the first thing cap heard was a fan blowing in bursts, as if someone were toggling the switch between levels—1, 2, 1, 2. Before he opened his eyes he remembered where he was. Hotel. California. Like the song. But some things were off. He wasn’t under the bedspread or the sheet, and he was fully clothed, his jacket next to him. He cocked his head around, putting pieces together. Then he saw her: Vega standing on her hands in the middle of the room.
It was the same as when he’d seen her through the window, except now he was right here. The intermittent fan sounds were actually her breaths—loud, then soft, through her nose. He did his best to not make any noise, partially so he wouldn’t disturb her morning ritual, and also so he could keep watching her.
Cap didn’t think he was aroused; it was more observational, nearly scientific, witnessing Alice Vega in her natural state, previously unseen by human eyes. He thought of the few times he’d tried yoga, only because Jules loved it, that and Pilates, the latter of which always seemed to him like a particularly Zero Dark Thirty way of working out with all the equipment and everything. He’d never gotten very far with any of it, could never stretch or balance enough and always felt more drained afterward than invigorated.
And though he’d never imagined Vega as the yoga type, she didn’t seem to have a problem with stretch or balance. Or strength. She wore a tank top and shorts, just like when he’d glimpsed her before, and he could not spot a bite of fat on her, nothing gathered around the waist or thighs.
He propped himself up on his elbows and watched her for ten minutes or so, and she showed no signs of coming down. Until about three more minutes passed and then she did. One leg at a time; then the way she moved her back, Cap didn’t really understand it—it really did look as if her spine were partitioned, vertebra by vertebra, each rolling up, ending with her neck and finally her head.
Cap quickly lay back down again and closed his eyes, playing possum.
Vega’s pronounced breathing had stopped. Cap focused on staying still, tried to prevent his eyes from moving around underneath his lids.
“Good, Caplan, you’re awake,” said Vega. Her voice sounded scratchy and really impossibly sexy, Cap thought.
He opened one eye.
“Morning, Vega,” he said, figuring that pretending in front of her was useless. “Sorry I fell asleep here.”
She stretched her arms behind her head. Her face glowed with a light sweat, just the start of dark semicircles under the arms of the tank top.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I found an email from about eighteen months ago to Ben Davis from Lincoln Investments.
“Lincoln Investments,” Cap repeated. “Is that…”
“Devin Lara’s company,” said Vega.
“Well, how about that,” said Cap. “What do we think that connection’s all about?”
“Not sure,” said Vega, drinking from a bottle of water. “Let’s ask him.”
“Davis?”
“Lara,” said Vega, heading toward the bathroom.
Cap stood up from the bed and said after her: “Vega, we go near Lara, you’re asking for Otero and Mackey and Boyce and whoever else is interested to come down on us. Including Lara’s driver.”
She stopped walking and turned around, said, “I’m okay with that.”
“For whatever reason, like you said, Lara is a hot spot for them. I thought we were staying away from him for now. To avoid the attention. One fight at a time and all that.”
She tilted her head.
“Is that what you think we should do?” she asked.
Cap scratched the back of his head and paused.
“Yeah,” he said. “Why muddy this up? Why not just keep on the track for Ben Davis?” he added, holding his hands out parallel, to show what a track might look like.
“Right, but we have no efficient way to find Davis yet, besides staking out his apartment, which he seemed to leave in a hurry and doesn’t get back to often. And we do know how to find Lara. And today is Saturday,” she said. “So it is a juice day.”
“I—” Cap began, then considered how to present the information in the most attractive light. “We go the Ben Davis route, we might have to wait a day or two, but we will get him. And we can move completely under the radar. No PD, no DEA.”
Vega’s face fell; she suddenly looked away from him.
Cap added, in an effort to make her laugh: “Just traditional Cap and Vega Justice. Trademarked.”
Vega did not laugh, only rubbed her eyes, appeared worn out.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
Cap squinted his eyes since he was physiologically unable to squint with his ears. He’d been asked this question many times before, usually by women and usually preceding a discussion about capital “E” emotions.
He’d never expected it from Vega.
“Yeah, of course,” he said.
She crossed her arms and hugged them against her chest, still not looking him in the eyes.
“Do you ever see the Brandt girls?” she said, almost inaudibly.
Cap thought a second. It wasn’t that he had a tough time recalling the details—he knew exactly when and where he’d seen the Brandt girls. His being taken aback grew solely from the act of Vega asking. He always had the impression that she shook off the dust of past cases as soon as they were closed. But perhaps the Brandt case had been different; it certainly was for him.
“Just once if you can believe that,” he said. “It was a couple of months ago, actually. I was in a mall with Nell. She was making me buy new running shoes because one of mine had a hole but they still had plenty of support—anyway, different story,” he said, sweeping the air with his hand. “And I saw them, the girls with the mom, walking around.”
Vega looked up at him now, her eyes wide with expectation.
“How did they look?” she said.
“You know, older,” said Cap. “Jamie’s lost a lot of weight. A little too much, if you ask me. And she looked…”
Cap paused, unable to put his finger on it at the time but remembering it now, he could finally identify her expression.
“Confused,” he said. “She seemed confused. Bailey was next to her talking a mile a minute.” Cap smiled at the memory, continued: “I passed them, and they didn’t see me, or maybe didn’t recognize me—I was out of context there, and Nell didn’t see them. Bailey was going through a list or something—“we have to go here, here, and here.”
“What about Kylie?” said Vega urgently.
Cap took a hearty breath in.
“She was behind them. Texting on her phone. She was dressed…well, let me say as a father I strongly disapproved of the way she was dressed. These short shorts and almost like a bathing suit top. A ton of makeup. I’d never let Nell out of the house looking like that as a seventeen-year-old, much less as an eleven-, twelve-year-old, and I fully embrace that I’m a cliché right now.”
“Nell would never want to leave the house looking like that,” added Vega.
“True. Point is, they were fine, Vega. Normal.”
Vega shook her head, her hair loose around her shoulders.
“Whatever they are, they would have been better if we’d gotten to them sooner, and you know it,” she said.
“Hypothetical,” said Cap sternly. “We got them as soon as we could get them.”
Vega’s expression remained the same, filled with disappointment, regret.
