Body of Shadows (27 page)

Drift found a space big enough for the Tundra two blocks away and doubled back on foot.

An alley ran behind the houses.

The suspect’s 7-year-old Mustang was parked in that alley. The driver’s window was down. Drift felt the grill; it was warm, not from the sun, from driving.

Jack Plank was home.

Drift rolled up his sleeves, swung around to the front, walked up the cracked concrete to the door and knocked.

A man answered.

Gone were the jeans and black T of yesterday, now he was well dressed in a gray summer suit with the jacket on as if Drift caught him just before he was about to leave.

He had a rough, manly face.

“Pantage Phair,” Drift said.

“What about her?”

“You were stalking her yesterday.”

The man tilted his head.

“Now I recognize you,” he said. “You’re that detective all over the news.” He opened the door, “Come on in.”

Inside the place was simple but neat.

“I wasn’t stalking her I was guarding her,” he said. “I’m with Personal Security Specialists, we do bodyguard work among other things. We were hired by Grayson Condor to keep an eye on Pantage and make sure nothing happens to her.”

“Does she know about it?”

No.

She doesn’t.

“Condor offered it to her early on but she wasn’t interested,” he said. “Yesterday his nervousness caught up to him and he hired us on the sly. We’re in the same building as him, down on the tenth floor. Our mission is not to be intrusive to the point of infringing on the woman’s privacy but keep her close enough to protect her if anyone makes a move.”

Drift called the law firm.

Condor confirmed the story.

Drift shook
Plank’s hand.

“Sorry about the mix-up.” He was halfway out the door when he turned and said, “How come you aren’t following her today?”

“We rotate,” he said. “Lea has her today.”

“Lea?”

Right.

Lea.

“A female?”

Plant smiled.

“Trust me, you wouldn’t want to mess with her.”

“What does she look like?”

“A lifeguard.”

“Okay.”

“Blond.”

“Okay.”

“Tanned.”

“Okay.”

Drift pulled up an image.

Plank said, “I don’t know if this is worth anything but I saw a guy yesterday. There was nothing suspicious about him and I only saw him once but for some reason he rubbed me the wrong way. I told Lea to keep an eye out for him today just in case.”

Drift raked his hair back.

“What’d he look like?”

“Huge,” Plank said. “Six-four or thereabouts and built like a warrior.”

“A warrior?”

“Right, ripped.”

“Like a gladiator?”

“Right. Warrior, gladiator, same thing.”

“Did he have long hair?”

Plank wrinkled his brow.

“Yeah, halfway down his back. Do you know him?”

90

Day Five

July 22

Friday Morning

Ghost Wolf had his body
on Yardley’s, his bare stomach flat on hers, his tongue licking her face, his pants around his knees and his hips maneuvering for penetration, when he suddenly froze. The hate in his eyes gave way to something different. He was consumed with something directly behind Yardley’s head.

Then a rattle shattered the silence.

It was a snake.

It was so close that the earth behind Yardley’s head vibrated.

For several seconds Ghost Wolf didn’t move.

Then he slowly lowered his face so it was pointing directly at Yardley’s chest and began to slither backwards down her body one inch at a time.

The rattles grew more agitated.

Yardley braced for a bite to her cheek or neck.

Her face suddenly felt cooler and she lifted her eyes to find the head of a massive rattlesnake bobbing directly above her, in and out of the sun, casting shadows across her eyes.

The reptile wasn’t looking at her.

It was fixated on Ghost Wolf.

Yardley closed her eyes.

She didn’t want the snake to snap at them.

Ghost Wolf had his face all the way down to Yardley’s navel. He was almost free. Then with a quick jerk he drew back and stood up.

The snake lunged.

The distance was too great.

The forward momentum of the snap brought the reptile onto Yardley’s chest.

It was heavy.

It was thick.

It was hot.

The rattle shook with a fierce warning directly above her face, striking her nose and ricocheting off her forehead.

She didn’t breathe.

She didn’t move.

Suddenly the snake lunged a second time.

Ghost Wolf screamed.

His massive body tumbled hard and bounced on the ground.

The snake was off Yardley.

She opened her eyes and twisted her head but couldn’t see it.

Ghost Wolf was twitching on the ground with his hands between his legs. When he pulled them back, his cock was an awful purplish color and grotesquely swollen.

Blood dripped from it.

It took thirty minutes
for Ghost Wolf to die.

Yardley watched every minute of it.

When the man finally stopped twitching and showed no reaction to being nudged, Yardley stuck a hand into his pants pocket in hopes she’d find a set of car keys.

The wait was worth it.

They were there.

A lighter was in there too.

Cigarettes were in his back pocket.

In the other back pocket was a wallet. The man’s driver’s license showed he was Ghost Wolf Ki-Jaka from New Mexico. In the fold was $2,300 cash. Yardley stuck the bills in her pocket, wiped the leather as clean as she could of prints and dropped it on the ground.

