I didn’t have any tools, but breaking boards is all about the right force at the right angle. With one well-placed stomp from my boot, the floorboard splintered, and I pried back the pieces and fished out a paper bag filled with neat piles of loose bills.
My gaze skittered around the room, wondering where else Courtney might have hidden something…something small enough to spackle into a wall. But the only option I could see was breaking every floorboard and then tearing down all the sheetrock, and that would take far too long. If Courtney still insisted on claiming ignorance, maybe I could stash her somewhere and then get back with tools before the Dark Suits did.
And maybe I could get some of my questions answered another way before then. Tucking the paper bag under one arm, I headed out, pulling out the cell phone as I did so and dialing Anton.
“Mack’s Garage,” chirped a girl’s voice.
“Penny, it’s Cas. Can you put your dad on?”
“Sure!” She shouted cheerfully for her father, and in moments Anton grunted in my ear.
“Anton, it’s Cas Russell again. I need you to look up something else for me.”
Grunt.
“That client who was with me today. Courtney Polk. Check her out for me.”
“Anything else?”
“No, just—”
A deafening explosion tore through the line. I heard a girl’s scream, and Anton shouting, and then any human sound was swallowed by the chaos of more explosions, multiple ones at once—and the call went dead.
Chapter 4
Shit shit shit shit shit!
I tore back along the street, my boots pounding against the asphalt, the math blurring and every other thought evaporating as I dove toward the car. I yanked open the door and ignored Courtney’s panicked questions as I wrenched the transmission into gear and spun us out into traffic with a squeal of tires; a cacophony of horns deafened us as other drivers swerved and slammed on their brakes, but I only heard Penny’s scream, echoing endlessly, high and terrified—we had to move—faster faster faster faster faster—
LA traffic is forever fucked, but it helps to know the calculus of moving objects—and to drive like a maniac. I slued between lanes, skidding in front of other cars by a hairsbreadth, cutting it as close as the numbers told me I possibly could, and when I started hitting traffic lights, I laid on the horn and popped the wheels up over the curb to sheer down the sidewalk, horrified pedestrians hurling themselves out of my way and traumatized citizens howling expletives in my wake. Courtney made small sounds in the passenger seat, bracing herself against the dashboard and trying to hang on.
This part of town didn’t have a huge police presence, but if I’d seen blue lights behind me I wouldn’t have cared. Or stopped. Within minutes, I was careening around the last corner toward Anton’s garage.
A tidal wave of heat and light and smoke crashed over the car, overloading every sense, blasting, overwhelming. We were still a block away, but I jammed my foot down on the brake, sending Courtney tumbling against the dash.
Anton’s building was a roaring inferno, the flames towering into the sky, black smoke pouring from the blaze and rolling thick and acrid over the street. I scrabbled at the door handle and stumbled out—the heat slammed into me even at this distance, an oppressive wall of blistering air. My skin burned as it flash-dried, and every breath scalded, as if I were swallowing gulps of boiling water.
The building was melting before my eyes, collapsing in on itself, the walls and roof folding with slow grace in massive flares of sparks. My brain catalogued materials, heat, speed of propagation…this horror had used chemical help; it must have. I did a quick back-of-the-envelope timing back in my mind, holding my breath and closing stinging eyes against the smoke that clogged the air.
I ran the numbers three different ways, and only succeeded in torturing myself. Even with the most generous estimates, nobody had made it out.
Fucking math.
I stumbled back to the car. The metal of the door was already warm. I slid into the driver’s seat, wrenched the steering wheel around into a U-turn, and accelerated back the way we had come. We’d ditch this car a block or two from here in case any traffic cameras had glimpsed my vehicular stunts, then put some distance behind us before the authorities arrived.
“Did they…are they…” Courtney asked timidly.
“Dead.” My eyes and throat scratched from the smoke.
A small sob escaped her. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” I couldn’t help wondering if it was her fault.
Or mine.
My mind buzzed. I’d contacted Anton a little over five hours ago—the traffic going into the city had held us up for a good chunk of time, but then I’d headed straight here. Five hours. Ample time to set this up, if someone had caught onto Anton’s search. If that someone happened to be motivated enough.
I tried to tell myself Anton’s work had encompassed a multitude of other projects, any of which might have generated enemies. Whoever had targeted him had overcompensated like fuck to take all of his data and information with him, but even so, a case from months or years ago might have provoked this. Some old client with a grudge. This didn’t have to be because of what I’d brought him.
Did I really believe that?
The platitudes curdled in my head.
Jesus Christ. This was supposed to be an easy job. Rescue the kid, get her out of the country, be home in time for dinner.
Nobody should have died on this one, least of all two people sitting at a computer looking things up for me.
My grip tightened on the steering wheel until my fingers hurt.
I studied Courtney out of the corner of my eye. She was hugging her knees to herself, her shoulders shaking, her ponytail falling across her and hiding her face.
She was involved in this somehow.
“What aren’t you telling me?” The words came out too harsh. I didn’t care. “Those men at your place were looking for something. What was it?”
She raised a blotchy, tear-streaked face to look at me. “I don’t—I don’t know. I swear I don’t.”
Right.
My client might be lying to me. My client, who was already on the run not only from the authorities, but from a drug cartel who wanted her dead, government men in dark suits, a dirty cop, and some unknown player willing to commit arson and murder to cover its tracks.
And, on top of everything, I’d lost my information broker. I tried not to think about Penny, the twelve-year-old kick-ass hacker who’d been taught to pay her taxes on time.
Courtney cried softly in the passenger seat the whole way to the bolt hole I drove us to. If she was playing a part, laying it on thick in the hopes I’d buy the tearful façade, she deserved some sort of acting award.
Maybe she really was just a naïve kid who had gotten in too deep, too scared or too stupid to tell me what was going on.
Still, the crying pissed me off. What right did she have to sob her eyes out for people she’d barely met and seemed to judge from moment one? “For Christ’s sake,” I growled, as I swung the car into a grimy alleyway. “You didn’t even know them.”
“How can you be so cold?” she murmured tremulously.
I slammed the car’s transmission into park. “Are you feeling guilty? Is that it?”