‘I saw it coming from pretty far off,’ Tasik said. They were rolling slowly now along the cresting road, looking for something. ‘If there’s one thing a practiced liar like you would know, it’s that you find a story and you stick to it. Dayly’s story started wavering. Suddenly she couldn’t tell me how much money was supposed to be under the police station. Was it ten million or fifteen? Then, what do you know? She’s suggesting it might only be two. She wouldn’t answer her phone. Wouldn’t let me speak to the old man, Fishwick. I wanted to talk to Lemon and Ramirez, become a full partner in this thing, but she’s telling me if they find out about me they’ll flip. I’ve only got her word on everything that’s happening, and I’m starting to discover that she’s lying. She would tell me she was alone, when there I am sitting outside her apartment, looking at her inside with Lemon, the cop. She became unreliable, and that’s when I knew she was going to double-cross us.’
‘How?’ Sneak asked.
‘The money.’ Tasik nodded. ‘She was going to use Lemon and Ramirez, the plumber, to get the cash out of the hole. She was going to have me sitting nearby like an idiot waiting for my cut, keeping her safe from jail, and them expecting her to share the cash when she goes and swipes it out from underneath them. She was going to run off with all of it by herself. I could feel it. It’s what I would do.’
Tasik seemed to find what he was looking for, pulled the car off the road onto an unmarked fire trail. Jessica’s grip tightened on her gun. She knew she had to take control. Disarm Tasik, cuff him. But her yearning to hear the rest of the story, to know what happened to Dayly, had her frozen in her seat. She knew that if she moved, if she broke Tasik from his spell, she might never get a full confession out of him. He liked the sound of his own voice. Wanted them to know how clever he’d been. But all of that could dry up in a second. A part of her wanted to believe this was his surrender. That he wasn’t leading them out here, into the dark of the mountain ranges, to kill them both. She couldn’t accept that another cop would do that. Didn’t want to accept it. Because that would be the final nail – that would show her once and for all that not only was she not a part of this family, but she didn’t know the members of it. Not at all.
The headlights illuminated a horizontal white boom gate. Tasik nudged it open gently with the bumper of the car.
‘Greedy little girl,’ he said, almost to himself.
Jessica watched the wide dirt road ahead of them, dust swirling in the lights, desert bugs flickering and flapping gold in the beams. She wondered if Dayly had been alive when she was driven out here. If she’d sat in the dark as her mother was sitting now, knowing this was the last road she would ever travel down, her final destination.
‘I confronted her in her apartment,’ Tasik said. ‘I’d had enough. She was telling me they’d hit a snag. There was a rock the size of a Volkswagen Beetle in the tunnel and they’d have to blast through it. She’d tell me when they were through, but she didn’t know how long the delay was going to be. I called bullshit on that. She was buying time to make her escape, I knew. I figured I knew where the guys were, I could tap their phones and find out when they hit paydirt. I didn’t need Dayly anymore. But she fought me at her apartment and got away. I know from pursuing girls like her my whole career that the best thing you can do is let them think they’re in the safe zone. Let them calm down. So I grabbed her laptop and phone from the apartment and followed her on the quiet. She hit a gas station for some cash and a car and was headed out west, probably to see Lemon and Ramirez. That’s when I took her down. I chased her up into the mountains here and ran her car off the road.’
Jessica watched Tasik’s eyes as he switched off the engine. A coyote yowled somewhere nearby in the dark, a high, anxious sound.
‘You killed her,’ Jessica said. She could feel how wide her own eyes were in the dark. Disbelieving, but also tensed, ready. ‘You torched the car with the laptop and phone inside. And you brought her here and dumped her.’ Jessica looked out the window beside him.
Tasik said nothing. His eyes were hard, challenging her in the dark, both his hands on the steering wheel. Jessica thought for a moment of quick-draw cowboys on dusty streets, tumbleweeds blowing by, a comic image thrown up by her brain to try to quell the terror in her heart. She drew her weapon, and her veins flooded warm when Tasik didn’t draw his.
‘Don’t you fucking move,’ she snapped.
She was twisted sideways awkwardly in her seat, the gun close to her chest, her elbows splayed in the small space. A smile was playing on Tasik’s lips. Her training and experience over the two decades she had been in the job hadn’t prepared her for disarming a man sitting in the same car as her. She’d never been stupid enough to get herself into this kind of fix.
