“You’re not disagreeing.”
“Would I have any reason to disagree?”
“Maybe I’d just better go.”
She turned away. He put a hand on her shoulder and drew her back. His voice was softer than before. “The situation must be pretty desperate if you’re coming here.”
“Not desperate. Just urgent.”
“Subtle distinction. You promise you’re not going to go off and get yourself killed?”
“That’s not the plan.”
“And you aren’t gunning for revenge?”
“My life isn’t a Charles Bronson movie. I told you what I want to do.”
“Yes. You told me.”
“And you don’t believe it,” she said flatly. Tess hadn’t believed her, either. She was tired of being doubted. “Okay, I’ll take off, then.”
“Not till I get you that info.”
She cocked her head, uncertain she’d heard right. “Yeah?”
“One of our gang guys will know about the Scorpions. Just wait here. And try to be inconspicuous.”
“I always am.”
He left. She paced the small office, barely aware of the chatter on the police radio. A uniformed cop stuck his head in the doorway, saw her and not Wyatt, and mumbled something about coming back later. Other than that, she was undisturbed.
She thought about what he’d said. Yeah, she was stressed. Who the hell wouldn’t be? She was tense and a little hyper. So what? She’d survived a goddamned gunfight. All her senses were temporarily heightened, her mind racing. That wasn’t a bad thing. If anything, it gave her an edge.
Maybe coming to the station house had a been a bad idea. She knew she shouldn’t be seen with him, especially by his fellow officers. It was the kind of thing that could come back to hurt him if she were ever exposed. But she was in a hurry. She wasn’t in the mood to play it safe.
He complained that she rarely told him anything about her cases. He was right. But the thing was, she was doing it to protect him. The less he knew, the better.
That was part of it, anyway. Not the whole truth. If she were being completely honest with herself, she would have to admit that she never shared more than necessary. Not with Wyatt. Not with Tess. Not with anybody. She was the original lone wolf. It had always been like that for her, but in recent years she seemed to have retreated even deeper into isolation and wariness. She had learned to trust no one, to be perpetually on guard.
It wasn’t the easiest way to live. And it wasn’t getting any easier. More and more often these days, she was getting that trapped feeling. It came on for no apparent reason and lingered for hours or days. Usually a dream served as a harbinger. She would dream of herself in prison-not a real prison, simply a place she couldn’t escape from. It might be nice and pretty, with attractive decor and comfortable furnishings, but she couldn’t leave. Sometimes the prison looked like her condo, and other times it looked like the ranch in Arizona where she’d grown up, but most of the time it was just an anonymous place, as meticulously appointed as a luxury hotel, and as impersonal.
She’d had the dream on and off for years. She was pretty sure she knew what it meant. Her symbolic imprisonment was a subconscious complaint about the life she’d chosen.
She worked alone. She’d created a job that allowed her to interact with a wide variety of people while maintaining a cautious separation from them all. Sometimes she felt trapped in the private world she’d carved out for herself.
Still, there was more to the dream than that. She had a feeling she was trapped in a deeper sense than simple emotional disconnectedness. Trapped by… circumstances? Fate? She wasn’t sure she believed in either. Circumstances were what you made them. Fate was a myth. Or so she liked to tell herself. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe when she’d signed up for this life, she’d boarded a train that was headed down a straight stretch of rail toward a predetermined end, and now the train was moving too fast for her to jump off.
Not that she would have jumped off, anyway. She was committed. She would ride this line to the end-even if it was a dead end. What the hell. Everything was a dead end if you looked far enough ahead, wasn’t it?
Besides, there was always a chance the train would jump the rails. She wasn’t sure if that part of the analogy was comforting or disquieting. She supposed it depended on whether or not she survived the wreck.
The door opened, and Wyatt came in. “Their main hangout,” he said without preliminaries, “is a biker bar on South Grande Avenue, name of Fast Eddie’s. There’s about twenty-five, thirty members in the Santa Ana club, plus a few probates-aspiring members-at any given time.”
“And they all have these tattoos?”
“All the sworn members, yeah. It’s part of the initiation ceremony. The tat isn’t always on the neck. Sometimes it’s on the biceps or the chest or wherever.”
“As gangs go, are we talking major crime or penny-ante stuff?”
“Somewhere in between. They push meth and designer drugs, but they don’t produce the stuff themselves. They’ve made efforts to legitimize themselves-graffiti cleanup, toys for tots, that sort of thing. But it’s all bullshit. At heart they’re all about drugs and violence.”
“A real credit to their community.”
“They’re people you don’t want to fool around with.”
“I never fool around,” Abby said quietly.
Wyatt gave her a long look. “That's what worries me.”
She didn't like his inquiring stare. It was hard to know what secrets he might draw out of her. He knew her so much better than Tess did.
She broke eye contact, moving quickly to the door. “Thanks, Vic. I owe you.”
He showed her an unreadable smile. “I'll put it on your tab.”
24
Reynolds had spent the night in his home office, a small, private retreat on the ground floor of his house. Nora knew better than to disturb him there. He’d microwaved a frozen fettuccini dinner and forced himself to eat it, the meal washed down with more than one glass of Scotch. At ten p.m. and again at eleven, he turned on the local news to see the story of the home invasion in San Fernando. He learned nothing from the accounts except that the reporters and a few onlookers had remained outside the house late into the night. He knew that Shanker’s men could do nothing until the media left.
By midnight he had to assume that the goddamned reporters were finally gone. They wouldn’t linger after doing their live stand-ups for the late local news. When the TV vans left, the neighborhood curiosity seekers would leave, too. And Bethany-Andrea-would be alone.
He had no doubt she would stay in the house. She would not trust the police enough to accept their protection. And if she was as paranoid and hostile as Abby Sinclair said, she wouldn’t have any friends she could go to.
She ought to be easy prey.
He waited, nursing another Scotch. Shanker’s boys would get it done this time. Hell, they might have done the job already. Andrea could be dead, even now. Or dying, her blood draining onto the floor as she lay helpless. He hoped she knew who was responsible. He wanted her to know who killed her.
His cell phone rang. He snatched it off his desk. “Yeah.”
“It’s me.” Shanker’s voice.
“You get it done?” Reynolds licked his lips and realized the old expression was true-he could almost taste it.
But Shanker took a moment too long to answer. “No,” he said finally. “We didn’t.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“She’s being watched.”
