Touching Silver (5 page)

Olivia stepped forward. “When he told me you planned to leave for Argentina, I decided it wasn’t a meeting I could miss.”

“Have you even slept?” Isaac said. “Because this is the decision of an exhausted man, not one who’s thinking clearly.”

“Have
you
slept?”

“I’m not the one hopping a plane across the world on a whim.”

“It’s not a whim. If Gabriel is using the Silver Maiden to send those girls…” Nathan glanced at Olivia and frowned.

“To send those girls where?” she prompted. “Is he sending them to South America?”

“No.” Nathan rubbed the back of his neck. “Will you excuse us for a moment? I think Isaac and I should talk privately.”

Olivia crossed her arms over her chest. “This decision affects my case. I want to hear what you have to say.”

No, you don’t
, Isaac wanted to say. She didn’t want to hear some magical coin was making girls disappear from their normal lives, and further, that it was very likely they were now bouncing through time like Bill and Ted. And she most definitely didn’t want to hear Remy was a time traveling refugee, because then he looked less like an ally and more like the ringleader of a three-man circus.

His hands balled into fists at his sides. Olivia was his sole back-up in keeping Nathan and Remy from going anywhere either. They were a team now, whether he’d wanted it at the start or not. The last thing he needed to do was fuck up their newfound camaraderie.

He turned to Olivia. “Can you get Remy in here?” Maybe Remy would be less likely to make a scene if…he couldn’t even finish the thought. Remy couldn’t care less who backed her into a corner. “Tell her we need to talk some more.”

Olivia looked from Isaac to Nathan, then nodded and turned on her heel. Isaac couldn’t help but watch her walk away. Her coat was short enough to show just how well her pants fit her perfect ass.

Nathan came up to stand beside him, watching as the door shut behind her. “She’s cute.”

“She’s not the topic on the table,” Isaac countered. “And she doesn’t know what the fuck the Silver Maiden is other than a stupid coin, so watch what you’re saying in front of her.”

“She could be in even more danger if you don’t tell her.”

“And look like I’m flying over, under and through the cuckoo’s nest? I don’t think so.” He folded his arms over his chest and stood directly in front of the door. “You can’t seriously think I’m going to let you go, can you?”

“Isaac, you’re just experiencing separation anxiety. It’s perfectly normal.” Nathan smiled, but Isaac knew what he was doing and refused to be pulled into the friendly repartee. “You’re not going to stop us and I’m not going to waste time trying to convince you it’s a good idea. But it
is
a good idea and you’re wrong.”

“Who’s going to talk to Stacy if you go? You’re the only one who’s been able to get her to open up.”

Nathan’s lips thinned. “A professional, hopefully. And we’re not setting up a summer home down there. We’ll be back soon.”

“Soon is all it takes for Gabriel to get away. You fucking know this!”

“Then don’t
let
him get away. Even if you arrest him today, lock him up, and throw away the key, we are still not going to get those girls back unless we figure out what he’s doing with that damned coin.”

The way Nathan spoke made it sound like Isaac had been playing tiddlywinks for the past decade instead of trying to get the goods on one of LA’s worst gang lords. He opened his mouth to argue, yet again, that he was trying to do his job when a sharp, female cry echoed from outside.

It only took a single glance at the flare of panic in Nathan’s eyes to know he’d heard it too.

Remy.

Both men bolted for the door at the same time. Isaac yanked it open to race out onto the balcony. The sound of scuffling was louder out here, and his head swiveled toward the parking lot, his hand already going to his gun. It stopped at the sight at the bottom of the stairs.

Olivia defended herself against two men, one of whom clearly had a broken nose. Blood soaked his white and blue T-shirt and he attacked with one hand while holding a bandana over his bleeding nose with the other. The other man didn’t have a mark on him, but he did have a knife clutched in a tight fist and the butt of a gun peeking out from his waistband.

Isaac drew his gun, ready to shout, but before he uttered a sound Nathan pushed him out of the way and sprinted down the stairs. He ducked the blade and raced for the parking lot where Remy was chasing after a third man. As near as Isaac could tell, she was unarmed, but she still had the thug on the run, and she didn’t look like she intended to let him go. Nathan closed the distance between them, shouting Remy’s name, but she didn’t slow.

