“Okay.”
“I want to know about a woman you were with the other night. She’s about this high.” V put his hand out flat at about five feet, nine inches tall. “Short dark hair. Had a leather jacket on. She helped you over to that dry-out tank—”
“Resource facility,” Rhage cut in with a glare. “And hey, pound me for getting some help. That takes courage. Good luck with your recovery.”
As Hollywood put out his toaster-oven-sized fist, the human put his open palm over the knuckles in confusion. And then when Rhage clapped the man on the shoulder, V had to catch Flash Gordon before he eggshelled onto the sidewalk.
“You know the woman I’m talking about?” V prompted. “You need her description again?”
“I, ah . . . yeah, I know her.”
“Great. Do you know where we can find her? You got a cell phone number or an address for her?”
The man fell quiet, and paid a whole lot of attention to the end of the hand-rolled. Then he smoked some more. Meanwhile, the city kept going. A couple of cars—a sedan and a truck—went by, and then some twenty-ish men in tight jeans and narrow-shouldered jackets slicked across the intersection.
“Hello?” Rhage said.
V reached into his back pocket. “Here. This hundy’ll help. I get how times are tough.”
The human’s eyes flared as he focused on the folded bill.
“Just answer any of my questions and it’s yours.” V held the Benji between his fore-and middle fingers. “Telephone number. Address. Regular place of business. Anything you know would be a big help.”
The human cleared his throat. Then he dropped the hand-rolled and stamped it out with a Converse All Star that had seen better days. And nights.
Flash Gordon shook his head. “Nah. I ain’t telling you nothing. Rio, she’s good to me. She cares about me. She makes me take care of myself better even when I don’t feel like it. I can’t tell you nothing. Sorry.”
The human straightened from his sagging posture, and even though he was still shaking, like he expected to have a gun put to his head at any second, his lips were shut and staying that way.
“Okay.” V nodded. “I can respect that.”
To a point.
By passing the human’s nobility and free will, he entered the man’s mind, and took a brief stroll around. The guy was currently sober, but that was not going to last—and he was feeling bad about being determined to score, like he was letting that undercover buddy of his down. In the end, though, the man didn’t know anything specific about the woman, other than her street name, Rio, and the fact that she was supposedly high up in an organization run by a guy named Mozart.
Pulling out, V didn’t bother patching anything up. It was better not to mess with the man much, because God knew that brain was damaged enough from the drug use.
In response, the addict winced like he had a headache, and those eyes went back and forth again between V and Rhage, all other-shoe-drop, bracing for some kind of retribution.
Vishous tucked the hundy in the man’s pocket. “Keep the money. Go get a hot meal, it’s going to be a long night.”
Flash Gordon stammered some thanks, and then he shambled away, looking over his shoulder a couple of times before he disappeared around a corner into an alley.
“You’ve got a good heart under those daggers, Vishous.”
“Whatever,” V muttered as he started walking again. “Let’s keep looking. At least we have a street first name now. But if she’s undercover and she’s missing? She’s going to wake up dead.”
Rhage caught up with him easily enough. “Hey, that’s what Butch says all the time. It’s a funny saying.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Christ on a crutch, V thought to himself. Finding that prison camp was a real pain in his ass on so many levels, true?
Hello?”
When Rio’s third call to her direct report, Leon Roberts, was finally answered, she had a split second of relief. Except then the man who’d picked up repeated the greeting—and she knew it wasn’t Leon.
“Hello . . . ?”
Without conscious thought, she stomped on the brakes. The SUV’s knobby tires immediately grabbed on to the pavement and brought her to a screeching halt in the middle of the narrow strip of country asphalt. As a surge of fear gripped her, her peripheral vision sharpened, the pine trees on either shoulder coming into almost painful clarity in the glow of the headlights.
Roberts was never without his cell phone. And she’d called him so many times over the last three years, she’d know his number and his voice anywhere.
“I can hear you breathing,” the man on the other end said. “I know you haven’t hung up.”
No, she hadn’t. But where was Roberts?
“And I think . . . I think I know who this is. Even though this number is not in Leon’s contacts.”
Rio covered her mouth with her free hand. Oh, God, she knew this voice. She knew who this was.
Tears speared into her eyes and she blinked quick.
“If I’m right about who you are,” the man continued, “you need to listen carefully. Do not . . . don’t come home. Wherever you are, if it’s safe, stay put. It’s not good here . . . at home. Do you understand what I’m telling you? I think I know who you are, and that means you know what I’m telling you and why I’m telling it to you like this.”
Drawing the cell phone away from her ear, Rio stared at the time count as the seconds moved quickly.
Then she snapped the thing back in place. Lowering her voice to disguise it, she said, “Detective José de la Cruz.”
There was a brief pause. “Yes. And I think you can guess why I’m answering this phone.”
All at once, she was back downtown, racing to meet Luke for the first time, accepting a call on her own cell phone. Clear as a bell, she heard Roberts’s voice in her ear, telling her her identity had been compromised. And there had been something else when she’d been busy talking over him. He’d told her he’d sent her something. Hadn’t he?