Shawn was sitting by the fire mixing something in a metal Sierra Cup with a plastic spoon.
“I keep stirring and stirring,” Shawn said when he noticed Gus was awake. “But this still doesn’t look like eggs Benedict.” He tilted the steel cup so Gus could see the yellow-and-white soup floating inside.
Shawn was here, but the lawyers were all gone. As he crawled out of his sleeping bag, Gus searched the camp for any trace of them. “Where is everybody?”
“Bathroom break,” Shawn said. “They worked out some system where the three of them go into the woods together so no one actually has to look at anyone else. Or something.” He took a sip of his eggs and grimaced. “If I ever come up with a brilliant moneymaking scheme that revolves around eggs Benedict you can drink with a straw, talk me out of it.”
Gus wanted to grab Shawn by the shoulders until his head fell off, grew spider legs, and ran away. How could he be thinking about anything so trivial right now?
There was a rustling from the bushes. Before Gus had time to formulate the image of the creature in his head, the three lawyers stepped out into the camp. Savage and Balowsky stayed a step behind as Gwendolyn walked up to Shawn and reached for his pack.
“We’ve taken a vote,” she said. “We’ve decided to share control of the map.”
Shawn nudged the pack out of her reach with his foot. “I voted that if Quaker Oats was going to release a new flavor of Life cereal they should go for chocolate instead of maple-and-brown-sugar,” he said. “They seemed to think that my vote didn’t count, especially since they never had an election.”
If Shawn had hoped to distract Gwendolyn into a discussion of the Quaker Oats company’s unfair decision-making process, he was disappointed. “We don’t trust you and your little sidekick.”
Gus should let that go, he knew. There were monsters in the woods. They couldn’t start fighting among themselves. But he found himself taking a step forward, his hands clenching into fists. In the last few days he’d been held hostage first by a mime, then by a group of actors. He’d been stranded in the mountains and forced to hike a bazillion miles to save his life. He spent half his energy fighting to stay alive and the other half struggling against blind, irrational panic. Through it all he’d remained pleasant and polite. And what was his reward? To be insulted by a lawyer-a lawyer! Worse-a lawyer with a thirty-four percent chance of being a mass killer. He wasn’t going to take it anymore. “I am no man’s sidekick,” he said.
“I didn’t say you were a man’s sidekick,” Gwendolyn said. “I said you were his.”
“That’s it,” Gus said. “The last straw.”
Somehow Shawn didn’t seem to share his anger, even though the barb had been aimed primarily at him. “I guess that makes you the camel’s back,” Shawn said. “That could come in handy on the rest of the hike. Which is what we should really be saving our energy for.”
“I’m ready to hike as soon as I can see the map,” Gwendolyn said.
“You want that map?” Gus said. “You can come through me to get it.”
“Because that would be a long and exciting fight,” Shawn said casually. “After all, she’s only the Master of Sinanju looking for an excuse to scoop your brains out through your nose with her pinky finger. And you never came in lower than second when we played Rock’Em Sock’Em Robots.”
“We’ve got to have this out now,” Gus said.
“That’s a good idea,” Shawn said. “I mean, it’s not like they came up to us and deliberately tried to get us mad so that we’d start a fight, giving them an opportunity to kick our asses and take the map from our cold, dead hands. And when I say it’s not like that, I mean it’s exactly like that.”
The blood pounding in Gus’ ears was almost enough to drown out Shawn’s logic. Almost, but not quite. He dropped his hands and felt the blood surging back into his fingers as they unclenched. “So by not fighting, we win,” Gus said. “It’s like a Zen thing.”
“Wax on, wax off,” Shawn agreed.
“That is the lamest excuse for wussing out on a fight I’ve ever heard,” Balowsky said.
“Almost as lame as letting the girl do your fighting for you while you hide behind her?” Shawn said.
“Even lamer,” Gwendolyn said. “They know who their strongest warrior is.”
“I know I do,” Shawn agreed. “If there’s one of the three of you who’s tough enough to toss Jade off a cliff, I’d vote for you.”
“And yet the other two want to give her the only map out of here,” Gus said
“Nice try,” Savage said. “But we can work that out between ourselves once we’ve got the map. Now hand it over.”
Shawn picked up his pack and slipped it over his shoulders. “Tell you what,” he said. “We’ll be the ones going in the right direction. You get moving, and we’ll call out the turns.”
He headed out of the camp between two tall trees. Gus shouldered his pack and followed. There was a moment’s whispered discussion among the lawyers, and then Gwendolyn led the others quickly through another stand of trees and around so that they were positioned in front of Shawn and Gus.
“You’re going to give us the map,” Gwendolyn said.
“You couldn’t trick us into a fight; you’re not going to outsmart us,” Shawn said. “There’s no way we’re going to give it to you.”
“Except that there are only two of you,” Savage said. “And there are three of us.”
Savage took one menacing step forward. But as his foot hit the ground, something snaked through the litter of dried pine needles and seized him around the ankle. Before anyone could move, the snare tightened on his foot and flung the lawyer upside down high among the top branches of the trees. Gus heard a meaty thump as Savage’s head collided with the trunk. Gus peered up. Way above them, he could see the tiny, broken figure of the lawyer dangling limply from the rope.
“I guess that makes us even again,” Shawn said. “Shall we start walking?”
Chapter Fifty-Two
After leaving the investigation, Henry had thought he’d go back to rock and roll camp. He’d driven most of the way to Ojai beating out his drum solo on the steering wheel. But he couldn’t focus on jamming right now; his mind was completely preoccupied with a double homicide, and he knew that even though he wasn’t officially involved, he couldn’t just let it alone. So he made a U-turn as soon as he passed the end of the divided section of Highway 33 and headed home.
He’d spent the next day working the phone and the computer trying to find any information on the case. He’d even popped into police headquarters, but Lassiter and O’Hara were out in the field, and no one knew when they’d be back. Of course he could have called their cells and offered his services, but he knew what they’d have said: He was retired.
The long and fruitless day landed him exactly one piece of information-the janitorial contracting service Arnold Svaco had worked for had a contract to clean, among many much less interesting places, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Arnold had been working there almost exclusively for years. Maybe that meant something, although Henry had no idea what. He left the information on Lassiter’s voice mail, just in case.
The next day was the last session of camp, and when he woke up Henry decided he’d go back for the big jam session finale. The case was still pushing the beat out of his mind, but after wasting all of yesterday, he decided he could leave the police work to the working police.
He was getting into the car for the drive to Ojai when his cell rang. He answered. And heard the last two words he ever expected to hear since his retirement:
Hostage situation.
Henry blew through a half dozen red lights on his way to Edgecliff Road, but by the time he got to Rushton, Morelock’s mansion offices, the parking lot was already filled with police cruisers. He jumped out of his car as Lassiter rushed up to him.
“How bad is it?” Henry said.
“How bad can it get?” Lassiter said. He started towards the mansion, assuming that Henry would keep up with him. They blew past the front door and continued along the exterior of the building.