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  Holden felt his heart speed up, but he was aware that she might be wrong. “How do you know?”

  She shrugged. “I might be wrong, but it’s weird. One guy was yelling at the other that he didn’t want him shot ’cause shooting a cop always brought trouble and attention.”

  Holy shit. “He said that?”

  “Yeah. And the other guy… I couldn’t hear him too well as he wasn’t yelling, and freeway traffic never thins out. But the other guy was saying he wanted him discouraged or taken care of in a quieter way, whatever that means.”

  If another cop had been shot, there would’ve been a big stink about it. They could only be talking about Kevin. “Would you recognize this guy if you saw him again?”

  She shrugged as she tore hunks out of her doughnut and shoved them into her mouth. “Dunno. Couldn’t really see him well through the trees. He and the guy were arguing in an olive-drab tent that wasn’t there when I left this morning. I asked around, but no one really knew the guy. He showed up recently and wasn’t friendly.”

  Holden’s mind raced, but it felt like it was looping back in on itself. He was missing something. “Did you hear anything else?”

  Again, he got a shrug. “That was the most incriminating bit. The rest I heard was just curse words.”

  Maybe she was just eavesdropping on his own train of thought. He needed to get Chai in on this, even though he didn’t want to get him involved. This felt dangerous, with one person—Burn—dead and another shot. But Chai was the true investigator of the two of them. “Thanks, Hel. Are you sure you’re safe?”

  “Oh yeah. I ain’t pretty, and some people think I’m a guy.” Weirdly enough—or maybe not—that was something of a help on the streets.

  Hel finished her doughnut and stood up, handing Holden the crumpled bag. “Thanks for the chow.”

  “You still have your emergency phone, right?”

  She nodded. “Don’t worry, chief. I’ve been on my own for a while.”

  And she was how old? Maybe eighteen at a push. It was more proof of how fucked-up life was.

  Once she was gone, Holden sat on the arm of the chair and considered his next move. Someone was hiding something at the Jungle, something they didn’t want the police to discover. But that could be anything. Probably drugs, but weapons were a possibility as well. Now they were nervous, and it was possible they were going to make a run for it. He had no choice, did he? Tonight he was going to have to pay a visit to the Jungle to see how far he could get. But he still had to bring Chai into this.

  He called him but got his voicemail. So he left Chai a detailed message about the Jungle case and what was going on and what he couldn’t figure out. He also let him know he was going to try and scope out the Jungle tonight, see what he could find.

  Holden wracked his brain while walking home, trying to figure out what he wasn’t seeing, but much like a word on the tip of your tongue that you still can’t remember, he was stuck looking for answers in a picture he couldn’t focus on.

  Once he was back home, he discovered Dahlia had called him but put it aside for now. She had every right to be upset about the state of Alexei and what happened to him, but he couldn’t deal with the emotional baggage at the moment. Holden got dressed in black sweatpants, a dark blue sweatshirt, and some worn sneakers he’d picked up at a Goodwill. They looked like they’d seen better years and also looked like they smelled. (They didn’t, but he liked the suggestion they might.) He hadn’t shaved today, so he had a bit of a five o’clock shadow, and he hadn’t used any product in his hair, so it was all good. Holden wondered if he should add a cap and ultimately decided against it. Now for the hard part—weapons.

  What should he bring? He wasn’t expecting trouble, but it counted to be prepared, especially since the first person looking into this, Kevin, was still in the hospital. But the sweat-clothes ensemble didn’t leave a lot of hiding room, despite the fact that they ballooned out on him like plastic bags. He fit the retractable baton in one pocket, put his lucky butterfly knife in the other, and figured that would have to be good enough. Yeah, it was dangerous to go there, especially after dark, but he was dangerous too.

  And besides, he used to live there.

  Holden poured some gin on his sleeve and wrung it out, blotted it dry and enjoyed the nice alcohol scent it gave him. It was either that or cigarette smoke, and he found the booze scent less obnoxious.

  As soon as the sun went down, he headed out.

