Ham

by Dustin Stevens

  Drawing in a deep breath, the scents of lake water and pine needles fill my nose. My chest expands with it, my neck lengthening. Before me, the sun is well into its trajectory for the day, bright light playing across the water, the glare so strong I have to squint against it.

  My back to the picnic area and the parking lot, I walk until my toes are just inches from the water’s edge. Waiting, I listen as footsteps approach, Glenda appearing in my periphery a moment later.

  Standing parallel to me, she stares out, her features bathed in the light.

  “What’s going on?” she whispers, voice low to keep Amber from overhearing us.

  “That was my guy on the phone, the one that I used to work for. The same one that set this up.”

  Giving a small grunt, she says, “Trying to figure out how they got onto you so fast.”

  “Yeah,” I reply, nodding grimly. “Damn near accused him of it, I was so pissed at first.

  “But he brought the new car out to us in Victorville personally. Even gave me a wand to check it for bugs if we ran into anything.”

  “So they’re both clean,” she reasons, referring to Mikey and the Forester.

  “Looks that way.”

  “And they went to Murph’s instead of the farm,” she continues.

  “So we know Amy is clear also,” I say.

  Once more, she lets out a low grunt. “That guy never even looked at you standing there, did he?”

  I have thought of the same thing a dozen times. Depending on how precise the tag is, there is a chance that it could have led them to Murph’s, Amber and I in close enough proximity that it couldn’t tell us apart.

  From there, it would have been a matter of using physical descriptions. Spiers likely would have handed them a picture of his stepdaughter, but with me it would have been nothing but a sweeping image of a woman with unique hair and a tan.

  They saw her, didn’t recognize me, immediately acted on it.

  For any of that to work, though, it would rely on two key things. One, that at some point in the abbreviated melee at The Sundowner, they had been able to tag me.

  Between pistol-whipping Spiers and shooting his partner, I don’t know when the hell that might have happened.

  Second, that they hadn’t already marked Amber.

  “Mikey told me that there is a tracking spray that some government agencies can get their hands on these days,” I say. “Back when I was still in, I’d heard about such a thing, but at that time it was purely speculative.

  “NSA- or CIA-level shit.”

  Glancing my way, I can see her press her lips into a disapproving expression. Her nostrils flare slightly, strain apparent. “LAPD?”

  “He said he wouldn’t rule it out.”

  Nodding, she turns back toward the water. Sunlight settles into each of the tiny crevices on her face, for the first time letting me see the full effect of the last ten years. Eyes pinched up slightly, she stares out, working through things, before asking, “Can we remove it?”

  Turning at the waist, I glance back to Amber. Still seated atop the picnic table, her hands are spread wide behind her, weight back on her palms.

  “Remove it? Yes. Scrub it off? No.”

  According to Mikey, the best remedy is to just let it fade, the signal becoming completely untraceable after a week or so.

  About five days longer than we currently have. Already, Spiers has guys here. That tells me the rightful owner of that money has put enough pressure on him that he’ll follow us anywhere.

  Or he’ll be smart enough to figure out we ended up here for a reason, likely kicking around until eventually he stumbles across something we really can’t allow.

  Just waiting it out isn’t an option.

  “So, are you thinking we cut it off or use her for bait?” Glenda asks, her voice relaying she is going through the same thought process I am right now.

  “I’m thinking both.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  “Any idea who the woman was?” Wilton Lucas asks. Awake and fully coherent for the first time in days, the head of his hospital bed is raised to a forty-five-degree incline. Not enough to impinge on his wounds at all, but enough to allow him to sit upright a bit, seeing out through the window and interacting with his wife and son.

  And with his partner, who now sits in the chair warmed by Esme.

  “No,” Jensen Spiers replies, giving his head a bitter shake.

  Most of the last two days have been spent trying to answer that very question. Combing through traffic cameras in West Covina, scouring the surveillance footage from every business and ATM along the street.

  All of it producing dozens of images of the getaway vehicle, a stock SUV with license plates that haven’t shown up in any state in the last forty-eight hours.

  Not that Spiers expected them to, knowing they and the vehicle they were attached to are both long gone by now.

  “You didn’t happen to get a look at her, did you?”

  Twisting his mouth to the side, Lucas thinks on it a moment, the look on his face relaying his response even before he gives his head a shake. “Not really. I remember dirty-blond or light-brown hair pulled into like a Mohawk ponytail thing.”

  “Right,” Spiers says, lifting both hands and running them down either side of his scalp. “Shaved tight on the sides.”

  “Yeah,” Lucas replies. “Other than that, didn’t really get a look at her. Just came out, pulled her off you...”

  He lets his voice trail away, not needing to finish the thought for them both to know how things ended. The instant the woman hit the wall, she plugged him twice, somehow placing both in positions to incapacitate but not kill.

  Training at a very high level.

  “Pretty weak description,” Lucas agrees, placing his head back on the wall and staring at the ceiling.

  “I’ve been through every phone record I can find of Amy’s,” Spiers says, “but with her being blind, it’s tough.”

  “Right,” Lucas agrees. “Not much of a paper trail for you to sift through.”

