Zoey stared for a moment, then snorted a laugh that almost caused her to choke on her sandwich.
“Ha! Wait, was that a threat? Am I the goat in that story?”
“No, ma’am. I know it ain’t fully sunk in yet, but to someone with assets like you now possess, a threat from a man like me wouldn’t amount to more than a hiss from an angry kitten. No, ma’am, we’re here, hat in hand, to ask if we still have jobs.”
Andre swallowed a wad of chili dog and said, “Is that why we’re here? Jesus, Budd, I would have sobered up first.”
Zoey said, “I don’t even know what your jobs were. And you know what, I don’t want to know. This whole thing happened because I got up last night, because my cat got hungry and I had to go find a fork, and I stumbled into that conference room and saw Will and Ling and their cop friend messing with a severed hand.”
Budd said, “A severed what?” and Andre said, “Your cat eats with a fork?”
“It was a severed hand. Don’t ask me if I mistook something else for a severed hand because no, I didn’t. It was a hand. They had it on the table, prodding it.”
Budd said, “I’ll ask Will about this hand situation, but I can assure you that I have no personal knowledge of any recent dismemberments by any members of the staff.”
Stench Machine was finishing his fish and rice. Andre heard him clinking the bowl around, glanced down at him and muttered, “Well, that’s disappointing.”
Budd said, “The point is, Livingston Enterprises, it’s a big ol’ machine, with thousands of moving parts. And those parts are people, and investments, and transactions bein’ made, day and night. And that machine is hummin’ along even as we’re sitting here havin’ breakfast. But at the moment, there ain’t nobody at the controls. See, because that’s what the four of us did, managed various aspects of the day-to-day. Your daddy, he wasn’t one to micromanage. And Will Blackwater, well, he was your daddy’s right-hand man.”
“I can see why, he’s delightful.”
“I’m happy to admit Will has the personality of a robot programmed by an asshole. But that don’t change the fact that your daddy was like a fath—Well, the two were very close, is what I’m sayin’. Arthur was a mentor to Will and I’m here to tell you that whether you keep him or fire him, Will will never allow any harm to come to you or the business. Because it’s not what Arthur would have wanted. Carlton and Andre both can confirm that. Armando, too, I bet. Everybody knew of your father, and everyone who knew your father, knew Will.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“So, that brings us to the main reason for our visit. Will wants a meeting. In a neutral location. He was hopin’ that—well, that if you’d had a night to sleep on it, you’d see things different. Now what I’m about to say, it’s not a threat, so please don’t take it that way. That’s why I’m delivering this message instead of Will, on account of he’s got that peculiar speech impediment that makes everything he says sound like a threat. The message is, monsters like what came after you last night? Both times? They’re not gonna stop. We can help you, Zoey. But you got to trust us.”
Zoey turned to Armando, looking for a reaction. He asked Budd, “Where does he want to meet?”
“The crater. The, uh, blast site, where the warehouse used to be. Where Arthur died. Will says there’s somethin’ there he needs to show you. Both of you.”
Andre said, “Well now I don’t wanna go. That makes it sound like he’s gonna get us out there and whip out his flop-hog.”
Zoey sighed. “All right. Let me finish my sandwich.”
SIXTEEN
Zoey asked Carlton how to get to the garage, assuming they had one. He led Zoey and Armando to a library, where pulling a certain book caused a shelf to slide over and reveal an elevator, because of course it did (though Zoey noticed the spine of the secret book had been covered with masking tape onto which “GARAGE” was scrawled in Magic Marker). The elevator took them down one floor to a cavernous showroom that contained at least fifty cars. There was nice variety of long luxury cars, SUVs, and low, crouching sports cars with tinted windows and paint jobs so glossy that you could have used the reflection to apply mascara. As they made their way down the aisle, Zoey found she had left Armando behind—he was carefully examining one sinister flat black sports car. It had bulbous fenders that curved around and down the front like a pair of scowling eyebrows, with a blood-red triangular vent in the center of the hood, like the car had sustained a fatal wound. Armando looked like he wanted to cry.
Zoey said, “Is that an expensive one?”
“This is a 2020 Bugatti Chiron. Fifteen hundred horsepower, widely thought to be the apex of the gasoline-powered automobile. Only thirty of them were manufactured. At top speed it gets three miles to the gallon, which means you could get a five-hundred-dollar ticket just for being caught driving it today.”
“Looks pretty cool.”
“This, Zoey, is a twenty-million-dollar car.”
“Oh. Wow. I bet the insurance is outrageous.”
Armando realized he had picked a terrible partner for this conversation, sighed, and glanced around the room.
Zoey said, “You want to drive it?”
“I would die a happy man. But for the situation we’re walking into, we’re taking that.”
He nodded toward a big, black sedan with tinted windows, parked next to a bigger, blacker box truck like you’d use to deliver furniture. Zoey actually wasn’t sure which vehicle he was referring to, but Armando walked to the sedan, opening the doors and trunk. He seemed to approve of what he saw.
