by Jackson Ford
“What do you mean?”
“We don’t know who they were. And we have no way of finding out.”
“Sure we do,” Nic says, a note of excitement creeping into his voice. “Health department’s staff list will be online. Just find the guy responsible for ocean health, who also happens to be big and bald.”
“With what computer?” Carlos replies.
Annie starts laughing. It’s the exhausted, can-you-believe-this-shit laughter of someone reaching the very end of her rope. She clutches her stomach, howling with glee. “Sorry,” she says. She’s under control for half a second, then erupts into another guffaw.
“What is your problem?” Carlos says.
Annie gets herself under control. “How far are we from UCLA?” she asks Nic.
“Maybe half an hour? On foot, anyway.”
She holds out her hand to Paul, who passes her his phone.
“No,” I say.
“Yup.”
“No fucking way.”
“Yes fucking way,”
“You’re telling me he’s—”
“Evening shift.” She grins. “Son of a bitch got out the Bloods, started working at UCLA.”
Nic spreads his hands. “Is that supposed to mean something? Who are we talking about?”
I rest my head against the side of the pool. “Mo-Mo.”
Paul groans, and Carlos rolls his eyes, unable to keep the smile off his face. I fill Nic in, telling him about our quest to find Maurice Saunders.
“But you don’t have his number any more, do you?” Paul says to Annie.
“Don’t have to. Directory enquiries gave the UCLA library number straight off, so—Oh, hello? Yes, hi, could I speak to Maurice, please?”
“Should we really be walking that way?” Paul asks. “With the police looking for us?”
“I could steal another car,” I say, even though the thought of using my PK so soon after I destroyed Nic’s apartment isn’t exactly happy-fun-good-times.
“Another car?” says Nic. “When was the first one?”
Goddammit, I hadn’t actually mentioned that we stole one the first time. All the same, there’s a little beat of excitement in my chest. Finally, a lead we can use.
“They’d have trackers anyhow.” Annie says, hanging up. “Last thing we need. Anyway, he’ll wait for us.”
“Is this really a good idea?” Carlos says quietly.
We all fall silent. It’s that uncomfortable quiet you get when you know you have to make a big decision, and nobody wants to be the first to commit.
“This is getting kind of crazy,” he says. “I just think that… I dunno, man. If we bug out now, we might have a shot. They can’t chase all of us.”
“We can’t just run,” I say. But how true is that? Up until now I’m pretty sure everyone’s been staying together because they needed China Shop. Then the cops got involved, and Burr’s team showed up. And it’s like Carlos’s question has opened a box that can’t be closed again. If we run now, it’ll be hard—but it might be easier than plunging ahead, when we’re certain of almost nothing.
I don’t want that to happen. I might have my PK, but without these people—without China Shop—I’d never have survived. Annie’s connections, Paul’s brain, Reggie’s leadership and computer skills. We’re hanging on by a thread already, and if everybody decides to go, I don’t know if I’ll make it.
“He has a point.” Paul nods at Carlos. “That spec ops team wasn’t more than four or five people. My guess is, they probably don’t have the manpower or resources to hunt all of us, if we go our separate ways.”
“That’s what I’m saying.” Carlos pounds a fist into open palm. “We don’t even know if the health department guy is still alive—or if the killer knows about him.”
Nic frowns. “There are pros and cons, I guess…”
“Plus, even if we do find him, we gotta find another car. Because I guarantee you that he’s not just living down the block. The longer we stay out there—”
“We’re doing it,” I say. But Carlos doesn’t even look at me. I feel sick. Africa’s call gave me a tiny bit of hope, but if it wasn’t enough to convince them, then I’ve got nothing else. There is no Plan B.
“I think we need to put this to a vote,” says Paul.
“What, like, stay or go?” Nic says, glancing at me.
“Guys,” I say. “Come on…”
“Yes.” Paul puffs out his chest. “We vote on it. Annie, what do you think? How about it?”
Annie mutters something, looking at her feet.
“Beg pardon?” Paul says.
“OK, well, I vote we split up,” Carlos says, raising his hand. “Sorry, Teags—you kind of knew I was going to.”
