Zero Sum Game

Chapter 5

I hoped the line we were on was insecure as hell, and that Rio knew it and was answering accordingly. Otherwise…otherwise, someone had been playing me like a fucking marionette. “We need to talk,” I said. “Now.”

“Camarito,” Rio said. “Main and El Zafiro. Midnight.”

Camarito was a small town near the compound I’d pulled Polk from the night before. “I’ll be there,” I said, and hung up. My skin felt itchy and too-tight all of a sudden, as if a thousand hidden eyes were watching me.

Rio had been willing to make a meeting, which meant our phone call wasn’t compromised—at least, not to his knowledge. Which meant he hadn’t contacted Dawna.

Who had? Dawna Polk was a middle manager at an accounting firm. She wasn’t exactly well-connected to the criminal underworld. It was very like Rio to decide her sister needed out—he judged people, decided what they deserved, and made it happen, and I had no trouble believing he would have disinterestedly come to the rescue of a scared kid suffering from one bad decision too many.

If Rio hadn’t called Dawna, however, then someone else had a motive for rescuing Courtney—and this mystery conspirator had kept me from being suspicious of the job by using Rio’s name. Which meant said unknown person not only knew way too much about Rio and me and our strange not-friendship, but was one hundred percent aware of Rio’s cover.

Rio was compromised. I felt sick. Our conversation would have tipped him off, and he could take care of himself, but still…

I picked up the phone again and called Dawna’s work number.

Her secretary answered, and hemmed and hawed about her boss being in a meeting, but apparently Dawna cared a lot more about her sister than whatever she was doing at work, because mere seconds later her voice came fast and breathless over the line. “Did you find her? Is she okay? Oh my God—did they hurt her?”

“She’s fine!” I raised my voice to cut in over her frantic queries. “Fine! She’s sleeping right now.”

“Oh—Ms. Russell, I don’t know how to thank you. I just—she’s my little sister; I can’t—thank you—”

“Yeah, okay, okay.” I had trouble squeezing a word in. “Dawna, we need to meet. Your sister—she might have gotten in deeper than she realized.”

“I don’t under—what happened? Is she still in danger?”

“We’ll talk in person,” I said. I didn’t want to give away too much—the way this case was going, someone was probably listening in on Dawna. Or following her. “Remember the coffee shop where we met before? Meet me there in an hour.”

“I—of course—of course I will. Will Courtney come? Can I see her?”

“Not yet.” No way I would let Courtney out into the world before I had a better handle on the situation. “It’s better if she stays here for now. She’s safe here. I’ll see you in an hour.”

“Oh—yes, of course,” Dawna said, her words tumbling into each other. “I’ll be there—and thank you—”

I hung up on her.

Courtney was still out cold. I did a quick differential equation, my eyes measuring her body mass, and figured she’d be gone for a while—three hours at the very least, probably a lot longer. Enough time for me to make it to Dawna and back.

Still…

A couple of naked pipes ran along the base of the wall next to the mattress. I pulled the handcuffs back out of my pocket and locked one side around a pipe and the other side loosely around one of the girl’s scrawny wrists. Then I stuffed some cash and other supplies in my pockets and pulled a .40-caliber SIG Sauer from behind the false back of one of the kitchen cabinets, replacing it with Anton’s file and the rest of the paper bag of money from Polk’s place.

I borrowed a motorcycle from a nearby parking garage, one with a layer of dust that told me the owner had last ridden it forty-two days ago, plus or minus a few hours. Probably a rich guy who took it out for a spin every few months; he’d never miss it. The helmet clipped to it was two sizes too big, and I made a face as I put it on—I don’t crash. But I also couldn’t afford to get the highway patrol on my tail. Stupid California and its stupid fascist helmet laws.

