Zero Sum Game (22 page)

I punched the “send” button to dial back.

“Oh, I’m good, aren’t I? Tell me I’m good,” crowed Checker in my ear.

“Sort of slow,” I said, affecting nonchalance.

“Slow?
Slow?
Do you have any idea how much paperwork I had to forge here? This was
record-breaking.
I never do ‘slow’ unless there’s cuddling afterwards.”

“Are you my brother?” I asked.

“Dear Lord, I hope not, considering what a turn-on your knowledge of statistics is. But I might’ve pretended to be. We have very important parents, by the way. Everything go smooth?”

“So smooth. Infinite differentiability, in fact,” I assured him, maybe just to be a little funny.

He cackled. “I knew I liked you.”

I cleared my throat. “What about—they took my fingerprints and everything…”

“Disappearing as we speak.”

Was that even possible? “Wow. Uh, thanks,” I said. Checker, I decided, was a good person to know.

“Sure thing. You made it easy; having nothing in the system meant I had a window to work with. So, how does it feel to be a free woman?”

I took a deep breath, intending to say something about an arrest in the civilized world being kind of a letdown, but the truth was, it felt good not to be trapped in the station anymore. And Checker had made it so I didn’t have to hurt anyone this time around. The copy of Tresting who had taken up residence in my head was starting to keep track.

“How much do I owe you?” I asked, to cover the fact that I was having feelings.

“Oh, on the house,” he said. “I owed you one for saving Arthur anyway, and besides—”

“We were even already.”

“Maybe
he
was, but I’m kind of grateful you kept him kicking, too, so, no charge.”

“Oh.” I mulled over whether I was okay with that. I don’t like owing people any favors.

“Just don’t tell Arthur. He, uh, doesn’t like it when I do things like this.”

The mention of Tresting’s self-righteousness soured me. My conscience deciding to take on his persona was frustrating enough; I didn’t need the real-life version harping at me any more than he already had. “I don’t get it,” I complained. “I’ve seen him break more laws than I can count, and he gets all hung up on the littlest stuff.”

“Hey, he’s good people,” Checker said sharply.

“Inconsistent people,” I muttered.

“Cas Russell, you may impress me with your knowledge of Bayesian probability, but don’t insult Arthur to me, okay? Just don’t.”

Apparently I’d hit a nerve. Oh, brother. “Uh, okay.” When he didn’t say anything, I probed, “You still there?”

“Yeah.” I couldn’t read his tone.

Best get back to business. “Didn’t you need my help with something?” I’d help him with his favor as payment, I thought. Then we’d be even.

He sighed. “Arthur isn’t going to like that I’m asking you this, either.”

“Asking me what?”

“He needs backup.”

Oh, good. Backup I could handle. “Sure,” I said. “On what?” If Checker was inviting me back onto the Pithica case, that wasn’t even a favor—I would jump at the chance. Even if it meant working with Tresting again.

Checker hesitated, then said in a rush, “Polk’s tracker came back on.”

“It did? Where is she?”

“The signal’s here in Los Angeles.”

“Why would she have flown back h…” I trailed off. “You think they figured out we had a GPS on her. You think they found the tracker.”

“It doesn’t make any sense otherwise. Why would it go offline and then pop back up again? Here?”

“But that doesn’t make sense either! If they make it that obvious it’s a setup, why would they think we would be stupid enough to—”

Checker made a strangled sort of noise.

I groaned. “Tresting’s going in, isn’t he.”

“That would be a yes.”

“He thinks they’re waiting for him, and he’s going in anyway.”

“Hence the needing backup.”

“Okay. When and where?”

There was a short beat of silence, as if Checker had expected a different response, but he recovered quickly. “I’m texting you the details now, including the location and the tracker frequency. Satellite imagery was no help, unfortunately; it only shows some buildings in the middle of the desert. As for when…he’s going in tonight.”

I looked up at the stars. “Uh, it’s night already.”

“Yeah.”

“So, I’m in kind of a hurry here, huh.”

“He left a few hours ago,” said Checker. “I tried to stop him.”

His words had become heavy with worry. It made me feel strangely isolated—no one gave a damn if I decided to make a suicide run. I wouldn’t even be missed; I’d disappear into the fabric of the Los Angeles underground as if I’d never existed.

