Jeffery Deaver - Hard News

"Oh, yeah."

Rune stopped suddenly and bent down and hugged the girl. Courtney hugged back, squeezing with just the right amount of strength that Rune needed just then. The little girl broke away and ran to the corner. A woman in a business suit, maybe a lawyer on break from Housing Court, crouched down and said to Courtney, "Aren't you a cute one?" Rune joined them and the woman looked up and said, "She's yours?"

And as Rune started to say she was just looking after her, Courtney said, "Uh-huh, this is my mommy."

Randy Boggs laughed out loud. The man sitting in the seat next to him, on the Atlanta-bound Greyhound bus, glanced his way but must have been a seasoned traveler and didn't say anything. He probably knew not to engage in conversation with people who laughed to themselves. Not on a bus, not in north Georgia.

What Boggs was laughing at was the memory of Lynda's astonished face as they walked out of the restaurant and he handed her fifty dollars, telling her to get on home and not go back in that bar if Tom Cruise himself was in there offering to take her to Bermuda. "Uh-huh," she said suspiciously. "Why?"

"Because," Boggs answered and kissed her forehead.

"You mean you don't wannta?" Nodding toward the room.

"I'd love to, 'specially with a pretty thing like you but there's someplace I gotta be."

He collected his bag and she gave him a drive to the Charlottesville bus station, which was a ways away but not so far that fifty dollars didn't buy the trip. He thanked her and trotted off to wait at the terminal for the bus that would eventually get him to Atlanta.

What had tipped him off had been the Men's Colony comment – the California State Men's Colony at San Luis Obispo.

Seemed pretty strange that Jack Nestor – knowing that Boggs was Inside and knowing intimatelywhy Boggs was Inside – he'd never mentioned he'd served time himself. It'd be natural for him to tell Boggs what it was like. Maybe brag a little. Ex-cons always did that.

But what was stranger still was that Nestor had been in the same prison, at the same time, as Juan Ascipio.

Okay, it could have been a coincidence. But if Nestor wanted something to happen to Boggs in Harrison, Ascipio would have been a good choice to start that accident happening.

The accident that killed Seven Washington and came close to killing Boggs.

A lot of strange things happening. The Obispo thing. And the way the witness, Bennett Frost, had died. And then the tape of Rune's story disappearing.

Beneath his lazy smile and easy manner, Randy Boggs was spitting mad. Here he'd done right by Nestor, never said a goddamn word at trial or the entire time he was Inside. Boggs was a stand-up guy. And look what happened: betrayed.

The bus rocked around a turn fast and he felt less angry. Boggs smiled. It wasn't as good as a car but it was still movement. Movement taking him away from Harrison and toward a pile of money.

He laughed again and said to the man beside him. "I love buses, don't you?"

"Be all right, I guess."

"Bedamn all right," Boggs said.

Whoa, a fire.

Jack Nestor, back on Christopher Street, looked at the charred wreckage of the houseboat. He leaned against a brick building next to the highway and wondered what this meant. He thought about it some. Okay, if she'd been inside, still tied up, when it happened she'd be dead and, fuck it, he could leave. But it was also pretty likely that somebody would've seen the fire and come to help her before she got toasted.

Or maybe she'd moved and some asshole just torched the place.

A lot of questions, no answers.

So Boggs the prick was gone. And now the girl was gone too.

Damn. Jack Nestor lit a cigarette and leaned up against the brick, wondering what to do next. The answer, he decided, was to wait. He hadn't slept well the night before. The pictures again, always the pictures. They'd wakened him and he'd lain in bed, thinking that now he was going to kill Randy Boggs he needed to find something to resent about him. There wasn't much. He wasn't a nigger, a fag, a spic. He didn't insult you. He didn't go after your woman.

Nestor's hand went to his stomach and he squeezed the glossy scar. The imaginary itching crawled around in his belly somewhere. Then he decided that Boggs's sin was that he was a Loser, capital L. Nestor smiled. That was plenty of reason to hunt the shit down and kill him.

Good. That was taken care of. It was a mild April night and the sky was lit by this eerie glow you couldn't tell where it came from. All the streetlights, probably. And headlights from cars and taxis and office buildings and stores… This made him think about all the buildings in the city, which of course included restaurants. Which reminded him that he was starving.

And then, just as he was about to go get a burger, there was the girl! She was walking slowly up the dock to the houseboat, looking at the smoldering mess. She was dressed in those weird clothes of hers – black miniskirt, boots, a couple of T-shirts, one bright red, the other yellow. Over her shoulder was a large bag but she was nice enough to set that down and stand with her hands on her hips, looking at the boat. She walked forward to look at some of the burnt junk on the pier, and kicked it absently. She walked to the yellow policeDo Not Cross tape and stood with her hands on it, looking down as if she was praying.

Nestor took the gun from his jacket pocket and looked around, Cars zipped past and there were people strolling along the riverfront but no one was near him. The sun was going down fast, a huge wad of orange fire, sinking directly in front of him. He could see it disappearing, inch by inch into the Palisades behind the charred skeleton of the houseboat.

Nestor aimed. He kept both eyes open; he didn't squint. It was a seventy-five-yard shot and he wished he had a stock and butt piece but he didn't so he leaned hard into the brick wall for support, crooked his arm and set the pistol in the V between his biceps and forearm. He aligned the sights and lifted it a millimeter to compensate for the distance. There was no wind. He held his breath. Complete stillness. Then: The last streak of sun slipped under the horizon.

A car sped past and honked. The girl turned.

Jack Nestor fired two fast shots, whose sharp cracks spread across the water, echoed briefly then faded.

He'd aimed for her back first then her head. Both slugs hit her. The first one struck her shoulder high. The second caught her in motion as she spun around. He saw a puff of blood, like smoke, on her cheek.

She dropped to the ground like a puppet with cut strings.

Nestor walked quickly back to the car. On the way he changed his mind. A burger would no longer do the trick. He decided to go looking for the biggest steak he could find in this goddamn town.

At first, Randy Boggs thought he'd been cheated by the bank.

He'd never had a good relationship with financial institutions. Although he'd never robbed any, several Georgia and Florida savings and loans (with the word "Trust" in their names, no less) had foreclosed on his family's houses after his father had missed various numbers of mortgage payments.

He was therefore predisposed to be suspicious.

So now, when the pretty girl behind the window handed him eleven tiny piles of cash so thin that they looked like a kid's building blocks, he thought in panic they'd kept most of the money for a fee or something.

She looked at his expression and asked, "Is everything all right?"

"That's one hundred ten thousand?"

"Yessir. They just look small 'cause they're new bills.

I counted 'em once and our machine there counted 'em twice – you want me to do it again?"

"No, ma'am." Looked right at Ben Franklin, who stared back at him with that weird smile as if was as natural for him as for anyone else to be holding a fortune. A hundred ten thousand and some change -the extra being thanks to the interest Jack Nestor had mentioned.