Mission Canyon (33 page)

Adam, get out of there.

I heard the keys coming back.

I rushed to the door. The only thing to do now was to get out ahead of him. I zipped into the hall and didn’t look back.

Len’s voice. ‘‘Hey. Hey, you—’’

I kept going through the security door into the lobby. Behind me the keys rang like wind chimes. I hustled outside and ran toward my car. Squealing out of the parking lot, I checked the rearview mirror and saw the guard writing down my license plate number.

Screw it. I was in all the way now.

I had to get to Kenny’s house. Kenny was in bed with i-heist, and if Adam confronted him, he was going to get hurt. Badly. I sped through Goleta, onto the freeway, and toward the elegant houses of Kenny’s foothills neighborhood. After twenty minutes, my hands tightened on the wheel. I braked around the switchback. Mistryss was golden in the sunset, with the mountains rising beyond.

Adam’s truck was gone.

I slowed, about to turn into the drive. But the Mistryss Cam system alerted Kenny that he had visitors. It showed up on his screen at the office—what about other screens? Perhaps on a laptop he kept elsewhere? I didn’t want him to know I was here. I idled on the road. And lookie there, the garage door was up, and the Porsche was gone.

In all the way. Why not do a water ballet with fountains and an orchestra?

I turned the Explorer around and drove back downhill until I found a turnout, and a footpath that ran up the ravine behind Kenny’s house. I parked and jogged up the path toward Mistryss. After a while I angled up the side of the ravine, climbing a slope so steep I had to lean forward against the hillside, holding on to handfuls of tall grass to pull myself up. I was panting when I got to the top. I crouched behind a tree near the lip of the hill and peered across Kenny’s lawn.

I saw no motion in the house, just lights on in the kitchen. I jogged across the lawn, past the pool, to the kitchen door. It was unlocked.

Considering the extent of Kenny’s security system, I thought he had either run out on a quick errand or an emergency. Otherwise he wouldn’t have left the house unlocked. If it was an errand, he’d be back soon.

I crept into the kitchen, grabbing a dish towel off the counter, and headed on down the hall until I found Kenny’s study. I draped the dish towel over the Webcam. Sliding the blinds shut, I sat down and turned to his computer.

Search. Segue
.

Two items. I tried the first and the computer connected to an auction site. I felt as if a bug were crawling up my spine.

This wasn’t an ordinary auction site. It was a morbid corner of the Net, specializing in the souvenirs of death. Bids, time left in the auction . . . it had all the earmarks of a legitimate site, except that the items being bid on were mementos from celebrity deaths. The movie star found drowned in his pool. The football player who took the curve too fast. The R & B singer whose plane crashed in a hailstorm. It was macabre.

On-screen, a section called Bid Tracker automatically kept pace with Kenny’s bids. My stomach shrank when I read it.

These were more than celebrity mementos. They were death relics, pieces left from the violent accidents that killed the singer, and the quarterback, and the passengers and crew of the Alaska Airlines jet that plunged into the sea off Point Mugu, fifty miles down the coast.

Kenny was a ghoul.

The walls around me seemed to shiver. The air felt like cold breath on my neck. I thought of him kneeling next to Yvette Vasquez’s grave, pressing his fingers along her name in the stone. I thought of the way he looked at Jesse, and how his fingers worked when he stared at the wheelchair, and his certainty that disability was my turn-on. I thought of the way he grabbed me at the cemetery, and my skin wanted to shrivel. My head was thumping.

But what did all of this have to do with i-heist? The auction program had opened when I searched for Segue. Segue was a shell corporation, set up to run i-heist’s money through the high-tech markets . . . it was a laundering facility. And some of that money was running out again from Segue to this freakish online auction outfit.

Was i-heist compensating Kenny for his services by helping him buy crash relics? That was their hold on him. Willing? He was an eager partner.

I left the auction program. I searched again, for a name that should have been obvious from the start.
Jesse Blackburn.

The screen lit up with search hits. My mouth felt like cotton.

Jesse’s life spread out on the screen before me: his financial records, mortgage balance, credit report. His medical records from the hit-and-run. His chart from the ER, admission records at the Rehabilitation Institute, even a psychological evaluation.
Patient is 24-year-old male, T-10 incomplete para . . . survivor’s guilt and adjustment issues . . . possible clinical depression; coping mechanisms include sarcasm . . .

