Critical Point

by S. L. Huang

  Willow paused for a moment. “Believe me. I haven’t hidden anything that could help find your friend. But…” She sat up straighter and shut her laptop. “All right. Tell me why he was looking into us.”

  “He wasn’t after you,” Pilar assured her. “It was an unrelated case that must have connected to Dr. Teplova somehow.”

  “D.J.,” I said. “Your friend’s killer is probably our kidnapper, and could very well be after all the rest of us by now. So spill.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me for a moment at that, but sharply, like her brain was whirring at impossible speeds behind them. Then, without sacrificing an inch of composure, she said, “I wasn’t entirely truthful earlier. I do have passwords to some parts of her file system. I don’t know if they would help, but I’ll share them with you.”

  Checker’s face tightened, and his hands clenched against his jeans. We’d been at this the whole night.

  “I apologize,” Willow Grace said. “I … I lost my friend last night. I didn’t want to do anything that would tarnish her, and the dangerous research, she was never going to use it, and I … I only wanted to protect her. I promise I’m not withholding anything else.”

  For the first time, she seemed fragile, like if she gave voice to any too-strong emotion it might shatter her.

  That didn’t stop me from wanting to do it myself. The enormity of the time wasted crashed down on me, wrapped in worry and screaming exhaustion.

  I ordered myself to calm down. She was cooperating now. It wouldn’t help Arthur for me to rage at her.

  Willow Grace reopened her laptop and hit a few keys. “Eva had some confidential files. Projects like what I assume were used to make the dogs. And other research like that.”

  Of course, she was making it really fucking hard to let go of that anger.

  Checker grabbed a tablet, presumably to follow along with whatever Willow Grace was unlocking. His jaw worked, but he didn’t say anything.

  “It’s okay,” Pilar said quickly into the tension. “We’ve got the info now, right? Let’s not lose any more time.”

  Checker took a deep breath and then spoke in a surprisingly even tone. “Whoever killed Teplova was obviously after this research. If we’re looking for a connection to D.J. or anyone else Arthur might have been tracking, the most likely trail is straight through what her enemies wanted her for, which means something in here. This is going to take a long time to sift through. I’ve got caffeine in both pill and five different liquid forms for whoever needs it; nobody sleeps till we find him.”

  He turned and started back outside.

  I scrambled to catch up. “We should get Rio on the data mining too, now that we’ve got data. He’s aces at it.”

  Checker nodded, a short, clipped motion.

  “I should go back him up anyway. I can take some laptops and keep in touch.”

  “Fine.”

  “You going to be okay here?” He didn’t look it.

  “I know she didn’t mean to, but—dammit, Cas. We lost time…”

  “You want me to punch her?” I was only half kidding.

  It was a mark of how upset he was that he didn’t have a retort and instead only shot me a hooded glare.

  “At least we know what this is now,” I tried. “This doctor’s powers, and what people were using them for.” Human weapons, to be pointed like a missile. Like Dawna. Like me.

  The apprehension sank in my gut, that Arthur’s abduction might only be the tip of it all, that this was going to go deeper than any of us had assumed … and with manufactured fear and who knew what else ready to take us out at any step. Teplova was dead, but her creations weren’t.

  I’d been right about what I’d so casually tossed out as a threat to Willow Grace: They might be after us already.

  “Hey,” I said to Checker. “I know you’ll work faster from here, but if you want us all to go over to Diego’s house together, it might be safer—”

  He didn’t stop moving, pushing out through the back door into the twilit dawn and heading back to his computer cluster. “Is Pilar armed?”

  Holy shit. Checker hated guns.

  “Yes,” I admitted. Not only did Pilar have her CZ at the hotel with her, but it turned out she’d been carrying more ammo to reload with in her trunk. I’d heartily approved, but I hadn’t thought Checker would have.

  “Good. We’ll work from here. Like you said, it’ll be faster.”

  “Checker—” I started.

