gauze pads and tightly wound tape had brought the bleeding under control, and he'd zipped into his flexible bulletproof vest to keep pressure on the bandaging. In the alley below, a homeless guy shouted schizophrenically, the latest dose of street theater. The lights were off. Kaitlin sat next to Sam, stroking his head.
Walker listened to the whine of passing traffic. He'd retrieved his backup Redhawk from the duffel, filled it with his last six titanium bullets, and seated it in his rear waistband. With the press of metal against his right kidney, he felt whole again. His heartbeat had finally started to slow, but his head still felt wobbly from the blood loss, and his skin was damp. 'You should get out of here.'
'His sleeping's been so off, I hate to wake him when he's down.'
The yelling from the alley faded, replaced by a bed knocking the neighboring wall and sweet nothings grunted in Spanish. On the verge of laughter, Walker and Kaitlin shared the inside joke across the distance of the room until the predictable climax of 'Ai, papi' s gave way to the sounds of a Telemundo talk show and a running shower.
The intervals between Kaitlin's yawns shrank until she switched beds, curling beside Walker and putting her cheek on the ballistic composite plating his chest. Sam murmured something and rolled over, clutching a pillow between his knees.
Walker spoke softly, so as not to wake Sam. 'Sometimes we really had fun, me and Tess. We had a Thanksgiving together during our mother's little break. We walked around, watched everyone eating through their windows, these great meals. We went back to the Buick, tried to sleep, but we were too hungry. So Tess had this idea'-a faint smile at the memory-'we were so broke and so hungry we drew pictures of food. Big turkeys. Hams. Mashed potatoes.'
Kaitlin looked at him with amused eyes. 'Cranberry sauce.'
'Why not, huh? I drew mine with a broken pencil on the back of a road map. I wish I had that drawing still. What a great Thanksgiving.' On the other bed, Sam mumbled and shifted, and they were quiet until his breathing smoothed out again. Walker said, 'I ever tell you that story?'
Kaitlin nodded, her cheek rasping against the vest. 'Yeah.'
'I never told you about when I got strep throat, though. The next month.'
'I thought I knew all those stories.'
'It was a few weeks later, when we kept the Buick under the freeway at Griffith Park. The whole back of my throat was white with pus. I wound up spitting into a bag because it hurt too much to swallow.' Amusement crept into his voice. 'I was a mess. I needed penicillin, but we couldn't go in to see a doctor because we were scared they'd report us and haul my ass off to a kids' home or something. Tess found a guy worked at the drugstore, said he'd filch some pills for us for twenty bucks. But, of course, we didn't have twenty bucks. That night I got bad. Fever, sweating, the whole nine yards. Tess stayed up with me, rubbing ice on my forehead. She told me…' Kaitlin looked up, startled, but already he was back in control. His voice, twenty-two years later, still held disbelief. 'She said if she could've had it instead of me, the strep throat, she would have. Well, there was this older guy always sniffing around us. Gold Rolex, would come to the park with his wife, push his kids on the swings. He'd always watch Tess. A few times, when he came alone with his kids, he'd take her aside and talk with her. The next day after that night with my fever going, the guy comes by again. He pushes his kids on the swings. Tess goes over and talks to him, and then they go away. I remember thinking it was weird, him leaving his kids playing alone on the swings. Maybe fifteen minutes later, she comes back. She drives me to the drugstore. We get the pills.'
Kaitlin was propped on her elbow, her face beside his. Her forehead was wrinkled in the middle like she might cry, but instead she stroked his face. It was the longest he could ever remember talking, his words pulling together one after another. He was probably a touch loopy from the blood loss. He found himself missing Sally and Jean Ann, his palm trees that he could see from his house in Terminal Island.
He heard himself continue. 'I kept a picture of you.' He tapped his temple. 'Didn't fade, no matter how much I wanted it to. Not in Iraq, not in Leavenworth, not through two and a half years at TI. Maybe I didn't want to ruin that, that image. After Iraq I knew I would if I gave myself a chance.'
Her cheeks glimmered in the neon light that managed to filter through the blurry back window. Her upper lip was slightly drawn, in anger or hurt or maybe both. 'Coward.'
