‘I’m here. Just checking something.’
He followed a line of pins, a jagged string of red, upward from Cambria. Quinton Wallace’s kills, leading all the way back to Portland.
A final red pin sat there in a cluster of white. Thibault reached out and touched his fingertip to it.
The other Anonymous. The one who Swarm had taken.
Someone like him. Dead now, but not forgotten by everyone. Marked with this pin, at least.
Thibault’s gaze slid down the map, past other flocks of white. Reds and the occasional blue blurred among them.
‘Red means dead Zeroes,’ he said. ‘They’re all over the country. Dozens.’
‘Damn.’ Flicker’s voice was soft in his ear. ‘What about the blues?’
He stared at the two blue pins in Cambria again, and it came to him.
‘Officer Delgado. Officer Bright.’
‘Of course,’ Flicker said. ‘Blue for cops, dead or injured.’
‘Man,’ Thibault said. ‘No wonder they hate us.’
‘Speaking of law enforcement, Phan just left the camera room. You don’t have much time. Get some close-ups of New Orleans. We need to know what we’ve gotten ourselves into.’
Thibault pulled out his phone again. Finding New Orleans wasn’t hard. Dozens of pins spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. There wasn’t room to fit them all. Mostly white, but also—
‘Six…seven of us dead in New Orleans.’ As he took pictures, his voice sounded thin and far away in his own ears. ‘And four blues.’
‘Shit, four cops? Let’s get you out of there, Anon. You don’t sound good.’
‘I’m okay,’ he said. ‘I’m not fading on you.’
She hesitated, like she’d somehow felt him trembling at the edge. ‘Okay, but you do not want to get arrested in this town.’
‘Yeah. Maybe not.’
Thibault took in the eastern half of the States. It was clumped with Zeroes activity, especially around the major cities. But nothing as dense as New Orleans.
It would have felt so amazing a year ago – finding out about all those other Zeroes. But his excitement was curdled from the start, because that white sea of possibilities was stained with red and blue.
‘He’s in the elevator. Get out of there.’
‘Not yet, Flick. We need to know more.’
His hand went to his wrist, to Chizara’s tracking device.
‘Anon! What do you mean? You’re not going to talk to him, are you?’
‘Hell no. But I have to go quiet. You too. No sound leaking out of my earbuds.’
‘Damn it, Anon,’ she hissed, then a whisper: ‘He’s right outside.’
On cue the office door opened.
THIBAULT SPUN TO FACE THE MAN, LIFTING A HAND TO SLICE THE SHAFT OF HIS ATTENTION BEFORE IT COULD LOCK ON.
Phan hesitated in the doorway. He scanned the room carefully.
Yep. He’d dealt with Stalkers before.
He was just like the others had described him. Older, graying, Asian. His suit a little too large, like he’d been losing weight lately.
Finally the suspicion faded from his face. He came in, sat down at the desk, and leaned backward. In the crowded space, Thibault had to suck in his gut.
He was pinned now. Maybe this hadn’t been a brilliant idea.
Phan pulled a wallet and phone from his back pocket and slapped them down on the corner of the desk. He pulled the keyboard off the computer and balanced it on the folders.
Then he stared for a moment, his attention glittering at the blank screen.
‘Your reflection in the monitor!’ came Flicker’s whisper.
Thibault reached out and snipped the thread.
Phan shook his head, as if rousing himself from a daydream. When he tapped a key, a lock screen came up: the FBI seal, bright enough to outshine any reflection.
Thibault breathed out slowly.
Phan typed in his password in a blur, then scrolled and clicked until an e-mail filled the screen. He reached for the landline phone on the far side of the desk. Punched a few numbers, drummed his fingers.
‘Koslowski? Phan here. Got a favor to ask. I got this team flying in from Houston for an operation tomorrow morning—’
There was a pause as Phan listened. Thibault raised his phone, trying to get the computer screen in focus.
‘But I still need a vehicle that can take the whole detail, seven people. And it’s gotta look legit. The target’s gonna be wary. Grew up down here, and knows my consultant from way back.’
Thibault took a few pictures and pocketed his phone. Now for the other thing.
