The ride into Beverly Hills was dark and hot. The black handheld in my jacket pocket jabbed into my chest for most of the way there. I cradled the unloaded Ruger in my hands, thinking furiously. Running every possible move and outcome in my head. My heart was hammering, and my nerves jangled with stress. I found myself grinding my teeth, and forced myself still. I wanted a cigarette. I wanted a cigarette and, stupidly, pemmican. I read all the James Bond books as a kid, and, in one of them, Bond prepares for an infiltration by holing up someplace until night, smoking cigarettes, and eating wedges of pemmican. I wanted cigarettes and pemmican and to be James Bond. Instead, I was sweating myself to death in the trunk of a lawyer’s car en route to Beverly Hills.

Brom finally popped the trunk. I sat up sharply. We were in an underground carport, dark and cool. Like a good boy, Brom had parked far away from the elevators, several whitewashed concrete stanchions obscuring us from whoever might be over there.

I pulled the ammunition from my jacket pocket and began to reload the Ruger. “How many?” I whispered.

“Just one, by the elevator. There’s a restroom around the corner from that.”

“Good. Brom, when all hell breaks loose, and it will—you grab Trix and you get the hell out of there. That’s all you have to do. Is that clear?”

Cogs worked in Brom’s brain. “You’re going to let me get away?”

“Get Trix out of there and no one needs to know you were ever involved. And I’m sorry about the crack on the head and all, but I was kind of pissed.”

Brom stuck out his hand. “So we’re even?”

My face must’ve changed significantly, because he instantly went pale. “No, Brom, we’re not even. I am simply choosing not to care about you. And if you don’t get Trix somewhere safe, you don’t get to live until the end of the week. Are we clear on that?”

He stuck his hand in his pocket.

I clambered out of the car. Trix waited beside it, very quiet.

“Just stick to the sidelines,” I said to her, “and get the fuck out of Dodge when it all goes off. I’ll get your money to you in a couple of days.”

“I don’t want the money,” she said.

“So what do you want?”

She didn’t say anything.

I looked around. It was just us in the carport.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do something really goddamn stupid.”