Private L.A. (Private 6)

“Yes, I know, Mr. Cobb,” Nickerson replied. “But that might be all we get if they don’t move the money out of some big government account.”

Cobb shook his head. “That’s where it will come from, and they’ll try to trace the money.”

“You don’t know—” Watson began.

“We do know, Mr. Watson, by deductive reasoning,” Cobb insisted. “It only makes sense, which is why you’re going to send that money off into oblivion, and while they’re chasing that paltry ten million, you’re going to have the account codes and passwords necessary to steal them blind, whatever is in the big account, however much we want.”

“What if there’s nothing?” Hernandez demanded skeptically. “Not a cent beyond ten million, Mr. Cobb?”

With no hesitation, Cobb said, “Isn’t it obvious, Mr. Hernandez? We’ll call the scammers on trying to track the money, and Mr. Kelleher will step up to take No Prisoners out for a spin again.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Nickerson said, raised his hand, and called to the waitress, “Say, Alice, can we get our check?”

Chapter 89

I DID THE only thing I could think of, ducked and threw myself back into the car, hearing the spit and ping of the suppressed round shattering the driver’s-side window of the Touareg, then another, smacking the door as I yanked in my legs, adrenaline surging, trying to get to my gun.

But I couldn’t reach it, and I could hear footsteps. Lying across the bucket seat and the central console, I saw the emergency brake lever, released it.

The door was still open as the heavy Touareg almost immediately began to drop back down the steep drive, slapping the side of the guy trying to kill me.

He swore in Russian, wild-eyed, trying to stop my vehicle and get a clean shot at me. I slammed the shift into reverse, kicked the gas pedal, pinned the shooter against the door, dragging him as we went flying backward into the street, hurling him from my sight when we crashed broadside into his car with a sound like a dump truck dropping its gate.

On impact I’d been slammed back against the seats, but I came up fast, dug for my pistol, kicked my way out through the door and up into a squared-off shooter’s stance, sweeping the …

He was sprawled, grunting, on the road beside an older Pontiac Trans Am that was making coughing noises and backfiring. His gun lay eight feet from him. I kicked it farther away into the gutter, noticed that his right leg was grotesquely broken, and now bright blood bubbled at one corner of his lips. Behind me I could hear Joy and Luck, Justine’s terriers, barking wildly inside her house.

“Why’d you try to kill me?” I asked.

“Fuck you,” he rasped.

I kicked him in the broken leg, barely aware of people coming out of their houses, happy to hear him scream, or at least try. “Why?” I asked again. “Or this time, I’ll stomp on your leg.”

“There is no why,” he said in a thick Russian accent. “I do job. Hired.”

“By who?” I demanded. “Who wanted me …?”

The Russian got a look of disbelief on his face, coughed up a gout of that bright frothy blood, and died there in the back-streets of Santa Monica, right in front of Justine’s house.

Chapter 90

AN HOUR EARLIER, Justine was sitting in an overstuffed chair in her bedroom, both dogs in her lap, still dressed in her workout clothes, wanting to cry again. She’d seduced a married man with a pretty wife and kids who rode in car seats and sang about the wheels on the bus. Pulling Joy and Luck close to her, she thought miserably, I’m a home wrecker.

The idea went against nearly everything Justine stood for, and yet there it was, hovering about like a ghost, trying to get her to break down, to succumb to the weight of what she’d done with Paul, and of the attack in Mexico.

She was suffering, but it didn’t mitigate things, she thought fiercely. A diagnosis of PTSD would not change what she had done, who she was, what she had become.

Justine’s next thought was that she had to right things somehow, atone for her sins. Should she go to Paul’s wife and confess? But what good would that do? She’d scar the poor woman and destroy their marriage. The truth was, Justine had been the aggressor. She had encouraged the tension that had been building with Paul, knowing nearly nothing about the man, not even his last name. It was true that he’d allowed himself to be seduced, and asked her out for coffee the day before, but …

It was all so confusing. She didn’t know what to do. Then she did. She called up Ellen Hayes, a fellow psychologist she admired, got put through.

“Justine,” Hayes said. “So good to hear from you.”

“It’s been too long, Ellen,” Justine allowed. “But I’m looking for a recommendation for a therapist who specializes in the aftermath of trauma.”

“That would be you, dear.”

“The referral is for me, Ellen.”