He pulled the leather strap from his wrist, untied it. The curled wafer of tracker circuitry slipped easily off the end. Chizara had said it could take a lot of punishment – water, impact, anything short of lighting it on fire.
He rolled it flatter between his fingers. Perfect.
Behind Phan’s elbow, under his phone, lay his wallet, fat with a badge. A sliver of Phan’s awareness coiled around the pile – some people were always aware of their phones. Thibault reached out and snipped the sliver of attention, then pulled the badge case free.
He slid Chizara’s tracker into the pocket behind the gold shield.
It felt dangerous, like throwing away an anchor. And it was a huge, dangerous relief, to have that anchor’s weight lift from him.
No more tracker. He was free. He could shed the Zeroes at any time. Could flee reality itself if he wanted, and Chizara couldn’t follow.
They would all forget him again. Flicker’s fear would be over.
But Phan’s voice brought him back.
‘You see my problem,’ he was saying. ‘Since my thing at Dungeness went wrong, it’s always the same half-assed shit. They give me the people and no transport. Or the right vehicle and nobody with crowd-psychosis experience. That’s why Las Vegas was such a shitshow. I know, I already owe you for backing me up on letting Saldana go, and I’ve still got nothing to offer you in return, but us crowd crazies gotta stick together. This is our chance to get one of these freaks all alone. Someone we can break.’
Thibault wedged the badge wallet back under the phone.
‘This guy scares me,’ Flicker whispered. ‘You need to get out of there.’
No kidding.
But the door was shut, and he was still pinned in the corner.
‘A Ford Transit? Perfect,’ Phan was saying. ‘Anything without fancy electronics. This town’s crawling with Electrokinetics. No, we don’t need it till morning. I owe you.’
He put down the phone and stared at the screen. Then he looked all around the little office, clearly uneasy.
Thibault stayed motionless, trying not to breathe.
‘He feels you in there,’ Flicker whispered. ‘Let me fix this.’
The bud in his ear went dead. What was she up to?
Long minutes of silence stretched out. Thibault let go of the mission, of urgency and fear.
The room dimmed and grew partial around him. Maybe he was letting himself fade too much. He could disappear now, away from those little red and blue accusations on the wall map—
The desk phone rang, jolting Thibault back into the world.
‘Phan here.’ The man listened for a moment, then sat up straight, his whole body rigid. ‘Are you serious? She mentioned Verity by name? Why didn’t you put her through!’
Thibault squeezed his eyes shut. Damn it, Flicker.
‘Right now? Where?’ Phan stood up as he listened, logged off the computer, gathered his wallet and phone.
A moment later he was out the door.
Thibault stood there, alone, solidly in his body after that surge of adrenaline. His phone vibrated in his hand.
‘What did you tell them?’ he answered.
‘The truth,’ Flicker said. ‘That I was a superpowered kid who’d met Verity. I heard the FBI was hiring, and I wanted to talk to him.’
‘That last part isn’t true, is it?’
?
??Maybe one day,’ she said. ‘But not in half an hour at the corner of Bourbon and Saint Ann.’
Thibault laughed, relief flowing over him. Flicker had extracted him from this brilliantly. He could walk out of this office, free of the FBI. He was free of the tracker, too. But he wanted nothing more than to walk out into the sunlight and into her arms.
Sometimes reality was worth sticking around for.
‘You need to ditch that phone,’ he said. ‘We both should, since you called me.’
‘Not till I feel your hand in mine.’
He couldn’t help but smile. ‘Okay. I’m coming.’
He winced at the thought of losing all his photos, and took another long look at the map, trying to memorize every region. Just in case the Zeroes found themselves in another city and needed to know the situation there.
But for now New Orleans was the front line of this war.
KELSIE DANCED TO THE ANTHEM BLASTING FROM A BRASS BAND ON A STREET CORNER.
Trumpets and trombones blared over the tuba’s spine-shaking riffs, and the crowd sang and clapped along in the evening cool.
‘Oh my God! Everybody knows the words!’ Kelsie shouted into the air.
