BACK WHEN SHE worked for Anton, Ellie had always made sure she was on time. Her health depended on it. The first week she went to work for him, learning the ropes, one of his stickmen ended up being five minutes late for a meeting. The guy had a valid excuse: a flat tire. He had even taken a picture of it on his phone and had texted it to Anton. Anton nodded in understanding and then broke the guy’s nose.
Ellie was waiting for him outside of her building at ten to one when, across the busy street, she saw Anton’s black BMW, with its tinted windows, slide to a stop and double-park. The guy driving behind him had to pump the brakes a bit and voiced his displeasure by planting his hand on the horn. Ellie darted through the traffic, the guy in the Audi not letting up on the horn, and when she got into the passenger seat, Anton threw his door open, about to storm out and put the fear of God into the driver. She grabbed his arm, his bicep as hard as granite.
“It’s not worth it,” she yelled over the horn. “Come on—let’s go.”
Anton shut the door but kept his hand on the handle, his attention pinned on the rearview mirror as he debated whether or not to go out and unleash holy hell. He wasn’t dressed for it: Prada loafers without socks, and tight, dark designer jeans with an even tighter black V-neck shirt. Anton put a high regard on his clothes, doted on them like children. He wouldn’t want to get them wrinkled, let alone bloodied, which she took as a good sign.
The Audi peeled out from behind Anton and darted back into traffic. Anton stared after it, quiet, grinding his teeth. He wore a pair of mirrored Oakley sunglasses, and the skin of his face was red with anger.
Working with Anton, she had learned quickly to forecast his mood swings, which were often as chaotic and unpredictable as summertime in New England. Sometimes the storm lasted minutes, sometimes days (especially if he’d gotten a blood transfusion), replaced by gray clouds or, God willing, sunshine and clear blue skies. Whatever was eating at him, it had nothing to do with the Audi.
She knew better than to ask. Anton hated when his employees asked him personal questions of any kind. It would set him off.
Then again, Faye Simpson wasn’t his employee, not anymore. Faye Simpson now worked exclusively with Frank. Faye Simpson wouldn’t ask Anton questions, but Officer Ellie Batista would because she needed to know what Anton was after, his thoughts, his game plan, everything.
Still, she’d need to be careful. On a good day, Anton was about as stable as a live grenade.
Anton got a call. His phone was connected to the BMW’s computer system through Bluetooth, so the caller’s name was displayed on the console: Galina. Anton took it.
The woman spoke only in Russian. Anton spoke in Russian, too, and while Ellie didn’t have the slightest idea what they were talking about, she knew it wasn’t good. The woman screamed at Anton, but he didn’t scream back—didn’t do much of anything except sit there and rattle off a few Russian words, looking like he wanted to take the world’s longest vacation. The call ended ten minutes later, when Galina hung up.
“What is it with you broads?” Anton asked, throwing his hands in the air. “You act nice, treat them right, take them out to nice dinners and shit, and what do they do? They squeeze your nut sack and smile because you’re not giving them more. But if you treat them like dirt, wipe your feet all over them, shit on them, they smile and come back and ask for more. You’re all insane.”
Then, when Ellie didn’t reply, he turned his head to her and said, “What? You got nothing to say?”
“I wasn’t aware you wanted my input.”
“Let’s hear it. I need your help with this.”
“That’s a sweeping generalization, your view of women.”
“You saying I’m a liar?”
“You ever think you’re picking out the wrong kind of woman? That maybe instead of going after the ones who have brains the size of a chickpea and beach-ball-sized boobs—”
“I’m a tit guy. It’s in my DNA—I can’t help it.”
“How about finding a woman of substance? They are out there, you know.”
“Yeah, and they’re fat and collect cats.” Anton sighed.
