Redemption Alley

Goddamn touchy Weres. You can’t even get mad at them when they’re so concerned about you. The thought of Saul rose like choking smoke in my chest, I shut it away.

“We won’t,” I tossed over my shoulder, and made it out the door. Leon followed, guzzling for all he was worth.

The green Charger sat across the street, in a rare bit of shade and free parking in front of a whole-foods store and a video rental place. I got behind the wheel, Leon slammed his door, and I looked at my fingers on the steering wheel. Bernie’s keychain, a heavy brass Playboy bu

“You just lied to a roomful of Weres.” Leon took another hit off the can. “Jesus, Jill.”

“The shipments should stop now that we’ve hit their distribution center.” My fingers moved restlessly, Mikhail’s apprentice-ring glinting on my third left finger. In other words, Leon, you can go home. You don’t have to see this through.

Yeah. Right. Like he was going to go for that. I shouldn’t even have thought it.

“I been curious all my life.” He shrugged, finished off the can with a long slurp and a massive belch that threatened to fog the windows. “Ain’t go

The unspoken lingered just under the day’s heat. And if this Argoth is closer than we think, I’ll need all the help I can get. Since neither of us is Jack Karma. Not even close.

I twisted the key. The Charger roused, nowhere near my Impala’s sweet purr. Bernie hadn’t taken care of this car. I could fix that, if I hang onto this hunk of metal after the case ends. Have to clean it out, too. “We need ammo, but I don’t want to draw any more attention to Galina’s. I’ve got a cache in the suburbs. We should get to the airfield in about two hours.”

The sun would be past its highest mark, the day hot and still in its long afternoon; blessed, safe sunlight everywhere. With a bit of luck, we could disrupt anything going on at the airfield and be home in time for di

I was hoping I’d finally be feeling hungry by then, too.

“More ammo.” Leon nodded sagely. “And I’ll be praying my ass off, Jill. This is suicide.”

You don’t think I know that? “It beats sitting in front of the TV.” I checked traffic and pulled out, sedately for once. I didn’t know how far I could abuse this engine, and I didn’t want cops marking this car. Not for a while, anyway. With Bernie’s partner dead and me driving like Gra

If we were lucky.

“Amen.” Leon belched again, dropping the can on the floorboard, and I rolled my window down.

Chapter Twenty-six

The Anabela Rosenkrantz Memorial Airfield sits about twenty miles outside the city limits. It’s a dusty, claptrap place, hangars set on one side of a long strip of pounded-down desert, leveled by a wheezing bulldozer after every gullywasher. Hutch had done his digging well, and now I knew all about it.

ARA was where prop-plane enthusiasts stored their machines and the Santa Luz Police Department trained their two or three helicopter pilots. The county fire department trained out here too, sometimes, rather than at the bigger airport situated halfway between Santa Luz and the state capital.

All in all, the dusty little place saw a lot of activity. That is, until last year.

Hutch had discovered ARA had been “closed for repair” last winter, and never reopened. The amateur enthusiasts had moved closer to the county seat, and the cops hadn’t been out here at all this year.

At least, not the honest ones.

Which is why I wasn’t surprised, when we crested the rise on a Forestry Service road cutting off the highway at an angle and heading into the canyons, to see more tin roofs throwing blinding spears of sunlight at the sky. It was the eight-by-ten I’d found in the Cherry Street warehouse. That picture had been taken recently, for some reason—probably to familiarize a pilot with the layout so the cargoes could be flown out.

The drug ru

“What?” Leon glanced up through the windshield as we rolled to a stop below the top of the rise.

I gestured briefly, switched the radio—AC/DC moaning about the highway to hell, since we’re both classic rock fans—off. Heatwaves blurred the distance and poured in through the open windows. “They’ve built more onto the airfield.”

We exchanged a long meaningful look. Rosita was in the back seat, out of sight but close at hand should he need her. “Shit.” He leaned over the seat to grab her.

I agreed. Coming in this way we had some cover, but the airfield was… well, an airfield, and out in the middle of nowhere where you could see somebody coming. We would raise a roostertail of dust into the stratosphere, and if they had assault rifles—

We’ll deal with that when we get there. I tipped my shades down my nose, looking over them and memorizing the layout. Light stung, water wrung out of both my smart and dumb eyes. And yes, friends and neighbors, wasn’t there a plucking in the fabric of reality around the airfield? Little dimples of swirling corruption lifting like pollen on the air, rising with the heat, and a brackish well of contamination centered right over the airfield, welling up like crude from a deep, dark secret place.

Leon eyed it too. “Gives me the willies,” he said finally, a world of hunter’s intuition boiling down to four little words.

“Contamination. Can’t tell what it’s from, yet.” Baking, sand-smelling wind scoured the inside of the car. Junkfood wrappers rustled and blew. Thank God we’re downwind.

“Yay.” His blunt fingers touched Rosita the way they would touch a lover’s hand. “This ain’t go

“I know. If half of what Hutch has archived is true we’re stuck hoping he hasn’t found a door yet.” That’s a hell of a run of luck we’re expecting. “This bothers me, Leon. It bothers me a lot.”

As usual, he took refuge in understatement. “You get the feelin’ we’re bein’ led by the nose?”

“All through this goddamn thing. I just don’t see how anyone would think Monty would call me in to look at his ex-partner’s ‘suicide.’ And I don’t see how anyone could expect me to find scurf and take them out, even if I was looking into disappearances on the east side. Those were probably escaped stragglers, unless the ’breed was outside to watch over them. It was probably luck pure and simple, and…”

“And anytime we get that lucky, someone has to be pla

“We find out what’s going on at this airfield, and what those new buildings are. And with any luck, they won’t be expecting us to hit them here.” Luck. Again. Never a substitute for proper pla