A dismissive wave of the gun barrel. “More in due time, my friend. For now, I’d simply like to know if you’re interested enough to continue this discussion. If not, you’re free to go. I’ll just consider the bail money an investment that didn’t pay off.”
“Free to go, huh? The next time I turn my back, you’ll put a bullet in my brain.”
“No,” said the voice. “I choose the base of the neck instead.”
A sudden chill. Miscalculation. “What?”
An instant later, Creighton heard the simultaneous crack of the gun and the bright explosion of glass beside him. He didn’t feel the bullet’s impact but quickly scanned his body for an entry wound, for a growing stain of blood. Found none. It was only the bottle. The guy had shot the bottle out of Creighton’s hand.
Right at the base of the neck.
“That,” Creighton said, holding up what little remained of the bottle, “was an impressive shot.”
“If I wanted you dead,” the voice said, “you’d be dead. I want your help.”
As Creighton threw the remains of the bottle to the ground, he noticed a spray of glass shards embedded in his thigh. Blood began to creep from a dozen wounds. He reached down and started wrenching the pieces of glass from his leg, thinking about how badly it should have hurt. “How do I know I can trust you?”
“You don’t. And I can’t trust you either. But that’s the nature of these relationships, isn’t it?”
Lately, Creighton had been working alone, but it hadn’t always been that way. “Yeah,” he said. “It is.”
“So, are you in?”
Creighton didn’t answer, just finished removing the glass from his leg and dropping it to the floor. But he didn’t turn to go either.
“All right. Good. Then I have a surprise for you.”
“And that is?”
“Your girlfriend. She’s waiting for you out back, in the car.”
Creighton straightened up. “My girlfriend?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
He glanced around the room. “Where?”
The man waved the gun toward the far wall. “Door’s over there.
Keys are in the car. So is your plane ticket, driver’s license, FBI iden-tification badge, and a little spending money, Mr. Neville Lewis.”
Creighton let out a harsh sigh. “Neville Lewis? That the best you could do?”
A crackle of electronic laughter. “Go on. We’ll talk soon. I know you must be anxious to see her.”
“Wait. You know my name, what am I supposed to call you?”
“You can call me Shade.”
The light blinked off, and Creighton found that he couldn’t see a thing except for the flashing residue of color swirling through his vision. The passageway he’d come from spit out a tiny pool of light, but other than that the room was pitch black.
He heard a faint brush of movement beside the chair and realized that if he couldn’t see the shooter, the shooter couldn’t see him.
So.
One chance.
Take care of this guy now. Then you won’t have to worry about trusting him, or working for him, or paying him back for any favors.
Creighton crouched low and skittered along the wall. Rushed toward the chair.
Groping through the dark, he knocked over the work lamp, and it clattered to the ground, the hot bulbs exploding on impact.
Creighton’s hands found the chair and he lifted it, swung it, hoping to find the person who’d shot the bottle from his hand, but he found only empty air instead.
He swung again. Shuffled around.
Nothing.
He prodded at the emptiness with the chair for a couple more minutes but found no sign of the man who’d invited him there.
Finally, he decided the guy must have slipped away somehow, perhaps out another door.
Rather than waste any more time stumbling around in the dark trying to attack a phantom, he threw the chair to the ground and started for the far wall. The guy had promised that his girlfriend was waiting for him. He wasn’t sure what to think about that, but he definitely wanted to find out.
Creighton found the door, eased it open. Stepped into the alley behind the club. A sedan with tinted windows sat beside a reeking dumpster. Night had fallen, but a jaundiced street lamp at the end of the alley managed to give Creighton just enough light to see.
He made sure no one else was in the alley, then approached the car and tried to peer through the windows. Too dark.
He didn’t trust the guy with the gun, and he wasn’t sure what to expect when he opened the car door.
A car bomb?
But why? Why waste the bail money? Besides, the guy could have killed him inside the building.
Sounds, soft sounds from inside the car. He reached for the door handle. Clicked it open. “Hello?” he said.
No one in the front seat. He slipped into the car. “Hello?” Turned around.
And found her, lying in the backseat.
A woman he had never met.
Bound and tightly gagged.
He pulled the door shut. Her pleading eyes grew large with terror when she saw him, saw that he made no attempt to free her. They had never met, but he’d seen her face. He knew who she was. She squirmed. Couldn’t get free. “So,” he said, eyeing her, smiling at her, fondling her soft blonde hair. “Maybe I can trust him after all.”
Creighton swiveled around and started the engine. “C’mon, my dear. It’s time we got to know each other. I’m going to be your new boyfriend.”
As he pulled out of the alley, Creighton could hear desperate, muffled cries coming from the backseat. He didn’t need to turn around to know what they were. He knew those sounds well. He’d heard them before.
She was trying to scream beneath her gag.
Yes, he knew those sounds well.
It looked like Weldon had been right after all.
Creighton Melice had made a new friend.
1
Three months later
Monday, February 16, 2009
San Diego, California
5:46 p.m.
I stared at the array of silverware surrounding my plate. “I can never remember which fork to use for the salad.”
My stepdaughter Tessa pointed. “The outside one, Patrick. You start there and work your way in.”
“You sure?”
She picked up my forks one at a time, a family of leather bracelets riding up and down her wrist, over the four rubber bands she wore beneath them. “Salad, main dish, then dessert.”
As she set down my dessert fork, I realized how much we both stuck out at this restaurant. Everyone else wore a dinner jacket or an evening gown; we both had on Tshirts-mine, a faded athletic shirt from Marquette University, hers, a black, long-sleeve DeathNail 13 tee with the band’s logo of an eyeball with a nail stuck through it.
Beside the picture she wore a small pin: Save Darfur. Now.
Tessa had chosen light pink lipstick tonight, but black fingernail polish and black eye shadow to match her raven-black hair. I hadn’t been too thrilled about the eyebrow ring and pierced nose she’d gotten last month without my permission, but I had to admit they were cute. And with her three-quarter-length black tights under a crinkly fabric skirt, she looked slightly Goth, a little edgy and dark, yet still girlish and innocent at seventeen.
“So, how do you know so much about table settings?” I asked.
“I worked at La Saritas, remember? Before Mom died.”
Her comment blindsided me, took me back to Christie’s funeral. I glanced out the window. The wind had been kicking up all afternoon, and now, just after dusk, the ocean looked ragged and gray. The remaining sunlight drained slowly into the sea as a few gulls meandered beneath the clouds, occasionally diving to retrieve a fish that had wandered too close to the water’s rough, leathery surface. “Yeah, sorry,” I said. “I guess I forgot. How long did you work there again?”
“Two days. The manager said I didn’t have a ‘team-oriented attitude.’” She took a sip of her ice water. “Jerk.”
I’d chosen a table in the back of the restaurant, my back to the wall. Force of habit. For a moment I watched the servers maneuver through the maze of tables, observing the routes they took, the choices they made. Habit again.