He flipped the phone open. “Hello, David.”

“Quinn. How are you?”

“What can I do for you?”

“I’m calling about the project we discussed. We’re officially on,” Wills said, his British accent clipped and proper. “I need you to get on a flight tonight to-”

And there it was, one of those exceptions. “Let me stop you. I can’t do tonight.”

“Okay,” Wills said, not sounding particularly happy. “Then first thing tomorrow morning-”

“David, I’m sorry, but the next few days are out. If you need to find someone else, I completely understand.”

Orlando leaned through the bathroom door. “He’d better understand.”

“Have you taken another job?” Wills asked.

“No, of course not. It’s just… a personal issue.”

“How personal?”

Quinn, annoyed, said, “Very.”

A few seconds of silence.

“Right, then, sorry. Didn’t mean to push. How long will you be tied up?”

“Could be up to five or six days.”

“Five or six days?” Wills said, surprised. “Hold on.” There was half a minute of silence, then Wills came back. “There is some flexibility with this project. I think I can arrange things so that the early operations are covered. Then you can take over and finish everything off.”

“ ‘Operations’ plural? How big is this?”

“It involves several related assignments,” Wills said.

“That could get expensive,” Quinn said.

Quinn was a cleaner, the guy you went to when you needed a body-or in Wills’s case, apparently, bodies-to disappear. His rate was simple: $30,000 a week, with a two-week minimum for each project. If someone had two jobs for him, and each took a day, it was still $120,000 total. He’d explained all that to Wills before the first job he’d done for the Englishman.

“I realize that, but I thought maybe we could work out a flat rate.”