“You can’t play what-if in our line of work, Vega. That is what I know,” he said.
She looked away sadly, and it pissed him off.
“You listen to me, goddammit,” he said, taking a step closer to her, his voice cracking. “We saved their lives, and just in time. One more day could have been too late. And it’s better they’re alive and broken than dead and perfect, you know?”
Vega dropped her hands to her sides, the whites of her eyes gleaming in the dim room.
“You’re right, Caplan. One more day could have been too late. And that brings us to today.”
Cap rubbed his chin. She wasn’t sad at all. She’d pulled him right into admitting that they had to go full-court press. No waiting.
“I see what happened there,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow. Oh do you?
“I suppose you think you’re pretty clever,” he added.
She ignored the comment, said, “Meet at the car in a half hour, okay?”
She didn’t wait for him to respond, instead turned and removed her tank top, dropped it on the floor at her feet before stepping into the bathroom. Cap shot his line of vision up to the corner of the room and shut his eyes simultaneously but there they were stamped on his eyelids, the translucent stepping-stones that made up the bones of her spine.
They sat in Vega’s car, parked at the entrance of the lot. Cap drank coffee. Vega drank nothing and kept her hands on the wheel, peering ahead through her sunglasses.
“So the plan is to convince him to get in the car and talk to us?” he said.
“Sure.”
“So I should just be prepared to get cleaned again?”
Vega shook her head.
“When Lara comes out with the juice, you talk to him. I’ll take care of Richie.”
Cap combed his teeth over his bottom lip.
“And we’re not drawing firearms here on this nice sunny morning, right?”
“I don’t plan to,” said Vega.
“You want to share with me what you do plan to do?”
“You talk to Lara first,” Vega said calmly. “I’ll get what I have in the trunk and take care of Richie.”
Cap’s face blanched; he looked as if he’d lost a packed wallet.
“Vega, I didn’t tell you—I tried to open the trunk,” he said, pointing to it. “It doesn’t work. It’s jammed.”
Vega turned to him.
“I rigged it so it’ll only open with the key,” she said. “Just wanted to see if you’d look.”
“Huh,” said Cap. “I see. A little test. Did I pass or no?”
Vega’s mouth curled at the edges, but then opened, her eyes peering over the glasses at something past Cap. He turned around, and there was a black sedan entering the lot with Richie driving. Vega could see the shape of Lara in the backseat through the darkened window. She started the car and slowly pulled out of the space.
“Keep your eye on it,” she said.
“He’s parking. Why don’t we get as close as we can to the juice place?” said Cap.
Vega nodded and accelerated.
“Slide down,” she said. “Just in case he’s got eyes in the back of his head.”
Cap didn’t question, slid down in his seat. Vega leaned her head back next to the headrest to hide as best she could. She parked in a spot close to the storefronts, and they both watched as Lara got out of the sedan and ambled toward the juice shop, focused on the phone in his hand, texting with his thumbs.
“He’s got a mobile order,” said Vega. “You should go.”
“All right,” said Cap, taking a steely breath.
He got out of the car and shut the door behind him, removed his jacket and dropped it through the window onto his seat.
“Caplan,” said Vega.
He leaned down.
“Yeah?”
“I got you. You know that, right?”
“I sure hope so, girl,” said Cap with a tiny laugh.
Then he left, heading toward Juicy Lucy with big strides. Vega spotted Lara’s sedan in the opposite row, three or four rows in front of hers. Richie was looking down, also on his phone, she figured.
Vega opened the door and got out of the car. She went to the trunk and unlocked it with her key. And there they were: twenty-four-inch, steel-jawed bolt cutters. She picked them up, clasping the padded grips tightly in one hand, slammed the trunk closed. Counted in her head. This was when time made long jumps; it was useful to count the beats. She estimated twenty real seconds before contact.
She started walking toward Cap (one-two-three-four); Cap moved quickly toward the door of the Juicy Lucy (five-six-seven); she paused and hid behind an SUV, heard Lara’s sedan door slam shut (eight-nine-ten); Lara emerged from the shop, juice in one hand, phone in the other, and Cap called, “Hey, Devin!” (eleven-twelve-thirteen); Lara shook his head like, some people never learn, and Richie walked with purpose down the middle of the parking lot aisle (fourteen-fifteen-sixteen).
Vega took off from her position, holding the bolt cutters up over her left shoulder, feeling the weight of the jaws at the top. She took a swing in front of her and heard the catch of the air splitting (seventeen-eighteen-nineteen-twenty).
Time was up.
“You must be one dumb sonofabitch,” said Richie to Cap as he unbuttoned the cuffs of his sleeves.
“Yeah,” said Cap congenially, keeping his eyes on Vega.
Devin Lara watched Richie approach and had a gloriously self-righteous expression like he was about to say, “That’s what you get when you break the rules.” But then his gaze shifted as he recognized Vega. The smirk dropped from his face as he opened his mouth to shout, “What,” pointing to her over Richie’s head.
Richie turned around, and Vega was two feet away from him. Twenty-four inches. The jaws of the bolt cutters up in the air. She swung hard, feeling her triceps and traps stretch and strain. Richie brought up one of his meaty hands to block, and she swung and knocked it out of the way, hearing a brittle crack of bone.
Richie screamed and groaned, held his hand, which sprayed blood, but didn’t fall, so Vega swung again from the other side and brought the jaws down just above the knee on the left side, hoping to snap his IT band, a ligament running from the hip to the shin, which could be excruciating if not stretched properly after a jog, so if it were severed at the knee, Vega could only imagine the pain. Not to mention a kneecap fracture.
She definitely hit one or both because Richie crumpled and screamed haltingly, too shocked with agony to make a continuous sound. Devin Lara was stunned, trying to type something with his thumbs on his phone but shaking too much.
“You should come with us, Devin,” said Cap. “We have a few questions to ask you, and then you’ll be free to enjoy the rest of your day.”
Lara appeared to regain the power of speech, his eyes glistening wildly.
“Fuck you, I’m not going anywhere with you,” he whispered.
Vega rested the clipper end of the bolt cutters on her shoulder as if it were an ax and she were taking a break from chopping a cord of wood.
