The Dirty Secrets Club (24 page)

Kelly, the only way I can stop him hurting us is to stop the man he sent, who's threatening Tyler. By stopping the trail dead, here, with me.

There's only one way to do that. Forgive me.

So much pain. Jo closed her eyes.

Don't leave me.

We're going home.

Before she knew it, the engine had stopped. She opened her eyes. They were parked on her street. Gabe opened his door and got out.

"It's okay," she said. "You don't need to walk me—"

But he had already come around to her side. He opened her door. She got out and walked with him through the cold air to her front steps. Her legs felt heavy. Her keys jingled in her hand. Gabe was a heated presence beside her. The third time she tried to stick the key in the lock and missed, he said, "What's wrong?"

She lowered her hand. "I wanted to kick him."

"Who?"

"Scott Southern. I wanted to kick him, choke him, slap him smack across the face with every ounce of strength I had."

"Why?"

"To tell him to snap out of it. Suicide solves nothing. Dying doesn't end the pain. It only shifts it onto his family." The porch light was off, and the night hid her expression. "I wanted to scream at him for making it impossible to turn back."

"Why are you so angry?"

"I'm not."

"You're about to blow."

She looked at the street, and at the stars. "He knew he was going to die. And he chose it, Gabe. In those final seconds. He had the choice to survive and he threw it away."

"What do you mean, he knew it?"

"He could have lived, but he chose to trash it all." Her voice was faltering. "He looked at me. I saw it in the way he moved. He knew it."

"How do you know?"

"Because I've seen that look before."

She didn't want to tell him. She didn't want to expose herself, but she couldn't stop. It was like a scythe sweeping through her.

"I saw that look on Daniel's face."

She was choking back tears. "At the end, Daniel understood what was coming. He looked at me. He could barely speak, but he looked at me, and he knew."

She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, horrified at her own weakness. "And he knew he didn't have a choice. There was no hope. I hate that look, I never wanted to see it again. Dammit."

She jammed the key at the lock but couldn't even see the door. Roughly she wiped her eyes. "I'm not crying. Shit."

Gabe's hand covered hers. He wrapped his arms around her and all at once she was close against his chest. She held as still as a fist, fighting it, but his fingers combed into her hair and eased her head onto his shoulder.

She pressed her face against his shirt and shut her eyes. Silently he held her, and she knew he wouldn't let her fall. He had her six.

A sob cracked from her throat. His fingers stroked her hair. She stopped shaking and let go. She let hot tears spill. Every synapse in her body felt electrified. His embrace was like oxygen, like water, like light.

She leaned against him and listened to his heart beat. Then she lifted her head and let go of him. She ran the heels of her palms across her eyes.

"I'm being stupid. Forget this, okay?" she said.

"No. You loved him. If you didn't get angry, you wouldn't be human."

He took the key from her hand and opened the door. His arm rested on the small of her back. She held still. She wasn't ready for this, for any of it.

In the cold night air, she touched his hand. "Thanks, Quintana."

He held motionless, eyes on hers, hand on hers. "You gonna be okay?"

"Rock solid."

"You can punch me instead, if you need to."

Despite herself, she smiled. He held her hand for a second longer. Touching his index finger to his forehead, he saluted and left.

She closed the door and leaned against it. The house was dark and empty. Empty, and so quiet.

Don't leave me.

The weather had worsened fifteen minutes out of Bodega Bay. In the cockpit of the air ambulance, the pilots wrangled the controls like a couple of rodeo cowboys. Through their headsets Jo and Daniel heard the terse conversation between them. The helicopter was near the edge of its performance envelope.

The pilot was a black guy with a face like a brick wall. His expression never changed, but his voice leveled to a tight monotone. He had no energy or emotion to spare on inflection.

"The wind spikes any higher, we'll have to turn back," he said.

She and Daniel shared a look. She could see the stress in his eyes— a green streak of anger, and rebellion at the idea that they would not get this child to the surgical team that was waiting for her.

But he checked Emily's IV and rested his hand on her shoulder. His voice was composed. "You like Harry Potter, Emily?"

She nodded.

"Remember when Harry played Quidditch in the storm?" He smiled, and his face amazingly looked sunny. "This is like that, isn't it?"

The chopper hit an air pocket and with a jolt they dropped a dozen feet. Jo threw her hand against the roof to keep from hitting her head. Out the window, she saw tattered claws of land grasping at the sea. Stands of fir trees clung to crumbling cliff sides. The ocean shuddered like a beast, gunmetal gray. Where it hit the land, white surf shattered against the rocks, booming into the air like phosphorous grenades.

Daniel kept his hand on Emily's shoulder. "When we get to the hospital, I'll get you a toy helicopter. They don't have a Harry Potter helo. What do you play with, Barbie?"

Emily didn't answer. She looked in pain, and petrified. Jo took her hand.

"G.I. Joe?" Jo put a smile in her voice. "Winnie the Pooh?"

Emily looked at her with her wide eyes. "Tickle Me Elmo."

The chopper shuddered and swooped up on an updraft. Over the headset Jo heard the pilot say, "We're gonna have to pack it in."

The pilots began talking about turning around. Jo watched the landscape speed by below them. A flock of birds swooped white against the green of the hillside.

Daniel listened to the pilots' chatter and said, "Can you make Petaluma?"

Jo knew what he meant: Go back to Bodega Bay and with every hour they waited for the weather to ease, every hour that passed before they could evacuate Emily, her chances diminished.

"No," the pilot said. "We don't have the power to clear the mountains."

