The Detachment (29 page)

“How long are you supposed to watch Kei?” I said.

“Horton told us probably a few days,” Ray said. “Until further notice. He paid for a week.”

“How long have you been out here?” I said.

“Horton called us four days ago. We flew in the next morning.”

That tracked with when we took out the team at the Hilton. Horton must have gotten paranoid—though obviously not without reason—and called on these guys just in case one of us learned about his daughter and decided to make a run at her.

“Did he mention any other travel?” I said. “Any other assignments?”

“No. He just asked us to keep our schedules open—to let him know if anything was going to tie us up in the next couple weeks so he could have first dibs.”

If that was true, it meant Horton was planning something else, or was at least planning for a contingency. But that was neither surprising, nor particularly useful.

“Nothing else?” I said.

“No.”

I decided to try for a long shot. “Nothing about schools?”

He looked genuinely puzzled by that. “Schools?”

I was disappointed, though not surprised. After all, it wasn’t likely Horton would have shared anything operational with these two beyond what was immediately necessary. But Kanezaki had said there was chatter about possible school attacks. And Treven and I had been speculating about the same thing.

Larison said, “Tell me how to get to Hort.”

“Get to him? I couldn’t get to him myself. But wait…wait. Maybe I can help you think of something. I mean, he lives in the Washington area, I think. I could call him, on a pretext, tell him—”

He was just blathering now. Scheherazade, without even a story to tell. “—that I need to meet with him in person, something like that. Flush him out for you.”

“I don’t think he knows anything,” I said to Larison. “There’s no real reason to think he would.”

Larison nodded. “I agree.”

Ray said, “Look, I’m really trying to help you. I really am.”

Larison said, “I believe you,” and shot him in the forehead. Ray’s head snapped back, then his body sagged and he slumped over against his partner.

“Maybe we’ll get something from the phones,” Treven said from up front.

“I doubt it,” I said.

Larison took Ray’s body by the collar and dragged it forward, away from the rear and side sliding doors. “If we grab Kei, it’ll all be academic,” he said. “But it’s nice that Hort keeps losing guys like this. At some point, he’s going to get short on volunteers.”

I hauled the other one forward and we covered them with a tarp. We could reveal them to Kei as circumstances warranted, but I wanted to have the option. No sense freaking her out without a reason.

I didn’t mind that the two of them were dead. If Larison hadn’t been so quick to do it, I would have taken care of it myself. They were certainly here to do the same to us. Besides, as Larison had observed, it was two fewer pieces on the opposition side of the board.

But I’d have to watch him with Kei. Dox had been right. It wasn’t just that he was professional to the point of ruthlessness. There was something beyond that, something that made me wonder if he took not just pride in his work, but also a little too much pleasure.

I
watched La Baig, in full daylight now, from the passenger-side peephole in the van. Larison had headed out around the corner to a small commercial parking lot on Harold Way, where he’d do some light stretches and calisthenics like someone warming up for a run or doing one of the WODs he and Dox seemed enamored of. I estimated we’d have at least a full minute from when Kei first appeared at the corner of Selma and La Baig to when she reached our position—enough time to alert Larison and for him to react. Treven was still at the wheel of the van, waiting for word from me. We had energy bars, canned coffee, and big mouth water bottles to piss in. The only thing left was to wait.

At a little past eight, I spotted someone heading toward us on the east side of the street. There had been several false alarms already—a jogger, a dog walker, two young women probably on their way to the bus and then to work—and I tried not to get excited. But as this one came closer and the sun slanted in on her face, I saw it was her. My heart kicked up a notch. “Here she comes,” I said, without taking my eye from the peephole.

“Got it,” Treven said. “Calling Larison now.” A moment later, I heard him say, “She’s on her way.”

Treven fired up the engine. I kept watching Kei. Her hair was tied back and she was wearing cut-off shorts and a white tee shirt under a navy fleece zip-up. A leather mailbag was slung over her left shoulder. A beautiful kid, even better in person than in the photos I’d seen. Leggy, curvy, with a long, confident stride. Someone who knew where she was going and how she would get there, and who wasn’t going to let anyone get in the way.

Well, she hadn’t counted on us. But with a little luck, we’d be no more than a bump in the road for her, immediately felt and quickly forgotten.

I watched her pass Harold Way. There was Larison, jogging down Harold, emerging right behind her.

“Go,” I said to Treven.

He put the van in reverse, cut the wheel right, and backed up all the way to the sidewalk on the other side of the street—essentially the middle part of a K-turn. Not too fast, not too sudden, just someone turning in reverse out of the motel parking lot to head south on La Baig. He stopped just as Larison reached Kei. Maybe she heard him coming; maybe some vestigial portion of her brain sensed the danger he radiated. Maybe both. Whatever it was, she started to turn. Too late.

Larison smacked her smartly on the side of the neck with the palm of his hand. Sometimes known as the “brachial stun,” the blow is intended to disrupt the brachial plexus network of nerve fibers, or, depending on the location of impact, the carotid sinus. Either way, the result can be temporary loss of coordination, unconsciousness, or even, if the blow is sufficiently severe and well placed, death.

The van stopped. Kei staggered and Larison clasped an arm around her. I moved from the peephole, threw open the rear doors, and caught Kei as Larison pushed her into me. We hauled her into the van and had the doors closed behind us two seconds after. Treven accelerated smoothly south and made a right on Sunset, so calm and courteous he even remembered to use the turning signal.

Kei hadn’t lost full consciousness, she was just dazed. We pulled the mailbag off her, secured her wrists behind her back with flex ties, and sat her up against the passenger-side wall. I knelt in front of her and quickly patted her down. Nothing. Whatever she was carrying, it must have been in the mailbag. Larison started going through it. He would disable her phone and confirm there were no tracking devices. Not likely there were, but it was possible Horton had implemented backup measures, hoping to protect her just in case.