'That, too, I guess.'
A weak voice from the other bed. 'Guys?' Sam had awakened, and his face looked yellow and bloated. 'I don't feel so good.'
A dog growled out front, and Walker stiffened. He crossed the room and fingered down the front blinds to see the Troubleshooter leading seven men in raid gear up the stairs.
Tim crept to Apartment 22, the brass numbers matching those that Morgenstein had scrawled on a torn bit of pizza carton. One of Pierce's portfolio companies had diversified into slumlording, this fine property north of the airport one of numerous holdings. MP5 in the high-ready position, Tim shouldered to the knob side of the jamb as Miller's explosive-detection dog cleared the door for booby traps. Maybeck's battering ram hit home, the door smashing open, and Tim charged in, the other ART members fanning out behind him to cover the rooms.
No people, no furniture, no bed-nothing but stained carpet and a startled rat in the far corner. Bear returned from the bathroom and stood beside Tim, half illuminated by the slash of streetlight yellow leaking through the splintered front door. Zimmer dropped his MP5, letting it dangle across his chest from the sling. Maybeck cursed, and Denley, still humming, poked at the rat with his boot.
Thomas said, 'I'm getting tired of raiding empty rooms.'
Bear's Remington shotgun swung at his side, its sawed-off tip brushing his knee. He dug the torn patch of pizza carton from his pocket and double-checked the address. 'Lying piece of shit.'
'Maybe.' Tim used the tip of his gun to lift a torn strip of carpet by the door. A bullet lay just beneath the ripped seam, the cause of the tiny bump. Using his barrel, he flipped it out. Homemade. Awfully familiar tint to the bullet head. The missing bullet from Walker's recovered gun?
Thomas said, 'Really?'
'Doubt it,' Tim said. 'Walker's not this careless.'
'Even if he cleared out in a hurry?'
'He's trained for worse than a hurry.' Tim stepped out into the floating hallway. He was standing on the short end of the L that formed the second floor, the staircase intersecting the nexus of the wings. A Latino guy in a towel, still glistening from a shower, peered out one of the doors across the way, then closed it quickly.
Why would Walker bother leaving evidence behind? To make them think he'd camped there, sure. But what benefit would that be?
Bear stood beside Tim, studying the pizza-carton corner. He spoke in a rumble of a whisper. 'He'd want to know if we showed up. Because then he'd know Morgenstein leaked. The bullet's so we'd figure we missed him, that he already cleared out. So we'd know there's no sense in us sticking around.'
'And he wouldn't want us to stick around because…'
Bear nodded. 'He's watching us. Right now.'
Tim said, 'Let's ring some doorbells.'
Sam held his stomach and moaned. From the window Walker watched the deputies fan out along the second floor, knocking on doors. He glanced at the back window. He'd tested it already-it screeched, and the rusty fire escape made a racket. Waiting it out was the best option. He still felt too weak to outrun eight men with MP5s.
Walker said, 'Put him in the bathroom. Close the door. Now.' He caught Sam's eye. 'If they hear you, someone's gonna have to die. I'm trusting you. That makes us family.'
Kaitlin coughed out a note of disgust at Walker. With her help, Sam staggered to his feet. She sat him in the bathroom and said, 'Honey, just hang on for a couple of seconds, okay?'
'No,' Walker said, 'keep the light off. And put the fan on for white noise in case he keeps moaning.'
'I'll close the door, but I am not leaving him in the dark.'
'I'm not scared of the dark,' Sam said.
Through a sliver in the closed blinds, Walker watched the huge deputy flash a crime flyer at Humpy Gonzalez next door. No worries there, since Walker had been careful to come and go without being sighted. The flicker in Morgenstein's eye-greed? envy? — when he'd handed over the apartment keys to Walker had raised a red flag. As promised, the building was in an ideal nowhere location, peopled by nowhere tenants. Walker had taken advantage of his father's hospitality but moved down the hall into another empty apartment to find out if Morgenstein was as untrustworthy as Walker suspected. Unlike the proffered pad in the short wing, this apartment-the door of which an
