Her voice was muffled by her shoulder. "How 'bout if I lost a leg?"
"No."
"Both arms?"
"Nope."
"Hysterical blindness?"
"We'd get through it together."
"Chronic halitosis?"
"We'd figure something out. Buy stock in Listerine."
"Hmm." Her eyes were closed; she moved toward his touch like a contented cat. "Would you divorce me if I started collecting Hummels?"
"No."
"God, you really took those vows literally. Just so you know"-with exaggerated exertion she shoved herself up so she could look at him-"one false move, I'm outta here, pal. I'm talking allergies, facial tics, whistling while you pee, disfiguring scars, referring to yourself as 'this guy,' bringing home sport-themed couch pillows-"
"I'll watch my step."
She hugged him at the waist and curled into him, suddenly serious, inundated with feeling. She spoke to his ribs in a hot whisper. "I want you to always be happy. If anything ever happens to me, you can marry someone else."
She was twenty-two and new to emotion. He was twenty-five, convinced of his greater maturity, and invincible.
"Nothing's going to happen to you," he'd said.
Now her milky arm protruded from the papery gown, exposed to the armpit. He lifted her hand. It came limply, as if detached. He ran his thumb across her short-cut fingernails, then over the recent wrinkles that pond-rippled from her middle knuckles. He pressed his face to the skin at her inner wrist-the smell of her, disguised by hospital soap and sweat. He slid his finger into her fist to feel the soft press of her skin all around him. "Squeeze, Dray. Go on, squeeze."
He waited for the faintest pulse. He lowered his head, closed his eyes, choked on a breath.
What are you doing here?
"Visiting you."
Leave the hound-dog-at-the-grave routine to Mac. He's got nothing better to do.
"I wanted to see you."
Great. Wring your hands. Rend your hair. Fall asleep on the visitor chair, too-that one always looks good on TV movies. This isn't me. Come on. You spent thirteen years enlisted, eleven with Spec Ops. You know better than to sentimentalize this.
"What do you want me to do?"
She laughs, crow's-feet bunching around her impossible green eyes. Get out there and bag some crooks.
Chapter 20
Ambulances lined the unlit berths like worn-out predators. Tim and Bear walked through the dark underground bay, heading up the slope to the open air. A GMC Safari van waited in the turnaround circle up top, bubble lettering announcing DRAIN-CLEAR PLUMBING. Tim rested the heel of his hand on the butt of his hip-holstered gun. As they passed, the door slid open. Tim halted but didn't draw-too much like a bad South American kidnapping to occasion hard-edged concern.
Pete Krindon's voice issued from the dark interior. "Get in."
Tim and Bear stepped up into the van. Rim seating, carpeted walls, embedded surveillance screens, wires protruding from the torn-apart dash. Pete veered around the block, easing behind a Dumpster in a supermarket parking lot. He cut the engine and pivoted, his thin arm fish-white against the navy vinyl of the headrest. "Turn off your cell phones. You don't have BlackBerries, do you? Good. Those wireless PDAs might as well be billboards advertising your location. I told you before, Rack, the Mark of the Beast'll be a bar code worn on the palm."
Krindon, a technical-security and surveillance specialist, could remote-monitor a man's every movement, or reconstruct a woman's life from the cards she kept in her wallet. Though he was too paranoid or too informed to work for the government, he sometimes contracted in, delivering sensitive intel while maintaining a freelancer's distance. Tim and Bear used him on occasion to acquire information that warrants couldn't flush out.
Bear nodded at the gaping hole in the dash. "You tore out your OnStar."
"You wouldn't believe the information embedded in those fuckers. If people knew the half of it." A world-weary head shake. "They're remote-operated-Big Brother can send a signal that turns off your engine. I tracked a mule from Matamoros once, remote-locked him into his Buick by satellite. Federales came, he was at the windows like a lizard in a jar, fifty bricks of coke locked in there with him." Krindon chuckled sadistically, scratching his vivid red hair as he scrambled into the backseat.
Tim withdrew the CD from his jacket pocket, and Krindon slid it into a unit beneath the passenger seat. Dray's approach played on a mounted screen. Krindon watched it through once, his face remaining impassive. He offered Tim no condolences, instead tugging on a catch that released a folding instrument panel from the wall. He stopped the recording when Dray's head jerked to the right to track the phantom bike's approach, and he set to work on the digital enhancer. After comparing each pixel to those surrounding it, the artificial-intelligence program either sharpened or flattened it, bringing the freeze-frame into greater resolution-it was like watching a cheap repro of a Monet transform into a photograph.
Something seemed to catch Krindon's eye, and then he zeroed in on Goat's rearview, angled to the side to deflect the squad car's spotlight glare. He advanced frame by frame until he picked up a darting movement-black on black, like a bat against the night sky. He captured the reflected blob, then enlarged the image and fussed with the contrast, bringing a partial silhouette into view. The mystery biker. An immense man astride a motorcycle. Kaner.
"What's that?" Bear squinting, leaning forward.
"Don't touch the screen." Krindon zoomed in farther, and then the screen rippled downward to pick up a protrusion from Kaner's boot. Krindon worked on it awhile, the screen rendering the image in waves of clarity.
"It's a shoe," Bear said.
"He's double-packing," Tim said. "Someone's on the bike behind him. We just can't see him because Kaner's so wide."
"Her." Krindon focused in on a fan of wrinkles at Kaner's side. Four fingers with cherry-painted nails, clutching Kaner's shirt.
Tim and Bear waited patiently, letting Krindon fuss over the segment, but the phantom bike never reappeared in the other bikes' mirrors, nor did the female passenger. Krindon sat back, frustrated, letting the footage roll in real time. Though Tim had seen it now many times, he couldn't tear his eyes from the screen.
Dray's profile, frontlit by the spotlight. "Okay. Stay still. Relax." The striker's snarclass="underline" "Get the fuck outta here." The refrigerator truck blasting past, on its way to another stop, another city, Andrea Rackley little more than a passing speck. Just another deputy harassing a few bikers. Nothing to turn a trucker's head.
Krindon slowly drew himself up until he sat erect, locked in the grip of an idea. Bear started to ask something, but Tim stayed him with a gesture. Krindon reversed the footage. The blood sucked back up into Dray's side. She drew herself together, bounced off the ground onto her feet, holstered her weapon and reverse-waddled a few steps. The truck flew by, also in reverse, winking back the spotlight. Krindon froze the bleached-out screen. He fiddled with knobs, darkening the truck's aluminum paneling. A reflected tableau resolved, like ghost characters emerging from a Polaroid fog. Kaner on his bike, a teenage girl clinging to his back.
"That's why Kaner made sure to keep out of the camera's range on his departure. He didn't give a shit if we saw him. He didn't want us to see her." Bear studied the girl's terrified face. "What would the Sinners want a Mexican girl for anyway?"
Krindon made a sucking noise, his tongue against his front teeth. "Nothing good."
Tim recalled Strauss's words this afternoon: We're fielding nearly two hundred tips an hour on the hotline-everything from looted TVs to girls snatched off street corners. Bear met his eyes, nodding, already on the same page.