Milo felt a strong grip on his arm, then a familiar voice. “Get up kid, you did good.” He opened his eyes, saw Cole Keegan standing over him. Behind the biker, the iron grill lay on top of a heavyset bald man wearing a sweat- stained leather apron and rubber gloves.
“Jesus, what about Tony!” Milo cried. He tried to stand, nearly toppled. His leg burned with agony.
“Settle down, you probably sprained something in that fall.” Cole checked his leg. “Nothing broken. Try to walk it off.”
Milo coughed, hobbled over to the man strapped to the rusty box spring. Limp, shirtless, Tony Almeida’s wrists were bound with wire, the flesh scorched around the coils. Milo saw the ancient crank generator and knew Tony’d been subjected to electric shock.
“Here.” Cole thrust a pair of wire cutters into Milo’s hand. “Hurry up. They’re putting out the fire. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Tony groaned as soon as the cold metal touched his burned flesh. His eyes fluttered, then opened wide. Milo cut the wires and gently eased Tony to the floor.
“Milo?”
“Don’t look so incredulous. You’ll hurt my feelings. Drink this.” Milo helped Tony to a sitting position and thrust a bottle of water into his numb, shaky hand. Almeida gulped it down, choking once or twice. Tony noticed the fat man crushed under the iron grate. “Did you do that?”
Milo nodded. “Pressman to the rescue.”
“His name was Ordog,” said Tony.
“Now he’s Dead Dog.” Keegan grinned.
“He a friend of yours?” Tony asked Milo.
“Meet Cole Keegan. Richard Lesser’s bodyguard.”
“You found Lesser?” Tony asked, gingerly flexing his arms.
Milo nodded. “Lesser decided to give himself up, come back home,” said Milo. “He was looking for you when —”
“When the Chechens found me first.” As he spoke, Tony dribbled some water on the burns on his wrists. The sting jolted him. “How’s Fay?”
Milo didn’t answer. Instead, he used tatters of Tony’s shirt to wrap the burns. Cole Keegan kept an eye on the door at the opposite end of the lab. Tony watched Milo work, waited for a reply to his question. Finally Tony caught Milo’s eye.
“Milo?
“The Chechens found her, Tony…she’s dead.”
Tony closed his eyes, grunted as if punched. He dropped the plastic bottle, stumbled to his feet with Milo’s help. “We’ve got to get out of here. Track them down.”
“Now you’re talking,” said Cole, moving to Almeida’s side. “At least that ‘let’s get out of here’ part.” He handed Tony his duster. “Put this on.”
Tony slipped the long coat over his muscled shoulders.
“Come on,” Milo told Tony. “Richard Lesser’s waiting for us in a car a couple of blocks from here, and an extraction team is meeting us across the border at Brown Field.”
“The exit’s over here,” called Cole. He clutched his shotgun, cocked and ready.
When they kicked open the door, the alley off Albino Street was deserted save for one. Brandy leaned against the wall, tapping her booted foot impatiently. She wore long black jeans, a Sunday church pink ruffled blouse, and clutched a small cherry-red suitcase in one hand.
Seeing her, Keegan froze in his tracks. “I knew this was too easy,” he muttered.
Brandy jerked her head toward the opposite end of the byway, where a crowd had gathered around the still- smoking brothel. The hoot of sirens signaled the not-exactly-timely arrival of the local fire department.
“Don’t worry,” she told them. “The gang guys went north for some kind of score, and the Chechens are holed up on the other side of town with that slob Ray Dobyns. Something big is up—”
Tony met her eyes. “Dobyns. You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” Brandy replied. “I heard all about how Dobyns sold you to the Chechens from Carlos—”
“I see.” Tony’s voice was tight with barely contained rage. “Who’s Carlos?”
It was Keegan who replied. “Her pimp. The guy behind the bar.”
Brandy ignored Keegan, stepped up to Tony. “Listen, if you want Dobyns’s head I’ll tell you where the pig is, but you gotta visit him later. I want to be across that border and on my way to my sister’s house in Cleveland before Carlos figures out I’m gone. Otherwise I’m a dead ho’ walking.”
Tony nodded. “Don’t worry. I promise we’ll get you across the border. But first we have a stop to make.”
“
The message machine cut off after thirty seconds. Lonnie went right back to work, moving the cursor and isolating another section of the photograph, enhanced it to the limit. He studied the disappointing results on his computer monitor, wondering if another photo shop program would do a better job of enhancing the image without pixelation. With the Mohave program all he got was a blurry mess — a silhouette of Abigail Heyer sitting in the back of the limousine, sure — but the details he was looking for were gone, faded into a soft blur.
Lonnie cursed and saved the image. It was just habit, the picture was useless. He moved to the next digital photograph in the sequence he’d snapped earlier that day, at Abigail Heyer’s mansion. This picture was taken just a split-second after the previous one. He expanded the picture until it filled the screen, then cropped off the driver’s shoulder and head, making the actress the central figure.
Before he tampered further, Lonnie studied the photo for a long time, absorbing every detail. He stared long enough for the phone to startle him out of his cyber trance. He ignored the call and on the third ring the machine answered.
“Nobunaga you son of a bitch! You’re fired. That’s what you are you bastard. You’re fired!”
Lon tried to ignore the stream of obscenities that followed his boss’s threat.
The message machine clicked off. In the silence that followed, Lon exited Mohave Photo Shop and activated a similar program from a software rival. To test the resolution, he selected an image from much later in the sequence, the best of which was a shot of Abigail Heyer crossing the stone patio to her front door, looking very pregnant under her voluminous slacks and pink cashmere maternity blouse.
A good photo, Lon decided. Crisp. Clean. Perfect composition. Jake Gollob would be proud to put it on the cover of his rag, with a banner headline announcing the pregnancy, and pondering the identity of the father. A
But it would be a lie.
Lon went backward, through the photo sequence to the very first picture he’d snapped, a photo of the interior of the limousine taken the moment the driver opened the door. He isolated a section of that image, Abigail Heyer’s torso as she leaned forward to exit the vehicle. This time, he reversed the image before he expanded it, so the dark lines would be light, the light sections dark, like a photo negative.
The computer churned and the results appeared on his screen. Lon contemplated the image without blinking.
He saved the enhanced image, printed out several copies. Then he copied all of the digital photo files from the Heyer mansion shoot onto a pen drive dangling from his key chain.
Lon rose, grabbed one of the photos of Abigail Heyer that he’d just printed out and literally ran to his bedroom. He scanned the DVD collection packing his bookshelf, found his copy of Abigail’s film,