‘Keep your hands right where they are,’ she said. She had two options. Have Tasik reach down and pull the gun from his own hip, or lean over and do it herself. Neither was good. She was trapped and he knew it. Seconds were ticking by in which Jessica knew he would be formulating a plan, so she’d better put her own into action. She took a hand off her gun and reached forwards.
She grabbed the gun, lifted it from the holster on his hip, leaned back. She relaxed. He was waiting for that, for the fraction of a second that her muscles loosened. His fist came up, outside of her range of vision, smashed her jaw in a brutal uppercut that pounded her head into the window.
Darkness. Only seconds’ worth. Her hearing sucked back before she could control her body. She was flopped sideways in the seat. Her brain wouldn’t issue commands to her limbs. She sagged helplessly as Tasik disarmed her.
‘Get out,’ he said to Sneak.
‘You’re not going to kill me,’ Sneak said from the back seat. ‘You’re not going to kill a fellow cop. Four people from the Pump’n’Jump will be able to testify that Sanchez and I got into your car. There’ll be CCTV at the gas station.’
‘I’m not going to deny I arrested you, or that Jessica came with me,’ Tasik said. ‘I’ve been playing this game a long time, Emily. You know that. All I have to tell them is that you slipped your cuffs to the front, as I knew you would do, and you waited until we were in a quiet backstreet in Koreatown so you could fake a seizure in the back of the car. Sanchez and I stopped to assist you, you attacked her. Took her gun and killed Sanchez, then made me put her in the car. You forced me to drive up here into the mountains, where you confessed to killing Dayly. You told me you’d dump me and Sanchez in the same spot you did her.’
Jessica tried to keep her breathing even, stopped trying to move. She knew she had to regain complete control before she launched her attack on Tasik. She couldn’t groan, couldn’t struggle. While he thought she was unconscious, he might delay finishing her.
‘She’s down there?’ Jessica heard Sneak ask. ‘You threw her down there?’
There was silence. Jessica didn’t need to hear an answer.
‘I’ll tell them I was lucky enough to overpower you,’ Tasik said. ‘But you put up a good effort.’
Jessica felt blood running from her mouth, down her limp arm, onto the seat. She opened her eyes a crack. She wondered if Tasik kept a backup weapon in the car’s glovebox, only a couple of feet away from her. Most cops she knew did.
‘You know that Ada and Blair are onto the money,’ Sneak said. Her voice was lower, thinner than it had been. She was losing hope. ‘You’ve got to, right? You know we’ve been asking questions. You saw us there at the gas station with the maps. You know Ada and Blair will be heading there right now, to San Chinto. They might get there and get the money before you, while you’re wasting time here with us. Let me go. Leave me here so I can find my child. Go get the money and run.’
‘I’ve got time,’ Tasik said. ‘I’ve been monitoring Ramirez’s texts. He thinks he’s got another three hours until he breaks through. Best case scenario for me is the two parties run into each other and there’s a shoot-out, and I walk in to find the cash sitting by a neat pile of bodies, waiting for me. Lemon and Ramirez won’t be expecting Maverick and her goons and Harbour. But no one at all will be expecting me.’
‘What if Ramirez’s wrong?’ Sneak said. ‘What if they break through early and you turn up and no one’s there?’
‘Fine. I know where everyone will be tomorrow. Lemon and Ramirez will be loading a plane they’ve booked to get to Mexico at an airfield near there. Maverick will be at her club. She’s not leaving. Not with her business interests in the area. And Harbour will be at her apartment. She’s got a kid. She’s not going anywhere. I’ve been in her apartment before, and I know she can fight, so this time I won’t be messing around.’
‘You,’ Sneak said. ‘It was you who broke in.’
‘I was trying to scare her off,’ Tasik said. ‘Scare both of you. It didn’t work. If you could put up less of a fight tonight than she did, I’d be really grateful. But this has to look authentic, so we’ll need to play around for a little while, at least.’
He pushed open his door, walked behind the car and opened the door beside her. Jessica heard Sneak yelp as the man grabbed her.
‘Enough talking,’ Tasik said. ‘Let’s start.’