The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(35)

Livia thought of the way Diaz had blown off her attempts to get her to be more tactical. But she wasn’t going to concede the point. “We’ll never know now, will we?”

“Well, I warned her.”

“Yeah, after the fact.”

He smiled. “Better late than never?”

When she didn’t respond, he said, “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make light. Look, Kanezaki said he was going to involve you. And I told him not to, that I would take care of it myself.”

“Why?”

He threw up his arms. “What am I supposed to do, let you get mixed up in this shit?”

“It’s not your call. And besides, I am mixed up in it.”

“Well, I tried. To spare you. You want me to apologize for that?”

“I don’t need you to protect me.”

“I never said you did.”

“Then stop acting like it.”

“Fine. I called you, didn’t I? So now you’re involved. I hope you’re happy.”

“Stop sulking. We need to figure this out.”

“I’m not sulking.”

“I’ve never seen you look sulkier than when you said that.”

For a second, he stared at her, looking exasperated enough to pop. Then he broke out laughing. “I guess you’ve gotten to know me pretty well.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“See what I mean?”

“Listen to me. It’s worse than you think.” She told him about Diaz’s call, about Schrader being released.

“I’ll be damned,” he said when she was done. “They’re going to kill that boy for sure. He’s probably dead already.”

“I don’t know. What about the videos?”

“Right, I expect he’s going to endure some unpleasant questioning en route to coughing up whatever he knows. The good news, maybe, is this gets Diaz off the hook. Plus being tortured to death over blackmail materials couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

“We need to talk to Alondra. Schrader was saying if anything happens to him, those videos will be released.”

“You mean like a dead-man switch? Larison was speculating about that.”

“I don’t know. And the people who took him—maybe they don’t know, either. Or they don’t know about the videos at all. Maybe you’re right. Maybe they’ve already killed him. We need to find out more.”

“Well, if there is a dead-man switch, and they killed him, I expect we’ll find out soon enough.”

“Who could have taken him? They had to forge a court order, fake FBI credentials, spoof a phone line out of the prison . . . This was a sophisticated operation.”

“My first guess would be Rispel. She’s the one trying to kill Diaz, or at least she’s the cat’s-paw. So when things went sideways for her in Freeway Park, she busted Schrader out of jail as a Plan B. But . . . could be another player entirely. Different agenda, different plan. Hard to say.”

“Can Kanezaki help?”

“I already talked to him. He’s trying to find out what he can. While dancing around Rispel’s suspicions.”

“What about Rain?”

“Larison’s calling him. John’s not going to have any intel, though.”

“I don’t want him for his intel. We don’t know what we’re up against.”

“Yeah, I know. I just feel bad. John’s trying to retire, or at least he thinks he is. I didn’t want to bug him. That’s why I called Larison. Larison loves this kind of shit. If trouble didn’t come looking for him, he’d go find it on his own. And I didn’t want . . . I’m sorry, Labee, I know you don’t need protecting, I really do. It’s just, if I can save you from something, I just . . .”

His voice trailed off and he looked away, his expression so forlorn it almost made her feel guilty.

“Carl. You have to stop making this about me. About us. It’s bigger than that. Okay?”

He looked at her and nodded slowly. “There’s not a lot for me that’s bigger than us. But . . . point taken.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. That’s the problem.”

She wished she could tell him how much she . . . cared about him. She wished he knew how much she wanted to say it. But all she did was look at him, hoping he would somehow understand.

“You know,” he said after a moment. “It occurs to me, maybe psychologically I’ve just been trying to get your attention. And if we could see each other more regularly, like normal people, then I wouldn’t be so motivated to get up in all kinds of political skullduggery as my only hope of ever being with you.”

She folded her arms and stared at him.

“I’m joking, of course,” he said. “And by joking, I mean eighty percent serious.”

Her phone buzzed. Someone named Jill Ehrman. Diaz. “Hello.”

“It’s me. I borrowed a phone.”

“Are you someplace safe?”

“Storyville Coffee.”

“The one at First and Madison?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be by in ten minutes. Look for the Jeep. Make sure you confirm it’s me driving. I’ll have a passenger, too, but don’t worry about that. When I pull up, come out and get right in.”