  The Jungle was probably a terrible name for this area. It was basically a stretch of land that started beneath the elevated part of I-5 southbound, where Hel was correct: the traffic never stopped. People sped by up above, unaware of everything and everyone down below. The Jungle stretched around a scrubby forested area on the edge of Beacon Hill. He eventually discovered it was a piece of land officially named the East Duwamish Greenbelt, but nobody called it that.

  When he was a street kid, he stayed in the Caves area for a little while with a couple other street kids, including a low-level drug dealer known as Gator—supposedly because of his alligator tattoo, although there was some argument over whether the nickname came first. A lot of other street kids thought it was too dangerous, but it was fine while he was there. Sure, there were some obviously mentally ill people who had no medication, and there were others with discernable prison/gang affiliations, but he was never hassled. Of course, if he’d been alone, that might have been a different story. The biggest problems he had were all related to the garbage and the rats it attracted. Every now and again, the city made a halfhearted attempt to clean up the area and resettle the populace, but it was like putting out a forest fire by spitting on it.

  Walking into the Caves, beneath the overpass, he was stunned by the déjà vu the sights and smells brought on, as if he was back to being a kid sleeping rough. Some of the graffiti tags even looked the same, which was weird. You’d think gang tags would cycle out—but no, not yet.

  He saw tents scattered here and there, some no more than tarps, and he saw someone had a fire going in a metal coffee can, although no one was near it. People wrote a lot of books and movies about dystopian futures, unaware they weren’t in the future. They were here, now, in some of the poorest places on Earth. Sometimes when he was with his more well-off clients, he thought about this place, and his blood boiled. If you went up the slope, into the genuinely wooded area, you could see part of downtown Seattle, with its mirrored skyscrapers and glittering lights, and realize you were a million miles away from those people. You were a “them,” and something in you would always be a them. There were regular people, with food and running water, and there was you, a scavenger on the edge of the world, fighting to get through a single day. Whoever said America didn’t have a class system was a fucking liar, and Holden could prove it to them by simply taking them on a tour of the places he used to stay.

  Holden already knew he’d picked up a tail before they stepped on and broke a needle, a noise he couldn’t ignore realistically in spite of the constant mechanical susurrus of the traffic overhead. Holden turned back and smirked at the guy now trying to hide behind a pillar. “Come on now. You’re not that clever.”

  “Neither are you, faggot,” a man said behind him.

  Holden’s head whipped around, and he saw several men approaching from his flank, including the speaker, a white guy with a tattoo on his neck. It looked like flames or a design that didn’t translate in an inept artist’s hands. His eyes were hard, and he was holding a baseball bat. Behind him, following, were four other guys. None of them looked friendly, and most looked like they could’ve belonged here. But not all.

  “Only my good friends get to call me that, sailor.”

  The guy who had been trying to hide behind the pillar also emerged. So they were surrounding him. Fantastic.

  This whole thing was a trap. They’d been waiting for him.

  Neck Tattoo frowned as if Holden’s words tasted sour, and he was glad because that was the exact reaction
Holden wanted from him. “Shut the fuck up.”

  “Or what? You’ll gang up on me?”

  Neck Tattoo’s face seemed to calcify, become harder than stone. He really didn’t like Holden, and since he didn’t recognize him, Holden had to assume he was simply a run-of-the-mill homophobe. Which was why it was going to be fun making him eat that bat. “You should have stopped.”

  “Stopped what?” The way Neck Tattoo frowned, Holden suddenly realized something. “Oh shit. You don’t know. You’re outsourced muscle.”

  “Shut up,” he ordered.

  Holden ignored him, glancing around at all the men. Six total, huh? Yeah, he wasn’t getting out of this unscathed. But he was getting out of this, guaranteed. He wasn’t Roan, but he hadn’t survived this long being a delicate little flower. “This isn’t really a can of worms you want to open. I could pay you off as well, and you can walk away without devastating injuries.”

  Neck Tattoo chuckled, along with a couple of his buddies. “You’re hilarious. You really think you can hurt any of us?”

