The Wolf, page 27
“Just another rubber chicken dinner.”
As they went back and forth, José let his eyes go on a roam. He’d spent so much time updating Stan on cases and problems in the department that he was familiar with every framed picture on the walls, as well as the window that looked out over the back parking lot, and the perpetual clutter on the desk, and the American flag folded military-style in its triangled box on the shelves. Closing his eyes, it was like a video game he’d overplayed when he was a kid, the details projected on the backs of his lids.
Was he going to miss this? he wondered.
No, he didn’t think so, he decided.
“I’d be surprised if they serve chicken,” he murmured, “much less the rubber kind of poultry, at Fontaine’s.”
“You’re probably right.” Stan finished knotting the tie and flipped his collar down. “But at the end of the day, this event is just like any other one. You know the deal. Some rich jackhole’s giving money to every nonprofit in town, and we’ve got that Police Benevolent Fund. Wouldn’t mind if some of his benevolence headed in our direction.”
“You’ve always been about the rank and file, Stan.”
“Speaking of which, what’s going on with our missing officer.” The captain sat down in his leather chair. “Any leads on Hernandez-Guerrero’s location?”
“No, I’m sorry to report.”
Stan cursed and smoothed that new tie. Which looked exactly the same as all of his ties. “Jesus, José. What are we going to tell her family?”
“She doesn’t have any.”
“Wait, did I know that? I think I knew that. And no boyfriends, husbands, that kind of thing, right?”
“No, she lived alone. There are a couple of cousins out of town, and we’re waiting to hear back from them.”
Shaking his head, Stan’s eyes got a faraway look. “You’re lucky you’re retiring. I don’t know how much more I can take of this shit. What about Officer Roberts? How’s his family?”
“Awful. Just awful.”
“Goddamn. Least he didn’t have a wife and kids, and if that’s all you can say about a situation, it’s pretty fucking crappy.”
As Stan stared off into space, they stayed in silence for a minute, no longer captain and subordinate, just two men who had known each other for over twenty years, in a context that could get really tough sometimes.
“You know,” Stan said, “my Ruby used to be great in situations like this. That woman would bend over backwards for any family of a slain officer. She’d cook them meals that froze well—big deal, the whole freezing-well thing. She’d visit and do chores. Pick up kids, if she had to. She was great, an extension of the department.”
“Yeah. How’s she doing?”
“Good. Her second marriage is going way better than her first. Big surprise, huh.” Stan rubbed his face and looked over his messy desk with an expression of hopelessness that had nothing to do with all the paperwork. “She was right to leave me. Too many frozen meal orders, and that wasn’t the half of it. You’re lucky you’re still married.”
“I am.” José glanced at the window, and wanted to change the subject—like he had some kind of nuptial survivor’s guilt. “Light’s getting low early now.”
“Winter is coming. Anyway, enough about ex-wives and the weather. Tell me what you know so far about Officer Roberts.”
“Yeah, so the coroner bumped the autopsy up and performed it this afternoon. I just got the results. We got a bullet.”
“Good. Ballistics working on it?”
“Yup. Meanwhile, Treyvon and I went through Roberts’s apartment.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Nothing we didn’t expect. Old takeout in the fridge. Beer cans in the recycling bin. No signs of a struggle or a robbery. We didn’t come across any car keys, but they could have fallen out of a pocket when he was in the river. Same with his wallet.”
“What about the car?”
“Haven’t located that yet. It’ll turn up.”
“This city is getting too violent.” Stan cursed again. “Maybe I just need to go on a vacation, get recharged. Or retire, like you.”
“You got a good pension.”
“No, I got good debt. I had to second-mortgage everything to pay Ruby off—so she could afford that other wedding dress of hers. And anyway… normal life is expensive.” He shrugged. “Then again, I could always get another job after this one. Maybe I can open a food truck. Or drive one, as it were.”
“Do you cook?”
“Okay, something else then.” The captain motioned around his desk. “Come on, I’m too old school for this job now. Look at this shit. Everything’s about computers, and has been for a decade. Maybe longer. I’m next to useless.”
“The officers love you. You got a lot of loyalty among the rank and file.”
“That new mayor, though. She’s going to run me out.” Stan shrugged. “Maybe I only need a sailboat.”
“For, like, recreation?”
“As an escape.”
“Have you been on the water before? Do you even swim?”
“Are you just here to poke holes in all my future plans? And I’m just talking about sailing off into the sunset. Hey, so what are you going to do with all your free time?”
José laughed softly. “I’ma start by going an entire week without getting woken up in the middle of the night.”
“You have low standards, my friend.”
“Fair enough.” José got to his feet. “Have fun at Mr. Fontaine’s.”
“Hey, do you need any other resources to help you with both those cases?”
José shook his head. “Treyvon and I got this. And everyone in the department is helping.”
“That’s great. That’s how it should be.” Stan shifted his weight up onto his worn loafers and held his forefinger on high. “Listen, before I forget, can you give me a copy of the most updated report on Roberts? I’m hounded by cameras everywhere I go, and I need to be prepared for the questions with all relevant details. Controlling your expression when you’re confronted by shit is harder than you think, and the press seems to know everything.”