Then, much to her surprise, he opened up to her about his problems with his girlfriend, Galina. She was Russian, Anton explained, and they had met at the wedding of a mutual friend, and after dating for eight months she thought they should move in together. Galina had become “too Americanized,” he said—had become a spoiled brat of a woman who expected to have the latest this and that, top-of-the-line cars and clothes, a beautiful home that would be the envy of her friends. Only she didn’t want to work for any of it. That was the job of a man, and she didn’t like how cheap Anton had become. She deserved the finer things in life, and if Anton couldn’t provide, then she’d find someone who could.
“I should kick her out on her ass, is what I should do,” Anton said.
“So what’s stopping you?” Ellie noticed they weren’t heading to Culver City. Were, in fact, heading in the opposite direction. And Anton had spent a lot of time subtly checking his rearview mirror, just a slight tilt of the head.
“She’s pregnant,” Anton said.
“Judging by your tone, I’m guessing I shouldn’t say congratulations.”
“She said she was on the pill. Told me she didn’t want kids, right? Had no interest in them. This morning she tells me, Look, you want me to keep this thing growing in my belly, then you’ve got to show me how much you love me, and that means opening up my wallet, ’cause that’s all she cares about, what makes her happy.”
Anton pulled right, into the entrance to a BMW dealership. “And if I don’t—how you say it?—pony up these things for her, she’s going to get an abortion.” He made the sign of the cross. “The woman is an animal, is what she is. I should put a bag over her head, put her out of her misery.”
“I thought we were going to lunch.”
“I’m bleeding my heart out to you here and you’re worried about lunch? That is the problem with you women, how you mess with a man’s pride. You take that away from a man and he can’t be responsible for his actions. Don’t matter if you’re a woman or man, the person who screws with your pride or tries to steal it, and you put up with that? A man without pride is not a man. He’s a pizda.”
“A what?”
“Forget it.” Anton drove behind the dealership. “I got to pick up a part for my car. It’ll take five, ten minutes tops. Can your little stomach wait that long, or are you going to faint from hunger?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You sure? I can get you a snack from a vending machine or some shit, tide you over.”
“I said I’m fine.” Ellie’s head ached. She’d forgotten what it was like to talk to him, trying to follow his thoughts, his violent mood swings. She wondered if he’d had a blood transfusion. She didn’t see any marks on his arms.
The back of the dealership contained a warehouse-like area where BMW cars and SUVs were serviced. Several bay doors were open. Anton surveyed them for a moment, then headed toward the one on the far right, Ellie’s gut instincts telling her something was up even before Anton picked up a small folded piece of paper from the console and handed it to her. It read:
Leave purse & phone in car. no questions.
Ellie stared at Anton’s block-lettered handwriting, thinking: He’s afraid my phone is bugged, my movements being tracked. And he would be right.
Ellie still had the piece of paper in her hands when he drove into the bay. The door began to slide down, a big, clanking sound that rattled inside her skull. The bay door didn’t have any windows—there were no windows in here at all, she noticed, just a long row of cars being serviced by mechanics, and she had a moment of panic, feeling like she was trapped, like she had been brought here because Anton had found out something about her, possibly her real identity, and planned to take her out.
The thought, and the accompanying feeling, she realized, was insane, and she pushed it aside. Still, the feeling wouldn’t go away, brushed against the walls of her heart when Anton turned in his seat and grabbed something that didn’t go with his tough-guy image: a Gucci backpack. He took it with him as he got out of the car. Ellie followed, leaving her purse and phone behind as instructed, and saw him walking across the bay, the mechanics ignoring him. She followed, stopped when he turned to her.
“You drive,” he said, and pointed to a silver SUV with tinted windows.
Ellie got behind the wheel. Anton tossed the backpack in the rear seat, and when he slid into the passenger seat, he programmed an address into the console’s built-in GPS system.
“When the door goes up,” he said, “start the car and drive.”
Anton adjusted his seat all the way back. He folded his hands on his stomach and said, “I need to meditate, clear my mind. No talking.”
The door went up.
Ellie drove out of the bay, heading for the highway.
They drove north on California State Route 99 for two hours in silence. Well, not total silence. When the British female voice wasn’t announcing her turn-by-turn directions, Ellie listened to Anton snoring softly beside her.