She’d never been part of anything like Mardi Gras. The city was full of noise and the smell of cooking crawfish. People ate and drank and danced. Music made the cool air feel sultry and alive.
She could almost forget she was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.
This city didn’t have the corporate glitz, the desperate fun, of Las Vegas. This was a real party town, and it was in her blood. She danced at each new corner full of music and breathed in the wild, crazy energy of the crowds. She could feel tangled mobs like melodies, separate but intertwined.
After weeks of hiding in empty campsites with grungy shower stalls, New Orleans was scrubbing her soul clean. It felt like home. A place she’d missed without even knowing it existed.
Kelsie imagined herself here at three years old, soaking it all in, and suddenly her whole life made much more sense.
She needed to tell Chizara, and searched the crowd for her – for that pulse of deep concentration, like a pure, rich bass note.
There she was, back against a wall and lost in the city’s tech, a distant frown on her face. Busy searching for surveillance vans, agents wearing earpieces, signs of other Crashes playing with technology.
Serious stuff.
Kelsie danced closer, a hand out, beckoning Chizara into the sound and life of the New Orleans night. She pushed the crowd’s party atmosphere at her.
Chizara’s concentration softened into a smile. ‘Stop that.’
Kelsie grinned back. ‘Relaxing is good for concentration. I read it somewhere.’
‘Yeah, well, dancing is not good for concentration.’
But Kelsie kept pushing until she could see Chizara’s chin bopping to the pulse of the brass.
‘It’s been weeks since we danced!’ Kelsie shouted above the music.
‘We’re supposed to be working,’ Chizara replied.
Kelsie took her hand, locked eyes with her, and started moving to the beat. Dancing was Kelsie’s link to the good things in their past, before evil Swarms and vengeful feds and supermax prisons.
Chizara put her hands lightly on Kelsie’s waist, a gentle weight against her rise and fall. ‘We’re supposed to be on the lookout, remember?’
‘We can look and have a good time.’
Chizara shook her head, still grinning.
‘Come on, Zara,’ Kelsie pleaded. ‘How long’s it been since we enjoyed ourselves?’
‘We’re running for our lives. Enjoyment isn’t on the agenda.’
Chizara said it like she was joking, but Kelsie felt the moment she shook off the feedback loop, like stepping off a dance floor.
Kelsie eased back, letting the crazy-happy vibe of the crowd slow down around her.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s check the next street over.’
They walked on, passing a bar with its windows open wide to the sidewalk, selling beer in plastic go-cups. Kelsie was thirsty, but she’d never get Chizara to drink, not while they were on duty.
‘Do you remember any of this?’ Chizara asked over the music.
Kelsie shook her head. ‘Only in my bones. Seems like I’d remember something specific, though. An address? A street name?’
But soon after her mom had broken Kelsie’s wrist, Hurricane Katrina had laid waste to the town. Dad had fled that disaster as well as his marriage. To protect his daughter.
She could never blame him, though she’d lost this vibrant place in the bargain. She hated to think of him having to run. Like she was on the run now, except he’d had a tiny daughter in tow.
She missed him more than ever.
‘So, your mom,’ Chizara began. ‘Where do we start?’
‘I found some old paperwork in Dad’s stuff. Just a name: Zoe Moseley. I used to search for her online all the time.’ Back when the internet had been a casual convenience, before burner phones and remote cabins.
‘Didn’t you tell me she was in a band?’
‘Easy Vice. A jazz quartet,’ Kelsie said. ‘But the last time she played with them was five years ago.’
Chizara shrugged. ‘Let’s see if they’re still around.’
She pulled out her burner, turned it on. Stared at the spinning boot-up wheel on its screen, Kelsie felt the street’s energy turn sharp and nervous along her spine.
Zoe Moseley was a stranger. The Zeroes couldn’t trust strangers anymore – even blood relations. Kelsie’s mom couldn’t break her wrist anymore, but she could destroy her with a phone call.
‘Wait, Zara. Don’t we have more important things to worry about?’
‘Let me worry about the feds.’ Chizara stared at her phone. ‘Easy Vice, right? They’re playing at the High Blues club tonight. That’s, like, six blocks from here.’
