The Water Knife

  Case was going to be pissed.

  The girl was staring up at the broken dam. “Who did that?”

  The same question Catherine Case probably was asking, but with the pointed addition of why didn’t I know it was coming?

  Angel didn’t envy Ellis, if he ever surfaced again. Case would put his head on a spike for missing this.

  “California probably. They’ll deny it, but it was their water. Colorado wasn’t sending it down the way they were supposed to.”

  “How come?”

  “Farms are drying up, cattle are dying. Standard stuff.”

  “So California blew up the dam?”

  “Looks that way.”

  Angel scanned the people around him, trying to come up with a way out of the trap, seeing no help in the mix of Chinese technical talent and Zoner finance types watching the shit hit the fan in Colorado.

  He spied the jogger Cali still doing his stretches. Nobody seemed to be looking for Angel in particular. Or else his outfit and companion were enough to throw them off. The two Calies he’d passed before were coming down again—he could see them getting on the glass elevator.

  “Do me a favor,” Angel said to Maria. “Look over slow and easy at the elevator coming down. You recognize either of those two guys? They the ones who killed your friend?”

  She glanced over, then turned her gaze back to the TVs. “I—I didn’t really see them. Just their shoes.”

  “And they don’t match?”

  “No.” Her brow knitted. “One of the guys had cowboy boots. Jeans, too. Not business suits.”

  “But it was two guys who took the woman?” he asked. “You sure about that? Did either of them have a business suit?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I mostly just heard them.”

  “She was alive, though, when they took her out?”

  “I think so. They wanted to ask her questions.”

  Angel scanned the Calies again. “You’re sure about the cowboy boots?”

  “Yeah.” She sounded definite.

  Angel leaned back, disappointed. None of the six Calies Angel had spied so far were dressed casually. For a second he’d hoped he might find a lead on what had happened to Lucy. If she wasn’t dead already, she’d be dead soon. Professionals didn’t leave witnesses. “Were you friends with the lady?” Maria asked.

  The question took Angel off guard. “No. Why?”

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe she was your girl or something. You seem awful worried about her.”

  Angel thought about it. “She was…she had some ice in her. Real hard-ass lady. Kind of liked that about her.” He shrugged. “ ’Course, she was a journo with some real high principles. And that shit just gets you killed.”

  “Stupid,” the girl said.

  “Yeah.” Angel sighed. “You’d be surprised how many people get their priorities screwed up.”

  The Calies were joining up with one another, a whole clump of them, and suddenly they were all looking in Angel’s direction, reaching up to earbugs to talk with their friends.

  “I do believe they’re on to us,” Angel said.

  He stood slowly, stretching, and sure enough, the Calies started to move. Casually, just like Angel. But still, on the move.

  Angel scanned the atrium one last time, studying the infinity pool where it spilled over the lip and cascaded down. Waterfall to lazy river, to filtration, to the farms…

  He walked to the overlook fence. Four stories down to lily pads and ponds.

  The Calies were sweeping around the edge. They’d have badges. Real badges that would stand up against Taiyang Security’s suspicions.

  Angel glanced at Maria. “Can you swim?”

  CHAPTER 24

  The most terrifying thing about the men was how businesslike they were.

  They frog-walked her through the heat with a brisk efficiency, shoved her indoors, and strapped her to a chair without giving her an opportunity to escape or struggle.

  When they finally yanked the sack off her head, she found one of them laying out gleaming implements of torture on a kitchen counter.

  The other was straddling a chair, watching her, smiling slightly.

  “Well hello, Lucy Monroe.”

  The man had taken off his ballistic jacket and hung it on another chair beside him. He was wearing a wife-beater that showed tattoos running up his arms: a dragon coiled up one arm, and on the other, an image of La Santa Muerte, Lady Death, displayed in intricate glory.

  “You like my tats?” the man asked, catching the direction of her gaze.

  Lucy tested her bonds; they’d done a good job. Her ankles were strapped to the chair legs, her arms pulled behind her and bound at both elbows and wrists. The cording cut into her skin, tightening when she tested it. Her fingers tingled from cut-off blood flow.

