Except I was fucking pissed.
This shit had killed Charlie, someone I’d liked no matter how much I denied it. He’d tried to kill me with napalm and then a goddamn bomb. In the boondocks of Georgia—a bomb. Who does that?
Someone whose ass I was going to kick to the state line and back before doing worse. I didn’t like guns, I hadn’t since I’d held one for the first and last time at the age of fourteen, but there were other ways to get things done. And as we said in these parts, sometimes a man just needs killing. This son of a bitch fit the bill.
I crouched but kept running—right until the asphalt parking lot came up to slam me in the face. Or it would have, if I hadn’t gotten my hands under me in time to avoid a broken nose. I did get some road rash on my chin from the feel of it and the breath knocked out of me as at least two hundred pounds landed on my back. I did discover that some of my hearing was back as I heard shots fired from about thirty feet in front of me and more from about three feet above my ear.
With the hearing in one ear gone again, I depended on the other to hear a truck’s engine revving, the screech of metal hitting metal, and the roar of an engine fading.
“Shit.” It wasn’t me who said it. I didn’t have enough breath in my crushed lungs to say anything, but I wholeheartedly shared the sentiment. King Kong rolled off of me and took a fistful of my shirt to pull me up to my knees and yank me around to face him. “Idiot. Are you dead? You damn well should be.”
I wheezed until I had enough air to snap back. “I had a plan.”
Hector, gun still in his other hand, gave me a light shake. “And what was your plan, Jackson, that was going to save you from running straight at a gun? I’m dying to know.”
“Ducking.” I glared and pushed his hand off. All that anger and adrenaline and nothing I could do with it. It was a little different from using my fake Glock to scare off junkies out to rob my shop. I’d been lucky. None of them had had guns yet, only knives. A fake gun and Houdini were more than enough to take care of them. This time, I had faced a gun, a real one, and my only disappointment in what I’d done was that Hector had been able to catch me. My stepfather had tried to kill me when I was fourteen, and this asshole was trying to kill me now. Enough. I’d had enough.
“Motherf—” Hector cut himself off. He’d cursed more today than I’d heard in the entire week or so that I’d known him—even when a cannibal was throwing his colleagues off a mill roof. His post-Army discipline was failing him. “I blackmail you, almost get you killed, then drive you over the edge to suicidal. Why not? It’s what I deserve. I’m going straight to hell. No doubt about it.”
He stood and turned to a heavyset older man who’d been running to his car, keys out. Unfortunately for him, it was his car next to which Hector had tackled me.
“We need to borrow your car.” Hector didn’t point the gun at the guy. First, Hector didn’t have that in him. Carjacking and giving the man a heart attack were a step beyond blackmail. Second, he didn’t need to point his gun. The guy had taken one look at it down by Hector’s leg, seen me on my knees, and threw the keys and waddled off as fast as he could.
“Get up. We still have a chance to catch the bastard without getting shot in the process.”
He clicked open the lock and climbed behind the wheel. I managed to get into the passenger seat while getting the rest of my breath back. There was the slam of one of the backseat doors, and Meleah had joined us. As Hector started the car and tore out of the parking lot, she fastened her seatbelt before reaching forward to pinch the back of my arm.
“Are you suicidal?” she demanded.
“What’s with you two? I had a plan. Jesus.”
We hit the ramp and two seconds later the interstate. “Yes, he had a plan,” Hector said darkly. “Ask him about his well-thought-out, completely nonsuicidal plan.”
“You were a helluva lot nicer to me when you were blackmailing me.” I searched the road ahead of us for sight of the truck.
“That was before you broke me. Charlie lived with you for months and still remembered you as a friend twelve years later. I’m with you one week, and you make me question my own sanity. Damn, there it is!”
And there it was—miles ahead but within reach. Refrigerator trucks didn’t have the speed of a plush, fast Lexus. Within thirty seconds, we were almost on it. With less than half a mile before we’d be technically tailgating it, Hector pulled his gun back out of his jacket pocket. I should’ve noticed the faint sag of the material. I liked to think I had my powers of observation left over from the days when I only read people’s faces and body movements, but either I was fooling myself or my skills were blunted instead of sharpened by knowing that there was a killer out there. Not a good showing for a former con man.
