Lupi 09 - Mortal Ties

government Ford to the curb and checked her rearview mirror. The white
     Toyota that had been following her drew close, then cruised on by. She would wait.
     No point in making them anxious by getting out before they could park. It was bad
     enough she brought them here when the light was going.
    Not that they would be spooked by the setting sun, no more than she was. The dead
     weren’t scary. It was the living you had to watch out for.
    While the Toyota hunted for a parking place, Lily transferred her penlight from her
     purse to her pocket. The day was slipping down toward dusk, and twilight’s a tricky
     bugger. In the daytime you know where you are and can seewhere you’re going. At night you know you can’t see, not without help—electric help,
     most likely, from the city, a flashlight, whatever. You know, so you take precautions.
    Twilight blurs the edges. In the shadow time, it’s easy to mistake what you see, to
     step wrong, thinking there’s light enough to keep going. Back when she worked homicide,
     Lily had arrested people who went that one terrible step too far, confused by a personal
     twilight of drugs or emotion. People who never set out to be killers.
    But some take that step on purpose. Some damn well know where the lines are and cross
     them deliberately. Like the bastard whose hearing she’d testified at today.
    Goddamn copycats.
    The Toyota backed itself into a spot between an SUV and a pickup halfway up the block.
     Lily grabbed her purse, checked for cars, and climbed out of her Ford. Traffic was
     sparse enough she could cross right away, so she did. By the time she reached the
     cemetery side of the street, two men had gotten out of the Toyota.
    One was slim and pale, with a round face and glasses. He looked like he ought to have
     a pocket protector tucked away somewhere. The other was a head taller, eighty pounds
     heavier, and looked like he ought to have a couple of tattoos and a rap sheet. Geek
     Guy wore a cheap sports shirt. Tough Guy wore a black T-shirt. Both wore jeans, athletic
     shoes, and sports jackets.
    Lily wore a jacket, too, and for the same reason. It might be a few days short of
     January, but this was San Diego. The air was crisp, not cold. But people get upset
     if you walk around with your shoulder harness showing.
    The men crossed the street between a dark sedan and a delivery truck. Geek Guy made
     a quick gesture with one hand. Tough Guy set off through the gate at an easy lope.
     Lily followed Tough Guy—also known as Mike—and was in turn followed.
    They hadn’t been tailed here, but it was just barely possible their enemies knew she
     planned to come and had someone waiting. Highly unlikely, but possible. A monthago she’d picked up a map of the cemetery. Theoretically, Friar could have somehow
     learned about that and kept the place staked out ever since.
    Or so Scott had said when she told him she was coming here. Lily considered this one
     of the safest things she’d done lately. Friar’s organization had been badly damaged
     in October when he’d managed to get a lot of people killed and had seen his long-laid
     plans blow up in his face. She doubted he had the resources to keep a sniper in place
     24/7 for a month. She doubted even more that he had any idea she’d picked up that
     map in the first place.
    He did, however, have one resource they could neither predict nor evaluate in any
     meaningful way, so she could be wrong. If so, well, she had backup.
    Sometimes it really is all in the name.
    For months she’d struggled with the need for bodyguards. No—be honest, she told herself
     as she set off down a narrow road that twisted through the cemetery, heading generally
     where she needed to go. She’d hated it. She’d hated dragging guards everywhere, hated
     the loss of privacy…hated, most of all, that one of them had given his life for her.
     The need for them was real, but her acceptance of the necessity had been a grim thing,
     testy and prone to muttering.
    Last week Rule had shaken his head at her mutters and said, “I don’t get it. Didn’t
     you ever call for backup when you were a regular cop? That didn’t make you crazy.”
    “Backup,” she’d repeated slowly. Then said it again as a weight shifted, not disappearing
     but settling into a more comfortable place, like slipping on her bra or shoulder holster.
     “Backup, not guards. They’re my mobile backup.”
    Trailed by half of her mobile backup—Geek Guy, aka