Cap pointed to her and said, “Now I’m not saying my partner will definitely smash your ankles with those bolt cutters, but she can be a little unpredictable.”
Vega stared Lara down while Richie vomited at her feet.
Just then a couple fresh from morning spin class emerged from Juicy Lucy; the woman gasped when she saw Richie. The man’s gaze bounced from Vega to Cap then Lara and didn’t seem to compute the events that had come before.
“I’ll call an ambulance!” he announced bravely, fumbling for his phone.
“You should,” said Cap. “Police, too. Devin?” he said, gesturing in the direction of Vega’s car. “You want to wait for the police or come with us?”
Lara considered it, chest pumping up and down quickly.
“Decide quicker,” said Vega, taking a step closer to him.
“Oh God,” the spin class woman said, finally stringing the beads together, looking from Vega to Richie while her boyfriend chattered on the phone.
“Let’s go,” said Vega definitively, and Lara started walking, Cap next to him, Vega right behind.
As they approached the car, Vega stuck the keys into Cap’s hand, feeling the warmth of his palm, the fingertips cool.
“You drive,” she said.
Cap unlocked the car and opened the backseat door for Lara. Lara turned and faced Vega, looked her over once more. She held the bolt cutters with both hands, the jaws resting on the ground between her feet.
“Police any minute now, Devin,” said Cap, standing at the driver’s side door.
The adrenaline in Lara’s eyes had tempered just a little bit but still, the wave of resignation crossed his face.
“I’m not afraid of the police,” he said, a little patronizing, like Cap was a real rube for worrying about it.
“Good, neither am I,” Vega said, stepping forward to close the distance between them, smelling the fruit of the red juice on Lara’s breath. “Now get in the fucking car.”
Lara didn’t think about it anymore, just recoiled, falling into the backseat. Vega followed him and pulled the door shut behind her. She held the bolt cutters across her lap and faced him, pitching her legs at a sideways angle in the well, her back leaning against the door. Cap started the car, and Vega heard sirens.
“How do you know Ben Davis?” she asked.
Lara blinked, glanced at the bolt cutters.
“Don’t recognize the name.”
“You sure?” said Vega. “Coyote Ben knows you.”
Lara paused, and Vega guessed which way he would go.
“What about Antonio LoSanto?”
Lara shook his head.
“What about Joe Guerra?”
“No,” said Lara.
“What about Corey Lloyd?”
“You asked me that before,” said Lara, now a little more confident in his denials. “I never heard of him.” He paused. “Sorry, you got the wrong guy.”
Vega studied his face. Still breathing rapidly, dilated pupils. Scared enough to get in the car but not enough to talk. Okay, then.
“So Corey Lloyd’s got it wrong, just arbitrarily named you as the guy who told him he needed a car where a girl ended up dead, and your company arbitrarily sent an email to one of the prime suspects in that girl’s murder eighteen months ago. These things are not connected at all.”
“People know my name,” said Lara, shrugging. “And my company sends information to hundreds of prospective clients each month.”
“So you’re saying it’s a coincidence,” said Vega.
“Yeah, I guess,” said Lara.
“You know what they say about coincidences,” said Vega.
“What—that there are none?” said Lara.
“Is that what they say,” said Vega, meeting Cap’s eye in the rearview. “I thought they said something else.”
Though Vega wasn’t sure of San Diego geography by sight, she thought they must be getting close to the college, the streets looking like they belonged in a little village, the way all college towns looked, cafés and bars, restaurants and shops peddling knickknacks.
“Cap, why don’t we pull over up ahead,” said Vega.
He pulled over into a metered spot in front of a bagel shop. California kids came in and out dressed like surfers and stoners and punks. Vega watched the relief flood Lara’s eyes when he saw how many people were around. He looked to Vega, defensive but hopeful, wondering what was going to come next.
“Our mistake,” she said finally.
“Whatever,” said Lara, shrugging.
“You can press charges against me if you want. I’d totally understand,” said Vega. “For aggravated assault of your man back there.”
“And kidnapping, too, I think,” Cap chimed in.
“Sure,” said Vega. “Kidnapping, too.”
“No, that’s okay,” Lara was quick to add. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You could, though. That would be fair. After all, you’re just a private citizen and everything.”
Lara pulled at the door handle, and it snapped back into place.
“Could you unlock the door, please?” he said, both trepidatious and annoyed.
“Oh, yeah, sure. Cap, could you unlock that child lock?”
Cap pressed a button, and they heard the lock click.
Devin took another look at her and Cap, opened the door wide, and jumped out.
The smile vanished from Vega’s face.
“Vega?” said Cap.
“Just giving him ten seconds.”
She watched him get onto the sidewalk and tap his phone, lift it to his ear.
“Ten,” said Vega, getting out of the car.
She left the bolt cutters behind.
On the sidewalk, students milled around her holding coffee cups and yoga mats. Lara was still speaking on the phone, the red juice in his left hand at his side. Vega could not make out the words he was saying.
She came up fast behind him and slapped the juice out of his hand. It splattered onto the ground in the shape of a beam cast from a lighthouse.
Lara whipped around and saw her for less than a second before she took two quick jabs, one to each side of his face, right, then left hand, and then as he started to fall backward she jumped and got him once more, the right elbow under his chin, jamming the jaw.
He screamed, fell to the ground, blood bursting from his mouth and nose. Vega squatted and grabbed his phone, which had fallen facedown next to him.
“I bith my tongue,” he cried, sitting up somewhat, spitting blood into his hands. Then he reached into the pool in his palm and picked out a small spongy bit. “Thith ith the tip of my tongue,” he said in shock.
“Would you look at that,” said Vega, indifferent.
She grabbed the collar of his shirt and yanked him toward her.
“Where is Ben Davis right now?”
Lara’s face twitched and roiled with pain and nausea.
Vega said, “Tell me right now before you pass out or I will take the rest of your fucking tongue out of your mouth.”
“He’th at the houth…” Lara said.
“What house? Where?”
“Thalton.”
Salton, she thought. She’d never been but had seen pictures. A manmade lake, surrounded by double-wides.
Lara shook his head, eyes fluttering, losing consciousness.
“Address,” she said, shaking him vigorously.
“Hey, stop it, you can’t do that,” one of the bros watching remarked.
