Fear

EIGHTEEN

The buzz instead of a ring. It was a setting on office phones. The call Cinco took when Groote first walked in gave off a ring; Joy’d gotten a buzz for that second call, but she’d pretended it was an outside call. His instincts told him the woman had been lying. The idea of Michael Raymond coming back at six was just to get him out of the gallery.

So he veered hard, ignoring the horns laid down around him as he narrowly missed clipping a truck, vroomed back down Paseo de Peralta, and took the hard right onto Canyon.

And right ahead of him, an idiot on a bike, a baseball cap practically covering his eyes, riding and balancing awkwardly in the middle of the street. Groote just missed him as he steered the car hard into the parking lot for the collection of galleries.

Groote saw the CLOSED sign hanging crooked in the Garrison Gallery’s door. He ran up to the door, tested the knob. Locked. He broke the pane of glass closest to the knob; an alarm wailed. He opened the door, drew his gun, ran through the gallery, upstairs and down. No sign of anyone.

The police would arrive within minutes. He tucked his gun into his holster under his jacket, went out the back, saw a woman standing with hands on hips, frowning at the noise.

‘I’m a friend of Joy and Cinco’s,’ he said to her before she could speak. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘My bike’s gone.’ She gestured toward the gallery door, the shrieking whine. ‘Is it a break-in or a false alarm?’

The guy on the bike. Outmaneuvered by an art hippie lady and a guy on a fricking bike. He ran past the woman and hurried to his car.

Groote bolted onto Canyon, then Paseo de Peralta. Had to choose and took a hard right. He drove two minutes, running red lights, looking for the guy on the bike. Wheeled hard around and went the other way, cursing. He backtracked, tore up side roads at eighty miles an hour. His heart caught in his throat, he pounded the steering wheel in fury.

I was this close to him. To finding Frost.

No bike on the street. No bike anywhere. Michael Raymond was gone.