The address Anton had plugged into the GPS was in Fresno.
What would bring Anton all the way out here, two hundred plus miles from LA?
Clearly Anton was afraid of being followed, which was why he had switched vehicles at the dealership and ordered her to leave her phone in his car. Clearly he suspected Frank or his people might be tailing him. Ellie was more concerned about her people.
Roland used her phone’s cell signal to track her movements. His people, Roland had told her, were watching her at pretty much all times, but they didn’t get too close, as they didn’t want Anton, Frank, or anyone else to get even the slightest whiff of being under surveillance. Ellie had no idea who Roland’s men (or women) were, because Roland wanted her to act natural and focus on her job, not spotting a familiar face and risking Anton or someone else she was working with picking up on it. The phone was the device that allowed the task force members working surveillance to hang back, and her phone was in LA. Had Roland’s people found out they had been duped? Probably Frank’s people, too, if they had been following Anton.
One thing was clear: there was a good chance she was on her own.
The uptight British GPS lady stiffly announced their destination was a mile ahead, on the right. Anton stirred awake. He sat up abruptly, and for some reason it reminded her of an old black-and-white horror movie she had seen a long time ago, when she was a kid—Dracula sitting up in his coffin, wide-awake and ready to feed on blood.
Where, exactly, are we going? Ellie wondered. Not a residential area—that was for sure. So far, the only things she’d seen on this long street were of the commercial variety: strip malls, big-box stores, and a couple of gas stations.
The address was for an expansive mall-like parking lot. It didn’t belong to a shopping mall but to an old Toyota manufacturing plant. She’d caught the sign in the front, long since faded by the sun and neglect, a couple letters missing.
“Drive around to the back,” Anton said, yawning.
“I think it’s time you tell me what I’m walking into.”
“You’re not walking into anything. You’re going to stay in the car.” There wasn’t a trace of anxiety in his voice—or on his face, for that matter. He yawned again, his jaw popping. She could see his eyes blinking behind his sunglasses. “And stay frosty, okay? Eyes and ears, eyes and ears—especially on your six. You don’t want anyone to smoke check you.”
It annoyed the shit out of her when he spoke in military slang, as if he had been a real soldier instead of a thug who did blood, shot ’roids into an ass cheek, shopped at Barneys, and had a five-thousand-dollar espresso machine in his condo. The tough-guy talk sounded like it had been plucked from video games and bad movies; still, he did have the ability to back up the tough-guy talk, because Anton was tough—ferociously so. She had seen him in action several times, with her own eyes.
They were in the back of the building now. She saw a bunch of gray-and-brown interconnected buildings, all the street-level windows gone, replaced by wood boards spray-painted with graffiti, like the rest of the plant.
“See that wide-open bay up there?” Anton said, pointing out the windshield. “Park in front of it.”
Ellie had to drive around oil barrels, shopping carts, and more than a few soiled mattresses scattered haphazardly on the ground. “How many people are you meeting?”
“That remains to be seen.” Anton snorted and leaned forward in his seat, scanning the area. “There’s a Glock in my backpack. Keep it handy but not out in the open. Put it in this side compartment here, or under the seat.”
Ellie’s back was slick with sweat.
“You ever fire a gun?” Anton asked.
Ellie Batista had, but not Faye Simpson. “Held a couple but never fired one.”
“You point and pull the trigger—that’s it.” She could feel his gaze on the side of her face. “Relax, will you? This is just for your protection, in case this shit goes sideways. I don’t think it will, but like you Americans say, it’s better to be prepared than to get caught with your dick flapping in the wind—am I right?”
“I don’t even know what this situation is.”
“Stop right here.”
The floor inside the bay was concrete. It was stained by decades of rust and grease. The afternoon sun lit up a good amount of the space directly in front of her, and she saw part of what appeared to be an assembly line, robotic arms of different shapes and sizes frozen in midair and stiff with rust, practically all the paint in there having fallen off. Ellie shoved the gearshift into park and left the engine running.