“I’d better get going, then,” I said, starting to walk faster. “Anything else I should know? Is anyone else with him?”

“I swear, I tried to get him to call in help. He got all idiotic nobility complex on me about not wanting to involve anyone else.”

That might have been why Tresting hadn’t phoned his other contacts, but I was pretty sure he’d had a different reason for not calling me. It made me perversely eager to save his bacon again. I wanted to rub it in his face. “Gotcha. Anything else?”

“Is it true?” Checker asked. “What Dawna Polk can do?”

I swallowed. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure it is.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment.

“Are you still there?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Hey, listen,” I said, trying not to let his concern for Arthur irritate me. “Stop worrying about it. I’m on my way.”

“Thank you. Really—thank you. I owe you big time. Anything you need, really, just say the word.”

Well, that might be a useful favor to call in someday. But first I’d have to make it through the night. After walking into a Pithica trap. Goddamn Tresting.

“And watch yourself, okay?” Checker added.

I blinked. I hadn’t expected him to be concerned for me, too. I doubted he would miss me if something happened, but still, it was…nice of him.

“Oh, don’t be stupid,” I said, a little too brusquely. “I’ll be fine.”

Chapter 22

I had
to move fast.

The location Checker had sent was out past Edwards Air Force Base, way out in the desert north of Mojave. Not much out there, I thought—nothing but rocks and dunes and endless sky. Good place for an ambush.

The car with my Ruger and grenades under it had probably been driven off by now. I’d grab Checker’s help to track it down later, if I lived that long. I was still near enough to the Chinatown apartment to swing by; all I had left there were the crap guns from the day before and a knife, but that was better than nothing. I armed myself in less than five minutes, grabbed a few protein bars and a light jacket from the meager tangle of clothes I had there, and headed northeast in a stolen sports car.

I called Rio from the road and hit a voicemail box. I gave him all the details, then hesitated, wondering if I should apologize for breaking my word to stay off the case. After all, I had told him I would keep my head down right before doing a spectacular job of exactly the opposite.

“I’ve got to go in,” I finally said to the recording. “I, uh—I hope that doesn’t interfere with any of your plans or anything.” I didn’t have a choice, though. Stupid Arthur Tresting had forced all of our hands.

I went well above the speed limit the whole way, but it was still almost three hours before the GPS in the sports car told me I was nearing the coordinates Checker had sent. The location was off any roads, but I circled around and barely made out the outlines of an unmarked half-paved track leading into the desert. I paused the car, switching off the headlights and letting my eyes adjust to the dimness.

Cell service had dropped out miles before. I was alone out here, driving into what was almost certainly an ambush. Shit. I might pack a whole lot more punch than Pithica was expecting, but if they sprung a trap before I saw it, I’d be just as dead as someone who didn’t know any math.

As long as I had an instant to react, however, I’d have the edge. And Tresting didn’t have a chance without me, I reminded myself. I took a deep breath, every sense alert, and nosed the car forward down the makeshift road.

The GPS said I was still a few miles away. The car crunched over the rocky ground, the empty night rolling by quietly to either side. Before long a handful of buildings rose ahead, a ghost town looming out of the desert: a couple of boarded-up businesses, a graffitied gas station, a string of warehouses that had probably encouraged the town to grow here in the first place. Darkness cloaked all the buildings, and they sat heavy with the stillness of the long-since abandoned.

I let the sports car roll to a stop and watched from a distance. Nothing moved. The moon lent its gray light to the emptiness, but only showed each hulking, shadowed building as darker and more vacant than the next. I sat for a moment, measuring out likely places for danger to come from, extrapolating probable threats. Snipers? Possible, though they didn’t have many vantage points here; the lines of sight danced through my senses and crossed at poor angles. Mines in the road, as the motorcycle gang had tried? A bomb that would obliterate the entire town, one already set to detonate, one I would never even see before it went off?

That was all more dramatic than Pithica’s preferred MO, though. Maybe they wouldn’t care how they took me out; after all, I lived off the grid anyway, and no one would miss me. But wouldn’t they want a better explanation for Arthur’s demise? How much would they care about disguising it?