A loud crack split the air. They might use celery to simulate the sound of bones crunching in the movies, but Isaac had heard and been responsible for enough of the real live stuff to know when someone’s wrist had been snapped. He looked back in time to see Olivia slamming the iron gate leading to the pool against the arm of her bladed attacker, and for the man’s loose sleeve to suddenly tear away to expose a distinctive tattoo.

Gabriel’s mark.
Fuck.

Isaac charged down the stairs, tackling the bloodied man before he could get to Olivia again. The pair rolled into a heap against the sandpaper-textured walls, and only Isaac’s thick jacket protected him from losing the skin off his shoulder. The man twisted away, his blood-slicked fingers making it difficult for Isaac to maintain his grip.

He shifted tactics and kicked at the man’s head. The bastard couldn’t fight if he wasn’t conscious.

By the time Isaac got back to his feet, Olivia’s guy was facedown on the ground, her heel between his shoulder blades, her gun aimed at the back of his head. Her eyes were fierce and her mouth tight, but other than a loose strand of hair slipping across her cheek, she looked immaculate.

“You have the right to remain silent.” She reached for her cuffs. She didn’t add
asshole
, but she didn’t need to. The gun remained steady on the back of his head as she dropped to one knee and forced his arms behind his back. He screamed as the cuff closed around his broken wrist, but Olivia appeared unmoved by his pain. She straightened and pulled him to his feet. “They went right for Remy.”

Isaac turned his head in the direction Remy and Nathan had taken off. There was no sign of either of them. “Gabriel’s men haven’t bothered them since last summer. Why would they be starting now?”

“Let’s ask our friend here.” She holstered her weapon and grabbed him by his ponytail. “Well?” She yanked his head back. “Why did Gabriel send you?”

“I don’t have to say nothing. I know my rights.”

He barely got the words out of his mouth before Olivia yanked on the cuffs and jarred his broken wrist. She spoke over his yelp of pain.

“I suggest you waive those rights. Why are you here?”

He gasped for breath. “Just told to stop them.”

“From?”

Isaac prepared himself for another scream, but the man—who didn’t look much older than eighteen—quickly said, “Going to the airport.”

He frowned. How could Gabriel know Nathan’s travel plans? Isaac had only found out about it half an hour earlier. That Gabriel knew about the trip meant two things.

One. Either Nathan’s or Isaac’s phone was bugged.

Two. Gabriel didn’t want Nathan to go.

All of a sudden this trip to South America sounded like the best idea in the world.

“We need to get a squad out here to take these guys in. You mind calling it in?”

Olivia nodded. “Sure, I’ve got things under control. You should go make sure it was only the three of them and nobody got the drop on Remy and Pierce.” She pushed the kid against the wall. “Don’t move or I’ll get you for resisting arrest too.”

Isaac took off, but he’d only rounded the corner leading to the parking lot when he was pulled up short by the sight of Nathan and Remy. The man they’d been chasing was nowhere to be seen, but Remy’s cheeks were flushed, her body still poised for flight.

“Don’t start,” she warned. “I know he chumped me. I don’t need you reminding me of the fact.”

Isaac held up his hands in surrender. From the look on her face, Remy’d skipped her usual, more fun Lara Croft mode and gone straight into Kill Bill’s Bride. “I wasn’t going to. I was going to say, we better get the two of you to the airport. Pronto.”

“What prompted this stunning change of heart?” Nathan wasn’t looking at Isaac as he spoke. His eyes were darting around the narrow lot, as though he expected another attacker to jump out at them without warning.

“This is all courtesy of Gabriel. The guy Olivia’s got cuffed gave it up. Someone’s itching for you to stay very far from Argentina.”

“Oh, Christ,” Nathan muttered. He looked over Isaac’s shoulder and his eyes widened. “My car! What the fuck did they do to my car?”

