Free The Survivor by Gregg Hurwitz Page A

wouldn’t need it.
    He was lurching between red lights on Wilshire on his way home when a dark Town Car pulled up beside him. It rolled forward, nosing dangerously into the intersection to bring a tinted back window even with him. He glanced across, sensing a presence behind it. Someone watching. A sheen of perspiration sprang up on his arms, the nape of his neck. He looked at the streetlight. Glanced back over. Menace emanating from that square of black glass. The tint was darker than standard, illegally so. The Town Car was too far forward for him to make out anything of the driver save a sliver of ear and an old-fashioned cap. He drifted up to get a better look, but the Town Car matched his movement precisely, pushing farther out into the red light, making a passing car honk and swerve.
    He stopped. The Town Car stopped. That tinted rear window so close now he could reach across and knock on it. He rolled down his window and was proceeding to do just that when the tinted glass moved as well, lowering two inches. A hand emerged, a cigarette stub poking from between the index and middle fingers. A tattoo branded each knuckle, and yet the nails looked manicured, and three stripes showed at the wrist—pale flesh, cream French cuff, dark suit. The smoke reached Nate’s nostrils. The cigarette burned down, and the hand adjusted, a quick pulse, and pinched the cherry between the two knuckles. A wisp of black smoke—burning flesh—then the hand let the dead stub fall.
    An echo from the bank vault played in Nate’s head, that accented voice: He will make you pay in ways you can’t imagine.
    Numbness spread through his body, a stand-in for fear. Slowly he became aware of a cacophony of bleating behind him, the din of horns, and he realized that the light had changed to green sometime ago. He stood on the brake pedal, a game of chicken, the two vehicles blocking a corridor of traffic.
    A sharp ring issued from his lap, startling him into a jolt, sending his old-fashioned clamshell cell phone to the floor. He chased it around, and when he straightened back up, the Town Car was gone from its spot beside him, already way up ahead, shrinking to nothing. But one detail grabbed his attention before it vanished: There was no back license plate.
    Enduring curses from L.A. drivers all around, he accelerated, glanced at caller ID, then fought the phone open. Jen Brown, his tough-minded boss, calling from downtown. Probably caught wind of the robbery. He said, “I’m okay.”
    “Good to know,” Jen said. “But I wasn’t asking.”
    Maybe word of his fake hero stint wouldn’t spread quickly.
    “I need you to pay a house call,” she continued. “Sean and Erica O’Doherty of Encino.”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not been the easiest day.”
    “Imagine what theirs is gonna look like.”
    He took a deep breath. Considered those pills awaiting him, and how he’d do well to get to them before the man or his bank robbery cohorts caught up to him as promised. “I don’t think I can do it right now.”
    “Okay. Then I’ll send Ken.”
    “Ken? Not Ken. Last time he—”
    “I know,” she said wearily. “He left a note pinned to the door. Let’s skip the outrage. We’re shorthanded, and you’re the only guy who does it right. Blah, blah, blah. Pretty much every time you say you can’t, you wind up doing it anyway. So let’s just pretend we already had this part of the conversation.”
    He gritted his teeth. “You got the file?”
    “Right in my pretty little hand.”
    He sighed, turned onto the freeway. “You know how to manipulate people.”
    “I’m not a cop for nuthin’.”
    *   *   *
    Nate triple-checked the address before ringing the doorbell. At the side of the porch was a teak bench, its base lined with shoes. Loafers and sneakers and a pair of worn Converse high-tops with peace symbols Magic Markered on the sides. The stab wound throbbed in his shoulder, and he hoped it wasn’t bleeding