Ransom River (36 page)

Andi said, “Did somebody let him out on the freeway?”

The vet frowned. “Who would do a thing like that?”

Rory phoned Seth. “It’s Riss and Boone, and they’re after me. I need your help.”

“Where are you?”

She told him. “I need a place to stay tonight that’ll take a dog.”

He was quiet for a moment. She was asking something big and open-ended. She expected to hear him mention his apartment or a hotel. But he said, “I don’t want anybody to follow you to my place, or my dad’s. You need to go someplace unexpected.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“In town. Dogs are no problem. Just follow my instructions for avoiding a tail.”

The sun had fallen below the western hills and infused the sky with a rose-washed light. Over the mountains, clouds gathered. Rain was coming. Rory
drove slowly along a crumbling one-lane road into the Callahan Ranch, as it had been called on TV. Live oaks and sycamores formed a canopy overhead.

The property was now a city park that closed at dusk. But the swing gate off the main road had been open when Rory drove up. Seth Colder, she suspected, owned a collection of lock-picking tools. She drove through and closed the gate behind her.

A mile up the glen, she eased over potholes and around a bend and saw the desiccated remains of the Hollywood set. There was a barn and the old three-story house with the porch and widow’s walk, now preserved as a landmark. The interior scenes for the show had been shot on a soundstage in Burbank, but this classic old building had stood in for the headquarters of the mighty Callahan clan. Nobody had lived here for eighty years. Rory didn’t know if it had electricity or running water.

Headlights off, she followed Seth’s directions and drove past the house. Seth came striding toward her. In his denim jacket and boots, he looked the part of a Callahan son. Stick a cowboy hat on his head and send him to the back forty.

He pushed open the big barn door. She eased the Subaru inside and parked it next to his truck. She got out and opened the hatchback. Chiba, drugged and drowsy, feebly wagged his tail.

Seth crouched beside the tailgate. “Hey, boy. You’ve had a hell of a day.”

In the corner of the barn was a faucet above a basin. When Rory turned it on the pipe creaked and groaned but filled the basin with water. Seth lifted the dog carefully from the car and carried him over. Chiba put his head down and drank. Seth rubbed the fur between his shoulders.

“Thanks.” Rory looked around. “Security guards? Park ranger? Night watchman?”

“Hasn’t changed since we were in high school, or I was on the force. Nobody’ll check on it unless there’s an explosion and fireball.”

“I’ll try to restrain myself.”

Chiba finished drinking. He stood unsteadily, back legs shaking. From the corner of the barn Seth pulled a little red wagon. Rory laid the beach
towel in it and Seth set Chiba inside. The poor dog was too whacked-out to realize that he was going against instinct, being pulled rather than pulling a sled. They walked outside and Seth shut the barn door.

The night was descending, the glen cosseted in oaks gone black in the twilight. It was amazingly quiet.

“Where are we camping?” Rory looked at the big house. “I do a poor imitation of Constance Callahan, standing there with my feet wide, spitting tobacco into the dirt and fighting off outlaws.”

Seth smiled. “I’m willing to watch that.”

She stopped, unsettled by his smile. Jesus, it was the old smile, the one that slid across his face when taking on a challenge.

“She was also expert at throwing a hatchet,” she said.

He turned and walked up the glen. “It’s getting cold out here. Come on.”

The caretaker’s cabin was a hundred yards farther up the way, under the boughs of the live oaks. The ground crunched with acorns beneath Rory’s feet. Seth let them in. It was cool inside. Chiba raised his head, curious. Seth shut the door and bolted it.

The shutters in the living room were closed tight. A hurricane lantern sat on the coffee table, guttering with amber light. In the fireplace split logs burned, bright orange.

Seth shrugged off his jacket. They arranged a bed for Chiba. Seth opened a backpack and tossed Rory a sandwich and a bottle of water.

“Thanks,” she said.

He dropped to a knee in front of the fire and jabbed at the wood with a poker. Sparks spewed, red and dying.

“I checked out the guys who were involved in the heist,” he said.

Rory sat down cross-legged in front of the fire. “And?”

“They weren’t part of organized crime or L.A. street gangs. They were semipros who dreamed of the greatest heist of all time and got in way over their heads. One died at the scene. One guy was shot in the head and survived,
but with permanent brain damage. He lives in a secure facility for the mentally incompetent. He has no family, nobody who would go after the money on his behalf.”

He sat down. “The third guy is in San Quentin, serving out his sentence as a jailhouse preacher. Jesus’ biggest fan.”

“You believe that?”

“It doesn’t matter. These guys were the logical starting point. But they’re not the ones after the money.”

