Deadly Little Secrets Page 0,93
a bit of it, but the gist was that she would be safer in Los Angeles, safer away from him.
When she finally agreed, he had Declan take her to the hotel. Someone else had already been dispatched to get Dav a change of clothes. “Give me your keys,” Pretzky said, holding out an imperious hand. “I know you won’t leave, but you can’t stay in that.” She waved at the dress.
“Oh, my God.” Ana looked down, clearly seeing the ruin of the elegant gown for the first time. “Misioia will be furious.”
At that, she burst into tears.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Drake demanded, pacing the parking lot of the darkened Opera House. “What were you thinking, shooting Bromley? You may have ruined everything.”
“Neh.” Jurgens denied everything with one cold word. “I am in Oakland, arranging the thing we discussed.” Drake could hear the icy fury in Jurgens’s voice at the very idea Drake would blame him. “Careful what you say.”
Drake yanked his hair, the pain of it grounding him, helping him to focus. “Damn it. Sorry,” he said, knowing he’d better mend fences. “The shot was so damn good.” He stopped, scanned the lot, decided he’d better get into the closed confines of his BMW before he said anything else. “Hang on.”
He started the car before he continued. “Really, man. I apologize. Bromley’s at the hospital, not sure if it was a kill shot or not, but it was a hell of a thing,” he explained. “No muzzle flash, just a snick and Bromley went down. You’re so good.” He let admiration fill his voice, knowing he needed to make up for his earlier accusation. “I just, well, you know. I thought it was you.”
“You did not designate Bromley as a target.” Drake thought he heard a little lessening of the anger. “Therefore, no action on Bromley. This is the way it works. I do not do other jobs.”
Drake winced. Jurgens was well and truly pissed. It was going to take something major. Groveling might be his best bet. “I know. I know that, I do,” he said, letting the weariness he actually felt suffuse his voice. “I overreacted, damn it. Stupid of me. I thought I’d gotten over that.” He said it ruefully, reminding Jurgens of easier times when they’d put together deals in college, made money for tuition, cars, and women with their joint escapades. Jurgens had always twitted him for being hasty, getting ahead of himself.
Drake didn’t agree, but he had moderated the tendency. Jurgens liked a long con better than he did, but they both liked the money. They paid one another, kept it straight so neither of them felt used or cheated.
The thing he always had to remember was that Jurgens was a killer; unstable, volatile, like nitroglycerin. Amazingly useful, but best handled with care.
“Seriously,” he said, hoping a last bit of eating crow would even things out. “It was that good. You can’t blame me for thinking it was you.”
“Huh.” Jurgens’s grunt didn’t sound convinced, but he didn’t sound like he was going to leave Oakland and come hunting Drake. “Be careful. Accusations are not wise.”
“Very true.” Drake decided it was time to shift gears. “Oakland, eh? What’s up?”
“Our discussion,” Jurgens said impatiently. “More product from our new watcher.”
“Ah.” The light dawned. Jurgens was suborning the inside man at the CIA he’d cultivated. “Good. Listen, I’ll say it once again. Sorry. I’ll e-mail you a new number. These shouldn’t be used again. Also, we need to step up our check on our East Coast rival. If this was him, he’s gotten better. If it’s something else, someone else muddling the works, we need to know that too.”
“Ja,” Jurgens agreed, disgust ringing in the single word. He cut the line off, and Drake was left sitting in the dark, seething.
If he’d thought it once, he’d thought it a hundred times. Jurgens was dangerous. He got out long enough to drop the phone on the ground in a puddle from the Opera House’s landscape sprinklers. Starting the car, he ran over it, smashing it. He got out to retrieve the destroyed SIM chip. The pieces of the phone were indistinguishable in the dark, useless and unidentifiable without the chip.
On his way home, he got two cups of coffee, sipping one and dropping the chip in the other. At the gas station where he filled up the car, he dumped the unused cup into the trash, taking off the cardboard sleeve where he’d touched it.