Page 60 of Critical Strike
“You heard me. It doesn’t have to be this way. The man is a disease, isn’t he? He finds your weak spot and works his way in. So, what is it? He found out about your gambling and threatened to spill to the department? I mean, they can’t have a degenerate gambler on the force, now, can they?”
“Watch it,” Arellano snarled. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I? I have the feeling I’m right. Call it instinct or the way your body language is taking to me. You’re scared out of your wits, man. Like I said, it doesn’t have to be this way.”
It was clear the man didn’t want to buckle. He wanted to stay strong and pretend he didn’t have the first clue what Luke referred to, but there were limits to a man’s resolve.
He leaned against the wall with a heavy sigh. “You’re right. He found out about the gambling and threatened to go the captain unless I agreed to play along. I mean, what was I supposed to do? It seemed like the answer to a prayer. Only...” He averted his eyes.
“Only you didn’t want to play along once you figured out what that would involve?”
A single nod. “Fisher...he’s a complicated man. He doesn’t, uh, care much about going by the book. I didn’t know that Ballard already knew him, though. Not until this whole thing started. And I didn’t know how far he was willing to go. I couldn’t do the things Ballard wanted us to do.” He shuddered, shaking his head.
Luke fought to put things together. He looked down at the bag Arellano still carried and noticed how light it looked. The condition of his clothes, the sweat stain around his collar, the stain on his tie.
An even uglier picture started to come together.
“You told him you wouldn’t play his game,” he murmured, “so he forced your hand.”
“He took my wife. Hetookher.” There were tears in the man’s eyes when they met Luke’s again, and the pain in his voice was almost enough to stir sympathy. “He’s going to kill her if I don’t see this through. I believe him.”
Luke muttered a curse, hands linked on top of his head. This was worse than any of them had imagined. “We can get you out of this.”
Arellano let out a miserable laugh. “You can’t believe that. Not knowing what you know, Patterson. You don’t seem like a stupid person.”
“You’re right, I’m not. Which is why I know we can get all of us out of this, but we’ve got to be smart. Which means you’ve got to play on our team from now on.”
“Don’t you get it?” Arellano snarled like a trapped animal—which, in essence, was what he was. “It’s quid pro quo. Claire’s life for Amanda’s. He wants Claire Wallace dead. He requires it, or else Amanda dies.”
Luke looked away as the man started to cry, both sorry for him and more than a little uncomfortable. “He’s not a disease... He’s the devil incarnate.”
“He is. I wish I’d known. I swear, I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have accepted his deal if I thought Amanda would get roped into it. She’s innocent. She didn’t even know about the blackmail money. I don’t know where he has her—” His voice lifted in pitch, taking on a note of panic.
Luke took Arellano by the shoulders and shoved him against the cold brick wall to shake him out of his spiraling. “Okay, all right. You’ve gotta stay calm and rational for Amanda’s sake. And you have to accept help when it comes your way. This isn’t like before. I’m not Ballard. I’m not trying to trick you. There’s a way we can all get what we need, but we have to work together. You need us, and we need you.”
Arellano took a few deep, shuddery breaths before pulling himself together, standing straighter than before. “You said you have a plan?”
“I do.”
“And this is a Ballard-proof plan?”
“Only if I have your full cooperation.”
He nodded, firm now. “Okay, Patterson... Let’s hear it.”
Chapter Twenty
If there was anything Claire knew for sure about herself, it was that she was no hero.
She sure hadn’t been one the day of Julia’s murder, had she? She sat there and let it happen, watching in mute horror with her knuckles in her mouth to hold back a scream. Running like a scared rabbit afterward, barely keeping herself from breaking into a run. Not exactly heroic.
She hadn’t been heroic in the days since then, either. If anything, Luke was the hero. He kept her safe, took care of her, made sure she didn’t starve or set up camp under the freeway with a cat who thought he was a dog as her only friend and protector.
He had even come up with this absolutely insane plan.
She was no hero—not then, not now. And for better or worse, she was still in possession of her wits, which meant she was scared to death. Any sane person would be. So many things could go wrong.
Yet it was the only way. That was the cherry on top of a melted sundae. This plan of Luke’s—crazy though it might’ve been—was the only way out of the madness.