Hide Her (The Erodium Trilogy Book 2)

by Kenneth Zink

  “Hey look, it’s better than nothing, smart ass.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “This is what I trained for. If I’m not ready then I don’t deserve the badge.”

  Robin pushed A-Cad from her mind, all the ways she’d been prepared for clusterfucks like this, all the times she’d been in a rough spot but come out the other side, all the things she’d had to do to get there. To stay alive.

  “Then let’s go.”

  When they popped open their doors the babel tripled in volume, a blaring rant from the man with the megaphone fused with the jabber from the crowd. The sky had flipped from light to dark, the stars masked by a pall of purple nocturnal smog that clashed with the bright white rented stadium lights shining down on the antifrag rally they were about to voluntarily walk into.

  Gloves in their pockets, Robin and Tim drifted apart, her behind the kid, close enough for her to keep an eye on him, far enough to look like they didn’t know each other.

  The street was packed from end to end, an entire city block plugged like a powder keg, smelling of hops and sweat and the onset of cold with an undercurrent of frying oil from the sidewalk vendors selling food. Burgers, fries, hot dogs, most of it drenched in cheese. They passed stragglers sipping beer at the back of the pack. One guy looked at her funny and her ring finger twitched, her gun almost barking out her sleeve like a rottweiler on a chain.

  “FRAGS THINK THEY’RE BETTER THAN US!” the man with the megaphone boomed.

  The guy looked at him and pumped his beer in the air. “NO!”

  Thank fuck for the circus. This op wouldn’t work without it. The whole rally was hyptonized, not from the rhetoric but the attention, the spotlight, the weird tone of warrior nobility they cast on themselves, creating an unholy feedback loop that fed into itself, the energy soaring without an apex.

  “THAT BITCH MOLLY WALKER THINKS SHE’S BETTER THAN US!”

  “NO!”

  “FUCK WASA!”

  Robin casually scanned the crowd, discounting everyone who was white, female, young, cutting them out of the picture in patches, looking for the leftover bits with anyone who might fit the profile of Shinzen Liang.

  Nothing yet.

  “THAT SMUG PRICK MANUEL CASTRO THINKS HE’S BETTER THAN US!”

  “NO!

  “FUCK THAT PHONY!”

  The deeper they went the denser it got, shoulders bumping shoulders, rallygoers decked out in Hardy gear, zany hats and taglined shirts, smushed together like half chewed food trudging through obese intestines.

  “EVEN THE GODDAMN CHINESE THINK THEY’RE BETTER THAN US!”

  “NO!”

  “COMMIE FUCKS!”

  Ahead, Robin saw Tim cut diagonally through the crowd. He must have spotted the target. Partners. She remembered why she hated them. If the kid was wrong it wouldn’t matter that it wasn’t her fault. She’d suffer the consequences, same as he would, simply because she’d trusted him.

  She had to remind herself he’d made it out of A-Cad. He knew what he was doing.

  She followed him, swerving off their straight path, getting close enough to the man with the megaphone for her to truly see him. Balding but hairy, his forearms as thick as his gut, spittle launching from his mouth with each syllable beneath the artificial light. He looked ordinary, like he could be a dentist with three kids and baseball on the weekends. If he looked her way he might see her, a fragment detective, other and lesser, someone powerful who deserved no power.

  “WELL I’LL TELL YOU WHAT, REX HARDY DOESN’T THINK HE’S BETTER THAN US!”

  The crowd erupted and then she saw him, the target, right next to the kid, the two of them standing still, watching the man with the megaphone, the kid smart enough to still act like he was just one of the rallygoers.

  Robin parked herself on the other side of Shinzen Liang. Short, stout, old eyes, smooth skin, bald, grey sprouts at his temple, retro converse on his feet, tattoos lining his fingers.

  Shinzen didn’t look in their direction but she could tell he somehow knew who they were without even moving his eyes from the man with the megaphone.

  “Mr. Liang?” Robin asked, monitoring the volume of the rally, using it to mask her voice within a tight radius.

  “Yes?” the old man asked.

  “I’m Detective Wray and this is Detective Avery.”

  “Partners,” Tim said.

  “Not the first folks I expected to see here,” Shinzen said.

