He braked hard. The tires squealed. He swerved to a stop, grabbed me, pushed me down, and lay across me. He opened the glove compartment and grabbed the gun. I heard him rack the slide.
“Stay down.”
I gritted my teeth, staring at the floorboards. Whatever was out there was behind us. There was no way he would get a good angle on it. He breathed
one, two, three,
and sat up, throwing himself against the door and swinging his right arm to aim the Glock at the back window.
For an aching second, then two, I heard nothing.
“Shit,” he said.
“Jesse?”
“Fucking shit. Is that what I think it is?”
“I’m sitting up.”
When he didn’t object, I poked my head up. He was flat against the door, gun arm rigid. I followed his line of sight.
A sound half snarled from my throat. “Lower the gun.”
He pulled his finger off the trigger and pointed the weapon at the floor. Sagging against the door, he ran a hand over his face.
“It looked like somebody was climbing on the tailgate.”
I ground my teeth so hard that my dental work creaked. “Tater must die.”
I got out and stomped to the back of the truck, where the Weekend Fireworks box sat with its lid half off. Panties and briefs and rubber toys lay strewn about. Looking up the street, I saw a red bra and a pair of fishnet stockings. I bet the love paraphernalia stretched back to Dr. Abbott’s office like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of bread crumbs.
Suzie Sizemore sprawled, partially inflated, against the tailgate. Her feet were still in the Weekend Fireworks box. From the ecstasy on her plastic face, she had climaxed from the thrill of flailing about in weekday traffic. I grabbed her and the box, tossed them in the backseat, and climbed into the truck, slamming the door.
Jesse sat staring dead ahead, hands tight on the wheel. “That’s twice today. Has anybody checked Taylor’s scalp for the birthmark?”
“Which one? Sixty-nine, or six six six?”
“I can’t take much more of this shit.”
I put my hand across his shoulder. He continued staring out the windshield, ignoring the traffic that flashed past and the bike that grumbled up and stopped outside his door.
All my adrenaline was depleted, so what I felt was the heat seeming to run out of my body.
“Boris and Natasha are here,” I said.
He looked at me, and out the window.
Jax Rivera was revving the throttle on the bike. Tim North, riding pillion, gave us his mutt’s stare. Dangling from his index finger was a silver lamé jockstrap.
“Jesse, mate, this style’s a bit tarty for you.” He nodded up the road. “Follow us.”
19
“I don’t like the vibe I’m getting here,” Jesse said.
He slowed the truck around a hairpin turn. Ahead, Jax curved smoothly up the hill. On the back of the bike Tim leaned with her, hewing to her movements like a shadow. La Cumbre peak crowded the sky. Chaparral and drooping oaks congested the edges of the asphalt. Jax powered the bike over a rise and cut left onto a side road.
Jesse read the road sign. “Knew it.”
The hill steepened past rows of eucalyptus and houses hunched back in the brush. Jax angled down a driveway with a FOR SALE sign, to a lot where the concrete foundation for a house was laid. We parked on a promontory overlooking the city and followed them up onto the concrete slab, Jesse popping a wheelie.
Tim’s bearing was army. He moved with the economy of a snake. He admired the two-million-dollar view while we approached.
Trying to maintain a cool facade with a paid killer wasn’t simple. “You’re carrying the British love of irony too far.”
“Coyote Road. I suppose so.”
“Kai Torrance. I need to know if that’s Coyote.”
He continued taking in the panorama. “What’s brought you to this juncture?”
“A typhoon named Maureen Swayze, plus two goons who move like they have the same sniper training as you. And a guy in a baseball cap who sent Jesse on a whirl around the dance floor. It was a regular fiesta. All we were missing was the piñata.”
Jax approached. “I imagine Coyote had you penciled in for that role.”
My flesh crept. “We saw him. Blond, slight, Mr. Inconspicuous.”
“Don’t rely on physical appearance,” Tim said. “Next time Coyote may turn up as a fat cop or an old woman.” He turned his head at last, taking us in. “Even I don’t know what Coyote looks like, and I’ve met the bastard.”
Shit. “Took you long enough to tell us.”