When Nathan bolted past him, Isaac turned and followed the same path Nathan’s gaze had just taken. All four tires of the Mustang had been slashed, leaving the vintage vehicle to sit even closer to the ground than it already had. “Looks like I’m driving.”

Olivia’s fingers were still trembling from the adrenalin rush when she reached the Children of the Lamb Church on Western. She hadn’t been on patrol in years and working cold cases rarely brought her in contact with armed thugs. Her blood thrummed in her ears, her pulse hammered and she wanted to go for a long run.

When Isaac had left her to take Nathan and Remy to the airport, she had been mildly annoyed. Not at being left to deal with their attackers—she had everything under control. In fact, Gabriel’s stunt had been a jolt of hope she might actually get a break in her case. Later, she would interrogate the two of them and see what interesting morsels of information she could gather. But she didn’t want Nathan to leave. Not yet. He’d given her the first glimpse of what Stacy could offer. She was convinced there was even more there, just waiting to picked from the girl’s memories.

Almost as annoying as losing her best chance at getting to Stacy was having her breakfast with Isaac interrupted. A part of her liked something about him. He was full of himself, though according to his record he pretty much had a right to be. But his fierce loyalty to his ex-partner was commendable. If she tossed in the fact that he wasn’t hard on the eyes, and he invited her to another breakfast at Scramblers, she probably wouldn’t turn him down. She wouldn’t tell him that, though. Forget the fact that his ego was big enough already. She wouldn’t risk looking a fool in case she’d read his interest wrong.

He’d instructed her to meet him at the station once she finished with Rico.
Instructed
. She had planned to suggest the same thing so she didn’t mind agreeing, but being ordered like she was some kind of cadet still chafed. They were a team now. Equals. She refused to let him bully her into submission like he probably did everybody else at the station. They were on the brink of something here. Nobody was going to ruin it for her, especially Isaac McGuire.

Because Gabriel was running scared now. Somehow, some way, they had spooked him. Why? An open hit with all the finesse of an amateur was a definite sign of fear. What did he want them to avoid finding? What was the Silver Maiden? What was the secret worth killing for? And how close were they to discovering it? She rolled that over in her mind as she pulled up in front of the church.

The white building hadn’t begun life as a church. It had been a house once. She used to drive by it every morning on her way to school and there would always be a fat hairy man in a grimy wifebeater, a newspaper in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, with two kids and three dogs playing at his feet. They weren’t quite a picture of domestic bliss. The man always looked like he was on a hair trigger and the dogs and kids all flinched if he lifted his hand. It made her wonder what happened to them when there weren’t any witnesses. But one morning they were gone and a sign welcoming the Children of the Lamb congregation had replaced the lawn chair.

Rico Vargas waited for her on the front porch, a cross the size of a soda can hanging from a thick gold chain around his neck. His face didn’t match his age. His eyes had seen too much of the world and he was old before his time.

“Detective Wright.” Rico reached for her hand as soon as she stepped onto the porch. “Would you like something to drink? A cup of coffee maybe?”

Olivia smiled. Rico always offered a cup of coffee, regardless of when they met. His elderly aunt had raised him—a woman who had gone blind and partially deaf by the time the boy turned five—and now he was trying to hammer together a veneer of respectability. Apparently, somewhere along the line, he’d picked up the notion that a good host
always
offered coffee.

“No, thank you. I’m good.”

“Come inside where it’s cool. We’re going to have choir practice in an hour…”

“It won’t take that long,” Olivia assured him. “I just have a few questions.”

“Then come into my office.”

Rico had converted a bedroom into a decent office, and she still remembered the morning he had given her the grand tour of the house-cum-church. The office had been the last stop, the crown jewel of the tour. He’d never had his own room before, and he’d been bouncing on the balls of his feet as he waited for her reaction. She understood that kind of delight. Her first place of her own had been a crappy studio apartment with a toilet that ran if she didn’t jiggle the handle exactly a dozen times and a view of an adult bookstore, but she’d invited her parents over for dinner her very first night in the place and finished the night floating high. She had never been so proud.

