I angled across the street, well behind my car, eyeing the pepper tree the whole way. No movement, no beard, no nothing. My gut told me I’d seen a beard and there was a Raptor behind the pepper tree waiting for me to approach my car. I wasn’t going to disappoint him. I silently walked toward the car and pulled my car key fob out of my pocket, careful not to let the keys jingle. Key fob in my left hand, blackjack in my right, I crept up to within fifteen feet of the tree. I stared at the back of the tree like I was trying to read the bottom line of an eye chart. Then the outline of a man snug against the tree slowly took shape.
Whoever he was, he was big. That’s the way the Raptors grew them. I tried to locate his hands to see if he had a weapon. Too dark. I carefully took another step closer, but my foot caught a pebble and it scratched along the sidewalk. I jabbed the key fob twice to draw attention away from me toward the car. The Mustang’s warning lights flashed and the horn sounded.
The outline jerked in the direction of the car. I bolted toward it and swung the blackjack down onto the back of the man’s head. He crumpled down hard and a crowbar clattered across the sidewalk. I pounced on top of the man and turned him over onto his back. Unconscious. I didn’t recognize him. Husky, black beard, leather jacket. A Raptor soldier. I rifled his pockets until I found a cell phone. I heaved the phone as far as I could and heard it crash down onto the street. The Raptor wouldn’t be able to call Delk, or whoever was driving the Trans Am, or anyone else when he came to.
The porch lights flashed on from the house with the pepper tree and the front door whipped open. I sprang up and dashed to my car and jumped inside.
“Hey!” A man’s voice.
I throttled the ignition and tore down the street, then yanked out my cell phone and called Sierra.
“Hello?”
“Out front. Now.”
I hung up and heard a low rumble in the distance behind me. Delk’s Trans Am was out there somewhere searching for Sierra and me, just a couple blocks away. I slammed to a stop in front of Sierra’s apartment building. No Sierra. The Trans Am rumble grew louder. Closer.
I fought the urge to hit the horn. Finally, Sierra trudged across the parking lot, both hands lugging her wheel-less ancient suitcase against her petite body. I jumped out of the car, ran over to Sierra, grabbed the suitcase, hustled her to the car, and threw it in the backseat. Just as Sierra and I slammed our doors in unison, I heard the siren.
Shit.
“Did you call the police?”
“No.”
Must have been the man who owned the pepper-tree house. I prayed that he didn’t get a good look at me or catch a glimpse of my license plate. Thank God for the dearth of streetlights on Long Branch.
After blowing my opportunity to lie in wait and assault Wayne Delk, I’d managed the deed against one of his minions. The fact that he’d been lying in wait for me and was armed with a crowbar might be mitigating circumstances if it ever went to trial. Cold solace.
I gunned the car down the street but eased the clutch enough not to squeal the tires. We made it onto Sunset Cliffs and out of Ocean Beach without a tail by either the police or the Trans Am. Safe. For now. I turned on my police scanner and listened for a possible 242: battery, what I did to the Raptor, or a BOLO, Be On the Look Out, for a black 2006 Mustang GT. Nothing.
Sierra sat quietly, staring at her side view mirror. When we hit Interstate 8, she turned and faced me.
“Maybe we should call the police,” she said.
“We could, but I’m not sure what we’d tell them. That some bikers came looking for you and your drug-dealing brother? We don’t really have enough to press charges and, without that, I doubt SDPD is going to use scarce manpower to guard you twenty-four/seven.”
Not to mention the fact that, without too much twisting of the story, I could be arrested for assaulting two Raptors. I doubted that it would come to that, but I didn’t want to take the chance. The Raptors would dole out their own brand of justice when they had the opportunity. That’s what I really had to worry about.
“I guess you’re right.” She slumped down in her seat.
“Look, I know you’re scared. I don’t blame you. But I’ll put you up in a hotel tonight where you’ll be safe.” I exited I-8 onto 805 North. I wasn’t sure where we were going yet, but north felt safer than south. “The Raptors are after Trey, not you. They took a shot that he might be with you, and it almost worked. Now that you’ve disappeared, they’ll focus all their attention on finding Trey. That’s why I need you to tell me where he is, so I can help him.”
“I don’t know where he is.” She looked out her window.
“Sierra, I can help him, but you have to tell me where he is.”
“I told you. I don’t know where he is!” Still wouldn’t face me. Still lying.
“Then call him and tell him to meet us somewhere.”
She turned from the window and looked down at her hands. She took a deep breath and let it out. “He threw away his phone. He said he’s going to buy another one and call me when he can. But I don’t know when. I don’t know how to get a hold of him.”
Trey had gotten rid of his personal cell phone and would buy untraceable burners in its place. No one could track him through the GPS from his cell phone. Smart. Trey was thinking. Good. That would keep him alive for a while. I just had to find him before the Raptors did.
“But you know where he was going. Come on, Sierra. You gotta tell me. You know he’s in danger. Where did he go?”
“He said he was going back to get the rest of his stash and then he was going to leave town for a while.”
Bingo. Candlelight Drive.
