Keep Her Safe(123)

“How old’s your little Gracie now? Six?” Mantis asks.

“Don’t you say my daughter’s name again. Ever,” I growl, charging at him.

He holds his hands up in the air in surrender, taking several steps back and around me, toward the door. “Relax. Just tryin’ to make a point. I’m getting this stuff off the streets for your daughter.”

“And I’m glad for that. But that doesn’t mean this stuff”—I sidestep around him to reach for a wad of cash, and hold it up—“should be lining your pockets.”

He gives a lazy shrug. “It was one time.”

“Bullshit.” The way he took that money—with smooth movements and such ease—he’s done it plenty. “Your mattress is probably lined with cash.”

“Funny, someone might say the same about you.”

“No, sir. I don’t think so.”

“You sure about that?” A wicked gleam shines in his beady eyes.

Wariness sinks in. “What have you done?”

“Where’s this proof that you’ve got?” he asks quietly, ignoring my question.

“Nowhere you’ll ever find it. What did you do, Mantis?” I repeat through gritted teeth.

“What I needed to, to make sure no one ever believes a word you’ve said.”

The call . . . the drugs . . . the cash . . . Jesus Christ. This is a setup. Mantis is setting me up. I need to get out of here. I need to— Unbearable pain rips through my chest, sending my body backward, into the wall. In the next second I’m on my knees. I manage to look up, to see Mantis aiming his gun at a shocked Hernandez. I didn’t even see him pull it out. When did he pull it out?

Hernandez is shouting something, but I can’t make out the words over the agony.

Another blast sounds, just as my face collides with the dirty, thin carpet. I can see Hernandez’s boots from beneath the bed.

And then I can see more of him, as his body hits the floor on the other side.

Everything begins to dim, as my lungs pull for air that won’t come, as the burning fire in my chest begins to dull.

My eyelids shutter.

Behind them, I see Gracie May’s big, beautiful green eyes.

I feel her tiny arms wrapping around my neck.

I hear her sweet laughter.





CHAPTER 54


Noah

Gracie and I huddle around Isaac’s laptop and watch as, twenty seconds after four gunshots go off, a single figure ducks out of Room 116. The person locks the door and smoothly strolls down the narrow path between the buildings, toward the parking lot.

Glancing ever so briefly at the room perpendicular to 116.

Not noticing the camcorder perched inside the motel room window.

The camera that captured his face beneath a baseball cap for that split second.

Long enough to identify him.

“Holy shit,” I whisper.

Beside me, Gracie’s body is stiff with tension.

“I usually like to watch a little bit of late-night news,” Isaac says, from his chair. He didn’t bother to watch the video with us, which makes me think he’s watched it plenty. “But that night I was already in bed, and not fast enough getting out of it when those gunshots went off. Lucky for me. Otherwise I’d have been standing in that window. That fella and me would have met eye to eye. He’d have known that I had him pegged.”

“Why didn’t you give this video to the cops!” Gracie’s voice cracks with frustration.

“You just keep watching, there.” Isaac shifts the curtain to peer out at the parking lot.

She shakes her head with frustration, but refocuses her attention on the screen, as we wait.

Barely a minute later, we get our answer. The same SUV from the Lucky Nine drug bust—or something similar—speeds into the parking lot, lights flashing.

Mantis and Stapley jump out and move straight for Room 116 to kick in the door.

Two minutes later a police cruiser comes racing in. Stapley meets them at the threshold, holding them back with a raised hand and some words.

“Let me guess: that’s where he’s telling them that Canning has ordered that no one step inside,” I mutter. What a perfect cover for Mantis.

A second and third police cruiser roll in.

And suddenly the video cuts out.

“I wanted to see what my little camera had caught, so I went back a bit. When I saw your daddy walk into that room and not walk back out . . . I had a damn good idea about exactly what I’d caught.”

Gracie’s body was already tense by the time we watched Abe stroll up to 116 to push into the room, badge and gun in hand. Because Isaac’s recording started twenty-five minutes before, when Mantis appeared. We watched him hand cash and a phone to a hooker who’d ducked out of a room and was heading toward her car. She made a call.

A call, I’m betting, to Abe, on the phone found on Hernandez.

It’d take about twenty minutes to get to The Lucky Nine from Abe’s old house. Twenty-five by the time Abe said goodbye to Dina and collected his Colt .45 from his safe.

Mantis sent that hooker scurrying away at a fast pace, the fear in her face telling me his words were laced with sharp warning. And then Mantis, his hand laden with a small navy-blue gym bag, knocked on 116. Someone opened the door; Mantis went in and didn’t come out until after the gunshots were fired.