fourteen

Ben met him on the tarmac a few hours later. “What part of clean sweep did you not understand?”

The part where it entailed shooting an unarmed woman. “Relax. It’s gonna be fine,” he said, dropping his duffle at his feet. “The gun used to do the guards has her prints all over it, and I used different calibers and kill methods. Once you plant the evidence in her computer that points the way to her hiring a hit squad, no one is gonna believe her lone-gunman theory.”

“She saw you.” Ben shook his head. “What if she recognized you from the club?”

“Please. The last time she saw me, she was blitzed out on booze and roofies,” he said, despite the doubt that nagged him. “That whole night is a big black hole as far as she’s concerned.”

Ben was as unconvinced as he was. “You should’ve killed her. Leaving her alive was sloppy.”

Michael eyes narrowed just a twinge. “Would you’ve killed her?” he said. Ben looked away, and he scoffed. “Didn’t think so. It’s bad enough she’s gonna spend the rest of her life in prison for multiple murders she had nothing to do with. Just let it go.”

“Easy for you to say—” Ben’s phone let out a chirp. He dug it out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. “Meet you on the plane,” he said, turning his back on him and walking toward the tail of the plane before answering. Michael watched him go, caught the smile on his face that appeared after he said hello. The grin faded quickly, replaced by a look that said he was all business now. After only thirty seconds, he snapped his phone closed and dropped it in his pocket. He walked back toward the front of the plane. “Change of plans. We’re making a pit stop before heading to Helena,” Ben said, and he moved past Michael up the steps to the interior of the Lear.

“Where?” Michael said, picking up his duffle and following.

His partner shot him a look over his shoulder. “San Francisco.”

San Francisco.

As soon as Michael boarded the plane, he dropped his duffle and stretched out on the couch, closed his eyes, and willed himself into oblivion. But it was useless. No way was he sleeping. Not when all he could think about was Sabrina.

It looked like fate had finally decided to stop being such a bitch and throw him a bone. He’d been wracking his brain, trying to figure out a way to slip his collar and find a way to see her, but suddenly his way was clear …

He looked across the interior of the Lear to where Lark had set up shop and felt the skin on the back of his neck draw tight once more before closing his eyes again. At least it was clearer than it had been a few hours ago. He still had to figure out how in the hell he was going to get rid of Lark and the kid—

“We need to talk.”

He cracked a lid to see Ben sitting cross-legged in the middle of the aisle, three feet from his face. He looked worried. It was never a good sign when Ben looked worried.

“So talk.” He closed his eyes again and waited for the kid to start in with whatever was bothering him, but all he heard was the constant tapping that told him Lark was on his computer.

He opened his eyes. Ben was still there. The worry was too. “Look, getting shot makes me tired, so if you’re just gonna—”

“It wasn’t Lark. It was me … sort of. I’m the reason my father knows about Sabrina.”

He shot a glare in Lark’s direction. He was sitting at the table. The same table they’d been sitting at that last time they’d all been together on this plane. They’d been having a conversation much like this one. He’d trusted Lark, and Lark had betrayed him. Now it seemed to be Ben’s turn to fuck him over. When was he gonna learn?

He shifted his glare back to Ben and settled on his face. “You have two minutes.”

“My dad knew something was up with you. After finding your sister’s killer, you came back wrong, and he wanted to know why.” Ben scrubbed a hand over his face and shook his head. “He kept at me, bugging me. Reminding me that my duty was, first and foremost, to my family. To him,” he said with barely contained disgust. “I repeatedly and quite emphatically told him to go fuck himself.”

Michael narrowed his eyes on the kid’s face. “Skip to the part where I get screwed over. It’s always my favorite.”

“I knew it was only a matter of time before Green Mile back there started flapping his yap and guaranteed, nothing he had to say would’ve been favorable.” He jerked his head toward Lark, who was listening. He hadn’t turned around, but his tapping had stopped. “But I kept my mouth shut and an eye out. Helped her get her job back. Tried to get her to rehab her leg.” Now he looked serious. Serious Ben was also never a good thing. “I did what I could—for her and for you.”

It took him a second to understand what Ben was saying, but then the realization hit. “You recruited her.”

Ben shrugged. “It was either recruit her or kill her,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re the one that brought her into this mess, man. I was just trying to make sure she stayed in one piece.”

“By turning her into an assassin?” His stomach clenched at the thought of Sabrina doing what he did, going the places he went. He thought of her standing over a mark like Cordova and pulling the trigger.

“She isn’t an asset; she’s a spotter. She sees a hard-to-locate target cross her desk or catches on to something that might interest us during surveillance, she calls me. That’s it.”

“What does any of this have to do with your father? You could’ve turned her without handing her over.”

“I did. She’s the one—she handed herself over. For you.” Ben swiped a rough hand over his face. “I mean, Jesus, didn’t you ever wonder how she got you out of there? You and her friend? She’s badass, but she’s not a miracle worker.”

“She called your father.” It wasn’t a question. He could almost see her doing it. He’d been in bad shape, poisoned by whatever David Song had been using to incapacitate his victims. He’d felt himself dying, and he hadn’t cared—not when it meant dying for her. And in the end it had been her sacrifice, not his, that’d saved them both.

Defeat and anger: he felt them both, struggled with them as they pulled his in every possible direction. “She’s the one who called you just now from San Francisco. She’s your contact there.”

Ben hesitated then nodded. “One of them, yeah.”

“How long? How long has she been working for you?”

Ben hesitated again, this time a bit longer. “I approached her while she was still in that hospital in Texas.”

All along. Ben had been in contact with Sabrina all along and he hadn’t said a word. Something crawled along the nape of his neck and trickled down his spine. “Is she chipped?”

“No. I convinced my father it wasn’t necessary,” Ben said.

“How?”

Ben shrugged. “Does it matter?”

Michael felt a dull pounding start up in the back of his skull, and he had to make himself unclench his fists. “Yeah. It does. It matters a lot.”

“I might’ve … liberated certain evidence from the SFPD that could’ve been used to prosecute her in a few murders,” Ben said.

He was talking about the bat she’d used nearly twenty years ago to defend herself from being raped by her mother’s boyfriend. The same bat Wade Bauer had used to kill a police officer in order to frame Sabrina for murder. If Livingston Shaw had it, he’d be able to make Sabrina do anything he wanted. “Where is it now?”

“My dad has it,” Ben said, but he cut his eyes in Lark’s direction for a split second and gave him an almost imperceptible shake of his head. He was lying. Wherever the bat was, Shaw didn’t have it.

“Why? Why are you protecting her?” he said. Ben’s motives mattered, and the wrong ones would get him killed.

Ben got that look again. That serious look that showed you just who he really was. “Because my father has stolen enough from you. Don’t get me wrong—you made your bed all by yourself, but as far as I’m concerned, your debt to him is cleared.”

Michael looked away, out the window at the blue and white that whipped by so fast it looked like it was standing still.

The kid was wrong. His debt would never be cleared. Not until Reyes was dead and buried.