There was enough information to rob him or manipulate him for years to come.

Okay, in all the way. New search.
Evan Delaney.

I felt as brittle as cracked porcelain. Here were my own financial records. Here were credit card purchases and Web sites I visited from my home computer. I felt ill, clicking through the list. Here was an icon labeled
D Cam
. Delaney camera? I hit
View
.

I leaned toward the screen and gasped.

On the monitor were split-screen pictures of my house. Live. One feed looked out at my living room. Another, slightly warped, peered down on my bed. It had to be a fiber-optic camera hidden in the smoke detector in my bedroom. A third peered from above the medicine cabinet in my bathroom. Anger and understanding crawled through me. Kenny had set this up to watch me in the shower, and in bed.

I remembered his leering face.
Corporate America is Big Brother
. Telling me he’d like to see me when I was really turned on. How did he install these things? When?

I hunched, staring at the screen, clenching my jaw. ‘‘Oh, my God.’’

The bedroom camera was focused on my grandmother’s patchwork quilt. It was moving.

Writhing, in fact. Rhythmically. I leaned closer and heard sound. I heard the silky voice of Marvin Gaye— singing ‘‘Let’s Get It On.’’ I gaped at the humping quilt. Marvin Gaye, that was Jesse’s album. My head was pounding. He couldn’t; he wouldn’t. I squinted at the screen. Please, no, don’t let it be Harley, no—

The quilt quivered and someone gave a little shriek. The blanket flew backward. A woman reared up onto her haunches. She arched her back and her breasts swelled into view, warping before the tiny fiber-optic camera.

She shouted, ‘‘That’s it, baby. Buck me.’’

I said, ‘‘Tater, you bitch.’’

‘‘I’m a broncobuster. Give it to me, you great big stallion.’’

She wore a bandanna neckerchief and a pair of six-shooters. Nothing else. It was the Billy the Kid outfit. She raised an arm in the air like a rodeo cowboy hanging on for those eight seconds out of the chute.

‘‘Buck me, big man. Taylor loves your bucking!’’

A grunt. I moved my eyes from the spectacle of Taylor’s gyrating breasts to the man pinned beneath her, laboring for breath. He was roped and tied to the bedposts, a sight that gave me a bizarre flush of relief. It couldn’t be Jesse, because he would never submit to bondage, would never let his arms be tied. No, it had to be Ed Eugene, and oh, lord, why couldn’t I tear my eyes away from this?

‘‘Oh. Oh . . .’’ Taylor whooped, bouncing on the saddlehorn, so to speak. . . .

The man panted with effort. ‘‘Ride ’em, cowgirl. Dig in those spurs. Dale’s been a
baaad
horsey.’’

My jaw dropped. It was Special Agent Dale Van Heusen, FBI. The man who wouldn’t bend his knees for fear of wrecking the crease in his trousers.

Taylor rose up and pounded down again. ‘‘Red Rover, Red Rover, you are a naughty boy, let Taylor
come
over—’’

Red Rover . . . Dale—Agent Van Heusen—bucked beneath her. And then . . .

He whinnied.

I put my hand over my mouth. Then over my eyes. Then I grabbed the computer mouse and swirled it around the screen, pointing and clicking, hoping to do . . . what? My God, how could I stop this?

‘‘That’s it, baby. That’s it. Don’t make me draw my six-shooters.’’

And I heard a sound I recognized. It was a doorbell. My doorbell.

On-screen, Taylor jerked upright. ‘‘Shh.’’

But Dale was . . . in the moment.

‘‘Hitting . . . the finish line,’’ he wheezed. ‘‘Taylor, don’t stop—’’

She slammed a hand over his mouth. The doorbell rang again. A moment later I heard pounding on my front door.

A man called faintly, ‘‘Taylor? Open up.’’

Wham
, the quilt went sailing, and Taylor flew off of Van Heusen as though she’d been bucked right in the butt.

Dale said, ‘‘What’s wrong?’’

Taylor was running around the bedroom, grabbing her clothes. ‘‘It’s Ed Eugene.’’

‘‘Your husband?’’

The pounding continued at the front door. ‘‘Taylor, I know you’re in there.’’

Van Heusen said, ‘‘What’s he doing here?’’

‘‘Fixing to kill you, if I don’t get out there.’’ She unbuckled her holster and threw it in the corner.

The front door rattled. ‘‘Woman, get your ass out here.’’