  “I know I can,” Holden replied, slipping his hand into his pocket and grasping the handle of his retractable baton. “Why do you think the guy outsourced this beatdown? Wasn’t ’cause I was easy, asshole.” Holden glared at him. “You guys do this, you aren’t walking away.”

  Neck Tattoo’s expression faltered. He was starting to understand that maybe this wasn’t a fight he wanted to have, but he was committed to it now, and besides, since when did a real man shy away from fighting a sissy? “There’s six of us and one of you.”

  “There only needs to be one of me.”

  Neck Tattoo looked confused, as if he had no idea how to react to that, which was probably true. But he was about to learn the hard way that Holden was a man of his word.

  Holden knew he was going to get his ass kicked. But he was going to have fun kicking all their asses in return.

  15—Robocop 4—Fuck Off, Robocop

  CHAI HAD no idea what he expected from Dee’s apartment, but it wasn’t what he found. It was smaller than he expected, but it was relatively neat, although in that “I cleaned up hurriedly for company” sort of way that was kind of endearing. Chai didn’t trust the obsessively clean or the extremely sloppy. He felt the best part was somewhere in the middle, although that could be a hard target to hit, even for him.

  They enjoyed a very casual evening of Chinese food and watching movies, as well as trying to figure out what wine went with Chinese food, and then decided fuck it, and drank what they had. It was a good choice.

  Chai tried to remember the last time he felt so relaxed on a date and suddenly wondered if this was a date. Was it a date? Or were they just hanging out? It could be a fine line, and he wasn’t sure. As the hour got later, he drank enough to have the courage to ask, but before he could, Dee’s phone rang. Chai watched as he retrieved it from the table where he’d left it. Dee was only wearing a T-shirt referencing a video game Chai wasn’t sure about and jeans, which didn’t necessarily seem like a date outfit. But if he was going super casual, maybe he would have been in sweats and a T-shirt that didn’t fit him so well. Dammit, he really needed to ask.

  But that was when Chai noticed how tense Dee’s posture became. “What? Holy shit. Are you kidding me?” Dee listened, looking concerned and nodding to whoever was on the other end of the line. A little over a minute passed before Dee spoke again. “What hospital? Okay, yeah. Thanks for the heads-up.” Dee ended the call and gave Chai a surprisingly serious look. “That was Shep, my usual rig partner. He’s working tonight. Um… Holden’s in the ER.”

  It was probably the haze of wine, but it took a few seconds for the words to sink in. “What? What happened?”

  Dee quickly shut off the TV and went to fetch his coat from the closet by the door. “All Shep could tell me was there was a huge fight at the Jungle, and Holden was involved in it. It looks like he was jumped by six guys, and he’s in bad shape.”

  The words were now crashing against Chai like waves, and each one was pushing him closer to sobriety. “What? How bad is he?”

  Dee shrugged on his jacket and let out a breathless laugh. “You know what Holden is? He’s the world’s toughest whore. He ain’t great, but he’s better off than two of the guys who jumped him, who were apparently taken in as critical. The rest are apparently messed-up enough that they couldn’t leave the scene before the cops arrived, or at least not in a way that wasn’t easily traceable.” Dee tossed Chai his own coat, which had also been in the closet.

  Chai was still too sluggish with sudden sobriety to catch it, but the coat landed on the arm of the couch. “Wh-what? How… how does that happen?”

  “As I said, world’s toughest whore. I don’t like the guy, but I’d never bet against him in a fight.”

  Chai levered himself up from the couch and put on his coat, still feeling like he might have fallen asleep and was dreaming all this. “How does anyone survive being jumped by six guys?”

  Dee shrugged. “If it was Roan, it’d be no sweat. Hell, put Roan against an army, and I’d still say Roan could take it. But I don’t honestly know.”

  “He’s that good?”

  “Yeah. And when the lion’s out, it’s that devastating.”

  Chai could say nothing to that because he didn’t know. But he was starting to suspect he would never catch up.

