She squatted to dig through the leather duffel bag, giving him an unabashed view of her backside. A fitness junkie, she knew precisely what she looked like from every angle.
She came up with a swim cap.
Around the rubber ball screwed into his pie hole, Reynolds looked puzzled but game.
She tugged on the cap, then blue surgical gloves. Next she removed an industrial blender and set it on the floor. Given his constraints, Reynolds was tough to read, but he wasn’t standing at attention as he had been earlier.
From inside the bag, her cell phone erupted with the chorus of “Venus,” the distinctive ringtone she reserved for one thing.
The sound of the next job zeroing in on her.
Of course, she preferred Bananarama’s cover: I’m yer Venus … I’m yer fire … At your desire.
She held up a blue-latex-sheathed finger to Reynolds.
When the big man called, everything went on hold — no matter how awkward the situation at hand.
She answered. “Yes?”
“Is the package neutralized?” Danny Slatcher had the voice of a middle manager, throaty and bland. Aside from his size, bigger than your average bear, he looked boring, too. Button-up shirts, weave belts, dust-colored hair in that white-guy side part, even the start of a spare tire around the midsection — she was never clear if the getup was costume or genuine. The only appealing thing about him was his lethality. When the shit went down, he was transformed, all precision and timing, latent rage, hidden muscles sending bodies and furniture spinning like tops. She’d let him fuck her once, in the adrenalized aftermath of a double hit, and once was enough. They’d been on the rooftop of a resort in Tamarindo, thunder vibrating the adobe tiles, the smell of gunpowder and fresh blood drifting up from the balcony below. But in men’s brains, “once” was an open invitation. She’d given Slatcher a taste, and he’d carried the memory for years, aging it like a wine, fantasizing about popping that cork just one more time.
Candy began unloading her supplies from the duffel and setting them beside the industrial blender. Hacksaw. Safety goggles. Hand ax.
Over on the bed, Reynolds made muffled sounds.
“Just about,” she answered.
“Good,” Slatcher said. “A bigger job just went sideways.”
“Clearly you brought in the wrong team, then.” She took out a long roll of black construction sheeting, placed it delicately on the floor, and gave it a nudge with her instep. It rolled smoothly across the floorboards, leaving a wide band of protective cover.
Slatcher cleared his throat. “I was overseeing them personally.”
“They’re not me.”
Carefully, she extracted from the duffel two jugs of concentrated hydrofluoric acid, effective at dissolving bones. It had to be stored in plastic, since it ate through everything from concrete to porcelain — what the majority of American bathtubs are made of. The copper soaking tub would react with the acid, sure, but it would just come out shinier, all the oxide stains eaten away. At the end of the day, Candy McClure would be just another considerate guest leaving a room cleaner than she’d found it.
The sounds of panicked thrashing carried over from the bed.
“I have a man down,” Slatcher said.
“That’s what you get for sending a man to do a woman’s job.”
A thick vein stood out on Reynolds’s forehead. He was trying to say something through the ball gag, but she’d secured the straps good and tight.
Candy set down the jugs, then carefully tucked her stray hair beneath the swim cap. She would leave no DNA on the scene. His or hers.
“Get here,” Slatcher said.
At his tone her playfulness evaporated. She calculated the naked man’s girth, the size of the tub, traffic conditions down the mountain. Four hours and change. She picked up the hand ax and started for the bed.
“On my way,” she said.
13
Professionals
Evan chose a midlevel motel in a less-nice part of Santa Monica several miles from the beach. With Katrin clinging to his arm in the role of browbeaten spouse, he checked in using a fake driver’s license and paid with a credit card tied to a cul-de-sac of a bank account. He booked three rooms on the ground floor with connecting doors for their extended family, due any minute now. Then he led Katrin into the middle room and waited patiently in a rickety wooden chair while she cleaned up in the bathroom. The sink water ran for a long time. When she came out, the red rims of her eyes looked pronounced against her alabaster skin.
She sat on the bed, pressed her hands between her knees. “God,” she said. She glanced over to the little desk, on which Evan had set out a stack of cash and a burner phone, and made a noise deep in her throat.
“Don’t leave this room. Order in only, have them set the food outside, slide the money under the door. Don’t use the phone unless it’s to call me. Understand?”
“This isn’t real. This can’t be real. We have to call them. We have to find out about my dad, and now they can’t call me since you took my phone and—”
“Where did Morena approach you?”
Katrin jogged her head back and forth slightly, as if to clear her thoughts. “I was playing roulette. Shitty odds, I know, but I was down to my last thousand.… It was a Hail Mary. I thought if God or karma or whatever you want to call it was on my side, I could hit ten on the wheel. And then again. And again. Until I had two-point-one million. Until I could save my dad.” She misted up and had to pause. “I didn’t know what to do. I don’t have anything. I don’t have money like that. Look, I really think we need to contact these guys—”
“How did she pick you out?”
“How do you think? I must’ve seemed like a fucking mess — because I was a fucking mess. And then this kid comes up. Looked barely old enough to be there. And she said, ‘Are you in trouble?’ Like she was searching for me.”
Morena’s aunt lived in Vegas, and she’d made it clear that she and Carmen were heading there. What better place than a casino to search out someone in desperate shape?
Katrin continued, “And you know how sometimes someone asks you the wrong question at the wrong time? I just started crying. And then we sat down, and she told me her story. And I told her mine. Well, part of it. But enough. And she gave me your number. I didn’t know what to think, whether I should trust her. I drove back to L.A., mulling it over. Then I gave in and called.”
“You told her your story? Even though you’d just met her?”
“A version of it, like I said.” Katrin’s neck firmed, and he saw a trace of steel beneath the green eyes. “Wait a minute. Is this some sort of test? After what you just saw? Like I made up almost getting shot? You seriously don’t trust me?”
“If I didn’t trust you, you wouldn’t be here.”
Her throat clicked as she swallowed.
“There’s no question they’re trying to kill you,” Evan said. “I just need to understand precisely what happened.”
She stood up, and he followed suit. “What about my dad?”
“We’ll get to that.”
“They said. They said I couldn’t tell anyone. Me calling you? That could’ve killed my father.” She twisted a hand hard in the hem of her shirt, as if working out a violent impulse. “We have to call. We have to—”
He took her arms gently and moved her back a step. “The first thing we do is nothing. If we do nothing, nothing can happen. Adrenaline is up right now, everyone will be amped, excitable, prone to making mistakes. Let them calm down. We want nerves to settle. We’ll call tomorrow, negotiate your father’s release.”