He turned. Ran. Plowed through the kitchen doors, heedless of an ambush.
The kitchen was empty. The door to the alley hung open.
Outside, the rumble of an engine.
The keys—he’d left the goddamn keys in the Ford.
Along with the valise and the girl.
“Bitch,” he breathed. “Fucking bitch.”
He staggered into the alley just as the Ford whizzed past him in reverse, the nun at the wheel.
He snapped off three shots, starring the windshield, but her head was down and he missed her, God damn it.
The car skidded onto Crocker, accelerated, speeding away, gone, and Swann screamed.
It was a scream of rage, a sound of madness, and it echoed on the alley’s brick walls and came back at him in hiccups of broken noise like mocking laughter.
And why shouldn’t there be laughter? He’d lost.
At the very end, when everything was over and he was set for life, he’d lost it all.
He was back in the kitchen now. He lashed out, jerking open drawers, spilling their contents on the floor. He stumbled into the dining room and raged among the tables, overturning them, hurling chairs against the walls, and screaming, always screaming.
Lost. Lost it all.
The biggest play of his life, his final score, and it was gone and the nun had beaten him, the nun with her cell phone and its piping singsong ringtone…he could almost hear it…hear it right now…
He did hear it. The phone, jammed into his pocket, was ringing again.
It was her. Had to be. Calling to laugh at him.
He whipped out the phone and flipped it open.
“What?” he rasped.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” A soft female voice with a Southern lilt, not the nun’s voice. “I hope I haven’t called the wrong number. Is this Kate Malick’s phone?”
Swann almost clicked off, but some quality of urgency of the woman’s tone made him hold on. “Yeah,” he said more slowly. “I’m Kate’s assistant.”
“I see. Well, I’m sorry to disturb you so early, but she did say to call anytime.”
“And you are?”
“My name is Georgia. I work at Teen Alliance, the shelter for runaways. And I have news. I’ve found Amber. I’m sure of it this time…Did you hear me? I found the girl Kate’s looking for.”
“I heard you,” Swann said, and he smiled.
KATE sped two blocks from the restaurant and around a corner, then pulled to the curb and looked in the backseat, where Chelsea lay unmoving. Reaching between the seats, she pressed her fingers to the carotid artery and felt a throb of life.
“Chelsea?” She slapped the girl lightly on the cheek—the second time she’d slapped her in the past twelve hours. No response. Not even a murmur or groan. Her breathing was so slow and faint as to be nearly undetectable.
She was alive but deeply unconscious, maybe comatose, and in respiratory distress. Swann had overdone it with whatever drugs he’d injected.
Get her to a hospital. Call for an ambulance—
She’d forgotten all about Skip until the bleating of a horn made her turn to her left. Skip was there, double-parked alongside her, his side window rolled down. “You okay?” he shouted.
“Where’s the nearest hospital?” She didn’t know this neighborhood and didn’t have her phone. “No, wait—that’s where Swann might go. The second nearest.”
“Let me check.” He typed on his cell with thumb and forefinger, accessing the information online. “Good Samaritan. Corner of Sixth and Lucas. Follow me.”
He accelerated, blowing through a yellow stoplight. Kate followed, running a red. She kept casting anxious glances at Chelsea’s reflection in the rearview mirror. It would be so cruelly unfair if the girl died now, when she’d been rescued and her ordeal was over.
She hadn’t even been sure Chelsea was in the car when she’d left the kitchen. Hadn’t known the keys were in the ignition, either. She’d been prepared to hotwire the engine—another skill passed on to her by Barney, her mentor—but fortunately, there was no need.
The Ford was in bad shape, pockmarked with bullet holes and scraped along the driver’s side. Swann had been in a shootout; expended shell casings littered the front compartment, and there was blood on the seat. Kate remembered that Grange and Di Milo were incommunicado, and feared she knew why.
The Ford was the car Sam had been directed to take. Obviously, Swann had caught up with him. It didn’t take much imagination to guess what had happened after that.
Distantly, she was aware of the valise on the passenger seat. She hadn’t bothered to check its contents. Two million dollars in jewels, not to mention the artwork, but none of it mattered if Chelsea didn’t survive.
She sped west, over the Harbor Freeway. Skip guided her to the hospital in under three minutes. As they pulled up to the ER entrance, the sun broke the eastern horizon. She hoped it was a good omen.
She parked the car and opened the rear door while Skip disappeared inside the ER, emerging with a nurse and two orderlies. The orderlies snapped open a gurney and loaded Chelsea onto it, then toted her inside, through the waiting room already crowded with the sick and hurt. The people in the chairs stared at Chelsea as she was carried past, and her name ran through the crowd in a ripple of astonished whispers.
Kate and Skip followed Chelsea into the ER but were stopped at the door to her room. The nurse who’d accompanied them said they had to stay out and let the doctors work.
Through the doorway, Kate could see another nurse already fitting Chelsea with an IV. As she watched, a doctor in green scrubs flew past her, into the room, and began examining the girl.
“What do we do now?” Skip asked, sounding lost.
“Did you call the police?”
