Page 65 of 2 Sisters Murder Investigations

I did need help staying alive.

I pulled over, got out, and swore loudly at the collapsing back tire. I didn’t go and inspect it, not yet ready to see evidence of a deliberate puncture, proof that I’d been set up to need assistance from a supposedly well-meaning stranger on a lonely stretch of road like so many murder victims before me. I waited, gripping my phone, staring hopelessly down the two-lane strip of blacktop on my side of a weed-infested island that stretched as far as I could see. Overhead, big dark birds circled, too high up for me to see what they were. I looked at my phone and noticed an error message in the location streaming app.No service.I looked for the reception bars. Nada. I was in a black zone.

Of course I was.

I pulled my shoulders back and went to the trunk of the Chevy, which opened with a wiry yowl from the squeaky hinges. I shoved aside my overnight bag and the other detritus of my life — gym gear, work files, a bottle of chlorine for the rooftop pool at home — and wrestled out the spare tire and the jack. A shiver passed through me as I worked. I dumped the spare tire on the ground and paused to watch the forest beyond the highway, imagining a figure standing behind one of the lonely trees, watching me.

There was no one. I held my ragged breath to listen for cars on the wind — there were none. I told myself that at least I’d broken down on a long stretch of flat road so I would see anyone coming from miles away. I’d have time to get my gun from the front seat. To hide. To call 911.

I didn’t know what I would do if a carful of innocent people came along. Flagging them down might put them in danger, or there might be safety in numbers. It depended on how unhinged my follower was.

If there was a follower.

I got down on the blacktop and inspected the blown tire. My heart soared to see that the break in the rubber was from a roofing nail, not a knife slash. I jacked the car up, applied the tire iron, and loosened the lug nuts, keeping an eye on the road in both directions as I worked.

I wrenched the busted tire off the car, rolled it behind the trunk, and let it tip over and wobble to a stop on its side. I was rolling the new tire over to the axle when I heard a vehicle approach. An SUV appeared in the heat haze on the horizon. I straightened and took a couple of steps onto the road. When the car was within hailing distance, I saw a woman my age in the driver’s seat and a teenage girl next to her. With a pit in my stomach, I let them go, not wanting to draw them into the potential danger.

The hammering of my own heart distorted the sounds around me. I told myself again that I was okay. But my breathing was the giveaway. I knew the thin wheeze didn’t come from changing the tire. I was in better shape than that. I kept working, trying to watch the road as I sweated in the late-afternoon sun.

I heard the rumble of another car approaching and looked up to see a blue pickup. I tried to calm my breathing as I watched it approach. Before it was close enough for me to get a good look at the driver, it veered off the road.

It disappeared into the trees. After a few seconds, it reappeared, taking a dirt road I hadn’t noticed. I tracked the vehicle as it rumbled through the forest, parallel to the highway. It was level with me when it passed the army-green pickup, parked in the shade.

The tire iron fell from my grasp and clanged loudly on the blacktop. As I bent unsteadily to pick it up, my instincts telling me to arm myself and hide behind the rear of my car, I heard a voice.

“Don’tfuckingmove, Rhonda Bird,” a man said.

CHAPTER75

BABY HAD A NEWplan of attack.

She had never been to Jamie’s apartment before, and seeing it now, Baby thought it was probably dirt cheap, being only a few inches of concrete away from one of Skid Row’s busiest nightspots. It had taken some work to get the surly bartender to put down his paperwork and give her access to the place. She crossed the empty nightclub, her boots crunching on shards of fluorescent-colored plastic shot glasses and making tacky sounds on years of spilled liquor. She went up a dark flight of musty carpeted stairs, found a door, and banged on it. Then she banged again.

When Jamie opened it, she saw that his Afro was crushed on one side and there was drool shining on the cheek on the same side.

“What in the World of Warcraft is this? It’s a home visit, that’s what. I’m here for an in-person consult,” Baby announced before Jamie could say anything. “I need help and it’s more than I care to put in a text message or say over the phone.” She nudged the door with her boot. “Let me in.”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait.” Jamie held his head. “Thereain’tno in-person consults. That’s not a service I provide. To anyone. Ever.”

“Things change,” she said, and she slapped three thousand dollars cash against his chest as she barged in. It was from her personal savings. “Get some caffeine, get on the computer, and do your thing.”

Five minutes later, her personal hacker was seated in his elaborate gaming rig in his dark, cluttered den of an apartment while Baby perched nearby, sipping the energy drink he’d offered her and marveling at the perfect half-moon shape of his hair. Jamie tapped and dragged and clicked, doing things on a bunch of screens, grumbling about it being the middle of the night in his universe.

Baby looked around. The apartment was nice under the sea of garbage, but Jamie had decorated it like a teenage boy’s bedroom, not the space of a guy in his mid-twenties. There were heaps of clothes in the corners, an unmade bed, nudie pictures of manga women on the walls. Baby needed to use the bathroom but didn’t dare.

“Why are all hackers such clichés?” she asked, wiping unidentified stickiness from her palms onto her jeans. “Aren’t there any online weirdos with nice, neat houses and families and dogs running around the yard?”

“Your creative space is supposed to be a physical representation of your mind,” Jamie said. “Welcome to my nightmare. I hope you get out alive.”

“Ugh.”

“So you want me to hollow out these Enorme creeps.” He sighed, bringing up a blank screen. “Tell me what to look for and I’ll find it faster. You think they’re into corporate fraud? Money laundering? Have they got shady investors?”

“Probably all of the above,” Baby said. “But I don’t want you to target the whole company. I want you to look into one woman specifically. Her name is Su Lim Marshall.”

“Ah.” Jamie smiled. “It’s personal.”

“It’s strategic,” Baby said. “Enorme is a global corporation, okay? It’s everywhere. Even if I bring what Marshall is doing to the executives’ attention or dangle some of their own illegal practices in front of them, they’re big enough to claim they had no idea it was happening, and they’ll just move her to the other side of the country, where she’ll do what she’s doing now to someone else. If I go to the media, the best I can hope for is an exposé in theTimesthat fifty people will read. And that’s assuming theTimesis even brave enough to face the lawsuits.”

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