  Her captor watched, smiling slightly, seeming to know exactly what she was trying to do.

  Tattoos. A goatee…

  “I know you,” Lucy realized. “You’re from the morgue. You were one of the fake cops.” She swallowed. “You work for Vegas.” She looked over at the man laying out the knives and pliers. He wasn’t the other water knife. He looked like some cholobi pulled off the streets. Tats all over him, face and body. Bald, with piercing hungry eyes.

  “Where’s your friend?” she asked.

  The goateed man laughed. “He’s a little slow to figure out how Phoenix works. We’re doing this party without him.”

  They were in the kitchen of some suburban house. An open floor plan. Saltillo tile. Behind the man, glass sliding doors showed the blast-furnace blaze of Arizona desert, cut by a line of high chain-link fences topped with barbed concertina wire. Beyond the fences, desert hills ranged upward, studded with creosote bushes and desiccated saguaros, festooned with Clearsacs glittering in the sun.

  “What’s your name?” Lucy asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  It didn’t. Not really. It was just her reporter’s brain, somehow still trying to create a story, even as her story was coming to an end.

  The cholobi set a hacksaw on the counter beside a roll of rubber medical tubing.

  “You got any tats?” her captor asked.

  The chain-link fence beyond the sliding glass doors was weirdly familiar. She glimpsed a sliver of blue beyond the fencing. A river? No…

  The CAP.

  She was seeing the Central Arizona Project canal. The artificial river was no more than a hundred feet away, placidly flowing blue—which placed her either north or west of the city, at the edge of Phoenix’s sprawl.

  Which helped her not at all.

  The chain-link and barbed wire were to keep people from getting to the open water flowing in the concrete-lined canal. When she’d first come to Phoenix, she’d written stories about refugees cutting through the chain-link, only to be shot dead by Phoenix militias. Now the fences displayed high-voltage warnings along their length, and drones patrolled overhead, and people avoided the no-man’s-land.

  Lucy wondered if there was some way she could use the CAP’s security to her advantage. Some way to get the Bureau of Reclamation’s security personnel to give a damn about her. Get the attention of some drone in the sky—

  “None? No tats at all?”

  Her interrogator seemed genuinely interested.

  “Why?” Her voice was thick. She cleared her throat. “Why do you care?”

  “No reason.” He rested his chin on the back of the chair, dark eyes considering. “Just thinking that I probably need to cut them out if I don’t want you identified.”

  His companion came over and handed him a kitchen knife. He tested the edge and nodded. Got up from his seat. Pushed the chair aside.

  Lucy could feel herself beginning to hyperventilate. She wanted to be strong and not break down, but all she could feel was her heart speeding up as he approached with the knife. She jerked against her bonds, trying to get free.

  The knife came closer, and she screamed. P
ure reflex. But once the panic started, she couldn’t stop. She screamed and thrashed against the cords that held her immobile and tried to get away from the approaching knife. She screamed desperately, trying to reach out to someone beyond the walls of the house, to make someone, anyone, hear and care.

  The man brought the blade up to her eye.

  Lucy threw herself backward. She toppled and slammed into the floor, still tied to the chair.

  Her captors laughed. They got down and lifted her and the chair upright again. Set her steady on the tile floor.

  “That had to hurt,” the man said.

  The assistant came around behind and gripped her shoulders. His fingers dug in, holding her steady. She could hear his breathing, ragged and excited.

  The man with the knife dragged his chair closer to her.

  “I’d gag you, but the problem is, I need answers. So if you got more screaming to do, you go ahead. I mean, we’re in the last empty suburb on the last empty road at the end of the fucking earth, but if you gotta scream, I get it.” He leaned in. “It’s all part of the business, right?”

  She was done with screaming. Already she could see how this would go. She tried to steel herself for what was coming, wishing for a fast way out, but knowing these men wouldn’t give it to her. She wondered if she could throw herself into the man’s knife. Maybe kill herself faster than he intended.

  I’m never going to see Anna again.

