“Wow,” Eric said, full of admiration. “I’m… I mean, it pays to have connections.”
Ace grimaced. “It would pay better if we’d stop going through cars,” he confessed. “And boy, I hate to see this one go.” He gave Jai an apologetic glance. “Sorry, brother.”
Jai shrugged and fished the keys out of his pocket. “Get something sporty,” he said, and George cackled behind him.
“Drive safe,” Ace told him, and Eric nodded.
“Will do.”
He caught the keys Jai tossed him and pulled from the front of the house, around the garage, and onto the highway from the hardpan drive. As he paused, making sure the way was clear, he saw the roadblock about half a mile to the west, directly in the path he’d need to take for any town but Vegas. It had been in Ace’s explicit warning to “drive safe.”
Read: Stay off their radar.
Eric wondered how many times Ace, Sonny, and Jai had “stayed safe” by playing dumb and decided he didn’t want to know. He’d come to the desert expecting to find a network—he’d thought a crime family. He’d found a crime-fightingfamily instead, and it was occurring to him that while the emotional stability and trust was a lot easier on the heart, the precarious situation in the universe was no less difficult on the nerves.
And while it was maybe in the high sixties, low seventies, as he approached the roadblock, he was still glad the Crown Vic had air conditioning like a boss.
He lowered the window, using his body language, his aggressive elbow, his widened chest and stance in the seat, to own thefuckout of that vehicle, while he pulled out his ID.
“What’s doing, Officer?” he asked, noting that there wereonlylocal deputies lining the road. No California Highway Patrol or Los Angeles County PD, which pointed to what they’d suspected, which was averyinsulated population taking their power very seriously.
The deputy with the clipboard leaned forward into Eric’s space, thrusting a tablet with a picture on it practically up his nose. “You seen this man? We suspect him of robbing a savings and loan out in Baker.”
Eric should have been ready for it, but he wasn’t. As he forcibly lowered the tablet—and the cop’s hand—so it was far enough away to see, Brady’s picture came into view.
It had been photoshopped badly, probably from his work ID. A hat—maybe his habitual baseball cap—had been “erased” out, along with the top of Brady’s hair and forehead, and Brady’s unsmiling cop face had been superimposed over the traditional measuring stick that marked an inmate’s arrest photo.
Eric wanted to howl. God, this was so unfair. He had no love of cops, or he’dhadno love of cops, but to take one of the good ones—one of the ones who didn’t want to hurt anybody,only wanted to keep people safe, to tie into his community, to bedecent—and tell the world he was a criminal; that was fucking reprehensible.
And Eric couldn’t let on.
Come on, man, you’ve made a living being fucking inscrutable for the last twenty years. Where’s your cool now?
It would be a lot better served if I had a pressure syringe and some insulin for this asshole right here.
“You seen that dirtbag?” the deputy sneered, and Eric fought to keep his face impassive. Not a flicker around the eyes, not a tightening of the mouth—not even a flaring of the nostrils to give him away.
“No,” he said, wondering if anybody had evencheckedthe video feed in the bank to see him there, fiddling with his phone and blanking out all the cameras.
“You sure?” He was close enough for Eric to see scum on his teeth.
Eric recoiled. “Sir, would you like a breath mint? Yes, I am certain.”
The deputy—a thirtyish man with coarse black hair in his eyebrows and knuckles who had missed a few spots shaving around his neck—gave him a dirty look, but he did step back self-consciously at the breath mint comment. “This car’s familiar. You live around here?”
“I pass through here for business,” Eric lied smoothly. “I’m meeting a client in Palm Springs for lunch.”
“It’s Sunday,” the man said suspiciously.
“He’s in town, and I thought I’d treat,” Eric said, with the imperiousness of somebody with somethingmuchbetter to do. “Can I go, or do I need to fish my wallpaper samples out of the trunk?”
Oh, that was the ticket. At the faintest whiff of interior decorating, the man backed up with no more than a grunt and waved him on.
Eric waited until the roadblock had disappeared from his rearview to put in his AirPods and call Ace.
“How bad was it?” Ace asked without preamble.
“Brady’s face photoshopped to look like a mugshot,” Eric replied, still seething.
