But Wright seemed genuinely scared. Even now, standing in a sunlit Miami morning, he couldn’t rest. He was all angles, jittery, restless, moving from one defensive posture to another.
“Syl?” Alex whined, waking Sylvie back to the moment. Sylvie read off the plates’ numbers, let Wright’s problems slide. “The ones I’m most interested in are a Navigator and the Subaru. More room for stuff.”
“Did they get stuff?” Alex asked, all disapproval. “You were supposed to keep them from getting stuff.”
“Plans change, Alex,” Sylvie said.
“That excuse is old, old, old,” Alex muttered, but low enough Sylvie could ignore it. She chose to. “Hey, Syl? Speaking of changing plans . . . Zoe took off.”
“When?” Sylvie said.
Alex sighed. “Sometime last night. I’m sorry, Syl. I was running a few programs—updating the office laptop—and I fell asleep. Woke up. She was gone.”
Sylvie sighed. She should have expected it. When she was Zoe’s age, she hadn’t paid much attention to the rules, either. Especially when there was a boyfriend waiting in the wings. “I’ll catch her later. What about the plates?”
“The Navigator’s in the Grove. The Subaru’s in Kendall. The Taurus? That’s a rental, not what you’re looking for, unless you think your thieves are renting a getaway car. The Audi is right at home on the Beach. Got a pen?”
Sylvie cadged Wright’s pencil stub and took down three addresses. “Those are pretty nice neighborhoods, Alex.”
“What? The rich never steal? Tell that to the SEC, Sylvie.”
“Your point,” Sylvie said. “Go on back to bed.”
“Wright still with you?”
“Yeah,” Sylvie said, and glancing over, found she was wrong. Wright was nowhere to be seen. “Got to go.”
“Syl—what are you up to?”
“Chasing down my client,” Sylvie said. She scanned the street, found Wright waiting beside a cruiser, leaning back against the hood, idly kicking the toe of one foot against the heel of the other. His fidgeting, his quizzical expression when she waved him back over, reassured her that Wright was in charge, that his wandering off was courtesy and not fugue state.
“I mean, it’s six a.m., you just got out of jail, and if you go sneaking around the Grove, harassing people and breaking into garages, you’re going to end up right back in jail.”
“If I go now, I can beat the cops there—”
“Nope,” Alex said. “No. This is your common sense speaking. Go home. Let the cops handle it. Give them a chance, and if they screw it up—then you can show ’em how it’s done.”
Sylvie hesitated. She hated to cede the advantage when she was being paid to investigate, but she was tired, grubby, and not even sure that following up on the cars would be useful. Only in children’s books and Scooby-Doo would the cars turn out to be owned by the perps.
Alex was right. Let the cops rule out the obvious and save her the effort. Time to get some sleep. Real sleep. Whatever else that sleep spell did, it didn’t leave its victims feeling rested.
SYLVIE AND WRIGHT TOOK THE METRORAIL BACK TO THE MALL AND reclaimed her truck. She went round front of it, pulled the parking ticket with a curse—Felipe was so damn petty—then asked Wright, “Where am I dropping you?”
He slumped against the door. His face, already reddening in the slanting tropical light, grew red highlights on his cheeks and ear tips. “I wasn’t joking,” he said, quiet. “I got nothing. No money. No local connections. Nothing. This is my Hail-Mary moment. My life’s in your hands, and you don’t even believe me.”
She pulled her sunglasses from the visor, covered her expression with them. He watched her as intently as a dog, trying to read her mood.
Sylvie reached over and pushed the passenger’s-side door open. “Get in,” she said. “There’s a couch in my apartment.”
Her little dark voice growled warning, but what else could she do? Pat him down for cash, call the banks, and make sure he was telling the truth?
She couldn’t leave him at the office. Alex wouldn’t be in until noon, and that left a lot of files open to his scrutiny. She locked the file cabinets as a matter of course, but every cop she’d ever met had a dab hand at popping the usual locks. Her files were coded, but codes were easy enough to crack if someone had a talent for it.
He waited, hanging off her door like some scrawny excuse for a gigolo, nervousness in his expression, leery of her offer. Of her. Maybe even of himself.
Sylvie had a few doubts of her own. The least dangerous scenario Wright presented was that he was delusional, and she was inviting him home. She stifled her common sense, sighed, and said, “In the car, Wright, or you’ll be bunking on the beach. And sand fleas are a real bitch.”
He shook off his own worries, slipped back into the passenger’s seat like he belonged there. Once he was settled, she turned her truck for home, flicking on the radio, and flicking it off when the morning DJs blathered at them. The traffic patterns were just going to have to surprise them.
Wright closed his eyes, and his face aged. The morning light traced the stubble on his chin, half-gold, half-grey; lines of exhaustion pulled his slack face toward sorrow’s mask.
Sylvie took another quick look at the list of cars, wondering if any of them were on her way. Made no sense to pass by if she was just going to have to return later.
“Home, James,” Wright muttered. He reached out a sleepy hand and took the list from her.
She allowed it; she’d seen what she needed to. Each house on the list was a destination, not a drive-by. Instead, she turned the truck’s scarred nose toward her apartment and a couple of hours’ sleep. She sighed. One day back on the job, and she was down to catching bits and pieces of sleep when she could.
The ride was quiet, South Dixie blessedly clear at this early hour, and Wright collapsed into a boneless sleep she hadn’t thought possible in anyone past the age of fifteen. Like a colicky baby, she thought, soothed to sleep by the motion of a car. But if he was asleep and dreaming, his dreams were unpleasant.
He woke when the truck came to its usual coughing halt and squinted at the bright Miami morning, yellow light and haze, reflecting off the white-stucco apartment complex. “Come on,” she said, and he followed her past the cutesy would-be Chinese entry arch, the single stranded Kwan-Yin sculpture left bereft in a rocky alley pathway between the buildings, with only a raised brow for all the kitsch.
“Home sweet home,” she said.
“Thought Florida was all about the Latin look,” he said. He took in the view of tilted-up roof corners, red tile cartoon-bright against the blue sky, the expanses of raked gravel and sand.
“Landlord was trying for the foreign-student demographic,” Sylvie said. “Ended up with something as authentic as grocery-store lo mein.”
Her building was the one deepest into the lot, farthest from the pool. She’d chosen it for the quiet, plus the nice long view of the walkway, which let her see who was coming to visit.
One flight of stairs up, and Sylvie put the key into the lock, jiggling the key as it stuck again. Humidity was a killer. The lock gave after a solid thump, and she ushered Wright in, kicking the door closed. He moved forward with the awkward shuffle of a guest preceding his host, awaiting cues and guidelines.
Sylvie felt tight in her skin, all too aware of his eyes sweeping the small expanse of the living room, the tiny kitchen, the shadowed depths of her bedroom, her bed unmade, sheets still tangled from that final nightmare that had driven her out of town. She’d slept better in Sanibel, defying all logic. Slept soundly and at length, no matter that her most pressing problems were things she’d brought along.
She sidled past him once he had moved beyond the narrow pseudofoyer, and found herself standing awkwardly in the living room. Times like this, she wished she were more of a regular person, with a dog, a cat, an aquarium, even houseplants that needed watering—anything to let her fuss with until she got over that first stranger-in-the-house discomfort.