  “Surprise.”

  Shinzen smiled. “If I was younger I’d run.”

  “Because you’d be faster or stupider?” Tim asked.

  “Both.”

  Tim looked at Robin. “Like a dick in winter.”

  “Good thing you’re neither,” Robin told Shinzen.

  “Identification?” Shinzen asked, his eyes still on the man with the megaphone.

  “You and I both know that’s a waste of time,” Robin said.

  “MAKE CHINA PAY!” the man with the megaphone said.

  Shinzen joined the crowd. “MAKE CHINA PAY!”

  “How’s this?” Tim asked Shinzen, palming his badge skyward but below his waist, where no one would see it.

  Shinzen looked down and saw the badge and looked at Tim, he and the kid looking like opposing lifeforces, young and old. “New to the job?”

  “First case ever, actually.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “We need you to come with us,” Robin said.

  “Warrant?” Shinzen asked, looking back at the man with the megaphone.

  Robin noticed a nearby woman dart her eyes their way and pull her daughter close. A warrant would take too long. They needed intel now. “We just want to ask you some questions.”

  Shinzen chuckled. “Questions.”

  “Something funny?” Robin asked.

  “Always.”

  “Mr. Liang—”

  “Shinzen,” the man said, throwing up his hand.

  “TAKE THE MOON!” the man with the megaphone said.

  Shinzen joined the crowd. “TAKE THE MOON!”

  “Mr. Liang, have you recently sold an MP5?” Robin asked.

  “I’m sure I have but my memory isn’t what it used to be.”

  “Can we see your books?”

  “Warrant?” Shinzen asked.

  “Don’t play games.”

  “Ah, I didn’t know constitutional rights were a game.”

  “Sir, we’re just looking for intel,” Tim said.

  “Should I be afraid?” Shinzen asked.

  “I don’t know, should you?” Robin asked.

  Shinzen laughed. “I don’t keep books.”

  “That should be illegal,” Tim said.

  “Should should should. What a funny word.”

  “STOP THE FRAGS!” the man with the megaphone said.

  Shinzen joined the crowd. “STOP THE FRAGS!”

  “No records at all?” Robin asked.

  “None,” Shinzen said.

  “Then we’ll have to do this the hard way.”

  “Which is?”

  “Do we have to spell it out for you?” Robin asked.

  “I see,” Shinzen said, looking down at her hands, stuffed in her pockets, before finally looking her in the eye.

  “Good man,” Tim said.

  “NO MORE WARLESS WAR!” the man with the megaphone said.

  Shinzen joined the crowd. “NO MORE WARLESS WAR!”

  “Focus,” Robin said.

  “Warrant?” Shinzen asked.

  “Your love of the law will get you killed.”

  “By who?”

  “By me.” She surprised even herself when she said it, but it was the girl, Lyla Walker, kidnapped and helpless and innocent, stuck somewhere out there in the deep dark world, that drove the words from her mouth.

  Tim looked at Robin. “What my partner means is—”

  “You know, I was on your side once,” Shinzen said. “Bought what they we
re selling. Molly Walker, WASA. Frags would be good for this country. We’d be safer and they’d be better off. Win win. The American way. Never again.”

  “HARDY! HARDY!” the man with the megaphone said.

  Shinzen joined the crowd. “HARDY! HARDY!”

  “A little girl is missing,” Robin said. “The more time you waste worming your way through a labyrinth of legality, the more likely it is that we don’t find her at all.”

  “A little girl?” Shinzen asked.

  “Six years old,” Tim said.

  Shinzen looked nowhere in particular, his eyes doing microscopic darts back and forth while his neurons clearly tried to piece things together, before he sighed and laughed and held out his hand. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  Robin felt her own hands start to sweat inside her gloves at the possibility of fragging the old man and seeing nothing but murk, again, another confirmation that she was used up. “All yours kid.”

  “Hell yeah it is.” Keeping his hands in front of his body, away from the rallygoers behind him, the kid slipped off a glove and took the hand of the old man. Started searching.

  She never would’ve admitted it aloud, but Robin hoped Tim would somehow find Shinzen just as muddled as she’d found Mac in the hospital, anything to explain away what was happening to her. Brain cancer. It was something she tried to deny despite it being an undeniable truth. Maybe the machines were wrong. Maybe maybe maybe. The epitaph of hope.