Jo held on to Emily's hand. The girl couldn't hear the entire conversation, but could probably sense the tension in the helicopter. The copilot asked whether they could make it to Bolinas, at the far edge of Point Reyes National Seashore.

The pilot said, "Bolinas doesn't have a hospital. We're turning around."

Daniel yanked off his headset and fought his way forward to the cockpit.

Over the howl of the wind and the engine Jo heard their argument. She stroked Emily's hand with her thumb. The chopper was straining for level flight. They were thirty miles from Bolinas. Daniel was begging the pilots to try for San Francisco. They were telling him to sit down.

Daniel said, "If you can make Bolinas you can make the city."

"You want to bet your life on that?" the pilot said.

The cracking sound reverberated from the cockpit like a sledgehammer blow. The noise in the chopper rose to a roar and the temperature plummeted.

In her headphones Jo heard, "Bird strike."

Her head whipped around. She saw the windshield. It had a fat circular crack, smeared with white feathers and red bird guts.

"Seagulls, fuck," the copilot said.

"Find me an LZ," the pilot said. "Sit down, Beckett. Right now. We can hold it and get on the ground. As long as nothing gets in the intake—"

Bad juju.

From above the roof came a horrible
whack.
It was exactly what it sounded like. The engine inhaling birds.

The engine coughed. The engine shrieked. The pilot said, "Put it down,
now.
Open space, a hill, trees, anything but steep mountainside."

His voice was as labored as the engine, and Jo felt the first thread of fear.

A new sound blared: an alarm on the control panel. Jo saw a red light flashing. The engine shuddered, and the shudder rang through the fuselage and into her back. The rain pelted against them. She heard the words no pilot wants to speak.

"Mayday. Mayday."

The Cadillac crawled up Russian Hill. Skunk chewed his lower lip, scanning the side streets. The black Toyota 4Runner had to be around here somewhere. He'd followed it from Fort Baker, across the Golden Gate Bridge, and through the marina before he dropped back so the military guy wouldn't spot him. Then it turned off Marina Boulevard and headed into this neighborhood above Fisherman's Wharf, and he lost it.

He burrowed deeper into the red leather seat. The Spider was in the 4Runner, and she had the names.

Skunk peered through front windows along the street. This was turning into a pricy neighborhood. Apartment living rooms had fancy track lighting and bookshelves. People in turtlenecks were drinking red wine. From real wineglasses.

The Cadillac crept along. At the top of the hill a little park was dark with trees, old Monterey pines shuddering in the breeze. A big brick mansion with a balcony was dimly lit.

He drove on. This was useless.

At the bottom of the hill he parked near Ghirardelli Square. The tourists were out in force, the Ghirardelli sign all lit up, cable cars clanging, everybody buying chocolate and clam chowder. He called Perry. Mr. Pray-and-Pay.

The phone didn't even ring before it was answered. "Update me."

Like always, his skin skidded at the mechanical buzz of Perry's voice synthesizer. Skunk talked fast, following the rule: thirty seconds, no more. All the big stuff—
salient points,
the boss called them—had to be told one two three, tickBOOM.

"Southern had the names. They were on his body when he got dragged out of the bay. And I know who has 'em now."

The Spider had the names. He didn't know who she was, or why she always showed up at the scene when somebody from the DSC died, but. . .

"This spider, she always shows up," he said.

The quiet on the other end of the line was spooky. He waited, dreading the next burst of the robotic voice.

Perry had the lights off. Darkness felt safer to him; he had superb eyesight. When people heard the electro-larynx emanate from the night, they sometimes shit themselves. Right now, however, he kept the volume low.

"Where is she?" he said.

"She slipped the tail. But I know which neighborhood she went into."

"If you can't find her, you'll have to draw her out again."

"I was that close to grabbing the list, boss. I can't believe Southern went over the rail with it in his pocket."

"Regret is a useless thing, Skunk. All that matters is getting the names of the people who started all this."

"And we're closing in on the bastards."

"They took what didn't belong to them."

"And we'll get it back. With interest, I know, boss."

They had taken much more than mere money, things he could never get back. Dignity, normality, his voice; sometimes it seemed like his very independence had all been stolen by the Dirty Secrets Club, and for what—a rich people's game?

Object lesson.
They ran off with the cash. Lying there on the floor of the warehouse, he'd heard them.
He won't talk.
They thought they'd fixed it, that he wouldn't talk because no lowlife racketeer would ever go to the police, but they also thought they'd fixed it so he couldn't talk, ever again. Two people, a steel pipe, the chain, the pain, but even when he lay on the concrete floor, and dragged himself to the door, and heard the sirens closing in, he knew the two who hurt him were just underlings. They were playing a game, doing it for somebody in the background who had set him up. Some A-list club member thought that sending their little minions to fuck him over would insulate them.

Wrong.

Because he didn't talk. They did. They began bragging about how they robbed him and left him to die. They got away two years ago, but they'd made a mistake. They opened their mouths when they thought they were safe. And word had got out.

Now he was close to finding out who set him up.

Five hundred thousand bucks these people had stolen from him. Five hundred K, and they had used it to make themselves even richer. Perry wanted that money back. It was part of evening the scales. Skunk, his agent, was going to get a cut. Fifteen percent, if he tracked these people down.

Before the fuckers died, of course.

"Tomorrow, Skunk. I'll be downtown at three p.m. I want the names by then."

Skunk sounded alarmed. "Three o'clock?"

"My attorney is a persuasive man. The other side agreed to move things forward."

"That's less than a day."