have been uncharacteristically unsafe of her if traffic had been moving the least bit, but it wasn’t. At all.
Or maybe she just wasn’t afraid of crashing.
“He’s sure?” she was saying. “He’s absolutely sure?… Yeah. Yeah, she’s—gone. I’m bringing Cas and Tabitha back, but the roads are clogged … well, thank you very much for that, then. When is it coming back on?… Okay. No, I can’t, and Cas is out of it … Oh, yeah, I’m pretty sure she’s fine, just drugged … I don’t know. I was going to refer that question to, um. All of you.”
I must have moved, then, because her eyes tracked to me. “Oh, she’s awake. Cas, Checker wants to know if there’s a plan for the, um. Crime scene.” She glanced toward the back seat, and I craned my head around to see a sleeping Tabitha.
Checker was alive, then. Which meant they were probably all alive. My mind wandered around the information. That’s good, I thought. Good.
I’d lost the thread of what was happening. Pilar had asked something. Right. I managed to circle back to it and pondered Checker’s question. Fifer had made sure Willow Grace’s mansion wouldn’t be stumbled into by anyone, so we had a little breathing room … I could come do a cleanup job tomorrow. Maybe Rio or D.J. would help.
In a perfect world, Pilar and Tabitha could report this whole thing to the authorities truthfully—mostly—and trust they’d be cleared, but I didn’t think any of us had faith in this being a perfect world. The two of them might be mostly law-abiding, but they’d follow my lead.
That was to say, they’d follow my lead or I’d make them.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it,” I said, and I was almost sure I saw Pilar’s shoulders relax slightly.
Almost sure. Maybe not. She seemed pretty calm.
“Their side went okay, then?” I dredged myself up to ask. I had the distinct feeling I should have been a lot more concerned about that. LED counters danced through my memory. Even if I’d given them the ten extra minutes, that hadn’t been a lot of time for D.J. to finish.
But Checker at least was alive. That was good.
“Yes. They got it done. With a little collateral damage.” Pilar glanced wryly around at the jammed streets. The power was out, I suddenly realized, the traffic lights swinging dark. That would kneecap LA for hours.
“Checker knocked out the power? And D.J. got all the bombs?”
“Yup. They got Diego out and dismantled all Fifer’s devices, and everyone’s okay. He says.”
So they’d gone through with pulling Diego just in case, simultaneously with disarming the police station. Smart.
“Good,” I mumbled. “Yeah. That’s good.” There would be a few more loose ends tomorrow, in addition to making sure nothing from the Malibu mansion would connect back to Pilar or Tabitha. Sikorsky was still a loose end, for one, and also double-checking Arthur’s family was permanently safe from any vengeance Fifer might have tried to reach out with from beyond the grave. And we should probably call someone in about possible explosives set to blow on the Barberry Canyon bridge.
But that could all wait. I leaned against the coolness of the window and let myself drift back to sleep.
* * *
THE POWER didn’t come back until after nightfall, just as we managed to creep back into the city. Traffic was snarled into such a Gordian knot that even having the lights and gas stations back didn’t improve our top speed much for the last leg in to Checker’s house in Van Nuys.
Checker had taken Diego and Elisa to the same safe house Arthur and the other kids were at. And, after hearing that Fifer was no longer a threat, Checker, Juwon, and Dr. Washington hatched a plan to hack through the crowded streets and get Arthur and the twins down to San Fernando Memorial. Visiting hours were over, but they’d managed to sneak the three of them in to see Simon anyway.
Checker reported with concern that even after Simon’s treatment, they were in much worse states than Pilar had been, after that many hours crushed under the adrenaline of their own panic responses. But Dr. Washington was monitoring them back at the safe house, and she hoped they’d be able to sleep it off.
My own first order of business once we got back was to deal with Sikorsky. I told Pilar to escort a sleepy Tabitha into the Hole so I could go and take care of the cop