The Triangle Conspiracy

“And do you think you haven’t?”

“Not really, no. Maybe I drink a little more than I used to. So what? I’m a little older than I used to be.”

Faith’s voice rose again. “What the hell is the matter with you? You’re not a kid, you’re not stupid. Can’t you see it? It’s already destroyed your career. What’s next?” Sean went still. Faith felt a coldness descend between them, as if a freakish winter wind had wandered into this May morning.

“I never said anything to you about my career,” Sean said, in a very soft, dangerous voice.

Faith raised both hands, then dropped them to her sides again.

“Now you’re checking up on me?” Sean said. His own hands balled into fists. “You’re in Department Thirty and you’ve got access to anything and everything, so you thought you’d check up on me?”

“Sean, I just-”

“No! No, you don’t ‘just.’ You’re not any better than Dad, the way he likes to control us. You’re just like him…better check up on ol’ Sean, make sure he doesn’t fuck up again. Is that it? Huh, is that it, Faith? Oh, Jesus, you’re good. You’re really good at that, aren’t you? You have your life of digging around in secrets and rolling around in mud and muck, and look at you now, Faith! You’re covered in it yourself. Jesus Christ, and you have the fucking nerve to talk about trying to help me. Man, that takes real balls, sister.” He threw her a mock salute, and began stalking away from the parking lot toward the street.

Faith’s heart was pounding wildly. “Where are you going? What about the…the house?”

“Forget it. Forget I asked. I’ll handle it myself. Just forget I came to town. Go back to your mud and your muck.”

“Sean…” Faith jogged a few steps toward him. “Sean, you don’t know your way around this city. Here, let me drive you back to your car. Come on, we can-”

“I’ll find a bus, a cab, something. You leave me the hell alone.”

He crossed Western on foot and began working his way south. Faith watched him go, riveted to the ground. In a few minutes he was only a speck in the distance.

Faith felt a hand in the small of her back. “Where’s your brother?” Cara Dunaway said.

“He’s gone,” Faith said.

13

IT TOOK SEAN OVER HALF AN HOUR, VIA OKLAHOMA City’s convoluted bus system, to reach the Metro Transit terminal downtown. The city was a lot like Tucson, and very un like his hometown of Chicago, in that very few people used public transportation here. The farther west you went, the more people were wedded to their cars, he mused.

He and three others got off the bus, and Sean started across the street toward Saint Joseph Old Cathedral and, beyond it, the federal courthouse. The nerve! he raged to himself. Of all the nerve…I went to her for help, for protection, and she takes me to A-fucking-A!

So I’ve screwed up a few times.

That doesn’t make me an alcoholic.

That doesn’t make me an alcoholic, dammit!

He shook away the conflicting stew of feelings that swirled around him, almost jogging now. If I run faster, will I outrun all this? Sean wanted to shout.

He had no idea where Faith had parked his Jeep. He circled around the block several times before spotting it in a parking lot on the west side of the building. As he dug in his pocket for his keys, his hand brushed something else.

Faith had figured out that he’d stopped and had a few drinks. But he was even later meeting her because he’d also stopped off at a hardware store. His hand closed on the additional key in his pocket-a key to Faith’s car that he’d had copied this morning.

Just in case, Sean told himself. Just in case of emergency.

He needed to go to a bad part of the city. Remembering Monica and Britt, he headed south from downtown. After a couple of wrong turns, he located Shields Boulevard again. He drove up and down a few side streets until he found what he was looking for-a deserted-looking block with a few cars parked on the street.

The houses were generally in poor repair, with peeling paint and sagging foundations. Rent houses, Sean thought. He felt sorry for the people who had to rent places like these just to have a roof over their heads.

Halfway down the block, he found a perfect target, an old pea-green Chevy Monte Carlo. Its back end was parked on the gravel driveway in front of a sad white frame house, and its front end was angled onto the thin grass of the front yard. Both front tires were gone, the proverbial concrete blocks propped under the wheels.

But it had a current Oklahoma license plate. Sean stopped one house down and withdrew a screwdriver from the Jeep’s glove compartment. He got out and moved quickly down the sidewalk, stepping around a broken tricycle and an empty Smirnoff vodka bottle.