“Don’t forget the nine,” Anton said, and then got out.
Ellie turned in her seat and grabbed the backpack. It was a basic thing, more stylish than practical. It had a pair of outside leather flaps with snap buttons, and inside the flaps she found vials of both steroids and human growth hormone (no big surprise there), and packs of Dentyne gum guaranteed to keep your breath fresh for hours.
In the main compartment, she saw a bunch of burner phones, a leather journal of some sort, and a thick manila folder. She hunted for the Glock, finally found it buried at the bottom—a Glock 19. The backpack went onto the passenger seat, in case she needed to use one of the burners, and then she cracked open his window and hers so she could hear, and watched as Anton made his way inside the abandoned plant.
He stopped thirty or so feet away from the entrance, then abruptly turned right, stuck his fingers in his mouth, and whistled. From somewhere inside the plant she thought she heard a car engine start. Anton didn’t wait around; he walked back to the Beemer, but he didn’t get inside. He leaned against the hood, directly in front of her, and folded his arms across his chest.
A single car emerged from the plant—a black Mercedes SUV with tinted windows, Ellie wondering what it was about gangster types always needing to drive top-of-the-line cars. The Mercedes parked at an angle in front of her, along the left side. The driver didn’t cut the engine or step out of the car, but the passenger-side door opened. Ellie felt her mouth dry up.
Gingerbread Man looked different from the last time Ellie had seen him. The first thing she noticed was his hair: It was longer, the crew cut having grown out, and covering the tops of his ears, and it was parted razor sharply on the side. It was also dyed black—the same color as his beard. He wore a pair of stylish eyeglasses with thick black frames and a black suit that had been expertly tailored, or possibly made from scratch, in order to accommodate his muscular build.
But the other physical characteristics she remembered were still there, untouched by a surgeon’s knife: the broad nose that looked like an inverted triangle, with flared nostrils; the thin, wormy lips commonly seen on certain elderly women.
Gingerbread Man—Paul, she reminded herself, his name is Paul Young—carried himself with confidence as he walked around the car. He slowed a bit when he eyed Anton, and took his measure. Paul didn’t come forward and shake Anton’s hand. He stood there with his hands in his pockets, jingling his change and looking a little consolatory, she thought, like a boy who had been caught red-handed and couldn’t lie his way out. His tone confirmed it when he spoke.
“Appreciate you coming out, Anton.”
Anton said nothing. His face, Ellie saw, was slack—which was a bad sign. It meant some internal pilot light had been turned on, his blood warming up, getting ready for a fight. It was the look he got when the shit was going to hit the fan.
Eyes on Anton, Ellie reached for the nine resting on her lap. She released the safety and held the Glock as her gaze cut to Paul. She watched from behind her sunglasses and from behind the tinted windows, the man who had killed her partner and had tried to kill her at the start of this past summer now standing on the opposite side of the door, less than ten feet way.
Paul looked Anton up and down.
Anton snickered. “You think I’m packing?”
“Wouldn’t put it past you. And I certainly wouldn’t blame you.”
Anton said nothing.
“Thought you might not show up,” Paul said. “Then I said to myself, No, he will. He has to. Anton has no place to go. He can’t work for the Armenians or the Mexicans. They don’t want him.”
To Ellie’s ears, it sounded like a threat. Anton, though, let it wash right over him. Which surprised her. Usually a threat caused him to start using his fists. But he didn’t move, and that made Ellie wonder if Anton was afraid of Paul. Paul had a good amount of size compared to Anton, but if it came down to a fight, she’d put all her money on Anton. In her experience, guys who were heavily into bodybuilding relied solely on their size to make their opponents back down, because they didn’t know how to fight.
Anton nodded with his chin to the Mercedes and said, “Looks like you brought along some company.”
“Just my driver.”
“He shy or something?”
“He’s just my driver.”
“Maybe he should say hello.”