  “I assume that’s not water?” Shinzen asked.

  Robin whisked herself back to the rally and found her flask in her gloved hand, out in the open, tipped up to her mouth, a few drops of liquor lingering on the rim. She stashed them both back where they came from, the flask and the glove. Hoped no one noticed. “I don’t like assumptions.”

  “I’m sorry you’re suffering.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “Why do you think that?” Shinzen asked.

  “You don’t know me.”

  “I never said I did.”

  “You did when you assumed I was suffering.” Robin said.

  “We’re all suffering.”

  “There you go again.”

  “Done,” Tim said, letting go of Shinzen and sliding his glove back on.

  “Anything?” Robin asked, watching three men stare at her and the kid and the old man while they whispered among themselves.

  “Well, if you count a tattoo on a target who bought an MP5 from our boy Shinzen here, then yeah, we’ve got something.”

  “Son, if you weren’t a frag, you’d be alright,” Shinzen said.

  “Fuck you too.”

  “We’ll run the tattoo through the DB until we get a match, move from there,” Robin said, analyzing the crowd, planning their route out of the rally.

  “You’re welcome,” Tim said.

  Robin mocked a smile but just as she was about to turn and leave someone bumped into her and suddenly she felt something heavy in her pocket, pulled it out and found a grenade, no pin, no lever, looked for whoever slipped it in her pocket but didn’t see them, realized she was holding an explosion in the palm of her hand, wheeled her arm back and chucked the grenade straight up into the sky. The thing spun up four stories, the crowd noticing it while it rose, even the man with the megaphone stopped to stare, everyone dumbstruck, watching death levitate into the bright white heights, wondering if it would come back down before it blew, the grenade twirling up like a juniper oblong until it paused at the peak, hanging above the collective held breath of hundreds, then began its descent, headed back down to earth, about to tear a flesh hole in the street, dropping from story three to two when it finally exploded in midair.

  The air above the rally pulsed and banged a thin cloud of grey smoke.

  The crowd screamed, covered their heads, backed away from Robin and Tim. She looked around and spotted Shinzen on the front lines, as if he’d never seen them before, paused in shock along with everyone else.

  “What the fuck was that?” Tim asked, his voice bland and his face impassive, A-Cad doing its job.

  “Grenade,” Robin said, spinning around, looking for a way out of the rally. “Someone slipped it in my pocket.”

  “Fuck.”

  “You good?”

  “Fuck.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Follow my lead.” Robin pulled her badge and held it up. Went with the truth. “NIF. One of you just planted a grenade on a fragment detective. We need—”

  “THEY’RE TRYING TO KILL US!” the man with the megaphone said.

  The crowd undulated without actually charging or retreating, their pent up energy vibrating but going nowhere. Half of them donned white gloves while the other half pulled their phones out, flash on, their devices shooting spurts of blinding light at Robin and Tim like priests exorcising demons with bibles. She had to squint to see anything. The crowd melted into shadowed blobs raging into an endless roar of human clanging. One tango spat at them, another called 911, another cracked her knuckles, another launched forward with his fist leading his body but Robin dodged it and elbowed the back of his head, his torso flipping over and his face crunching against pavement just as another lunged and Robin ducked, hit him with two jabs to the stomach and one uppercut to the chin, and kicked him back just as another materialized out of the phone flashes and thumped her in the head.

  She stumbled, crushed by nausea, vision flickering, body buckling, memory receding. Where were they? Who was they? Why was she?

  She locked herself away. Breathed. Pieced her psyche back together. The same tango that had knocked her back rushed her again but Tim unleashed a flurry of hits that reduced him to a floppy meat sack. Two more tangoes rushed the kid. He let them come, weaving between styles, throwing Aikido at their arms and Krav Maga at their heads and Capoeira at their necks. Another tango drew a gun but before they could pull the trigger the kid grabbed the handle and the barrel and spun it into his own hands. The tango backed away, hands up, the crowd swallowing him whole.

  “What the fuck are we doing?” Tim asked, gun raised at the mob.

