Solitude Creek (Kathryn Dance 4)

"He's surfaced. He doesn't know who I am. Just tell him we work together. Or he's going to park a slug in my head."

"Fuck you doing, Serrano? Leave my boy Foster alone. You got that?"

"He with you?"

"The fuck I say?"

The gun didn't lower. "Okay, only...any chance he undercover?"

"Well, he is, then he's the only undercover took out a Oakland cop."

"No shit."

Howard said, "Asshole show up at my place unexpected. Foster, pop pop took him down."

"Steve, no!" Dance raged.

Howard called, "The fuck's that?"

"Another cop, works with Foster."

"That's just fucking great." The gangbanger sighed. "You two take care of her. I got shit to do here."

The call ended.

"Serrano," Dance began, "what I was saying before. You need to be smart. You--"

The Latino snapped, "Shut up, Kathryn."

With a cold smile, she said to Foster, "The story you told me before. You don't have a son, do you? That was a lie."

He turned to her, looking down. "I didn't know what was going down. Needed you on my side."

Dance sneered, "You can't be running a network on your own. You're not that smart."

Foster was indignant. "Fuck you. I don't need anybody else."

"How many people've died because of what you've done?"

"Oh, come on," the man said gruffly. Then: "Serrano, let's get this done. Do her, I'll get the asshole outside in here. We take him out. I'll tell the response team I got out the back and hid in the hills. I'll say it was somebody else here, not you. One of the crews from Tijuana."

"Okay with me" was the matter-of-fact response.

Then Foster was squinting. "Wait."

"What?"

"You...you said, 'Kathryn.' You called her 'Kathryn.'"

A shrug. "I don't know. So?"

"I never used her first name here. And I was at the interview last week between you and her. She never said it either."

I'm Agent Dance...

A grimace. The Latino accent was gone as the young man said, "Yep, I screwed up on that. Sorry." He was speaking to Kathryn Dance.

"No worries, Jose," she said, smiling. "We got everything we needed. You did great."