  He followed Dee numbly to his car and got in, still feeling like he was in a daze. It was hard to believe any of this was happening. He checked his phone, just for a sense of reality, and discovered he had a voicemail message, and it turned out to be one left by Holden. His fear he had been calling for help was both confirmed and denied. Yes, he was asking for help, but not in fighting off six dudes. Help with the case, which was different. Chai listened to all he had, but right now it went in one ear and out the other. He was finding it difficult to concentrate on anything.

  Dee was talking to him, but again, the words slipped by him. All he could think was, what if Holden died? What did he do then? Had he returned to Seattle just to bury his friend? He didn’t think he could handle it and then admonished himself for being selfish. Still, he couldn’t help but think it. Holden was pretty much the only thing akin to family he had.

  Chai seemed to be walking in a cloud of unreality, and he didn’t even remember getting out of the car. One moment he was sitting in the vehicle, and the next he was following Dee into Harborview, where Dee held up what he recognized as a type of ID badge. His paramedic identification? Probably. He said hi to the nurse behind the front desk and said he was escorting a loved one to see a patient. She seemed busy and barely glanced at Chai, waving them on. The hospital was noise and people and felt almost overwhelming, sending him into memories of being in one after the accident. He didn’t want to be having those now, and after a few minutes, he shook himself out of it. By that time, Dee had led them into the ER, and they were met by a man who must be Shep.

  He was a big bear of a man, with dirty blond hair and a close-cropped dirty blond beard and mustache combination. He had sleepy hazel eyes and looked like he was kind. “Shep, this is Chai. He’s Holden’s investigative partner. Chai, this is Shep.”

  “Hi, good to meet you,” Shep said, shaking his hand. Shep had big hands and a strong grip.

  “Nice to meet you,” Chai repeated, feeling silly. He then said what he wanted to know. “How is he?”

  Shep sighed and ran one of his hands through his messy hair. “He’s in surgery right now. He had some internal bleeding they needed to take care of. But it’s minor, really. Considering.”

  “Considering?” Chai repeated. Nope, this still didn’t feel real at all.

  “Well, being jumped by six guys isn’t conducive to good health.”

  “Do you have any idea what happened there?” Dee asked.

  Shep shrugged. “Don’t know a lot right now. There was a call saying someone was being beaten to death at the Jungle, and when units arrived, Holden was unconscious and surrounded
by beaten men. Two are currently in critical, like I told you. One guy lost an eye, another had the Achilles tendon on his right foot severed, another still has a shattered knee and probably won’t walk without a limp ever again. The last has a ruptured testicle and his front teeth gone.”

  “Why are the two in critical?” Dee asked. None of what Shep said seemed to have moved him in the least.

  “One got stabbed in the thigh, nicking his femoral artery. We found him howling on the ground and bleeding out. The other took a severe blow to the head, and his brain’s swelling.”

  Chai winced. “How the hell did Holden do that?”

  Shep shook his head. “No fucking clue. When the guys talked, they didn’t make a lot of sense.”

  “How injured is he? Holden?” Chai asked. He was almost afraid to know.

  “Well, his hand’s broken, he’s missing at least one tooth, he has a broken nose, and he’s being kept under observation for a possible concussion. He isn’t anyone’s idea of pretty, but he’s gonna live. I really don’t know about those other two.”

  This was unbelievable. How could this be happening? A woman in a professional-looking pantsuit came up to them. Her black hair was cut short, and while she wasn’t unattractive, her face barely had a trace of makeup, and her expression was rather severe. “What the fucking hell is going on, Cole?” she snapped. Belatedly, Chai noticed she was wearing a badge on a chain around her neck.

  “Don’t ask me,” Dee said. “I’ve got no clue.” Dee looked at Chai then, and so did the lady cop. “Chai, this Detective Darinda Murphy, although anybody who knows Roan calls her Dropkick. Detective, this is Chai Nayar, Holden’s detective business partner.”

  Dropkick? Was he serious? What the hell kind of nickname was that?

  Unlike Shep, she didn’t make any move to shake his hand. “Okay. What the hell was Krause doing in the Jungle?”