  “Staying alive,” Robin said, ejecting her own gun and aiming it at anyone and everyone, moving through the crowd alongside the kid, out and away from the center, until they breached the border of the rally and had enough space between themselves and the crowd to escape.

  They ran, faster and farther than she’d ever run before, block after block after block, their legs still pumping their bodies forward simply to be sure they were safe, the rally long gone, police sirens whining back the way they came, until they were downtown, billboards littering the buildings, the light in the air utterly artificial, the moon outshined by pixels and bulbs. When she was about to throw up from the booze sloshing in her stomach she stopped the kid and the two of them leaned against a bodega while pedestrians stared.

  She closed her eyes. Breathed deep and from her diaphragm. Pawed around her coat for the familiar contour of the book that belonged to her mother. Found it. Breathed deep again. Willed the liquor back down where it belonged, out of sight and mind, forgotten the moment it passed her tongue.

  “Robin,” Tim said.

  The nausea was just beginning to fade. “What?”

  “Look.”

  Robin opened her eyes. Tim was looking up. She followed his eyeline.

  Every billboard was playing the same thing, a recording of a dark concrete room with a single overhead light hovering above a little girl tied to a chair, hood over her head, sprigs of curly hair brushing her shoulders, a bracelet wrapped around her wrist, the kind made in kindergarten, white beads strung together, each one etched with colorful letters too small to read. Masked men flanked the girl while another masked man paced back and forth in front of the camera, speaking a language Robin didn’t recognize.

  “Mandarin,” Tim whispered.

  An unseen translator spoke over the video.

  “For decades your President, Molly Walker, has done nothing but
antagonize the People’s Republic of China. One year ago she colluded with the United Nations to draft the Open Space Deal, a plan that, contrary to its name, limits the economic rights of our great nation. The Republic of China will not stand for such doublespeak.” The masked man stopped pacing and stood beside the girl, dropping a hand on her shoulder. “This child belongs to Molly Walker, just as the right to colonize extraterrestrial space belongs to everyone equally. We propose a new deal. The President of the United States will announce a renegotiation of the Open Space Deal so that it more accurately reflects the values America claims to hold, and the Republic of China will return Lyla Walker to the custody of her grandmother.” The man walked forward and knelt before the camera, the girl out of focus behind him. “This is a war you have started, Madam President. Now you can end it. You have one day. I hope you love your granddaughter as much as she thinks you do.”

  The man walked out of frame and the video stopped, frozen on the final image of the girl tied to a chair, masked men standing on either side of her, holding rifles.

  8

  They almost died back there but all Robin could do was think of the girl. In less than a day those masked men would hurt her. Or worse. Following the explosion, the ransom video, and the realization that the clock was ticking now more than ever, Robin and Tim hopped in a cab and headed toward the man with the tattoo on his hand.

  Alexander Han. Entered the country seventeen days ago. Rented a foreclosed house in the middle of nowhere Virginia from the bank that owned it. Traveled into D.C. four times, one of which must have been to broker the weapons deal with Shinzen Liang.

  While Tim grabbed some burgers Robin ran what she called an errand, a vague word that allowed her to do whatever she wanted without him asking about it. The truth was she slipped into a nearby liquor store, bought a bottle of vodka, and shut herself in the bathroom, chugging as much of the stuff as she could handle and filling her flask before chucking the bottle in the trash. She couldn’t keep this up forever, she knew that, but she also knew she couldn’t save the girl without it. Booze. Didn’t know who she’d be if she didn’t drink. On her way out she had a feeling the clerk behind the register recognized her, the old woman looking more angry than afraid, ready to reach beneath the counter and make the mistake of her life. Robin was no longer just a frag but a specific frag, the one with her face all over the internet, phone footage from multiple angles showing the moment a fragment detective had attended an antifrag rally and proved their point by tossing a grenade in their general vicinity. It didn’t matter that it didn’t make sense, that no one got hurt, that the footage clearly showed her pause when she pulled the grenade, confused. For most people it would only validate how they already felt about frags. They were dangerous, someone had to do something, Hardy was the only one willing to do anything about these people. Same shit, different day. The NIF would open an investigation into the rally incident, use press conferences to chum the waters for the public, look like they were taking this seriously, and ultimately find no wrongdoing on her part, but the damage was done.