“What are you going to do with that? Shoot through the metal panels or pull up beside the truck and shoot over my head again?” I asked, not yet willing to forgive the scathing dismissal of my ducking plan.
“It’s not a that. It’s a Beretta 92F, identical to the M9 I carried in the Army. It’s dependable. I like dependable in situations like this. And I’m going to try for the tires.” Hector sounded as if I had insulted his best friend.
“Does that work in real life?” Meleah asked. I heard the tinkle of glass she shook off her shirt and out of her russet-streaked hair.
“You’re handling the bomb thing like a pro,” I commented. Unlike the searing anger that had pumped through me. I hadn’t liked bullying directed at me when I was a kid, when I was at Cane Lake, and I liked it less now. I wished I had a baseball bat instead of a pissant pair of weighted gloves for when we caught up to the son of a bitch. “You’re like every doctor I’ve read. You have repression down to an art form.” It was true. They all had boxes in their subconscious, and the face of every patient who died on them went into that box. It made sense. How else would you move on to your next one if the memories of the deceased ones stayed with you every minute of every day?
“I’ll break a few things later when I have more time. Now I’m more worried about catching the man who killed Charlie. Hector, can you actually shoot out the tires of the truck?”
“With my knowledge of physics, you’d think it would be easy—it’s not. If this doesn’t work, I’ll ram it.”
That had me clicking my own seatbelt into place. Ramming didn’t seem a better plan than ducking, the hypocrite. A Lexus was sturdy, but a refrigerator truck made it look like a Tonka toy in comparison.
Before I could point that out to Hector, he leaned forward over the wheel with his eyes narrowed. “Now, what is that?”
Our semi-stolen, semi-borrowed car was eating up the road, and we were only eight or so car lengths behind the truck. I saw what Hector was referring to. There was a black line across both lanes of traffic—it almost looked metallic. The cars in the slow lane were passing over it as the truck blew past them in the fast lane. Whatever it was, it looked and seemed harmless. It did nothing to the cars or the truck. I didn’t know anything about physics or the ease of shooting tires out of a speeding truck, but I did know one thing: if it looks or seems harmless, it never is.
“Son of a bitch.” I grabbed Hector’s shoulder. “Stop! Don’t drive over it!”
Too late, though. We were going too fast, and by the time I said “Don’t,” I heard the blowout of all four tires. The car skidded off the road, hit a ditch, and flipped over onto the roof. There was the peculiar crunch of safety glass fracturing but not shattering, held in one gluey whole, and the crump of metal buckling against unforgiving earth. I couldn’t breathe for a moment, the seatbelt had tightened around my chest, I was hanging upside down, and I was choking from the force of the air bag that had hit me and the billowing clouds of dust that came with it. But I did abruptly remember. I knew what that strip of metal was, and I hadn’t seen it in the mind of one of my clients. It wasn’t the lingering image of one of my readings. No, I’d seen it on TV while slouching on the couch, drinking a beer, and sharing a che
ese pizza with Houdini.
I’d seen it on an episode of goddamn Cops.
15
“Remotely deployable spike strips,” I repeated, sitting on the bank of the deep ditch and rubbing my chest. A seatbelt can save your life, but it hurts like a bitch. “Don’t tell me you didn’t use them in the Army.”
“I spent most of my time in military intelligence as a glorified gofer. I had the Mensa-level IQ, but I didn’t have Stanford and Cal Tech on my curriculum vitae yet. I enlisted to pay for that, but yes, we have spike strips, just not ‘remotely deployable spike strips.’”
The thing had been flat and smooth until we drove over it and the guy in the truck triggered the spikes to open. He had planned his escape in case the explosion didn’t work. This guy was good, sneaky, and better at distractions than the former con man I was.
