The Inner Circle Read Online Free Page A

breath. In the next moment he was gone, stepping out into the drizzle, and it took me a couple seconds before I realized I should be out there too, that I should already have returned to the Corolla to bring it around.  
    Carver appeared in the space the Racist had occupied only seconds before, pulling his own earpiece out of his pocket.  
    “What happened?” I asked, but Carver just shook his head and hurried past me out into the street.

 
     
     
    7

    After leaving The Spur, the Racist went straight for where he had parked the Crown Victoria.  
    Ian watched him the entire time, while Ronny fetched the SUV. Ian stood on the other side of the street, a half block down, his hands in his jacket pockets, his head covered with a Red Sox cap, and watched as the Racist started the car, backed out of its space, and left the lot. Seconds later Ronny pulled up in the SUV, Ian jumped in, and then they were off, maintaining a five-car-length buffer.  
    By that point Carver and I had returned to the Corolla. Ronny kept us in the loop the entire time, informing us that currently the target was headed north on Collins Avenue. Carver pulled up a map of our current location on his phone and directed me on a shortcut to catch up with them.  
    “We don’t have our guns,” I said.  
    Carver stared down at his phone. “We’ll be fine.”  
    There was a silence.  
    I asked, “Just what the fuck happened in there anyhow?”  
    Carver didn’t look like he was going to answer at first. He just sat there, staring at his phone. Something was different about his face, about his entire body language. I’d been working with Carver for two years now and we had been paired up many times tracking a new target. I’d begun to get a good sense of Carver’s moods, and his different kinds of silences. But this was a new silence.  
    “Well?” I prompted.  
    He blinked and looked out his window and took a deep breath. “The guy just ... flipped out. He’s a loose cannon. That transvestite went up to him, barely said a word, and he just hit her. Smacked her right in the face, then kneed her in the groin. I know it’s hard to believe, but I think Simon’s already broken this one. I think”—he swallowed—“I think we might have another Christian Kane on our hands.”  
    There was another silence.  
    Then, in our earpieces, Ronny muttered, “Jesus Christ.”  
    Carver, nodding slowly, staring back down at the map on his phone, said, “Exactly.”

    •     •     •

    F IVE MINUTES LATER , the rain still drizzling, Ronny said, “He just pulled into a hotel parking lot.”  
    “What hotel?” Carver asked.  
    “The Beachside. We’re going up to the second entrance to park.”  
    Carver closed the map on his phone and called the Kid, putting him again on speakerphone. He said, “Find out everything you can about the Beachside Hotel. That looks to be our target’s next location.”  
    “You think the girl’s in there?”  
    “Possibly. Has the page changed?”  
    “Nope. I keep checking it every thirty seconds but it’s still the same. Wish I didn’t have to, though. I feel like a fucking perv with this thing on my screen.”  
    “You’ve seen worse.”  
    “Don’t remind me.”  
    “Listen,” Carver said, “find out everything you can about the place and get back to me. But do it fast.”  
    He clicked off just as we passed the hotel’s first entrance, the same one the Racist had used.  
    Compared to the rest of the hotels along Collins Avenue, the Beachside wasn’t overly impressive. The building was mostly white stucco, no more than twenty stories high. The parking lot was moderately full.  
    “Ronny,” I said, “we’re pulling into the second entrance now.”  
    Ronny said, “Take the first left and come the whole way back.”  
    I parked the Corolla two spaces away from the SUV. Carver and I got out and hurried over and climbed into the SUV’s backseat.  
    Ronny had our guns and