Livia Lone

51-NOW

She recognized Tyler the instant the wooden door swung open. Of course, prison had aged him, even beyond the sixteen years since Livia had last seen him, on the barge from Portland. He’d been about twenty-five then, but now his face looked closer to fifty, the skin looser, a network of seams around the eyes. But the gait was the same, the expression, the businesslike don’t-fuck-with-me attitude. The sleeves of his fleece were rolled up, and she saw the tats she remembered on his forearms, though on the barge she hadn’t understood their significance. Lightning bolts and Iron Crosses-white supremacist symbols. Probably there was a lot worse under his shirt. On the barge, the other two had been beefy while Tyler was lean and sinewy, but the lean aspect was gone now, replaced by probably twenty pounds of new muscle. Well, not much to do in prison but work out.

Her heart started pounding as all the emotions of that horrible time came surging back, and she closed her eyes for a moment, concentrating on her breathing the way she once had before matches, walling off the nervousness, reassuring herself she had trained for this, she could do it, she was ready.

He had a gym bag slung over his shoulder-the meth, no doubt. He wasn’t stupid enough to leave it in the truck, even for a quick bathroom break. She saw him log her, then check his perimeter as he approached, the same as she had checked hers, his head swiveling, confirming there was no one else here, this wasn’t a hit or a heist. And once he realized it was just a petite, pretty Asian woman out for a ride, his shoulders relaxed. He smiled and rolled right up to her, just as she’d hoped.

“Little engine trouble there?” he said over the wind, when he was about ten feet away.

“Nothing I can’t handle, thanks.” She could see the bag was unzipped. A safe bet he had a weapon inside it. She was glad. If he thought he could access a weapon, it would relax him, increase his confidence. While at the same time, making no difference. She was already holding the Glock on the other side of the engine. He couldn’t see it, but it would sure as hell be faster than anything he might try to pull from the bag, or from anywhere else, for that matter.

“You sure?” he said, coming closer. “I’m pretty good with engines. Nice Ninja, by the way. I’m strictly a Harley man myself, but hey, it takes all types to make a world.”

She looked at him over the seat of the bike. “You really don’t remember me, do you?”

He frowned. “Remember you?”

“Yeah, remember me. I mean, how many thirteen-year-old girls have you kidnapped and brought to Llewellyn from Portland by barge?”

He stared, squinting, and she could see the recognition. And the fear.

Then his expression hardened. “What the hell’s this about?”

“Then you do remember me.”

He glanced around. “I don’t know if I remember you or I don’t.”

“Then why are you looking over your shoulder?”

He hesitated for a moment, then said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. So excuse me, but I’ve got places to be.” He took a step in the direction of the truck.

“You mean meth to deliver?”

He stopped. She saw what he was thinking and raised the Glock over the Ninja so it was pointing at his chest.

“Don’t. Seattle PD.” She pulled her badge from the jacket pocket and held it up so he could see it.

He lost a lot of color and started breathing rapidly. She realized he might panic and do something stupid. That would be catastrophic. He’d be useless to her dead.

“Be cool, Weed,” she said. “I’m not here to arrest you. I just want to talk.”

“What is this?”

She glanced at the picnic table. “Why don’t we sit over there? It’ll be more comfortable. We have a lot to catch up on, right?”

He shook his head. “If you think I’ve got anything to say to you, you’re crazy.”

She returned the badge to her pocket and stood, the Glock still pointed at his chest. “You know I have probable cause to believe you’ve got meth in that bag. Along with a weapon a felon like you isn’t legally permitted to carry. But I don’t want what’s in the bag. I want what’s in your head.”

He glanced at the pistol, then at her eyes, then held up his hands, palms forward. “All right, look. It was a long time ago. I told the AUSA back then, I didn’t know anything. I didn’t, and I don’t.”

“You don’t seem to understand. Right now, I just want to talk. If you tell me what you know about how I wound up on that barge, I’ll be grateful, and that’ll be the end of it. If you want to dummy up, I’m going to arrest you and search that bag.”

There was a pause. She could see the gears turning in his mind as he weighed the options, the risks.

“All right,” he said. “You win.”

She nodded toward the picnic table. “Over there.”

He hesitated, then started walking. She grabbed the helmet with her free hand and followed him, keeping behind him and to his right. If he went for a weapon, he’d have a hell of a time acquiring her from there before she dropped him. Though she hoped he would be more sensible than that.

When they reached the picnic table, she said, “Set down the bag on the far side of the bench. Then sit opposite. Your back to the parking lot.” She wanted the tactical view for herself.

Again he hesitated.

“Weed,” she said. “You just did sixteen years. You have a wife and daughter and a lot to live for. Do you really want to die today, in the parking lot of some highway shithouse? I’m not here for anything more than confidential information.”

He looked at her and shook his head disgustedly. But he did as she directed.