Vega didn’t turn her head fully but angled it toward the voice and said, “Shut up. He fucks little girls.” Then, back to Lara: “What’s the address?”
Lara passed out. His head was loose on his neck. Vega let go of his collar, and his upper body dropped to the concrete.
She stood up, her shirt and hands damp with blood. College kids stood around, stunned, filming her, texting, speaking quietly. But none taking a run at her. Vega turned and walked past them all, and they didn’t try to stop her. The college kids chattered; she vaguely heard them say, “stop,” “police,” “tongue,” “fucks little girls.”
She tapped Lara’s phone, which hadn’t yet locked, and scrolled through the recents. Then she scrolled through the contacts and found Davis. She pressed her thumb on the name and began to write a text, got into the car, the engine still running.
“Ready?” said Cap.
“Go.”
He peeled out of the spot with a tight scream off the rear wheels.
Again, they heard sirens.
“Where to?” said Cap.
“Salton City,” said Vega. “It’s east.”
Two police cars passed them heading the opposite direction. Cap drove for a minute.
“That’s what was in the trunk—bolt cutters?”
“Yeah—why?”
Cap shrugged. “Didn’t think it would be so low-tech.”
“They’re superuseful,” said Vega somewhat defensively. “Get on the freeway in half a mile.”
She continued her text to Davis.
“Is that Lara’s phone?” Cap asked.
“Yes, I’m sending Davis a text.”
“Pretending to be Lara,” said Cap, beginning to understand.
Vega nodded. Her thumb hovered over the Send button. She checked her map app. Two hours twenty-nine minutes to Salton. She sent the text: “VIP on the way. Text him with directions. Number attached. Will pay triple for youngest we have.”
Later they sat in the car on a street that looked recently paved, the smell of tar pushing through the vents along with the faint scent of decaying plant life. Here and there were houses but they were spread far apart, two or three to each sprawling block but not because they were upmarket properties, because there seemed to be no one or nothing out here. Cap noted that he hadn’t seen another car or human for at least a couple of miles.
“You think I can pass for a VIP?” he said, examining his face in the rearview.
“I didn’t ask you to come here just because you’re good at your job,” Vega said.
“You needed a guy.”
“I needed a guy,” she repeated.
Cap gazed at the house down the block.
“Wish we had some time for recon,” he said.
“We only have until Lara regains consciousness and gets to a phone,” said Vega. “Maybe more if he doesn’t know Davis’s number from memory, which is possible.”
Cap unbuckled his seatbelt and touched the Sig under his jacket.
“You think they’ll pat down?”
“They have no reason to,” said Vega. She tilted her head against the window and raised her eyebrows, looking at the house. “You get in there, let me know. If it feels like we have a shot, we take it.”
Cap breathed hard and hot through his nose.
“What am I there for?” he said.
“The youngest.”
He began to shake his head, almost like he couldn’t believe it but of course he could. Of course there were more Janes, alive right now. For now.
“Vega—” he began, and he knew it sounded like he was about to launch into a protest.
“You have to move quickly,” she said.
He paused.
“Caplan?”
“Vega, don’t mistake my hesitation for lack of enthusiasm,” he said. “I just think I should enter engaging the purpose of recon, and the possibility of rescue.”
Vega faced forward, considering it.
He continued: “What if they’re armed?”
“They might be but it won’t be an arsenal.”
“You sure? They do have a habit of stabbing people in the kidneys and forcibly administering electroshock. These are those guys.”
Vega shut her eyes. Cap shifted his weight in his seat, rubbed the stubble on his cheeks and chin.
“Okay,” she conceded. “Get in a room with a girl and text me. That’s it. Head count, firearms, whatever you want.” She paused, then added, “If you’re in danger, get out. No questions.”
Cap nodded, aware of the blood pumping in and around his heart.
“You should go,” said Vega, when she saw he wasn’t moving.
“Yeah, I’m going,” he said, staring at her, still not moving.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to kiss you,” said Vega.
Cap broke into a laugh. Vega looked out the window.
“Well, shit,” said Cap. “The hell I’m sticking around here for?”
He got out of the car then and walked away quickly without looking back, right up to the long blue house with the rose pink doorframe.
He knocked and waited, then knocked once more. Someone came quickly. It was Davis.
“Caplan, right?” he said.
Cap nodded, looked him over. His hair was about an inch long, blond at the tips, light silvery color in the eyes, narrow but alert.
“You Davis?”
“Yeah. Come in.”
He leaned against the door, and Cap stepped past him, into the house.
It smelled like air freshener, the cardboard pine trees that dangled from rearviews, or aftershave. The carpet was tan and stained here and there with bleach spots. Did Davis dye his hair and then walk down the hall, spilling and dripping, Cap thought as he followed him.
Davis led him into a room full of girls. There were nine, Cap counted quickly, all in bras and underwear or skimpy slips. All barefoot. Some looked up at him as he entered, and some watched a game show on a TV in the corner. Two girls lay on their stomachs in front of the screen. Cap flashed briefly to Jaylin Duffy and her sensory deprivation project, and he smiled thinking of her.
“It’s good, right?” said Davis, assuming Cap was happy with the options.
Cap played along.
“Yeah.”
There were drawn blinds on a long picture window in the middle of one wall, an L-shaped counter on the opposite side of the room covered with bottles of rum, tequila, red Solo cups. A nearly obese guy with a black goatee sat on a stool at the counter, a Glock 42 on a belt on his hip. Dammit, Vega, thought Cap. Of course they’re armed.
“Lara said you wanted the youngest?”
Cap felt his stomach churning, smelled synthetic strawberry and vanilla perfume and lotion. He nodded, his eyes covering the room once more.
“Missy’s twelve.”
One of the girls lying on the floor turned her head and looked at Davis.
“That’s her,” said Davis, pointing. “Missy, levántate,” he called to her.
Missy stood. She was maybe four feet tall. She met Cap’s eyes and turned all the way around, 360, so he could see her body from every angle prior to purchase. She wore a skimpy black teddy.
Cap nodded again.
“So that’s six hundred for the hour. We take it up front,” Davis said.
Cap pulled his wallet from his pants and pulled out the hundreds, folded them in the middle, and handed them to Davis, who counted them again.