“It was in Colombia, during one of the more robust interludes in the War on Drugs.”
He glanced at his wife. She was strolling to the edge of the slab, admiring the view. Even wearing shit-kickers and motorcycle leathers, she might have been gliding through a pas de deux in
Swan Lake
. Colombia, to hear Jax tell it, was where she hit the end of the line as a CIA operative. It was impossible to know whether she was remembering the final act in Medellín: the lover who betrayed her to narco-traffickers, the heroin she doped him with, the nine-millimeter round she fired into his temple.
Tim said, “In the field you sometimes work with peers from other intelligence services. I was occasionally part of Coyote’s supply chain, providing logistics.”
Jesse put his hands on his push-rims. “Thought you were at the top of the chain, behind the nightscope.”
“Even rock stars occasionally take day jobs.” Tim smiled a rough smile. Considering that he was the scariest man I might ever consider trusting, it was a disarming look.
“Of course, Coyote was using a cover identity. But you’ve nailed him. Kai Torrance.”
I let out a breath. “He was CIA?”
“I never saw who signed his pay slip. I only know that in his prime he was terrific. Quiet, effective, and reliable,” he said. “Later I crossed paths with him in Thailand, and he’d changed. He was edgy, almost brittle. His methods had become eccentric.”
“How so?”
“He’d taken to slicing claw marks into the bodies of his targets. Signing his work like he was bloody Zorro. Needless to say, a signature spook is an oxymoron.”
Jesse was grim. “Who are we up against?”
“He’s trained in sabotage and demolition, and he’s adept at vigorous interrogation.”
Demolition. Jesse and I glanced at each other, thinking of the explosion at the air force clinic that killed Dana West.
A bitter taste filled my mouth. “He’s a trained torturer?”
“He was trained to withstand torture. His methods of inducing pain were of his own devising.” He turned to me. “Covert ops deal with the most malign thugs on the planet, and it’s not your average agent who leaves his air-conditioned office in Virginia to face violence and dysentery in the armpits of the world. I’m telling you he’s one vicious cat with an unholy level of devotion to his mission.”
The sun felt harsh. I sat down on the edge of the foundation slab.
“What happened in Thailand?” I said.
“Drugs, whores of various flavors—devotion to mission doesn’t exclude the usual appetites.” He took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. “Something split inside him and the wheels came off, at high rpms.”
“He killed somebody?”
“A transvestite in Bangkok.”
Jesse glanced over. “Is he gay?”
“Gay, bi, a goat shagger, I don’t know. But this
katoey
—this Thai ladyboy—it wasn’t a simple murder.” He shrugged. “Huge city like that, ordinarily a whore dies and few people take notice. But the trappings of this death were . . . well, it was . . .”
He stared at the ground.
Jax mimed a knife slicing flesh. “Coyote used a KA-BAR. Took ’em off midwank.”
Jesse flinched. So did Tim.
“After that Coyote turned into smoke,” he said. “Out of play, dead, who knew?”
“Why—” I began, and had to clear my throat. “Why did his mission change from sorting out thugs in Southeast Asia to killing my classmates here at home?”
Jax sat down beside me. “You’ve made the leap, then.”
“That he never went off the government clock.”
She nodded. “In a manner of speaking.”
“Is Project South Star still active?”
“No. This seems more like an aftereffect. South Star died out but Coyote burns on.”
The sun felt hot on my face. “If you walk back the cat, the tangled ball of string unspools to China Lake. Things went wrong when my class got too close to that explosion out in Renegade Canyon. We were exposed to something that’s causing my classmates to get sick and die. And now it’s leading Coyote to kill them.” I looked at her. “Are we the error that somebody’s trying to correct? The flaw?”
Jax eyed me. “Get sick and die? Is that why you were coming out of a doctor’s office?”
I should have known they’d been following us from Dr. Abbott’s. “No, I’m fine. Are you telling me that you didn’t know about that?”
Jesse raised a hand. “Before you ask any more questions, I have one.” He waved at Jax and Tim. “Why do you want to help track down Coyote? Tell me how come you give a shit.”
They didn’t answer. Tim lit a cigarette.
