Sure enough, Delaware turned his head and glanced across at her, lifting his chin to check her out. A flare of alarm panicked his features as he stopped mid-stride twenty yards away. Lopez covered her dismay at having been spotted with a cheerful smile.
‘Morning, Lewis,’ she called brightly. ‘Don’t run or I’ll kick your ass.’
Delaware flashed her a nervous grin, whirled and took off down the sidewalk.
Lopez launched herself in pursuit, wishing once again for the comforting feeling of a pistol by her side. Cans of pepper spray and nightsticks were handy, but they weren’t so hot against bullets. Lopez watched as Delaware, scrawny and out of shape, ran with a gangly gait past an automobile trader, barreling past a BMW pulling out in front of him. Lopez dodged past the vehicle with a single bound, lithe as an antelope as she bore down on the frantic Delaware, who glanced over his shoulder at her, his eyes wide with panic.
Delaware aimed for an old Lincoln parked at the end of Camino Ortiz, clearly hoping to make a break for it before she caught him. Lopez gave her all and accelerated as she yanked her collapsible baton from her jeans and flicked it open before hurling it at Delaware’s legs. The baton span through the air and sliced neatly between his calves, interrupting their passage enough to send the kid sprawling face down onto the hot asphalt in a tangle of limbs, his cap flying from his head. Lopez reached him as he scrambled back to his feet and yanked his fists up defensively in front of his face, glowering at her as he panted for breath.
‘I told you not to run, Lewis,’ she said.
‘I ain’t goin’ to jail,’ he gasped. ‘You ain’t takin’ me.’
‘No?’
Lopez reached out with her left hand to grab his left wrist. As Delaware pulled it back and exposed his face, Lopez jabbed a fast right straight into his eye. He yelped, staggered backwards and collapsed to his knees with his face in his hands.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he cried as Lopez yanked him to his feet, flashing her bondsman badge as curious citizens watched them from the parking lot of a Saab dealership, and cuffed Delaware.
She dragged him, still whimpering, across the street to a narrow alley. Delaware turned, unsteady on his feet, real fear starting to spread like an infection across his face.
‘What the hell is this?’ he uttered. ‘I want to speak to my—’
Lopez strode forward and drove one knee into his groin. A strangled gasp later and the kid was on his knees. She moved around behind him, squatted down and whispered in his ear.
‘Listen good, Lewis. I’m going to empty your pockets and anything I find that I don’t like, I’m going to borrow, okay?’
Delaware opened his mouth to reply, but only a faint whistling squeaked from his throat.
Lopez emptied his pockets, finding two hundred bucks in cash, a small wrap of what looked like marijuana and two crumpled packs of cigarettes.
‘You’ve got weed,’ she hissed. ‘Both know what possession means, right, Lewis?’
‘Don’t tell ’em,’ Lewis whined pathetically. ‘Please don’t tell ’em.’
‘Get up,’ she ordered, gripping his cuffed wrists and yanking them into his shoulder blades, eliciting another squeal of pain. ‘What they don’t find you won’t miss, understood?’
With more force than was necessary Lopez pushed Delaware back to where she’d parked her car outside a nearby mall. She was in the process of wedging him into the rear seat when she saw Ethan walking toward her. He glanced at Delaware as she booted him aboard the car.
‘Busy afternoon?’ he asked.
‘Productive.’ Lopez nodded, shutting the door and handing him Lewis’s packets of cigarettes. ‘Saw him jaywalking back there, easiest pull we’ve had in months. How about you?’
Ethan took the cigarettes from her. ‘This all he had? Thought he’d be dealing, all the way out here.’
‘Nothing on him,’ Lopez said calmly with a shrug. ‘Doesn’t mean that wherever he’s been staying is clean.’
‘We don’t have time to get search warrants,’ Ethan said, and handed her the printed copy of the photograph from the town hall. ‘Recognize anybody?’
Lopez scanned the image and gasped.
‘I’ll be damned. Willis was right.’
‘You found him yet?’
‘No,’ Lopez admitted, swiping a strand of hair from out of her eyes and noticing Ethan watching her as she did so. ‘Nobody has any leads on either Tyler Willis or Lillian Cruz. Which means we’re left with trying to find either Saffron Oppenheimer or Colin Manx, both of whom probably have nothing to do with the disappearances.’
Ethan filled her in on Saffron Oppenheimer’s family history, both illustrious and tragic at the same time.
‘There’s a motive for her hitting laboratories all right,’ Ethan said, the hot wind moaning down the street tousling his light brown hair. ‘And it may explain her taking such care to hit the computer servers before she left.’
‘Industrial espionage?’ Lopez murmured. ‘You think that she’s actually working for Grandpa?’
‘It fits if Tyler’s work in any way conflicts with SkinGen’s,’ Ethan said with a shrug. ‘Saffron hits labs working in similar fields to slow down their research. Right now, we don’t have much else to go on. Local police have searched Tyler Willis’s apartment and found nothing out of the ordinary. Enrico suspects that whatever he was working on, the details are being held elsewhere.’
Lopez nodded.
‘Which means that somebody else was looking for them, or at least Tyler suspected that they were, and hid his work.’ Ethan smiled at her, teasing her along. ‘I’m not Sherlock Holmes,’ she said, ‘but I guess it does tie Jeb Oppenheimer to both Saffron and Tyler Willis. Still, it’s a long shot.’
‘Not so long that we shouldn’t pursue it,’ Ethan said. ‘Time to go and join the natives.’
Lopez jabbed a thumb at Lewis Delaware.
‘We can drop this asshole off along the way.’
Ethan nodded as he walked around to the passenger door. Lopez waited until he was on the other side of the car before discreetly tossing the small wrap of marijuana into a nearby trash can.
18
‘What the hell were you thinking?’
Colin Manx’s face was taut with rage, his frizzy hair trembling as he glared at Saffron Oppenheimer.
‘I was thinking,’ Saffron said without concern. ‘That’s the difference between you and me.’
Manx struggled for a response, glancing at the thirty or so people gathered round them and an aged NAPCO GMC Suburban. A mixture of hippies, college drop-outs and petty criminals with nowhere else to go, they represented a small army of individuals who didn’t possess the sense to realize that their actions against the state and science would get them nowhere except jail. They stared wide-eyed at Saffron Oppenheimer, and for a moment she thought that they might go down on their knees and prostrate themselves before her. She, alone, had led them to what they considered their greatest ever victory since casting themselves out from society into the Pecos Wilderness.
Saffron Oppenheimer, for her part, despised each and every one of them.
‘Is that what you call it?’ Manx raged. ‘Thinking? You fired a shotgun, put several scientists in hospital, stole all the animals and then you blew up the computers in the goddamned laboratory.’
‘Go, Saffron!’ Ruby Lily squealed from nearby. A ripple of delighted chuckles fluttered through the watching groupies as Ruby pointed at Saffron. ‘You should have seen her, she was awesome!’
Manx scowled.
‘Yeah, awesome enough that we’ll likely have the FBI hunting us down now!’