“Anything you want, just show her,” said Davis. “You can hit but not the face.”
Cap stayed silent and nodded again, almost said, “How much can I pay to hit you in the face?”
Missy came forward and stood in front of Cap. Davis gripped her arm and whispered something in her ear. She looked at the floor.
“Hour starts now,” said Davis.
Missy took Cap’s hand with both of hers and smiled. Cap guessed she was attempting to be alluring but it just looked like a little girl wearing her mom’s makeup in the bathroom mirror. And scared to death underneath.
She led Cap out of the girl room and down the stairs, where there was a hallway with closed doors on either side. She stopped in front of a door near the end of the hall and opened it. She held her arm out, presenting the room to Cap. He stepped inside. The room was about the size of a storage locker. There was a twin bed with only a fitted sheet on it, a folded towel at the foot, and a single-drawer filing cabinet, which Cap registered as odd, even though he was not certain he was processing everything exactly as it was, feeling somewhat in shock.
Missy pressed a button in the doorknob after shutting the door. She stood in front of Cap and smiled again at him, the same pretend-smile. Then she removed the teddy and dropped it on the floor. Her breasts were small and Cap stared at her face so he would not have to look at her body. She took his hand and began to bring it to her breast, and Cap yanked it away. Her eyes lit up with fear and confusion.
“No,” he said, a little too loudly. Then he whispered, calmer, “No.” He reached down and picked up the teddy, handed it back to her. “Please,” he said. “Por favor.”
He mimed putting the teddy back on. Missy stared at him. He pressed the teddy against her.
“Please,” he whispered again.
Missy suddenly became shy and put the teddy on quickly, folded her arms in front of her to cover up even more. She said some words quietly in Spanish; Cap didn’t know much, almost nothing in fact, but he thought he heard a word that sounded like “other,” and he assumed she was asking him if he wanted someone else, some other girl.
He shook his head vigorously and then held up his finger. Wait, one second.
From the inside pocket of his jacket, he pulled out the picture of Maricel Villareal at the window. He showed it to Missy.
“Do you know her?” he whispered in English. “Do you know this girl? Maricel?”
Missy’s eyes flashed with panic. Her mouth opened slightly as she took the picture from him.
“Maricel,” she said.
“Yes, sí,” said Cap. Then he pointed to himself and said, “I’m here to help you. Ayuda,” he added, pointing at her.
Missy seemed stunned, still staring at the picture in her hand.
Then, because he thought it would be impossible to explain how even though he was a private investigator and not technically a police officer, he and his partner were working with the police until very recently when they’d been let go, he placed his open palm on his chest and said, “Policía.”
Missy shook her head and began to chatter in Spanish, too fast for Cap to pick anything out. She pushed the picture back at him and backed away, talking fast and anxious, and kept pointing to the door.
“Rafa,” she said. Then more urgently quiet, as if she were being choked: “Rafa…”
Cap looked toward the door. What was rafa?
“Rafa?” he repeated.
She kept talking, shaking her head no, her small hands and fingers trembling. Cap held up his finger again to indicate one minute more, and he pulled out his phone and texted Vega, “One big guy with Glock in living room with 8 girls. In bedroom with 9th girl. Recognizes Maricel.”
He hit Send. Missy had backed up to the bed now, was curled against the wall, making her body so small and flat it reminded Cap of a pressed flower.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he said in his kindest, calmest voice possible. “I’m not going to hurt you. Ayuda,” he said again.
Vega’s text came back: “Any other guys/guns?”
Cap wrote: “No. Only fat man and Davis.”
He tapped Send and then quickly added a separate text: “What does rafa mean?”
Missy was crying, covering her mouth with both hands, the breath from her nostrils audible.
“Come on now, I’m going to get you out of here,” said Cap. He took a small step closer to her, and then his phone buzzed.
He glanced down, saw Vega’s response.
“On my way. Don’t know rafa. Name maybe?”
Just as he felt that land in his head, the door burst open. Missy screamed now, full volume, and Cap saw why: there was a third guy, at least two heads taller than him, built not like a linebacker but maybe like the guy who bullies linebackers in grade school, black hair to his shoulders and pierces in his cheeks, ears, eyebrows, neck. Dead dark eyes.
Rafa.
He was holding something in his right hand but Cap didn’t stop to identify it. Cap reached for the Sig but wasn’t quick enough. Rafa thrust his hand forward and shot him with a standard two-probe Taser, like the kind Cap had been trained to use as a cop. Then Cap fell to the ground but didn’t feel the hit, didn’t feel anything, not asleep and not awake, thinking few thoughts as his eyes remained open and body paralyzed, like he was in an elevator the size of a coffin going down, down, down.
Vega wasn’t getting anything back.
“Respond,” she wrote.
He didn’t.
“Goddammit, Caplan,” she said out loud.
She got out of the car, picked up the bolt cutters with her left hand, and set the jaws on her shoulder. She shut the car door, and then she drew the Springfield with her right hand.
She had practiced something like this with John Patrick, as a method of arm strengthening, twenty-pound weights in each hand, swinging each in front of her in windmills. It built the shoulders especially, and she felt the control she had now of the things in both hands.
She came to the door of the house with big strides and swung the bolt cutters up and then down, cracking them into the door near the handle. The wood splintered and buckled but didn’t break so Vega wound it up again and slammed the clips in the same place. The handle broke clean off, and Vega put her hand through the hole she’d made and felt around for other locks. She felt a bolt above and unlocked it. Then she opened the door.
A house with no air and screaming girls. She ran toward the screams into an arched doorway on her right, and right away she took in the girls but didn’t dwell on them (later, later, scuttled through her head). There was a fat guy on the other side of the room, and as soon as he saw Vega, he grabbed a girl standing next to a counter covered with liquor bottles and cut limes. He fastened his arm around the girl’s neck, pinning her in front of him, and put a gun to her head.
“I’ll put her down like a dog you come any closer,” he said.
Vega did a quick diagnostic of the truth and possibility of that statement. Even though there were the two dead Janes, here were nine more in this house, and they were all money in the bank. Whatever the reason was for killing the other two, would collateral against a stranger make the cut?
