by Erik Carter
But then he saw something.
To the left. At the side of the porch. There were boards lying on the ground. Someone had busted open the side of the porch and gone under.
And they could be hiding there now.
Right beneath Jane.
Running now. Everything swam around him.
Keep your balance. Stay steady.
When he got to the porch, he dropped to his knees and positioned himself near the opening by the discarded boards. He cleared the corner, aiming his gun under the porch.
And there was nothing there.
Moonlight flowed in through the opening and through the gaps of the floorboards above. But there was no one beneath the porch. Just weeds and rocks. Whoever had been there was long gone.
Dale stood back up. He was feeling steadier now. His surroundings swam around him less than they had been.
He went to the porch, up the steps, and to Jane. Her eyes glanced up as he approached, but she didn’t acknowledge him, just kept struggling to pull the heavy chair over the body of one of the gangsters that was blocking the doorway.
Dale hurried over to her, grabbed the other side of the chair. Jane was breathing rapidly, a frustrated desperation on her face. Together they lifted Jonathan out and onto the porch.
Dale looked inside at the carnage. Only for a moment. Only long enough for him to determine that, while there had been groans and gasping before he left, everyone in there was now dead.
He saw Beau Lawton, lying on the table in a pool of blood and missing a hand. A few feet away, lying among the other bodies, was Kimble. Bullet wound to the head.
Dale turned back around. Jane was frantically clawing with her fingernails at the ropes on Jonathan’s wrists. She was clearly in a state of mental shock.
Dale put his hand on her shoulder
She stopped. Looked up at him.
He took his pocketknife out and cut the binds on Jonathan’s wrists and arms, and then together, without saying a word, he and Jane lifted Jonathan from the chair and propped him up against the wall.
Jane sat beside her brother, put her hand on his knee, and looked out to the road blankly.
Dale turned to sit beside her, and as he did, he stumbled backwards into the wall, slid down. He hadn’t recovered as much as he thought. He was still dizzy. Adrenaline and purpose had been fueling him, but now the effects of the blow were returning. As he slid down to the floor, he began to drift to the side, but before he could collapse, Jane grabbed his arm, pulled him up.
She brushed some dirt from his bare shoulder then rested her head on it. And together the three of them sat, looking out into the redwoods.
They didn’t say a word.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
The pain in El Vacío’s shoulder was relentless.
He kept his eyes focused on the highway’s lines. Something to draw his mind away from the fire in his shoulder. Anything to distract himself.
He had been right about the cop. The man was worthy of his respect. Few people had bested El Vacío, and from the first moment he’d seen the man in action back in Chinatown, he knew that this one was special.
Part of El Vacío wanted immediate revenge. Naturally, he wasn’t the sort of person to take something lying down. But respect came with certain privileges. Sort of a professional courtesy. El Vacío could make it his vendetta to hunt the cop down, even chasing the guy all over the country if he was a fed, which he seemed to be. But that would be like killing an animal that had survived multiple hunts. At a point, you had to give the prey its due deference. Of course, if El Vacío ever crossed paths with the cop again, he would have no hesitation in striking him down—and, in fact, he hoped that he would get such an opportunity—but for now, he would let him be.
El Vacío was not the sort of person who could walk into a hospital and ask for service, so he was headed back to San Francisco—Daly City, technically—where there was an establishment that tended to the wounds of people in his world. The sort of place that asked no questions and had no alliances. The sort of place only a few people knew.
He still had another two full hours of driving to get there.
And the pain was getting insurmountable.
He could no longer distract his mind by watching the lines on the road. The initial adrenaline rush had worn off, that adrenaline that shields you from the reality of pain. Now the pain was very much real. Upfront and personal.
Tearing at him.
His head felt airy. His vision began to lighten.
So he developed a system to help him manage the pain. He’d take a couple deep breaths. Then scream, using the howl to absorb some of his agony. Then repeat.
Ahhhhhhhhhh!
Deep breath. Deep breath.
Ahhhhhhhhhh!
He could keep the system going.
He only had two hours left.
By the time the Cordoba came to a halt at the end of the alley in Daly City, El Vacío could hardly see.
He fell out of the car and stumbled toward the door. Though it was dark outside and the alley was poorly lit, everything within El Vacío’s vision was going to white. The peripheral blurred and lightened and came in on itself, closing into a small tunnel. He kept the tiny sphere of clear vision focused on the single door fifty feet ahead of him. It was a plain, metal door, painted blood red with a single light fixture hanging above it.
His tunnel vision continued to close. He stumbled forward the last few feet completely blind.
The next morning.
El Vacío sat on a bench in Mussel Rock Park. He wore a new sweatshirt he’d bought from a convenience store, and he pulled it in tight around his torso. His right arm was folded under the sweatshirt, held up with a sling. It was still very cool outside, and the sky was a bit grayish.
There were large rocks on either side of him and one jutting out of the ocean directly ahead, waves crashing violently against it. Only a few people were out this early. A woman walked her dog in the sand before him and smiled as she walked by.
