Page 59 of Dirty Love

Albuquerque

Phoenix

I write the dates next to the cities. There’s a gap of five days between Portland and Salt Lake City. She’s planning on going home to Seattle while the buses go on ahead and everyone gets a day off in Vegas.

Vegas.

I scrawl that in the middle.

Vegas always has potential to fuck someone up. And if Tabitha’s safely out of the way, all the better.

I scrawl Grant’s name at the far end of the wall. How do I get you the fuck away from my woman, you disgusting sack of shit?

His mostly estranged family is one option. I need to dig deeper into their backgrounds, and figure out who helped him with the new identities.

A new thought pulls me up short.

Could he have acquired the identities from the Feds?

I don’t like that idea at all. I put the marker down and head back to my computer. If it was a US Marshall, it wouldn’t have been official. Where to start searching for a ten-year-old cold lead on a corrupt government agent?

But it doesn’t take me long to set that theory aside, because the Feds don’t recycle social security numbers. And Grant Derew was a real kid. Two years older than Grant Rook, he was a California native who studied at UCLA, then worked in the Valley for the regional government until he went missing six months before Tabitha moved to Los Angeles—and then was quietly removed from the Missing Persons registry seven months later.

So whoever helped them trolled through that registry of missing people, found someone that Grant could be—right down to the first name—but no easy identity to adopt for Tabitha.

I pace back to the wall and draw a tall, skinny rectangle around Grant.

He’s my last domino.

How do I get him to tip over?

Who can I set up to push him?

I write some names around him. His family. Silent business partners. Hollywood types.

None of the relationships are particularly strong, though.

What’s his carrot?

What would he do anything for?

Grant got me the spot. He wanted it for himself, but they wanted a female singer-songwriter.

I spin around and grab the tablet. She’s still asleep. I open a new window and search for Grant Rook performances. There he is, skinny kid, big head, real talent.

I don’t feel any sympathy for him, nor does he deserve any, but this helps. Tabitha’s a proxy. I need to give him another proxy—and then take it away, because there’s no reward for being evil. Not if I can help it.

A falling from grace in public would make me happy, but it can’t touch Tabitha.

Vegas.

A falling from grace in the underground would work, too.

Time to set up a fight for Nix in Sin City.

DIRTY LOVE

part four

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