“Huh? No. I thought we were keeping them out of it.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. Call them and have them go to the restaurant.” She shrugged. “Swann will have left by now, but maybe they can pick up his trail.”
“He can’t get far. You stole his ride.”
“A man like that can always get transportation.”
Skip looked uneasy. “Maybe you call the cops. I don’t like to interact with the authorities.”
“Just do it. I’m going to move the Ford away from the entrance. I left it sitting there.”
With a couple million dollars of jewelry and art inside, she added silently. Better secure that.
She headed back toward the waiting room but was sidetracked when she spotted a pay phone. She could spare a minute to bring Alan up to date and see if there was any word on the chase car. She pumped in some coins and dialed his cell.
“Alan, what’s up? You hear from Vince and Alfonse?”
There was a pause that scared her. “Chief, we’ve got some bad news in that department. Just got a call from the state police. They found our guys in a wrecked car on Sierra Highway. They were both shot. Shot dead.”
It wasn’t a surprise, not after what she’d seen of Swann’s car. Still, she took it hard. For some reason, she thought of Grange petting Chanticleer, the small shivering dog in the big man’s hands. And of that arrogant asshole Sal French, crowing about how many death threats he got, insulting Di Milo to his face while Di Milo just stood there, taciturn as always.
“Chief?” Alan asked, worried by her silence.
“I’m still here. Just…processing it.” But she knew she couldn’t process it. Not this soon. Not until the funerals, or afterward. “You said the police called you?”
“They found Guardian Angel ID on both…uh”—bodies, she knew he’d been about to say—“both men, so they gave us a call. Office calls are forwarded to my cell when I’m away from my desk.”
She knew that, and he knew she knew it. It was just something to say, a small detail of normality to keep them both grounded.
“What about you?” he asked. “Any luck at the restaurant?”
It came back to her, then. He didn’t know. Qui
ckly, she ran through a summary of the events, ending with Chelsea in the ER and Skip calling the police. “Oh, and I got the valise back,” she added indifferently.
“Is Chelsea going to make it?”
“She has to,” Kate said firmly. “Get her mother down here.”
“Will do. I—hold it, another call.” Click, a few beats of silence as Kate shifted her weight restlessly, and then Alan was back. “Chief, got the lady from Teen Alliance on the line. She wants to talk to you.”
“Can you patch her through?”
“No sweat.”
A moment later, she heard Georgia’s mellifluous Southern accent. “Miss Malick?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“I’m probably being awfully paranoid, but something about my earlier call didn’t sit right with me.”
“What earlier call?”
A beat of loaded silence. “The one I placed to your personal number. I talked to your assistant.”
“When was this?”
“Why, just five or ten minutes ago.”
“You say you talked to someone? Who?”
“Well, he said he was your assistant. But I don’t know, I got a funny feeling about him. I thought I’d call your office and make certain—”
“What did you call about? What did you tell him?”
Again, Georgia hesitated. “That man wasn’t your assistant, was he?”
“No. What did you tell him?”
“Where Amber is.”
“You found her?”
“I’m quite sure of it. I’ve been showing the flyer to everyone who comes in. One girl knew her. She’d been with the gang when the police rousted them. She knew where Amber was headed.”
“What makes you think she told the truth?”
“She wants Amber off the street. Says she’s not cut out for it. Thinks she won’t last much longer if she doesn’t get help.”
“Where’s Amber crashing?”
“The Monroe Towers. It’s this old low-income high-rise at Monroe and Normandie, just north of the 101. Condemned, but kids break in and squat. Amber and her set usually take a room on the top floor.”
“You told all this to the man who answered my phone?”
“Well, not all of it. He wasn’t interested in the details—”
“But you told him where to find Amber? The building? The room?”
“Yes. He said he was your assistant,” she added defensively, miserably.
“I’m not blaming you, Georgia. Did you call Carson Banning?”
“No. You asked me not to.”
“Good. Keep him out of this.”
“Miss Malick, what is it? What’s happening?”
“I have to go.” She set the handset on the cradle and stood there for a long moment, leaning forward, her hand on the phone.
Then she dug out more coins and dialed her cell number.
Two rings, three, four.
He was making her wait, just as she’d made him wait when he called.
On the fifth ring, he answered. “Hello, Sister Kate. So who is this Amber, anyway?”
“She’s no one. She’s not important.”
“She’s important enough for you to tell that social services bitch to call you anytime. Anytime, even at five fucking thirty in the morning. So I’d say she’s plenty important. I’d say she’s important as hell.”
“Swann—”
“I told you to call me Jack. But you can’t follow simple fucking instructions. You don’t know how to behave. That’s your goddamn problem. You don’t take orders.”
He was shouting into the phone. Losing whatever was left of his mind.
“I’m sorry, Jack.”
“You’re not sorry. You’re trying to fuck with me in a whole new way. But not this time, Sister Kate. This time you do what you’re fucking told.”
“What you want me to do?”
“Bring me Chelsea.”
She shut her eyes. “Jack, you know I can’t do that.”
“You can find a way. You have to. We’ll make a swap. Amber for Chelsea.”
“It can’t happen.”
“But I want her back. I just want her back.” He was frantic, almost pleading.