“Was this a thorough investigation?”

“It was a couple of phone calls and some computer voodoo thanks to a backdoor password I have for the system. I wanted to see if we were missing a red light flashing under our noses. But we’re not.”

Though she hadn’t eaten much all day, she was hardly hungry. “Riss and Boone,” she said.

Seth’s face was grave. “If your cousins are involved, it means Lee was the fourth man.”

The blasphemous shine of her parents’ revelations flared in her mind.

“Riss and Boone are involved,” she said.

In the firelight, Seth’s face was aglow. His dark eyes seemed to capture and amplify the flames.

“And they’re not doing this on their own,” she said. “So who did they get in bed with? Somebody from Lee’s past?”

“Maybe. Somebody who has connections to career criminals in Vegas—people who can pressure a gambler to take on a suicidal mission? That’s some real grease. Who’s got that?”

“Let’s see. There’s the Mafia. There’s the Crips and the Bloods, though this doesn’t seem their style. There’s Lucy Elmendorf’s husband, but he’s crazy, not connected. There’s even Grigor Mirkovic, who’s connected and who doesn’t mind sending goons to terrify me and Petra. But disrupting the trial destroys his chance to see Lucy and Jared Smith imprisoned for his son’s murder. There’s the Illuminati. The Vatican. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir.” She rubbed her eyes.

Seth said, “Whoever it is, the question remains—how did Riss and Boone find them?”

Chiba set his head on Seth’s knee. Seth looked calm and in control. He looked so much like himself, and yet so much older, as though a sadder soul had settled deep inside him and taken on his form.

He caught her watching him.

“About what my dad said earlier,” he said.

She looked at the fire.

“I’m trying to get you out of this, not in deeper,” he said.

“I didn’t hear a thing.”

He picked up the poker again. “Are you really that scared of me?”

“I haven’t been scared of you since fourth grade.”

“Then why won’t you look me in the eye?”

He might as well have swept sparks from the fireplace directly into her face. She turned, deliberately, slowly.

“We going to do this?” she said.

He held completely still, though the light from the fire played over his features like winged birds.

“I mean, we going to spill everything, open our veins, see what pours out?” she said.

“I take it back. Are you really that angry at me?”

“I’m not angry. That night, that final night,
that
was angry. I blew up,” she said. “I shouldn’t have.”

He said nothing for a moment. “You’re talking about…”

“Before the wreck.”

The wood in the fireplace popped. The moment expanded. It was the first time either of them had openly said the word
wreck.

“I was a mess,” Rory said. “And I was scared for you.”

“It was about me?”

“No.” She raised her hands. Gathered her thoughts. Then thought,
Screw it. Let everything flow.
“I hated what was going on with your job. I hated what I saw you doing. But I didn’t hate you. Seth, I loved you.”

Seth held her gaze. He seemed unsure whether to rip these scars open. “So…”

“And I know it seemed final. I know I told you before the wreck I was done. Period. So I understand why you stayed away afterward. I respect that.”

He sat there. “Say that again.”

“I respect your reasons for staying away from the hospital. I’d said good-bye.” Her face was hot, and not from the fire. “But it hurt. It hurt like a son of a bitch.”

A flash in his eyes, then metallic calm. “Your dad kept me away.”

It felt like a rock hitting her in the back of the head. “My dad.”

“Barred me from seeing you. Had a note put on the board at the nurses’ station. I couldn’t get on the ward.”

The breath left her chest as though she’d been punched. “No.”

“Yeah.”

“But the police report cleared you of any fault—”

“Rory, from the time we were kids your father has never trusted me.”

Her hands hung limp on her lap.

“He was always kind to me,” Seth said. “He welcomed me into your house. But I knew.”

She stood.

She had acquiesced at the time. In the hospital she hadn’t asked for Seth. Hadn’t called him, even limited as she was. She’d been in a fog of pain, confusion, and exhaustion.

She walked across the room. Put a hand on the wall. Seth was right about her father’s attitude. She hadn’t wanted to admit it. And now she wondered if her dad simply hadn’t wanted her spending so much time with a cop. A cop’s son.

No more.

“Seth, I wanted you there. I wish—”

“Babe, it’s way too late for that.”

She looked away. The ruddy reflection of the flames rolled across the walls and ceilings, shadowed and jittery. And she abruptly needed to know all the rest.

“The police report on the accident,” she said. “The truck that rammed us was sideswiped by another car.”

The mystery vehicle never stopped, and nobody got the license number. Black older-model SUV, no tags, driving over the limit with its lights off.