El Vacío sucked in a big lungful of salty air. It tasted good, even though his senses were numbed by his injury and the painkillers he’d taken. The smell reminded him of his beachfront property back in Colombia. It was a very different beach, but no matter where you went, the sea was the sea. And the smell made him anxious to get home.
But first he needed to make a stop back in San Francisco proper.
There was one quick thing he needed to do before he left.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Simona Ricci sat at the island in the center of the expansive kitchen in the Alfonsi estate. There was a mug of coffee in front of her, and she chomped on a piece of chewing gum, both things that Marco had told her to do to stave off her hunger. But it wasn’t working. She was starving.
She stopped filing her nails and called out to him. “Marky!”
No response. He’d been in the bathroom for almost twenty minutes now.
She huffed and smashed the gum between her teeth. She went back to filing her nails.
Her stomach growled.
Sooooo hungry.
She took another look at the clock on the wall above the oven.
11:24.
Ugh. She was a breakfast kind of girl, but Marco had made her skip it with the promise of a big, celebratory brunch.
But he’d delayed and delayed, and now it was almost lunchtime.
She was sort of uncomfortable about celebrating anyway. Marco’s father and brother had been murdered in front of him last night, so she was a tad surprised that he wanted to eat out, even if he was now the head of the Alfonsi family. She knew that if either of her parents or any of her siblings died—let alone murdered, let alone in front of her—she would be in hysterics. Oh my goodness, she wouldn’t be able to function for weeks.
But everybody was different, she kept reminding herself. And everyone handled grief in different ways. So she figured that Marco was deferring his suffering and replacing it with this celebration. He�
��d always told her that he was going to be a big shot someday, but he also knew that Matt would be the one leading the family after their father passed on. Suddenly Marco had found himself more powerful than he had ever dreamed.
Maybe it wasn’t so bad that he was celebrating.
But he needed to hurry up in the bathroom. Her stomach growled again.
“Marky!”
Still no response. She was about to get angry with him.
She leaned her head back, and belted out his name, so loud her eyes squeezed tight. “Markyyyyyy!”
Still no response.
Sigh.
She stopped filing her nails again and listened, leaning her ear toward the nearby hallway where the bathroom was. She realized that maybe she was being a bit selfish. Maybe he was having troubles in there. She sure hoped he wasn’t. As she listened intently, she braced herself for some awful noises. Men were so gross.
But she heard nothing.
Absolute silence.
A new thought occurred to her, and she cursed herself for not thinking of it earlier.
Maybe something was wrong.
She dropped her nail file on the island and hopped off the stool, quickly went to the hallway, her heels clicking first on tile and then on hardwood.
“Marky?”
The door was at the end of the hall, shut. Around its edges she could see some of the late-morning sunlight from the window in the bathroom beyond. She stepped up to the door, stuck her ear to it. No sound from within.
“Marky!”
She was starting to panic.
No response.
She put her hand on the door knob, turned. It wasn’t locked. The hinges squeaked as she slowly opened the door.
What she saw made her scream.
Marco was hunched over on the toilet, his pants and drawers at his ankles, blood covering his shirt. He was perfectly still.
Simona scuttled back, banged into the wall. She brought her hands to her mouth. Her fingers shook.
There was no mistake about it. Marco was dead.
“Marky, no,” she said and cried. “Marky...”
Then she noticed something. She wiped away her tears, focused.
More blood. Strangely, it was coming from his forehead. There was something peculiar about the gash, but she couldn’t see it fully with Marco’s head slumped over like it was.
Shaking, she made her self get closer to him, leaned down to look at his face.
And then she saw it. Carved into his forehead. A symbol.
Simona screamed again.
Chapter Sixty
Dale watched the swarming mass of reporters and hangers-on beyond the glass doors.
He was with Yorke and Eliseo Delacruz in the lobby of the Hall of Justice. The three of them stared at the entrance, about thirty feet away from where they stood. The media peered through the glass, microphones and cameras in hand, anxiously awaiting the person they knew was about to leave the building.
“Again, we have to give you a massive thank you, Conley,” Delacruz said. “That was one ballsy move going up to the redwoods. How did you figure that out?”
“Actually, that was all Yorke,” Dale said. “She knew about some obscure tree called the Immortal Tree or something. She and Jane Fair were able to put the clues together.”
Delacruz gave Yorke an impressed nod.
“Is that a fact?” He patted her shoulder. “Well done, Yorke.”
Delacruz then left, and as Dale watched him walk away, he could feel Yorke’s eyes upon him. He turned.
She was giving him a look.
“What?” he said.
“You know what. It was you who figured that out about the tree. What you just told Delacruz isn’t what really happened.”
Dale put his hands in his pockets. “Well, you know, reality isn’t always the most important thing.”
He winked.
Dale hated to lie. He was honest to an often disastrous fault. But on a very rare occasion, he would find a reason to distort the truth. And giving Yorke a bit of a helping hand was a damn good reason.
“Thanks for believing in me,” Yorke said. She pointed at his cheek. “By the way, the non-bearded look works on you, Conley.”
