WHEN SEBASTIAN ENTERED the area that served as a hub for monitoring patient rooms, he found Ron Wolff reclining in one of the brand-new Herman Miller office chairs, sipping his coffee and staring straight ahead, at the one-way mirror looking into Faye Simpson’s room. Ron didn’t speak, which didn’t come as much of a surprise. Ever since the explosion, Ron had gone into full quiet mode. He did that when he was royally pissed off—and Ron was still royally pissed off at Sebastian for forcing his hand that night. Ron, Sebastian was sure, also blamed him for the deaths of his three employees.
And now Frank’s.
Ron and Frank had been tight. In a lot of ways, the two of them were cut from the same cloth. Like Frank, Ron kept his true emotions well hidden. Unlike Frank, Ron had emotions.
“Any thoughts?” Sebastian asked.
“I think it’s a great idea, having her stick close to you. Paul’s probably shitting his pants, wondering what she’s told you about him, his plans.” He scratched his chin. “Speaking of Paul, if I were a gambling man, my money’s on him investing whatever resources he has to put you down—the sooner, the better. Once you’re out of the picture, he won’t have to be constantly watching his back. He knows we have people out there looking for him.”
“You think he has people watching me?”
“I’ve wondered about that,” Ron said. “He knows we’re watching you, so in order to avoid detection he’s got to hire solid professionals who have experience in this area. If he doesn’t, he runs the risk that we’ll spot one of them. Which brings me back to my previous point about getting you out of the way as soon as possible. When that happens, he can relax.”
“You think Paul might come after her? For retaliation?”
“More like it’s smart business. If you have her stick close to you, it’ll make our job easier, covering you both.”
Sebastian settled into the chair next to him and watched Faye Simpson eat a softball-sized blueberry muffin like it was an apple, taking great big bites. She used a remote to thumb through cable TV channels, her face relaxed, maybe serene.
“How much do we really know about her?”
“I ran the background check myself, when Anton hired her,” Ron said.
Sebastian said nothing.
Ron took the silence as an accusation. He tilted his head to him, ready for a fight. “If she wasn’t one hundred percent clean, I wouldn’t have told Anton to bring her on. Everything on her checks out.”
Sebastian nodded absently, watching Faye and reviewing what had gone down at Long Beach. “When the flash-bang grenade hit the floor, she didn’t hesitate. She turned and wrapped her arms around me and threw me to the floor.”
“Like she said, it was a smart move. If you were dead, she wouldn’t be able to collect the reward.”
“But when things escalated into a full-blown shit show, she didn’t scream or cower or cry or try to run away or find someplace to hide. Then, when Paul killed—” Sebastian’s voice caught, the images of what had happened to his childhood friend constricting his throat and squeezing his heart. “When Frank went down, she didn’t so much as pause. She grabbed a handgun from the floor and returned fire.”
“Sometimes people can surprise us when the shit hits the fan.”
Sebastian rubbed a finger across his bottom lip, thinking, watching Faye on the screen. “Way she acted—that’s muscle memory. She’s had training. If she isn’t military, she’s something else.”
Ron’s eyes turned hard. “You think she’s a cop?”
“How many women you know who can handle a gun?”
“If she is Miss Undercover for LAPD or the Feds, then people are watching her, and they would have put a stop to what went down at the house. They wouldn’t have let it escalate. They would have intervened because they knew she was in trouble.”
Maybe Ron’s right, Sebastian thought. Maybe I’m overthinking this. The bane of every alcoholic.
Still . . .
Sebastian reached into his pocket. “There’s also this,” he said, and handed Ron a folded picture of a young boy of three or four sitting in front of a Christmas tree; the camera captured the look of wonder and expectancy on his face. The photo had been folded and unfolded so many times, the white crease marks were beginning to fray.
Sebastian said, “Maya went to throw out her clothes and saw it peeking out from underneath the insole of her shoe.”
Ron looked up from the picture. “Her shoe?”
Sebastian nodded. “She must’ve used a knife, something sharp, to cut out a space so she could hide it.”
“I know she doesn’t have any siblings. She’s an only child.”
“What about cousins?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t dig that deep. But I can, if you want me to.” Then, when Sebastian didn’t answer: “Do you want me to?”
Sebastian had made his living being able to read people. It had made him a lot of money in the real estate business, and it had kept him alive, safe, and well protected from his competitors in the blood world. His initial instincts about Paul had been correct, but he had allowed Paul to enter the business as a promise to Trixie, and he had paid for that dearly.
But he didn’t need to consult his instincts on Faye. The only reason someone went to great lengths to hide things was to keep a secret about their true, inner self from being discovered. It was basic human nature. So why was Faye hiding a picture, of all things, inside her shoe? More important, why was carrying around this picture so important to her?
What are you hiding from me, Faye?
“Dig deep,” Sebastian said. “As deep as you can without putting us at risk.”
Ron nodded. “I’ll also work my LAPD contacts, see if I can find anything.”
“Be discreet. We don’t want to tip our hand.”
Ron slid the photo into his shirt pocket. “What are you going to do with her?”
“She’s already on our side of the fence. Let’s keep her in the fold.”
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?”
Something Frank would have said. Frank had loved all that Sun Tzu Art of War shit. “Paul has a driver. Why shouldn’t I?”
Sebastian got to his feet and took one last look at Faye. Her secrets would come out eventually. In his experience, they always did.