The house was dark.
Maria walked up the street. The moon looked just as close as it had looked the night before as its silver light filtered through the tree branches. She was already a little tired. The walk hadn’t been easy, but she needed the car parked far enough away that she could walk back to it and drive away. Nick had chosen this house for its solitude. He’d said as much himself, but now that solitude was what made this easy for Maria.
At least the approach to the house.
Everything later would be much harder.
She walked around the side of the house, checking windows and doors.
Everything was locked.
She checked the garage.
The Oldsmobile was still there.
The backyard was the slope of the hill, and the house was braced with wooden beams. A shed was a good twenty feet down the incline. Maria walked to it. Pressed her ear against the door. Heard nothing. The door was padlocked, a sturdy metal hasp securing the door to the frame. Maria walked around the shed, no windows. Just solid wood.
Maria walked back up the hill and stood against the back wall. Checked her watch. Wondered if Nick would be home at his regular time. She wondered if Wanda had kept quiet about the microphone. If Patrick was told about the microphone, he would have confronted Nick. Maria wondered about the bonds men felt after going to war together. Wondered if Patrick would allow a murder to go unpunished because of his ties to the murderer.
That didn’t fit with her impression of the man.
Then again, Maria wasn’t sure about her impressions anymore. She’d found Nick relatively annoying but was genuinely surprised when she’d been told about his war injury. She should have found out more about military training. She hadn’t done the proper research to know who was capable of what. She could have focused on Nick sooner. Found him on those apartment cameras. Maybe even seen him at the RV parking lot, setting everything up.
Maria closed her eyes.
She’d beat herself up later.
Maybe she’d even eat a bullet.
But not tonight.
The RV parking lot. Nick had to have it set up ahead of time. He couldn’t have been triggered by what Wanda had told Ariella. Maria thought about the setup, the power, the control, the hatred necessary, and Nick’s wound. His history as a womanizer. Misogyny was the underlying theme in most of the crimes Maria investigated. Men unable to live with their inability to meet their own expectations of themselves, and their hatred of the women who didn’t give them the respect they thought they deserved.
Nick probably told himself he was protecting Patrick when he cuffed Ariella to the chair, but he was doing it for his own twisted reasons, and there was no way Maria would ever be able to tie him to the crimes. There was only one way to make this right.
Headlights flashed against the front of the house.
Nick was home.
Maria took up a position at the back of the garage. He would go for the car and relatively quickly. The garage wasn’t large, and once he was inside, he would have nowhere to dive or move to. Just her and a direct shot and a brief conversation.
She wondered if she was capable of doing what she was planning.
Decided she was.
Hoped so.
She pulled out her service weapon.
The .22 was stored in her belt in the small of her back underneath her shirt. If it came to that, she would use it, but for now, just her 9mm.
Footsteps came around the corner of the garage. The door swung open.
Maria went around the corner fast and stepped through the doorway.
Nick looked over his shoulder at her. Smiled.
“You sure are a hell of a lot smarter than you look,” Nick said. “That Connor was a setup, wasn’t he? Nobody is looking for this car at all, huh?”
“Put your hands on the roof and no sudden movements,” Maria said.
Nick did as he was told. But he didn’t look worried.
Maria took a zip tie from her belt and put it on the roof. Told him to place the tie around his wrists and use his mouth to pull it tight.
Again, Nick did as he was told.
Maria spun him around, grabbed him by the neck and walked him backwards, her gun pressed against his spine. She guided him out of the garage and up onto the porch and then into his living room. She pulled him roughly to the floor and stepped away before he could get his hands on her. The curtains were drawn shut, and no one had been on the street.
Just him and her in his living room.
“Come to arrest me, officer? Because it feels a bit more like a kidnapping, to be completely honest, not that I’m against breaking the rules from time to time,” Nick said.
“First, we’re going to have a little conversation,” Maria said.
“The detective wants to understand the why. Is that it?” Nick said.
“I think I understand the why. Your dick got shot off, and you feel like a useless piece of crap, that’s the why. I’m a little curious how it got so far, though. You did that favor for Patrick. You and Vance getting rid of Christopher Wilkins. But Ariella? Why did you have to do that?” Maria said.
