pavement. He leaped down, grabbed her hair, and forced her face around to his. She was stunned, lipstick smeared down her chin, stockings torn and bloody at the knees, hand cupped beneath her draining nose. He felt a revulsion for what he was doing, but it wasn’t close to stopping him. He tugged the gun from his belt and pressed the muzzle to the front of her shoulder, where arm met torso.
‘Look at me,’ he said. ‘Look at me.’
Her pupils rolled to meet his.
‘Do you care now?’
‘Unh?’ she said loosely.
‘Do you care now?’
She nodded against his grip. ‘Oh, God, yes, please stop.’
A few people had spilled out of the office, and tenants were at their windows in the apartment complex beyond the collapsed wall. What surprised Mike in the face of all this was just how undaunted he felt.
He said, ‘Talk.’
‘I don’t know who they are I swear one big guy and a cripple never gave me a number or anything just showed up like fucking ghosts found me by reputation I’m the best female operator in the area up here I got pending charges they said they could get ’em wiped for me Jesus my nose-’
‘
‘So they gave me a file with info and the whole play set up already for me to contact you as the will executor they wanted me to confirm who you were they weren’t sure.’ She was panting, blood spraying her lips. ‘I have everything in the trunk there
The trunk had blown open from impact, the file box inside knocked upside down, trapping the folders in place. Mike found the red-tabbed file quickly. Jotted across the front, upside down, was “
He walked back around to Kiki. She was on all fours, coughing. He pointed at the file, ‘What’s this license plate?’
‘I wanted something in case they screwed me so when they drove away I wrote down the plate number of the truck but that was before I learned how they are.’
‘It was a truck and not a van?’
‘It was a truck you can’t tell ’em they’ll kill me.’
Shep had vanished. A small crowd was forming by the door of the office, and a few of the younger workers were whispering, looking like they were gathering their courage. The woman in the penthouse window across the way had a phone pressed to her face; she recoiled from Mike’s stare, dropping to the floor. It would only be a matter of time before the cops rolled up.
‘I guess you got a lot to worry about, then.’ Mike paused over her. ‘If you warn them I’m coming, you will see me again.’
‘Okay.’ She wiped at her bloody nose. ‘Okay okay okay.’
File in hand, Mike stepped across the rubble through the hole in the wall and jogged along the side of the apartment complex. When he dashed out into the street a block over, a ragged Pinto with a rusted hood wobbled up beside him right on cue. Shep was hunched in the torn front seat like an elephant on a tricycle, the grocery bag with Mike’s things waiting in the passenger foot well. Mike jumped in, and they motored away from the curb.
‘I didn’t think these things were still on the road.’
‘After what you did to that Saab,’ Shep said, ‘this is all you’re gonna get.’
The back of Mike’s forearm was streaked with blood, and, wiping it, he realized that it wasn’t his own. He could feel it drying, a tightening on his skin.
Shep glanced down. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You’ll get used to it.’
Chapter 44
‘Where are we?’
Boss Man’s voice through the phone was so clear he might have been sitting on the porch of the clapboard house next to William. A hot-oil smell wafted over from the wrecking yard; when William and Hanley’s grandfather had built the house, he hadn’t factored in wind patterns, so on some days the very walls seemed infused with burned tires and battery acid. The clear-as-hell afternoon afforded a glimpse of Mount Shasta rising in the distance, speckled with an early snow.
‘Wingate’s a wanted man in his own right,’ William said. ‘The agencies are on alert. Anywhere he pops up, they’ll deliver him straight to Graham.’
Behind him the rickety screen door banged and heavy footsteps creaked the boards. Dodge carried with him the musk of the cellar. The mass of his shoulders bowed in a broad arc, he descended the steps and arrayed something on the crackly dead weeds of the front lawn. He shuffled over toward the side of the house, clearing William’s view to the tools nestled in the weeds. Ball-peen hammer. Needle-nose pliers. Metal shackles.
‘Even in his position, Graham can only do so much,’ Boss Man said. ‘The higher-profile this thing gets, the more cover smoke he has to blow. And the more it costs.’
‘Well, that’s why Graham has Dodge and me, isn’t it? Once he gets a bead on Wingate and the girl, we’ll make them vanish from all consideration.’
Trailing a black garden hose, Dodge moved back toward the weeds. Returned to the spout to crank on the water.
‘You left the smashed-up van behind,’ Boss Man said. ‘Can anyone trace it to you?’
‘Nah,’ William said. ‘Old license plates, no reg, VIN placard pried off the dash. If there’s one thing we know how to do, it’s strip vehicles.’
‘But that’s
Splitting the stream with a thumb, Dodge sprayed down the tools.
‘No, sir.’ William moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. ‘Wingate’ll surface soon. You can’t hide with a kid. He already tried to get her on an airplane to-’
‘You should’ve killed her when you had her in hand,’ Boss Man said.
‘We were gonna use her as a lure first. In the ’Raq, our boys handed out a lot of sniper rounds through the spinal cord. You get someone down, screaming loud enough, and you can draw pretty much anyone out of the-’
‘Your uncle would’ve handled them on the spot,’ Boss Man said.
William bit his lips, overgrown stubble poking this way and that. A pulse beat in his neck, fluttering the sallow skin at the side of his throat. His right arm jerked a little. ‘Maybe if the old man was more strategic, he’d be teeing off in Palm Springs ’stead of slow-roasting in hell.’
But Boss Man wasn’t interested in clan history. ‘And the wife?’ he asked. ‘She’s our best path to him and the girl.’
‘She was transferred.’
A displeased pause. ‘Where?’
‘We looked high and low. Nothing. Graham’s running a computer search starting in Los Angeles and circling out in a spiral, checking every-’
‘She was in critical condition. She can’t have moved far. Every hospital within driving distance. Every one. Understand me?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Apparently satisfied, Dodge coiled the hose again by the house. Leaving the tools to dry below, he sat on the porch steps beside William and resumed reading the graphic novel he’d left facedown. The pear-shaped bruise on the side of his neck was changing from blue to purple.
‘Where are you?’ Boss Man asked.
William said, ‘We came back to base to ready a few things, but we’re good to deploy as soon as the bell
