Jan Burke - Nine

“Around the time Laney was able to leave the hospital,” Ciara was saying, “my mom was already widowed and living with me, so Laney moved back in with us-right, Laney? Then my mom died about two years ago, just about the time I started working in Homicide. That was a rough time for both of us, but we had our routines set by then, so it wasn’t as hard as it might have been.”

Laney reached for the photo, and Ciara gave it to her. She held on to it without really looking at it. After a moment, she seemed to lose interest in it, and Ciara gently took it back and returned it to the shelf. “My brother and I look more like my dad,” Ciara said, “except I’ve got Mom’s hair and eyes, too.”

They ordered pizza-an apparent favorite of Laney’s.

“I’d better hit the road if I’m going to get up to Malibu this evening,” Alex said quietly, when he noticed that Laney was nodding off. “And I have that lecture to give about fire and bees.”

Ciara smiled. “Thanks for the ride. I know it was out of your way.”

“That stuff about the shortest distance between two points being a straight line? Really overrated.” Tired as he was, he meant it.

He decided to stop at home before heading up to Malibu. As he drove, he thought about Ciara and wondered how she managed to cope with all the pressures of the job and the pressures of being the primary caregiver for her sister. And still managed to be a damned good detective into the bargain.

Had any of her previous partners known about Laney? He doubted it. Word would have spread, most likely. The first time someone had called her B.B. Queen, someone else would have said to cut her some slack, and mentioned that she cared for a sister with severe disabilities.

And God, how she would have hated that.

“You can slit your throat with your tongue,” John had once told him. Hell if he’d be the one to talk about Ciara’s home life to anyone in the homicide bureau.

Palmdale, California

Wednesday, May 21, 4:05 P.M.

Julio Santos was bored. He was used to seeing a lot of action when he was working as a bodyguard for Bernardo Adrianos, because somebody was always trying to kill that bastard. At first, he had enjoyed the high-intensity life, but nobody likes to live like that for long. Or gets to. That much was clear to him, and to his partner Ricky Calaban, even before they were contacted by their new employers.

The basics of the original deal had been appealing. Adrianos dead, Julio and Ricky alive and wealthy. None of Adrianos’s friends or associates knew where Julio and Ricky were. Most people figured the bodyguards had died trying to defend him. This is exactly what the strangers had told him would happen.

Then the strangers offered more-if Julio and Ricky agreed to come to work for the strangers’ private company for one year, they would earn five million each, and Ricky’s brother and Julio’s mother would each receive another million. If they wanted their family members relocated to a safer place, this would be arranged.

Julio asked what they would be required to do during that year.

It would be a dangerous job, the leader said, but not as dangerous as continuing to guard Bernardo Adrianos. They would each guard one man, and that man would be drugged most of the time. They would learn to do certain simple medical procedures involving narcotics and intravenous feedings. They did not need to learn how to do these gently, just effectively. In addition to the leader, three men would be allowed to visit the prisoner from time to time, but otherwise, they would be somewhat isolated.

Ricky, he learned later, had jumped at the offer. Julio had been more cautious but had ultimately accepted it. He didn’t have a lot of options.

At first, he thought it might all be some FBI setup, but so far, all the strangers had told him had been true. Julio’s mother now lived like a queen back in Mexico, and he had a bank account that was going to be much bigger in a few months. The man he was guarding here in this abandoned small factory in Palmdale was too heavily sedated to be a threat. He looked like a mean motherfucker, all right, but most of the time, he was completely out of it.

To the outside world, Julio appeared to be a watchman who was paid to keep an eye on a property that might be sold. The room Julio guarded and his own living quarters were concealed within the building. His quarters were extremely comfortable. He had music and magazines, electronic games, a satellite dish, and a phone-although they warned him that the phone was tapped and that the entire place was, in fact, full of listening devices. If he wanted to call his mother, they would pay for the call. Anywhere in the world. But they would be listening. They were sure, the leader said, that he could understand their desire to protect their investment.

They would send a whore to him whenever he wanted one, provided he never let her see the prisoner or even hinted that there was a prisoner being held there. And the whores were much classier hookers than the ones he had enjoyed while working with Adrianos. At first he had taken a lot of advantage of that perk, but even his appetite for whores seemed to be waning these days.

As happened on visiting days-when one of the four strangers would stop by-the prisoner’s morphine had been cut back. Sometimes, if he wasn’t waking up fast enough, Julio gave the prisoner a low-dosage injection of an amphetamine. That would counteract the morphine’s effects for a while. Julio was so tired of this routine, he was tempted to go in there and kill the prisoner himself, and tell whichever of his bosses who showed up today that the man had tried to escape. But he wasn’t going to blow five million-six, if you counted his mother’s share-by being impatient.

He heard the prisoner pacing. He watched him on a security camera. It had bothered him a little at first that he was going to spend time watching a naked guy night and day, but by now it hardly registered with him.

He understood the man’s restlessness. At first, whenever he was awake, the prisoner had ranted about wanting his lawyer. Julio wondered if the guy had finally figured out that it wasn’t the good old cops who had him now. Then again, where he came from, maybe this was the way the cops treated all their prisoners.

Watching the news, Julio figured he had a good idea what was going on. Adrianos had been on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. The prisoner was on it, too. His name was Farid Atvar, and he was one of those fucking terrorist assholes, one of the few who were on both the top ten and the special list for terrorists.

The day he had learned that, Julio, who was not unpatriotic, had been ready to go in there and fucking put Farid’s lights out permanently, and to hell with the money. He had no patience for these head cases, these so-called religious men who blew up buildings and shit like that in the name of God.

That was bullshit, anyway, Julio thought. Who the hell would be dumb enough to worship a god that wanted you to do senseless crap like that? You didn’t do shit like that because of God. Julio figured this kind of guy must embarrass the hell out Arabs who really did believe in Allah, the way some of those preachers on television embarrassed Christians.

Julio never would believe anybody bombed anything on account of God. No. You blew things up because you were a powerless little fuck who found another bunch of dickless wonders and let lunatics who hid themselves half a world away talk the group of you into being suicide attackers. You let them do it because they were good at mind games, and they knew exactly what you thought of yourself-that you and your useless life weren’t worth the paper you used to wipe your ass. Well, they got that part right, at least.