Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(34)

“Gotta push. Better to break than to rust.”

“Those aren’t the only two choices . . . Anyway, Rae’s on the phone.”


LUCAS FOLLOWED her inside, picked up his cell phone, and said, “Hey, babe. Have you nailed Tremanty yet?”

“Can’t talk about that,” Rae said. “Listen, you said to call you tonight. I’m calling. How’re things?”

“I’m going back to LA,” Lucas said.

“Are we coming with you?”

“If you want,” Lucas said. “I’d like the company.”

“Hell, yes.” He heard her turn away from the phone and call, “We’re going back.”

“Bob’s there?”

“Yes. We came down to watch them close the scene at Deese’s cabin. They’re running an eight-foot hurricane fence around the entire site. They spent the whole day putting up posts, pouring concrete around them. They’re turning it into a fort. Eleven graves, twelve bodies.”

“Speaking of forts, I’ll call Russ Forte tomorrow,” Lucas said. “I don’t know exactly when . . . What’s your schedule look like?”

They talked schedules, and since they were going back to California anyway, Lucas wanted to take a day to swing by Stanford to see Letty. She was going into her final year and trying to figure out what to do next: grad school or a job.

“I’d say a week or ten days,” Lucas said. “I talked to Rocha a couple of days ago, and the LA cops are dead in the water. They’d love to get their hands on Beauchamps and Cole, but they believe they’re gone. They’re probably right.”

“Where are we going to start?”

“That Englishman at the Flower Child’s bar. You didn’t mention him to Rocha, did you?”

“I might have forgot,” Rae said.

“Good. We’ll start there.”


WEATHER HAD KNOWN that Lucas was getting ready to go back to Los Angeles. She didn’t resist but was worried about his head as much as his body.

“When you got shot in the throat, it didn’t affect you like this has,” she said. Years before, Lucas had been shot by a young girl with a piece of crap .22 and might have died if Weather hadn’t been there to open an airway with a jackknife.

“That’s just the shit that happens if you’re a cop. I didn’t do anything wrong. There was no reason to think she had a gun, she was a kid,” Lucas said. They were sitting in the kitchen, munching cantaloupe chunks from a plastic cup. “This was different. I did something really, really stupid. I should never have even been behind the tree and stepping out there when I knew there was an experienced, hard-core shooter in there with a machine gun . . . That was really stupid. I thought the fight was over and I just stepped out to look at the house. I keep coming back to that. Would I have ever done that when I was younger? Have I lost the edge?”

“You haven’t lost any kind of edge, for Christ’s sakes,” Weather said, exasperated. “You’re too young to lose your edge. Everybody does stupid stuff from time to time.”

“Even when being stupid can kill you?”

“I saw a story on the news that said thirty-seven thousand people died in automobile accidents last year and more than two million were injured. Most of those were caused by momentary stupidity,” Weather said. “If you’re driving a two-and-a-half-ton vehicle at 85 miles an hour and talking on your cell phone, you’re stupid. But everybody does it. Including you. When Shrake got hurt last spring and Virgil had to drive him to that hospital in Fairmont, Shrake said the scariest part of it was when Virgil was driving and talking to the Highway Patrol at the same time, said Virgil almost got them killed a couple of times. He probably saved five seconds by being stupid, and Virgil isn’t normally stupid.”

“A Shrake exaggeration,” Lucas said.

“Not much of one,” Weather said. “Stop brooding. You did something stupid. Get over it.”

He knew she was right; she’d gotten over a couple of awful moments herself. But this was . . . different.

Lucas didn’t in theory believe in revenge, but there was that long hockey life, from Mite to Squirt to Peewee to Bantam to Midget to high school to university. If somebody gave you a shot, you gave him a shot back. Harder. In this case, the guy who literally gave him a shot was beyond reach, being thoroughly dead.

Psychologically, though, it felt like unfinished business: there were still three other guys out there. He needed to give them a shot . . . And harder.


WEATHER HAD BEEN tough on him after he got home. When she arrived at the Huntington, she’d half expected to find him dying or dead, but when she’d come into the room and he’d tried to smile at her she’d turned around and run back out. Letty went after her and later told Lucas that Weather had collapsed in the hallway, unable to handle the instant departure of stress.

Then she got tough.

At home, she enforced a rigorous regimen of healing and recovery. By the middle of June, he was going on long walks; by the first of July, he was fast-walking. By the middle of July, he was running but weak. By the first of August, he was running harder. By the middle of the month, he was ready to kill, and Weather released him, to go do it.

But he still hurt, and occasionally felt weakness hiding down deep.