Olivia pulled seven glossy photos out of her bag and arranged them on Rico’s desk. “Six of these girls are missing. This one,” she tapped the picture of Stacy, “was recently found. I need to know what happened to the other six, Rico. I need to know if they’re still alive.”

He stared at the photos for a long time. When he looked up at her, his brown eyes were saucers. And frightened. “No, you don’t want to get involved with this.”

“It’s a little too late for the warning. I’ve been involved since these disappearances went into Cold Cases.”

“No, this isn’t good news.”

“Why isn’t it good news?”

“Look, these girls…they’re like his special obsession or something. I was never involved with picking them up, but I know where he kept them for awhile and sometimes I’d have to keep an eye on them.”

“He was keeping them? For what?” Horrible possibilities filled her mind.
Pornography, prostitution, white slavery, old-fashioned sadism
. “Did he hurt them?”

Rico shook his head. “It’s not what you’re thinking. And that’s what makes it so
weird
. Man, he treated those girls like they were princesses. I think a few of them were starting to like it. ‘Rico, I need this.’ Or ‘Rico, take me to the mall.’”

She nearly swallowed her tongue. “To the
mall
. He was allowing these girls to go to the mall?”

“Not all of them. Just one or two who seemed to be happy to be there. He never planned to hurt them. But I think they’re probably gone now.”

“Gone?”

“Look, I heard on the street that he was unloading all his real estate. The first thing on the market was his place in Twenty-Nine Palms. That’s where he was keeping all the girls. So either he moved them or…”

“Or he unloaded them, as well.”

“Right.”

“But why is he getting rid of all his real estate? That’s part of his cover.”

Rico shrugged. “I can’t speculate. I’ve been out of there for two years now and he was already a bit crazy when I left.”

Olivia frowned. Nothing made sense. What was Gabriel playing at? Everything she’d learned about him showed him to be damned
careful
. Isaac and others had been trying to bring him down for years and now she had a half-dozen fingers pointing in Gabriel’s direction.

“Crazy how?”

“Just crazy. Obsessed.”

“You keep using that word. What is he obsessed with?”

Rico shook his head and folded his arms. Every line of his body screamed he was done talking.

“Is it the Silver Maiden?” It was a shot in the dark, but something whispered in the back of her head that it wasn’t such a bad one. “Is the coin feeding his obsession?”

Rico narrowed his eyes. “How do you know about that?”

“Somebody mentioned it.”

Now he looked almost relieved. “I don’t know
what
to think of that shit. I mean, Gabriel was always so focused. Right on point. Except when that stupid coin was involved. One time I got a look at his books. He sends more money to Argentina than he keeps here in LA! He was always going on about how important it was to protect our own and whatnot. Real motivational speaker, except meanwhile he’s bleeding his banks for who knows what in South America.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I think he was looking for it.”

“It?”

“You know. The Silver Maiden. Are you even listening to me?”

She was, but she was also hearing Isaac’s voice, explaining why she had to trust Remy. Because she’d faced Gabriel down and walked away. All because she’d turned over something he wanted.

“Things have gotten so weird since this summer that sometimes I wonder if he
found
it.” Rico shook his head. “That coin is the Devil’s own work.”

“How can a coin be the devil’s work? It’s just a collector’s item, isn’t it?”

“Gabriel isn’t a good guy. When I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, I knew I needed to get away from Gabriel. But man, he
scares
me. And not because of the violence. He’s sick.”

Olivia frowned. “Do you mean he’s mentally ill?”

“I mean this Silver Maiden…it’s consuming him. It was consuming him two years ago. There’s probably nothing left now.”

And that scared her more than anything else.

She expected Isaac’s desk to be meticulous. Everything from the way he conducted business to the way his tie matched his socks suggested it. So the array of plastic and wire strewn across its surface took her by surprise. She settled in the seat opposite him.

“This is why people buy those rubber stress balls.” She gestured toward the mess. “Less collateral damage.”

He didn’t rise to her bait. Any amusement she might have had about his predicament vanished. “The bug was in
my
phone.”

Ouch
. A professional like Isaac would take that hard.

