Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

Her lips pursed but did not form a smile. “At least you’re realistic.”

“I want you carrying all the time. Even in the house.”

Dray raised her sweatshirt to reveal the Beretta tucked into her waistband. “I hope to hell they do come after me. But I have a feeling they’re not gonna make it that easy.”

“Probably not.”

She hooked her hair back behind her ear, then stood and fingered the blinds. “You shouldn’t have come here. You’re too smart to pull this move.”

“Let’s be grateful they think so, too.”

“They’ve been out there feigning competence since yesterday morning. I told them we don’t talk anymore, but I think they knew I was lying.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Not all men lack perception.”

Tim handed her the tape. “Not a bad piece of leverage. A little creative editing by Rayner and it could hang all his accomplices.”

“Or at least keep them in line.” She took the tape and set it down quickly on the table, as if she didn’t want it touching her flesh.

“I shouldn’t stay long. I don’t want to put you at risk. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I…I need that money.”

“Of course. I pulled out a couple grand for you this morning. It’s in the gun safe.”

“Thank you.”

They sat quietly, unsure of what needed to be said, hesitant because the next words would likely signal Tim’s departure.

“I see you got a new coffee table. The box is, uh, in Ginny’s…”

“I can’t respect that room as hallowed ground forever. Living here, it puts you on a different timeline, maybe. At least for some things.” She looked away quickly, and he saw her face set, mad and little-girl stubborn. He remembered that he didn’t miss all parts of her. “You wouldn’t know.”

He let the remark skip off into inconsequentiality. “How’s security on Dobbins?”

“No way they’re getting at him. His hospital room is like Fort Knox. Where’s Bowrick?”

Bowrick’s confidential hold ending at midnight was another concern to add to his list. “They won’t find him.”

She took a sip of coffee, grimaced against the heat. “Why would the Mastersons stay here where everyone’s looking?”

“They hate L.A. because their sister was killed here, they hate L.A. cops because they handled their sister’s case poorly, and they hate the system here because the L.A. courts turned her killer free.”

“Where’s her killer now?”

“Shot to death.”

“Hefty coincidence.”

“That it is.” Tim cracked his knuckles. “They have a plan for the city. They have strong contacts here, know their way around. Plus the case files they stole-all L.A.”

“Now their motive for killing Rayner is a lot clearer,” Dray said. “Tying up loose ends. Keeping eyewitnesses off the books.” Her chest expanded, and then she sighed deep and hard, as if expelling something from her body.

“Yeah. They know there’s no hard evidence or charges would’ve been brought. They’re mopping up.”

Dray pulled her head back, as if she’d been struck. Exasperation and intensity colored her smooth cheeks. She spoke slowly, as if she were still trying to catch up to her thoughts. “There’s another loose end they’re gonna have to tie up.”

Tim felt his mouth go dry, instantly. An ocean rushing in his ears. Realization. Alarm. Stress.

He was on his feet, down the hall.

He was pulling ammo from the gun safe into a backpack when he became aware of Dray in the doorway. The roll of cash he’d wedged in the back pocket of his jeans. Dray studied his hands, the ammo.

“Take your bulletproof vest,” she said.

“It’ll slow me down.”

“May you die and come back a woman in Afghanistan.”

He stood, slinging the backpack over one shoulder. He started out, but she shifted in the doorway, blocking him. Her arms were spread, clutching the jamb on either side, the sudden proximity of her face, her chest, recalling the moment before a hug. He could smell her jasmine lotion, could feel the heat coming off her flushed cheek. If he’d turned his head, his lips would have brushed against hers.

“You’re taking the fucking vest,” she said. “I’m not asking.”

WHEN TIM TURNED off Grimes Canyon Road onto the snaking drive to the burned-down house, he felt a thrumming start in the void where his stomach should have been. He pulled to a stop on the overgrown concrete foundation where the house used to stand, dead weeds crackling beneath the wheels.

Ahead, the stand-alone garage stood at the base of the small eucalyptus grove. At night it conveyed a sort of dilapidated grandeur, like a forsaken Southern mansion, but in the bright and unflinching daylight, it looked pathetic and distinctly unmenacing. Tim pulled on his gloves, his bulletproof vest, then approached.

The dirt-clouded windows had grown almost opaque. The garage door creaked up on rusty coils. The first thing that struck him was the odor, damp and dirty, the smell of water left stagnant and then drained. The busted water pipe had deposited swirls of silt on the greasy concrete floor.

Same ratty couch. Same hole in the far wall, no longer plugged by Ginny’s underwear. Same enveloping dankness.

But no Kindell.

The side table had been knocked over, the cheap particleboard splintered down the middle, throwing up spikes of wood. One of the couch’s cushions had been upended, the fabric split across the front like a burst seam. Crusty yellow stuffing protruded from the rip. The lamp lay shattered on the floor, the bare lightbulb still miraculously intact.

The mark of a brief struggle.

Tim placed his gloved fingertips on a dark spot on the couch, then smeared the moisture off the leather onto the white Sheetrock of the rear wall so he could discern its true color. Blood red.

A carton of milk lay on its side on the counter, a thread-thin tendril of fluid leaking from the closed spout. Tim righted the carton. Almost empty. He stared at the pool of milk on the floor, about four feet in diameter. He watched its drowsy expansion, gauged it had been at it for at least half an hour.

They’d taken Kindell somewhere. If they were merely going to kill him, they would have done it here. Isolated, quiet, rural. The stand of eucalyptus would have gone a long way toward stifling a bullet’s report.

There was another plan in the works.

As Tim headed out, a white seam in the freshly exposed couch-cushion stuffing caught his eye. He walked over and tugged on it. His daughter’s sock emerged.

A tiny thing, not six inches heel to toe, a ring of circus-color polka dots around the top. His daughter’s sock. Stowed away in a ripped cushion like a dirty magazine, a bag of pot, a wad of cash. In this place.

His legs were trembling, so he sat down on the couch, gripping the sock in both hands, thumbs pressed into the fabric. The small room did a drunken tilt, a jumble of sensations pressing in on him. A waft of paint thinner. Milk dripping from the counter. A tingling in the scab over his eye. The smell of the embalming table, of what had remained of his daughter at the end.

He pressed his hand to his forehead, and it came away moist. His knees shook, both of them, uncontrollably. He tried to stand but could not find the strength in his legs, so he sat again, clutching his daughter’s sock, shaking not with rage but with an unmitigated longing to hold his daughter, a longing that ran deeper than sorrow or even pain. He had not been braced, had not anticipated the need to shield these vulnerabilities, and the tiny white sock with its foolish dots had soared right through his fissures and struck him deep.

After ten minutes or thirty, he made it out into the pounding sun, across the scorching foundation to his car. He sat for a moment, trying to even out his breathing.