Motorcycles are a joy to ride in LA traffic. I wove between the cars, zipping past long lanes of stopped vehicles and leaning into a tight curve to fly up the ramp onto the freeway, frustrated motorists idling in line behind me. Widths and speeds and movement danced in front of my eyes as I rocketed the huge sport bike through spaces that didn’t look wide enough for a cat to slip through, dipping and looping around other drivers and gunning between them down the asphalt, an untouchable point in motion.

On the bike I made it across town in thirty-four minutes, which would have been impossible in a car. I also managed to find parking on the street in Santa Monica, which likewise would have been an exercise in futility for a larger vehicle—I squeezed in against the curb behind a little Honda, not worrying myself about the niceties of a legal parking space. My friend I’d borrowed the bike from would be the one to see the fallout from any tickets.

I was early, but my client already sat at a table waiting for me, somehow looking both relieved and tense at the same time as she fiddled with the strap of her purse and ignored the cold paper cup of coffee in front of her. Dawna Polk looked nothing like Courtney, and with her height and fine bones and Mediterranean coloring, she could have been beautiful…except that she wasn’t. She was…worn, and faded, and looked like someone who stared glassily at tedious minutiae all day in a featureless cubicle where she let her personality leach slowly away.

Yes, said a taunting voice in my head, drinking your way through life is so much better, isn’t it? Hypocrisy, thy name is Cas.

Dawna leapt up when she saw me, almost knocking her purse off the table. “Ms. Russell!”

“Dawna,” I greeted her. “Walk with me.”

She jerked her head in a rapid nod and scooped up her belongings to trot after me, tottering slightly as she tried to hurry in stupidly high heels. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere else. I need to make sure you weren’t followed.”

Dawna’s eyes got wide, and she came with me without any more questions.

I led her down a few bustling, crisscrossing streets, surveying the trendy crowds of midday shoppers in all directions and staying alert for watchers and tails. A few blocks over, I took a sharp right into another coffee shop with a mostly empty sit-down section. A hipster on a laptop in the far corner was the only other customer; knowing Los Angeles, he was probably working on the next Great American Screenplay.

“Sit down,” I said to Dawna, dropping onto one of the chairs at a small wooden table as far as possible from the other patron. The rich smell of brewing coffee mingled with warm baked goods made my stomach start a riotous clamor about not having been fed; I pulled out an energy bar I had pocketed back at the loft and tore it open. A lanky young employee made a hesitant movement toward me as if he were about to say something, but I glared at the kid, and he meekly turned back to wiping tables.

I pulled out a little electronic gadget I’d also grabbed when I’d dropped off Courtney and pushed a button on it as I chewed. A light flashed green, which meant it wasn’t picking up any electronic interference likely to be a bug. I let my eyes flick around the shop, measuring distances and figuring sound propagation in air; the lone employee had gone back behind the counter and the laptop-engrossed hipster wasn’t close enough to eavesdrop over the folksy wallpaper music. Excellent.

Dawna watched me anxiously, not asking questions. She wasn’t the curious sort. “How is Courtney?” she said at last.

“I left her right after I talked to you,” I said. “So, sleeping. She’s fine, like I said.”

Her fingers clasped at each other in worried little twitches of movement. I realized she was literally wringing her hands. I’d thought that was a figure of speech. “When can I see her?” she asked.

“When I figure out what’s going on here,” I said evenly.

“What do you mean?” Her eyes were wide and frightened.

“Dawna.” I lowered my voice, even though we had already been speaking quietly. “Tell me everything about how you knew to contact me.”

Her forehead wrinkled in confusion, but she obeyed anyway. “A—a man called me.” She swallowed, as out of her depth as the first time she’d told me the story. Dawna Polk was not a woman built for uncertain times. “He knew my name. He told me Courtney—” She lowered her gaze to her nervous hands, blinking rapidly. “He said if I wanted my sister to live, I would—I needed to get her out. He was very convincing.” She shivered. “He gave me your phone number, said to call you and tell you—to tell you Rio had sent me.”