Trey had gone from safe and smart to endangered and stupid in thirty seconds. If the police caught him with five pounds of marijuana, they wouldn’t need a frame job to put him away for a while. And even if Timothy Buckley could get him released to testify in court on behalf of Randall Eddington, Trey’s credibility would be shot.
On the other hand, if the Raptors caught up with Trey before the cops did, his whole body could end up being shot. The Candlelight address had been on a piece of paper in the ashtray of Wayne Delk’s car. His men might be racing over there right now. Or, worse yet, they may already be there waiting inside the house. Trey could be heading into an ambush, and I had no way to warn him. I couldn’t call the cops and send them over to find Trey walking out with five pounds of weed. I was his only hope.
By taking I-8 to the 805, I’d pushed us way east of where we needed to go. It would take at least ten minutes to get to Candlelight. Ten minutes Trey Fellows might not have. I gunned the Mustang up to eighty-five, hit Highway 52, and took it until it emptied into La Jolla.
“Where are we going?” Sierra asked, as we went up winding Hidden Valley Road to the steep serpentine climb of Via Capri.
“To find your brother.” I didn’t tell her that the Raptors might already be way ahead of us. She was scared enough.
We took Via Capri all the way up to the top of Mount Soledad and circled by the cross and war memorial. A favorite place to visit with my father as a child. Now forever a dark beacon of death inhabited by the man with the black staring eyes from my nightmares.
I pushed the nightmares aside and sped down the winding back side of Soledad Mountain. Three minutes later, I turned down Candlelight Drive. No sign of Sierra’s yellow VW or Raptor trucks, Trans Ams, or motorcycles. Good. Unless the damage had already been done. I drove past 5564 and parked around the corner on Lamplight.
Sierra sat rigid. A statue. Her eyes, below blond bangs, round in permanent fear.
“You know how to drive a stick?” I asked her.
“Yes.”
“Let me have your phone for a second.” She handed me her phone, and I punched in Buckley’s cell number but didn’t hit send. “If I’m not back in five minutes, or if you see biker types coming down the street or a police car drive by, go check into a hotel. A nice one with a lobby and multiple floors. Call this number and tell the man who answers what happened tonight.”
I handed her back the phone.
“Can’t we just go now?” Eyes big and voice high pitched. “My car’s not here, so Trey isn’t either.”
She was probably right, but I didn’t want to tell her that I needed to make sure that Trey wasn’t lying injured in the house. Or worse.
“Sierra,” I gently grasped her wrists. “You’re going to be fine, and I’ll be back in a couple minutes. If for some reason I’m not, just do what I told you. Okay?”
She nodded her head.
“Okay. Now give me back the gun I gave you.” I wasn’t going into a possible Raptor ambush unarmed. I hoped I wouldn’t have to find out if I could ever pull a trigger again.
“The gun?” Sierra’s eyebrows went up. She shoved her hands into her coat pockets and pulled them out empty. “I…I think I left it back behind the apartment building.”
The good news was that I wouldn’t have to face my fears. The bad news was that I might have to face armed Raptors without a gun. I fingered the blackjack in my coat pocket. It had worked twice tonight. Would three times make me charmed?
“That’s okay. I won’t need it.” I prayed.
“I’m sorry.” She looked like she was about to cry.
“Don’t worry. Remember what I told you. Now come around and get in the driver’s side.”
I got out of the car, and Sierra took my place behind the wheel. I walked along the sidewalk and turned left up the hill on Candlelight. No one else was outside and there were only a few lights on in the homes along the street. It was close to midnight and this was a hard-working, middle-class neighborhood.
One of the homes with lights on was Trey’s old hideout. Good. If someone had been in there waiting to attack whoever came through the door, they would have wanted the cover of darkness. I felt better about not having a gun. But not by much.
I avoided the light coming through the kitchen window and went up to the front door, making sure no one in the neighborhood was staring out a window. Clear. I’d forgotten to grab my lock-pick set from the trunk of the car. Shit. Maybe I’d get lucky.
I tried the doorknob. Unlocked. Because Trey had left in a hurry and hadn’t locked up? Or because the Raptors wanted to make it easy for him to walk into a trap? I took a deep breath and pressed my luck.
I pushed the door open six inches and realized I’d been wrong on both counts. The sickly sweet and rancid smell of undiscovered death wafted out of the house. I’d smelled it before back on the job in Santa Barbara. This wasn’t overpowering like a cloistered old woman who’d been found a week too late. This was fresh. Certainly not someone who’d been killed in the last half hour like Trey would had to have been. There wouldn’t yet be an odor. But probably no more than a day old.
I could either call the police or find out who it was on my own. Or I could close the door and leave right now. Candlelight Drive was in La Jolla and LJPD would handle the investigation. The dead body inside could have been planted there by the Raptors to set up Trey so he couldn’t testify against their leader, Steven Lunsdorf. LJPD had their own reasons to keep Trey from testifying in a hearing to free Randall Eddington. They weren’t likely to look past a murder rap against Trey dished up to them on a silver platter.
But Trey might still be in the house. Alive. Or dead.
I pushed the door open and went inside.