user name and password to get to the skank and elucidate.
“I can make that difficult for them,” I say. “I just need to have another little chat with Jyri Ivalo and explain the situation. And besides, they could have done that already. They want us alive until we give the ten million back.”
“Should we use it to bargain our way out of trouble, then give it back?”
“No. We’re in the kind of trouble no bargaining will cure. Not over the long haul.”
“Then what’s the plan?”
“Kate will be home soon.” I say it with confidence but offer a silent prayer that Milo can really make it happen. “I want this over before she arrives. And Loviise Tamm’s future is on a tight time frame as well. If it hasn’t happened already, odds are good that what they have in mind for her will psychologically and emotionally devastate her, probably for life.”
I say another silent prayer that she hasn’t been fed to the sharks yet and forced into prostitution. Girls in her position are broken in by being raped and beaten over and over until they just give up and do what they’re told. “We start the search for Loviise this evening.”
“It’s a big city. How?”
I’m suddenly exhausted again. “I’m going to take a nap. I’ll let you know when I wake up.” I wash the gop off the teeth in the lion’s head of my cane, oil them so they don’t rust, and lie down in bed.
Sleep doesn’t come. Images flicker through my mind like a slide show. A tear gas canister blowing out my window. Kate blowing Adrien Moreau in half with a sawed-off shotgun. The bodies of little children his accomplices left in shallow graves. Sweetness destroying the biker’s knee. The sound of it. He’ll never walk on it again. Instead, like me, he’ll drag his leg around for life. So much violence. I went into self-imposed isolation to avoid it. Or rather, after understanding just how volatile I’ve become, to avoid hurting others. My emotional state is fragile. I’m unpredictable. I don’t want to be. I want to move on from all this ugliness.
The past won’t let me be. I have to sleep. I tire easily and may be in for a long night of police work, or some facsimile of it. I dry-swallow a couple pills and wait for them to knock me out, but my mind keeps churning and turns, as it so often does, to Kate.
13
I roll out of bed at six p.m. I slept all day after sleeping fifteen hours last night. I tell myself it’s because I tire easily and we have a long night ahead of us, but I know damned well sleeping near round the clock is a sign of depression. Milo said I’m in “shock.” I don’t know, maybe I am. I don’t much care.
The girls are sitting side by side at the dining room table, somber, speaking sotto voce. Sweetness is sitting on the floor in front of the TV, playing the video game Grand Theft Auto. With our watchers incapacitated and the message sent, I think my apartment is safe, at least for now.
Some burgers are in a pan on the stove. We have no bread in the house because Jenna and Sweetness are avoiding the dreaded carbohydrates that would turn them into slobbering fat monsters. I add some salt and eat two with my fingers. I ask Sweetness, “Ready to roll?”
He snaps off the TV and stands up. “Just let me get my stuff.”
Said stuff includes a bulletproof vest. It’s made of lightweight material, like a mesh T-shirt, with pouches that hold Kevlar inserts. It won’t stop a big-bore Magnum round, but is sufficient protection for the greater majority of gunshots, and is unobtrusive, hard to spot under a loose shirt. He puts a windbreaker overtop to provide sufficient pockets and hide his pistols and other necessities: twin .45 Colt 1911s in shoulder holsters that accommodate their silencers, a sap in his waistband, razor-edged knife, Taser and extra magazines for the Colt, and a second backup .45 Colt with a three-inch barrel in an ankle holster. Plus a small flashlight.
I’m carrying all the same gear, except that I only pack one full-sized Colt in a shoulder holster and the smaller backup. Since he’s ambidextrous, two benefit him, but not me. It’s a warm evening, I’m already sweating from the added clothing and weight. If we’re to find Loviise, we have to play to our strengths. I’m a