One by One (Роберт Хантер 5 Поодиночке) - Carter Chris (2) - Страница 50

Sixty-Five

As soon as Garcia dropped Patricia off in front of her apartment block in Monterey Park, Anna turned and faced him.

‘OK, I’m not waiting until we get home so we can talk about this, Carlos. What the hell is going on?’ Anna still sounded rattled. ‘I could see there was nothing happening in Tujunga Village – no squad cars, no one being arrested, no emergency, nothing out of the ordinary to speak of.’

Garcia shifted a gear and joined North Mednick Avenue, going south.

‘This has got something to do with whatever you’re investigating at the moment, hasn’t it?’ Anna asked rhetorically. ‘I know because Robert was surveying the street like a man on a mission. Who are you guys looking for? How did you know that I was out shopping with a friend? Why are you scaring me like this?’ Tears welled up in her eyes.

Garcia took a deep breath.

‘Talk to me, Carlos, please.’

‘I have to ask you for something,’ Garcia finally said, his voice steady.

Anna leaned back against the passenger’s door, wiped the tears from her eyes and stared at her husband.

‘I need you to stay at your parents’ for a few hours. I’ll come and pick you up later.’

Anna took two whole seconds to digest the request before her nerves took over again. ‘What? You said that nothing had happened to my parents. Are they OK?’

‘Yes, yes, they’re fine, baby. Nothing happened to them. I just need you to stay there for a few hours. I need to go back to the PAB and sort a few things out. I’ll come and get you in a short while.’

Anna waited.

Garcia said nothing else.

‘And that’s all you’re going to say?’ she challenged.

One of the reasons why Garcia and Anna’s relationship worked so well was because they both knew they could always talk to each other, no matter what. And they always did. There was never any recrimination, jealousy or judgment. They were both great listeners, and they supported and understood each other better than they understood themselves.

Anna could see Garcia was struggling with it.

‘Carlos,’ she said, placing a hand on his knee. ‘You know I trust you. I always have, and I always will. If you want me to go stay with my parents for a few hours, I can do that, it’s not a problem, but I have the right to know the reason why. Why don’t you want me to go home? What is going on?’

Garcia knew Anna was right. He also knew that there was no way he could give her the real reason without frightening her, but he had no other alternative. If he lied, she would see right through him. She always did.

He took another deep breath and told her what had happened earlier in the day.

Anna listened without interrupting. When he was done, tears had returned to her eyes, and Garcia felt his heart tighten inside his chest.

‘He was right behind us?’ Anna asked. ‘Filming us?’

Garcia nodded.

‘And he was broadcasting it live over the Internet?’

‘Over the Internet, yes,’ Garcia said. ‘But not open to everyone, just to Robert and me. No one else could see it.’

Anna didn’t want or need to know the technical details.

‘Please, Anna, just stay with your parents for a few hours. I need to get a few things in motion, and I want to check our apartment.’

Anna coughed. ‘You think he’s been in our home?’

‘No, I don’t,’ Garcia said with conviction. ‘But I have to be absolutely sure, because the paranoid cop in me won’t rest until I am. You know that.’

At that moment Anna couldn’t be sure if the emotion in Garcia’s voice was anger or fear.

‘So this is the same person who abducted and killed that LA Times reporter who was on the paper this morning,’ she finally said. ‘He broadcast it over the Internet, didn’t he? Just like he did with Pat and me.’

Garcia didn’t need to reply. Anna knew she was right.

He kept his eyes on the road and tightened his grip on the steering wheel, bottling all he could inside. What he really wanted to ask Anna was for her to leave Los Angeles until they had this psycho behind bars. But she would never agree to it, even if her life were in danger. Anna was a determined, very stubborn and totally committed woman. She worked with deprived elderly people, people who needed and depended on her on a daily basis. Even if she could, she wouldn’t just get up and leave them overnight. And Garcia had no way of knowing how long this hunt would take.

Garcia had agreed with Hunter that today, this killer had no real intention of harming Anna. But he took it as a warning, an eye-opener. The killer could very well change his mind tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that . . . and Garcia knew there was very little he could do about it. What the killer had broadcast this afternoon had filled him with real fear, and highlighted a frightening truth. The truth that despite who he was, despite how much he wanted to, he couldn’t truly protect Anna twenty-four hours a day. The killer knew that. And today he made sure Garcia and Hunter knew it too.

Sixty-Six

With the old-fashioned, closet-sized elevator stuck somewhere at the top of the building, Ethan Walsh took the steps up to his fourth-floor apartment in a hurry, and two at a time. The problem was that physical exercise wasn’t even part of his vocabulary, never mind his daily routine. By the time he hit the second floor, he was out of breath, red-faced and sweating like a sumo wrestler in a sauna about to have a heart attack. Though Ethan had gained a little extra weight in the past few months, he wasn’t exactly fat, but he sure was unfit.

Usually he would’ve taken his time conquering the eight flights of stairs that led up to his flat, cursing as he reached the top of each one, but tonight he was already ten minutes late for his half-hour, face-to-face call with his four-year-old daughter, Alicia.

When Alicia was born, Ethan’s life seemed to be on a plain-sailing course to success. Ethan was an independent videogames programmer, and a very good one at that. He had developed several online games by himself, and for three consecutive years he’d won the prestigious Mochis Flash Games Award for Best Strategy and Puzzle Game of the Year. But with the advent of direct online stores for major platforms like Microsoft’s X-Box 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3, a whole new world had been presented to independent videogames developers. And there was a hell of a lot of money to be made.

Ethan had discussed the idea of creating a game for the X-Box 360 with Brad Nelson, a brilliant Canadian games programmer he had met several years back. Brad said that he had also been playing around with the same idea, but doing it alone was a mountainous task. After a few more talks, they decided to do it together, and that was how Ethan and Brad created AssKicker Games just six months before Ethan’s baby girl was born.

Brad was very well connected, and on the strength of Ethan’s games awards he managed to secure a couple of very healthy investments, which enabled both of them to quit their day jobs and concentrate solely on developing their first major console game.

Within seven months they had a short playable demo that went viral on the X-Box 360 store. An incredible buzz started about the game and their company, but Ethan was a perfectionist, and he kept on stripping and redoing enormous chunks of the game, which severely hindered its progress. Arguments started breaking out between Ethan and Brad on a daily basis. The completion date for the game just kept on being put back further and further, and two years later it was still under development. No one knew for sure when it would be finished. The buzz about the game and their company had died down. The investments dried up. Ethan ended up remortgaging his house and putting everything he had into the company.