Night Game by Kirk Russell Read Free Book Online Page A

notes and talk, and I met with your warden today.”
    Marquez got the name of the bar. An hour later when he walked in he found Kendall at a table with a thin red-haired woman he introduced as Sadie. Her freckled face was evenly tanned, hair heavily dyed, her smile shy and friendly. Marquez figured her tan explained Kendall’s using an applied tanning product. Sadie smoothed her thin dress as she stood, and she brushed away Kendall’s hand as he patted her rear.
    “I won’t be long,” Kendall told her, then motioned for Marquez sit down.
    On the table a bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and a half-eaten order of fried zucchini rested on a copy of the Mountain Democrat . Marquez watched Sadie take a seat at the end of the bar. She looked unhappy to be alone, and Kendall nodded toward her.
    “Good woman,” he said, as though talking about a reliable old car. “I drove down and picked the bullet up from your friend at DOJ. Thanks for having him call me, but the bullet is not a match. I’ll get it back to you. That said, if you find your Coldwater Canyon hunters, I’d like to interview them.”
    “How’d it go with Petroni?”
    “He bullshitted us again.” Kendall leaned back, belched softly, covering his mouth. “I’ve got another witness tying him to Vandemere, and we’re going to have to kick it up a notch. I’m notifying your chief tomorrow unless you want to take a final run at convincing Petroni.”
    “I don’t.”
    “Then it gets rough for him now.”
    “You’re running on rumors.”
    Kendall looked at Sadie, then back at Marquez. “I don’t have to tell you anything about rumors. You live off tips, don’t you?”
    Marquez left Kendall sipping a Jack Daniels. After he was in his truck and rolling toward the buy site, he checked in with Shauf.
    “We’re all in position,” she said. “You’re going to drive past Melinda right at four miles out.”
    “Have you seen anyone?”
    “No, though we heard motorcycles.”
    “Dirt bikes?”
    “That’s what Brad and Cairo think.”
    Their map showed the road alongside the creek ending a couple of miles in, but that didn’t mean there weren’t unmarked trails.
    “So maybe there is another way in,” he said.
    “That’s what we’re guessing.”
    “Okay, well, I just drove past Roberts.”
    He felt his gut tighten the way it had years ago when he’d gone out on the first drug buys. He didn’t feel like himself.
    “They say it’s going to take you twenty minutes to walk up to the rock. It has the names Chloe and Ed spray-painted in white on it.”
    “Got it.”
    Twelve minutes later Marquez started up the creek road, smelling the moss and oak leaves, feeling the cold night. The flashlight shone on dark earth. He heard the trickle of water in the creek off to his left, and the night seemed unnaturally dark. On the phone their seller had warned him to keep the flashlight pointed down at the road, and he kept it angled just ahead and walked slowly, listening, expecting from what Shauf had told him that it might be a dirt bike that would round the corner and coast down toward him with its engine off. Half a mile in, a light flashed on and off ahead. A deep voice he wasn’t sure he recognized said, “Shine the light at your face and keep it there.”
    Marquez shone the light on his neck and stared into the darkness trying to see who was there. Holding the light on himself made him feel like a target. Two men walked down the roadtoward him, and he knew he’d done the right thing leaving the Kevlar vest and digital camcorder behind. One was big but light on his feet, fading to the side while his pale companion came forward with a garbage bag and a powerful flashlight. He dropped the bag on the ground and shone the light on it.
    “Take a look,” he said, and when Marquez didn’t, “what are you waiting for?”
    “You open it.”
    “What are you afraid of?”
    The background man moved in and showed a gun.
    “We want you to take off your