“Annie, I didn’t hear you,” Paul says. “What do you think about a—”
“Cut the shit.” Annie’s fists are clenched, held tight at her sides.
“I’m sorry?”
“You heard me. Shut the fuck up.”
She looks around, taking us all in. “You’re trying to make this whole thing logical, like any of this makes sense. You wanna talk about pros and cons and voting, and whether it’s worth doing this and yadda yadda, when none of you wanna admit how scared you are.”
Her words are forceful, but the way she’s saying them is strange. She’s not looking at anyone, and the way she’s clenching her fists… I thought it was because she was angry, but it’s more than that. It’s like she’s doing it to steel herself.
Nic tilts his head. “We’re not—”
“Nope.” She shakes her head. Hard. “You’re scared. You’re fucking terrified, and you just don’t wanna admit it. You wanna pretend like we can solve everything if we just talk about it enough, and that’s just bullshit.”
“Now just hold on,” Paul says, taking a step towards her.
“Teagan.” She turns to me. “I don’t like you. You do stupid shit, you act like a five-year-old and you never take anything seriously.”
I blink at her. “Yeah, well… you…”
“Shut up, I wasn’t finished. You might be a pain in the ass, but you were right about one thing: none of us are straight with each other.” She levels a finger at me, rounding on everyone else. “This bitch got the balls to speak her mind. With that cheese-sandwich stunt back at the apartment—she didn’t know that shit was gonna work. She didn’t know how you—” The finger finds Nic. “—were gonna react. What does that make us, if we can’t even admit why we don’t wanna do this?”
Paul is giving Annie the strangest look—like she’s turned round and casually stated that the earth is flat.
“You want honesty, Teagan? You want the truth? Here it is. I’m scared too. I’m scared my mom is gonna wake up tomorrow and find out her only daughter got sent back to prison. Or got killed. How about you, Teagan? You scared?
My tongue feels odd in my mouth, heavy and thick. “Yeah.”
“Good. You should be. You’re in way over your head, and you’re probably gonna get yourself shot. But I’m not gonna leave you to do it and tell myself there was a good reason. I’ve done…”
She closes her eyes suddenly, lets out a long, slow breath.
“I’ve done some shit I’m not proud of. Things I haven’t told you guys. When this is over, maybe I can set it straight, same way you did with him.” She nods at me, then waves a hand at Nic. “But right now? We’re gonna do this. We’re gonna stand up for each other, no matter how scared we are.”
I am an ugly crier. I am talking snot everywhere, fire-engine face, honking sobs. So it is a damn good thing that I manage to keep my emotions in check.
Paul lets out a long sigh. “I go where Annie goes.” His eyes meet mine. “We’re with you.”
Carlos gets to his feet, a look of deep discomfort on his face. He still wants us to run. Him, me, everybody. But instead of pushing the point, he just nods and says, “OK. We’ll do it your way.”
“How about you, man?” Annie asks Nic.
If he wants to take off, I won’t stop him. It’ll kill me—it really will—but I can’t force him to stay. He’s had his entire world turned upside down, the laws of physics broken right in front of him. That’ll do a mind job on anybody.
He looks back at me. Holds my gaze for the longest time.
“What are you going to tell… Mo-Mo? That his name?” he says.
“What do you mean?” Paul asks.
“Are you going to tell him the truth? About what you guys do?”
I open my mouth to reply, but what the hell am I supposed to say? Should we tell Mo-Mo the whole truth, after my big speech? Do I show off my ability again? What if…
“No.”
Annie looks a little calmer now. More determined. As if she’d been squaring up to take a punch, and when it landed, it turned out whoever threw it can’t hit for shit.
“We can’t tell him,” she says.
Carlos frowns. “You said—”
“I know. It’s not right, and I know I just gave you all that stuff about being straight, but we need to be smart before we tell the whole world. I don’t have a solution for it right now, but we’ll figure it out.”
She sees our blank looks. “You know what I’m trying to say. We have to lie… but we can at least be honest about why we’re doing it.”
A slow, exhausted smile creeps across Nic’s face. “I’m a lawyer. That should have been my line.”
Which is when I know it’s going to be OK. Not for ever. Maybe not even for the next hour. But right now? Just for a little bit? Yeah.
