Dox didn’t like the sound of that. “Talk him down?”
“I don’t know what to tell you. He asked me to step out and call you from a payphone. And to tell you we’d meet as planned as soon as the three of us can get there.”
Dox hoped there would be three left. If whatever talk Rain was trying didn’t work out, there would likely be only two. Or one.
“All right, thanks for letting me know. I’ll see you in a little while.”
He clicked off and finished the route on Ducommun Street, an empty cul-de-sac a few blocks from Union Station, where he parked in front of the busted chain-link fence in front of an abandoned warehouse. He got out with Kei’s mailbag and looked around, squinting against the sun and the heat. Someone had spray-painted
He walked around to the trunk and opened it. Kei shut her eyes and lifted a hand to shield her sweaty face from the sudden invasion of light.
She squinted up at him fearfully. “You’re really going to let me go?”
He wondered if he could feel more low. He was never doing something like this again, no matter what the stakes. Never.
He held out his hand. “I promise you, I am. And I’m sorry, that was a long drive. I can see where you might have started to doubt me. Plus, it must have been god-awful hot in there.”
She paused for a moment, then took his hand and sat up. She looked around.
“We’re a few blocks from Union Station,” he said, “but, as you can see, not in the most upstanding of neighborhoods. If you don’t mind, I’ll just follow you in the car while you walk the few blocks to make sure you make it all right.”
She put some weight on his hand and stepped out of the trunk. She looked around again. “Okay.”
She was still holding his hand. He squeezed hers briefly and then let go.
“I know it’s pretty lame under the circumstances,” he said, “but I apologize for what we did to you. I shouldn’t have let myself get caught up in it. It was wrong, and I’m truly sorry.”
She said, “Thank you.”
He shook his head, ashamed. “You don’t have one single thing to thank me for. I did a terrible thing to you.”
She looked at him. “I knew you wouldn’t hurt me. You were the reason I wasn’t scared.”
That only made it worse. “I don’t think that’s worth very much, actually.”
“It was to me.”
“Darlin’,” he said gently, “are you familiar with a thing called the Stockholm Syndrome?”
“I know what it is. And I don’t have it. If the police had kicked in the door to that room, I wouldn’t have shielded you with my body, I can tell you that.”
He smiled. Ordinarily, he might have taken an opportunity like that to comment on the possible upside of her throwing her body over his. Instead, he said, “Well, now you’ve gone and burst my bubble.”
She laughed, just a little. “It could have been a lot worse for me. You made it better. I kept looking at that scary guy, Larison, and thinking, ‘Dox wouldn’t let him.’”
He wondered if she was playing him. “You really thought that?”
She nodded. “I did.”
He looked down at the ground. “If I did something to make this a little less worse of an ordeal for you, I’m glad. But it was still an ordeal, and I was still a part of it. Trust me, I know you’re bursting with relief and gratitude right now, but later? It’s all going to settle in. You’ll realize what you’ve been through. Being held like we held you is no joke.”
“You sound like you know.”
He wondered whether he should say more, and then did anyway. “Not so long ago, some men held me. I’m not going to tell you what they did, other than that it involved electric shocks, repeated drownings, and threats to Nessie. So yes, I’m not unacquainted with what you’re going to be dealing with in the coming days and weeks. I wish there were something I could do about it, but I can’t, other than to say again I’m sorry.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Nessie?”
He shook his head, knowing he shouldn’t have joked like that, determined not to follow up. “Never mind.”
He handed her the mailbag. She took it.
“What did my father do to you?” she said.
He shook his head again. “I don’t want to talk about it. It never should have had anything to do with you. I want you to tell me something else, instead.”
“What?”
He looked around at the cracked road, the barbed wire, everything baking under the unblinking Los Angeles sun.
“What are your plans? I mean, for the future. Film school…you want to make movies?”
She smiled. “That’s what I want. Pretty far afield from my dad, huh?”
“I’d say. But I’m glad. I like movies. When am I going to get to see yours?”
“I don’t know. I wrote a script I think is great. But financing is hard these days. We’ll see.”
“Financing, huh?”
She shook her head slightly as though not understanding what he was getting at.
“When you get home,” he said, “check the bottom of your mailbag. There are a bunch of little stones in there. They don’t look like much, but they’re diamonds. I don’t know what movies cost, and probably what I put in there wouldn’t be enough for Harry Potter, but I think they’ll get you started.”
She looked at him, then said, “Are you serious?”
He gave her a mock-stern look. “In the short time you’ve known me, have I ever not been?”
She looked at him for a moment longer, then stepped in wordlessly and hugged him. He hugged her back, but tentatively. He was ashamed to receive her gratitude, and he also didn’t like how good she felt in his arms. The Wilson Combat was in his front waistband, coming between them, and he supposed that worked as a metaphor.
After a moment, he broke the embrace. “All right, you.” he said. “Now git. I’ll follow you to make sure you reach the station all right. And I’ll keep an eye out for your movie.”
She hesitated. “Am I ever going to see you again?”
He shook his head. “That’s Stockholm Syndrome talking.”
“The hell it is.”
He smiled, and tried not to show how crappy he felt. “Well, I know your cell phone number. Who knows?”
“Will you call me someday? Not right away. Just…after this has started to seem unreal.”
He kept the smile in place. “I’d like that.” The way he’d phrased it, it wasn’t even a lie.
He followed her to the station as planned. When he was satisfied she was in a safe area, he pulled out alongside her. She turned and looked at him, and he thought she was going to come to the car. So he gritted his teeth and held up a hand in goodbye, and pulled out into traffic. He checked the rearview as he drove and the sight of her standing on the sidewalk, alone and watching him leave, made him feel sadder than he’d felt in a long time.
The next morning, the four of us stood on the tarmac at sleepy Santa Monica Airport. Kanezaki had flown commercial to LAX that morning, where he was changing to a chartered jet that would pick us up here. We could have met him at LAX, but security at major airports was extreme at the moment and we didn’t want to risk it-even if we’d been willing to leave the firearms behind, which we weren’t. So I’d dropped the others off at Santa Monica Airport and then driven the truck to a nearby U-Haul place, hoping Kanezaki would only be hit with a penalty for accidentally returning the truck on the wrong side of the country, rather than the cost of
