Critical Point

by S. L. Huang

  He choked out a laugh, and his hand tightened on my wrist for a second. “You should come in. He was asking for you.”

  “Seven’s a crowd. Later.” I meant it to sound light. I wasn’t sure I managed.

  Checker looked like he wanted to say something else, but instead, he just gave my hand another squeeze and went back into Arthur’s room.

  I leaned against the wall next to the door, alone in the hallway.

  twenty-four

  GETTING EVERYONE back to the Rosales house was a caravan of chaos, and I didn’t relax until we were safely behind both closed doors and Rio’s security system. Fortunately, everyone else was almost as sacked out as I was, and were being docile about it instead of following my short-fused example. They obeyed my orders without pushback, and then Diego took over to sort everyone into rooms and sleeping space.

  Arthur got the downstairs guest room so he could have dark and quiet. Elisa was to bunk in with Tabitha, and Diego pulled out a sofa bed in the living room for anyone else who needed to sleep—I caught him looking at Checker as he offered it. I wasn’t the only one who’d been up for more than fifty hours.

  I claimed the other couch with Rio’s security monitor next to me. It was the best strategic location if my alarm clock turned out to be someone trying to bust in.

  Pilar said she’d been catnapping, but her usual chipperness was starting to look worn around the edges too. With minimal prodding from Diego, she agreed to borrow some pajamas and collapse, but before she did, she made up a schedule so Arthur would never be without someone sitting with him, just in case he woke up and needed something. I was of the opinion that it was serious overkill considering how determined the kids were to spend every second hovering, but I wasn’t about to get into an argument with her about it.

  I did notice she put me on the spreadsheet but left Diego and Elisa off.

  So some hours later found me slightly better rested and having finally washed my face, and on a laptop by Arthur’s bedside while most of the household continued sleeping. I’d left the light off and the blinds drawn, working only by the glow of the screen. Before claiming a spot on the sofa bed with Pilar, Checker had gotten me copies of all the police data regarding Arthur’s kidnapping to start on, and I was slowly slogging through it.

  It felt horribly voyeuristic reading both the notes on Checker’s interrogations and the interview Arthur had given the police. Even through the filter of impersonal police observation, Checker’s desperation and fear were plain. Trapped in custody, with no way to keep looking for Arthur, no means of getting news—I was grateful Elisa had descended on him; I’d started to get a sense he might have been on the verge of saying something stupid in the hopes of getting officially arraigned and released on bail before it was too late for him to help Arthur.

  I had to stop reading a few times and switch to something else.

  But attacking Teplova’s research again was almost as depressing. Now that I didn’t only want to follow her methods, but figure out how to reverse them, her science proved far more daunting. The files didn’t seem to have any templates or records of the individual surgeries she’d done, making a simple inversion out of the question.

  I remembered again how Coach had tried to disfigure his face himself, and shivered. If changes like that were statistically insignificant against the weight of Teplova’s alterations … what if it wasn’t reversible?

  I pulled up footage of Willow Grace to try to find a frame of reference for her surgeries, but the oldest I found still had her current face. I kept the volume muted and watched her newscasting for a few minutes anyway. She was good—her bearing was so confident, I wanted to believe what she was saying without even hearing the words.

  She was also slightly different. The bones below the flawless skin of the woman I’d met sloped just inside the lines of the one on the news report—she must’ve had some additional work done since. She was also shorter in reality, but I figured that was probably heels, not bone deletion. I tried to at least figure out where the most recent modifications might fit into Teplova’s algorithms, but could figure out no statistical justification for them.

  Frustrated, I flipped to reading the police report on the interview with Arthur. At least that read more clinically than Checker’s interrogation, but I was also sure he hadn’t told the police close to everything. I’d have to re-interview him myself.

  I got the chance when Arthur stirred toward the end of my shift. His eyes cracked open. “Russell?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Hey.”

  I didn’t answer. I was glad he was all right, but not in any mood to simper.

  “Water?” he whispered.

  I found the water bottle next to his bed and stuck it within reach.

  “Thank you,” he said, after managing a few sips.

  “No problem.”

  “Not talking about the water.”

  “Well, don’t thank me for the rescue either. They let you go.”

  “Pilar, she said something…” He shifted and grimaced in pain. “Catch me up?”

  “You catch me up first.” I didn’t want him falling asleep again before I got some intel. “This isn’t over. Give me whatever you remember.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” The words were weak, but he didn’t seem as out of it anymore. “Did it for the cops, I think it helped. Don’t remember much about when … I guess it was Friday. Got bashed in the head. Don’t think I saw who, though.”

  “We think we know who.” Small favors D.J. had taken a break from the explosives obsession. “I’m glad he opted for blunt force trauma for once in his life.”

  “We sure it was D.J.?” It looked like Arthur’s features tried to tighten into a frown, but then he found it too painful. “Couldn’t see, they had me blind through all of it, but the cat who had me the whole time—thought it was a woman.”

  He’d said as much in the police interview, but I’d sort of assumed he was just trying to get the heat off Checker. “D.J.’s got a pretty high voice,” I said, digging back in my memory. “You ever meet him in person?”