She circled around to face him. “Now, palms on the table. Good. Keep them there, where I can see them.” She straddled the bench, left leg under, right leg out, a flexible, mobile position. The benches were integrated with the table, and sitting the way he was, Weed didn’t have a move. But that didn’t mean she shouldn’t seize every advantage, either.

She held the Glock under the table. If anyone showed up at the rest stop, she and Tyler would look like just a couple of people taking a break from the road and chatting under the pretty blue sky.

A gust blew a snack wrapper past them and shook the pine trees. She paused for a moment, almost afraid to ask, afraid that after so long, what she thought would offer the way to Nason would be revealed as a dead end.

Come on, Livia. Do it.

“All right,” she said. “I want to know who hired you for that boat.”

He sighed. “Like I just said. I told the AUSA I don’t know anything. I didn’t handle any of the arrangements. That was my brother, and the cops killed him.”

She glanced over at the bag, then back to him. “Last chance. Then I search the bag.”

There was a long silence. Then his shoulders slumped and he sighed. “It was a Thai group, all right?”

Her heart started pounding, but she kept her expression placid. “Which one?”

“Which one? I don’t fucking know which one. The one we always dealt with.”

“The one you dealt with. Not just your brother. You.”

“Yeah. All right.”

“What was your contact’s name?”

“He called himself Kana.”

“What did he look like?”

Tyler shrugged. “Tall for Asian. Big cheekbones. Kind of a bony face. Okay?”

Her heart beat harder. “That’s the guy who handed us over to you? Kana?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he look different compared to when you’d seen him previously?”

“Different? No. Well, I mean, his face was bandaged. Actually, one of his guys was cut up, too. They said a steel packing strap broke loose and whipped across their faces. Sounded like bullshit, but I didn’t ask.”

“Bandaged how? Where?”

“His eye. It was, you know, like an eye patch.”

Skull Face. It had to be. He was telling the truth. So far. She took a few slow and steady breaths, working to ease her rampaging heartbeat. She so hoped she had cut Skull Face’s eye out. Yes. Please that.

“Why you? What was the arrangement?”

“No arrangement. Just… look, I’m cooperating, okay? Like you said, I have a wife and daughter. They’ve been waiting a long time for me. I give you what you want here, and you let me walk, right?”

“I want the truth. All of it. You give me that, and you walk. But only for that.”

He nodded. “We’d never done a shipment of people before, okay? And I didn’t want to. It wasn’t something I wanted to get mixed up in.”

“Then why did you?”

“Why do you think? Kana offered a sweet deal.”

“Sweet compared to what?”

“Compared to dope. Up until then, it had always been just marijuana. I mean, where do you think I got my gang name? The Thai dope was super high quality, much better than the domestic or Mexican. They tell me these days you can buy Thai and a lot better in any Washington State cannabis store, but back then, the profit margins were crazy. Like what you’d get for coke. That’s what we moved for them. Just ganja. High-quality Thai ganja.”

“So then Kana comes to you and says, ‘Hey, I have some people to move.’”

“That’s right. And that they’d pay us five thousand a head. Which was, shit, a lot of money.”

“How many heads?”

“Kana said ten. Six adults. Four kids.”

She kept her face frozen. “Tell me about the kids.”

“Well, first he said ten people. But I said, look, I need to know what we’re moving. How much food to bring. Blankets. I mean, fuck, we’re practically putting together a week-long camping trip, how do we prepare? He said, okay, six adults, four kids. I said, what the fuck do I know about taking care of kids? He said, don’t worry, the adults will look after the children, and anyway, two of them are sisters, they’ll take care of each other.”

She suppressed the urge to raise the Glock and shoot him in the face. “There were only three kids. What happened to the fourth?”

He cocked his head slightly as though in thought. “What, was the fourth one your sister? Is that what this is about?”

Her gun arm trembled and she fought to keep her voice level. “What. About. The other. Kid.”

He raised his fingers from the table. “Okay, okay. He didn’t explain. We met at Terminal Six in Portland, which was the plan, and all he said was, turns out nine people, not ten, he’d been mistaken.”

She wanted to scream. She was so close to knowing. She could almost feel Nason. Feel her, but not touch her.

“Nothing else about the sister?”

“Nothing. I swear. I’m telling you what I know.”

“Who arranged the barge?”

“Kana, I guess. It wasn’t us. He just gave us the information. We got on the barge. The container with you and the other people was already loaded. Our job was just to get you to Llewellyn.”

There was so much here she needed to examine. She pushed it away and forced herself to focus.

“Why didn’t you give any of this to the AUSA? You could have saved yourself a lot of prison time.”

He laughed. “Yeah, getting killed isn’t exactly my idea of how to save myself prison time, but thanks.”

“Why were you so afraid?”