“Bulletproof glass, half inch thick. Titanium shell around the whole body, carbon fiber inner shell, silica and polyethylene glycol core to catch shrapnel. Emergency oxygen system, run-flat tires. Threat detection A.I., emergency pathfinding navigation. Refrigerator in the trunk for a blood supply should an emergency transfusion be needed.”
“Is that good?”
“A direct hit with an antitank rocket would not stop this vehicle. If somehow the driver was killed, the car would drive itself to safety.”
“Cool. You can tell all that by looking?”
“I recognize the model. It’s the same one the president uses. Get in.”
He was nodding toward the back seat when he said it, but Zoey took the front. Armando slid in, threw the briefcase Zoey hadn’t noticed him carrying into the backseat, and began tinkering with the windshield display. They had to pass through two separate garage doors to get out, the first closing behind them before the next opened, which Zoey assumed was to make sure nobody could wait outside the door and rush into the house while they were pulling out.
The scenic rich people enclave around the Casa was positioned to give the illusion that it was way out in the country, but only five minutes of driving put them back in view of the flickering forest of glass and girders that was downtown Tabula Ra$a. As she watched, a huge animated car raced across the skyline, an ad that spanned five buildings announcing a Christmas sales event at the local Changfeng dealership. They weren’t even all the way downtown and Zoey was already getting a headache. They took an off-ramp and before long, the scenery changed to hangar-sized buildings, warehouses, and silos. Zoey wondered if she owned any of it.
Her phone went off and the word “MOM” hovered over it.
“Hey, Mom. Can you hear me?”
“Heeeey, Z! Saw you left a message. You having a good time in the city?”
“You didn’t watch the news, did you?”
“No…”
“Well, when you do, don’t have a panic attack. Everything is fine. I was accosted by a man on the train but it turned out okay. Then I was accosted by another man but he’s—Everything’s fine now, that’s what you should take away from this.”
“Oh my god! Where are you now? Did you talk to the police?”
“It’s all taken care of. I’m driving around the city now, in one of dad’s cars. Or my car, I guess.”
“Did he bequea
th you a car? Are you going to keep it?”
“It’s a long story. But I think he left me some money.”
“Hey, we can get the refrigerator fixed!”
“Sure. It’s, uh, kind of complicated.”
“I was just joking about the refrigerator, honey. The money is yours, buy yourself a vacation and leave a little to get something practical for yourself. You’re a big girl and you can decide, but you know what I say, experiences are worth way more than stuff.”
“It’s a lot of money, Mom. In fact, I think he left me all of it.”
Silence. Trucks were rumbling past outside, and they passed warning signs along the road depicting stick figures suffering various industrial accidents.
Finally, Zoey’s mother said, “What a bastard.”
“I know, Mom, he should have left it to you—”
“Oh no. He knew better than that. Zoey, I hope you’re grown up enough to know that all he did was dump his burden on you. You shouldn’t have to suffer from his stupid addiction.”
“He was an addict?”
“Honey, you don’t make that kind of money unless you’re addicted to making it. These stockbrokers who work hundred-hour weeks piling billions on top of billions, you think they could stop, even if they wanted to?”
“It really did seem like he was having a good time…”
“Of course, because one hundred percent of his energy was devoted to building up appearances. You remember Elba the cat lady, used to live in the blue trailer? When she died they found she had over fifty cats in there, and they ate her face?”
“Ew. Gross. Yes, I remember that.”
“So why do we call her crazy for piling her trailer full of more cats than she could take care of but applaud when somebody accumulates more money than they can spend? They’re both hoarders.”
“All right, all right, I shouldn’t have brought him up. I know how much you hated him.”
“Don’t ever say that. I never hated that man for one second. He gave me the most beautiful, perfect daughter in the whole wide world.”
“I have a sister?”
“You definitely inherited his smart mouth, missy.” Armando was steering them around orange cones and a flashing sign that was trying to tell them the road ahead was closed. “My suggestion is you just bail out and let them take care of it. I’m betting that within the next week a swarm of lawyers and creditors and loan sharks and lord knows who else are all going to show up at the door. In my mind, you are under absolutely no obligation to put up with any of that. Life’s too short.”
“Like I said. It’s complicated.”
“I say just keep enough to do something fun. Heck, take a few thousand dollars, ride the train down to Vegas and just blow it all. Get one of those fancy hotel rooms with the big bubble bath, pick up some handsome boy, make a bunch of mistakes, and then come home and tell me all about it.”
“Okay, I should go.”
“Just make sure he uses protection.”
“Mom! God.”
“Good-bye, honey. See you Sunday.”
She hung up and Armando said, “We’re coming up on it here.”
Zoey saw what was ahead and said, “Oh, wow.”
The car stopped at a barricade flashing an announcement that the inlet road was closed and that no one was permitted beyond that point. Beyond it, Zoey could see the aftermath of the explosion. It was a giant perfect circle of black—it looked like God had reached down and taken out a football field–sized hunk of earth with a huge ice cream scooper. Arthur Livingston had gone out in spectacular fashion. Almost as if he had planned it that way.
