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“We hit a snag on the sliding board, but I think we have it figured out.”
“I’m at your house, and I have a sort of situation here.”
“What sort of situation?”
“Sort of a home invasion situation. I’m fine and Ranger is here, but we thought you’d want to check out the … problem.”
“Oh man, did someone shoot a rocket into my living room?”
“Nope. No rocket. Your living room is just like you left it. It’s the kitchen that was sort of invaded.”
“Okay, I’ll round Bob up and come home.”
“This probably isn’t going to go well,” I said to Ranger.
Bob bounded into the kitchen, slammed into me, and sniffed at Ranger. Morelli followed. He nodded to Ranger and focused on me. His gaze traveled down my arm to my hand, and I realized I was still holding his Glock.
“On the counter,” I said.
Morelli shifted his attention. “It’s a heart,” he said.
“We think it’s human,” I told him. “Someone broke in while I was upstairs and left it here with a note.”
Morelli walked to the counter and read the note. “I’ll have yours next.”
He looked at me, and I could see the checked anger in the set of his mouth. “Do you know what this means?”
“Probably,” I said. “We think it relates to the polonium.”
“I’m listening.”
“When I was with Special Forces,” Ranger told Morelli, “I had an encounter with an SVR a
gent named Vlatko. He’s an assassin and an interrogator, and he’s in this country on some sort of mission. He used Rangeman for a practice run. I’ve tracked him to the Russian consulate in New York, and have some leads, but he’s still in the wind.”
“What has this got to do with me?” Morelli asked. “Why do I have a heart on my kitchen counter?”
“It has nothing to do with you,” Ranger said. “It was left for Stephanie. He’s targeting her because she’s worked for me. Eventually he’ll come after me. In the meantime, he’s playing with the people around me.”
“Do the feds know about the Vlatko connection?”
“Not from me,” Ranger said. “But they followed all the same initial leads that I followed. Since they don’t share their information with me, I have no idea where they’re at in the investigation.”
“If it’s a human heart, it has a body somewhere,” Morelli said. “At the very least, it needs to be tested and registered as a crime.”
We all looked over at the kitchen counter. No heart. Just a watery smear of blood and a trail of drops on the floor leading into the dining room. We followed the drops through the dining room and into the living room, where Bob was gnawing on the last remnant of the heart.
“Bad Bob,” Morelli said, shaking his finger at Bob. “That’s not Bob food.”
Bob obviously had a different opinion, because he snatched the mangled piece of meat and ran upstairs.
Morelli ran after him, there was a lot of yelling and growling, and Morelli came down empty-handed.
“He ate it,” Morelli said.
I was horrified to the point of gagging. Ranger stared down at his shoe, making a monumental effort not to laugh. And Morelli stood hands on hips, staring at the bloody splotch on his rug. The splotch sort of blended in with the rug pattern and various other food and beverage stains.
We were all carrying guns, and no one wanted to say the wrong thing and start World War III, so no one said anything.
