Ransom River (29 page)

She couldn’t say whether it was a mistake, a slip, or bad luck. Or even a tip-off. Later, she knew, people had made inquiries. They’d grilled Seth. Still, nobody knew for sure.

She and Seth had dinner in the San Fernando Valley, a Mexican restaurant across the city limits from Ransom River. The place had twinkly white Christmas lights strung around the walls and garish paintings of matadors. The food was cheap and plentiful, and the beer was colder than snow.

And it had a jukebox. Seth was standing next to it, one hand braced on the wall, choosing a song to buy for his quarters. His back was turned. Rory held on to her Diet Coke, wondering if he was turning his back on her as well. Whether he was losing his grip on his own life. She was watching him so intently that she didn’t see the door open. She didn’t realize she had been approached until the man was standing next to her table.

It was the human knife.

He was short and wore a white turtleneck and a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, as though he were a history professor. But his eyes were like a doll’s: round, all pupil, no expression. One of his goons stood behind him.

“Imagine seeing you here,” he said.

She stared at him, quietly. Every synapse in her body shouted,
Run.

“Excuse me?” she said.

“You must have changed your mind about my friend Hollis.”

He didn’t look at Seth. Neither did Rory. She was trying furiously not to say the wrong thing. The next words out of her mouth needed to be the right ones.

She held the man’s lifeless gaze. “Could be.”

“How long you two been seeing each other?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

“I didn’t offer it.”

At the jukebox, Seth dropped in his coins. “Sweet Home Alabama” began to play. He turned around.

He didn’t even hesitate. He walked back to the table. And his walk was not his walk; the look in his eyes was not Seth Colder’s. He approached smoothly, like a cobra.

“Dobro,” he said.

The man smiled. It was a waxen, humorless grin. His eyes stayed round and predatory.

“So you managed to corral her after all,” Dobro said.

Rory had never believed in guardian angels. If anything was hovering over her shoulder, breathing down her neck, it didn’t have wings and a halo. She hoped her heart wasn’t pounding so hard it was visible through her chest wall.

Seth put himself between her and Dobro. Not to protect her, she thought—Dobro didn’t seem overtly aggressive. No, Seth was
claiming
her.

“The beer’s good,” he said. “Enjoy yourselves.”

The man’s waxwork smile remained. He looked at her. “Your mister’s not being polite. What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“I’m the goddess Wanda,” she said. And she smiled at Seth, coldly, a flash of teeth. “You better treat me like a goddess if you wanda get anywhere with me.”

Dobro snorted. He said to Seth, “We’ll see you around.”

He and his man walked to the bar. Seth sat down. His face was blank, but his eyes were wired. He drank a long swallow of beer. “Sweet Home Alabama” rocked from the jukebox.

Across the room, Dobro and his man took barstools and watched Rory and Seth in the mirror behind the bar.

Seth said, “Eat.”

Rory couldn’t have eaten if she’d had a gun to her head. “How long do we have to stay here?”

“Until we’re finished.”

But when he finally put cash on the table and they strolled outside into the hot evening, Dobro followed them.

“Where you going, goddess?”

Seth was holding her hand. Under his breath he said, “Ignore him. Get in the truck.”

The sun had dropped behind the hills in the west. Red twilight drenched the sky. Dobro slouched toward them with his muscle in tow.

“Where you going in such a hurry? There are things I’d like to discuss.”

Seth dropped her hand and became electrically alert. “We’ll set it up.”

Dobro walked past him and slid a hand around Rory’s shoulder. His doll eyes were black in the dusk. “There’s no rush, goddess. You can do better than this guy.”

He laughed, a whinnying sound. Rory felt things teetering, like a vehicle about to tip, barely balanced.

Seth’s voice was flat. “This dance is mine,” he said, and reached for Rory’s hand again. “Let’s go.”

Dobro squeezed her shoulder and only gradually relinquished his hold. He took a cigar from his pocket, and a gold lighter. He said to his man, “Bring the car around.”

The man left. Dobro nodded Rory toward the truck. “You go on.”

Unsettled, furious at being belittled, she headed toward Seth’s pickup. She glanced back. Dobro was watching her.

