Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(35)

ON AUGUST 18, Lucas flew into San Francisco, rented a car, and drove to Palo Alto, where Letty had taken a summer lease on a condo from an economics professor who was in London, studying money.

“I got a deal on it,” she told Lucas when she’d called him about it a few days before Lucas got shot. “I can get it for two thousand dollars a month. It’s got a great pool, though it’s stuffed with geeks. All I have to do is take care of the dog. I don’t even have to fuck the professor.”

“That’s good, because then I won’t have to come out there and kill him,” Lucas said.

“I knew you’d approve. Can you send me a check?”

He could.


HE PICKED HER UP at the condo. When she opened the door, she took a step back, and he asked, “What?”

“You’re a bag of bones,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m down a few pounds,” he said.

“A few pounds? Don’t lie. You’re down ten or fifteen pounds, and you weren’t carrying any fat to begin with. You’ve lost muscle. What do you weigh now?”

“I haven’t looked lately, but I’m running hard. I’m fine.”

She wasn’t convinced but went to get her shoulder bag. Lucas checked the professor’s bookshelves, which were heavy on economics. And erotic photography. He looked at a couple of the photo books, and asked, “Say, are you sure you’re okay with this guy?”

“Positive. He hinted he might like to takes some pictures of me someday, but I told him my dad’s first two rules for a girl’s life,” Letty said.

“I’m not entirely sure I remember those,” Lucas said.

Letty counted them off on two fingers: “No ink; pierce anything you want, but no ink. And never take off your clothes around a camera.”

“Now I remember,” he said. “Excellent advice, I have to say.”

“But you never told me how much it hurt to get your labia pierced . . .”

Lucas blanched. “Jesus Christ, Letty . . .”

She laughed merrily and said, “Gotcha. Let’s go eat.”


THEY ATE a late lunch at a nice California-style outdoor café, chicken sandwiches with avocado slices and fries with Indonesian pepper and some kind of healthy tea that was supposed to bring peace to your soul, or clean out your colon, or possibly do both simultaneously.

“Two different futures,” Letty said. “An important guy at Yale says he can fix me up with a scholarship at least through a master’s degree and probably a Ph.D. if I want to take that track. And second, Slocum Haynes—you know who he is?”

“Zillionaire. Oil and airlines and ships and . . . other stuff. Rockets.”

“Yeah. He’s offered me an internship where I’d be one of his assistants. Pay is barely okay. I could afford a one-bedroom apartment in Oklahoma City. I’d travel a lot. He also says that in two years with him, I wouldn’t need a master’s or any other kind of degree.”

“Sometimes good-looking young interns—”

“Get preyed upon,” Letty said. “You gotta stop worrying about me, Dad. Haynes said I wouldn’t have to fuck him. Or anyone else at the company. Said he didn’t allow it. Actually used the f-word.”

“I wish you’d start saying ‘f-word’ more often.”

“Dad, if you didn’t say ‘fuck’ at least once every five minutes, your head would explode.”

“I’m not a young woman,” Lucas said.

“Yeah, well, neither am I, not so much.” She was twenty-one, but he knew what she meant.

“I don’t know enough to advise you,” Lucas confessed. “It’s interesting that you’re balancing a Yale degree against a bad-paying job. That suggests to me that you think the job might be more valuable . . . in some ways.”

“I think it would be. Haynes is a genius. And I could always go back for the degree,” Letty said.

“How’d he hear about you?”

“He was invited out here for a seminar,” Letty said. “I was interested, I sat in and asked a bunch of questions. He asked me out to dinner, along with a couple of faculty members. We talked, and a couple of days later he called me and made the offer.”

“Did you ask your porno economics professor about it?”

“Yeah. He asked me if I didn’t take the Haynes job, would I recommend him? I think he was joking, but I’m not sure. He told me that if Haynes liked me, I’d wind up rich and powerful.”

Lucas rubbed his chin and said, “I don’t like to talk about this shit, but . . . I could have gotten killed last May. Another inch lower, an inch to the right . . .”

“I know that. Exactly what shit are you talking about?”

“My will. Weather gets most of it, but if I got killed tomorrow you’d get ten million.”

“Jeez. And I forgot to bring my gun with me.”

“I’m not joking,” Lucas said. “What I’m trying to tell you is, whatever you do, you don’t have to start saving for your retirement. When I croak, you get somewhat rich. When Weather croaks, you get even richer. You’re basically trust fund scum. You don’t need Haynes.”

Letty looked down at the tabletop, then said, “You’re telling me I can do what I want. I don’t have to do something I might not like because I think it would be prudent.”