Haven 1: How to Save a Life (35 page)

“Henderson’s coming to question me. He’s going to take me in.”

“You were here with me when Vargas found Seth.”

“Yeah, but I’m guessing the physical evidence will be pretty damning.”

“Is it Henderson setting you up? Or could it be Prescott?”

“Could be either. Or both. Henderson would be covering for himself and getting back at me. Prescott…he’d be trying to get me out of the way.”

“To get to me.” Kevin spun around, grabbed his laptop off the table, and headed for the door.

Walter stopped him, the doorknob in Kevin’s grip. “Where are you going?”

“I’m not letting anyone pin this on you, and I’m not waiting here like a sitting duck. I’m going to figure out where Prescott is hiding.”

“You are going somewhere safe with Tucker as soon as he gets here.”

“You want me to just wait? For what? Your trial? Your sentencing?”

“I’ll tell IA everything we’ve found about the connection between Henderson and Prescott.”

“And what if Henderson doesn’t let you get that far? He has to have a plan to shut you up.”

“He doesn’t know I suspect him.”

“We need to keep looking for Dylan and the others.” Kevin clasped Walter’s hand. “Come with me. We’ll figure this out together.”

“I have to tell the truth.”

They stared each other down. Apparently Kevin didn’t think he had a chance of convincing Walter to leave with him. He turned and went for the door again.

“Damn it.” Walter pulled him to a stop before Kevin got the door open. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

Kevin fought his hold. “How can you give up?”

“I’m trusting the system.”

Kevin spun around and shoved Walter hard in the chest. “You’re giving up. You gave up when you left the force, you gave up when Gary died, and you’re giving up now.”

Walter couldn’t stop the anger rushing through him. He charged at Kevin. “How dare you?”

Kevin didn’t back down. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

They stood there in the narrow entryway, both breathing heavily, glaring at each other.

Charlie trotted up and sat beside them. He licked the side of the hand Walter had clenched at his side. If Walter got arrested, Charlie would once again be left alone to fend for himself.

Walter would also be leaving Kevin behind—with this fight between them and some asshole still coming after him. Even with Tucker watching his back, Walter couldn’t leave Kevin alone in this.

He unclenched his fists and stepped forward. “I’m not giving up on Dylan and the others. I’m not giving up on you.”

A loud, forceful knock came from the apartment door.

Kevin moved to Walter’s side. “Then let’s get out of here.”

Another knock. “Police. We have a warrant to search the premises.”

Walter hesitated, then nodded.

Kevin went to the kitchen and deposited his laptop in his bag. He grabbed their phones off the table and the towel with the dried blood. “Are they at the back entrance too?”

“Only one way to find out.” Walter picked up his keys from the hall table and headed for his bedroom. “Charlie, come.” The dog trotted after them.

In his closet Walter went straight for the bottom drawer of the storage unit and slid out the locked gun case. He opened his wall safe and retrieved the ring with the key to the case. He added it to the ring with the rest of his keys. An extra dog leash sat on the nightstand by his bed. He clipped the leash on Charlie. He wouldn’t leave him there for Henderson to find. Who knew what he was planning? Maybe Kevin was right and Henderson had no intention of taking Walter in unharmed. Maybe Charlie would get in his way in the process.

Walter slipped the gun case into a shoulder bag and made his way down the hall toward the rear of his apartment, Charlie at his side, Kevin right behind them. The knocking had grown louder. “Hurry,” he told Kevin.

Hopefully Henderson and his partner hadn’t bothered to check with the building’s security about the possibility of a separate entrance.

The back hallway was empty. They called the freight elevator with no trouble and took it to the first floor, then headed to the attached parking garage, not spotting a single cop until they neared Walter’s parking space. A uniformed officer stood guard behind the car.

Without a word, Walter and Kevin turned away and walked out onto the street.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Twenty minutes later they exited Happy Tail’s Doggy Boarding & Day Care, a knot forming in Walter’s gut. He’d hated watching the woman working the front desk lead Charlie into the back, his tail no longer spastically wagging like it had been when they’d first left the apartment.

