Xo (Kathryn Dance 3)

"Charles is a triplicate kind of guy," she said, smiling and adjusting her position on the seat as some pain from the tumble shot through her side.

He reached into his computer bag and handed her a black plastic gun case. "Fifty rounds. If you need more than that, well, we're all in trouble."

She took his arm, squeezed it. Wanted to rest her head against his shoulder again but refrained. "This was a vacation. That's all it was."

Just then Dennis Harutyun walked into the bar and Dance introduced them--though the local deputy remembered O'Neil from the Skype conference call. It was midnight but the detective looked as fresh as if it were the start of his daily tour, uniform shirt perfectly pressed. He said to Dance, "Charlie's folks've been through the park. Nothing other than the cigarette and the fishing line used as a trip wire. We'll send the cigarette in for DNA but there probably isn't any. If he was smart, which he seems to be, he just lit the end, probably wore gloves. The line is nylon, the sort you'd buy in any one of a hundred sports or big box stores."

O'Neil reported what he'd seen, which was very little. Dance had heard the weapon's receiver but neither of them had actually seen a gun, much less the attacker himself.

The Monterey detective said, "Could be the weapon he stole from that deputy of yours, the one who's out of commission now?"

"Yeah, could be. Oh, and it gets worse. You tell him?" Harutyun asked Dance, who said, "No."

"The head of the detectives here and another officer were a little casual in a search and seizure. Edwin filed DOJ complaint and they're suspended too."

"Hell," O'Neil muttered. "Pike Madigan?"

"That's right. You saw him in our Skype conference."

Dance glanced out the window and noted a few cars slowing as they drove past the now brightly lit park, filled with crime scene officers and uniformed deputies, flashing lights from cruisers. Dance wouldn't have been surprised to see the big red Buick. But of course she didn't.

"I think I better get some sleep." A glance toward O'Neil. "You must be tired too."

"Haven't checked in yet either."

No, he came to rescue me....

As Dance signed the drinks to her room, her mobile dinged with an incoming text. She'd turned it back on after her disastrous mission into the park.

"What is it?" Michael O'Neil asked, noting she was frozen, staring at the screen.

"It's a text." She barked a laugh. "From Edwin Sharp."

"What?"

"He'd like to see me."

"Why?"

"To talk, he says. He wants to meet me at the sheriff's office." Her eyes rose and she glanced at O'Neil and then Harutyun. "He also asked if I had a pleasant night."

Harutyun exhaled in surprise. "That man is something else."

She texted back that she'd meet him at nine.

He replied: Good. Look forward to spending some alone time with you, Agent Dance.

Chapter 46

AT NINE ON the dot Kathryn Dance met with Edwin Sharp in an apparently little-used office in the FMCSO, not an interrogation room. No intimidating decor, no mirrors.

The location was Dance's idea; to put Edwin at ease, though it wasn't exactly comfy. The room was windowless and featured a gray battered desk, propped up by books where a leg was missing, a trio of dusty dead plants and stacks of boxes containing files. On the walls were a half dozen bleached pictures of a family vacation at a lake, circa 1980.

The imposing man entered ahead of her and sat, slumping in the chair and regarding her with amused, curious eyes. She noted again his outsized arms, hands and eyebrows. He was wearing a plaid shirt, tight jeans and a thick belt with a large silver buckle, an accessory that somehow had come to be a stereotypical element of cowboyness, though she wondered if anyone had ever really worn one on the plains of Kansas or West Texas in the 1800s.

His boots, with pointed toes tipped in metal, were scuffed but looked expensive.

"You mind if I take notes?" she asked.