“Cross off altruism or a desire to atone for your own sins. That leaves money or a vendetta.”
Tim’s expression didn’t change. “Nobody’s paying me to kill Coyote.”
“So it’s a freebie?”
Jax stood up. “It’s neither. What matters is that I will not lie to Evan or put her in danger. That’s all you need to know.”
“The hell it is.”
Tim dragged on his cigarette. “Jax went to Evan with information intended to shut down this bastard before anybody else died. So maybe you could dial it down, mate.”
“Don’t tell me to cool it.”
“Twenty minutes ago you pulled a gun on an inflatable toy. Cooling it is precisely what you need to do.”
Jesse closed his eyes and put up his hands. “Fine.”
Jax sat down beside me again. “Summarize what you’ve learned.”
I gave them the short form: South Star, explosion, death, death, and death.
She scanned the view of the harbor. “It almost ties together, but not quite. We’re missing something.”
I looked at her. “He killed the helicopter pilot last year near Seattle.”
“Dearing? I didn’t know she had a China Lake connection.”
“Do you know about any other murders?”
“There was a car wreck in Cincinnati that’s suspicious.”
“Hell,” I said. “Marcy Yakulski?”
“That’s it. The paper reported that the gas tank caught fire when they flipped. It didn’t report that somebody watched the car burn.”
“A bystander?” Jesse said.
“This was a dispassionate observer. He stood by while two people burned inside the vehicle. But the driver ignored the flames and managed to get her child free and carry her down the street. The observer followed. When the driver collapsed he stood over her, staring. He was there when the fire department arrived. Before he fled, one of the firefighters saw him squat next to the driver, touching her. The autopsy showed marks in her flesh.”
Jesse’s voice was low. “Holy fuck.”
“That was Marcy,” I said. “Did he rig the crash?”
Jesse came up behind me. “No, I mean that Coyote was observing the effects of South Star. He watched Marcy burn to study the effects of the pain vaccine.”
From the hillside below us a vulture swooped up into the sky, black wings a hole in the blue. I closed my eyes, trying to shut out all but the evidence. Trying to make the string untangle.
“We weren’t vaccinated against pain. We were contaminated with something, and so was Coyote. And now he’s trying to get rid of us.”
“It’s a coverup,” Jesse said. “Coyote isn’t out there running amok. He’s on assignment.”
Tim dragged on his cigarette. “A comment from one who toiled in the bowels of government. If an agency wants something covered up, they may outsource the work so that they can keep their hands clean.”
“Covering their asses?” I said.
“They’re bureaucratic weasels. They like their comfy offices in Whitehall and Langley. They like their projects to look like successes in the after-mission reports. One gets promoted by running clean, successful projects.”
“So they’re going dirty as hell to clean up a messy project from way back?” I said.
Jax shrugged. “It’s conceivable.”
I ran my hands through my hair. “Then Coyote’s using the serial killer profile to distract attention from his real agenda.”
Jesse rubbed his palm along his leg. “Problem is, some government agency may have outsourced the coverup of a toxic chemical exposure to an actual psychopath.”
“If that’s what’s going on,” Jax said, “then Coyote has backers, funds, and possibly contacts who provide him with information to target his victims.”
“Salt ’n’ Pepa?” I said.
“I’m not sure who those men might have been. But right now we don’t know who you can trust. Presume that somebody is feeding Coyote information. Watch yourself.”
Jesse looked at me, bleak. Above us the vulture lazed in the sky, riding the late afternoon thermals.
I stood and began pacing. “It still doesn’t scan.”
Jesse echoed me. “For the government to try to kill every kid in a class that was exposed to toxic chemicals—for what? You’re right. It’s overkill.”
“We still haven’t put it together. Something else is going on.”
Jax said, “You need additional information. Who else can you talk to about this?”
I jumped. She was right behind me.
“I need to talk to the classmate who’s ill. And maybe the doctor back in China Lake who advised the high school.” Looking toward Jesse, the sun spun into my eyes and I put a hand up to block the glare. “Tully Cantwell, you met him at the reunion.”
Jax took hold of my hand. “Oh, my.”
She turned it so the ring flashed in the light. Her eyes narrowed.