Walter shifted the bag higher on his shoulder and kept walking along the sidewalk, the humid air making it hard to breathe. Or maybe it was more than the air.

He stopped and looked back at the building where they’d left Charlie.

“He’s gonna be fine,” Kevin said from beside him.

Then why did Walter still feel like the biggest ass? He started walking again.

“You told them he’d probably only be there overnight, and you gave them enough money for a week. They’re going to take good care of him.”

“Yeah.” More than one car in the bumper-to-bumper traffic jam beside them began honking their horns. “We’re never getting a cab at this hour.”

“What time is it?” Kevin checked his phone. “Come on. If we hurry, we can catch the bus.” He started jogging.

Walter caught up to him, and they kept moving in the direction of the nearest stop. They were on the bus and heading away from Walter’s neighborhood in no time.

Kevin pulled out his laptop and went back to looking over the search results from the paper’s archives. The old woman in the seat next to them halted her knitting and turned sideways to get a better look. Not at Walter, though. It was Kevin she stared at.

Walter nudged Kevin in the side. “Do you know her?”

Kevin glanced around him. “Great. I’ve seen her on the bus before.” He returned his attention to the laptop. “There are a lot of results here for H&H Holdings. Maybe we can still find something that’ll help.” He kept scanning.

The woman leaned across the aisle and said, “I told you…” She went back to her knitting and spoke in a sing-song voice that was more than a little creepy as her head tilted side to side with each word. “I told you… I told you… I told you…”

“You were right,” Walter said. “You attract the craziest people.”

Kevin rolled his eyes and refocused on the computer.

The woman kept on singing.

“What did she tell you?” Walter asked.

“I don’t remember.” Kevin shut the laptop’s lid. “Battery’s dead. We need to find someplace I can plug in and get a better Internet signal.”

Walter checked their location out the window beside Kevin. “Let’s get off at the next stop.”

Crazy Lady continued the singing. “I told you he was coming for you. I told you… I told you…”

Did she mean Prescott?

What the hell? It couldn’t hurt. Walter bent her way and asked, “Who did you see was coming for him?”

She stopped her knitting and smiled, her teeth nearly as gray as her eyes. She peeked around at the other passengers on the bus as if she was about to share the world’s biggest secret. “You. You were coming for him.” Her expression turned more sweet and knowing as she returned to the knitting. “Real.” She wrapped the yarn around a needle. “Powerful.” Another twist and pull of the yarn. “Love.”

Walter sank back in the seat. Kevin returned his stare, eyes wide, lips parted.

With that look, Walter knew…she might be crazy, but she was right.

He and Kevin needed to talk again. Soon. About what they were to each other, about where this was headed. As soon as they cleared his name, found the missing men, and stopped a psycho before he hurt anyone else.

* * * *

The hotel was not the kind of place where the average person would want to let the soles of his shoes touch the floor, let alone get a little shut-eye, but with access to the citywide Wi-Fi and the meager cash they had left in their wallets, it was a good choice to keep them off Henderson’s radar for now. At least Walter hoped so.

It was also someplace for them to regroup and for Kevin to finish his search of the newspaper’s archives. They had to find a way to locate Prescott or tie him to H&H Holdings. Then they could get Henderson to confess, to tell them where Prescott was hiding before it became too late for Dylan and the others.

Screams and the smack of a whip across flesh poured out of the too-loud speakers on an archaic computer sitting behind the hotel’s check-in window. The guy getting whipped in the video sounded like he was begging for release—and not the fun kind. The bald, tattooed man working the window remained glued to the computer until the screamer finally cut off. Either the video was over or Baldy needed to give another $29.95 for ten more minutes.

He gave Walter a smirk when he handed over the room key. “Got yourself a pretty one. Nice and clean too.”

Walter snatched the key from him. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Come on, man.” Kevin grabbed his arm and tugged. “I paid you for a full hour.”

That had Walter laughing. Who knew you could find humor in anything while on the run from the police.

The guy behind the desk was already back to searching for a new video, looking more bored than when they’d entered.

