The Dolomite Solution by Trevor Scott Page A

setback.
    â—
    It took the bomb squad almost an hour to get there, and another hour to disassemble the C-4 device.
    Jake was standing back behind the cordon on a snow bank when Martini approached. His expression was more forgiving this time. Jake didn’t want to rub it in, but he knew his caution had possibly prevented the death of Martini and his men. Leverage went a long way with professional courtesy.
    â€œThanks Jake,” Martini said with great difficulty. “This was the real thing. Semtex. There was enough underneath the gas tank to blow all of us off this mountain.”
    â€œHow was it wired?”
    â€œThe trunk latch. The electronic release had been disengaged, so it would have only gone off after we used the key.”
    Jake thought about that for a moment. That was well planned out. Murdock is killed...of course the cops would want to take a look at the car when they found it. “The killer couldn’t afford to have the thing go off just at any time. The signal might have been the same for another rental sitting in the area. No, he wanted you to find the car. Wanted you to blow up. You and your men.”
    Martini couldn’t argue with him. His jaw tightened like it had the first time Jake had met the man in the funeral home. “This sucks. Isn’t that what Americans say?”
    Jake laughed. “Yeah. It doesn’t feel too good when someone fucks with you, does it?”
    â€œWhen I find this man,” Martini said, “he better hope I’m in a good mood.”
    â—
    Quinn had left as soon as the bomb squad arrived, his hope for a glorious spectacle shot all to hell by Adams. He’d make the bastard pay for that.
    Now he was sitting in his car outside the Super Ski Rental in the town of Axams. The young man who had rented him the skis flipped the sign to closed, and that was Quinn’s cue to get out.
    He looked up and down the street, but there wasn’t much traffic. Quinn knew he should have taken care of this long ago. Perhaps he had simply gotten lazy, which was totally out of character for him.
    He tapped on the door window. The young man was back behind the long counter where he would set the skis to adjust them for each person, pointed angrily at the sign, saying they were closed. Quinn pretended like he couldn’t hear the man, waving for him to come closer.
    While the man turned to round the counter, Quinn slipped out his gun from inside his ski jacket, cocked the hammer, and planted it behind his right leg.
    The young man stopped a foot from the glass. “We’re closed,” he said adamantly.
    Quinn smirked at the guy, raising the gun to a few inches from the glass. The man was looking right at his intense eyes, his crooked, upturned lips, and didn’t see the gun. Glass barely shattered as the two bullets shot through the door, penetrated the man’s chest, and sending him hurtling backwards. His knees buckled and he dropped like a cow in a slaughterhouse.
    Slipping the gun back inside his jacket, Quinn walked back to his car casually, thinking how nice his grouping was that time. It pays to practice.

13
    The Alfa Romeo seemed to glide and float out of the mountains following the famous Brenner Pass. They had been delayed at the border by a huge accident involving more than twenty cars and trucks, closing the northbound lanes entirely. Toni and Professor Scala had sat by helplessly as workers unraveled the mess and removed countless victims from the wreckage. Toni couldn’t help thinking how if she had been driving a few miles per hour faster they would have been in the wreck. Even faster yet and they would have never seen the accident at all. Fate was a strange thing indeed, Toni knew.
    Toni had not said a word to Professor Giovanni Scala since slowly pulling away from the accident scene. As they had sat paralyzed in the traffic jam, she had told Scala about his friend and colleague’s death that morning. He was