If Rio hadn’t called Dawna, however, then someone else had a motive for rescuing Courtney—and this mystery conspirator had kept me from being suspicious of the job by using Rio’s name. Which meant said unknown person not only knew way too much about Rio and me and our strange not-friendship, but was one hundred percent aware of Rio’s cover.
Rio was compromised. I felt sick. Our conversation would have tipped him off, and he could take care of himself, but still…
I picked up the phone again and called Dawna’s work number.
Her secretary answered, and hemmed and hawed about her boss being in a meeting, but apparently Dawna cared a lot more about her sister than whatever she was doing at work, because mere seconds later her voice came fast and breathless over the line. “Did you find her? Is she okay? Oh my God—did they hurt her?”
“She’s fine!” I raised my voice to cut in over her frantic queries. “Fine! She’s sleeping right now.”
“Oh—Ms. Russell, I don’t know how to thank you. I just—she’s my little sister; I can’t—thank you—”
“Yeah, okay, okay.” I had trouble squeezing a word in. “Dawna, we need to meet. Your sister—she might have gotten in deeper than she realized.”
“I don’t under—what happened? Is she still in danger?”
“We’ll talk in person,” I said. I didn’t want to give away too much—the way this case was going, someone was probably listening in on Dawna. Or following her. “Remember the coffee shop where we met before? Meet me there in an hour.”
“I—of course—of course I will. Will Courtney come? Can I see her?”
“Not yet.” No way I would let Courtney out into the world before I had a better handle on the situation. “It’s better if she stays here for now. She’s safe here. I’ll see you in an hour.”
“Oh—yes, of course,” Dawna said, her words tumbling into each other. “I’ll be there—and thank you—”
I hung up on her.
Courtney was still out cold. I did a quick differential equation, my eyes measuring her body mass, and figured she’d be gone for a while—three hours at the very least, probably a lot longer. Enough time for me to make it to Dawna and back.
Still…
A couple of naked pipes ran along the base of the wall next to the mattress. I pulled the handcuffs back out of my pocket and locked one side around a pipe and the other side loosely around one of the girl’s scrawny wrists. Then I stuffed some cash and other supplies in my pockets and pulled a .40-caliber SIG Sauer from behind the false back of one of the kitchen cabinets, replacing it with Anton’s file and the rest of the paper bag of money from Polk’s place.
I borrowed a motorcycle from a nearby parking garage, one with a layer of dust that told me the owner had last ridden it forty-two days ago, plus or minus a few hours. Probably a rich guy who took it out for a spin every few months; he’d never miss it. The helmet clipped to it was two sizes too big, and I made a face as I put it on—I don’t crash. But I also couldn’t afford to get the highway patrol on my tail. Stupid California and its stupid fascist helmet laws.
Motorcycles are a joy to ride in LA traffic. I wove between the cars, zipping past long lanes of stopped vehicles and leaning into a tight curve to fly up the ramp onto the freeway, frustrated motorists idling in line behind me. Widths and speeds and movement danced in front of my eyes as I rocketed the huge sport bike through spaces that didn’t look wide enough for a cat to slip through, dipping and looping around other drivers and gunning between them down the asphalt, an untouchable point in motion.
On the bike I made it across town in thirty-four minutes, which would have been impossible in a car. I also managed to find parking on the street in Santa Monica, which likewise would have been an exercise in futility for a larger vehicle—I squeezed in against the curb behind a little Honda, not worrying myself about the niceties of a legal parking space. My friend I’d borrowed the bike from would be the one to see the fallout from any tickets.
I was early, but my client already sat at a table waiting for me, somehow looking both relieved and tense at the same time as she fiddled with the strap of her purse and ignored the cold paper cup of coffee in front of her. Dawna Polk looked nothing like Courtney, and with her height and fine bones and Mediterranean coloring, she could have been beautiful…except that she wasn’t. She was…worn, and faded, and looked like someone who stared glassily at tedious minutiae all day in a featureless cubicle where she let her personality leach slowly away.
Yes, said a taunting voice in my head, drinking your way through life is so much better, isn’t it? Hypocrisy, thy name is Cas.
Dawna leapt up when she saw me, almost knocking her purse off the table. “Ms. Russell!”
“Dawna,” I greeted her. “Walk with me.”
She jerked her head in a rapid nod and scooped up her belongings to trot after me, tottering slightly as she tried to hurry in stupidly high heels. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere else. I need to make sure you weren’t followed.”
Dawna’s eyes got wide, and she came with me without any more questions.
I led her down a few bustling, crisscrossing streets, surveying the trendy crowds of midday shoppers in all directions and staying alert for watchers and tails. A few blocks over, I took a sharp right into another coffee shop with a mostly empty sit-down section. A hipster on a laptop in the far corner was the only other customer; knowing Los Angeles, he was probably working on the next Great American Screenplay.
“Sit down,” I said to Dawna, dropping onto one of the chairs at a small wooden table as far as possible from the other patron. The rich smell of brewing coffee mingled with warm baked goods made my stomach start a riotous clamor about not having been fed; I pulled out an energy bar I had pocketed back at the loft and tore it open. A lanky young employee made a hesitant movement toward me as if he were about to say something, but I glared at the kid, and he meekly turned back to wiping tables.
I pulled out a little electronic gadget I’d also grabbed when I’d dropped off Courtney and pushed a button on it as I chewed. A light flashed green, which meant it wasn’t picking up any electronic interference likely to be a bug. I let my eyes flick around the shop, measuring distances and figuring sound propagation in air; the lone employee had gone back behind the counter and the laptop-engrossed hipster wasn’t close enough to eavesdrop over the folksy wallpaper music. Excellent.
Dawna watched me anxiously, not asking questions. She wasn’t the curious sort. “How is Courtney?” she said at last.
“I left her right after I talked to you,” I said. “So, sleeping. She’s fine, like I said.”
Her fingers clasped at each other in worried little twitches of movement. I realized she was literally wringing her hands. I’d thought that was a figure of speech. “When can I see her?” she asked.
“When I figure out what’s going on here,” I said evenly.
“What do you mean?” Her eyes were wide and frightened.
“Dawna.” I lowered my voice, even though we had already been speaking quietly. “Tell me everything about how you knew to contact me.”
Her forehead wrinkled in confusion, but she obeyed anyway. “A—a man called me.” She swallowed, as out of her depth as the first time she’d told me the story. Dawna Polk was not a woman built for uncertain times. “He knew my name. He told me Courtney—” She lowered her gaze to her nervous hands, blinking rapidly. “He said if I wanted my sister to live, I would—I needed to get her out. He was very convincing.” She shivered. “He gave me your phone number, said to call you and tell you—to tell you Rio had sent me.”