“Well, I hope you have another one of those stashed away somewhere.” She kept her tone light. He didn’t need recriminations. Something told her he was an expert at doing that to himself already.

With a sigh, he picked up one of the larger pieces and turned it over and over between his fingers. “I’m getting a clean one from one of the tech guys. He salvaged my SIM card so at least I’m not losing my contacts. I just can’t figure out how the hell Gabriel even did it. Or how long it’s been going on. Or if this is why he’s always been one step ahead of me.”

“Have you swept your apartment yet?”

He shook his head. “I’m waiting on the gear from tech so I can go home and do that. Just to be safe, though, I’m doing Nathan and Remy’s place too. No more chances of fucking things up.” The plastic clattered where he tossed it back onto his desk. He leaned backward in his chair, staring up at the ceiling. “It might be smart for you to have everything double-checked too. He heard Nathan telling me that he doesn’t think the girls are dead. He knows we’re on to him.”

“We’re on to him? What are we on to? Fill me in.”

The walls came slamming back up at her careful questions. The same walls went up every time she sensed there was something more for her to find out. It all came back to the Silver Maiden nobody really wanted to talk about.

“We know he’s got the girls somewhere. There’s no way he’d be running scared like this if he wasn’t trying desperately to cover something up.”

“Rico told me he’s seen the girls before. Gabriel treats them well.” Olivia leaned forward, her elbows resting on his desk. “So you’re one of the most powerful gang lords in the city. Why would you kidnap seven girls to treat them like princesses and keep them in a house in Twenty-Nine Palms?”

“Maybe he’s starting his own little harem. He already thinks he’s God. Maybe he wants to be David Koresh too.”

“You know, I wish I could take that off the table as a possibility. But I can’t, even though Rico didn’t seem to think he was hurting the girls. Right now I don’t think anything could surprise me about this case.” She fished her phone out of her pocket. She just needed something to do with her hands. “Do you want me to help you out with the sweep?”

For the first time since she’d walked in, Isaac brightened. “You’re not chasing around on other interviews today?”

“I have an appointment later tonight, but we should be done by then.” It wasn’t that she didn’t have anything better to do than help Isaac, but maybe if he trusted her a bit more, he would finally tell her about the Silver Maiden. “And we still haven’t really had a chance to exchange information.”

Isaac smiled as he stood up. She rose as well, all too aware of how he towered over her when she was seated. He was broad too. He filled out his suit very, very nicely.

“We’ll be able to grab some lunch afterward. How do you feel about ribs?”

“You know, I think a girl could gain ten pounds if she spent a week with you. What do you have planned for dinner? All you-can-eat-pasta?”

He held the door open for her, inviting her to exit first. “Trick is to make sure you work it all off. You can eat anything you want then.”

Olivia studied his face. Was he flirting with her or extolling the virtues of exercise? He might have been joking—she was beginning to appreciate his sense of humor—or he might have been making some sort of insinuation, or he might have been simply informing her of his daily regimen.

But his intentions didn’t matter.
The real question is: Do I want him to be flirting with me
?

The answer should have been no. But she’d had glimpses of Isaac when he felt truly comfortable with somebody. His relationship with Nathan was clearly very close and regardless of what he might say, it was obvious he even cared about Remy the way he might care for an incorrigible little sister or younger cousin. And she kind of liked what she saw.

He once again announced he would drive. She couldn’t have concentrated on navigating Los Angeles to find his apartment anyway. They kept their conversation to a minimum in the car. It would need to be swept too.

“I guess you saw them to the airport without further incident?” she asked, once they stood outside his apartment door.

“If you count having a front row seat to them making out not an incident.” He pushed the door open and stepped inside, immediately flipping on the light.

To say the apartment took her by surprise would be an understatement. The living room Olivia walked into was warm and inviting, walls painted a pale taupe, the curtains and plush couch a deep reddish-brown. An oriental rug covered the middle of the floor space, with a carved square coffee table separating the sofa from the oak entertainment center on the far wall. Plants thrived in strategic corners and, as she followed him in, she watched him head to a large aquarium tucked along the wall behind the door.