I looked into her eyes. I could see she was coming back to herself. We didn’t need to do anything to resuscitate her.

After a moment, she blinked hard. She looked around the van, and then at me. “What the fuck?” she said. “Who are you? What is this?”

“It’s a kidnapping,” I said, using a word she would clearly understand and that would provide some immediate context amid her current confusion. “This isn’t a joke. It’s about your father. Colonel Horton. You understand?”

“My father…what did he do? What the fuck?”

“It doesn’t matter what he did. All you need to know is that he owes us something and we’re using you to get it. Do you understand?”

She looked from my face to Larison’s and back, and I could see how scared she suddenly was. She didn’t answer. I realized there was no need to let her see the bodies of the men her father had sent. She was frightened enough as it was.

“We’re going to take your picture now,” I said. “To show to your father.”

Larison handed me a copy of that day’s Los Angeles Times, which we’d scooped up from a driveway on the way to the motel that morning. I propped it on her lap. Larison moved in close and snapped a few shots with her phone. We’d send Horton the proof from his daughter’s own phone. That would increase his sense of how thoroughly we controlled her, and keep our phones clean.

I took the newspaper off her and tossed it aside. “We’re going to try to make this go smoothly. But there are two ways you could get hurt. One is, if your father doesn’t do what we want. Two is, if
you
don’t do what we want.”

She was breathing hard now and I knew she was fighting panic. Fighting it well. I respected her for it. And with the respect came a sudden and surprising dose of self-loathing.

I suppressed the feeling. I’d deal with the emotional fallout later. Like I always had before.

I looked in her eyes. “You’re worried that we’re letting you see our faces, is that it?”

She nodded. She was smart—smart enough to know that if a kidnapper lets you see his face, it means he’s not worried about you being a witness later. Meaning, probably, he’s not planning on letting you be alive later.

“It doesn’t matter if you see us,” I told her. “Your father is going to know exactly who we are. And he’ll explain to you when this is done why you can’t go to the police. So we’re not worried about you seeing our faces. Does that make sense?”

She nodded again.

“All right,” I said. “I get the feeling you’re smart. So you probably know about secondary crime scenes, and how you should never let someone take you to one, because once you’re at the secondary crime scene, the criminal can do anything he wants to you. And that’s true. But the thing is, you’re already at the secondary crime scene. We’re alone in this van, we have total control of the environment, and total control of you. If we wanted to hurt you, we’d be hurting you right now. But we’re not. And we want to keep it that way. Are you with me so far?”

“Yes,” she said, and I was glad she felt in control enough to trust herself to speak.

“In a little while,” I said, “we’re going to transfer you. First to another car, then to a hotel room. We’re going to keep your wrists tied and before the transfer we’re going to blindfold you, but we don’t want to make you any more uncomfortable than that. We don’t want to gag you, for example. I don’t know if you’ve ever been gagged, but I can tell you, it’s a horrible way to spend a few days. Much worse than you’d guess. Mimi, are we going to have to gag you?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Are you going to try to run away? Or fight us? Or in any way not do what we tell you to do?”

“No.”

“Look, for me, this is mostly just business.” I tipped my head toward Larison. “But for my associate here, it’s extremely personal. You don’t want to give him a reason, okay? Trust me, he’s looking for one.”

She looked past me at Larison, and I could tell from her expression that she believed. Believed utterly.

I let another moment go by, then said, “But I’m sure you’re going to be fine. Now, do you have any questions?”

She nodded. “Where are you taking me?”

“I can’t tell you that, other than to say it’s someplace where we can manage you, and where no one’s going to be able to find you until we let you go. Anything else?”

“What did my father do?”

“You’re going to have to ask him that. Anything else?”

“Yeah. Why do you keep asking me if I want to ask you anything, when you know you’re not going to answer?”

I smiled sadly, admiring how quickly she’d mastered herself, and liking the moxie she’d accessed even in the midst of shock and distress.

“You ask good questions,” I said. “I’m sorry I can’t answer them all. I can tell you this, though. We’re going to change cars a couple times. You and I are going to ride in the trunk in one of them. And it’s going to be at least a few hours before we’re someplace comfortable, someplace with a bathroom. If you need to go before then, we’re going to need to put you in an adult diaper. Can you make it?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’m trying to make this as easy on you as I can, Mimi. But yeah, you better believe that I’m serious.”

Kei declined the diaper, and I was relieved. Maybe it wasn’t worth much under the circumstances, but I really didn’t want to subject her to the indignity. This was going to be hard enough as it was.

We spent the next two hours driving under virtually every overpass on the 101, the 110, and the 10, and going in and out of various underground parking garages, too. I took the passenger seat; Larison stayed in back with Kei. When I was satisfied, I called Dox. “You ready?”

“Ready, partner.”

“All right. We’re on our way.”

We made a left off Venice Boulevard onto South Redondo. As we came to the stop sign on Bangor Street, I saw the Fusion, waiting to make a right—Dox. He pulled out ahead of us, and we followed him south toward the 10. As soon as we were under the overpass, Dox cut right and swerved to a stop on the sidewalk. The trunk popped open. Treven hit the hazard lights, cut right onto the sidewalk and then back onto the street, skidding to a stop so that the passenger side of the van was right alongside the open trunk of the Fusion. I jumped into the back and slid open the side door. Larison was already standing there with Kei, still wrist-tied and now blindfolded. The two of us lifted her easily into the trunk and I squirmed in beside her. Larison slammed the trunk shut and Dox peeled out back onto the road, accelerating to the end of the tunnel, then rapidly decelerating and emerging at a normal speed. Treven would be right behind him in the van, same timing, same formation as when we entered.