  “We each got work to do,” the goateed man was saying. “I got to do some hurting, and you got to do some screaming. Just like your friend Jamie did some screaming.” He grinned. “Now, that boy—that boy had a set of lungs. But you don’t got to go that way, you know. You don’t got to die with a broom up your ass. You don’t even got to hurt, much.” The man tested the edge of his knife. “All you got to do is talk instead of scream, and this goes easier for everyone.”

  Lucy found herself wishing she could send a message to Anna and her kids. Tell them…something. Not to worry about her? That she loved them? What kind of message were you supposed to send when you knew you were about to be tortured and killed?

  Absurdly, Lucy thought of Anna and her handcrafted cards.

  I’m never going to feel rain again.

  More and more it was sinking in. She was going to end up as a photo in one of Timo’s blood rags. Just like all the other people who ended up in empty swimming pools. Just another body. Just another enticement for click-thru on some voyeuristic news site.

  #Swimmer

  #PhoenixDowntheTubes

  #BodyLotty

  #ReportersWithoutBorders, if someone managed to ID her.

  “What do you want?” Lucy asked. “I’ll tell you anything you want. Just please don’t hurt me.”

  “Good girl!” The man smiled. “Let’s start with your friend James Sanderson. He had some water rights he was selling.”

  Lucy nodded. “Yes.”

  “The way I heard it, these rights, they’re senior to God. Might be the most senior rights ever existed. Old old old. That about what you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nice! Thank you.” He smiled. “Now…do they really exist?”

  “Jamie said they did.”

  He looked disappointed. “You never saw them?”

  She shook her head. “He wasn’t open like that.”

  “Yeah. Motherfucker played me pretty good, too. I mean, here I was, thinking he was going to sell us some sweet water rights, and I come up empty because the motherfucker already sold them to California.” He laughed. “Motherfucker jerked me around good.”

  “I told him he was being stupid.”

  “You knew about that?” He smiled. “I told him double-dealing doesn’t pay while I was digging his eyes out.” He paused. “You want a drink of water? You thirsty?”

  Lucy swallowed. Shook her head. Her interrogator glanced up at the cholobi behind her. “My buddy behind you really wants to see you hurt. But I told him we’d hold off as long as you told me the truth.”

  “I am telling you the truth.”

  “That’s good.” He leaned forward, studying her face. “That’s good.”

  His knife dangled casually in his hand, seeming to come to accidental rest between her legs, against her inner thigh.

  “So let me tell you my problem,” he said. “While I was digging out your friend’s eyes, he told me he sold those rights to the Calies.” The knife began to move, a lazy stroking motion. “Now, I don’t take that too personally—I mean, we know those motherfuckers got money. But here’s the strange thing. The Calies can’t seem to find the rights, either. They got people running all over the place looking for the same thing I am. Your friend Jamie swore he sold them to California, but no one there has them.” He smiled as he continued stroking her thigh with the knife. “And here’s the thing that’s got me thinking. You see…I keep running into you. You’re everywhere the Calies are. And you’re everywhere poor old Jamie was. And that makes me think you’re in this deeper than you’re saying.”

  “I’m not! I don’t know anything. Jamie told me he sold the rights, too. He was just screwing with Vegas. He wanted to rip off Catherine Case. That’s all I know!”

  “The boy was ambitious. Gotta give him credit there.” The knife slid up her thigh. It pressed against her crotch. Lingered. Promising violence. The blade slid up her stomach, slipped under her shirt. The point pricked her skin.

  “Just tell me what you want to know! I’ll tell you! You don’t have to hurt me! I’ll help you!”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get to that.”

  With a single slice he ripped the knife upward, cutting away her T-shirt and leaving her exposed.

  “Nice tits,” he said. He turned to his assistant. “Gimme the electrical cord. I don’t want her blood all over me.”

  “But I don’t know anything!” Lucy protested.

  “Don’t worry about it. This is just business.”

  —

  By the time he’d finished with the whipping, Lucy’s body was crisscrossed with fire, and she was shaking with uncontrollable spasms of terror. Her voice was hoarse from screaming.

