“Yeah. SIG P320. Don’t worry, I’ll wipe it down and leave it.”
They had considered wearing gloves, but decided it wasn’t cold enough and that they would look more innocent without anything that could be interpreted as an attempt to prevent fingerprints.
Rain glanced at her. “I really do micromanage, don’t I?”
In response, she offered a gentle shrug.
He nodded. “Don’t let Dox see the SIG. He’ll insist one of us keep it. He likes trophies.” He used the man’s sweatshirt to wipe the cellphone.
Livia looked at the man. His face was contorted and his neck was bent at an impossible angle. She and Rain had once talked about Rain’s ability to shape-shift, to inhabit a legend so well he would go unnoticed against whatever background he was operating in. However he had acquired this related ability, she wanted him to teach her.
“How do you do that?” she said.
He shrugged. “It’s just a neck crank.”
She sensed he knew she was asking about something else. “That’s not what I mean. You didn’t show anything. Anything. The way you’re not showing it even now.”
He didn’t respond.
She knew he was reluctant, and that her intensity probably wasn’t the right way to persuade him. But she badly wanted to know. “Will you teach me?”
He started to say something, then stopped and looked away. After a moment, he said, “If you want.”
She heard several vehicles pass on Sand Hill. One turned onto Manzanita, but the sound wasn’t right, and they stayed put.
A minute later, she heard the rumbling of multiple wheels turning off Sand Hill. The rumbling stopped just ahead of the bridge. Livia glanced around the side of the concrete wall and saw the truck and the horse trailer.
The back doors opened, and Carl, Diaz, and Kanezaki jumped out. They were wearing tactical street clothes: cargo pants, chest rigs under zip-down jackets, light boots, gloves. All in woodland colors, and with body armor underneath. Diaz had insisted on coming, and when Livia couldn’t talk her out of it, she’d made sure Diaz was carrying. A Glock 19, simple to operate. They’d gone over the basics, just in case.
Diaz and Kanezaki vaulted over the side of the bridge. Carl tossed a pair of duffels to Rain and Livia, then shouldered a third and came over himself. Evie, who was behind the wheel of the truck, drove off.
Carl set down his duffel and glanced at the body on the ground. “Well, that had to hurt. Maybe better to move him under the culvert. Little less visible. Tom, give me a hand?”
“Sentry?” Kanezaki said.
Rain said nothing, but the question—which could as easily have been stated, You sure you didn’t just kill some innocent bystander?—pissed off Livia. “Yes,” she said. “But if you have any doubts, how about next time you take care of it yourself?”
Rain looked at her, and she thought she detected the trace of a smile.
There was a pause, then Kanezaki said, “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m sorry.”
Rain unzipped one of the bags—the same clothes and equipment the others were wearing. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “And no, no intel on him. Just a burner, turned off.”
Carl and Kanezaki dragged the body under the overpass, where to see it a passerby would have to come down from the road. Then Carl unzipped the second bag, pulled out Livia’s armored vest, and started helping her into it. “You know,” he said to Rain, “spandex becomes you. I don’t know why you don’t dress this way more often.”
Rain chuckled, and Livia could tell Kanezaki’s faux pas had been forgotten. “Maybe I do,” Rain said. “Just not around you.”