Walter climbed the stairs to their room with Kevin at his side. “Nice try, but I’m not sure he bought that.”

“I would, you know.”

“What?”

“Pay for you.”

That had Walter tripping up the next step.

“Watch it.” Kevin reached out to him. “Steps are tricky.” When Walter walked on steady feet again, Kevin added, “You’re getting awfully klutzy.”

“You’re a bad influence. Since I’ve met you, I’m cursing like a sailor, and now I’m tripping over everything.”

“And laughing more.”

Walter threw him a slight grin and said, “I can’t argue with that.”

Their rented room stank of sweat and mildew. A constant whistle seeped out of the air-conditioning unit that pushed out air just a touch cooler than the temperature outside.

Kevin deposited his bag on the only piece of furniture besides the bed. The scratched wooden desk teetered for a moment on unsteady legs. He plugged in his laptop and turned it on. “This will just take a minute to boot up.”

Walter added his bag to the desk and crossed the room to check out the window. Nothing much to see. A view of the brick building next door and the overflowing garbage bin in the alley. No fire escape or way for someone to climb into their room.

Below the window sat an old cast-iron radiator that probably wouldn’t do any better heating the room than the air-conditioning did cooling it.

Walter heard Kevin step up behind him. There was a long pause before he spoke.

“Walter, I saw that look in your eyes when the old lady on the bus said what she did. Just so you know, if you decide to push me away because of whatever warped reason you think it’s the right thing to do, I won’t go easily.”

Walter faced him.

Kevin had his arms folded over his chest, his face sporting a serious, determined scowl. “Just so we’re clear on that.”

Walter considered him, saw the truth in those brown eyes. “We’re clear.”

* * * *

The Protector leaned against the side of the van and waited. The continual honk of car horns around him suggested how much the heat was getting on everyone’s nerves.

Good thing he wouldn’t be waiting long. Cops had no patience. Henderson would make his move soon, and the Protector would make his.

The parking lot sat across the street from two hotels, both sporting rusted neon vacancy signs with more than half the letters no longer lit up. From the intent way Henderson had been watching the hotel on the right, that had to be the place. But the Protector needed to be certain. He couldn’t take a chance.

He didn’t like the idea of his boy inside that building. The place was dangerous, disgusting. The kind of hotel men came to for a quick fuck. Nowhere Kevin Price should lay his head.

Soon.

His boy would be where he belonged soon. He’d be clean and cared for. And loved.

Eventually the door of Henderson’s car opened, and the cop headed for the hotel he’d been keeping an eye on for the past fifteen minutes.

So predictable. And stupid. The way Henderson went about everything since they’d been kids. How had he even passed the entrance exam to get into the police academy? Surprising he’d been careful enough to get a good look at the hotel before he entered. Maybe the lengths to which he’d gone lately in order to keep his daddy happy had freaked him out.

Inside the hotel’s lobby, the stench of sweat and sex permeated the air. With each step, the Protector’s shoes momentarily stuck to the peeling linoleum floor. He waited off to the side of the front desk, near an old pay phone that no longer had a cord or a handset. A woman came down the stairs and sauntered across the lobby, straightening and counting several wadded-up bills. As soon as she spotted the Protector, she shoved the money inside her bra and hiked up her skirt an inch. She approached him in a strut that said she’d done this a lot in her life.

He waited until she got close, shook his head, and handed her fifty bucks. “Just stand here like you’re talking to me.”

“And I don’t have to get on my knees? You got it, baby.” The fifty joined the other money she’d tucked away. She pulled out a tube of red lipstick and applied a fresh coat to her swollen, smudged lips.

The Protector kept his gaze locked on that disturbing mouth as he listened to Henderson talking to the guy working the check-in window.

Henderson identified himself as a detective and asked for the room number of the two men who’d entered earlier, giving a description of each. He was taking a big risk flashing his badge like that. Or was he really there to make an arrest?

The Protector considered playing this out and seeing what Henderson had planned.

No. He wouldn’t take that chance. Besides, Henderson deserved to be punished for what he’d done to one of his boys.

The man working the desk gave in, and Henderson had a room number.