Vega didn’t think so. She locked eyes with the girl, who didn’t seem particularly alarmed. Shock, thought Vega. The other girls in the room screamed and cried and clung to the walls.
Even though Vega’s right arm was steady, she held the bolt cutters underneath her forearm, crossing just below the elbow to get a flat surface.
“Here’s the thing about the human shield,” said Vega, shutting her left eye. “You have to find someone bigger than your fat ass.”
She fired twice, one after the other, got him in the elbow of his firing hand, then the knee. He cried out and crumpled, fell hard to the floor, and Vega felt the floor shake under the weight. The gun dropped; the girl stayed standing, her bare skin sprayed with blood.
Vega walked in a direct path to the fat guy and kneeled down. He was moaning, writhing as best he could with his various rolls of flesh. Vega got in his face and positioned the bolt cutters in his groin. Hit ’em where it hurts, Perry would have said.
“How many guys here beside you and Davis?” she said.
The fat guy groaned, saliva leaking from his mouth. Vega scissored the bolt cutters tighter.
He shouted.
“How many?” she said again.
“Just one, just Rafa,” he uttered, and then he began to pass out.
Vega unclasped the jaws from his testicles, and he gasped, his head rolling back onto the carpet. She eyed his bullet wounds. They were bleeding steadily but she hadn’t hit any organs or arteries. Just some bones and fat but enough to keep him down so she could get to work. She took his Glock and stuck it between her pants and the small of her back. Then she stood up.
Vega addressed the girl that the fat guy had grabbed.
“Are you hurt?” Vega said in Spanish.
The girl shook her head. The right side of her face was sprayed with blood. She appeared to be on the older side of the group. She wore a spaghetti strap tank top with no bra and pink underwear. Bare feet. They all had bare feet.
“My name is Vega. I’m here to help you.”
The girl didn’t respond, so Vega continued.
“I need to find my partner first, the white man who just came in. Do you know where he is?”
“Rafa took him to the garage,” she said.
“Where’s the garage?”
The girl pointed toward the door. Outside. Vega remembered seeing a shed next to the house, figured that was it.
“Any other men here besides Coyote Ben and Rafa?”
The girl shook her head.
“Any other girls besides who’s right here?” Vega said, gesturing gently to the others.
“Two,” said the girl. “Missy and Chicago.”
She pronounced the “Ch” hard, like in “chitchat.”
“There’s a man with Chicago downstairs. No gun. Bald,” said the girl, pointing to her head.
Vega glanced around at the other girls. They pressed themselves against the walls and in the corners like they were trying to camouflage their bodies into the paper-white paint.
“Does Coyote Ben have a gun?” asked Vega.
The girl shrugged. Unsure.
“He has a knife,” she said. Then she held her fingers out, about six inches apart. “This long.”
Vega nodded, assumed this girl must have seen it at least a couple of times to remember it so well.
“Does Rafa have a gun?” Vega asked.
“Rafa has everything.”
“I’ll take care of him,” said Vega.
She knew she was saying it wrong. She’d learned Spanish from her father and from high school and spoke it well, had picked up slang and idioms working in fugitive recovery but had to concentrate sometimes to find the right verb. She knew she was using the wrong one, cuidar a, like to be a caretaker of a baby or a patient in the hospital. The girl squinted at her. Vega wasn’t sure she understood but she didn’t need to. Vega was going to do it anyway.
She peered over at the fat guy; he had passed out for good but was definitely still alive, the gelatinous mass of his stomach rising and falling steadily.
“Will you stay here while I find my partner?” asked Vega.
The girl nodded with a puzzled look in her eye. Like, where else would she go? Vega scanned the room, looked around at the girls. They all seemed scared, but they had stopped screaming. There was a distance there, a separation; it was like they were wearing masks of scared faces. Vega wondered if they’d been sedated.
Vega nodded back at the girl and left, found the stairs and went down, to the rooms. She stepped as lightly as she could, her right arm extended with the Springfield aimed straight ahead, the jaws of the bolt cutters resting on her left shoulder. She stuck close to the wall and listened, thought she heard movement—feet shuffling, fabric rustling, the scrape of denim. She froze and waited, gritted her teeth and thought, C’mon, you sonofabitch, come see all the damage I got for you right here.
Cap was aware that he was being dragged outdoors, could feel the gravel on his back, could see the sun above him glaring into his unblinking eyes, tears leaking out of the corners.
Rafa was pulling him, his thick hand clasping the collars of Cap’s jacket and shirt. Cap could feel the second button pressing on his neck, garroting him, but he couldn’t move any muscle in particular, was unable even to summon a cough. Had he and Nell once talked about autoerotic asphyxiation? The memory of a conversation floated past.
Then he was yanked inside again, a new room, a smell like an old electric train set when the cars run off the tracks. Burnt batteries.
He could see toothpicks of sunlight shooting through panels on the wall. Wood, siding, he wasn’t sure. He was dropped, felt the back of his head hit the concrete, stinging flashes of pain crowding his vision. A sound came from his throat unwittingly, halfway between a gurgle and a cry.
Rafa moved above him, walking back and forth. Cap followed him with his eyes as far as they would roll to the corner of the room where the door was. Cap heard the door shut, then a series of locks.
Rafa returned, leaned down into Cap’s face, and examined him like he was a specimen in a jar. Scrutinizing. Cap could smell the sweat on his skin. Rafa stuck his hands in Cap’s underarms and heaved him up, threw him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, then dropped him on a narrow table.
Cap’s eyes shot to the walls. Tools hung there—a saw, hammers, screwdrivers. A vise, prongs, tongs. All of them dotted and splattered with odd patterns of rust.
Cap’s knowledge as a handyman was limited to basic carpentry and the contents of a set of Time Life how-to books his parents had purchased in the eighties. But he only had to think about it for a second, that rust didn’t form and dry like a liquid on tools.
Only blood could do that.
Vega made a sharp turn at the bottom of the stairs. There was another smaller hallway and a little girl in a lacy top and underwear crouching in a doorway to a room. The fear on her face was the opposite of the distant fear on the faces of the girls upstairs. This girl’s fear was immediate and alive. It appeared to be gobbling her up right there, her teeth chattering, words spilling out fast and slurry, her eyes darting to different points on the ceiling like there was a connect-the-dots up there.