  Her torturer wiped his forehead, grinning. “God damn! I’m sweating!”

  He went into the kitchen and filled a glass of water from an urn. Drank. Came back with the glass.

  “You thirsty? You want a sip before we get back to it?”

  Lucy summoned all her hatred and spat in his eye. Her torturer jerked back in surprise. She held her breath, expecting violence, but instead he smiled, which was almost worse. The man wiped the spit off his face. He examined his wet fingers, then smeared the spittle down her own cheek. She tried to bite him, but he was too fast for that as well, as if he’d known exactly what she would try.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I know you needed to get that out of you. If you go on and tell me what you know, maybe I’ll forget that you did it. But I got to be honest—if you didn’t like the whipping, you’re definitely not going to like what happens when I keep working you, because this is just warm-up.”

  “But I don’t know anything,” Lucy protested. “I really don’t.”

  He took another drink of water and set the glass on the counter beside the pliers and knives and needles. “You know, I’d believe you, except after I jammed a broom up your friend Jamie’s ass, he told me a lot more than he started out telling me. People got a way of holding out, you know? Took old Jamie a while to give up all the details. So I had to poke around in him. Kind of frustrating, ’cause California does things right. Got all these fronts and blinds so you can’t really tell who’s doing the paying and who’s doing the collecting, which makes it hard to know what you need to ask. But if you keep poking around, eventually you get everything.” He nodded at his companion. “If you waste any more of my time, maybe I’ll let Kropp poke around in you for a little while, see what pops out.”

  “All I knew was that Jamie was trying to sell the rights to California. And he was planning
on jerking Vegas around. He had back-to-back meetings, and he was really proud of himself.”

  “How did you know Ratan?”

  “I didn’t. He was just a lead. I was trying to figure out who killed Jamie.”

  “And here I am, helping you out with that.” He smiled. “You going to get me a Pulitzer for my original reporting?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “How about you help me out?” he said. “Tell me how you and Ratan were actually connected.”

  “I told you already—we weren’t.”

  “You know, if Ratan was here, alive and all”—he glanced pointedly at Kropp—“I might believe you. Problem is, he walked his face into a bullet. And that makes me suspicious, because you knew the guy who was selling the water rights. And you knew Ratan, the guy who bought them. And that makes me think you’re in the middle somehow. Might be that you’re the one who actually has them.”

  “I’m not! I don’t! Jamie had them! Not me!”

  “You know, I’ve been spending the last three days running around, trying to find out where the fuck those water rights ended up. I mean, I ambush your friend Jamie and my guy Vosovich, and for what? Nothing. I get nothing out of it, because your friend Jamie’s already sold the rights, and he’s just dicking us around like we’re his second-best girl who he’s never going to marry. Which leaves me in a tight spot. At first, I think I can maybe just grab the money your boy Jamie got out of California, except when I dug the bastard’s eyes out, I lost my best chance at retina-scanning my way into his bank accounts. I mean, how the hell was I supposed to know I’d need his eyes? So now I got nothing, and I got to cover my tracks, and I just got to eat the fact that I fucked my big score.”

  He grinned. “But then you know what happens? Good old Michael Ratan pops up, saying maybe he’s got something special to sell, and he wants to talk. Hmmm. Wonder what that could be? What could a nice buttoned-down Cali like Ratan have that he’d want to sell to Vegas? Maybe it’s something he don’t feel like giving to his bosses, ’cause it’s too fucking valuable.” He laughed and shook his head. “Motherfucker’s making the same play I would have made, if I’d gotten hold of those rights. It’s kind of beautiful, really. I mean, here I am, shaking my whole network, trying to find out if anyone knows where those rights went, and old Ratan comes running right to me, saying he’s got something big, and he wants to sell it, if Vegas will guarantee him safe passage and a whole fuckton of digital currency.” He grinned. “Except Ratan’s worse than stupid when it comes to working shit like this. So”—he shrugged—“you know. I drop in early on him.” He leaned forward. “And then the motherfucker goes and gets himself dead, and I get stuck with his laptop and no passkeys.”