Page 92

He can start with the men who sit near Whitlock in church.

I fold the marker copy into my shirt pocket. Nobody in the kitchen mentions Delilah, but Beckett and Audrey both keep looking out the window. It's been most of an hour, and she hasn't come out.

When the back door opens, every head in the kitchen turns. Delilah walks in and stops at the end of the table. Her eyes are red, but she's washed her face. She's still in my shirt; with the revolver I gave her in the back of her jeans. She looks at the map, not at me.

"I'm going in," she says.

Nobody answers her.

"Whitlock wants me," she says. "Dutch wants me. Nobody knows where they've got Hector. If I walk up that drive, I can find out where he is. And if Coleman's partners come down to the cigar room where they used me, I can tell Torres which voice belongs to which man while they're still talking."

"No," I say.

It comes out of me low and flat, before I can stop it. It's the voice I use in my ring and in my bed. Beckett looks away from the window.

Delilah finally looks at me. "Not your decision."

She's right. On her paper, everything I get to decide about her happens inside a scene she agreed to. This isn't a scene, and she never signed anything that lets me tell her where she can walk.

I've had that green ledger locked in my gun safe since Ozzie brought it to me, and I knew what was in it long before that. All that time, I decided what she got to know. I've lost any right to tell her what she gets to do.

"Not my decision," I tell her. "So you're getting the best plan we can build, and you're going to hear everything that can go wrong with it before you walk up that hill."

"I'll take your plan," she says. "I trust you to get Hector off that hill. That's all I trust you with right now."

I nod once and set my phone in front of her. "Torres told you to call her yourself."

She dials and puts Torres on speaker. "It's Delilah. I'm going in."

"Before anybody says another word, this is my operation," Torres says. "Hollister, you know that ground and those men better than I do, so you tell me what you see. I approve it or I don't. My people make the arrests. I decide when we go in."

"Whitlock doesn't trade fair," I tell her. "He'll take her and keep Hector too."

"Agreed," Torres says. "Why am I letting her go at all? I could get a warrant today on what she's already told me, but a warrant doesn't tell me where Hector is. If I hit the wrong building, or the right one too slow, they kill him or move him before I find him. If her wire tells me where he is, I go in knowing which door."

"And once she's down those stairs, you lose her," I say. "That cellar's cut into solid limestone."

"The wire won't carry well through rock," Torres says. "So we don't wait on a word we might not hear, and we don't stop to work out why the signal dropped. If the wire goes dead for any reason, we go in. My entry team sits in the van with me, close enough to be at Whitlock's barrel-room door before anybody down there gets her moved. We go in the same way if they try to put her in a vehicle, take her toward that tunnel, or put a gun or a hand on her throat. If she says her word, we go that second. It just isn't the only thing that brings us."

"And if they find the wire on her?" I ask.

"It goes dead, and you already know what that means. I've got GPS trackers about the size of a quarter," Audrey says. "I put them on cars when I'm chasing somebody who skipped bail. I can sew one under the insole of her sneaker, in the heel, where a man patting her down won't feel it. It won't talk through rock either. But it'll tell you when she goes into that hill, and it'll pick her up again the second she comes out of it. I'll log your people into my account."

"Do it," Torres says.

"And Hector," I say. "What if Dutch tells her he's alive but can't walk? What if he says she only sees him once she's inside?"

Delilah answers before Torres can. "Then they carry him down that drive and out the gate, where Torres can see him and Audrey can come back for him. I don't go one step past whoever meets me until Hector's out. If they won't bring him, I say the word."

"And if they say he's downstairs, and that's the only place you'll see him?" I ask.

She doesn't look away from me. "Then I've told Torres exactly where he is. She's got her door."

My jaw locks. That answer is good enough for Torres, and it puts Delilah in the cellar.

"That's the line," Torres says. "If she goes down those stairs, I go in behind her."

"She goes up that drive before sundown, not at it," I say. "If they stall her up there, your people still have daylight to see by."