AFTER TWO LONG blocks, she pulled over and stopped. She leaned over for a kiss. I wanted that kiss and put everything else aside, closed my eyes and kissed her like I’d never kissed her before. Kissed her like it would be the last. I wound my fingers in her hair and pulled her in.
She tasted of warm, wet peppermint. And for a second, the briefest of moments, I didn’t care if she did do what they accused her of, I’d still follow her to the dark side of the moon.
She chuffed when we broke, but she held on to my head looking into my eyes. “Well, hello, cowboy, where have you been all of my life?”
After all that had happened, holding her felt like holding a live grenade and not being able to let go.
Her eyes were alive, ready to handle anything that came along. Ready to drive a car through a wall to get to me. I didn’t see any deception, or any form of the evil Whitney and his flunky had described. They were out of their minds.
“Come on,” I said, “let’s go.”
“All right. But why are you out here on foot? Where’s your car? Is Gadd around here someplace?”
“Let’s move. But don’t go up to Rosecrans; stay down here in the side streets. Keep heading west.”
She took off again driving fifty in a twenty-five. “What’s going on, Bruno?”
I said, “Tell me what happened with Ollie.”
Chelsea took her eyes from the road and looked at me. “I’m not sure I like your tone. What’s going on?”
“Tell me your side of the story.”
She yanked the steering wheel, took us over to the curb, and stopped with her foot on the brake. “Talk to me. My side of the story? What are you trying to say?”
“Ollie’s dead. Gadd stabbed her in the back with an ice pick.”
To give suspects information during an interrogation, to expose your hand, was taboo, but this was Chelsea, not a suspect.
“Ah, Bruno, I’m so sorry.” She reached over and gripped my hand. “I know how much you liked her.”
“What happened?” I asked.
Chelsea pulled away from me. “I lost her. Ollie took off before Wicks and his team came up on her. I tried to follow her, but she knew what she was doing. She did counter surveillance. Right at the end I said screw it and didn’t care if she saw me. And she still lost me. I tried. I really did. I guess I should’ve tried harder. I’m so sorry.”
“Why didn’t you answer all those pages I sent you?”
“What’s with the third degree? What’s eating at you?”
I said nothing.
“Okay,” she said. “I was trying to find her, and by the time I found a phone to call you back, you were already gone. What is this, an interrogation? Do you think I did something wrong?”
“No, I don’t.”
She hesitated a long time staring at me, searching for the truth in my expression.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Where to?”
“To get Gadd.”
She smiled. “You know where he is?”
I waved my hand. “Go on, head to 213th Street and Avalon in Carson.”
She took off as my mind went back over her responses, her reactions to the information I’d given her. Maybe Whitney was right, maybe I was too close to look at this thing objectively.
She didn’t know the way and asked several times for directions. Otherwise, neither of us spoke.
In the dead of night, three o’clock in the morning, nothing moved in the predawn silence.
“Right there. Pull up and stop right there.”
She did, stopping under the deep shadow of a huge tree. She shut off the headlights. “Which one is it?”
I pointed. “That one right there, first floor, third from this end. We should call in for backup.”
“Why? You and I can handle Gadd. What’s with you? Come on, let’s go get this son of a bitch.” She got out and eased her door closed so it clicked shut. I waited and watched her. She bent down, looked in through the driver’s window, and waved for me to follow.
I got out and eased my door closed. I came around to her side and stopped.
She pulled her gun. “Well, come on, big man, what are we waiting for?”
I reached in my back pocket and took out the folded photo of her and Gadd and held it out, just a white folded square.
“What’s that?” The light in her smile went out.
I tried to hand it to her. She wouldn’t take it. Her eyes turned sad, her shoulders sagged, her voice barely a whisper. “How much do they know?”
I let the folded photo drop to the ground and shook my head. “All of it.”
“Bruno, you don’t know what it was like working in that hellhole. All that boring, mundane bullshit, day after day. I couldn’t take it. I was a rising star out here and working big cases, interesting cases. Cases that mattered, that made a difference. Then they go and banish me for no good reason. I didn’t deserve that. You know what happened, you were there. Do you think I deserved that?” She spoke waving her gun around for emphasis, forgetting her gun safety training. Why not? She’d forgotten the meaning of integrity and honor and truth.
I said nothing and stared at her. Who was this person I was so attracted to? How could I have been so wrong about her? But I hadn’t been wrong. The system ground her up and spit her out. It could do it to anyone. At that moment the system had me torn in three different directions. Even so, I could still see the correct path.
She read my thoughts. She pointed her gun toward the apartment. “They don’t have shit on me if Gadd can’t testify. You understand me, Bruno? We can fix this right here and now. Then we can take a long-deserved vacation.”
I said nothing. A large hole opened up in my chest and grew larger by the second, making it harder to breathe.
“Bruno, Gadd killed Ned.”
The sadness in me shifted to anger. “Don’t you dare bring his name into this.” She’d tried to tarnish his good name, use it as a distraction, an excuse for what she’d done. No way did she know who pulled the trigger, D’Arcy or Gadd. But Gadd had been responsible for the whole mess so it didn’t matter.
She was about to say something else and shut her mouth. Then she said, “Bruno, please? Please, you owe me.”
I froze. All the air left me. I wanted to wilt to the ground. I did owe her. No truer statement had ever been uttered to me. I owed her my life.
I’d been teetering on the fence about what to do with her until she said that. I reached out and took her left hand, pulled her into me, and hugged her, my face buried in her hair. She started to cry. Her whole body shook. She tried to pull away. I held on tight.
“Bruno”—her voice was muffled against my chest—“Come with me. Please, I’m begging you.”
I swallowed the large lump that was growing in my throat. “I don’t think I could take the cold where you’re going.”
“I’m not going to prison. I won’t go.” Her body convulsed as she sobbed. “Bruno?” With her right hand she stuck her gun in my ribs hard enough to hurt.
I closed my eyes and thought of Olivia.
“Bruno?” she said a little louder.
I held on tight and said, “Run. That’s all you got left. Run.” I let her go.
She took a step back, wiped tears from her cheeks and nose. “Okay. Okay. But you have to promise me you won’t be the one to come after me. I couldn’t take it if you showed up one day and—”
“Chelsea, run.”
She nodded, holstered her gun. She got in her car, started it up, and took off without turning on the headlights.
I watched her go until she turned a corner at the first block. Once she was out of sight, I questioned whether I’d made the right choice.
I drew my gun and went after Gadd.