CHAPTER 1
WHEN ELLIE BATISTA turned the patrol car onto Montclair, a quiet street in Los Angeles’s Brentwood neighborhood, she spotted a big Secret Service–looking dude in slick mirrored sunglasses and a black suit ushering a boy dressed up in prep school clothing to a Chevy Suburban with tinted windows parked at the top of the driveway of a spacious, contemporary ranch house. The guy holding open the SUV’s back door was bigger and taller than his partner, but the thing Ellie noticed right away was how both men were looking around like a sniper was lurking somewhere nearby, in this neighborhood where the greatest danger was living next to someone who hadn’t paid their parking tickets.
Ellie was close enough now to see the anxiety on the kid’s face. She hit the lights but not the siren. Her partner looked up from his smartphone, saw her shooting up the driveway, and rolled his eyes.
“No,” Danny said. “No, we are not doing this again.”
“Relax, Pops. I’ll take care of everything.”
Ellie parked at an angle so the SUV couldn’t escape—at least down the driveway. She couldn’t see the driver—the SUV’s windows were tinted, almost black—but if there was someone behind the wheel, he might decide to make a break for it, tear across the lawn.
Danny sighed as he unsnapped the holster of his sidearm. “You’re doing all the paperwork—and you’re picking up lunch.”
“Where?”
“Jimmy J’s taco truck.”
“The place where you got food poisoning?”
“I think it was a stomach bug.”
“Still,” she said.
“That’s the deal. What’s it going to be?”
“Your funeral,” she said, opening the door.
At five feet eight, Ellie was tall for a woman. The guy holding open the SUV’s back door stood six feet six and weighed probably close to three bills. He looked, Ellie thought, like vanilla pudding poured into a cheap suit. He had a tiny pug nose and small hands for a man so large, but there was no doubt in her mind that he could swat her away like a fly.
The driver had rolled down the windows. He knew the drill, and he rested his hands on top of the steering wheel.
“IDs and permits,” Ellie said.
Vanilla Pudding sighed. “We’ve been stopped three times by you people just this past week alone. You’re seriously screwing with our, you know, productivity.”
Ellie looked to the driver. “Sir, please cut the engine and step outside.” Then, to the group: “Put your hands on top of the car roof so I can see ’em.”
As Danny frisked them, taking their licenses, gun permits, and handguns, Ellie studied the boy from behind her sunglasses. He looked to be eleven, maybe even as old as thirteen, and had a sweaty pie-shaped face and stringy blond hair, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He kept swallowing nervously and his eyes skittered across the ground in front of him as if it contained hidden land mines.
Carrier, Ellie thought. Had to be, given all the security. If this kid had the gene, he was worth big money. The rule of thumb in the blood world was the younger the carrier, the more potent their blood, the more he or she was worth. Blood didn’t discriminate. Boy or girl, black or white, mentally challenged or potential Mensa candidate, a single child could be worth several million dollars over the course of his or her life—unless the kid was drained and dumped, the blood sold for quick cash. That seemed to be the norm these days, at least here in California, with everyone looking to make a quick buck.
“What’s your name?” Ellie asked the boy.
“Christopher.”
“Christopher what?”
“Christopher Palmer.”
“Nice to meet you. Do you know these men?”
The boy nodded. He wore dark gray pants with loafers and a navy blue suit jacket with a school crest on the lapel, over a white shirt with a red tie. Prep school kid, lots of money.
“I need to hear you say it,” she said.
“I know them.”
“Are you in danger?”
“From what?”
“From anything. Are you a carrier?”
Vanilla Pudding, standing with his hands splayed on top of the SUV’s roof, turned his head and spoke over his shoulder. “Don’t answer that, Christopher.” Then, to Ellie: “Look, kid’s already late for school, and we’ve got to get him there before noon. He’s got a big test today he can’t miss.”
“I’m not through with my questions.”
“All due respect, Officer, what you’re doing, LAPD—it’s harassment.”
“So, if I’m hearing you correctly, sir, you don’t want to cooperate.”
“How about you take our licenses and gun permits, our weapons, do the background checks, whatever, while you follow us to his school? We drop him off, and then we can play question and answer for as long as you want. I’ll give you the numbers for his parents, too. You can call them along the way, make sure everything’s copacetic.”
“Give me the numbers.”
The parents’ names were Cynthia and Francis Palmer. After she wrote down the numbers, she showed them to the boy. “Are these your parents’ phone numbers?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Can I sit in the car, please? It’s really hot out.”
Ellie opened the back door for him. Then she looked at Vanilla Pudding and said, “Lead the way.”
Danny took over driving duty so she could work the laptop installed in the car. As she checked the licenses and permits, she thought about the steroid-laced goons playing rent-a-cop and wondered if someone, maybe even a group of people, was watching the boy right now, shadowing his movements and working on a plan to abduct him. She doubted anything would happen on the way to school, but something might go down at the school. Last month, a group of masked men armed with assault rifles stormed their way into a fancy private high school in Van Nuys to abduct a pair of teenagers who carried the blood gene. The gunmen were killed, along with two students and six school employees. There was a lot of talk in the state about teachers arming themselves.
The bodyguards checked out. Their gun permits all checked out. Ellie called the numbers Vanilla Pudding, whose name was Trevor Daley, had given her. She got the boy’s mother on the phone, but the woman refused to answer any questions until Ellie gave her own personal information.
Ellie didn’t blame her. Families of carriers had to worry about people posing as police and federal agents. You couldn’t trust anyone these days. Anyone.
When the boy’s mother called back fifteen minutes later, she seemed more relaxed. Ellie asked the woman a series of personal questions, comparing her answers with the information listed on the computer screen. Everything seemed to be in order.