“It’s the Army. The food could double as concrete for housing developments. The remote ones are news to me.” Hector had ripped free a strip of his sleeve and was wiping a trickle of blood from Meleah’s forehead. It wasn’t from the wreck; her seatbelt example saved us all. No, her blood was from the flying glass in the explosion. Although Meleah was better trained to take care of it herself, Hector was finally stepping up to the plate. Meleah might not need that crowbar after all.
Not that newfound love was going to do him any good. Police sirens were wailing like an F8 tornado warning, and the flashing lights were moving fast toward us. We would be off to jail and facing everyone’s dream come true: a body-cavity search and a neckless cell mate wrapped in three hundred pounds of steroid-rage-enhanced muscle.
“You had to steal a car,” I grumbled. “I hope they find Jimmy Hoffa up there when they snap on the gloves and bend you over at the station.”
“You misjudge the situation. Our project is funded by the government—the kind of government the majority of the country knows nothing about—the ones who do know are living in a bunker with tinfoil hats.”
He’d made a call before wiping at the blood on Meleah’s copper-brown skin. Maybe he was calling in the X-Files guys to back us up, vouch for us. I crossed my fingers. I could take care of myself, but I’d rather not have to bruise my foot or both fists doing it. I’d spent my teenage years kicking ass to survive. I didn’t miss it. Sometimes it was necessary, but I’d take cheese pizza with my dog over inflicting blood and broken bones. Maybe I’d gotten lazy when I hit the big three-O, or I’d simply had enough violence in my life.
“Fine. You get us out of this, and I’ll tell you what women really think about men. Not Cosmo shit, either. The real deal. It’ll help your dating life”—I finished under my breath—“or ruin it completely.”
Meleah heard the last part. The woman had the ears of a bat. “Shhh,” she said with annoyance. “It would give him a stroke. Men aren’t meant to know. You’re not meant to know.”
“And don’t you think I wish I didn’t? It’s a burden no guy should have to bear or live up to.” A state police car braked beside us. It hadn’t come to a complete halt before one cop had jumped out, screaming with gun pointed. “Ah, shit.”
Hector started to stand up and reason with him. Mensa, my ass. The one person you don’t ever try to reason with is a state cop on an adrenaline high. He spends most of his day giving tickets and reading gun magazines. When something exciting comes along—like a Denny’s explosion and people fleeing the scene in a carjacked Lexus—he or she is going to make the most of it. Not obeying commands while trying to talk your way out of it—especially while stepping toward the cop—that’s only going to get you pepper-sprayed, Tasered, or shot.
I snagged Hector’s arm and pulled him down beside me.
“Monkey see, monkey do.” I grunted at him. I rolled on my stomach in the dirt and laced my fingers at the small of my back. Meleah was doing the same. Luckily, Hector’s gun had flown out the window, ripped from his hand, when the car started to roll, or Hector would already be pepper-sprayed, Tasered, and shot.
Hector landed in the dirt and copied my position. “It’ll be all right. I made the call. They’ll pull us out.”
I was roughly handcuffed. “I hope so. Since it was self-defense, my juvenile files aren’t sealed. All I need is some DA trying to get reelected changing his mind, deciding I was a fourteen-year-old Bundy at the start to my life of crime. I’ve been to jail before, Hector.” Only for a day, only before it was all sorted out and I had a cell to myself, but a day even in a podunk country jail makes an impression on a kid. I dreamed of iron bars for weeks afterward. What my life would’ve been like if they hadn’t believed me and the evidence. “I didn’t much like it.”
• • •
Fortunately, Hector’s government muscle came through after we were fingerprinted but before we made it to the mug shots. Ten minutes later, men in dark suits and sunglasses came in, flashed badges, and ushered the three of us to a black car out front. We left mystified and furious cops in our wake, which almost made the whole day worthwhile. Before I’d found the carnival and lived on the streets picking pockets, I’d had to bust my ass to outrun a cop or three. They couldn’t just let a kid make a living.