I wasn’t keen to find out. My current objective was to find Tresting and leave. We could return with a much better plan than sneaking in haphazardly and separately in the dark.

I goosed the sports car forward, the tires crunching on gravelly asphalt. As I came to the outskirts of the town, a familiar shape rose out of the darkness and distinguished itself: Tresting’s truck.

I stopped the car and slid out, drawing the Smith & Wesson. I reached out my other hand to press against Tresting’s hood. The engine was cold. He’d been here for a while already.

A slight scuff in the dirt. I spun and dove to the side in a crouch, bringing up the Smith—

I recognized the silhouette and let my finger up off the trigger. “Tresting. Shit.”

He lowered his weapon at the same time I did. “Russell? What you doing here?”

“Backing you up.” I straightened, staying wary. “Checker called me in.”

He sucked in a breath. “Course he did.”

“What’s the situation?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the darkened buildings.

He turned back toward the town. “Ain’t rightly sure. Nothing here.”

My spine prickled. “What do you mean, nothing?”

“Been through the place three times,” Tresting said. “Was real leery of surprises the first time through, but…nothing.”

That didn’t make any sense. “What about the tracker?”

“Ain’t found it yet. Looks to be in the second warehouse there—” He nodded toward the hulking buildings. “—but the signal ain’t precise enough for me to pinpoint. Searched the place top to bottom, and can’t find anything.”

“Show me,” I said.

I let Tresting take point, trailing him to the warehouse. I kept my gun drawn, my senses wired, but the street stayed empty.

Tresting led the way inside, prying up a metal roll-up door with a loud screech of steel. I glanced around sharply, but our surroundings didn’t give a twitch in response.

I ducked into the warehouse, my eyes straining against the leaden darkness inside. A few grimy skylights let in scant moonlight, but didn’t provide any more contrast than outlines of gray on gray. Someone had tried to refurbish the inside of the warehouse, badly, and had never finished—flimsy walls attempted to partition the vast floor space and formed a maze of unceilinged half-rooms, as if a giant had approximated an office cubicle jungle with cheap sheetrock.

“Could be anywhere,” said Tresting softly, his voice echoing. “Might be hopeless.”

“I think we can narrow it down,” I said. I’d taken great care to pay attention to the coordinates Checker had given me, and to what the GPS had read when I stopped the car. I did a quick extrapolation in my head given the precision of the tracker—it had to be the northeast corner. “This way,” I murmured, heading in that direction.

Tresting seemed as nervous as I was, even after having searched the whole place already. This time he hung back while I led, watching our six in a semicircle as I found a way through the wide aisles between the drywall.

“It has to be somewhere past here,” I said, and then realized I didn’t hear Tresting’s footsteps behind me anymore.

I slipped to the side and whipped around, gun barrel first.

Tresting had disappeared. Instead, a slender silhouette was stepping out of one of the unfinished rooms and raising delicate hands in the air.

Everything went cold. Even in the darkness I recognized Dawna Polk.

“Hello, Ms. Russell,” she said. “My people have Mr. Tresting. Please put down your weapon, or unfortunately he will be the one to suffer for it.”

He said he searched the building. He said he searched the building!
Where had they been hiding? And
why?

“You have questions,” acknowledged Dawna. “The reason we did not show ourselves before now was that we were waiting for you.”

How could they possibly know I would show up?

“We made some educated guesses about human nature,” she answered with a small smile. “We’re quite good at that.”

But what did they want with me in the first place? And why not just kill us?

“I shall explain everything in good time,” said Dawna. “But you are quite correct; we do wish you to accompany us whole and unharmed for the moment. Your new friend Mr. Tresting is more expendable, so please, put your weapons on the floor.”

Jesus Christ. She was reading my mind.

And to make everything orders of magnitude worse, they’d grabbed Arthur so quickly and quietly I hadn’t heard a whisper of it. Some serious muscle must be lurking in the shadows—I’d fought alongside Tresting; he was no slouch.

And now Pithica had him.

I lowered the Smith & Wesson slowly and placed it on the cement floor, keeping my hands away from my body as I stood back up, wondering just how far Dawna Polk’s powers went.