Howard called, “The fuck’s that?”

“Another cop, works with Foster.”

“That’s just fucking great.” The gangbanger sighed. “You two take care of her. I got shit to do here.”

The call ended.

“Serrano,” Dance began, “what I was saying before. You need to be smart. You—”

The Latino snapped, “Shut up, Kathryn.”

With a cold smile, she said to Foster, “The story you told me before. You don’t have a son, do you? That was a lie.”

He turned to her, looking down. “I didn’t know what was going down. Needed you on my side.”

Dance sneered, “You can’t be running a network on your own. You’re not that smart.”

Foster was indignant. “Fuck you. I don’t need anybody else.”

“How many people’ve died because of what you’ve done?”

“Oh, come on,” the man said gruffly. Then: “Serrano, let’s get this done. Do her, I’ll get the asshole outside in here. We take him out. I’ll tell the response team I got out the back and hid in the hills. I’ll say it was somebody else here, not you. One of the crews from Tijuana.”

“Okay with me” was the matter-of-fact response.

Then Foster was squinting. “Wait.”

“What?”

“You…you said, ‘Kathryn.’ You called her ‘Kathryn.’”

A shrug. “I don’t know. So?”

“I never used her first name here. And I was at the interview last week between you and her. She never said it either.”

I’m Agent Dance…

A grimace. The Latino accent was gone as the young man said, “Yep, I screwed up on that. Sorry.” He was speaking to Kathryn Dance.

“No worries, José,” she said, smiling. “We got everything we needed. You did great.”

Foster stared from one to the other. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

“Serrano,” who was actually a Bakersfield detective named José Felipe-Santoval, aimed his weapon center mass on Foster’s chest, while Dance, relieved of her weapon but not her cuffs, ratcheted the bracelets on.

Adding to Foster’s shock, the agent who’d been pretending to be the deceased Pedro Escalanza hopped to and dusted off his jeans, drawing his own weapon. He’d been lying facedown, head hidden from the trio in the hotel room.

“Hey, TJ.”

“Boss. Good takedown. How’s the blood?” He glanced at his legs, spattered red. “I tried a new formula. Hershey’s syrup and food coloring.”

“Big improvement,” she said, nodding at the tile.

Foster gasped, “A sting. The whole fucking thing.”

Dance pulled out her cell phone. Hit speed dial five as she glanced down and noticed her Aldo pumps had a scuff. Have to fix that. These were her favorite shoes for fieldwork.

She heard through the phone Charles Overby’s voice: “Kathryn? And the verdict is?”

“Foster’s our boy. It’s all on tape. He’s the only one.”

“Ah.”

“We’ll be back in a half hour. You want to be there, at the interrogation?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Chapter 90

Disgust overflowed in Foster’s face as he looked from Al Stemple to Dance to Overby. They were in the same CBI interrogation rooms where Dance had held the phony interview of the phony Serrano last week.