“Like what?”
“Friendship. Compassion. Forgiveness. Pretty much everything that has to do with relationships. How are you going to measure things like that? You can’t demand that they be proven or tested, because they start to disappear the minute you try to measure them or compare them to some standard.”
She stared at me. “What does that mean?”
I shrugged. “Life is hard to understand. Bigger than we are. Sometimes I think it was made that way on purpose. Sometimes I think it’s better to just assume the best. If you insist that everything has to make sense, that can make you crazy too.”
“You’re talking about faith.”
It seemed I had returned to what Bud Tanner had said to me. It seemed ironic that I was standing there saying something similar to her. But it also seemed true.
“Yeah,” I said, “I guess I am.”
“Well, I don’t have any faith.”
“Everything you decide to believe based on incomplete evidence is a leap of faith, even if you’ve decided not to believe.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“To me it does,” I said, “because it has to.”
After we had cleaned the dishes, she said she wanted me to sleep inside the apartment. I wanted to stop Medallion and the Other One before they could get inside, so I told her it was better if I kept watch from the street. I warned her not to answer the intercom at the front gate or a knock on her front door unless she knew for certain it was me outside.
She said, “I won’t.”
“This is very serious. No matter what they say, just don’t respond. Not to the intercom or through the door. Not even if they claim they’re the police. No matter who they say they are, just stay away from the door and call me. I’ll come fast. Just stay in here and wait.”
“You’re scaring me.”
“Good. Promise you’ll pretend you aren’t even here unless you hear my voice and nobody else’s.”
“I promise.”
I went out, backed the Bentley out of her driveway, and parked at the curb about one hundred feet down the street. It was drizzling a little. From time to time, I let the windshield wipers clear my line of sight to Olivia’s apartment. On the radio, they were issuing mudslide warnings in the mountains. Apparently it was raining hard up where Haley died. I tried hard not to think about it. Mostly I succeeded.
At fifteen minutes after midnight, a small car rolled to a stop behind me and turned off its headlights. I saw two heads in silhouette, one behind the wheel and the other in the passenger seat. I pulled the M11 out of my holster, slipped the safety off, and held the gun in my lap. I waited for them to make a move.
The passenger got out. He was carrying a duffel bag. He walked up to my side window and knelt down beside my car.
I lowered the side window and said, “Simon.”
He passed me the duffel bag. “My apologies for being late. There was an accident on the interstate.”
“Who’s that with you? Teru?”
“He guessed where I was going somehow. He insisted on driving.”
“Well. He’s a good driver if you need one. Are you both armed?”
“To the teeth. Would you care to brief me?”
I told him I had already checked all the access points from inside the apartment. There were only two doors into the apartment—the one off the front courtyard, which led to the gate off the street, and another one that opened into the garage. There was only one way into the garage, which was through the overhead door that also faced the street. So he could watch both sets of doors from where he was parked. There was no alley. Her building was surrounded on three sides by other buildings, each of which had walls along the property lines. So to penetrate the perimeter, they would have to sneak past us or else gain access to a neighboring property, scale a wall, and break in through one of her rear or side windows, which I had secured earlier.
I said, “Let’s trade phones.”
Simon handed me his cell phone and I gave him mine. Olivia had my number on her landline’s speed dial, so she only had to push one button, and it would ring. I had my phone set up to do the same with Simon’s number, so he could ring me just as quickly. I figured less than three seconds would pass between Olivia’s pressing the button on her phone and Simon heading for her door. I would be less than thirty seconds behind him. A lot can happen in half a minute—I had seen dozens of men die in a fraction of the time—but it was the best we could do.
I said, “If it’s possible to wait for me, do it. Otherwise, take action, and I’ll be right behind you.”
“Very good.”
“Don’t let Teru get in the middle of it.”
“No.”
He walked back to his car. I got out of the Bentley and looked back. They had come in Teru’s Porsche. I waved at him. He lifted a hand in response. I went into the building beside us, a bed-and-breakfast where I had reserved a room earlier that day.
The elderly couple who ran the bed-and-breakfast had hidden a key for me under a rock in a planting bed. It opened their front door and my room upstairs in the back. I put the bag on a chair beside the bed, opened it, and withdrew my shaving kit, which I carried into the small bathroom. I stared at my face in the mirror while I brushed my teeth, trying to think of anything I might have missed. The cut on my forehead from the attack in the mountains was healing. The swelling at my jaw from the beating in Pico-Union was completely gone. My pupils and my irises were still the same color, so my eyes still looked like a pair of empty holes. I would never understand what Haley could have seen in them. Maybe what she had seen in them had gone with her.
It felt wrong not to be downstairs watching over Olivia, but I knew it made more sense to take a break. I couldn’t watch her around the clock. If I tried, I’d lose my edge. Besides, based on Simon’s marksmanship the day Castro had tried to run us down outside El Nido, I had a feeling he was up to the challenge.
I set the alarm timer on Simon’s phone and put it on the bedside table. I took my keys and wallet out of my pockets and put them next to the phone. I pulled the holster off my belt and set it on the table too. It’s hard to sleep with a holster jabbing into your side.
It had been a long day. I checked the safety on M11 and I lay on top of the bedcovers, fully clothed, with my shoes on and my weapon in my hand.
46
The alarm went off four hours later. I rose, put the M11 in the holster, clipped the holster to my belt, splashed some water on my face at the bathroom sink, put my keys and wallet and Simon’s cell phone back in my pockets, picked up the duffel bag, and went downstairs.
Outside the sun was still an hour away from rising, and the drizzle that often passes for rain in Los Angeles hadn’t abated. I spoke Simon’s name softly and paused near a streetlight where he could clearly see me. When I heard him say, “Approach,” I walked to the passenger-side window of the Porsche.
“Anything to report?” I asked, kneeling down to Simon’s level by the window.
He passed my phone out to me, and I gave him his. He said, “I believe Miss Soto is present and correct.”
Beyond him sat Teru, still watching Olivia’s gate.
“You’ll get some sleep later this morning, as we discussed?”
“After Mr. Gold has gone to work. And I will return tonight at the same time, unless you contact me with different instructions.”
“I’ll be here too,” said Teru.
“Thanks for this, guys.”
Teru said, “They hit Olivia. We can’t have that.”
After he drove away, I went to the Bentley. At six thirty my phone rang. “You out there?” she asked.