“It’s okay,” said Vega quietly, in Spanish. “I’m here to help you.”
The girl shook her head desperately.
“Rafa,” she whispered.
“He took the white guy to the garage,” said Vega.
The girl stopped shaking her head.
“Where is Coyote Ben?” asked Vega.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you Missy?”
She nodded.
“What about Chicago—the girl, Chicago?”
Missy pointed down the hall and held up three fingers—the third room.
For the first time Vega looked at the layout: there were four doors on each side, the rooms like makeshift cubicles, small and clearly not part of the original architecture of the house, constructed out of white fiberboard, divided by thin strips of sheet metal.
Vega walked down the narrow hallway and counted the rooms on her right. One-two-three. She pointed at the door in front of her and looked at Missy. Vega knocked with the nose of her gun lightly. There was no answer so she pounded on the door three times with the jaws of the bolt cutters.
The door opened about a foot wide, and a chunky bald guy leaned his head into the opening to speak.
“I have twelve more minutes,” he said to Vega. He seemed almost on the verge of tears.
Vega kicked the door all the way open and aimed the Springfield at his face. He stumbled backward, naked except for a white T-shirt. Vega chased him to the floor, and he scrambled on his hands and ass into the wall. Vega kept the gun in his face.
“Where are your car keys?” she said.
She pressed the nose of the gun against his forehead, felt it slide with the sweat.
“In the pants,” he said, a tiny drop of spittle escaping the corner of his mouth with the “p.”
Vega took a step back and pulled the gun away from his skin.
“Get them,” she said.
He crawled to his pants and frantically searched the pockets, pulled out a small ring of keys.
Vega let her eyes jump briefly to Chicago, who lay on the bed naked. She hadn’t made a move to cover herself. She looked about sixteen and had a circular red burn mark on her temple just like Jane 1. Was she on something? Had her brain been cooked? Or was it the fog of trauma, multiple rapes and beatings? Vega knew fear could punch deeper holes with longer-lasting damage in neural pathways than ice picks could.
The bald man started to wriggle his stocky legs into his pants, fussing with the belt in his shaking hands.
“Leave the fucking clothes, you dumb motherfucker!” Vega yelled at him, her voice reverberating off the flimsy walls, stinging her own eardrums.
He stood up, cowering, holding his keys in front of his crotch as if they would cover his rapidly shrinking dick.
“Get the fuck out,” she said.
He ran out the door, past her, his keys jingling.
Vega lowered her gun and looked to Chicago, who watched her like a deer.
“Do you know where Coyote Ben is?” Vega said.
The girl just stared at Vega, the words not getting through.
“You should go upstairs. With the other girls,” said Vega.
Chicago got off the bed and stood. Vega realized Chicago was actually taller than she was. She could see the girl’s ribs underneath the perfect semicircles of her breasts. Chicago left the room, taking no clothes with her.
Vega stepped out of the room. Chicago had joined Missy at the bottom of the stairs, and the two headed up. Vega could hear Missy whispering to Chicago urgently, but Chicago didn’t react.
Vega moved down the hallway and kicked open the doors to the rest of the rooms. They were empty and identical—twin beds, filing cabinets. No Davis.
She turned and ran, thinking about how narrow it was—the hallway, the stairway, no visibility around the corners, and she really hated that. She took the stairs two at a time, not worrying about the sound because now Davis could only be upstairs if he was anywhere in the house, if he hadn’t skipped totally and was well on his way to Tijuana.
Vega came to the top and headed to the right, the direction of the girls, but then Davis appeared, lunging at her abdomen with a knife in his hand.
Vega heard her jacket and shirt rip at the side and dropped her gun, fell back against the wall, away from Davis. She knew he’d gotten her but didn’t feel the pain, just the warmth of her blood like a broth spilling through her clothes, but she also knew she was upright, not falling, not fainting, so realized it was just a swipe, nothing punctured, might not even need stitches.
It was not even a full second—not a one-Mississippi, and then Davis came at her again, this time the blade pointed right at her, gripping it from below with one hand, his left outstretched heading for the wall or her shoulder. Vega was familiar with the stance; the slice had been meant to stun. Now he wasn’t looking to stab; he was aiming to gut.
Fortunately she still had the bolt cutters.
She swung them with whatever momentum she could gather with both hands, and the jaws met Davis’s hip before he got near her, knocking him down. He dropped the knife and screamed, grabbed his smashed hip with both hands and yelled, “Shit, shit, shit.”
Vega knew she wanted to get information from him at some point soon. But at the moment she wanted to knock all of his teeth out more. She swung at his mouth, not with her full weight, not hard enough to bury the alloy steel into his skull, but enough to unhinge his jaws, destroy his sinuses, splinter his nice suburban teeth. He screamed and cried and whined when she pulled the bolt cutters from his mouth, his hands slapped over his lips, waterfalls of blood and spit pouring over his fingers, real genuine tears leaking from his eyes.
Vega picked up her gun and pressed her elbow tight to the incision in her side. She stepped over Davis and headed for the front door, not looking back, thinking, Good boy, down you go.
Cap could hear the hum. He remembered rock shows from his youth and Nell’s fall band concerts—the sound of the amps as the musicians plugged in and tuned up. Early MTV heavy metal videos, the single victorious drumstick twirling.
This wasn’t that. Rafa stood next to him, shifting things around on a table near Cap’s head. Then he sat in a wheeled chair. He leaned down and pulled Cap’s eyelids up with his thumb, peered into one eye and then the other.
“All right, boss,” he said, like he was about to serve him a drink. “You should wear a better costume next time, hey?”
He opened Cap’s mouth and pushed his rows of teeth open with two fingers, shoved in a mouth guard, like the kind boxers used. Cap could feel it pressing on his gums, stretching the frenulum of his upper lip.
“You bite your tongue off, more cleanup for me, boss,” Rafa said.
Cap’s breathing sped up. He huffed through his nose.
“Yeah, I know, the first time’s a bitch.”
Rafa leaned over and flipped a switch. The humming grew louder, and Rafa pressed a silicon patch onto Cap’s left temple. Cap felt one tiny twitch in his right pinkie. He concentrated on his toes and fingertips and willed them to wiggle. But then Rafa flipped another switch, and the humming got louder still, a gargantuan alien mosquito in his ears, and then the very last switch flipped.
