Chapter 8: The Introduction of Dario Salcedo

The Rio Grande Botanic Garden opened at ten on Saturdays. Marcus arrived at nine fifty-three, paid the seven-dollar admission to a teenager who did not look up from her phone, and walked the entry path twice before settling on a bench near the Mediterranean house that gave him a clear sightline to the main gate while appearing to read the placard about drought-resistant ornamental grasses.

The placard was not interesting. The gate was.

Reyes had given him three facts about Dario Salcedo: landscaping business, South Valley operation, punctual. She had offered more and Marcus had stopped her. He preferred to form his own initial read without her annotations layered over the top. He'd learned that in Bogotá, where a S.H.I.E.L.D. briefing document's characterization of a mid-level cartel liaison as volatile had caused two of his team members to misread the man's nervous stillness as threat posture when it was simply how he prayed before difficult conversations. The operation had worked out. But the misread had cost them forty minutes and a better extraction window.