  But I didn’t know what to say. We’d reached the Hole; Checker beelined inside and immediately buried himself in scrolling screens again. “Take some laptops and go, Cas. You’re right, you should be with Diego and the kids, just in case. Tell Diego—”

  He stopped, the movement on his monitors pausing with him. I waited.

  “Tell Diego I’ll fix this,” he finished finally, his hands moving on the keys again.

  We’ll fix it, I wanted to say, but the words stuck in my throat.

  thirteen

  WHEN I got to Arthur’s family’s house, the morning already had that sort of hazy, scorching sunlight that made everything too bright and hard to see. I squeezed into a parking spot pointing back toward the freeway—just in case—and hiked to the bungalow with my bag of laptops.

  All the blinds were drawn. At Rio’s direction, I was sure.

  I knocked and called, “It’s Cas.”

  Knowing Rio, he’d probably been monitoring my approach since before I was within a stone’s throw of the house. The deadbolt drew back almost immediately, and he pulled the door open. “Come in, Cas.”

  I stepped into a tiny, crooked foyer with dark hardwood floors. The house had one of those bizarre, slightly haphazard architectures that happened when places were old enough to have survived several remodels. A hallway led in front of me at a slight angle, with stairs tucked against it to the right, and doorways popping off in three directions. Picture frames lined the walls—some holding photographs, presumably of the kids as they grew up, and some holding drawings or art projects or other displays of familial sentimentality.

  It was a homey, cozy place. One that needed a lot more escape routes.

  Rio led the way through the doorway to the right, which turned out to be a room in a slightly smashed L shape that held living room furniture in the longer part of it and a dining table back closer to the kitchen. Spread out on the table were several weapons, with a KRISS Vector half field-stripped over newspaper next to some patches and oil. I noted the Vector with approval—I loved the things; they had all the elegance and compactness of an MP5 but in .45 caliber. Speaking of, I’d have to grab some .45 from Rio for my Colt. Pilar had only had nine-mil.

  Rio sat at the table and went back to cleaning his guns. “I have some security measures I would like to review with you, Cas,” he said, his hands moving deftly on the cleaning rod, “but I believe it is something we should discuss without an audience.”

  I needed to discuss everything with him, from our conclusions about Teplova to the weapons and security on down, but I’d also noticed the eyes peeking through the hinges of the open kitchen door. “What’s going on with them?”

  “They are playing a game,” Rio answered.

  Both pairs of eyes got huge and then vanished. I’d recognized one of them as Tabitha already.

  “I don’t think they realized you knew they were there,” I said to Rio. I pulled out the chair across from him and sat. “How many liabilities right now?”

  “Three at the moment—the father and one son and daughter. I have been informed there are five children total, and that two more will join us today and another tomorrow.”

  “You can introduce yourself, you know,” Diego said. I looked around. He’d come to the doorway of the cheery kitchen. “Juwon and Tabitha are home now. The twins are Matthias and Roy—they’re both USC students, and they’re taking summer session. They were staying over with friends last night, but I called and asked them to come home today so they could talk to yo
u about how to stay safe. Elisa is our eldest. She’s a lawyer down in Inglewood. She’s on a business trip today, but she’ll be back tomorrow, and she has agreed to stay here until this is over. She is not the happiest about the arrangement.”

  “Tomorrow?” I frowned. “You can’t get her back sooner?”

  Diego’s lips flattened. I supposed this was what came of impending doom getting normalized in his family, but hell, even I was freaked out by what might be going down here.

  “Look,” I tried one more time. “Not meaning to scare you, but—screw that, I do want to scare you. We are dealing with some incredibly dangerous people. They’ve already committed kidnapping, murder, and bombings that could level this block, and they targeted your ex-husband. The smartest thing you could do for your kids until this is over is hide.”

  Diego hesitated, and I thought I’d won him over for a second before he said softly, “We did, the first time Arthur told us to. And the next. And … that’s no way for anyone to grow up, pulled out of your home, scared, never knowing how bad it really is.”

  “It’s bad this time. I promise you.”