“What did his voice sound like?” So far she hadn’t said anything she hadn’t told me in our first conversation, when she’d initially contacted me.

She gave a tense little half-shrug. “A man’s voice? What—what are you asking?”

“Any accent? Distinctive pitch? Anything?” Jesus, I needed something. If Dawna couldn’t give me a clue, I was at a dead end.

“No. It was very flat.”

Which did sound like Rio, but it also could have been someone else. Someone meaning anyone. “Can you remember him telling you anything more specific? Anything might be helpful.”

“He said—he said they would kill Courtney if I didn’t—” She started to tear up. Honestly, woman, get a hold of yourself. “He said you were very good, that you were the only one who could save my sister. He said to pay whatever you asked.”

Well, that had been nice of Not-Rio.

“I knew she’d been taken,” whispered Dawna. “The police, they interviewed me about what happened. The news stories about the cartels, what they do to people—the police wouldn’t help; they already thought she—” Her voice broke. “I was scared to go to you, but if I hadn’t and Courtney had—I couldn’t bear that.”

Yes, yes, I was such an intimidating person. Dawna had given me exactly zero new information. “Aside from the drug stuff, was Courtney mixed up in anything else?”

“Of course not!” Fire flooded Dawna’s eyes. “My sister is a good person! How could you even think—?”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” This interview had been useless. The woman didn’t know a damned thing.

“Ms. Russell.” Dawna reached out, taking me by surprise, and grasped my hands in her own slim, birdlike ones. “Please. What’s going on? I thought Courtney was safe.”

“She is. Now. But…” I sighed. “It turns out my friend Rio wasn’t the one who called you. There may be more going on here than we thought.”

“What are you going to do?”

In spite of myself, I felt sorry for her. “I’m meeting with Rio tonight,” I said, trying for a soothing tone. “I’ll see if he knows anything. And then we’ll figure out why everyone is after your sister.”

Dawna’s eyes widened further. “Everyone? After her?”

“Well, we know why the cartel is and why the cops would be, but I think someone else…” I frowned. “Dawna, have you ever heard of something called Pithica?”

She shook her head. “No. What is it?”

“I don’t know yet. But some people think Courtney’s involved in it.”

“Who? The cartel?”

“The cops. Or at least, a cop we…ran into. I don’t know about the cartel.”

“And this Pithica thing, it’s…bad?” hazarded Dawna anxiously.

“Considering people seem pretty willing to kill her over it, yeah.”

She started tearing up again.

Oh geez. “Look, Dawna, I’m going to get her out of this.”

She tried to nod, but she was trembling with the effort of not breaking down. She brought her fine-boned hands up to cover her face, breathing raggedly.

I’m not great with people, but I tried. I reached out and put a hand on her thin shoulder. The motion felt very contrived. “Hey, don’t worry. We’re going to find out what this Pithica thing is, and why people think Courtney is involved in it, and then we’re going to shut them down.”

She managed to nod, face still in her hands.

“Here, I’ll buy you a coffee.”

I finally got Dawna calmed down; she drank her latte with small, dignified sips, dabbing at her ruined makeup with a napkin. “I’m sorry, Ms. Russell,” she whispered, her voice shaking only slightly. “It’s so overwhelming.”

“I understand.” I didn’t, but whatever.

“I, ah, I have to get back to work,” said Dawna softly.

I wondered where she worked that she couldn’t take time off right now. Well, maybe she needed the distraction. It wasn’t like I was unfamiliar with that myself.

“To meet with, uh, Mr. Rio—are you going back to the—to where you found my sister?” Dawna asked in a quiet, fearful voice as she cleaned herself up.

“Yes,” I said. “To a little town nearby.”

“Be careful, Ms. Russell. Please.”

“I will,” I assured her.

It wasn’t until I had left Dawna tottering back toward work and was back on my borrowed sport bike that I realized I’d forgotten to ask her about payment.

Huh. That was unlike me—I never forget about money. This case must be getting to me more than I thought.