  Given that the woman was wanted for attacking two police officers, Spiers had been given free rein to any database the LAPD had access to. Shoving every permutation of the woman’s physical description and the vehicle she was driving into the system, the few leads he did turn up were dismissed almost as fast as they arose.

  One for having too many tattoos. Another for being the wrong ethnicity. A third for being picked up in Anaheim for a bar fight on Saturday and still sitting in custody the next morning.

  All totaling to even more frustration for Spiers, the combination of his wife, this woman, Lima, and his broken nose heaping into a pile he could do without.

  “How you doing?” Lucas asks, rolling his focus over to the side. Already he looks much better than he did after surgery, a bit of the color returning to his cheeks.

  To say nothing of the visible weight loss, the last three days being the longest Spiers can ever remember him going without a trip to the gym.

  “Only hurts when I breathe,” Spiers quips, forcing a thin smile into place.

  A few feet away, Lucas does the same, both men chuckling before receding back into their thoughts.

  If Spiers was forced to guess, he would imagine that the woman was nothing more than a soldier for hire. That his wife had taken the money and had her daughter post an ad somewhere online. During the few days of lag time in between, they’d been hiding out, waiting for someone to answer it and make arrangements.

  Only by pure bad luck had he and Lucas arrived when they did.

  Even as he sits and works through it, he can see the gaps in the logic. Never can he imagine Amy involving her daughter in something like that, and if it did play out that way, it still begged the question of where the money was when they showed up.

  The only bags he recalled were both still present when he came to, each nothing more than some clothes, free of anything that would give him direction or — more importantly — caus
e anybody to look back at him.

  Not to mention, the woman had referred to his wife as Ames more than once, hinting at a prior personal relationship.

  Perched on the chair, his feet extended and crossed at the ankle before him, Spiers barely hears the first pulse of the cell phone in his jacket pocket. Dismissing it as nothing more than another of the many machines at work around the room, he waits until feeling it against his ribs before snaking a hand down into the pocket and drawing it out.

  Checking the screen, he glances up to Lucas and says, “Hendricks.”

  Lifting his head from the pillows, Lucas nods, signaling he is ready.

  “Spiers.”

  With the volume turned down low, Spiers rises from the chair. Grasping it by the arm, he drags it over flush with the side of the bed. Settling down into it, he puts his shoulder just inches from his partner’s, the phone between them.

  “And Lucas.”

  In the background, they can hear the sound of traffic, as if Hendricks is again standing alongside the road. For a moment, there is no reply, before finally, he says, “Stepanovich is down.”

  Snapping his eyes up, Spiers meets Lucas’s gaze. A ripple of palpitations shoots through his core, his eyes widening. “Down? You mean...?”

  “Not out,” Hendricks says. Each word is measured, a forced attempt to keep an even keel, though Spiers can hear the strain.

  It is the same one that was present two days ago when he came to and realized his partner had been shot.

  Refraining from pressing harder, from allowing the questions he had to come tumbling out, Spiers grips the phone firmly, his gaze locked on Lucas.

  “We tracked the girl to this big outdoor supply warehouse place,” Hendricks says. “Some joint shaped like a barn, full of farming and gardening and lawncare stuff. Pumpkin patch out back, corn maze for the kids, that type of thing.”

  Even though he can’t be seen, Spiers nods. He knows the type of place, having spent time outside of Los Angeles in his youth.

  “Anyway, Stepanovich got eyes on her first,” Hendricks says. “Texted me, told me to loop around and bring them in.”

  “Them?” Spiers snaps, the word out before he can stop it. “The girl and the mom?”

  After the events of the last week, he can’t even bring himself to say their names out loud. Sure as hell not to refer to them as his wife and stepdaughter.

  “Not the mom,” Hendricks says. “Older woman, maybe a grandmother or something.”

  From the bed, Lucas looks a question toward Spiers, the meaning clear.

  Just as fast, Spiers gives a quick shake, Amy having told him only that she was an orphan that hadn’t seen her parents since she was still in single digits.

  “So I started circling around, coming forward, when out of nowhere somebody caught Stepanovich off guard. Hit him with a heel kick to the side of his knee, completely caved the damn thing in.”

  By the last word, his voice is just barely audible, anger and bitterness both present in equal amounts. When he is done, he falls silent, the noise of the road and the faint whistle of the breeze the only sounds.

  “Jesus,” Lucas whispers, again dropping his head back and staring at the ceiling.

  “Any idea on who did it?” Spiers asks.

  “Not really,” Hendricks says, the vitriol of before a touch higher still. “Already so damn crowded, once he went down, place became a madhouse.”

  Even without hearing the ending, Spiers knows that the girl got away. In the ensuing craziness, Hendricks had to see to his partner, allowing for the others to slip past.

  “Had to be the same woman,” Spiers whispers, looking over to Lucas.

  Focus still aimed upward, Lucas dips his chin an inch. “Had to be.”

  Staring on for a moment, Spiers considers things, trying to make sense of the latest firebomb to be dropped into their unit. Already, he has the aching suspicion that Captain Lucille is peeking over their shoulders.

  Something like this will only heighten that into total scrutiny.