“I’d been thinking about it for a while. Just putting her in front of a mirror and watching her, you know? Making her look at herself, having her watch me, watch her. I used to like that, before, putting a woman in front of a mirror and being behind her. Watching her enjoy it, but obviously, they weren’t going to enjoy it anymore. They were going to laugh at me, weren’t they?” Nick said.
“How many were there before, Ariella?” Maria asked.
“Does it matter?” Nick said.
“No, not really, I’m just curious,” Maria said.
“Not as many as I would have liked. Your girl, what the hell was her name, anyway? Some stripper name, Claudia or Colette,” Nick said.
Maria ignored him. Waited for him to go on.
“She told me to fuck off, so I had to show her who was really boss. God, I enjoyed watching her beg me to stop,” Nick said.
“There were no bruises inside or out. She told you to fuck off, and you ran off like the impotent trash you are,” Maria said.
Nick smiled. Raised his eyebrows up and down rapidly like a cartoon villain. But he was really watching her, waiting for his moment. She could feel all the tension in his body coiled to strike. The man was sitting down on the floor, just waiting for her to make a wrong move.
Maria took a step back.
“How did you know Ariella had found out about Christopher Wilkins?” Maria asked.
“So what are you going to do with me, exactly? Bring me in? Accuse me of some horrendous crime without any evidence. I’m a decorated war hero with a purple heart. I fought for my country. Do you really think I’ll be in jail for very long?” Nick said.
“Who said anything about jail?” Maria said.
Nick cocked his head. Thought about what she’d said. Then laughed.
“Nah, you ain’t got it in ya,” he said.
Maria took another step back. She wanted to get close enough to the window to see if anyone was outside, close enough to hear, but something was telling her to keep her eyes on Nick. He wasn’t worried, at least not outwardly. Maria couldn’t decide if that was combat experience or training or something else.
Then she heard the voice in the doorway, “Well, isn’t this an interesting setup?”
Vance Nixon was standing there with a shotgun aimed at Maria.
“Of course,” Maria said, “someone else was waiting for you with the RV. You were never doing any of this alone.”
“Teamwork is everything. Now why don’t you drop that gun,” Nick said.
Maria threw the 9mm onto the couch. She could feel the .22 in the small of her back. Trying to pull it out and shoot them now would be a mistake, but maybe, if she timed it right. She stepped back until she reached the easy chair and sat down. Anything to keep them from searching her.
“You were taken by a woman, Nick. Hogtied and everything. How does that feel?” Vance said.
“She’s not exactly untrained. She’s an experienced police officer,” Nick said.
“Whatever you need to tell yourself there, buddy. Don’t worry, I’ll only tell everyone every chance I get,” Vance said.
Nick pulled himself up and walked past Maria into the kitchen.
Vance smiled at her.
“Almost question-and-answer time,” Vance said.
A drawer opened and closed in the kitchen. Nick rooted around until he found what he was looking for. When he came back in, the ziptie had been cut off of his wrists. He threw it on her lap and walked over. Picked up her gun.
“This your service weapon?” Nick asked.
“Imagine killing a cop with a cop’s gun. Sounds kinky,” Vance said.
“Swear to god, you’re getting dumber by the day,” Nick said. He dropped the gun back on the couch.
“Who knows you are here, young lady?” Vance asked.
Maria ignored them. Sat there, arms on the chair. She was trying to look as cocky as Nick had looked but couldn’t be sure if she was pulling it off or not.
Nick eyed her. Seemed to not like what he saw.
“Something is off,” Nick said.
“Tell me about it. Our timeline is fucked. We should be on the road by now,” Vance said.
Nick approached Maria carefully. He patted her pants to feel if she had anything in her pockets. Ran his hands up his shirt and felt along the bottom of her bra.
“How do you have nothing hidden on you?” Nick said.
“Maybe it’s in her snatch. You going to look there too? I’ll get some cologne to mask the stench,” Vance said.
“Vance killed Les, didn’t he? You could probably have knocked his jaw off if you wanted to, but that’s not you. Men don’t bother you. They don’t bring out your hatred. No, you only like torturing women, but him, he’s just rotten to the core. He probably thinks about the sound the jaw made when it tore free of the bone every night,” Maria said.
