He’d never been a good fighter. He didn’t have the natural instincts, and he’d known it coming out of academy. On the street, he’d always relied on superior training and bigger brains. When a scenario had to go hands-on, he’d learned through hard experience how to gain advantage where he could. How to know where he couldn’t.

But in almost ten years on the job—as many wrong moves as he’d made, even counting the fights he’d out-and-out lost—he’d never been caught dead-bang until now.

“Up.”

Worth stood to his feet.

“Lose the gear and take two steps toward me.”

He unstrapped his handset, unbuckled his belt, and dropped it all in a heavy pile on the carpet.

Never give up your weapon. It was like a Bible verse. No matter what happens. No matter what. Never, ever, not ever do you let the other guy end up with your gun.

Tony Briggs pointed his own at Worth’s face, slipping his finger inside the trigger guard. Worth finally noticed the sap gloves he wore. Prohibited old-school gear, no doubt purchased through the mail or over the Internet. Steel or lead in the knuckles—nothing you’d probably notice unless you’d ever worn or been hit by a pair.

He was thinking of the knot above John Pospisil’s eye. The stitches in Briggs’s head.

Slipped on ice, Ray Salcedo had said.

Standing there, staring into the round black hole of Briggs’s gun barrel, Worth could see the whole thing: John coming through the doorway to the living room, Briggs waiting in the darkness at his left. He could choreograph the exchange of blows on wound location alone.

“Come on out,” Briggs said over his shoulder. “Everybody’s friends.”

The bathroom door opened and Gwen appeared, hands cuffed in front of her. Her gray eyes blazed, nearly green in appearance. “I didn’t touch him.”

Tony Briggs chuckled. “That’s sweet.”

“Matthew, I didn’t.”

“He knows you didn’t, sweetie.” Briggs looked at Worth and holstered his weapon, just to show he didn’t need it. “He also knows who the alpha dog is. Right, brother?”

Worth turned his back, stooped, and picked up his gear belt. He took his time strapping it back on. Briggs stood by, watching, seeming amused.

“So you’re Tony?”

“That’s me.”

“I heard you got your head cracked open by a one-legged guy,” Worth said. “Is that really true?”

Behind him, Ray Salcedo chuckled.

Tony Briggs smiled, nodding along. “That’s good. Hey, where’s your gun, funny man?”

“What do you want?”

Briggs shook his head. “Don’t even play.”

Worth walked over to Gwen. He used his own key to undo her cuffs. He tossed the bracelets to the carpet and rubbed her wrists between his hands.

She stepped in close, but her body stayed rigid. If there had been any time in the past three days when he’d made her feel safe, he didn’t make her feel that way anymore.

“He said if I didn’t go along he’d shoot you in the head when you walked in,” she said. “He showed me the gun he was going to use. He had it in a paper bag.”

Worth saw the wrinkled lunch sack sitting on the table off the kitchenette. He wondered how often Tony Briggs dropped a piece to make a story work out his way.

“Let’s skip the bullshit,” Briggs said. “We know all about what you two tricksters have been up to. So you don’t need to knock yourself out, pretending you don’t know why we’re here.”

Ray Salcedo came away from the door, shoulders square, thumbs hooked in his belt. He offered Worth a companionable shrug. Sorry, guy.

“Here’s what I’m wondering.” Briggs walked over and picked up the phone. “Say I had a line on a homicide case potentially involving one of our own. If I called right now? You think Detective Vargas would pull his dick out of your wife long enough to answer the phone this time of night?”

Worth felt his face get hot. He ignored it this time.

“I wouldn’t,” Salcedo said.

“Dude, me either,” said Briggs. “I was Detective Vargas, I’d need two dicks.”

“So for you that would be what?” Gwen said. “A two-hundred-percent increase?”

Worth looked at her, surprised.

Ray Salcedo laughed out loud. “Snap.”

Tony Briggs gave her a long, slow grin that started in his eyes. “You’re a handful, aren’t you?”

“You wish.”

“I’ll bet it was you who did old Russ,” Briggs said. His radio crackled; he reached to his hip, listened to the chatter a moment, then turned it down. “Isn’t that right? Lover Boy here doesn’t have the sack for it. I can see that. But you got a little freak back there, don’t you, baby?”

If Gwen’s eyes had been laser beams, Tony Briggs would be a smolding black scorch mark in the carpet. It was like she’d shifted into a gear Worth hadn’t known she had.

He turned his attention back to Briggs and Salcedo. Somehow they knew Russell James was dead. They thought he and Gwen had planned it together. Worth wondered what else they knew.

“Hey, whatever,” Briggs said. “The stiff is your business. We’re not judging.”

“Wouldn’t be our place,” said Ray.

“Hell, any guy hits his girl the way that guy hit on you? My book? Baby, I don’t care who he works for. That’s a guy who got what he deserved.” Briggs shrugged. “As soon as you two adjust your thinking, accept the fact that you don’t get to keep what isn’t yours? I don’t see where the four of us have a problem.”

There it was.

Of course they knew about the money. Because it was their money. Briggs and Salcedo. Russell James must have been working for them somehow. And they were working for somebody else. Somebody higher up the ladder.

Gwen looked at Worth. He could see the question in her eyes. What is he talking about?

He looked at Briggs and Salcedo, again wondering how far ahead they really were.

They were up on Sondra. They’d been inside his house. It wouldn’t take much for them to figure Junk Monkey Scrap and Salvage into the equation, if they hadn’t done that already. Worth thought of the effortless manner in which Ray Salcedo had procured the information he needed from Detective Kenna.

He put his arm around Gwen’s waist like they were Bonnie and Clyde. “I guess you win.”

Tony Briggs smiled.

22

Rita missed her connection in Denver and didn’t get home until late Monday night.

Vince waited up for her at the kitchen table, reading the paper and sipping Jim Beam. She came up the back stairs with her suitcase and a long sigh that said she was happy to be home.

“Brrr.”

Vince didn’t turn. “Told you to pack a coat.”

“You don’t need coats in the desert.”

She left the suitcase at the top of the steps. Twice a year she visited her mother, two weeks at a time, and she’d never packed more than the one small suitcase. A few changes of clothes and a sketch pad or two. I’m coming right back, she always said.

She came up behind his shoulder, burrowed a hand into his hair, and scratched the back of his head like a puppy. “Hey, babe.”

Vince scraped his chair back and swatted her rear.

“Let’s get you warmed up,” he said.

Rita had gone gray early. She had a wild springy mass of hair, and by her forty-third birthday, every strand of it had gone the color of stone. But where Vince had put on sixty pounds over the years, at fifty-one, Reet still had the body of a thirty-year-old marathon runner. Slim and sinewy.

She took care of herself first, making the same sighing sound as she’d made walking in the door. Home sweet home.

Just as Vince was about to let himself go, she stopped at the very top. The last possible inch. She held herself there, grabbed two tight handfuls of his chest hair, and pinched her knees up under his ribs.