Nine

“Look here, Everett-” she began angrily.

He raised a brow. “Yes?”

She subsided and did as he asked.

“I take it your cell phone works fine?” Alex said as she searched his pockets.

“It was easy to put a dead battery in it after I had checked in with Everett,” she said. “I would have asked for yours if you hadn’t offered it.”

“Hurry up,” Everett said.

She shoved Alex forward, steering him toward the administration building.

“I’m just trying to figure out what I ever did to you,” he said to her, unable to keep the rage from his voice.

She didn’t answer.

He thought back to her reaction to his saying that Kit was dead. Her anger was toward Kit, then. But what could she have against Kit? That first night in Lakewood, she had obviously coaxed Alex into talking more about the similarities between the way Adrianos was left and the Naughton cases.

He suddenly recalled something she said on the day they visited Shay Wilder. She said it had been overkill when Kit attacked Naughton-and that she had read the files. But how could she have read the files on him? Those were sealed because Kit was a minor then, and there had never been an arrest. Those details had not been in the papers or in court records. She must have investigated Kit Logan on her own, at some earlier time.

He watched for an opportunity to escape, but they made sure he didn’t have one. He hoped for a while that Kit might take a shot at one of them. But he saw no sign of Kit.

He was shoved into a room with a long counter in it. It was a typical school office. He could see a small infirmary through one door, a room with filing cabinets through another. Against one wall was a public address system. A microphone sat on a desk near it.

“I take it you provided all the screams?” he asked Ciara.

“I began to wonder if you heard them.”

“I imagine everyone living up above this canyon heard them,” he said. “Including the guards at Kit’s house.”

“He has a point,” Everett said, glancing at his gold Rolex. He moved to a metal storage cabinet and locked up Alex’s pack and weapons. “I’m not sure I should listen to any more of your ideas.”

“Watch out, Ciara,” Alex said. “Che Guevara Junior here has a rapidly shrinking number of partners-or haven’t you noticed?”

“The old divide-and-conquer routine?” Ciara asked, pushing him toward a door marked PRINCIPAL.

The room was a large, carpeted one. Heavy curtains were drawn across the windows. Meghan Taggert sat bound and gagged in a chair turned to one corner.

“Alex, we’ll have you sit here,” Everett said, pulling out a second chair.

Ciara shoved him hard into it.

“Ciara,” Everett said, turning Meghan around, “I know my darling resisted you, but did you have to strike her face?” Meghan’s left cheek and eye were a little swollen, Alex saw. It would have taken more than one blow. However many had landed, it hadn’t knocked the defiance out of her.

Everett caressed her cheek. She pulled as far away from him as her bonds would allow.

“Doesn’t look as if you’re satisfying him in bed, Ciara,” Alex said. “But then, it doesn’t look as if his new courtship is going all that well, either.”

Everett smiled. “Things will go better now that Kit is dead.”

Meghan shot a look of despair at Alex, then she seemed to notice the blood.

“I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it.

She shook her head, but tears were welling up in her eyes.

“You know, you have a point, Meghan. I think I’ll bring his body in here. It will give you closure. And then maybe you’ll feel like telling me where your brother the loser is.” Everett turned his attention back to Alex. “And for the record, Ciara and I have a strictly professional relationship.”

“The story of her life,” Alex said, and Ciara slapped him. He smiled. She struck him again, harder. That time he laughed. “This is obviously hurting you more than it does me.”

She folded her arms, visibly resisting the urge to hit him again.

“Ciara owes much of her career as a detective to me,” Everett said, as if nothing had happened. “Didn’t you ever wonder how she solved so many cases?”

“Actually, Internal Affairs is investigating her,” Alex lied. “She would have been fired long ago, but we wanted to catch those who were helping her. No one believed she was capable of that on her own.”

“You’re full of shit,” Ciara said.

“He’s envious,” Everett said. “They all are. Do you know what we’ve done? The best law enforcement agencies in the country couldn’t do what my small, select team could do. You see, Alex, your partner had an intelligent, privately operated, well-financed team on her side. Your underfunded lab with its six-month backlog? We could have answers in a week. I could hire men who could focus entirely on one case, while you had to take whatever came your way, whenever it came your way. And your stupid rules! When you’re dealing with lawbreakers, what could be more ridiculous than worrying about rules? Why not level the playing field? Look what we’ve accomplished. Wiretapping? No problem. Electronic tracking devices? Not to worry. Need to inflict a little pain to get a guilty party to talk? We could do it. It worked perfectly.”

“Not exactly perfect,” Alex said. “You only caught nine out of ten.”

“Oh, but one hundred percent of our goal-the truly guilty ones. It’s really an incredible fluke that Gabe ended up on the Ten Most Wanted list. He was at that robbery, of course. So technically, he can be tried for murder. But anyone who believes Gabe Taggert could murder anyone, let alone a family with small children-Why do the police always take the easy way out?”

“One of his partners named him-” He broke off, seeing Everett’s smile.

“Exactly. The whole thing went much bigger than we expected.”

“Are you so deluded, you think none of this will catch up to you?” Alex said. “We were already looking at you and Cameron as suspects before you had my ex call me.”

“She’s a really fine fuck, by the way.”

“If you don’t mind leftovers,” Alex said.

Everett laughed. Ciara made a sound of disgust and walked toward the door.

“Stay for a moment, Ciara,” Everett said. “I’ll need you to keep an eye on them while I check out his story about Kit.”

Remembering what Kit had told him about Everett, Alex said, “The body is in the woods. Cameron’s, too.”

He saw Everett hesitate.

Ciara saw it, too. “Let me look for him.”

“If you insist,” Everett said, glancing at his watch again. “You’ll have to hurry. And we’ll need to make sure we aren’t sending you into some sort of trap. There’s a big switch that turns on the baseball field lights out there somewhere. Near one of the dugouts, I think.”

Alex lowered his head to hide his reaction. He was sure Cameron had turned the lights on, after hearing Hamilton fire his gun. But when the lights had gone out again, he had assumed Everett had been the one to plunge the woods into darkness again. If it hadn’t been Everett, was it Kit?

No, Kit wouldn’t have been able to get to the switch to turn the lights off, and then back into the woods so quickly. But if it hadn’t been Everett or Kit or Hamilton…

“He knows something,” Ciara said, watching him.

“I know you’ve partnered up with a lunatic.” He looked at Everett. “I told your old man to get help for you, but I guess he didn’t listen.”

“Don’t try to pretend you had my best interests in mind,” Everett said. “You wanted to destroy me then, but you learned that it wasn’t so easy, didn’t you? And in case you haven’t noticed, the public doesn’t think I’m so crazy. The public loves what we’ve done. We’re heroes.”

“Martyrs, most of you,” Alex said. “There is that difference. Has he got another Bora waiting for you, Ciara? Who’s going to take care of Laney when that happens? You sold your soul-and your sister-to have the highest clearance rate in Homicide?”