Page 38 of Stone
“Look at me learning,” he said with a smile.
She made a face. “Too much? I know, I like weird facts. And I retain them. I don’t have an eidetic memory, but it’s close.”
“It’s not too much. You drop interesting tidbits, not lectures. Was the first female umpire really named Bernice?”
She nodded as he exited Highway 101 again and started heading back north on the surface streets. “Did he pick the name of his bike because of his military background?” The chitchat was banal, but it kept her from dwelling on the fact that the triad had found them.
He shook his head. “Without getting into it too much, his transition to civilian life wasn’t easy. He bought the bike about five years ago and spent two years riding around the country looking for some sort of sanity. He eventually found it, so he named his bike afterthatvictory, not one on the battlefield.”
Empathy washed through her. Sometimes, the hardest battles soldiers fought were the ones they faced at home.
“What’s he do now?”
“Manages bands. He stopped at a lot of local bars as he drove around the country. Found a couple of singers in the Midwest and a band in the South—all former military, too—that he decided needed a break and that he’d be the one to help them get it. He didn’t set out to be a manager, but he has six clients now—four singers and two bands. He’s good at it. He’s plain speaking and doesn’t take a lot of shit. His clients trust him in a field that doesn’t always breed trust.”
The car bounced as it hit a dip, and she popped up against the seat belt.
“Sorry,” Simon said with a grimace. “I forget how bad the streets of San Francisco can get.”
“As long as we lose the tail, then I’m all good,” she replied before making a face. “I sounded like a bad PI novel, didn’t I?”
A low laugh rumbled out of him. “Yeah, but the lingo didn’t come from nowhere, so I won’t hold it against you. And we lost him,” he said. “We’re about fifteen minutes from the house, so as long as he doesn’t pop up like a zombie that we can’t get rid of, we should be good.”
Her attention remained on the side mirror despite having accepted her lack of skill in spotting a tail. “The house is your friend’s, right? There’s no way to link it to you?”
He remained silent as he made a right turn. His hesitation had her glancing over. He exhaled. “It’s mine. But like this truck and my house in Mystery Lake, it’s in the name of one of the businesses the Falcons own, not mine. Different businesses. If they were to dig, they’d find the connection from the truck to the club and then the club to the house. But we own a couple of other places in the Bay Area, too, though, so the house isn’t the only residence they’d find.”
Setting aside the questions about the breadth of the Falcons’ businesses, she asked, “Does it make more sense to drive south, then head back east? Get a hotel somewhere in Silicon Valley?”
He considered her question before responding. “I don’t want us on the road any longer than we need to be. Especially not now that they know what I’m driving. The house has excellent security. So does the other half. It’s a semidetached.”
“What’s in the other half?” she asked. If a family lived there, she didn’t want to bring even the chance of danger to them.
“It’s empty. Hank rents it, too. He uses it when he has bands in town,” he said, making a left turn, taking them deep into a residential area.
“Should we stay on the empty side? I assume it’s not totally empty if he has people stay there on occasion.”
“Security isn’t as good,” Simon replied. “It’s good. Just notasgood.” He reached over and hit a button on the in-dash screen. Three houses up and to the right, a garage door opened. A few seconds later, the rear lights of the truck reflected off a single window as they backed into the bay. With a layout similar to her townhouse, each unit’s garage shared a wall. The internal entrance to their half sat midway along the opposite wall.
Simon waited until the door closed behind them before killing the engine. Then bringing his phone to life, he opened an app, tapped in a code, then held the device up for a facial scan.
“Unlocking the door from the garage into the house. That way, we don’t have to go outside,” he said, sliding from his seat. She followed suit and met him at the door. “As soon as we’re in, I’ll reset the alarm, but I don’t want to turn any lights on. Are you okay with that?”
She nodded, then grimaced. “I’m a little klutzy, though. No light, a new place…” He studied her in the dim emergency lighting, then slid his hand into hers, holding tight as he led her inside.
A solid door swung open into a stone tile foyer. To their right lay a bedroom and laundry room and to their left, stairs to the main part of the house and the alarm keypad. Simon entered a code, and the system beeped in response.
“There are motion sensors, but I turned those off for now. I’ll turn them back on when we head to bed,” he said, leading her up the staircase, careful to ensure she found her footing.
When they stepped onto the main floor, she drew in a quick breath. From the outside, the townhouse looked like a regular San Francisco residence—stucco walls, garage on the ground floor, stairs leading to a main floor with one floor above it. Nice, but nothing spectacular.
Inside was another story.
She preferred warm and cozy interiors, but even she appreciated the gorgeous sleek lines of the room that stretched from the front of the building to the back, comprising the living room, kitchen, and dining area. Toward the front, a silky gray rug covered a white tile floor that also held a couch and chair that, although blue, picked up the colors of the rug. A lapis-colored cement shelf lined the far wall with a fireplace embedded between bookshelves. The walls were a soft white and the ceiling a rich, warm wood. To her right, the modern kitchen with counters and cabinets the same blue as the shelf looked both luxurious and functional. Under the round glass dining table was a tricolored rug—gray, black, and white—in the shape of animal skin, though clearly not made of hide.
“Um, this is nice,” she muttered, wondering what the bedrooms looked like. The luxury of it all had her picturing herself on a cloudlike bed, buried in two-thousand-count silky cotton sheets with a fluffy comforter.
When Simon didn’t answer, she glanced over. His hand gripped hers, and he stood preternaturally still. Had he sensed something she hadn’t?