“Man, I’m glad I don’t have your job.”
“I just want to be prepared.”
“Of course. And I’ll get you everything before I leave tonight.”
“Hate to ask you to stay late.”
“It’s my job. At least for another four weeks.”
Goodbyes were said, and then José closed the door behind himself and gave a wave to Willie, the captain’s executive assistant, who was back at her desk in the waiting room.
Homicide was just down the hall from the chief’s suite, and on the approach, he could hear the murmuring voices of the bullpen out in the corridor. Walking into the open area with its cubicles and fast-talking detectives, he felt an old, familiar charge go through him. It wasn’t pleasurable, per se, but he didn’t dislike it, either.
The idea of never experiencing the adrenaline surge again made him feel like he was in a kind of mourning.
Trying to keep himself from overthinking everything, he headed for Trey’s desk and thought about Stan’s chief shit—and was so glad the force didn’t have some disconnected bureaucrat sitting in that chair.
If that man was serious about leaving, too, José had another reason to be glad he was retiring.
Things were going to change in the CPD if Stan was no longer in charge.
And not in a good way.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Back at the prison camp, Rio’s mind was churning as she returned to those private quarters upstairs. As Mayhem entered the code again and sprang the lock, she walked in and stood over the bodies of the two guards. As an undercover officer, there were rules and regulations about things she could and couldn’t do, and she wasn’t exactly sure how many she had tripped up in the last twenty-four hours. Then again, everyone back in Caldwell no doubt thought she was dead.
Not that that gave her a pass.
“Just outside, then?” she said. “Where exactly?”
This gruesome task was necessary. She needed to get a sense of the exterior of the facility, and she was running out of time. They were liable to blindfold her on the way out when they left after dark, so if she could see the exterior of the building now, it would make it easier to identify and locate the operation, wherever it was.
“Just right outside.” Mayhem went over to the other door on the back wall. “All you have to do is take them down the shallow stairs and leave them right there—”
“This is ridiculous.”
As Luke spoke up, they both looked at him. Well, didn’t he seem happy. He had crossed his arms, planted his boots, and was the very picture of over-my-dead-body.
Ha-ha, Rio thought grimly as she glanced down at the guards. “Look, I can handle it, okay? You think these are the first corpses I’ve seen—or handled?”
“It doesn’t matter—”
“Yes, it does.” She had to check out the outside of the building. “And it won’t take me any time at all.”
When she went to hook her hands under one of the guards’ armpits, Luke stepped in. “No. I’ll do it. I’ll take them—”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Mayhem blurted.
“There’s a little cover over the door. It’ll be okay.”
There was a tense pause between the two men, as if they were communicating telepathically. And then Mayhem shrugged as if Luke had won the argument with some really bad logic.
“I guess I’ll just make sure she gets out of here alive,” the guy muttered. “That’s all I got.”
“Don’t be so fucking dramatic.” Luke picked the guard up off the floor, and slung the dead body over his shoulder. “Get the door, will you?”
“You better hope it’s cloudy,” Mayhem announced.
“Like she said, I won’t be long.”
In the back of Rio’s mind, she tried to find a protest that wouldn’t make them suspicious. When she failed, she could only impotently watch Luke—and she couldn’t help but note how easy it was for him to lift a heavily muscled man up off the floor. And deadweight was tough because there was little resistance to get a grip on.
She couldn’t imagine being that physically strong.
As Mayhem entered a different code on the pad than the one at the other door, she memorized the pattern—and was surprised at the smell of fresh pine as things were opened. Light from an overhead fixture showed off all kinds of new construction, but as with everything she’d seen that had been recently added, nothing was painted or finished beyond the rough-in first stage of the work.
Luke descended four or five steps; then he paused at a second, reinforced door—and looked back at her.
For a moment that felt like an eternity, he stared at Rio like he was memorizing her face.
“You can trust Apex, too,” he said roughly. “The bastard’s a sociopath, but he feels like he owes you, so you’re safe with him.”
Dear Lord, he was saying goodbye.
“What the hell is out there?” she asked.
Mayhem drew her away and closed them in the quarters together. Putting his back to the panel, he squeezed his eyes shut.
Then they waited. And waited…
… and waited.
As time stretched out, Mayhem started to roam around, hands in pockets, hands out of pockets. He looked at a watch on his wrist—that was not actually there—and for the first time, Rio noticed what he was wearing. It was the same kind of loose sweatshirt Luke wore. And his boots were the same. Pants, too.
Like it was a uniform.
“How long’s he been gone?” she blurted. Because she was wondering, herself. Worried, herself.
Abruptly, he turned to her, took out a gun that was so big, it surely qualified as a hand cannon—and held the weapon out to her.
“You’ve got to go and check on him. I can’t.”
Rio didn’t even hesitate. She took the forty. “Open that door right now.”
The man went over to the keypad. “Listen, once you’re out there, I can’t help you. You’re on your own. Just please… bring him back. He can be an asshole, but I’m kind of fond of him.”