“Are you kidding? Everyone knows how well the Thais are connected. They’ve got every kind of organized crime in Bangkok-Russian, Italian, Japanese, Mexican. They do business with everyone. And if you say one word about the business, your shortened prison sentence will end even shorter with a shank in your kidney. Hell, you think the Brotherhood would have protected my peckerwood ass from Black Gangster Nation and the Mexican Mafia if I’d come in with a snitch jacket? Are you crazy? Everyone would have known why I got the easy time. Especially when there were follow-up busts. I would have been a dead man.”

She thought about his story. It tracked with what she knew. But what was he leaving out?

“You said you’d never moved people before this.”

“That’s right. Just ganja, that’s it. Hey, you mind putting away the piece? I told you, I’m cooperating, all right?”

She ignored him. “So why did Kana want you to move people this time?”

“I asked the same. He said they had a buyer, simple as that.”

That told her nothing. She clenched her jaw, walling off the emotions, willing herself to think.

“Kana,” she said. “Did he deal with anyone else in the Northwest?”

“You think he would have told me if he did?”

“I didn’t ask what he told you. I asked what’s known. The way it’s known his people are connected with the various international criminal organizations you just mentioned.”

There was a pause, then he said, “No. I never heard of him dealing with anyone other than Hammerhead. I mean, why else would he have used us for you and those other people? If he knew other smugglers experienced with that kind of cargo, I’m guessing he would have used them instead, right?”

“Maybe,” she said, thinking aloud. “Or maybe… you think a little Thai ganja offers profit margins? You should see what traffickers make moving people. Dope gets smoked and it’s gone. But slaves? Slaves are an investment.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about that. I told you, I never moved people before, or obviously since. The one time I tried it, my brother and best friend got killed, and I got sentenced to twenty years in Victorville.”

“My point is, maybe you peckerwoods were small-time to your guy Kana. Maybe he used you because his organization didn’t care if you got rolled up.”

“You think I haven’t wondered about that? I had sixteen years to wonder it. But why would Kana set us up? Paid us fifty thousand to move that cargo, and the cargo never even gets to the buyer? Doesn’t make any sense.”

No, it didn’t. But…

And suddenly she was hit by a cop epiphany. He saw it in her face and flinched.

“You ever think it was strange, Weed, that some of your cargo didn’t make it?”

He swallowed. “What? I told you. Kana just told me they were one short. It had nothing to do with me.”

“I’m not talking about the fourth child. I’m talking about the ones who were on the barge.” She felt the dragon stirring and breathed in and out steadily, trying to calm it. “You know, the ones who died of food poisoning. Along with one of the adults.”

His eyes shifted from side to side as he looked for the right lie. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Except it wasn’t food poisoning, was it, Weed? It was just plain old regular poisoning.”

He shook his head. “That’s crazy. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’d never thought about it before. I didn’t have the context. The way you and the other two fed us on the barge. Handing out the food individually. Watching us eat. Collecting the waste. Why were you so careful to monitor who ate what?”

“We weren’t, we just, it was just-”

She pulled the Glock from under the table and pointed it at his face. “You better tell me what I already know. Or I will search that bag and send you back to Victorville for the rest of your fucking life.”

He looked at the muzzle of the gun, his eyes wide, and then to her face. “Okay,” he said, raising his hands, palms forward. “Okay. Kana gave us a vial and told us to put five drops in the other kids’ food when we were a day away from Llewellyn. Only theirs. Not yours. He said it would just make them sick.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask, and he wouldn’t have told me anyway.”

“What about the woman who died?”

“He said we had to do some adults, too. We did. But I’m telling you, we thought it would only make them sick.”

Five drops. A fatal dose for a child, probably. Probably borderline for an adult.

“Why the other children? Why not me?”

“I don’t fucking know. Think about it, why would Kana tell me something like that?”

No, she realized. That would have been too much to hope. Probably Tyler was telling the truth, at least about that much.

For the first time, she glanced down at the bench to her left, where he’d set the bag. It was unzipped, but she couldn’t see inside it. She reached over and moved one of the flaps. Inside was a large, plastic-wrapped brick of what must have been meth.

On top of it, a Smith & Wesson.357 revolver.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t look in the bag. Come on, this is bullshit, we had a deal. I told you everything. I did. I don’t want to go back. Don’t fucking send me back. Like you said, I’ve got a wife and daughter. Please.”

“You’re not going back,” she said. “I’m leaving. You stay here after I’m gone.” She pulled on the helmet.

His shoulders sagged with relief. He nodded and smiled. “Okay. Good. I gotta say, you scared me there for a minute.”

She dropped the visor, pulled the revolver from the bag, and shot him in the heart.

He jerked back and his hands clapped over his chest. “Oh!” he groaned. “Oh, guhhhh…”

He tried to stand, then sat back heavily. He looked at her, his face contorted with pain and surprise. Then he slowly pitched forward, his hands still compressed against his chest. His face hit the picnic table. His body twitched once, and then he was still.

She looked at him for a moment, the dragon fiery inside her, then stood to go.

“They’re not going to miss you,” she said.