“Covering sick-outs,” Salcedo said. He held the door and stood aside; Worth entered the apartment, feeling a tingle in his gut.
Another cop appeared from the hallway to the bedroom. Salcedo’s partner, Tony Briggs. Worth could see the stitches in the guy’s head from across the room.
“Goddamn,” he said, adjusting his belt. He wore gloves just like Ray. “That bitch knows how to suck dick.”
Worth wasn’t sure he’d actually heard what he’d heard.
But there wasn’t any mistaking the sound of the apartment door closing behind his back. He looked over his shoulder, saw Salcedo giving the bolt a twist. Click.
All his senses went hot. He suddenly became hyperaware of the size of the space, the layout of the room, his position between Salcedo and Briggs.
Briggs walked straight toward him. “Matt Worth in the house.”
Worth stepped back and angled himself so that he could see Briggs and Salcedo both. Briggs kept walking. Salcedo leaned against the door.
Worth moved his right hand to his radio. “Where’s Gwen?”
“Gargling, my guess.” Briggs laughed. “Swear to God, Ray? My balls feel lighter.”
Worth felt something flare in his head. Like powder burning out of a priming pan. Down the hall, the door to the bathroom was closed. Light glowed along the bottom edge.
“Hey, man, you gotta tell me something.” Briggs stepped close, tapping him on the chest with the back of one glove. “She ever let you—”
Worth hit his hand away.
Briggs grinned and slapped him.
Worth saw it coming from his blind side, reacted a split second too late. Leather smacked his cheek. The blow landed much heavier than he’d expected, throwing off his response.
The room shimmered, then dimmed.
He wasn’t sure how things happened from there. One minute he was stepping in tight, coming up under Briggs’s jaw with a short left. Then a grenade went off in his solar plexus and he was on his knees, unable to breathe.
Worth fell to his hands and time stopped for a little while. He tried to inhale and couldn’t. The carpet went out of focus, and his nerve system began sounding alarms. Worth forced himself not to panic, knowing it would just make him pass out that much quicker.
At last he managed to drag in a small sip of air. Then another. Worth finally crouched back onto his heels and looked up, into the muzzle of Tony Briggs’s nine-millimeter service weapon.
“Welcome back,” Briggs said. “Stand up.”
Worth discovered that his own Glock had already been removed from its holster. He had a lockback knife in a belt pouch, but he knew he couldn’t do much with it at this point except make things worse.
He’d never been a good fighter. He didn’t have the natural instincts, and he’d known it coming out of academy. On the street, he’d always relied on superior training and bigger brains. When a scenario had to go hands-on, he’d learned through hard experience how to gain advantage where he could. How to know where he couldn’t.
But in almost ten years on the job—as many wrong moves as he’d made, even counting the fights he’d out-and-out lost—he’d never been caught dead-bang until now.
“Up.”
Worth stood to his feet.
“Lose the gear and take two steps toward me.”
He unstrapped his handset, unbuckled his belt, and dropped it all in a heavy pile on the carpet.
Never give up your weapon. It was like a Bible verse. No matter what happens. No matter what. Never, ever, not ever do you let the other guy end up with your gun.
Tony Briggs pointed his own at Worth’s face, slipping his finger inside the trigger guard. Worth finally noticed the sap gloves he wore. Prohibited old-school gear, no doubt purchased through the mail or over the Internet. Steel or lead in the knuckles—nothing you’d probably notice unless you’d ever worn or been hit by a pair.
He was thinking of the knot above John Pospisil’s eye. The stitches in Briggs’s head.
Slipped on ice, Ray Salcedo had said.
Standing there, staring into the round black hole of Briggs’s gun barrel, Worth could see the whole thing: John coming through the doorway to the living room, Briggs waiting in the darkness at his left. He could choreograph the exchange of blows on wound location alone.
“Come on out,” Briggs said over his shoulder. “Everybody’s friends.”
The bathroom door opened and Gwen appeared, hands cuffed in front of her. Her gray eyes blazed, nearly green in appearance. “I didn’t touch him.”
Tony Briggs chuckled. “That’s sweet.”
“Matthew, I didn’t.”
“He knows you didn’t, sweetie.” Briggs looked at Worth and holstered his weapon, just to show he didn’t need it. “He also knows who the alpha dog is. Right, brother?”
Worth turned his back, stooped, and picked up his gear belt. He took his time strapping it back on. Briggs stood by, watching, seeming amused.
“So you’re Tony?”
“That’s me.”
“I heard you got your head cracked open by a one-legged guy,” Worth said. “Is that really true?”
Behind him, Ray Salcedo chuckled.
Tony Briggs smiled, nodding along. “That’s good. Hey, where’s your gun, funny man?”
“What do you want?”
Briggs shook his head. “Don’t even play.”
Worth walked over to Gwen. He used his own key to undo her cuffs. He tossed the bracelets to the carpet and rubbed her wrists between his hands.
She stepped in close, but her body stayed rigid. If there had been any time in the past three days when he’d made her feel safe, he didn’t make her feel that way anymore.
“He said if I didn’t go along he’d shoot you in the head when you walked in,” she said. “He showed me the gun he was going to use. He had it in a paper bag.”
Worth saw the wrinkled lunch sack sitting on the table off the kitchenette. He wondered how often Tony Briggs dropped a piece to make a story work out his way.
“Let’s skip the bullshit,” Briggs said. “We know all about what you two tricksters have been up to. So you don’t need to knock yourself out, pretending you don’t know why we’re here.”
Ray Salcedo came away from the door, shoulders square, thumbs hooked in his belt. He offered Worth a companionable shrug. Sorry, guy.
“Here’s what I’m wondering.” Briggs walked over and picked up the phone. “Say I had a line on a homicide case potentially involving one of our own. If I called right now? You think Detective Vargas would pull his dick out of your wife long enough to answer the phone this time of night?”
Worth felt his face get hot. He ignored it this time.
“I wouldn’t,” Salcedo said.
“Dude, me either,” said Briggs. “I was Detective Vargas, I’d need two dicks.”
“So for you that would be what?” Gwen said. “A two-hundred-percent increase?”
Worth looked at her, surprised.
Ray Salcedo laughed out loud. “Snap.”
Tony Briggs gave her a long, slow grin that started in his eyes. “You’re a handful, aren’t you?”
“You wish.”
“I’ll bet it was you who did old Russ,” Briggs said. His radio crackled; he reached to his hip, listened to the chatter a moment, then turned it down. “Isn’t that right? Lover Boy here doesn’t have the sack for it. I can see that. But you got a little freak back there, don’t you, baby?”
If Gwen’s eyes had been laser beams, Tony Briggs would be a smolding black scorch mark in the carpet. It was like she’d shifted into a gear Worth hadn’t known she had.
He turned his attention back to Briggs and Salcedo. Somehow they knew Russell James was dead. They thought he and Gwen had planned it together. Worth wondered what else they knew.
“Hey, whatever,” Briggs said. “The stiff is your business. We’re not judging.”
“Wouldn’t be our place,” said Ray.
“Hell, any guy hits his girl the way that guy hit on you? My book? Baby, I don’t care who he works for. That’s a guy who got what he deserved.” Briggs shrugged. “As soon as you two adjust your thinking, accept the fact that you don’t get to keep what isn’t yours? I don’t see where the four of us have a problem.”