Page 52

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Surge caught me in the hallway after dark, and he came around the corner too slowly.

That was the tell. He checked behind me before he spoke, half a second too long, and on any other man in this club it would have been nothing.

“Say it,” I said.

“There’s surveillance on Ruth’s facility.”

“Shooter’s not on it till Monday.”

“I know where Shooter is.” The glasses were up in his hair. He’d been at a screen for hours. “It isn’t ours. Car in the lot twice in four days, same plate both times. Shell company, and it traces back to that logistics outfit off the agricultural accounts.”

“When?”

“Patch…”

“You said twice in four days. When was the second one?”

“Yesterday.”

The hallway got very quiet. The pool table clicked somewhere behind him and somebody laughed at something, and none of it had anything to do with the two of us.

“You’ve had it a day,” I said.

“I’ve had it a day.”

“Say the rest.”

“It wasn’t confirmed. One plate, two sightings, no faces. I’ve handed you half-certain intel before and watched what you do with it. You don’t sleep, you just quit telling anybody you’re not sleeping.” He didn’t look away, which I’ll give him. “You’re running at the edge already. I decided I’d get it confirmed and hand you something you could act on instead of something you’d just carry around.”

“You decided.”

“Yeah.”

“On your own.”

“On my own. And I’ve been sick about it since about four this morning, which is why you’re hearing it now instead of tomorrow.” His jaw set. “So go on. Say whatever the hell you’re going to say.”

I didn’t say anything for a second, and I could see that landing on him worse than shouting would have. “You know what I do here,” I said.

“I know what you do here.”

“Say it.”

“You know where everybody is.”

“I know where everybody is.” My voice didn’t come up. That wasn’t what this was. “Every man, every bike, every post, every hour, for twenty years. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at that didn’t require me to gamble with somebody’s life. And you had a car sitting in a parking lot at the facility, with an old woman inside it who can’t run, and a girl who walks through the front door of it every Sunday at the same damn time… and you sat on it for a day.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I thought I could fix the damn thing before you ever had to know about it.”

And there it was. Not malice. Not carelessness. The man’s whole problem in one sentence, and I couldn’t even get properly angry at it, because I’d have done the same thing and called it protecting her. “Don’t do that to me again,” I said.

“I won’t.”