“Don’t say a word until we get back,” Hector said at my ear in a whisper so low, lips barely moving, that the Men in Black didn’t notice. It looked like, same as always, the right hand didn’t know what the left was doing—even in secret government organizations. I had a feeling that when all was said and done and this entire project was finally written up, the amazing All Seeing Eye, psychic Jackson Lee, was not going to be featured anywhere.
Thank God.
On the other hand, there were bound to be many uses the government could find for a psychic, enough uses to last until I was old and gray, then dust in the ground. If that happened, I would’ve been better off staying in jail.
Once we were back at the base, we were dropped off without a word. Meleah headed back to the infirmary, Hector and I to the main science building. Thackery was waiting for us. He appeared unhappy and, well, thwarted, rather like a zoo veterinarian who’d just lost his shoulder-length rubber glove, speculum, and favorite watch inside a pregnant elephant.
“What now?” he demanded. “First your psychic’s room is napalmed, and then the car he was riding in was apparently blown up. Are you sure he’s a psychic and not a sadomasochistic pyromaniac instead?”
That’s why he was feeling frustrated. He was disappointed that I hadn’t been in the car when it had exploded. “I’m psychic enough to know you did double the dissections of the other students in your anatomy class because you just loved picking out cats at the pound and cutting them up. And no matter what you told the teacher, it damn sure had nothing to do with extra credit.”
He stared at me, the color leeching out of his eyes to match the chunk of ice that masqueraded as his brain. He was a Bundy, a Dahmer, a Gacy who hadn’t crossed the line to killing people—letting it happen, yes, but not doing it with his own hands. But someone knowing what he was, exactly what he was, down to his last sociopathic cell—it could push him over that edge. At least when it came to me. But I was tired of tiptoeing around this shit. In the week and a half since I’d been there, nothing had been done. Not one damn thing. Charlie hadn’t been saved. A spy hadn’t been caught. The only thing that had been accomplished was that I got to take a tour of several very nasty places and “see” many even nastier murders take place. If I had to take a tour, I’d have chosen a goddamn cruise, not this. The sooner we could wrap this up, the sooner people would stop dying, and the sooner I could go home.
If that took pushing, I was read to push my guts out.
I knew Hector agreed, because he followed right along. “We know there’s an industrial spy here. We know they killed Charlie. And Dr. Thackery …” He leaned forward until he was nose-to-nose with the smaller man and bared his teeth in what would pass as a smile if he were a crocodile. “We know you knew about the spy and didn’t tell a goddamn soul. That makes you responsible for my brother’s death in
my eyes, if not the law’s. So I’d advise you get behind the team on this one while I decide just what I’m going to do about that.” He moved in even closer, causing Thackery to take a step back. “About you and Charlie. Start thinking hard about who the spy could be. Start now. I’ll be back soon to see what you’ve come up with. Jackson, come with me. I need to go to the armory to get another gun.”
Thackery didn’t move as we passed him. He had to be calculating whether the gun was for him. At least, I hoped he was, the prick. Hector was striding down the hall at an angry and fast speed, but running at the Y seemed to have helped, and I kept pace easily enough.
“You know you made a lifelong enemy there,” he said.
I shrugged philosophically. “An enemy is just a friend you were smart enough to stab in the back first before he got you. Besides, you were on his list before me. In fact, I imagine everyone he has ever met is on the Thackery shit list. We’re nothing special.”
“Special enough to be at the top.” He stopped. “The armory’s around the corner. This isn’t a military operation, Jackson. We have military support around if we need it, and we damn sure have needed it, but bottom line: Thackery and I are in charge here.” And whoever had sent the black car was in charge of them. “That means I can check out as many handguns as I can carry. We’re in trouble, me, you—so this time, let me get you a damn gun. I understand because of your stepfather why you don’t want one, and you might not have to use it. I’ll do my best to make sure you don’t have to use it. But we need to be armed if worse comes to worse.”
A gun.
Boyd, the lazy, rattlesnake-mean, abusive shit. Until I was fourteen, I had one mental picture of him, only the one: him sitting in the filthy, beat-up recliner and drinking beer until he was drooling drunk.