“Good. Because I don’t care what they are, or who they think they’re Master of, nobody gets away with this in my city.”
She gathered her photos and left. I’d half expected to be arrested, to be questioned about how much I knew—to be forced to lead them to Arturo at gunpoint. I knew where he kept his lair.
But she let me go because she was going to tail me. She was going to have people watch to see who I talked to, who tried to contact me, and they’d follow those threads until they had someone they could charge.
I almost ran after her and begged to be taken into protective custody. Surely no one could get to me if I was locked in a jail cell. But then I’d have no place to run.
I called Ben on my way home. Every ring he didn’t pick up terrified me. I was too late. They’d gotten him, Carl had tracked us and I was next—
“Yeah?” Ben finally answered.
I stumbled over the words in my hurry to speak. “Ben, we have to get out of town. We have to leave right now, we can’t stay, we—”
“Kitty, whoa. Slow down. What happened?”
“She’s dead. I don’t know how Carl got to her but he did, and Hardin showed up at work with the photos and he’ll know we helped her. He’s probably looking for us right now.”
He didn’t have to ask who was dead. “But you took her to the airport. How did he get to her? How did he get her away from there to kill her?”
“I don’t know! It doesn’t matter now. It’s all over.”
“Where are you?”
“On my way home.”
“We’ll talk when you get here. Stay calm, okay? Keep it together.”
He’d picked up my catchphrase, the thing I told myself when Wolf came too close to the surface, when her instincts started to override reason.
I nodded, which wouldn’t reassure him on the other end of the phone. “Okay. I’ll be okay.” No, I wouldn’t.
“I’ll see you soon.”
“Okay,” I said, and we both hung up.
Nobody tried to kill me between the parking lot and the door of Ben’s condo. It seemed like a miracle.
He was sitting on the sofa, waiting for me, looking far too calm. I wanted him to have guns on the coffee table. We had to circle the wagons, defend the Alamo.
We regarded each other in a moment that felt anticlimactic. Where was the panic? The hysteria?
He said, very calmly, “What happened?”
I heaved a frustrated sigh. “There’s no time, I’ll explain while we drive. We have to leave now.”
I went to the bedroom, found a duffel bag, and started shoving clothes into it. I didn’t care what clothes—a handful of underwear, some shirts, some jeans. Pack it up, jump in the car, and go.
“What are you doing?” Ben said softly, patiently, like a parent with a kid throwing a temper tantrum. Waiting me out.
“Leaving. Rick made his move and lost. He’s probably dead. Jenny is dead, I couldn’t save her, Carl got to her somehow. And he’ll kill me, and you, and there’s nothing we can do.”
“Kitty—it’s not your fault Carl got to her. You tried. You did what you could.”
“I can’t fight him. I can’t even instigate a little civil disobedience.”
Closet to bed, a few more clothes. Couldn’t get the zipper closed, so I pulled something out and threw it aside. Had to get my toothbrush in there.
“You’d leave while your mom’s sick? Abandon her too?”