He shook his head. “That’s crazy. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’d never thought about it before. I didn’t have the context. The way you and the other two fed us on the barge. Handing out the food individually. Watching us eat. Collecting the waste. Why were you so careful to monitor who ate what?”
“We weren’t, we just, it was just—”
She pulled the Glock from under the table and pointed it at his face. “You better tell me what I already know. Or I will search that bag and send you back to Victorville for the rest of your fucking life.”
He looked at the muzzle of the gun, his eyes wide, and then to her face. “Okay,” he said, raising his hands, palms forward. “Okay. Kana gave us a vial and told us to put five drops in the other kids’ food when we were a day away from Llewellyn. Only theirs. Not yours. He said it would just make them sick.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask, and he wouldn’t have told me anyway.”
“What about the woman who died?”
“He said we had to do some adults, too. We did. But I’m telling you, we thought it would only make them sick.”
Five drops. A fatal dose for a child, probably. Probably borderline for an adult.
“Why the other children? Why not me?”
“I don’t fucking know. Think about it, why would Kana tell me something like that?”
No, she realized. That would have been too much to hope. Probably Tyler was telling the truth, at least about that much.
For the first time, she glanced down at the bench to her left, where he’d set the bag. It was unzipped, but she couldn’t see inside it. She reached over and moved one of the flaps. Inside was a large, plastic-wrapped brick of what must have been meth.
On top of it, a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t look in the bag. Come on, this is bullshit, we had a deal. I told you everything. I did. I don’t want to go back. Don’t fucking send me back. Like you said, I’ve got a wife and daughter. Please.”
“You’re not going back,” she said. “I’m leaving. You stay here after I’m gone.” She pulled on the helmet.
His shoulders sagged with relief. He nodded and smiled. “Okay. Good. I gotta say, you scared me there for a minute.”
She dropped the visor, pulled the revolver from the bag, and shot him in the heart.
He jerked back and his hands clapped over his chest. “Oh!” he groaned. “Oh, guhhhh . . .”
He tried to stand, then sat back heavily. He looked at her, his face contorted with pain and surprise. Then he slowly pitched forward, his hands still compressed against his chest. His face hit the picnic table. His body twitched once, and then he was still.
She looked at him for a moment, the dragon fiery inside her, then stood to go.
“They’re not going to miss you,” she said.
52—NOW
She tossed the revolver and the meth from a bridge into the Methow River just south of Winthrop. She’d been wearing her riding gloves the entire time and hadn’t touched anything. And any gunshot residue on the helmet or the leathers wouldn’t survive the long ride back to Seattle. Not that a little GSR on a cop’s clothes was so difficult to explain regardless. Anyway, her connection with Tyler was ancient history. She doubted even Rick would suspect she had anything to do with it. And Masnick would take their conversation to his grave—because he knew he’d be in that grave a lot faster if he didn’t. No, when the shooting victim was someone like Weed Tyler, the working theory was typically Drug Deal Gone Bad. Which, in its way, in this case wasn’t so far from the truth.
She didn’t want to go straight back to headquarters. Seeing Tyler, killing him, recounting the past, putting together some of the pieces . . . she had so much to think about. She needed air. She needed to move. To let her emotions wash through her so her mind could be clear.
Back at the loft, she changed out of the leathers, pulled on jeans and a fleece, and drove the Jeep to Alki Beach, where she walked north along the water. The air smelled clean, and the only sounds were the wind, the crunch of her boots on the gravel path, the waves lapping against the shore.