It took him less than half a minute to get the Monte Carlo’s plate off. He’d noticed, while driving around this city, that Oklahoma did not require a front license plate, only the rear. That made his job much easier.

He had the plate under his arm and was halfway back to the Jeep when he heard a screen door slam.

“Hey!” a woman shouted.

He didn’t look back, but lengthened his stride back to the Jeep. He slid behind the wheel and started the Cherokee in one smooth motion. From the porch of the house, the woman yelled again.

“Alto!” Stop!

She was young, Hispanic, and tired-looking, with a baby on her hip. She reminded him eerily of the woman back in Sasabe who had glared at him as her little boy darted across the road in front of him.

“Alto!”

He gunned the Cherokee down the street, made a quick turn, and was out of sight. In a few minutes he was back on the interstate, heading west toward El Reno. Toward Daryn.

Forty-five minutes later, Sean exited Interstate 40 and pulled into the parking lot of the Super 8 Motel in El Reno. He circled to the back of the motel, away from the highway, and put the stolen Oklahoma plate on the Cherokee. He tucked his own Arizona plates under the rear seat, then drove around to the front again.

As he got out of the Jeep, with two bags of hastily purchased clothes and supplies in his arms, he looked up at Room 213. He saw a shadowy face in the window, and then the curtains fell back into place.

“Here I am,” he said as he entered the room a moment later. “I bought you some clothes. I sort of guessed at the sizes. Plus some water and sandwich stuff. Kat?”

He realized the room was very dark, none of the lights on, the thick curtains completely covering the window.

“Kat? It’s me, Michael. Are you here?”

I know she’s here. I saw the curtains move. She was watching for me.

“I’m here, Michael,” she said.

Sean’s eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. Kat’s form took shape in the chair on the far side of the bed, sitting very still.

“Are you all right?” Sean asked.

“Yes. I’m glad you’re back. I was beginning to wonder.”

She’d been just sitting there, in a dark room, no TV on, no radio on, nothing to read…just waiting for him. Sean blinked into the darkness. She was a woman of extremes, he thought, contrasting the unbridled lust she brought to her lovemaking with the incredible stillness of being able to sit in a room for hours, simply waiting. Sean shuddered, and it wasn’t just because he wanted a drink.

“Why don’t you turn on a light?” he said.

“I had a migraine. When I get one of those, it’s better in the dark.”

Sounds like having a bad hangover, Sean thought, but said nothing as he dropped the bags on the floor.

“Did you get the help?”

“What?” Sean said.

“The person who was going to help you. Did it work out?”

Sean sighed. “No. But look, I’ll stay with you and help you keep safe. I bought some food.”

“What about your business?”

Sean cocked his head. “What?”

“Your woodworking business. What will you do about it?”

Sean stuffed his hands in his pockets, suddenly thankful for the dark, that Kat couldn’t see his hands trembling. “I set my own hours. I work for myself, so I can do that. Might get behind on a couple of custom orders, but I’ll get caught up eventually.”

“Good. I hoped you’d want to stay with me, Michael.”

Sean nodded.

“You saved my life,” Daryn said.

“You don’t have to…”

Daryn reached over and flicked on the bedside lamp. It took a moment for Sean to focus in on her face, like watching an old television set warm up before the picture fully settled on the screen. In the harsh lamplight, her forehead was lined. It was quite striking on such a young, beautiful face.

“Migraines can really be painful,” Sean said. “I have a friend who gets them.”

Daryn nodded. “Very painful. But I feel better now. The dark and the quiet helped, and now you’re back. I was worried that you wouldn’t come back. You have your own life…I’m just an escort.”

Sean said nothing. She was leading the conversation, trying to take it somewhere, and he couldn’t tell where yet. He’d learned by now that whether it was in sex or in conversation, it was better to let her lead and see where she was going before committing.

She opened her dark eyes wide and looked straight at him. Into him. Deep into him.

Jesus, Sean thought. He’d stared down drug dealers and arms smugglers and child stealers and professional assassins, people with no regard whatsoever for human