The volts shot through Cap, and there was no more thinking, just all the meat of his muscles snapping into spasms, his brain off the clock.
Vega went out to the garage. It was a rickety shed, made of cheap siding. There was a single door with a handle and Vega pulled it, then pushed, but it was locked. She shoved her shoulder into the door and felt something solid and immovable behind it. Not as weak as it looked.
She lifted the bolt cutters with both hands and swung full force into the door. The jaws made a dent, and the whole wall shook but didn’t break, didn’t open.
“You can’t open it like that,” said a voice in Spanish from behind Vega.
Vega turned to see the older girl, still with the spray of blood from the fat guy on her face. The other girls stood behind her, blinking into the sunlight. Some sat on the dirt. None appeared to be trying to run.
“There is…” the girl said and paused, trying to find the right words. “Metal behind the door.”
Vega’s mind raced. Steel, aluminum, acrylic. Only if it were specifically ballistic resistant would it kick back a bullet.
“You should stand over there,” she said to the girl, pointing to the others.
The girl backed up and regarded Vega with curiosity.
Vega pulled the Springfield from her holster and flipped the safety with her thumb. She took a step back and aimed down, at about a forty-five-degree angle, and fired. The bullet hit the door with a tinny crash and the casing dropped to the dirt. The door was dented. There was something bulletproof behind it.
Vega walked back a few paces, thought briefly about walking around the shed and firing along the perimeter but two things gave her pause: she couldn’t be sure where they were inside and it would give Rafa time. She could sacrifice one but not the other. She needed something faster, bigger.
She ran to her car, the entire right side of her shirt, the right leg of her pants soaked with her blood now. But she knew she couldn’t be losing that much; she was still thinking, processing, taking deep breaths, and not feeling faint, not yet.
She got into the driver’s seat and threw the bolt cutters on the seat next to her, stuck her gun back into the holster. Buckled the seatbelt and winced at the pressure on the cut but ignored it, yanked on the belt twice to make it as tight as possible across her. Then she pushed the driver’s side door open.
Time to go.
She started the car and kept her left foot on the brake while she tapped the gas gently with her right, felt the engine rev. Forty should do it, she thought. She put her hands at 3 and 9 and pressed the back of her head into the headrest. She took her foot off the brake, and the car lurched at first, not the best pickup anymore. The tires screeched, and she pushed on the gas, watched the speedometer climb like it had a fever, right up to forty, the street blurring by.
Then she was on the curb and the second before making contact she slammed the brake and turned her head, crashed into the side of the shed, tearing through the wall.
The airbag inflated and Vega felt it sock her in the cheek with the weight of a packed boxing glove, smelled the smoke and the powder. She held her breath and shut her eyes and with her right hand followed the seatbelt down to the buckle and snapped it open. The right side of her stomach and thigh had gone numb now, but she didn’t feel the pain of the cut anymore. The crash had pumped more adrenaline into her heart than a hypodermic.
She slid to the left of the airbag near the door, which had been blown back toward the car on impact but had not shut. She pushed it open with her shoulder and squatted behind it, on the floor of the shed, pulled the Springfield out of the holster with her right hand, then the fat guy’s Glock from her waistband with her left.
She looked up to the ceiling. The car had ripped one of the walls off a corner, smashed the bottom half of it open so it looked like a half-open garage door. The room smelled like smoke, but Vega couldn’t tell what was burning.
She poked her head up and peered through the glass of the car door. Caplan was on a table, but she couldn’t see his face. He wasn’t moving. Rafa had a gun out and fired into the windshield. He was a big boy—six four without shoes—and looked like he’d lifted pretty regularly.
She held the Springfield just above the window of the car door and fired, aimed for his legs, got a thigh. He screamed and fell to the floor with a crash. Then she stood up and walked quickly toward him. Fired with the Glock into his other leg. He screamed again and moved his hands instinctually to the newer wound.
The Glock was bigger than Vega’s gun and kicked back in her hand a little but she held it steady and then fired once more with the Springfield into his foot. He convulsed with the pain and tried to reach for the injured foot but couldn’t seem to make it, cried out as his hands curled in front of his stomach, his head twisting on his neck.
Vega put her guns away and ran to Cap. His eyes were open and blinking rapidly. He had an electrode patch on his head and his mouth was open an inch. Vega could see a solid bulk of white against his teeth.
“Caplan,” she said, reaching her fingers into his mouth.
She pulled out a mouth guard and tossed it to the floor. Then she carefully unpeeled the patch and dropped it, let it swing from a wire attached to a box the size and shape of an old VCR. There was a pink burn on Cap’s left temple where the patch had been.
“Caplan,” she said again, quieter.
She held his face in her hands. He was looking at her, his eyes searching her face, but he didn’t speak. Muscles were twitching, his lips, arms and fingers, feet. His head shook toward his shoulder.
“Can you hear me?” she said.
He tilted his chin up in a sharp nod. She took his hand and bent his arm at the elbow, as if they were about to arm-wrestle.
“Can you squeeze my hand?”
He squeezed. It wasn’t strong but it was there.
“Move your feet,” said Vega.
He moved them, pointing the toes. One, two.
“Now your whole leg. This one,” she said, patting his left thigh. “Just lift it off the table a little.”
Cap blinked heavily at her, as if he didn’t understand the command at first, but then he did it, hovering his leg over the table about an inch.
“How about the other one?”
He lifted the other one. Hokeypokey.
“Okay,” said Vega. “I’m going to pull you up.”
She leaned close to him and kept her hand tightly clasped around his, then put her other arm around his back and pulled him upright. She could feel his biceps and flexors working. She let go of his hand. Without her telling him to, he swiveled his whole body to the side so his legs hung off the table, like he was at his annual physical.
Vega stood next to him, took his hand, and pulled his arm around her shoulders so they were side by side.
“On three,” she said.
He nodded.
“One. Two. Three.”
She lifted him, and he stood at the same time. They began to walk, Cap’s feet not stepping too far off the ground. Vega’s side began to ache again. They walked around Rafa’s twitching body, past the wreckage of Vega’s car, through the hole in the wall of the shed, out into the light.