Paul looked over his shoulder, to the driver, and nodded. The window came down. The driver was a white guy who was nowhere near as tall as Paul, and nowhere near as big, although he did seem to have a good amount of muscle on him. He wore sunglasses and a black collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and he had both forearms draped on top of the steering wheel to show he wasn’t carrying. He was somewhere in his late twenties to early thirties, Ellie guessed, and had a military-style crew cut and teeth that were too big for his face. He chewed gum methodically, trying to give off the vibe that he wasn’t nervous.
Only he was. Ellie caught the tight way he swallowed. Guy was probably not even conscious he was doing it. He was a pretender. Didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous, though. Could be quick with a gun. Like her, he probably had one within reach.
“Anyone there in the back?” Anton asked.
The driver looked to Paul. Paul nodded and the driver rolled down the back window. The backseat was empty.
“You want to check the trunk, too?” Paul asked. “Pat my boy down?”
“Not a bad idea,” Anton replied.
“Then please, be my guest. While you do that, I’ll introduce myself to the person you brought along. Or maybe he’d like to roll down his window and introduce himself?”
“You don’t get to make the rules. Not with me. Not after that shit you pulled.”
Paul opened his mouth to speak, then paused, as if second-guessing himself. He sighed—a bit theatrically, Ellie thought—and then he hung his head for a moment, his lips pursed.
“You know what? You’re right,” Paul said. “You’ve got every right to be pissed about what happened in Brentwood. I know they’ve put you under the microscope.”
“Under it? They kicked it up my ass.” Color was creeping up Anton’s neck—a sure sign he was getting ready to explode. “They’ve followed me for months since Brentwood ’cause they thought you and I were working together, had some sort of plan in place. They still think that.”
They, Ellie thought, had to be Frank and the real estate guy, Sebastian Kane.
Paul said, “I take it they’re back to watching you.”
“Day and night. And I’m guessing you have something to do with that.”
“Let’s talk about insurance for a moment.”
“I look like Blue Cross to you?”
“Not the medical kind,” Paul said. “I’m talking the other kind—you know, like a liability policy. A smart man always protects his investments. He hopes he never has to use it, but he knows it’s there if he needs it. It gives him peace of mind in case disaster strikes.”
The anxiety Ellie felt made her want to shift in her seat, take a look behind her. Anton didn’t move. He showed nothing, said nothing.
Paul said, “You’re super pissed off, and I get that. I do. And I wouldn’t blame you if you or your person there in the car wanted to come after me. But I’d advise you not to do that, because I took out a liability policy in the form of a friend who’s handy with a sniper rifle. He’s watching us right now, so let’s everyone keep calm, cool, and collected, okay?”
Ellie felt the skin of her face flex against the bone. She wanted to grab the gearshift, throw it in reverse, and hit the gas, then peel right out of here. It would be the reaction of a normal, sane, and sensible person. But a normal, sensible person wouldn’t have agreed to come here to meet alone with a killer—wouldn’t have agreed to go undercover to glean secrets from a gang of psychopaths.
“Brentwood,” Anton said.
“I asked your boy Tyree if he could hook me up with some of those new stickers you’re using. Said I would pay him, too.”
Paul, Ellie knew, was referring to James Tyree, the surfer-looking kid with the man bun who had packed an Uzi in his canvas bag. Her mind’s eye coughed up the picture of the kid, his limp body splayed on the concrete near the pool, blood everywhere, as Paul said, “Tyree called me that morning. I told him where I was, and he came by to—”
“You go behind my back, use that kid to deliver my sticks to you—and that Uzi. My stickmen don’t go around armed.”
“I had nothing to do with that, Anton, I swear. I’ve got my own hardware—I didn’t need to buy any from him.”
“But you admit to going behind my back.”
“Yes. Absolutely. One hundred percent.”
Anton hadn’t been expecting an admission of guilt. It threw him off guard just a bit, Ellie could tell.
Paul said, “I had something in the works—something major. I’m talking life changing. That’s the reason why I asked you to meet, so we could—”
“You mowed him down.”