Half a mile up the road she found the car, locked with the windows down a couple of inches.

She fired up the engine, lit a cigarette, made her way to an abandoned country road she’d never seen before and headed west.

The air conditioning was heaven.

The smoke in her lungs was an oasis.

As the miles clicked by her thoughts turned to Marabella. It wasn’t clear if the woman had given Ghost Wolf orders to protect Yardley from Cave or to pretend that was his goal. She needed to get home and find out if her loft or store was being scrubbed of loose ends.

It took
an hour and twelve minutes to get back to the city limits, less than she thought. She swung down C-470 to the west end of the light rail, dumped the car on a side street off the 6
^th
Avenue frontage road, and took the tram east into downtown.

Her blouse was tied but not perfect.

Anyone who focused on it could tell it had been ripped off.

She kept as covered as she could, ostensibly reading a newspaper, and made her way to the loft without drawing any direct questions as to whether she was okay or what happened to her.

There she walked through the lobby, took the elevator down to the parking garage and got the spare key she kept hidden on top of the sprinkler pipe over in the corner.

Then she headed up to her loft.

Everything inside was normal.

No one had entered.

She took a long hot shower, slipped into panties and laid down on the couch.

Her eyes closed.

Everything was fine.

Everything was good.

She didn’t fall asleep,
almost but not quite. Twenty minutes later she got dressed and headed for the bookstore on foot.

She needed to know if it had been sanitized.

She needed to know if Marabella was friend or foe.

91

Day Five

July 22

Friday Afternoon

Cutting through downtown
on the shady side of the street, Pantage turned directly into the path of a skateboarder carrying a box. They both went down, the box flew and the skateboard skidded upside down to a stop.

It happened fast.

Pantage didn’t know if it was her fault.

The person next to her on the ground was a teenager, high school age, a girl, with a ponytail pulled through the back of a Rockies hat. Pantage helped her to her feet. The girl’s knee was bleeding.

“Sorry. Are you okay?”

The girl wiped the blood off.

“I’m fine,” she said. “You?”

Pantage checked.

Her nylon had a run and the side of her skirt was dirty.

Stuff was all over the sidewalk.

Pantage helped gather it up. There were paperbacks, CDs, folded up posters, pens, a calculator, a clock radio, makeup, perfume and lotions.

The girl’s name was Netta.

They shook.

Pantage grabbed the last thing down, a DVD, and glanced at the cover. There was something striking about it. The title was “Rebel Without a Cause.” Netta must have seen something in Pantage’s face because she said, “Have you ever seen that movie?”

No.

She hadn’t.

“Take it.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“For helping me pick everything up—”

She shrugged.

“Thanks.”

The movie went into her purse.

They hugged.

Then they parted.

Half a block later
Drift called and said, “Where are you?”

She told him.

She was outside knocking skateboarders to the ground.

“Outside?”

Right.

“I’d rather you stayed at the firm,” he said. “The gladiator may have been following you yesterday. Look around and see if there’s a blond lifeguard tailing you.”

She turned.

It was true.

There she was, back fifty steps, paying attention to something in a store window.

“Who is she?”

“Her name’s Lea,” he said. “She’s today’s equivalent of the scorpion guy from yesterday who turned out to be a non-event. Both of them were hired by Condor to guard you.”

“To guard me?”

Right.

That.

“Condor didn’t tell me anything about that.”

“He thought you wouldn’t approve.”

“Well, he was right.” A beat then, “I need to see you. When?”

“I don’t know. Tonight?”

“Deal.”

“You were a bad girl,” he said. “You broke into the gladiator’s place.”

“You talked to Kelly?”

He did.

“So what’s next?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

Politely,
Pantage called Condor and expressed appreciation for his concern but respectfully asked that he call off the troops.

He argued but didn’t win.

Pantage walked down the sidewalk as if to nonchalantly pass the bodyguard, then stopped at the last second and held her hand out.

“You’re Lea,” she said. The shock on the woman’s face was palpable. “Nice to meet you, I’m Pantage.”

Right.

The woman knew.

“You’ve been called off,” Pantage said. “Call your office and confirm if you want. Have a nice day.”

She turned and headed for Wazee.

It was time to see what she could find out about the mystery woman from her past, Yardley White.

92

Day Five

July 22

Friday Afternoon

Drift climbed
a rusty fire escape up seven floors, questioned the sanity of what he was doing, then took a peek inside an industrial, single-paned window. He wasn’t prepared for what he saw. The space was just that, space, broken by no walls or interior obstructions other than a few support columns. A young Asian woman was bound to one of those vertical shafts with multiple wraps of red rope. She was standing with her back strapped to it. Her feet were separated with a stretcher bar and her arms were pulled up tight, putting her in the form of an inverted Y. The rope was as snug as it could be without digging into her flesh. A red ball gag was in her mouth.

She wore no clothes.

The gladiator was kneeling at her left foot with his back to Drift, working yet another wrap of rope into place.