Maverick clucked her tongue. “We went through all the garbage within two miles of the Villas—city dump too. Nice try.”

“At the farm,” Frodo continued, “I buried four bags. Weird, lumpy shapes. I don’t know what was in them, but they stunk.”

Greenwood kept his tone even. “You’re telling us you didn’t look in the bags?”

“I didn’t know Chapman was missing. I just did what they said. But I can take you to the bags, at least tell you where to dig.”

Chapter 49

CHAPTER

49

Los Angeles

MIKE PARKED AT a trailhead between Kieran’s house and the Hollywood sign and flashed his lights once. Michelson emerged from the darkness and got in the passenger side with a duffel bag. “You got here fast.”

Mike drove west. “I was in Hollywood. Where are we going, Kieran?”

“TJ, bro.”

“Why Mexico?”

“I just need to get there. Maybe cut over to Durand Drive up here, stay away from my place.”

Mike understood Kieran’s concern. He’d been outside the mansion for the last hour, watching twenty of the FBI’s finest pick the place apart. Not only were the agents unimpressed when he pointed out the absence of Kieran’s off-road scooter, they told him flat-out to leave the premises.

We don’t need help from a dirty ex-cop, they’d said. A decade after his conviction, only one person in Los Angeles saw Mike as anything other than a criminal, and she waited by the phone in Indiana. Pissed off, he’d started the drive home. Michelson’s call came seconds after.

Now, less than a mile from the feds, Mike continued to play dumb. “Something you want to tell me, Kieran?”

Michelson dug through his bag, came back with a wad of cash. “I’ll pay you five grand.”

Mike pointed to the glove box. “In there.”

“Sure, can we get going?”

“Yeah, one more thing.” Mike popped the trunk. “You’re going in the back.”

“The trunk?”

“You called for my expertise, K. You’ve gotta leave town and don’t want to be seen. It’s a world of cameras, understand?”

Kieran got out, followed the doctor’s orders. Wedged in the trunk, the tall twenty-four-year-old looked like a kid in a couch fort. “Any chance we can stop for tacos, maybe hand them to me through the back seat?”

“Sure,” Mike said. “I know a place downtown.”

He shut Kieran in, took side streets south and west. Thirty minutes later, he came to a complete stop in Westwood.

“K, I’m getting out for a bit. I’ll be back with food. Don’t go anywhere.”

“See if they have carnitas, bro.”

Mike got out and walked toward the man waiting beyond the concrete barriers that protected the tall gray and black Wilshire Federal Building from vehicular attack. “What is that, seventeen stories?”

The well-built man in a tailored charcoal suit looked up, the same direction.