Claire laughed, too. She came over to where Serena was sitting and knelt by the side of the easy chair. She leaned forward, her bare arms on the cushion. “I’m going to bed,” she said.
“Okay.”
“How about you?”
Serena didn’t want to look into Claire’s eyes, but there seemed to be no other place in the room to stare. The blue eyes teased her. “Is that an invitation?” Serena asked. As if it were a joke.
“Yes.”
“I don’t think Jonny would be too happy to come home and find us in bed together.”
“You might be surprised.”
“I’m sorry, Claire. If things were different, you know? But they’re not.”
“I understand.”
Claire used one fingertip to glide along Serena’s forearm with a silky touch. Serena was so on edge that she almost jumped.
“Are you going to catch Blake tonight?” Claire asked.
“If not tonight, then soon. Half the police in the city are looking for him. The valley isn’t so big. We’ll get him.”
Serena wanted to believe it.
“Don’t kill him,” Claire murmured.
She spoke so softly that Serena wasn’t sure she had heard her right. “What?”
“Don’t kill him, I said.”
“Why not?” Serena asked. “Why do you care?”
Claire looked down. Some of her blond hair fell across her face. “You really don’t know, do you? It’s so obvious to me.”
“What is?”
“Look at me,” she said, looking up, holding Serena’s stare again.
Serena did. “So?”
“Blake is my brother.”
“What?”
“I knew it as soon as I saw him,” Claire said. “I can’t believe you don’t see it Those eyes. There may be a lot of Amira in him, but that’s not all. It’s more than that. It’s Boni, too. Boni’s his father.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Ten minutes to midnight, Amanda thought.
She could have been home with Bobby. Making love to him the way she liked best, on their sides, face to face, rubbing together. Warm and safe under the blankets. Or they could have been in the Spyder right now, on the desert highway to California, leaving Las Vegas behind forever at a hundred miles an hour through the black night of Deatii Valley. A new life.
But no.
She sat alone in a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop a few blocks from downtown. Her coffee was getting cold, and she looked up every now and then, hypnotized, as rows of glistening doughnuts streamed along the conveyor belt, getting drenched in icing. There was a steady stream of late-night patrons in and out She was one of just a handful of people who waited inside, her back to the door, a newspaper in her hands, a half-eaten doughnut on a napkin in front of her. She had nursed it for an hour.
All right, it was actually her fourth.
The reality was that adrenaline was pumping through her veins, along with me sugar. It had taken her several hours to find this place, going from shop to shop in the city, before the little Asian man behind the counter here took the sketch and nodded vigorously.
“Yeah, sure, he come here. Day, night, couple times a day like. Always the same. Half a dozen original and Sprite.”
“You’re sure?” Amanda asked. “This guy changes his appearance a lot.”
“Oh yeah, he look different. Sometimes blond, sometimes beard, sometimes no beard, sometimes old, sometimes young. Order always the same, though. Half dozen original and Sprite. That him.”
“You didn’t think it was odd, him looking different all the time?”
The Asian man shrugged. “This Vegas.”
That was enough for Amanda.
She was waiting for Blake. The manager said he hadn’t been in yet tonight, so there was a good chance he’d arrive for a late-night fix. She sat so he couldn’t see her face, and she had a baseball cap on her head, with its brim pulled down. She didn’t know if he knew her face, but she had to assume he did. She wanted him in the store, in a confined space, not out on the street where he could run.
It was the most dangerous thing she had ever done, and she tried not to think about that. She radioed in that she was taking a break for an hour and then switched off her walkietalkie. She was all alone.
She knew she should have called for backup. That was procedure. They could have surrounded the place and mounted a stakeout, but Amanda wasn’t sure they’d let her inside the store, and that was where she wanted to be. She also thought Blake was savvy enough to spot a stakeout from six blocks away, and he would disappear and never come back to the store again. They only had one chance to get it right. Her, by herself
She could have called Stride, but he’d want to follow procedure. Never in a million years would he expose her to that danger alone. Or he’d want to be there with her, and she knew that Blake would spot him.
A part of her wanted to prove herself. Bring Blake in herself and then extend her middle finger as she walked out the door.
She put down her newspaper and picked up her coffee. Cold. She thought about getting a warmer-up, but she didn’t want to draw attention to herself. The Asian manager buzzed behind the counter, busily attending to the doughnuts. She had told him to be cool, not to betray any reaction, not to look at her when Blake came in. She hoped he could do it. She hadn’t told him that the man in the sketch was wanted for multiple homicides.
Almost midnight.
The bell on the door signaled another customer. She took a bite of doughnut and picked up her paper. She didn’t glance at whoever passed by, just listened to heavy footsteps and knew it was a man. Whoever it was beat a steady path to the counter.
Amanda heard the Asian manager. “Hey, boss.” Then he added, “Same as usual, huh? Half dozen original and Sprite?”
Mistake. She hoped Blake didn’t recognize the tip-off.
Amanda put down the paper and reached for her coffee at the same time, with the barest glance at the counter. The man wasn’t looking at her. She saw blond hair. The height wasright, and so was the lean and strong physique.
She watched the manager use a straw to pick hot doughnuts off the assembly line and put them in a box. He didn’t look at her. He filled the box, then opened the refrigerator and pulled out a plastic bottle of soda.
“Here you go, boss.”
“Thanks,” the man said.
Was that the voice she had heard through the static on Stride’s cell phone?
He was paying now. She had to be ready when he turned around, with her gun already in her hand, pointed, set to fire. He’s lightning fast, Stride had told her. She thought about Sawhilclass="underline" If you’ve got the shot, take the shot, and make the shot
Amanda reached behind her, taking the butt of her Glock in her grip, wishing there were no sweat on her palm. She silently extracted it and kept it in her lap under the table.
Her eyes never left Blake. If it was Blake.
“You got eleven cents?”
“No.”
“Okay, boss.”
The little Asian man counted out change. He extended a palm to the man at the counter.
Time began to freeze.
The man reached for his change, but then he slid his arm past the register, took the Asian man by the throat, and in an instant yanked him up bodily by the neck and catapulted him over the counter. Coins sprinkled across the floor. Amanda’s mouth fell open in shock. She bolted back in her seat, the chair tumbling behind her. She sprang up, swinging her gun.
“Police! Don’t move!”
She took aim, but Blake already had the Asian man suspended in front of him. Blake’s pistol was at the man’s head. The manager’s eyes bulged with fright, and he wet himself, urine dripping from his pant leg as Blake held him in the air.
Amanda and Blake stared at each other. He had a beard again. Fuller cheekbones. Glasses. But it was him. His lips curled into a smile.
“Very nice, Detective,” he said. “I wondered if my doughnut addiction would get me into trouble eventually. But they are so good, aren’t they?”