‘What do you need?’ Kennedy leaned back in his leather chair.

Without going into too much detail, Hunter told him.

Kennedy sat forward. ‘Are you kidding?’

‘Not even a little bit.’

‘There’s no way, Robert.’ Kennedy’s voice turned morbidly serious. ‘That kind of information is as restricted as it gets. It’s under the same sort of lock and key as our witness protection program.’

‘To someone like me, yes,’ Hunter replied. ‘But not to the head of the NCAVC.’

‘Still, Robert. We have protocols and rules here.’

‘Yeah, I have an egg.’

Kennedy frowned. ‘Excuse me?’

‘I thought that we were just mentioning things that we can easily break.’

‘Oh, that’s cute.’

Hunter said nothing.

‘Listen, Robert, I can’t just go accessing that sort of information without leaving a log trail as long as Route Sixty-Six.’

‘So? Leave a trail.’

‘Easy for you to say.’

‘What difference would that make to you, Adrian? All you’ll be accessing is information and that’s what your job demands, isn’t it? Acquiring it, processing it and understanding it. No one will care.’

‘I will. I’ll still be breaking protocol to access extremely restricted information to then pass it on.’

‘To a fellow law enforcement officer, Adrian. What do you think I’m going to do with it, sell it to the press? And, after all, you owe me.’

Kennedy did owe Hunter. He also knew the LAPD detective well enough to know that he wouldn’t ask for anything unless it was absolutely imperative. He breathed out.

‘This is more than I owe you, old friend.’

Hunter remained quiet.

‘OK. Fuck it,’ Kennedy finally said. ‘Give me about half an hour.’

Eighty

Hunter spent the next twenty-two minutes rereading everything he had found, and for him it only served to underline something he already knew – that reality was much, much more perverted than fiction. The problem was, if he were right in his hunch, reality was just about to get a lot more twisted.

He recalled all the photographs he had found with his initial search less than an hour ago and studied them again, this time a lot more carefully. The last photograph was the one that had triggered an avalanche of thoughts inside Hunter’s head. The one that had made him call Adrian Kennedy.

Despite his best efforts, that was the only photograph of that subject he could find. It had been taken years ago and from a considerable distance. The angle also didn’t help, making the subject blurry and unclear.

Hunter tried using a photo-enhancing application to enlarge it on his screen, but the bigger he made it, the more pixelated it got and the blurrier it became. Still, something about its subject made him very uneasy.

Hunter had become so absorbed by the image that he almost didn’t notice his cellphone rattling against his desktop.

The screen display told him that the caller was unknown.

Had Mat Hade been arrested?

‘Detective Robert Hunter, Robbery Homicide Division,’ he said as he brought the phone to his ear.

‘Robert, it’s Adrian.’

Hunter breathed out. ‘Did you have any luck?’

There was a heavy pause.

‘Adrian?’

‘Yes. I got the files you’re after. I’m emailing them to you right now.’

‘Thanks, Adrian. I’ll owe you for this.’

‘Yes, you will. Robert?’ Adrian called before Hunter could put the phone down.

‘Yes.’

‘Be careful, old friend.’

Hunter disconnected and opened his email application. Seconds later, Kennedy’s email arrived. The subject field was left blank. The body of the email showed only two words – Good luck – but the message came with three separate attachments. Hunter opened the first one and began reading through it. The information it contained was very similar to what he had already found out, only much more detailed.

The second attachment consisted of a single black and white photograph. A photograph of the same subject Hunter had been studying before he’d received Kennedy’s telephone call. As the picture filled Hunter’s screen, he stopped breathing for a moment. It was an old photograph, but not as old as the one Hunter had found. It had been taken inside a controlled environment, not from a considerable distance, and the subject was staring straight at the camera.

Hunter could barely believe his own eyes.

It took him more than a minute to get over the shock of what he was looking at. Once he had, he finally opened the last attachment. The most secretive of all the documents Adrian Kennedy had sent him.

And the most devastating.

As Hunter read through it, he felt as if life had lost its logic.

He got up and began pacing the room, trying to put his thoughts in order. What to do next?

The clock on the wall showed 12:59 a.m.

There was no way he could wait until the morning.

Reaching for his cellphone, Hunter placed two calls. The second one was to his partner.

Eighty-One

Garcia had gotten home at around a quarter past nine in the evening. He had called Anna from the office to let her know that, once again, he wouldn’t be home in time for dinner. Like always, Anna had told him that it was OK. She said that she wasn’t planning on going to bed early anyway, so she would keep their dinner in the oven and they could heat it up when he got home, and still dine together.

Garcia and Anna had been together since their senior year in high school, and Garcia couldn’t have asked for a more supportive wife. Anna knew how much he loved his job. She’d seen how hard he’d worked for it and how dedicated he was. She understood the commitment and the sacrifices that came with being a detective in a city like Los Angeles, and she fully accepted them. But despite her incredible psychological strength, it was only natural that Anna felt scared sometimes. Scared that one day she’d get that phone call, or that knock on the door in the middle of the night, telling her that her husband wouldn’t be coming home again.

The truth was, after Hunter and Garcia’s last case, the one that had prompted Captain Blake to demand that they both take a two-week break, Garcia had been ready to quit the RHD Special Section.

Garcia was as fearless as fearless got, but his last investigation had brought Anna to within a whisker of death and that had scared him senseless. She meant everything to him, and if he lost her he would lose himself. He’d told his wife about his decision and Anna had been the one who had made him go back.

Tonight, after dining with his wife, Garcia dragged Anna into the shower with him. It reminded him of how they’d made love for the first time. After that, they both collapsed in bed, feeling completely exhausted.

Garcia thought he was dreaming when he heard a clattering sound coming from his right. He turned his face in that direction but kept his eyes closed.

Brrrrrrrrrrrr.

There it was again.

He let out a confused sigh, opening his eyes just enough to see his cellphone vibrating against the surface of his bedside table. It took another two seconds for his tired and sleepy brain to understand what was happening before he finally reached for it.