“I didn’t ask him to hang out, go for a swim. He was supposed to leave.”
“You killed him. My guy.”
“He got caught in the cross fire when the cops arrived—which, as I mentioned in that note I gave you, I had nothing to do with.” Paul studied Anton for a moment. “It couldn’t be helped, what happened to Tyree. An unforeseen consequence. As someone who has survived in this business a long time, you should under—”
“The next words outta your mouth better be about helping my bottom line.”
“How much to settle it?”
“I’m thinking a million,” Anton said.
“That’s a lot of scratch for an orphan kid who was living on the street and giving out hand jobs.”
“That’s what Sebastian’s offering for you.”
“I thought it was half a mill.”
“He bumped the reward up. It’s half a million now for your head, a million if you’re brought in alive.”
“Wow. I’m surprised the cheap bastard bumped up the bounty.”
“Tyree,” Anton said.
“I’m not going to give you a million,” Paul said. “But I’ll give you two.”
Anton stood in profile; Ellie could see his eyes narrow in thought behind his sunglasses, Anton searching for traps hidden in the bullshit.
Paul said, “But why settle for two million when I can give you more money than you can possibly imagine?”
“Yeah? I can imagine quite a lot.”
“Then go ahead and pick a number and it’s yours.”
Anton snorted. “Whatever plan you’ve got cooking, Frank and Sebastian are not going to hand over their business to you.”
Their business, Ellie thought. Were Frank and Sebastian equal partners?
Paul smiled. He had the look of someone who knew every single answer on a final exam.
“They will,” Paul said. “I guarantee it.”
“How? What are you going to do, rat him out to the Armenians? You do that, he’ll turn around and rat you out. They won’t stop looking for you.”
“Sebastian is going to hand over everything to me. He’s—”
“He’ll never hand over his donors.”
“I don’t need them. He can go live with them, for all I care. I just need his infrastructure. The product I have is—”
“Better than Pandora. Right, you mentioned that in your little note.”
“And that, my friend, is God’s honest truth. Come on—let’s take a walk.”
“What’s wrong with right here?”
“Nothing,” Paul said. “But, all due respect, I asked you to come alone, so we could discuss those business matters I mentioned in my note, and you brought along someone—someone I don’t know.”
“That’s my business.”
“And now you’re making it mine, which, I’m sure you can respect, puts me in an awkward position, as I don’t want to bring an outsider into this.”
“She’s not an outsider,” Anton said.
Paul’s eyebrows rose at the word she.
“She’s my insurance policy,” Anton said, and then turned his head to her. “Roll down your window and say hello.”
Ellie wore sunglasses, and her hair was different. Her clothes were different, too—she was different. There’s no way he’ll recognize me, she reassured herself as the window rolled down. There’s no way.
Paul smiled at her the same way he did when he came out of the house in Brentwood, acting all natural and asking if there was a problem before taking out the AR-15 and turning the backyard into downtown Beirut. He pushed himself off the car and came closer—too close, Ellie thought. He leaned forward, hands on his knees, and from behind her sunglasses Ellie watched as Paul studied her face.
“Hello, there,” he said brightly.
“Hello.” Ellie thought her voice sounded normal—astounding given the fact that her heart was jackhammering against her breastbone like it wanted to explode from her chest and get as far away from here as possible. She couldn’t stop wondering if he was looking at her the same way she was looking at him.
Again she told herself no. It was impossible. She looked radically different now, and there was no way he recognized her voice. Well, that wasn’t entirely true—she had screamed at him to lower his weapon before the shooting started.
“You got a name, hon?” Paul asked. “Habla usted inglés?”
Anton answered the question. “Her name is Faye.”
“Faye,” Paul said, as if he were rolling the word around in his mouth like wine, seeing if he liked the way it tasted. “Faye what?”
Anton said, “Faye works for Frank.”
Ellie couldn’t stop the surprise from reaching her face. Her skin tingled and her brain felt like it had actually cramped. Tell me he didn’t just say what I think he said. Paul, too, was experiencing his own WTF moment. His eyes widened, and his face stretched tight across the bone like that of someone experiencing his first prostate exam.