“Chelsea is safe. You’ll never get her again.”
“So you want this other girl to die? Is that it?”
“I’m not trading one life for another. I’m not playing God, Jack. Not like you.”
“You sanctimonious cunt.” A long silence ticked past. “All right. All right, God damn it, then I want my reward. The bag with the jewelry. And the paintings. Bring that. It’s my money. I earned it. I deserve it.”
“Bring it where?”
“Where Amber is. You’ve got the same info I do. You know the building and even the room.”
“You’ll get it.”
“And you have to bring it. No one else. No one comes with you, and no one comes instead of you.”
“It’ll be me. Just me.”
“We’ll finally get to spend some quality time together, Sister Kate. Looking forward to it.”
Click.
Oh yes, he was looking forward to it, all right. She knew that, just as she knew why the delivery had to be made by her and no one else.
Swann was going to kill her, of course. And do it slowly, make her suffer. That was what he meant by quality time.
But she would go anyway.
THE Monroe Towers was a cement monolith rising next to a vacant lot. The building and the lot were hemmed in by a security fence, but gaps showed through the fence, marked by scattered leavings and trails of footprints.
Kate parked the Ford near the building’s entrance and got out, lifting the valise. The bag, she noticed, was stained with Swann’s blood.
She looped the strap of the valise over her left shoulder, leaving her right hand free.
Ducking, she slipped through a break in the fence, catching the sleeve of her jacket on a loose wire. She pulled it free, tearing the leather, not giving a damn.
The day was brightening, but the tower cast a long rectangle of shadow over its front walk. She left the sunlight and headed to the lobby doors in a deep drift of shade.
The doors were padlocked, but someone had broken the boarded-up windows on either side. The glassless frames were the new entryways. She stepped into a cavernous room cut off from sun and sky.
Power in the building had long since been extinguished. She drew her flashlight and let it guide her to the stairwell, a shaft of concrete threaded with an echoing metal staircase. She started climbing, aware that death waited for her on the top floor.
She had to watch her step. The stairs were strewn with castoff items. Syringes, condoms, pocket litter. Some of the treads were slick with dried vomit or feces. She caught the strong ammonia smell of urine. People had relieved themselves here, crouching in the stairwell like animals.
The building was a temporary home to many people, stirring awake. She saw them in the hallways as she passed each landing—huddled groups of three or four, drawing warmth from trashcan fires.
Most of them were children. Runaways like Amber, but unlike Amber, most had probably come from far away, riding a bus to reach Los Angeles, a city they knew from movies and TV shows. A city of dreams, they thought—and they ended up here, in this cinder block purgatory, starved and shivering, wearing unwashed clothes that clung to their unwashed skin, having quick, furtive sex in dark corners, picking up diseases and addictions, and dying young.
The city was a killer, and they were its victims, and this maze of concrete corridors was their burial ground.
She reached the top floor. She looked down the hall in both directions. An ambush was possible. Swann could be lying in wait.
But he wasn’t. She heard his voice, desperate, crazed, from the far end of the hall.
“I don’t give a shit. You’re wasting your breath, asshole.”
Another voice spoke in hushed, urgent tones, but Kate couldn’t make out the words.
> She advanced down the hall. The rooms lining the corridor were doorless—all the doors must have been removed for reuse when the building was condemned—and through each doorway came a glow of morning. She put away her flashlight and drew the gun.
Daniel Farris’s gun.
En route to the towers, she’d detoured to the church and recovered it from the floor where it lay by the dead man.
She had checked the Sig Sauer’s clip. Five rounds fired, nine left. The gun had been meant to kill her, earlier tonight. Now it just might save her life.
Swann was talking again. “You were never my friend. You were someone I could use.”
She was a yard from the last doorway. There was only one door into the room. Just one way in or out. Every room was identical, and from passing the others, she knew this one would be small. A concrete cage. No space to maneuver.
Near the door she hesitated, listening.
The other voice was clearer now. A rasping, plaintive voice.
Carson Banning’s voice.
He’d found his daughter—at the worst possible time.
“For Christ’s sake, Jack,” Banning said, “I’m your partner in this.”
She risked a look inside, hoping Banning had Swann distracted, offering her a shot. No luck. Swann had one arm around Amber’s waist and a gun to her head. Banning stood a couple of feet away, his hands open, palms up, pleading.
She didn’t understand why he was so passive. He had to be armed. He’d been carrying a gun when he went after her, and he must still have it.
“I set it up,” Banning went on in the same cajoling tone. “I was the go-between for you and Farris. It was practically my idea. God damn it, I’m as much a part of this as you are.”
Kate stepped into the doorway. “Interesting confession.”
The words came out louder than she’d expected, clanging against the bare walls.
Banning turned to her but didn’t seem to see her. His whole focus was on Swann, and on the gun in Swann’s hand, a gun aimed at his little girl.
The three of them—father, daughter, Swann—stood in a haze of pink light from the rising sun. There was nothing holy in that light. It was febrile, sickly, the color of hell.
Swann didn’t bother to look in her direction. He held Amber tight, pressing her to his body, a human shield blocking any shot Kate might have had.
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