Nick smiled. Took a step away from Maria and looked over his shoulder at Vance.
“She just got you figured out, doesn’t she?” Nick said.
“Yeah, yeah, she’s a supersleuth. Go start the car. We might as well put her in the trunk and deal with it when we get out in the desert,” Vance said.
“Kill a cop. You’ll get the needle,” Maria said.
“Don’t worry darling, they’ll never find you. And unfortunately, I’m not going to have time to enjoy that tight lesbian cunt you have. Or did your girl use some massive dildos on you to stretch you right out? I never did get the chance to ask her,” Vance said.
Nick went out the front door.
Maria’s gun was still sitting there on the couch.
Vance saw her eyeing it.
“If you go for it, I will splatter you all over that front window. It’ll be a pain in the ass to clean up, but we’ll figure it out,” Vance said.
Nick came back through the front door. He looked pissed.
Behind him, Nazmul had a large silver .45 pressed in between his shoulder blades.
Vance looked from Maria to Nick and back to Maria. He seemed to be thinking about his chances. He could shoot, but he’d probably only kill Nick or Maria. No way he could get both, and Nazmul was smart. He was low behind Nick, holding him tightly at the base of the neck.
Then Vance saw the red dot hovering on his chest.
Maria looked behind her. Through the side window, Syed was pointing a rifle at Vance.
“Looks like you two are going to be way off schedule,” Maria said.
Vance threw the gun down. Got down on his knees with his hands behind his head.
“My lawyer is going to have a field day with this one,” Vance said.
Nazmul threw Nick to the ground. Took up a position where he could watch both men.
“We are not the kind of men who call the police,” Nazmul said.
“Who the hell are you?” Nick said.
“Don’t worry, you will soon find out,” Nazmul said.
Syed came through the front door. He was wearing loose fitting jeans and a Philadelphia 76ers basketball jersey. His arms were taut coils. His strength had been hidden in the button-down shirts of the safe house. Syed stepped around Nazmul to the couch. He picked up Maria’s service weapon and handed it to her. Asked if she really wanted to be a part of this.
She did, but she didn’t.
“She don’t have it in her,” Nick said. He was still smiling, still eyeing the men, looking for his chance.
Vance wasn’t saying anything. He was just looking at the floor, running over something in his head.
Syed said something to Nazmul in their native language, and Nazmul nodded, yes. Syed motioned outside with his hand.
Maria stepped out onto the front porch.
The night was cold and the sky clear. The moon still so close. She could understand why people lived up here. Vegas wasn’t but an hour away, but it felt like a different century.
“I want to thank you for being so dedicated to finding the men who killed my daughter,” Syed said.
“Did Nazmul come to free you or to avenge Ariella?” Maria said.
“Those two things are not mutually exclusive. My sole reason for turning myself in was to provide some stability to my daughter. With her dead, I had no reason to live in witness protection or to testify. Now I can return to my life,” Syed said.
“And them?” Maria said.
“They will never be seen or heard from again and that is as it should be,” Syed said.
Maria turned away from Syed. Stepped down off of the porch and headed off down the street to her car parked half a block away. She placed her hand on the small of her back and felt the .22 there. Should she go back? Do what her father would have done? Or should she keep walking?
The fact that she was unsure made her continue.
She heard the front door open and close.
She heard the first gunshot when she reached her car.
She got in, turned it on, and took off as fast as she could.
As she drove, she cried. Mourning was really starting now, not just the mourning for Carla, but also for her life. She knew she was never going back to the job, and she didn’t know what was next. She didn’t think at all about the house up the mountain, though. She didn’t wonder how Syed or Nazmul were going to dispose of the bodies.
She didn’t care. She was just happy to be done with it.
She came down through the valley to where the road flattened and straightened out. The glow of Las Vegas lit the night sky but was still a way off in the distance. This area was barren and dark.
She was so tired. She needed to return the car to where she had found it. Wipe it down and walk home. No one would know she’d ever been here except for two fugitives and two dead men. Tomorrow she’d figure out what was next. But for now, there was the drive home and what remained of the whiskey on the living room table.
Then she saw the headlights of the SUV barreling up behind her.