He turned to Seth. “We need to rethink our arrangement.”

It was all he got out. Seth punched him hard in the face.

Dobro reeled back under the force of the blow. He raised his hands toward his face and Seth hit him again, in the diaphragm. He doubled over. Seth kicked his knees out from under him. Dobro hit the asphalt and Seth booted him in the gut.

“Come near her again, I’ll take you apart,” Seth said.

He hauled back and kicked him in the kidney. Rory couldn’t move.

Dobro tried to rise and Seth planted a boot between his shoulders and crunched him back to the asphalt.

“So much as look at her, I’ll clip your nuts.”

He backed away. Dobro pushed to his knees. His gaze was deathly. Seth turned. For an instant he looked surprised to see Rory standing in the middle of the parking lot.

She got in the truck.

Seth climbed behind the wheel and burned out of the parking lot. Dobro remained on his knees.

Rory couldn’t bear to look at Seth. All she could see was the expression on his face when he had turned around after kicking Dobro.

Fury. Calculation. Electricity.

He accelerated along the street, a broad suburban boulevard lined with downscale retail stores. Mattress showrooms with huge banners across their plate-glass windows. Tanning salons, McDonald’s, auto-parts stores, garish billboards. Rory’s vision went out of focus, constricted, shoved the crimson sunset to the edges.

“Dobro won’t come after you. Don’t worry,” he said.

She didn’t answer.

“He’ll want me, but he’ll think twice.” He glanced at her. “You were sharp back there. You gave him nothing.”

The truck raced past a gas station and a strip mall.

She said, “You beat him up to preserve your cover.”

He took a beat, as though the remark caught him by surprise. “I preempted any move he might try to make against me.”

“By kicking the shit out of him.”

“He was openly challenging me.” He glanced at her again. “He is not a good guy.”

“And if you’d left it alone? Driven away?” she said.

“Rory, don’t.”

She turned, slowly, to glare at him. “Don’t tell me you were being my knight in shining armor.”

“He followed us to the restaurant. He has obviously been probing me for weaknesses. He thought tonight he had found one.”

“You scared the hell out of me back there,” she said.

“Me?” He turned, baffled. And beginning to look angry.

“Seth, you calmly beat that guy to a pulp.”

“Do you know who that was?”

“Of course not.”

“He is a midlevel nobody. He preens like he’s the shit, but he’s a gofer.”

“So?” The edge in her voice was sharp.

“So now he won’t come back on me. Word will get around. He stepped out of line, and I pushed back.”

Rory’s pulse beat in her temples. “You mean if he’d been a bigger fish, you would have let him get away with it?”

“I would have taken a different tack. Rory, he was pissing all over me and threatening you. I had to act. I spoke in the only language he understands.”

“So cops can commit assault and battery if it fits with their cover story?”

Shaking his head, he pushed it through a yellow light. “Get real. Things could have been very dangerous back there.”

“Then why haven’t you called it in to your handlers?”

“For Christ’s sake.” His face looked cold. “Why don’t you make a checklist for me. Mackenzie-approved tactics.”

Her hands were trembling. “That’s not the problem.”

“Don’t tell me I’m reckless. I’m not.”

He was, bravely reckless. Sometimes he seemed to taunt fate—to seek a cut from the Reaper’s scythe, to prove to himself he was invincible.

“That’s not it,” she said.

“Then what?” he said.

They crossed the Ransom River city limits. The boulevard emptied. Plowed fields and lemon orchards spread out on either side of them. Black furrowed ground, trees huddled thickly together.

What was the problem?

“You enjoyed it,” she said.

She turned in her seat. She had jumped in the truck in such haste that she hadn’t bothered to buckle her seat belt. She reached for it but paused.

“You enjoyed beating that man up,” she said.

He looked at her with reproach. His face was white.

“Seth,” she said, “what’s happening to you? What the hell is going on?”

“What’s
going on
is that this investigation is at a critical point.” He shook his head. “Don’t do this. Not now.”

“This investigation is dragging you into a pit. A deep one. And I don’t know what to do.”

“You do nothing. The job will take care of itself.”

“How?”

“I can’t tell you operational details. You know that.”

