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Chapter 44

‘Where are we?’

Boss Man’s voice through the phone was so clear he might have been sitting on the porch of the clapboard house next to William. A hot-oil smell wafted over from the wrecking yard; when William and Hanley’s grandfather had built the house, he hadn’t factored in wind patterns, so on some days the very walls seemed infused with burned tires and battery acid. The clear-as-hell afternoon afforded a glimpse of Mount Shasta rising in the distance, speckled with an early snow.

‘Wingate’s a wanted man in his own right,’ William said. ‘The agencies are on alert. Anywhere he pops up, they’ll deliver him straight to Graham.’

Behind him the rickety screen door banged and heavy footsteps creaked the boards. Dodge carried with him the musk of the cellar. The mass of his shoulders bowed in a broad arc, he descended the steps and arrayed something on the crackly dead weeds of the front lawn. He shuffled over toward the side of the house, clearing William’s view to the tools nestled in the weeds. Ball-peen hammer. Needle-nose pliers. Metal shackles.

‘Even in his position, Graham can only do so much,’ Boss Man said. ‘The higher-profile this thing gets, the more cover smoke he has to blow. And the more it costs.’

‘Well, that’s why Graham has Dodge and me, isn’t it? Once he gets a bead on Wingate and the girl, we’ll make them vanish from all consideration.’

Trailing a black garden hose, Dodge moved back toward the weeds. Returned to the spout to crank on the water.

‘You left the smashed-up van behind,’ Boss Man said. ‘Can anyone trace it to you?’

‘Nah,’ William said. ‘Old license plates, no reg, VIN placard pried off the dash. If there’s one thing we know how to do, it’s strip vehicles.’

‘But that’s not the one thing I hired you for.’

Splitting the stream with a thumb, Dodge sprayed down the tools.

‘No, sir.’ William moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. ‘Wingate’ll surface soon. You can’t hide with a kid. He already tried to get her on an airplane to-’

‘You should’ve killed her when you had her in hand,’ Boss Man said.

‘We were gonna use her as a lure first. In the ’Raq, our boys handed out a lot of sniper rounds through the spinal cord. You get someone down, screaming loud enough, and you can draw pretty much anyone out of the-’

‘Your uncle would’ve handled them on the spot,’ Boss Man said.

William bit his lips, overgrown stubble poking this way and that. A pulse beat in his neck, fluttering the sallow skin at the side of his throat. His right arm jerked a little. ‘Maybe if the old man was more strategic, he’d be teeing off in Palm Springs ’stead of slow-roasting in hell.’

But Boss Man wasn’t interested in clan history. ‘And the wife?’ he asked. ‘She’s our best path to him and the girl.’

‘She was transferred.’

A displeased pause. ‘Where?’

‘We looked high and low. Nothing. Graham’s running a computer search starting in Los Angeles and circling out in a spiral, checking every-’

‘She was in critical condition. She can’t have moved far. Every hospital within driving distance. Every one. Understand me?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Apparently satisfied, Dodge coiled the hose again by the house. Leaving the tools to dry below, he sat on the porch steps beside William and resumed reading the graphic novel he’d left facedown. The pear-shaped bruise on the side of his neck was changing from blue to purple.

‘Where are you?’ Boss Man asked.

William said, ‘We came back to base to ready a few things, but we’re good to deploy as soon as the bell rings.’

‘I suggest you figure out how to ring that bell yourself.’

Dial tone.

William set down the phone and spit a scattering of seeds across the porch steps. The wind picked up, sending dead leaves rattling across the uneven boards. But aside from that, silence. The house wasn’t the same without Hanley.

Still buried in the comic, Dodge turned the page, a rare smile twitching his lips. William glanced over at the facing page, where a scrawny guy with Orphan Annie eyes wearing a wife-beater exclaimed, “Knife to the Eye!”

William thought about what he’d just told Boss Man: You can’t hide with a kid. Using the railing, he pulled himself creakily to his feet. ‘Wingate got that file. He knows we’re watching everyone who’s ever been connected to him. I say he parks the girl somewhere safe. Let’s check State Children Services.’

Dodge blinked twice and swiveled his head back over to his graphic novel.

William said, ‘No – wait. Too obvious. And he’d want her below the radar.’ Behind them the leaves kept scraping along the boards of the porch.

Dodge set aside the comic, lumbered down the stairs, and began towel-drying his tools with the oversize hankie he kept stuffed in a pocket. His attention was loving, absolute.

A scud of wispy clouds had materialized from nowhere to confer a halo on Mount Shasta’s glorious peak. ‘He’s a foster kid himself,’ William said. ‘He’ll go back to his roots.’ He spit into the weeds and turned for the door. ‘Let’s start checkin’ foster homes.’