  “Thank you,” Diego answered after a moment, and it was as polite a dismissal of my argument as anyone could have sculpted. “Thank you for being here. If I seem ungracious or unhappy, it is directed at the situation, not at you. I appreciate your time and aid.”

  “If that’s the way you want it.” I debated adding that he shouldn’t blame me if the whole family was murdered in their sleep. I probably should have, but … even I didn’t want to visualize that possibility.

  Instead, I got up, leaving the bag with the laptops. “I’ll have Rio give me the nickel tour and then we’ll need to work. Keep the kids away if you want to spare them.”

  Diego grimaced. “They’re teenagers, and their father is missing. They want to know what’s going on.”

  “You won’t want them to know everything that goes on.” Not the way Rio and I worked. “Trust me.”

  We went to move past him, and Diego hesitated long enough before shifting that he managed to telegraph his unhappiness loud and clear. Christ knew what he wanted us to do about it.

  The house had bits of Spanish architecture and bits of Southwest ranch and bits of “some prior owner wanted a bigger kitchen at some point and didn’t think too much about it.” The ground floor had the odd-shaped living/dining room, a kitchen in the back, and on the other side of the hall, a bathroom and a room set up as a bedroom. In keeping with the mood of the house, the downstairs bedroom had originally been intended for something else; the doors were paned glass covered over in paper and a wardrobe stood in lieu of a built-in closet.

  Upstairs simultaneously felt small and endless—a loft that had been expanded and then expanded again during several different architectural eras. Four bedrooms, none of which were rectangular and which varied wildly in size, some windows that were dormered and some that weren’t, a funky-shaped landing at the top of the stairs, and a second bathroom that looked like it had originally been a master bath but had a door knocked in the other side now.

  The downstairs bedroom had been arranged somewhat generically, and Rio had confirmed it was the guest room Diego had offered for our use. The upstairs bedrooms, on the other hand, were all shouting with personality. The disorganized mess of newspapers and notebooks and true crime novels had to be Tabitha’s room; she had flashcards of California law spread out across an untidy desk, and one whole wall had been nailed over with corkboard and turned into what looked like analyzing real-life cold cases. A jury of well-loved stuffed animals oversaw the chaos from an unmade bed.

  Arthur and Diego must have their hands full with her.

  The largest room with two beds that was wallpapered with loud, clashing movie and music posters clearly belonged to the twins, and the smallest bedroom was a study in neatness that could rival Arthur, with alphabetically shelved books on science and Latin, a lineup of precisely spaced gadgety trinkets that included a gyroscope and a Rubik’s cube, and glow-in-the-dark stars pasted to the ceiling in a scale map of the real night sky that was pretty damn exact.

  This must be the boy who’d been with Tabitha downstairs. Juwon, Diego had said his name was.

  The fourth bedroom was clearly Diego’s, with the more restrained decorating taste of an adult and some weights and exercise equipment against one wall.

  Rio noted lines of sight, distances, and possible escape venues as we went. His tone never gave away much, but when we finished the circuit and returned to the stairs, he said bluntly, “Cas, this place is not secure.”

  “I know,” I said. Shit.

  Should we pressure Diego harder? How? Haul his kids out by their hair? It wasn’t like I knew the man, but he seemed barely inclined to cooperate as it was. Not to mention that we needed to be concentrating on finding Arthur, not wrangling recalcitrant families.

  Maybe I could get Checker to talk to him. My eyes felt grainy—God, I needed some sleep, but that wasn’t going to be happening for a while.

  “Let’s get the whole family under one roof and concentrate on the Teplova data pull,” I said. I’d briefed Rio on how my night had gone in between studying the house. “If things develop, I’ll force the issue with Diego.”

  Somehow.

  As if it had heard my last statement, something in Rio’s pocket beeped. He pulled out a device that looked something like a smartphone and said, “Someone approaches.”

  I glanced at the screen. Two gangly figures were ambling up what was unmistakably the house’s front walk.

