Page 8 of Dodge

A reddish eyebrow involuntarily rose. Surprise vanished, replaced by business.

“Half up front. Nonrefundable. Give me his particulars and I’ll see what I can do.”

She reached into her backpack and dug around the cluttered interior until she found an envelope of cash. She counted out the bills and slid them over.

Wexler asked, “So, this man, what do you want him for?”

Rather than explain that she’d come to Upper Falls, Wisconsin, to murder him, Marlowe said only, “That’s my business. Yours is to take the money and not ask questions.”

“You don’t hear much about a woman doing that.”

“No, you don’t,” US Marshal Ed Greene offered absently. He’d apparently lost his taste for food. The remaining half of the burger and most of the fries sat intact.

Tony Lombardi wanted the rest of his own lunch but thought it would look bad, him scarfing down food. “Women, breaking the law, you think of them abusing their kids or shooting a cheating husband. Not torturing people.”

Greene displayed an iPad.

On it was a security camera image of a woman in her early thirties. She had thick hair, red and brown, pulled into a tight ponytail. She was in jeans, a sweatshirt and a well-worn black leather jacket. Boots. Crouching at the door of a small warehouse, she held a pistol.

“Rival crew’s stash. She was hired to torch it. Which she did. Then shot one of the guards in the knee. Didn’t have to. She just did.”

“What’s her name?”

“Constant Marlowe. Not Constance. Constant.”

“Never heard of that,” Lombardi said. “That a scar on her forehead?”

“That’s right.”

She was pretty despite that. Maybe it made her prettier.

“What’s her story?”

“From what I hear, the wiring’s off. She’s just, well,bad. A sociopath. In juvie a half dozen times before she was eighteen. She was a boxer for a while. Good but she got banned—ignored the ref too much. At the gyms she made some contacts, mob and some of the bigger indie crews. She started doing odd jobs. It worked out: nobody suspects a woman’s going to kill. That’s how she got close to my assistant.

“So, the boxing? She can kick ass. And she’s a good shot. She parked three a few inches from my head at fifty feet when I was following up on a tip. Only it was a setup she’d put me together to take me out.”

“Fifty feet? A handgun?”

“Yep.”

Pistols were nowhere near as accurate as movies made them out to be.

Greene lifted an eyebrow. “I by rights should not be here now.”

Lombardi had never been shot at and he’d never fired his own weapon in his seven years with the HCSO. Drawn but not fired.

“Are you sure she’s after you?”

Greene was silent for a moment. “About a week ago I got a message late at night from her. A text. She told me to back off. It was her last warning.” He hesitated. Then: “And she attached a recording she’d made of Joanne while she was torturing her.”

“Oh, my Lord.” Lombardi’s gut twisted again and he wondered if he’d be sick.

No. Control it, Deputy. He did.

“Back off,” Greene whispered, shaking his head. Then he focused again. “Okay, Tony. This brings us to the crux of the matter. She’s decided to have our—what would you call it?”

The deputy suggested, “Showdown? Like in the streets of Dodge, some old Western.”

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