come out of the room empty-handed, heading back up the hill to their stakeout car, no doubt leaving the place exactly as they’d found it. No reason to tip their hand at this stage of the game.
“What are we going to do here, Jack?” Scout asked him, watching the whole scene down at the motel as intently as he was watching it.
The woman, Red Dog, was amazing, so sleek. She moved like a cat, one of the big ones, with a supple, easy grace, radiating strength and power with every step. She and Travis got back in their car and settled in to wait.
“They don’t have him, Scout,” he told her. “If they did, they wouldn’t be wasting their time here. You were bait, a way to get to Con, nothing more, and I’m even less. I’m just the pain in the ass who stole their bait. It’s Con they want, not us.”
“So what are we going to do?” she repeated her question. “I’ve got the phone.”
Fuck the phone, he thought.
And it rang.
Except it wasn’t hers. It was his.
Geezus. He whipped his phone out of his pocket.
“Go,” he said.
“Location?”
It was Con. It couldn’t possibly have been anyone else, but Jack was still damn relieved to hear his voice.
“Three blocks south of the motel, up on the hill. We’ve got a surveillance team, two people, a block north of us. They’re confirmed SDF operators.”
There was a brief silence.
“Do you know how they found the place?”
“No, but they broke into the room, stayed a couple of minutes, and came back out.”
He heard Con swear under his breath.
“Did they take anything?”
“Not that we could see. They came out empty-handed, and neither one of them is wearing a jacket.”
There was another brief silence, and Jack thought he could hear sirens in the background.
“Where are you?”
“On the west side of town.”
Jack could tell Con was moving.
“We had a visual sighting of Lancaster on our way out of Steele Street.” Jack gave him the news. “No possibility of a mistake, and we ran into Rick Karola and Sam Walls immediately thereafter. We tailed Karola to a downtown hotel called the Kashmir Club.”
“Kashmir Club? So it’s a hotel. Rock Howe confirmed it as Lancaster’s location, so we’re in. King Banner is here, too, but he and Rock are both out of the equation, which means Lancaster is way down on his team.”
Damn. It had been a busy night all over.
“We should regroup.” That was putting it mildly.
“We need something close to the Kashmir Club—”
Oh, Jack could see where this was going.
“—but not too close.”
They were going in, dropping on Lancaster tonight.
He was all for it.
“There’s a hotel, the Armstrong,” he said. “At Champa and 14th.”
“Roger. Turn on the news and lay low until I get there. King and Rock are bound to be the breaking story. I’m temporarily on foot, heading away from the circus over here. King and Rock caught us in a restaurant, very public, very messy. Some shots were fired, but they’re both alive. Listen to the reports in case somebody comes up with something we can use.”
“Copy.” Con had stopped to eat? “Who’s us?”
“Unplanned hostage,” Con’s voice came over the phone. “She slowed me down.”
Jack just bet she had, especially if they’d stopped to grab a bite to eat. Geezus. He was starting to get a little confused.
“Are you on your own now?” A legitimate question, if he’d ever heard one.
“Affirmative. I’ll meet you at the Armstrong. Out.”
“Roger and out.”
He turned to Scout, and she looked as relieved as he felt.
“We’re not turning anybody in to SDF,” he said. “We’ll tell Con everything you’ve seen and heard, and I’ll confirm about Kid, and then we’ll do exactly what he tells us to do.”
“That’ll be a first.” She gave him a pointed look.
Which he ignored. So he’d been running a little wild these last few months. He’d settled down since she’d been gone, for a whole eight weeks now, and he had something else to say, something kind of new for him, but it was pressing him hard, and he needed to get it off his chest.
“I’m sorry, Scout. I’m sorry I wasn’t in Paraguay when these pendejos dropped in on you and Con.” If he’d been with them when Erich Warner and SDF had all piled in on top of the river house, chances were she wouldn’t have been captured, and he’d thought long and hard about that. “I’m going to be sticking a lot closer to home for a while—for a long