  “No. And I was tracking his sig on the bombs. Right, makes sense.”

  “It’s not just him, though. He’s got some seriously supercharged people under his thumb.” I gave him a brief paraphrase of what Teplova’s surgical magic was capable of, leaving out the more personal connections to me. For now. I could tell him when he could stay awake for more than twenty seconds.

  “Shit,” Arthur said, his face going slack.

  “And he hasn’t been shy about the explosives either,” I continued. “He broke out the bombs on your office after kidnapping you, by the way. And on mine.”

  “Oh, Lord. Russell, I’m sorry—I’m so sorry—” He covered his face with both hands.

  “Not your fault.” I was much more pissed at him for other things.

  “Yes. ’S my fault. I’m sorry, so sorry, they kept—kept pushing me to say who I’d been working with, who else might know. I swore it was only me, said I was alone in it, the truth, but they—they were going to dig, go after—I knew they’d find your name on my voicemail message anyway. I got this mad crazy hope…”

  He’d given me away knowing D.J. and his cohorts would come after me. First, because he’d known I’d be easy to find anyway, but second, because he’d clung to the possibility that out of everyone, I would beat them, I would survive, I would outsmart them and turn around and come track him down.

  Arthur had used me to protect Checker and Pilar, the people who actually worked with him. He’d used me to protect his family, for just that little bit longer.

  “I’m sorry, Russell. I’m so sorry…” He was weeping now, into his hands.

  Instead of adding to my resentment, the revelation made something inside me fold open like an unraveling flower. Arthur did trust me. In some ways.

  In at least one way.

  “I did get out,” I said. “You were right.” It had been mostly luck, but I decided not to
add that. Or to reveal Tabitha had almost been blown up along with me. “It was a good call.”

  “Shouldn’t’ve said—shouldn’t’ve said anything—”

  “And who’s the person with the most clear-cut employee connection to you? Pilar, right? If D.J. was going after people who’d worked with you, she would’ve been the first one he found. Send bad guys to me instead of Pilar any day.”

  He didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure he heard me.

  I sighed. “Keep going. I want to know how D.J. got control of the doctor. How did you find her?”

  “The doctor…”

  “Teplova. You had her business card, and you asked Sonya about a mathematical formula for beauty. You’re the one who led us to her.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Didn’t think that was going to pan out, to be honest. Potential client of hers was going to meet her about six months ago … bridge went out, he had to turn around, clinic closed before he could ever reschedule. Official conclusion on the bridge was accidental construction explosion … but the case didn’t close for a while because preliminaries had a bunch of signature matches to D.J.’s devices. Thought it was worth a look.” He coughed weakly. “This sounded weird enough for a check, but there’d been so many false leads … hadn’t found much yet…”

  So he’d only been at the beginning of chasing down that thread. We knew more than he did at this point about Teplova—and about what D.J. had been doing with her research.

  Damn.

  “Okay, go back to what happened when they had you. D.J. threatened you, threatened the people you worked with, tried to find out who else might know what you’d been investigating—what else?”

  “The person who—D.J., I guess,” Arthur said. “He rambled a lot. I think there’s some plan. To … bomb a lot of places. All at the same time.”

  Holy shit. That definitely hadn’t been in the police interview. “What? Why? Is someone paying him?”

  He started coughing again, a longer fit this time. I handed him the water, but it still took some time for it to calm down. I wondered if I should worry about straining him.

  But hell, he was a grown adult. He could say if he got too tired. And more bombings? Shit, he should have led with that.

  “No, I don’t think it’s someone else’s dime. Think it’s more … personal in some way. He wasn’t being real coherent, but he sounded angry. Like this was about fixing something. Don’t know what.”

  “Keep thinking, maybe more will come back to you,” I said. “In the meantime, what kinds of places are we talking? There’s no way to stop random terrorism, but high-profile targets will have security—”

  “Yeah. I hope so. It was—now I’m thinking about it, the ranting was mostly about US-based stuff, I think. Not real specific, but I remember some things about the Hill and Washington. Big ticket places, some sort of higher cause … dunno, maybe it was just talk.”

  That frankly surprised me. And didn’t match the impression I’d had of D.J., but then, it wasn’t like I knew the guy. And if he’d been talking explosions, it couldn’t be anyone else.

  “Should tell the cops, right?” Arthur murmured. “Wasn’t sure … but now that Checker’s out…”

  “Don’t even think about telling the cops this,” I said. “You do that, they’re hauling us all in for questioning, and nobody’s getting out this time.”

  “Someone’s gotta stop him, Russell.”

  “Then we’ll do it.” We were on the case anyway. We could add preventing a few high-profile assassinations to protecting Checker and the kids and tracking down D.J. and saving Coach and … fuck me.

  “Might only be so much we can do,” objected Arthur. “Russell … might be this is best to pass on to the law.”

  “We’re not going to hang our own out to dry just to take a bullet for some politicians,” I said. “That’s not happening.”