Van Heusen pulled against his restraints. ‘‘Untie me.’’

‘‘Quiet.’’ She pulled on her shirt and wriggled into panties and her skirt.

‘‘Let me loose.’’

‘‘Will you hush? If he finds you, he’ll go off.’’

Van Heusen said, ‘‘Oh, God, get my gun out of your holster. It’s loaded—’’

Taylor exhaled, a sound of disgust, and knelt on the bed.

Ed Eugene was roaring. ‘‘Taylor!’’

She dashed from the room, slamming the bedroom door behind her. I heard Ed Eugene shouting at her. I had to get over there before he killed Van Heusen. I saw the look in the FBI agent’s eyes: desperation. Taylor had left him tied to the bed, with a horse bit jammed in his mouth.

The sound of an engine brought me back to Kenny’s house. I peeked out through the blinds and saw Mari Diamond’s white Jaguar parked in the driveway. She and Kenny and her dogs were climbing out.

Adam walked toward his front door, keys in hand. He racked his brain. Kenny Rudenski wasn’t home—where else could the bastard be? Inside, the phone started ringing. He rattled the keys into the lock, went in. The answering machine picked up.

A woman’s voice came on. ‘‘Dr. Sandoval, we’ve never spoken, but I know you’ve had a truckload of shit dumped on you. I want to tell you it’s gotten too heavy, and—’’

He grabbed the phone. ‘‘Who is this?’’

‘‘Never mind. I’m calling to say I’m done with this game.’’

‘‘Is this’’—the name, her name—‘‘Cherry Lopez?’’

‘‘It doesn’t matter. The autopsy photos were too much. I’m out.’’

‘‘You’re working with Brand, aren’t you? I know it.’’

‘‘Not anymore. Not since he ripped us off. That’s why I’m calling you. To say he can have whatever’s coming to him. He is one sick fuck.’’

‘‘Where is he? Tell me where he is.’’

‘‘You want to have a crack at him? Do tell.’’ A humorless laugh. ‘‘What’s it worth to you?’’

What was it worth to him? To find Isaac’s killer? It was worth everything.

He gripped the phone. ‘‘Tell me what you want. Tell me what I have to do.’’

I was in Kenny’s kitchen when I heard them open the front door.

‘‘. . . getting out of hand. I’m worn out,’’ Mari said, her voice moving across the atrium toward the living room.

Kenny said, ‘‘Won’t be long now. Want a drink?’’

I darted out the kitchen door and ran across the lawn, past the pool. At the lip of the gorge I jumped, ready to slide down the slope. The trees and boulders looked ghostly, as if they were shifting in the twilight.

And one of them spoke. ‘‘Mind the rocks. It’s treacherous out here.’’

Electricity seemed to crack through me. I landed crooked and tripped, going down on my knees. I scrambled to my feet, swearing, because that was all I could do to keep myself from screaming.

Tim North was standing half-shadowed behind a tree, holding a tiny pair of night-vision binoculars. For God’s sake, was there any moment of my life when people weren’t watching me? If I ever got the chance to sit down and think about how bizarre this evening was, I would probably blow a lobe out my ears, but at the moment I had to stop Dale Van Heusen from being turned into patchwork samples by a jealous husband.

‘‘What are you doing here?’’ I said.

‘‘Taking in the show.’’

‘‘I have to go,’’ I said. My skin was still prickling.

He leaned against the tree. ‘‘Do you recall what I told you about self-defense?’’

It began with the awareness of the threat against you. . . . ‘‘What about it?’’

He pointed toward the house. ‘‘There’s a Doberman behind you, and I think it’s on your scent.’’

I looked and saw, rushing across the lawn, fur and teeth and sleek, bunched muscle. I sprang past Tim down the slope, sliding and stumbling. I heard growling. Panting, too—but that was me, arms flailing, legs spiking into the hillside, flinging up pebbles and dust, fighting for balance.

Where was Tim? No sound, nothing—had the dog ripped his throat right out?

I didn’t even pause, because the barking was much louder now. I jolted down the hill and onto the trail. The dog flailed behind me. I heard it coming, heard the slobber and snarl. I accelerated, saw the Explorer ahead. The dog lunged for my leg. I felt it bite into my jeans and I stumbled, hands hitting the dirt. I felt hot breath, saliva, wetness on my leg. I fought to break free. My jeans and leg jerked in the dog’s mouth.