Anton said, “Now ask me why I brought her.”
It was both interesting and terrifying to watch the transformation happening on Paul’s face. Ellie had read her fair share about psychopaths, had even met one or two during her brief time on the streets, but it was always after the fact—after the creature or whatever it was that lived beneath their skin had been let out and done its damage. This was the first time she had seen one in the wild, so to speak, and the raw, brutal ugliness she saw in Paul’s face reminded her of a home surveillance video of a pit bull that had mauled a four-year-old boy to death—which was what Paul wanted to do to Anton right now, lurch forward and maul him with his hands and teeth.
Anton didn’t notice or didn’t care. He cupped a hand around his ear and leaned forward a bit. “Sorry, what was that?”
Paul’s face . . . it didn’t relax, but it looked reasonably human again. At least for the moment. “Why did you bring her?” he asked, his tone cold. Clipped.
“So glad you asked,” Anton replied. “Faye works at the new place where they perform the transfusions. She has access to the client database, where the blood is stored, everything.”
No, I don’t, Ellie wanted to scream. Why was Anton feeding him this complete and utter bullshit?
Paul said, “What about his donors?”
Anton’s smile was like a fist. “You ready to have a serious talk?”
Paul said nothing. They stared at each other in a way that reminded Ellie of those old Clint Eastwood Westerns, two gunslingers measuring each other up. Only Anton’s head was in a sniper scope, Anton acting like he’d been in such a position before, no big deal.
Paul eased himself off the car. Was he leaving?
No. He motioned for Anton to join him. Anton straightened and followed Paul into the plant. As Ellie watched the two of them disappear somewhere in the shadows, she rolled up the window, the BMW motor purring softly through her seat.
It was risky, the idea she had in mind. She could waste time debating it in her head or she could listen to her gut instincts. She went with her gut.
Ellie grabbed a fresh burner. As she dialed Roland’s number, she turned on the radio, adjusting the volume so it was just loud enough to drown out the sound of her voice.
Roland picked up. Ellie didn’t realize how dry and tight her throat felt until she spoke.
“It’s me. Don’t speak—just listen.”
She gave Roland a quick rundown of where she was and what had happened. He gave her instructions, and an address where she was to meet him as soon as she could. The call lasted less than a minute, no way to trace it. She removed the SIM card and battery from the burner to prevent the signal from being traced anyway. Both components went into her pocket, along with the burner. Now the backpack.
From behind the tinted windows, she made a careful study of its contents while keeping a watchful eye on the front window. Anton could come back at any moment.
The leather planner was something called “The Best Self Journal.” In addition to having an area where you could list your appointments, the planner had areas for goals, daily targets, morning and evening gratitude lists. It would have made an interesting read if Anton had written in English instead of Russian. The manila folder contained sheet after sheet of commercial properties available for sale all over California. Real estate listings, she thought. She saw something called an MLS number, and while she didn’t know what that was, the rest was easy enough to read—costs per square foot, amenities, detailed descriptions and pictures of interiors and exteriors—everything a potential buyer would need to know.
Toward the back of the stack, she found a listing for a sprawling residential property in Ojai, a city in Ventura County, north of Los Angeles. Known for its hills and mountains, it was a popular destination for tourists who were into hiking, spiritual retreats, and buying the best organic produce grown by local farmers, no big boxes or chain stores allowed. The pictures of the house made the place seem more like a fortress than a home, but what made it interesting, beyond its eight-figure price tag, was what Anton had written along the bottom of a sheet, in blue ink: “Chauncey Harrington, 72, 87.6 mil, paper.”
The sheet contained no other writing.
Ellie replaced the backpack exactly where she had found it. She glanced up and saw Paul standing outside again. He had traded his eyeglasses for a pair of sunglasses with dark green rectangular lenses—a style she associated with military and special-ops guys. He stood with his hands in his pants pockets, looking in her direction, smiling.