  “But if we can’t find him—could be we won’t have a choice, you know? I was on his tail for so many months, and nada. We can give it a day or so and see if we’ve got some progress, but after that…”

  Arthur and his fucking conscience. And today, in particular, after all the secrets, after his kidnapping, after everything, the constant moral harping crawled under my skin like parasitic worms, chewing me from the inside out. Tell the cops? They’d re-arrest Checker in the first heartbeat, and probably Tabitha, and definitely me—good luck to them there. Then they’d put a bullet in Coach and odds-on end up chasing their tails trying to find D.J. until he set off whatever whole anarchist movement he was gunning for anyway.

  That was what you got for calling police. I didn’t know why I’d ever listened to Arthur.

  “You wanna tell the cops, I’m disappearing,” I said harshly. I clenched my teeth together, swallowing back bitterness. “You want to know who’s been keeping your whole damn family safe? Me and Rio. If you want to actually find out what’s going on here, let us handle it.”

  His face was still creased, and I expected him to balk again. But after a moment of thought, he nodded. “Take a day; we can revisit tomorrow if you’re not finding anything.”

  We weren’t going to revisit shit, but by a couple of days from now, I was determined to have D.J.’s head on a pike anyway. “What else did you overhear?”

  “Dunno. It’s all scattered—think maybe it was nothing I was meant to be able to catch, or there’s no way she’d—he—no way he’d have let me live, right? He kept me pretty loopy after trying to get me to say what I knew about him, who else I’d told, all that sort.”

  He was starting to ramble.

  “All right. Tell me about where you were being held.”

  “Don’t think it’s the place you found me. Real quiet. No traffic sounds, wooden floors, smelled like bleach. They had me under when they brought me both in and out, though. And just the one person almost the whole time, D.J., I guess it was. Thought I heard other footsteps a few times, but no voices. Except there was an Aussie guy in at one point, real brief.”

  We knew who that was anyway, didn’t we? We did. We definitely did. I’d check my notes.

  “I have to go call Rio,” I said. “He needs to be updated on all this. I’ll be right back.”

  “Wait. Russell.”

  I stopped in the process of shutting the laptop. “Yeah?”

  “You seem … I dunno. We okay?”

  I’d thought he’d be too out of it to notice.

  I debated just brushing him off—we had more important things to worry about—but … I was so angry with him. I’d been holding on to it this whole time, white-knuckling my resentment and fury to shove it under everything that had needed to be done to get him back.

  “You’ve probably figured out I met your kids,” I said slowly.

  “Oh.”

  “Yes, oh. And Diego.”

  His face went carefully neutral. “He’s a good man.”

  Star-crossed lovers, Jesus. “Yeah, I gathered. You want to tell me more?”

  He pressed his lips together. “Can’t say I do.”

  “Were you ever going to tell me about them?”

  He was so long responding that I thought he was going to wuss out and pretend to have fallen asleep. But he finally said, very softly, “No.”

  Something inside me went heavy and leaden.

  “Russell, you gotta understand,” he whispered. “It’s my family. The life you—your life, the people you associate with—you’re a dangerous person to know. If you met my kids, got to know them … doesn’t matter how much I like working with you. No matter what it costs, I got to keep my kids out of harm’s way.”

  I hadn’t expected him to try to defend it. I’d expected … I didn’t know.

  “Sure. Makes perfect sense,” I said, the syllables like knives. “’Cause you live such a safe and risk-free existence.”

  “Don’t think it doesn’t keep me up nights, wondering if some scum criminal will come after my family one day in revenge. But I got to do the good I can. And my li
fe doesn’t hold a candle to yours, sweetheart. Ninety percent of my cases are normal folk running into a string of bad luck, not mob bosses or arms dealers or other … questionable folk. Not to mention, I got a license and a social security card and a California driver’s license—”

  “Is that what this is about? Just because I choose not to have the government spying on my every move—”

  “No, that’s not even the point!” He was still rasping, but his voice was gaining strength. “All I’m saying is, you choose to live a dangerous life. And I’m going to do everything in my power to have as wide a moat between that kind of danger and my own flesh and blood as I possibly can. That’s it.”

  “Flesh and blood? I thought all your kids were adopted,” I said snidely.

  “You are way out of line,” Arthur said, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him. “Get out.”

  It was coming up on Roy’s turn to play nursemaid anyway. I took my computer and left.

  twenty-five

  I GOT Roy from upstairs, then looked at the time, said screw it, and woke up Checker and Pilar.

  “’S morning?” Pilar mumbled sleepily.

  “No,” I said. “Not even close.”

  I prodded them into the kitchen and then got Rio on speakerphone.

  “We have a problem,” I announced to them.

  “Which one?” Checker asked through a yawn.

  “A new one.” I relayed to them everything Arthur had said about possible political bombings. “We’re too connected to this. If we don’t figure it out before the cops do, we’re the first ones they’re going to drop the hammer on. Not to mention that Arthur’s already lied to them.”

  I didn’t mention Arthur’s oh-so-sanctimonious deadline. But that wasn’t far from my mind either.

  “Fuck,” Checker said with feeling, and scrubbed his hands over his face. “This makes a scary amount of sense. D.J. was always … you know the type, ‘it’s all too corrupt, we’ve got to burn it down to fix it.’”

  “That’s a pretty popular attitude with a lot of people these days,” Pilar said unhappily.