  “Cameras and motion sensors?” I guessed.

  “I’ve set up some rudimentary surveillance. It was next on my agenda to relay to you.”

  Sending Rio had been a good idea. I might have an edge or two over him in a direct fight, but he blasted me out of the water when it came to planning and forethought.

  “The twins, I’m guessing?” I tried to recall the photos in the hallway and along the stairs.

  Rio nodded—knowing him, he’d filed dossiers of all possible friendlies away in his head immediately upon arriving. With a glance around the landing, he made a compact carbine appear from somewhere underneath his duster and slid down the hall back toward Diego’s bedroom at the front of the second floor. High ground in case any threat was following the kids.

  I split off to go back downstairs. The twins were noisy, their keys scraping and jangling in the locks as they piled in with bags and backpacks.

  “Hellooo!” one of them called from the door, making the o sound into a long hoot. “We hear our lives are in danger again! Such a dramatic existence for two lowly students of comedy. Oh! Hello.”

  The young man who was talking—a tall Black kid with dreads hanging in his eyes and a wide grin—had noticed me coming down the stairs and into view of the foyer.

  “Wait, you’re not one of the people trying to kill us, are you?” said the other one, a white boy with shaggy hair who was equally tall and lanky. “Because if so, you have to give us at least the dignity of wetting our pants and screaming for a few seconds.”

  “No, I’m here to—I’m a friend of your dad’s. Arthur’s,” I said. The two boys might have height in common, but the numerical aspects of their physical genetic characteristics had no statistically significant overlap, so I thought it likely their twinship was a chosen one. “Matthias and Roy?”

  “I’m Matthias, he’s Roy,” said the Black boy with the dreads.

  “Or Matti, if you’re friendly with him, and if you’re not, it is my fraternal duty to challenge you in a duel to the death,” Roy added.

  “Which on your end would start and end with the aforementioned pants-wetting,” Matti said.

  “Truth.”

  “You two seem awfully cavalier,” I said, before I could think better of it.

  “Oh, even threats to our lives get mundane after a while,” Matti said. “Plus, we’re comedians. We’re contractually obligated not to take anything seriously. It’s in the oath
.”

  “Don’t ask us to say something funny, though,” Roy added. “If you tell us to say something funny, we’re contractually obligated to beat you around the head with a stick.”

  “Zing!”

  They high-fived.

  “No, I meant about your dad,” I said.

  Their smiles dropped to the floor and shattered.

  “What about our dad?” Roy asked after a moment.

  “Yeah,” Matti said. “Did he call saying there’s more danger? What’s going on?”

  Diego’s voice came from behind me, in the direction of the kitchen. “Miss Russell. I’ll take it from here.”

  I turned slightly. “You didn’t tell them?”

  “Papá?” Matti said uncertainly.

  I ducked into the living room to start setting up the laptops. Roy and Matti crowded around Diego, asking if their dad was okay, asking questions he couldn’t answer any better than I could.

  But this wasn’t, apparently, a house where I could escape human company. I’d barely gotten a workspace going and signed us into a secure chat session with Checker and Pilar when Tabitha came around from the kitchen and stood watching me, her eyes wide, like she wanted to say something but didn’t want to interrupt. The brother who’d been with her before hovered behind her. I got a good look at him for the first time—skin a few shades darker than Tabitha’s, a JPL T-shirt, and a deportment that was equal parts awkward, shy, nervous, and determined. They looked to be about the same age, or maybe Juwon was a little older, though Tabitha was taller.

  I tried to ignore them and get started, but Tabitha ventured, “Ms. Russell?”

  “You want me to find your dad, right?” I said. “Then go away and let me work.”

  “We will, in a second, but, um. We wanted to say. If we can help at all—”

  “What did I tell you about ‘helping’?” I said, not looking up.

  “It doesn’t have to be important help,” piped up Juwon. “We can get you coffee, or breakfast, or run errands or—I know Tabitha makes people think otherwise, but we’re actually very good at following directions. Very good.”