Crave (Fallen Angels 2)

"Fuck." He didn't have to open the Star Market bag and count; by weight alone, he knew that Grier hadn't taken even a dollar out of the rolls of hundreds and twenties or the fluffy scruff of the unbundled.

But she had been here--Matthias would have taken the weapons to make him less dangerous. And waited around to shoot him in the head.

Shit . . . the cash-intact crap meant either there was a bondsman involved . . . or she'd bailed him out with her own money. And when he'd been processed, there had been no disclosure about a third party posting the benjamins. So she must have.

Damn it.

Snapping back into action, he took the bag and replaced the section of bead board. Then he went around to the windows and doors, flicking off the receptors with his knife and putting the metal plates into his pockets. No more than three minutes later, he left the way he'd come: out the back and quiet as smoke.

The five hundred dollars he left on the counter in the kitchen was going to have to cover the fact that he was breaking his lease, and Mrs. Mulcahy would have to figure out herself that he'd left when there was no sign of him after a couple of days.

The less contact with him, the safer she was.

Same with his attorney.

God damn it.

Down below, in the backyard, Isaac's senses were razor-sharp as he whispered around to the side of the apartment house and resumed his jog. He didn't slow his pace until he was a couple of miles away.

Ducking into an alley, the call he made was answered on the second ring: "Yeah."

"It's Rothe."

The fight promoter perked right up. "Jesus Christ, I heard you were in jail. Listen, I can't bail you--"

"I'm out. We fighting tonight?"

"Shit, yeah! We was gonna have to move from that location anyways. This is awesome. How'd you pull it off?"

"What's the address and how do I get there?"

The location was some six miles away in a town called Malden, which made sense--the cops in Southie were obviously dunzo with having fights on their turf. And how the promoter hadn't gotten pinched was a mystery. Unless, of course, he was the one who'd given the tip and gotten out in time.

You never knew with people like that guy.

After Isaac hung up, his next move was to find a bus shelter with a schedule. When the right ten-wheeler monolith trundled along, he boarded it and sat by the emergency exit window.

As he stared out at the apartments and businesses and buildings that passed by, he wanted to scream.

He was getting out of XOps because he'd found his conscience, and that meant he couldn't take off with Grier Childe having covered him to that extent. She'd looked rich, but twenty-five grand was a lot of cash no matter how much you were worth. Hell, he wouldn't have felt comfortable with even an anonymous bail bondsman eating that bill. But that elegant woman who he'd lied to? And sent on a dirty errand?

Nope. He wasn't about to leave her in the lurch.

And didn't that just complicate everything.

Two hours after she left the jail without her client or any clue where he had gone, Grier stood in the middle of a shindig full of people who were arguably part of her tribe. Everyone was old-money Boston and shared common Mayflower ancestry.

God love them, but some of these blue bloods were old enough to have come over on the boat itself.

Her mind wasn't on this ballroom at the Four Seasons, however. Or the man in front of her who was talking to her about . . . What was this party for? The MFA or the ballet?

She glanced across at the placards that had been set up. Reproductions of Degas. Which didn't necessarily help answer that one: All those fuzzy tutus could have fit into either category.

As the bow tie in front of her kept chatting away, she was not tracking. Her mind was stuck back in that hallway at the courthouse . . . when she'd turned around from the elevators and found herself alone.

She'd never even heard Isaac move, much less leave. One moment he was behind her; the next there was nothing but air where he'd been. How someone that size could pull off a disappearance like that was astounding.

Of course, it hadn't taken a genius to figure that he'd gone out the back stairwell--so she'd punched through the fire door and started after him, taking her high heels off and jogging down in her stocking feet. She went all the way to the bottom of the stairs, pushed out of the exit, and glanced over at a guy who was lighting up a cigarette. When she'd asked him if he'd seen a big man leave, he'd just shrugged, blown a milky white cloud into the air and wandered off.

After she'd put her stilettos back on, she'd gone to the underground parking garage, gotten in her car and driven over to her client's apartment again. There had been no lights on upstairs, but she hadn't expected any. The last place someone on the run went was the address they'd given the police.

She'd known her client was a flight risk. What she hadn't counted on was him being like that smoker's exhale in the breeze, gone as fast as he had appeared.

Coming back to the present, Grier put her warm chardonnay on the tray of a passing waiter--just as her phone started to vibrate against her hip.

Excusing herself, she ducked out into the hallway. "Hello?"

"Hey, Miz Childe. How you be?"

"Breathlessly waiting for your call, Louie, that's how."

"Aw, now that's sweet, right there. You're a good woman." Louie dropped the affable routine and got down to business. "You're not going to like what I have to tell you."

Why am I not surprised? she thought. "Let's get to it, then."

"He's a ghost."

No disagreement there. Still, considering she'd been chatting up her dead brother lately, ghosts could be real. "He looked pretty corporeal to me when I was sitting across the table from him."

"Well, the Isaac Rothe I was able to locate died about five years ago. Down in Mississippi. He was found dead in a ditch on a cattle farm, and he was nineteen at the time. The newspaper articles I read said he was busted up beyond recognition, but the photo of him while alive that ran with the obit matched the mug shot taken at the police station yesterday night. It's the same guy."

"Jesus . . ."

"Not for nuthin', but the disappear job back then was expensive and extensive. I mean, for him to have lasted this long undercover? Sure, you can do it --this is a big country and all--but you got to be careful, because there are a lot of central databases. He hasn't been using his own social security number--that is different than the one with the name originally--so it could be part of how he stayed gone. But my sense is, he knows what he's doing. And he has some serious backing."

"What kind of serious backing?"

"I'll give you two initials: U and S."

"Last name `government'?"

"I was going with Uncle Sam, but yup, that fits." "I don't get it, though. If he wanted to stay lost, why did he keep his own name? You buy a new social, usually it comes with a different first and last, doesn't it?"

"You'd have to ask him about the whys. But first thing comes to my mind--he never expected to be found. And I'll tell you this . . . I'd be careful around him. That body in that ditch in Mississippi didn't get there by accident. I'd bet my retainer on the fact that someone killed a white boy who looked enough like him to pass in a closed casket--and guess what: Your client there is still breathing. So that SOB could be a murderer."

Grier closed her eyes. Great. This just kept getting better: She'd not only bailed out a flight risk who had bolted, but a man who might well have killed somebody and faked his own death.

Polite and gentle my ass, she thought, wondering how in the hell someone like her, who'd passed nineteenth grade summa cum laude, had managed to be so stupid.

At that moment, the crowd parted to reveal Daniel in a tuxedo lounging next to one of those Degas. As he toasted her with a champagne flute, his handsome face was wallpapered in told-you-so.

The dead sonofabitch had a point. Even though he'd passed two years ago, she was still performing a kind of CPR on him: Desperate to bring him back to real life, she was caught up in other people's dramas, that urge to get in and help sometimes the only thing that kept her going.

"You okay there, girl?"

She gripped her cell phone harder and wondered what the PI would say if he knew she was staring into the all-knowing eyes of her deceased sibling. "Not really, Louie."

"He snow you?"

"I snowed myself."

"Well, I got one other piece of info for you--although I'm not sure I want to give it over. Sounds like you're in too deep already."