“And use her for leverage. Now put Cody on.”

The bathroom door opened. Ellie heard the click of heels and terminated the call. That was the rule. You never knew who might be listening.

She flushed the toilet, drowning out the sound of her removing the battery from the phone. The phone went into her purse, along with the bag.

Ellie sat on the toilet lid with her eyes closed, and thought about Ron Wolff going around Vegas, showing people this picture of her brother. Ron wouldn’t find anything out there, but that didn’t mean he—or Roland, for that matter—wouldn’t keep digging.

And digging.

CHAPTER 38

RON RETURNED SEBASTIAN’S call the moment he touched down at LAX. Sebastian kept the conversation brief. He gave him the broad strokes on Ava and Grace Lewis, and then he told Ron what he wanted to do. Ron said he’d get to work on it right away and promised he’d be in touch as soon as he knew something.

Sebastian was left saddled with needing to find Grace now.

Anton supposedly had had contacts with Armenians who were stickmen. But it was a moot point now, with Anton dead. Sebastian couldn’t make any inroads with the Mexicans. The cartels rewrote the handbook on fear on a daily basis. The Armenians were more pragmatic and private, took genuine pleasure in the torture their people had perfected over centuries of war.

Sebastian couldn’t do anything, had to do something. He spent the next few hours dealing with Ron’s men, tasked them with finding people in the late Enrique’s network. Ron’s men made detailed surveillance reports and were more than glad to answer his questions. The problem was, despite all the manpower and technology, they hadn’t found anything of real significance. The interesting fact Sebastian found out was that Enrique’s friend, the one he called Gee-Gee, the one who sent Enrique to Paul’s house—his full name was Gerald Gambles, and he was dead. His body had been found the day after the explosion. The police report said he had been beaten to death.

Paul, it seemed, was tying up any loose ends.

When five o’clock rolled around with still no word from Ron, Sebastian sent a text. Ron responded a few minutes later, said to meet him at nine at Paradise City on West Sunset. Sebastian knew the place. The dive bar, in Echo Park, was well-known for offering cheap drink specials before Dodgers games.

Sebastian arrived at quarter of, found the bar area surprisingly quiet. The billiard tables were doing brisk business, each one occupied by what looked like bikers—big guys with beards and leather vests, a lot of tats on the necks and hands, even the faces. The sound of pool balls smacking against one another filled the air as Sebastian slid into a red vinyl booth in the corner. He ordered a seltzer water with a lime for himself and, for Ron, an old-fashioned with Maker’s Mark bourbon. Sebastian was staring at it when Ron slid into the booth, across the table.