Compartmentalization. She knew that too well.

“And then what?” she said. “Can you tell me when it’ll be over? When you’ll come back to me, as yourself?”

“Soon.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“Rory, why are you doing this?”

“Because you’re scaring me.”

He looked at her, and in his eyes was resentment and hopeless fatigue—as though explaining everything would simply drain him to the bottom.

“
I’m
scaring you. Me. But that guy back there”—he nodded in the direction of the restaurant—“Dobro? He’d sell his sister to Somali pirates for cigarettes. And he touched you, Rory. He laid his hands on you.”

Because I was with you.

“And what do you mean, come back? I’m right here. I’ve been beside you since fourth grade.”

“That kid I knew. The nasty bastard I saw at the restaurant, I don’t.”

“That nasty bastard is who I’m supposed to be.
When I’m at work,
” he said, enunciating each word with chipped care. “Because at work
I am an undercover cop.
”

But she knew, despite his vehemence, that he wasn’t being honest. He thought he was. But he couldn’t see it. He’d been swallowed by the job, the life, the importance of staying in the role. He had lost himself.

And she saw again his face, as he turned away from Dobro in the parking lot.

He had smiled.

That rakish grin, the
devil’s got me
smile. He had felt fulfilled and justified and goddamned
happy
at kicking a man to the ground. For her, he thought.

The truck raced toward the foothills, the night falling, orchards giving way again to homes and the vast asphalt prairie of a car dealership. She squeezed her eyes shut.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she said.

“Fine with me. Let’s let it lie.”

“No.” She turned to him. She had to be looking straight at him when she said it. “I’m done.”

He paused a beat. He knew what she’d said. He had to. He was, it seemed, waiting for her to take it back.

“Seth, that’s it. I’m finished.”

“What are you saying?” He shook his head again, as though he didn’t believe her. “No.”

“We’re done,” she said.

“Because of Dobro?” He sounded incredulous.

“Yes, because of Dobro,” she said, “and if you can’t see that—Jesus, Colder, if you can’t understand that, you’re farther gone than I imagined.”

He held the wheel. The sun had dropped below the horizon and the sky was a bleeding red, fading to black.

“That’s it,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Like that.”

It seemed obvious, pure, easy. She knew already she was regretting it, that this would be a bleeding wound, sharp and deep, but she was so livid, so full of fear and righteous anger, that she could feel nothing but her own triumph in saying it to him.

He didn’t look at her. His gaze was on the road, but she couldn’t tell whether he saw anything at all.

“Then it’s done,” he said. “That’s it; the cord’s cut.”

She nodded and watched the neighborhood race by. Her heart was pounding.

“I won’t pretend with you,” he said. “If we’re finished, that’s it. We’re not friends. We’re nothing. No smiling and acting like it’s amicable.”

She said nothing. He drove.

“I’ll take you home,” he said.

She bit back,
That’s mighty nice of you.

He drove on, in acid silence. Rory didn’t want to be near him. She didn’t want to breathe the same air as him. She was exhausted and ready to cry and was not about to let Seth Colder see even a hint of that.

When his phone rang, she didn’t move. Normally, he might have asked her to dig it out of his back pocket. She heard him pull the phone out, peripherally saw him glance at the caller ID. He answered, “Colder.”

The truck rolled straight down the road at fifty miles an hour. He said, “Where?” He stared out the windshield but his face was set in a thousand-yard stare.

“When?” he said. “Where’s the nearest patrol unit?”

His tone of voice chilled her. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard.

“Nobody’s closer?” He listened again. “I don’t want to risk—”

He frowned. Rory could hear the person on the other end, an official and urgent voice.

Seth glanced around outside. “I’m two miles away. And I’m not alone.”

He looked reluctant. He didn’t glance at Rory. He listened to the urgent request coming through the phone. He finally acquiesced.

“I’m on my way. But send a patrol unit ASAP.”

He ended the call and dropped the phone on the dashboard. “Domestic disturbance, shots fired. It’s at an address that’s linked to the operation. It’s an emergency.” He barely gave her a look. “I’ll drop you at the Outback—you can get a cab home. I’ll give you the fare.”

“Don’t bother,” she said.