Read California Bones for Free Online

you’d end up back at the bus dock. When I saw you get in the van I hailed a taxi.”
    “Farmers Market to Culver City … that’s not a cheap fare.”
    “I didn’t tip generously. You were in Otis’s place a long time. I almost went in after you.”
    “You think you can just break in and out of Otis’s? I like your spunk. Not sure I like your delusions.”
    No gazing and no hugging, but Cassandra would still risk her life for him.
    “There are seven entrances and exits in and out of Otis’s,” she said. “Otis only knows six of them.”
    Cassandra had joined Otis’s crew when she and Daniel were both fourteen. Her parents were small-time smugglers who’d fallen into Otis’s debt, and when they couldn’t pay, Otis took Cassandra instead. Her parents died the next year, but the debt survived unpaid until Cassandra turned eighteen. This was a very fair arrangement, as far as Otis was concerned. He didn’t mistreat her. He educated her. She learned how to pick pockets with a bell-dummy wired to buzz whenever jostled. She knew more about locks and safes than a locksmith, and as much about barriers and wards as an osteomancer. She could also fight, and she could drive, and she could shoot.
    Daniel was dazzled by her. She was smart and funny and pretty, and she was kind to him when he was a short and scrawny kid with splotchy skin who was entirely incapable of arranging his hair in anything that didn’t look like a bowl cut. And only a few years removed from his father’s murder and his mother’s defection, he wasn’t very fun to be around. After a few months, they were a couple, and they had three years together, running jobs for Otis with their other friends. It was good, profitable fun, right up to the night of the Sylmar job. After that, Cassandra left Otis, and if Daniel had followed right away instead of working another four jobs for him, they might have stayed together.
    At least they were still partners.
    “So what did Otis want?”
    Daniel told her about the Ossuary job. It took a while before the magnitude of Otis’s proposal sank in. Her brown face paled.
    “Jesus.” She stopped on the sidewalk, staring off into space. A refuse barge chugged past before she spoke again. “What’s the take?”
    He nudged her back into motion. “The sword is priceless. But the cash score is actually a bundle of basilisk fangs. They’re high purity and untapped. Otis figures he can sell them to his Malaysian partners for half a million, at least. If that falls through, he knows some Salvadorans who can’t pay as much, but they can pay. It means he doesn’t have to sit on the fangs for months and months. It’s quick cash.”
    “Half a million…”
    “I told him no, Cass.”
    “Of course you did. It’s too dangerous. But, just theoretically, how big a crew would it take?”
    Daniel didn’t like the gleam in her eyes. But if he looked in a mirror, he’d see the same gleam in his own. For that kind of money, he could get out of Southern California. He could get away from the Hierarch’s shadow. Maybe he could convince Cassandra to come with him. There’d be money left over for start-up funds. New identities. Jobs. Decent schools. Daniel pictured a house where he and Cassandra could start over, somewhere safe, clean. And a white picket fence and a green lawn and two kids and a dog named Spot and Cassandra would call him “honey” and he’d bring her breakfast in bed.
    He gritted his teeth to dispel the fantasy.
    But escape and safety and a chance at a life away from Los Angeles? That part of the dream was achievable. If he took the Ossuary job.
    “There’s still too much about it I don’t know,” Daniel began. “Otis isn’t going to spill until he’s sure I’m on board.”
    “Then just tell me the parts you do know. Who’d be on the crew?”
    Daniel thought it over as they walked past a strip mall reeking of dry cleaner chemicals.
    “An osteomancer. Not just to sniff out the targets, but to