“Huh.” Maybe.
Ten minutes later, he got off the freeway in Santa Monica, looped around, and pulled into a wide parking lot beside the pier. On a Saturday afternoon, the lot might have been packed, but now it was barely a quarter full. The kiddie roller coaster on the pier swung around a turn, its rattling rumble wafting on cool ocean breezes. He slowed to a stop. For a moment they stared out the window.
“Time to hunt mammoth.”
Laney looked over, tension drawing taut the lines of her face. “Daniel . . .”
He waited, but she didn’t say anything else. “It’s going to be okay.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.” He reached for the door handle.
“Hey,” she said. “You forgot something.”
He turned, saw her smile, and realized what he’d forgotten. He took his time collecting it.
When he got to the end of the pier, Daniel found half a dozen photographers leaned against their tripods, long lenses pointed out to sea, snapping pictures of surfers and the fading sunset and the bright lights of the pier winking on against the coming dark. He chose one slightly apart from the rest.
At first the photographer didn’t understand what Daniel wanted. “Is this, like, for a movie?”
“Something like that. Listen, just take as many pictures as you can of the guy who comes to talk to me. Get close-ups of his face, get us both together, get any details you can.”
“Five hundred bucks?”
“Five hundred bucks.”
“I’m your man, dude.”
And now here Daniel was, standing on the pier beneath the fading sky with its gory red and brutal yellows, its pewter foam and bobbing surf kids. The handful of photographers tried for the perfect stock photo, and from this distance there was no way to tell that one of them had the lens pointed at him.
In theory, the idea was straightforward. He just had to keep cool long enough for Bennett to expose himself. Then he would turn it around on the guy, tell him what they had done, and offer a simple quid pro quo: If Bennett went away, they wouldn’t pass the audio or photographs to the police. He’d keep his anonymity, and they’d keep their lives.
Let’s just hope your theory is sound.
The wind off the ocean was cold, and Daniel fought a shiver. A tourist family was taking snaps of themselves on one railing; on another, a couple sat holding hands.
Daniel checked his cell phone. Time, now. No sign. He continued pacing, moving from one weathered wooden plank to another, trying not to step on the rusted metal bolts. Making a game of it. Anything to distract him from how very exposed he felt out here.
What if Bennett decides just to kill you, and go after Laney alone?
What if he puts a gun to your back and makes you call out to her?
What if Bennett doesn’t care about the money anymore, and just wants to tie up loose—
“Are you Hayes?”
She was slight, the woman who asked, a hundred pounds with her clothes on. Her face was pretty but so angular it looked like it might cut a hand that touched it. Blond bobbed hair framed jumpy eyes.
“I . . .” Your picture has been in the news. It was only a matter of time before someone recognized you. And all she has to do is yell and the whole world will come crashing down, and your neat shiny plan with it. “Umm.”
The woman glanced around quickly, then pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, tugged one out with uneasy fingers. “I’m supposed to ask you for the package.”
“What?”
“He said to ask you for the package.” She struck at a match, then again, cupping her hands around it. “Hope you don’t mind if I smoke. I’m nervous.”
What does she mean? What pack—
Oh, shit.
Daniel’s mouth fell open. He had been so focused on making sure he was safe, picking a location that Bennett couldn’t attack him. And instead, the man had outflanked them.
Daniel rose up on his toes, looked up and down the beach. No sign of Bennett. The photographer he’d paid was busily clicking away, taking pictures that would be no use at all.
She had the cigarette going now, took a deep hard drag. He could see her relax as the smoke hit her lungs. “So? Do you have it?”
“Where is he?”
“He said not to chitchat, just to get the—”
He stepped forward, grabbed her wrist. “Where is he!”
She tried to pull away, but he gripped harder. “Ow! Let me go!”
The father of the happy tourist family caught her tone, looked Daniel’s way. He grit his teeth, opened his fingers, and she snatched her arm back, massaged it with her other hand. “Asshole.”
“Listen,” he said, wanting to grab her tiny body and dangle her over the railing until she gave him what he needed. “I don’t know what Bennett told you. But he’s coming after my family. My wife. He’s trying to kill us.”
The woman’s eyes darted. “I don’t know anything about that. He just— I owed him, and he told me to come get this bag. He said you were trying to play him, and he was going to take care of something while I talked to you.”
What does that mean? “I’m sorry about before. I am. But please, I’m begging you. Tell me where he is.” Take care of something while she talked to me . . .
“Look, I told you, he just—”
. . . while she kept me busy.
Oh, fuck!
Daniel turned on his heel and sprinted down the pier, left the woman yelling after him. His sneakers pounded on the dry wood, a childhood sound. He threw himself forward, arms flying, breath coming fast. Visions of horror splashing across the back of his retina. Of finding their borrowed car empty. Worse. Finding her in it. Really dead this time, eyes empty and staring.
“Move!” Daniel shoved through a row of giggling high school girls, knocked an ice cream cone flying. Behind him curses rose in two languages. He dodged around a bicycle, then ran for the edge of the pier. Grabbed the railing and vaulted it, dropping the ten feet to sandy beach. Hit with a ring of distant pain in his ankles and the front of his shins, but he didn’t fall, just leaned into his run, pushing for the parking lot where they’d agreed to meet. The parking lot where Laney had been left alone, where Bennett could have come at her from any direction. Jesus, how had he been so stupid, how had he let this guy outthink and outplan him, and then his feet hit concrete, and he pushed for the far end, where he saw Robert’s silver PT Cruiser parked, the sunlight off the windshield hiding anything—