“Don’t worry. I got him.”
* * *
The sun was low in the horizon, its angle sharp, its rays dulled by the seasonal tilt of the earth on its axis. There was even some cloud cover in the sky, and on top of all that, there were trees around—granted, with not much on their limbs, but the trunks and branches were not invisible.
Yet Lucan didn’t make it more than two feet out of the door.
Yes, there was an overhang, but that didn’t do shit when that great-ball-of-fire was so close to going down on the horizon: The low position of the sun meant the blinding, strength-sucking golden light hit him like a ton of bricks, the force of it taking his breath away. As he slumped, he lost his hold on the guard’s body, but that did not matter.
Instantly, he couldn’t see anything.
The world turned into a shapeless, formless bank of white, and he spun around, thinking he was facing the door. Except he wasn’t. He put his hands out, but he couldn’t find the handle. Couldn’t find the building.
He tripped over something. Fell down. Pushed himself up—
Burning now.
Was it his skin? Yes. And the pain was so paralyzing, he landed face-first in dirt.
Holy shit, he thought. This was how he died. He couldn’t believe it.
There had been a number of other situational volunteers for the lights-out trophy, from accidents, to fights, to an infection when he’d been a young… and then there had been the dreaded transition, because he was a half-breed and that was how vampires matured.
But after surviving all of those assaults on his mortality, he had lived to discover that this, this oven-hot-baking-sheet stretch of asphalt, was how it happened. This sun bath was the answer to the question that every person who was alive, be they vampire, wolven—even human—wondered about in some dark corner of their mind.
And the weirdest thing was… he couldn’t stop thinking about Rio.
Fear for her life made him try desperately to find the door. Casting his hands out, he dragged himself forward, even though he knew damn well that he could just be pulling himself farther and farther away from safety—
“Luke!”
The voice confused him. What was Rio doing out here? Oh, right. The white landscape around him had to be the Fade—the place where vampires went to spend eternity. And hey, it turned out that the female you wanted to be with was your greeter—
Shit!
“Rio,” he mumbled. “Are you dead?”
“Come on, stand up.”
In the great abyss of his pain, he still wanted to please her, do what she asked of him. So he attempted to get to his feet.
“Fuck,” he groaned as a hold locked around his waist and yanked him forward.
He stumbled into something hard, his face taking the brunt of the impact, and then his balance listed. There was a series of beeps. And then another series—
“Goddamn it, what’s the code?” Rio barked.
Lucan weaved on his feet, and the collapse that was coming his way speeded up like it was a boomerang looking for the hand that threw it: One minute he was holding his own against gravity; the next, he was horizontal, his face back in the dirt, his body not responding to all kinds of get-up, get-up, get-up’s.
After that, there was a split second of relative silence. Which was followed by a helluva lot of noise.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Mayhem! I need the code—he’s dying! What’s the code—”
Lucan threw his hand out toward Rio’s voice, and he got something on her, an ankle, he supposed. “Rio—”
“I need the code! Mayhem—”
“Shh. Rio. Listen to me.” When it was clear he wasn’t getting anywhere, he used what felt like the last of his strength to yell, “Rio!”
There was a pause, and then her voice was very close to his ear. “I’m getting help. I just need to get help—”
“Listen.” When she fell silent, he talked fast because he knew he was out of time. “I’m so glad I met you—”
“What are you talking about? I need to—”
Lucan grabbed at thin air—and then happened to snag her hand. Pulling her back down, he said hoarsely, “I wish we’d had more nights and days, you and me. I think we really could have been something.”
“Stop talking. Save your strength.”
As he went quiet, he wasn’t sure whether he was following her directive—or was just about to stop breathing altogether.
He wished he could have told her more because they had had more together. More time, more peaceful surroundings, more kissing.
More… love.
But that, his dying heart knew, was not a gift given to the likes of drug dealers and half-breeds.
And more was the pity.
CHAPTER Thirty-Nine
Through the swirling smoke and terrible grilled-meat smell of burning flesh, Rio restarted with the pounding on the metal panel. She couldn’t hear the sound the impacts were making or what she was yelling. All she was aware of was that Luke was facedown on the ground beside an out-and-out bonfire and she needed to get him back inside.
“Mayhem!”
She glanced back at Luke. His big body was in a sprawl, and one of his hands seemed to be smoking—and it was obvious what had happened. Even though there were no gas fumes in the air, he’d clearly used an accelerant on the dead body and tossed a match, and the explosion had blown up in his face and lit him on fire. In a fit of self-preservation, he’d done a stop, drop, and roll, and she worried about what the front of him looked like.
God, she prayed his lungs were okay.
“Help!” she yelled.
Right next to them, the fire was doubling and redoubling, the heat curling off the remains of the guard in ever greater intensity. If the blaze kept growing, she was going to have to drag Luke away—
The door flew open, something breaking through it—a black bag—no, the other guard’s body had been used like a battering ram. And as she caught sight of the shallow stairwell, she had a split second image of Mayhem with his arm raised to cover his face, his balance falling away, his body landing back on the pine steps like he’d passed out.