Armando said, “It broke windows fifteen blocks away.”
Andre and Budd pulled up alongside them in Andre’s Bentley. Zoey stepped out and they all walked past the flashing barriers and made their way toward the blast crater. Within ten steps she was walking precariously on a jagged pile of debris—busted cinder blocks and shards of glass and twisted metal beams—that got more treacherous as she neared the black bowl where the warehouse had been. There were yellow bulldozers and backhoes and other vehicles scattered around the crater like toys, making it look like a giant sandbox some enormous toddler had been playing in. Everything smelled like burnt toast.
From behind her, Budd said, “You see that black gunk splattered all over them bricks there? That’s glass. When this place blew, it melted in an instant and sprayed every which way.”
“What could do this? I mean I know it was a warehouse, but what was in it?”
“You figure it out, be sure to let the rest of us know, all right?”
Andre said, “That’s Will, out there by the crane.”
Andre tromped off into the charred wasteland, and Budd followed. Zoey glanced back at Armando who said, “It’s not a good ambush location, if that’s what you’re wondering. No choke points and no place to hide gunmen.”
Zoey nodded toward his little black briefcase. “Is that full of guns?”
“Not full, no. But we’ve got a few things in here we might find useful should things go sour.”
They trudged out into the crater and Zoey asked, “Should I have a gun? Just in case?”
“What kind of training do you have?”
“I’ve seen a lot of movies. As far as I can tell, as long as you’re the good guy the bullet just goes right into their heads. It’s only the bad guys that miss.”
“I can sign you up for a six-week course, and after that we can talk about you carrying. But otherwise, no.”
“Six weeks? I don’t intend to be here six days if I can help it. So what if a psychopath jumps me in an alley when you’re not there?”
“The gun without the training just means you’ve given your attacker a free gun.”
They crunched through the charred landscape until they got close enough for Zoey to see that Will was standing next to a ruined truck. It was a pickup with a Livingston Construction logo on the side, and it had been twisted completely around—the rear wheels were upright, the cab was upside down, everything in between looking like it had been wrung like a wet rag. Echo was crouched near a bumper, examining it like a crime scene tech. Zoey wondered how in the hell she had traversed the crater in those heels.
Zoey said to Will, “I’m here, show me what you got to show me.”
Will just gestured toward the twisted truck.
Zoey shook her head. “What am I looking at? The truck? It looks like it made it out of the explosion better than the building did.”
Will shook his head. “This didn’t happen in the blast. The truck belongs to the cleanup crew. They left it parked here last night, this is what it looked like this morning.”
“I don’t understand.”
Echo said, “Look at the bumper.”
Zoey walked around to the front and Echo said, “You see those dents? Two of them, each about as wide as a hand, about four feet apart on the bumper? One on top, one on bottom.”
“All right.”
“Now imagine in your mind a person grabbing the bumper so that they could twist a truck in half with their bare hands. That’s where the dents would be.”
“Oh. Oh.” A freaking person had done this. Zoey felt a sinking in her gut. Suddenly the five of them seemed very exposed, standing out here in the open. “Jesus.”
Will asked, “Now do you understand?”
“Not in the least.”
“It’s a threat. Intended for us. Or rather, you, since now these are your trucks. It’s from Molech.”
“There’s that name again. What’s this guy’s deal?”
Will pulled out his phone and brought up a video feed. “This is from a drone, above us right now. Look.”
It was an overhead view of the dark circle of the blast crater, zooming in until Zoey could see the six of them standing around the twisted truck. The ruined vehicle was, she could now see, part of a message that could only be viewed from the sky—the truck they were examining formed the lower part of a capital “
L.” Scattered around the crater were the remains of probably a dozen other vehicles that had been torn apart and rearranged to form four letters: G O L D.
Zoey said, “What, he wants Arthur’s gold? He can have it. Tell this Molech he can pick it up, or we’ll drive it to him, whatever is convenient. Throw it in the trunk, we’ll take it right now. I totally don’t care.”
Will shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Are you saying we don’t have any gold?”
Andre answered, “Oh, I’m sure Arthur had some, somewhere. Gold and platinum and several hundred other commodities that made up a portfolio that even he barely kept track of. If somebody stole all the gold Arthur owned, he probably wouldn’t even have noticed. Probably kept it in a cigar box in his basement.”
Budd said, “It’s like if somebody kidnapped your family and their only ransom demand was a jar of mayonnaise.”
Zoey said, “Okay, and why do these people seem to have superpowers, again? Are they magic?”
Will said, “No. But the reality isn’t any less alarming.”
“Tell me.”
“Information like that, Ms. Ashe, is precisely the kind of helpful insight I bring to the table as one of the chairmen of Livingston Enterprises. Unfortunately, I am not currently employed in that capacity, as you know.”
“Ah. That’s what this is about. You want a share of the money.”