The bomb under the sedan erupted and painted the world in jagged streaks of hot white. A fist of concussive force slammed into my back and threw me to the pavement while metal screamed louder than thunder. The sound was a physical force, penetrating flesh and bone, reverberating in my ears and blotting out the power to think. I lay there, stunned, my shirt torn and my left arm scraped bloody on the pavement.
A shower of sparks and ash drifted down in a lazy, silent rain, kissing the scorched earth.
I wasn’t sure how long it took before I was able to move again. My hearing slowly swam back. The thrum-thrum-thrum of the endlessly echoing blast faded, replaced by car horns and distant sirens.
My phone buzzed in my hand. Private number. Had to be Grimm, calling back. I didn’t pick up. Let him wonder if I was dead or alive.
I damn well knew which category he’d fall under, once I got my hands on him.
*
First things first. Damage control.
I limped off down an alley, waving off a couple of good Samaritans and putting some distance between me and the pile of twisted, smoking debris that used to be my ride. I made two phone calls. The first call was to Jennifer; I needed a pickup, fast. I also needed someone to hop onto the police and paramedic radio bands. I was pretty sure I’d bailed in a clear spot, that no bystanders had gone up in the blast, but I wanted to know for sure. My second call was to Pixie. I gave her a five-second recap.
“So you need the Avis rental database scrubbed,” she said. “Got it. Why would you rent a car under your own name, anyway? I mean, your own fake name.”
“Building credit. I’m trying to give ‘Paul Emerson’ a credible paper trail in case anyone ever pokes into his life, which entails buying and renting a lot of stuff as him. Which works great, until someone starts blowing up the aforementioned stuff. I don’t think the standard insurance covers ‘acts of mad bomber.’”
“I’m on it. Pix out.”
A ragtop sedan with battered, Bondo-patched doors rumbled along the street. A couple of Calles bangers were up front and I dove in the back, stretching out along the vinyl bench seat. Partly to keep my face out of sight, just in case the first cops on the scene were working faster than usual, but mostly because I really, really needed to lie down for a minute.
Once the adrenaline ebbed away, leaving a jittery, empty ache in my veins, I was able to do a self-assessment. Wriggling toes, bending joints, checking for damage. I knew a guy who had been shot in a botched smash-and-grab once and didn’t know it until half an hour later; he tried to scratch a nagging itch and chipped a fingernail on the slug in his back.
I’d gotten off easy by comparison. The scrapes along my left forearm were ugly to look at and stung like I’d dunked my arm in scalding water, but I’d only sacrificed a little skin. My knee twinged when I bent it, but I could walk that off. The injury to my pride would take longer to heal.
I still thought I’d made the right move at Winter, refusing to duel with this chump. My mistake had been thinking he’d slink off with his tail between his legs and that’d be the end of it. Whatever his malfunction was, he was bound and determined to come at me, and he’d keep coming until I shut him down for good.
I told the Calles to run me over to East Harmon Avenue. Winter wasn’t far away—and neither was the parking garage where I’d left my rental on the night of the party. I walked in on foot, past the automated ticket box and glossy yellow swing-arm, and into the gallery of silent cars.
Jennifer met me there, and Caitlin wasn’t far behind. Cait pulled me close. Her eyes narrowed, suddenly venomous, staring at my shredded and rust-spotted sleeve.
“He dies,” she said.
I crouched in an empty parking spot, the concrete spattered with dried oil stains. From there, I looked to the rafters and the bare, industrial girders that laced the boxy garage like steel bones.
“That’s a given,” I said. “So, this is where I parked the night of the party. I didn’t notice the rattling sound under the car until the next morning, so I think this is where he planted the bomb. Do you see any security cameras?”
They joined me in the search and came up empty. I had parked in a blind spot.
“He came to the party late,” I said. “Good chance he stopped here first. Must have been watching me for a while, so he knew what car to look for. If he had a few minutes, uninterrupted, it’d be easy enough to slap something crude to the undercarriage.”
Caitlin tapped her chin with a fingertip, following the timeline. “So you think he rigged your vehicle, then came and challenged you to a duel? Why?”
“Fail-safe, maybe?” Jennifer said. “We don’t know if the bomb was triggered remotely or if it was on a timer. Could be he set it on a long timer, figuring that if you beat him at the party, he’d get ya from beyond the grave. So what do you know about this weirdo, anyway?”
“Very little,” Caitlin replied. “I put out some discreet feelers after the party, but no court seems willing to claim him. Not surprising. The one thing we know for certain is that he’s a cambion, and my court is one of the few that doesn’t consider half-bloods a step above literal vermin.”
We walked back to the garage entrance together. I spotted the gray nozzle of a camera pointed square at the gate.
“I know that he’s got some very unlucky timing,” I said.
Jen glanced my way. “How do you figure?”
“Because with Elmer Donaghy in Paris and the Network’s plans on hold, the dumb bastard just made himself my one and only dance partner. He’s earned my undivided attention.” I gestured to the camera. “And if he did plant the bomb during the party, there’s a good chance somebody caught him coming and going. Let’s find the manager and ask.”
The on-site manager was a bloated slug in a beer-stained tank top and jeans, squeezed into a tiny office behind a lopsided and broken-legged desk. A small bank of monitors showed grainy, flickering views of the garage entrances and exits.
“We need to see last night’s surveillance footage,” I told him.
He looked at me like I’d come in off the street and asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage. “Who’s ‘we’? You ain’t with the company.”
I was deciding whether I was going to play nice or start bouncing him off the walls to relieve my pent-up irritation, when Jennifer caught the look in my eyes. She gently nudged me aside and stepped up to the desk.
“Let me, sugar.” She looked at the manager and took out her wallet—white leather, with western fringe—then peeled off a couple of hundreds. She slapped the cash down on the desk. Her side, just out of his reach.
“What’s this?” he said.
“That’s what we’re payin’ you for access to that security-cam footage. Two hundred dollars, nonnegotiable. Now, you can take the money and have yourself a good time tonight. Or”—she pulled back her utility jacket and showed him her pistol, snug in a calfskin holster—“I can introduce the butt of this roscoe to your skull a half dozen times, and you can spend that money on stitches down at the ER when you wake up. Either way, you’re taking the money, and we’re getting that footage. Do we have a deal?”
He didn’t take long to think about it.
“Yeah, deal.” He paused. “Uh, the—the first choice, the good one, not the other one.”
“Good thinkin’,” Jennifer said.
*
I wasn’t sure if Grimm was legitimately crazy or not, and that bothered me. He’d shown up with a bevy of made-up titles and a ridiculous legend to go with it, along with his pointless vendetta. Did he actually believe any of it? Was it all a smoke screen? And why did he want me dead, anyway? There’s no opponent more dangerous than one you can’t predict, and as it stood, Grimm was the deadliest kind of wild card. I needed to find out who he really was, what made him tick, where his lines were.