Brady remembered that conversation he’d had with Eric the night before, the half-desperate one. “I-I kept pushing to investigate,” he whispered. “There… there was this cop with aphone full of kiddie porn, and his brother with a computer full of it, and they were both dead and… and wasn’t anybody going to see if this was bigger than them?”
“And what have we figured out?” Ace asked grimly.
Brady’s head swam. “Probably not,” he answered, feeling so small. All his life he’d wanted to be a policeman. He’d had to move out here, south of hell, to do his job and not have to answer a thing about his love life, and it turned out that not being able to come out was the least of his worries.
“Probably not what?” Ace was talking slowly now, as though making sure.
“Nobody in my station house wanted to find out if this was any bigger than those two people, and nobody was going to investigate those murders.”
Ace grunted. “So what do youthinkought to be done?”
“I have a friend,” he said, suddenly remembering. “In the FBI. I… I turned the investigation of Donnie Ray Kuntz over to her. She might help out. She’d know the proper channels. But first I need to get her that phone.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” Ace said. “Okay, then. See? It’s not all bad. Now you meet me at the place—take some back roads. You know where the back roads are?”
Brady had to laugh. “Out by where all the illegal street racing takes place?” he asked.
Ace cackled some more. “Our boy ain’t stupid. All right, then. Where’s all your cop friends?”
“I don’t know. They’d justfigured out I’d left the hospital when I got my department issue back to the station house.”
“Now them boysisstupid,” Ace said grimly. “Alrighty. Let me know if you got any on your tail. Otherwise, stick to the plan.”
“Sure,” Brady said, and he realized that, while thin at the moment, there wasstilla plan in place. And it involved a higher power. And an attempt to restore things back to order.
And sanctuary.
He was going to have to call it good.
AN HOURand a half later, he was… well, wearing a borrowed pair of board shorts in a stranger’s pool.
After the conversation with Ace, his brain had sort of checked out. He remembered the gas station, and the way Eric had shown up with a beat-up Toyota with disintegrating seats and told him to hop in. Ernie was there too, driving a sweet little Kia that Brady hadn’t seen before, his hand out for Brady’s keys.
“I’ll take the clothes and some takeout to the neighborhood,” he said to Eric. “Get him to the pool, make him take a breath. He’s in shock.”
“I can see that,” Eric said. “Poor man.”
“Well, not every day you realize your entire livelihood is trying to kill you,” Ernie said, patting Brady on the shoulder.
“What’s everybody else doing?” Eric asked.
“We’re gonna talk some story,” Ernie said vaguely. “If he needs a bedroom to sleep in, wait until the first person gets home—we’ve all got spares.”
“My couch is quite comfortable when it comes to that,” Eric said, and Brady heard a note to his voice, a smoothness, and whatever he wasn’t saying, it made Ernie smirk.
“The couch. Sure. Look, wherever he ends up, he needs to be bright and shiny by Monday. We’ll have some ideas by Monday.”
“Monday sounds fine,” Eric told him. “I’ve got more than enough food to last until then.”
Ernie snorted. “You are so transparent. My God, you’re lucky you survived this long.”
Eric’s next sentence reverberated around in Brady’s skull. “I survived this long working for the finer things in life. I’d say Mr. Carnegie fits the bill.”
“Not going to argue,” Ernie agreed. “Now get him out of here before his brains start rolling out his ears.”
And that had been that.
Eric had taken him into the RV and told him to change, and then had led him—practically by the hand—across the cul-de-sac from where the camper was parked and, after unlatching a gate that wasn’t locked atall, led him back to this glorious, enormous jewel of a pool in the desert.
