Page 2 of Nightcrawler

I almost feltsorryfor Trench as I sat outside the thirteen-story building resembling stacked vinyl records on Vine near Hollywood, waiting for him to arrive. I combed the area around the building. It was early and, though, I could hear the usual heavy traffic on the nearby 405 Freeway, the corner of Hollywood and Vine wasn’t busy at this hour. It would be after eight when businesses were up and running in earnest. I glanced out the windshield of my old truck and spotted a bus coming down the road, moving sleeker and faster with its low-emission CNG or zero emission electric engine than its high-emission, exhaust-belching predecessor.

The minute Trench stepped off the Hollywood DASH bus, I was in motion, exiting my F-150, and moving to intercept the man, not knowing that someone else had also been watching with much the same agenda. He stepped out of the shadows and got to the singer moments before I did, catching him off guard by calling out, “Look! It’s Angel Gabriel!” It took me only seconds to see what was coming and narrowly ducked Taser darts the attacker fired toward Trench as the surprised suspect twisted to greet an ardent fan.

The darts had hit Trench square in the stomach seconds before I tackled him from behind, hitting him hard enough to propel him into the person firing the darts. He landed on thesidewalk, flat on his back beneath both of us, letting out an agonized cry of pain and in a split second, I rolled off them, praying I hadn’t broken their backs. I got to my feet and bent down to check if the man was otherwise armed, dismissing him when I saw he wasn’t. Then turned to check the damage to my quarry.

Trench lay on the ground, out cold, the darts still sticking out of his stomach. I breathed a sigh of relief and turned to the other man, resting my hands on my waist and realizing with horror, my holster was empty. I whipped my head around and spotted my weapon fifteen feet away, lying on the grass pretty as you please. I flushed in embarrassment as I went to pick it up. After tucking it away, thankful the safety had been on, I turned back around and was brought up short. The dark-haired man was up and fastening handcuffs on my unconscious bounty with a knee on his back.

“Morning,” the man said, grinning up at me, looking just as pretty and as smug as could be. “Raven Mathis, recovery agent for Grayson, Mallory, and Simms Insurance,” he said, standing to his full height which rivaled my own, and flashing some sort of ID badge in a wallet. “Bounty hunter,huh?” he asked, sticking out his hand.

I ignored it, reaching for my badge which swung limply from a chain around my neck. “Trigg Huerta,” I replied. “I prefer fugitive recovery agent and by the way, you’ve got your cuffs on my bounty.” I was fuming as I stared at the bastard who’d just cost my bail bondsman a cool fifty thousand and me 20 percent of that. Jamie was going to be pissed as hell, and I couldn’t have blamed him.

“The early bird and all that,” Mathis had said, shrugging as he lowered his hand. I watched him clench it into a fist at his side and it was only then that I spotted the pepper spray in his otherhand. I’d totally missed it.What is wrong with me?He looked at the spray can and then me and smiled again, shrugging.

“Had that at the ready, did you?” I asked, nodding at the chemical weapon in his fist.

“For you, not him…well, maybe both. Couldn’t see your badge from where you were seated in the truck,” Mathis said.

I blinked. “You were watching me?”

“Spotted you as you drove up. You’ve been parked there for quite a while. I figured you were a bounty hunter—fugitive recovery agent—but since I couldn’t be sure, I took precautions.” He clipped the can into a bracket on his belt before looking back at me with another fucking sunny smile. “You always carry that kind of firepower?” he asked, nodding to my Beretta M9 semiautomatic in full view.

“Always. Pays to be prepared,” I replied.

“I’d expect a former Marine to be able to take down a suspect without having to resort to that.” He nodded to my belt as my heart started a rapid tattoo.

“How’d you…?”

“Beretta M9…standard military issue.”

I frowned deeply, crossing my arms over my chest. “Don’t mean I’m a Marine. Could be Army or another branch.”

Mathis smirked, nodding to my bicep. “A lot of Army guys wear Eagle, Globe, and Anchor tats, do they?”

Without thinking, I reached up and covered my tattoo, forgetting that the black muscle T-shirt I’d donned that morning, only partially covered the black ink.

“Anyway,” he said, “you should think about carrying something less lethal than a Beretta on the job. You can’t tell meyou never worry about having it taken away from you in a fight or…oh, I don’t know, a dogpile in Hollywood. Really, you should carry this. It works great.” He tapped the can on his belt.

“Thanks. This’ll do me just fine.” I waved my hand at the can. “Besides, neither a gun nor a can of pepper spray is gonna save you if they run out, so you’d best rely on this.” I tapped the side of my head.

“Yeah, guns run out of bullets,” Mathis said, smirking again, “which is why I follow the ‘21-foot rule.’” He bent and lifted the leg of his jeans, pulling out a large knife and straightening. He held it up and showed me. The hilt of the KA-BAR was covered with some sort of colorful wrapping and beaded. “I know you know what that is.”

“The 21-foot rule?”

“Yeah.”

“’Course I know what it is,” I huffed in disgust before eyeballing him more closely. “You’re not military?” I asked, a little surprised by this man.

“Navajo,” he said with a grin, replacing the knife.

I nodded. The 21-foot rule was a concept taught in self-defense classes to all law enforcement and military recruits as part of their training. It said that an attacker with a knife or other melee weapon could close the distance to another person in the time it would take to draw a gun. In this instance a knife would become the superior weapon.

“I’ll keep your advice in mind.” I hadn’t considered pepper spray a lethal weapon even though I had personal experience with it in my capacity of fugitive recovery agent…usually on the painful, receiving end.

I glanced down at my bounty, still snoozing on the grass with his hands cuffed behind his back and wondered how I’d let this Mathis guy get to him first. It pissed me off beyond all reason and Jamie was going to kick my ass. We both turned as an unmarked black cruiser pulled up to the curb. I recognized the blond man driving it and got a lump in my throat. The man seated beside him was as familiar to me as the back of my hand. The car made a U-turn and pulled up to the curb as the passenger window rolled down. The older man got out as the driver parked and joined him on the curb.

“Well, well, are you two working together these days?” Cassidy Ryan asked me, holding out a hand. Even though I’d known them both for twenty odd years, I wasn’t good with remembering ages. But I knew Cassidy was older than me by at least a decade or more, and his partner, Mike Williams was older than Cass by a good ten years.

“Not hardly, Cassidy,” Raven Mathis said. He grinned, shaking their hands after me before turning to Trench who still lay unmoving on the grass.

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