Every Precious Thing

She smiled. “Thanks.”

He gave her a nod as she walked off.

Taking a drink, he scanned the room, wondering if anyone there knew anything about Sara or what had happened to Pep. Maybe they all did, or maybe no one.

When he’d worked his way through most of his beer, the bartender returned.

“Another?” she asked.

“Sure,” he replied.

A moment later, she walked back with the full glass, and Logan put six more bucks on the bar.

“Can I ask you a question?” he said.

She gave him a look like she knew exactly what he had in mind. “Not interested.”

“Sorry?”

She leaned forward, and whispered so only he could hear. “You’re not my type.”

“Okay,” he whispered back, “but that’s not what I was going to ask.”

Her eyes narrowed, wary but curious. “So what, then?”

“My name’s Logan.” He held out his hand.

She shook it, but said nothing.

Okay, he thought. “Did you hear about that fight last night?”

Now her curiosity turned into full-on suspicion. “Why? The bar had nothing to do with that.”

“I didn’t say it did.”

She remained quiet.

“I’m not trying to cause trouble. It’s just that the guy who ended up in the hospital is a friend of mine,” Logan said.

He sensed a sudden shift in her demeanor, a distancing.

“Sorry to hear that,” she said.

“I don’t suppose you know who attacked him?”

“Attacked? I heard it was a fight.”

“Not really. I don’t think my friend even got a blow in.”

“Sorry, don’t know who attacked him. I don’t even know who your friend is.”

“I think you might have met him.”

She shrugged. “I meet lots of people.”

A woman walked up to the bar. “Hey, Diana. Can I get another rum and Coke?”

“It would have been last night,” Logan went on. “Not long before he was beaten.”

“Excuse me,” the bartender-Diana-said to Logan.

She went off and made the woman her drink, but she didn’t immediately come back over. Logan waited, leaving his second beer untouched. Finally she returned.

“So what?” she asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“So what if I might have met him? If he came in for a drink, yeah, I would have. Why’s that important?”

“He was looking for a woman.”

She snorted. “Like that never happens here.”

Logan pulled out his phone and accessed the picture of Sara. “A specific woman.” He turned the phone so that Diana could see it. “She’s missing.”

The bartender looked at it for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, I remember your friend now. He didn’t want a drink. He just showed me that picture.”

“And?”

“I told him I’d never seen her before,” she said. “I’m sorry about your friend, but I wasn’t paying him that much attention.”

She started to move off.

“Wait,” Logan said. “Did he show the picture around? Maybe piss someone off? Anything like that?”

“Like I said, I wasn’t paying attention to him,” she said, shrugging. “Enjoy your beer, and have a nice night.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The flight arrived in Los Angeles at 11:44 p.m. Though it was on time, Dr. Erica Paskota glanced at her watch, annoyed. By the time she retrieved her rental car-with the special package that had hopefully been slipped into the trunk-waited for her two men who weren’t scheduled to arrive for another thirty minutes, then drove the three-plus hours to Braden, she wouldn’t arrive until after four a.m. at best.

Her man on the scene had been watching the woman for four weeks, but there had been no sign she’d had any contact with the target. Erica had begun to assume it was a dead end, but had left her watcher in place because caution was the best course.

Then there’d been the beating the previous night. The watcher had not seen the actual fight, but he had seen the man in the bar not long before he was attacked. That, in itself, wouldn’t have been enough to draw the doctor’s interest, but the picture the injured man had been showing around was.

Someone else was looking for the same person she was. Why? Who was he? And the woman bartender they’d been watching-did she actually know something?

Whatever the answers, this needed to end now. It had been going on way too long. Though she had other matters that required her attention, she could no longer trust this issue to anyone else. She had decided to fly out herself and lead the search. It was the only way she could be sure of a satisfactory ending.

She glanced at her watch again, even more agitated than before. She was sure the ending she craved lay to the East, but she wasn’t getting there any faster as her plane endlessly taxied through LAX.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Four more bars and Logan found himself no better off than he’d been when he left The Hideaway. It was almost midnight when he walked into the fifth, a place called the Sunshine Room. It was in a low-slung building connected to the Sand Castle Motel just off the main drag.

The Sunshine Room did not live up to its name. The interior was almost as dark as the desert night outside. Whereas The Hideaway had elevated itself above dive-bar status, the Sunshine Room seemed to embrace its seediness.

It was only large enough for four tables and the bar. A handwritten sign on the wall read: RESTROOM OUTSIDE AROUND BACK. The toilet’s location didn’t seem to help eliminate the stale odor of piss and beer that hovered in the room.

Logan walked over to the laminated bar, where a tired old man stationed on the other side looked annoyed by the fact he had a new customer.

Instead of asking Logan what he wanted, he merely looked at him, waiting.

Logan used his now familiar opening line. “What do you have on tap?”

“Beer.” The man’s voice was scratchy.

“Okay. Sounds good.” It was Logan’s seventh beer that night, but beside the first one, he’d only taken a sip or two of the others so he didn’t really care what the man brought.

The bartender filled a glass with something that almost looked like water, and set it on the bar. “Four fifty.”

Logan pulled out a ten.