  “Where are you now?” Spiers asks.

  “Outside the hospital,” Hendricks replies. “They got him heavily sedated and his knee somewhat stabilized, but the guy needs surgery, like, now.”

  Pressing his eyes closed tight, Spiers pushes out a loud breath.

  The scheme they’ve been running has been especially kind to them all, both professionally and financially. But the events of the last week are fast spiraling to a point that can no longer be condoned. Never had he realized how tenuous their system was until one small thing was removed and the rest of it came tumbling down around them in record time.

  “How you want me to play this?” Hendricks asks, the question causing Spiers to open his eyes. Looking across at his partner, handfuls of responses come to mind, none seeming any better than the one before.

  If given his preference, he would tell the man to sit tight, that he was on his way. Or he would tell him to go get the biggest gun he can find and end things right now.

  Or a host of other things in between, all speaking more to emotion than logic, fed by the fury pulsating through his system.

  Not that he can single out any one of them. Not while sitting in Lucas’s hospital room, and definitely not with Stepanovich lying in one just like it a thousand miles away.

  “It’s your call, Detective. Whatever you decide, we’ll back your play.”

  Chapter Fifty

  The girl’s name is Taylor. At seventeen, she is the oldest of those currently under Glenda’s care, a transplant from Washington that arrived three years ago.

  What her backstory is, I’m not sure, all external signs pointing to a fairly well-adjusted adolescent. Dressed in jeans and a plain T-shirt, her auburn hair is pulled back through a Boise State Broncos ball cap. Her cheeks are round and full, and she isn’t afraid to make eye contact.

  Of course, with the exception of my unique choice in hairstyle, most people would probably look at me and say I appeared fairly normal as well.

  The kind of shit people like us have been through doesn’t always show up on the surface.

  Pulling the old farm truck up to the picnic area beside the lake, she steps out carrying a brown leather satchel. Cradling it in both arms, she walks over and places it on the picnic table beside Amber.

  Not once does she ask a question as she does so, or even say a word.

  “Thank you, Taylor,” Glenda says. “Did you bring the other bags as well?”

  Hooking a thumb over her shoulder toward the truck, she replies, “In the bed.”

  Glancing to me, Glenda nods. Returning the gesture, I move straight for the truck as she goes for the satchel, each of us with a role to play.

  The events of the morning have us both running with tensions high. Taking out one of the men bought us a bit of time, but we know for a fact there is at least his partner in the area, if not more. We also know that Amber is currently marked with something that makes her a human homing beacon, unable to be hidden.

  Whatever lead we have is shrinking by the minute.

  Going to the bed of the truck, I grab up both my duffel and the bag that Mikey had left for me. Taking one in either hand, I carry them over to the Forester and pop the trunk, using the door for cover as I set my bag aside and dive straight into Mikey’s.

  The wand he told me about is buried deep in the bottom, tucked in along the side. Resembling something TSA would use at an airport screening, I flip the switch on, seeing a series of lights ranging from red to yellow to green light up in order before falling dark.

  A faint buzz emanates from the wand, letting me know it is active.

  Starting beneath the rear bumper, I do a quick sweep of the exterior, none of the usual places like the gas tank or tire wells lighting up. Moving inside, I go through it in quick fashion as well, finding nothing.

  Last in order is the undercarriage. Sprawled flat on my back, I work the wand over every inch of it, the rocky ground biting into my ass and shoul
ders the entire time.

  A task that proves unnecessary.

  The car is clean, just as Mikey said.

  Climbing back out, I return the wand to the bag and zip it closed. In the very near future, I’m going to be needing more than a few items from inside, but for the time being — with both girls close by — they can stay hidden away.

  What’s about to happen is going to be bad enough.

  Slamming the door on the Forester shut, I cross back over the narrow grassy expanse. As I approach, I can see Taylor has retreated to the water’s edge. Her back to us, she is lazily lobbing rocks in the lake, the resulting ripples spread wide across the surface.

  On one of the tables, Glenda has opened her medical bag, the aging item the same one she used when I was a kid. Lined up beside it are a series of small vials with clear liquid inside.

  A syringe in hand, she stands alongside Amber, the young girl’s shirtsleeve pulled back to expose her arm.

  “Okay,” Glenda says, doing her best to put on a soothing tone despite the tension in her voice. “You’re going to feel a small pinch.”

  Eyes wide, Amber looks up at her, appearing as if she might burst into tears at any moment.

  “And what’s this for again?”

  “Remember when you said the man sprayed your neck?” Glenda asks, deftly inserting the needle before the girl can protest. “We need to scrub it off, and it might hurt a little.”

  The process that is really about to occur is much, much more intense than that, though there isn’t any need to tell the girl. In a minute or two, she’ll be asleep. Later tonight, she’ll wake up in bed beside her mother with a bandage on her neck.

  And that’s all she’ll ever need to know.

  “Clean?” Glenda asks, glancing my way while pulling the syringe from Amber’s arm. Returning it to the original paper packaging, she wraps it up snugly, to be incinerated once she’s back at the farm.

  “Clean,” I respond, confirming what we both already knew about the SUV, no matter how much we might want the opposite to be true.