She ran her hand along his jaw, from the bottom of his ear to the edge of his chin. Her hand rested there for a moment. Her skin felt softer than Dale had imagined. He savored the moment, letting the electric sensation of contact with smooth, supple female skin ripple through him. He felt like doing a heel click.
Yorke smiled and removed her hand.
“I guess Beau really was a monster,” she said. “You know, I always got a bit of a dark feeling from him.”
Dale shook his head. “Now, you shouldn’t go saying that. Just because Kimble accused Lawton of framing him doesn’t mean he did. Maybe Kimble really was crazy. Maybe he made that whole story up in his head because he couldn’t handle the reality of what he’d done, killing all those kids. Orrrrrr, maybe you’re right. Maybe Lawton was a power-hungry monster willing to do anything to climb the ranks, even framing his best friend for something so heinous. But the fact is, we’ll never have all the facts. They’re both dead now.”
Yorke breathed in and sighed. “And even though it looks as though Beau was forced to write his confession note saying that he was the mastermind in the plot to control Jonathan Fair, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t true. He might have been involved all along.”
“We’ll never know what really happened,” Dale said.
It was a strange way to end an assignment. Usually, Dale put all the pieces together, used his historical knowledge and puzzle-solving skills to come to an irrefutable truth, at which point he would chase down the villain who then ended up in jail.
But what could be said about this set of events? Who even was the bad guy? There was Jonathan Fair, the man everyone assumed was the villain. But he’d been manipulated, his mental handicap used against him. There was Lee Kimble, the man who had orchestrated everything. This was certainly an evil act, but was Kimble an evil mind? Or was he another disturbed mind like that of Fair? Then there was Beau Lawton. If Kimble’s allegations were true, then Lawton really had been the villain. But there was no proving it either way. And then there was the assassin. Jane had told Dale that the man was El Vacío, one of the world’s most notorious killers. Unquestionably, this was a bad guy. But he wasn’t the villain. He hadn’t orchestrated anything. He was simply a gun-for-hire. And the person who hired him was dead.
The fact was, Dale was just going to have to accept that there was no immediate answer. After all, there were no good questions remaining and no one to whom they could be asked. The Red Riding Hood case would be reopened, the facts re-examined by San Francisco authorities. INTERPOL and the CIA would continue their hunt for El Vacío—but he’d never been caught in all the decades he’d been active. Jonathan Fair had been clearly proven to be a patsy, and the other two, Kimble and Lawton, were dead.
Dale liked answers, but there were going to be none here.
The elevator at the opposite end of the lobby opened, and Jane Fair exited among a small group of people. She walked toward them.
“Leaving so soon?” Dale said with a smile.
Jane laughed. “As charming as you are, I think my head will explode if I spend one more minute in this building.”
“Good news from the lawyer?” Yorke said.
“If there’s one benefit to being part of this family of mine, it’s that we have great lawyers. He assured me that Lawton’s confession would be more than enough for him to exonerate John from the crimes. It’ll have to work its way through the legal system, of course, so I’ll stick around for a while. In the meantime, since I’m now the matriarch of this family, I’ll use this time to disband the organization. Down to the last grift deal.”
“And then what?” Dale said.
“My father’s enemies aren’t going anywhere. So John and I will leave again. Change our names again. I was thinking ‘Winter
s’ this time.”
She gave him a smile that harkened back to their conversation from the previous night as they flew up 101 in Arancia.
Logan Winters—the man she’d left behind in California the first time she fled the state seven years ago.
Dale knew this was the way things should work out for Jane, and he was happy for her. He had a strong feeling that if Logan Winters was available, the guy would still have feelings for her. Because Jane was something special.
Very special.
She was one of the strongest women Dale had ever met. And he found it … alluring. Dale had known guys who were attracted to the maternal qualities of single mothers they’d dated. Having no desire for children himself, Dale figured this sort of attraction must be some biological impulse that he was simply missing. But now, Dale understood. He saw what those other guys were seeing. There was something wildly attractive about Jane’s steadfast protection of her brother.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that she was drop-dead gorgeous.
But Dale could tell as soon as she had said Logan Winters’ name in the car that she had the utmost admiration for the guy—like an infatuation that she hadn’t let herself believe. She needed to find Logan Winters.
The lucky bastard.
For Dale, it wasn’t meant to be. Another unintended pairing.
Jane looked to the doors and the swarming media beyond and turned back to Dale and Yorke. “Thanks for everything.”
She kissed Dale on the cheek, right where Yorke had placed her hand only moments earlier. The joyful rush of female contact flooded through him again.
“Gotta run,” Jane said. “I need to spend some time wrapping up all these loose ends. And then John and I will disappear again.”
She smiled then walked away. She crossed the lobby and opened the glass doors. There was an explosion of voices, people calling her name. She walked into the crowd, and, just as she promised, she disappeared.
Dale turned back to Yorke and motioned with his head. “Come on. I want to try some sourdough before I go back to D.C. Your treat, of course.”