Kelsie looked down – so close. Her anxiety spiraled out into the crowd. A stir traveled down the street, and when the brass band at the end of the block blew a few sour notes, the crowd’s dance turned ragged and agitated.
Chizara’s arm came around her. ‘Hold it together, Kels.’
‘Sorry,’ Kelsie mumbled into her shoulder. She squeezed Chizara hard, and with a shuddering breath drew back inside herself.
‘You don’t have to be scared of her anymore,’ Chizara said. ‘Maybe you never did. We don’t even know your mom’s side of the story.’
Kelsie nodded. Dimly, she felt the call of the crowd, which had recovered its good cheer on its own. She reached out for that warm, reassuring party vibe. Her tribe. Her town.
And her mother was part of that connection. Part of her.
‘Okay, Zara. As long as you’re with me, I’m not afraid.’
WHEN THEY REACHED THE HIGH BLUES CLUB, THE BOUNCER ON THE DOOR FELL WORDLESSLY VICTIM TO KELSIE’S FEEL-GOOD VIBE AND WAVED THEM INSIDE.
Kelsie breathed slower in the safety of the club. The low lighting, the friendly crowd paying serious attention to the music. Nobody looking for the Cambria Five.
‘Nice place,’ Kelsie said.
Chizara’s wide eyes were scanning the lighting setup. ‘It’s all analog!’
They sat at a small table and watched a jazz quartet finish their set of Dixieland and ragtime. When the musicians wrapped up half an hour later, Kelsie felt her anxiety leaking out into the crowd again.
‘I need a drink,’ she said.
‘No, you don’t.’ Chizara pointed to the stage. ‘That’s Easy Vice.’
Three women in feather boas and fedoras were coming on stage, testing their instruments. One played a riff on the keyboard, while the others tuned the open strings of their fiddle and bass.
‘They used to be a quartet,’ Kelsie said softly. Had Zoe joined another band? Left town? Died?
Kelsie searched the faces in the audience, just in case she was here for old times’ sake. Would she even recognize her own mother?
The band launch
ed into their first song. Music streamed through the room. Deep, soulful music with a crying edge that made Kelsie want to weep for her losses. But also to take account of every narrow escape, every stolen moment with Chizara.
The crowd mellowed, and Kelsie fell into their soft energy. She felt soothed and protected and safe. She was home. This was home.
Chizara looped an arm around her, and they sat with their heads touching, watching the stage.
Forty minutes later, the band laid down their instruments for a break. They nodded to the crowd’s applause, and two of them disappeared into a back room. The bass player stepped offstage and went to the bar.
Kelsie got to her feet and cut across the room toward her. She felt Chizara following, close and protective.
Just as Kelsie was about to tap her shoulder, the bass player glanced her way. The woman blanched.
‘Damn. I’m seeing ghosts!’
Her gaze was so intense, like it was finding something Kelsie hadn’t known was inside her.
All she could say was, ‘Do I really look like her?’
The woman nodded, and they were both silent for a moment.
Finally she said, ‘I’m Edie. Good to see you…Kelsie, right? You’ve grown. I mean, of course.’
Kelsie laughed in spite of the fact that she was trembling. She gestured shyly at the audience. ‘I was hoping my mom would be here.’
Edie shook her head. ‘She quit the Easies years back.’
‘Yeah, I saw that,’ Kelsie said. ‘Is she in another band?’
‘Quit the business,’ Edie said sadly. ‘Quit singing. She took it hard when your daddy stole you away—’
‘That’s not what happened!’ Kelsie said hotly.
Her sudden ferocity spiraled out, catching Edie in its wake. Edie’s hand tightened around her drink. A bus boy dropped a tray, and people leaped back from the broken glass like it was glittering snakes and spiders. There was a rattled silence as he scrambled to collect the pieces.
Chizara stepped forward, putting an arm around Kelsie, and Kelsie remembered to breathe.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. She pulled back on the anger.
Edie stared. ‘That was you? Are you one of those—’
‘We’re just looking for Zoe, okay?’ Chizara said gently.