I put a closed fist to my mouth, mostly because those emotions I mentioned are about to come tumbling out of me. The urge to hug Nic is enormous, but if I do that, I really will start bawling. Instead, I give him a very grateful nod.
“OK.” Annie gives a brisk nod. “I’m tired of playing defence. Let’s go get this asshole.”
As we climb out of the pool, Paul coughs. “Teagan?”
It’s still hard to talk. “Yeah?”
“Am I saved in your phone as ‘Agent Whiteboard’?”
“What? No. Absolutely not.”
“Really.”
“Yeah. For sure.”
“Because your friend Africa seems to think—”
“Can we please just take this shit seriously?” Annie is already over by the side of the house. “At least until we’re not running for our lives?”
THIRTY-SIX
Teagan
We don’t speak much on the way to UCLA. We stick to the shadows, even when we reach the campus. The place is quiet, its wide avenues lit by soft yellow street lights. There’s no sign of the cops or Burr. No sign of anybody.
We pass a building with two towers bracketing a set of swooping arches, lit from below by spots. It’s peaceful—like I could curl up on the grass and just close my eyes, without a care in the world. Wouldn’t that be nice.
The library is in the north part of the campus—a big brick building set back from the street. And it’s there, after checking in at reception, that we finally meet Mo-Mo Saunders. At this point I’m not sure whether I want to hug him or beat him to death.
He’s Annie’s age, wearing jeans and a neat blue button-down. The shirt is open over a white T, with a weird acronym on it, UCLA IOES, under a green and blue circle. He looks like he should be holding court in a philosophy seminar.
Until he opens his mouth. “Annie Cruz,” he says, leaning against the door frame. His eyes are huge, his pupils rattling around like pachinko balls. He is stoned out of his mind.
“Hey, Mo-Mo,” Annie says. “You’re a hard man to track down.”
“Who this?” he says, nodding at us. Or he tries to nod, anyway—the movement kind of carries him forward, nearly spilling him down the steps he’s standing on.
“Friends.” She steps past him, gesturing at us to follow. Mo-Mo turns his head to look at her, which almost sends him stumbling in the opposite direction. There’s a huge gentle grin on his face.
The inside of the library makes me wish, for the second time, that I could just stop. It’s beautiful: high vaulted ceilings, intricate columns, winding staircases. Hogwarts, if one of Harry’s wacko spells teleported it to California. It’s just as quiet here as it was outside, with no more than a handful of students around, most of them reading under low lamps at big wooden tables. None of them looks up as we walk past—the only time one of them notices us is when Mo-Mo tries to make a turn by a desk and smashes his hip right into it.
He leads us to an office off the main reading room. The door is ornate, made of wood, but the space behind it is cramped and cluttered, lit by grimy fluorescent lighting. The walls are covered with ancient posters, and the computer on the desk—an old-school monitor with the extended back end—is surrounded by piles of dog-eared paper.
The place stinks of weed and is only just big enough for the six of us. As we crowd inside, Annie squeezes into the chair in front of the computer, pulls up the browser. “Won’t take me a minute,” she says to no one in particular. Her voice betrays her exhaustion, ragged at the edges.
“Yo, you doing OK?” Mo-Mo says.
“Fine, why?”
“Heard Nando Aguilar was looking for you.”
“Never mind that. Me and Nando are cool.”
“No one’s cool with Nando.”
“Nando?” I say. “You mean the MS-13 guy.”
“Yeah,” says Annie. “It’s no big thing. We’re good.”
“What’s your deal with him anyway? You guys used to run together?”
“More than that,” says Mo-Mo. “They—”
He stops when Annie gives him a very poisonous look.
“OK, hold up.” I plonk my butt down on the edge of the desk. “Annie…”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“No, I am kind of worried about it, actually. You’re acting weird all of a sudden.”
“It’s a long fucking story.”
“Which I’d really appreciate hearing.”
“Now.” She leans back, waving a hand at the computer. “You wanna hear this now? Because seriously, it’s not important.”
“Yeah, kind of.”
“Ladies.” Mo-Mo tries to step between us. “Let’s just…” He trails off as if he isn’t quite sure what he was about to suggest.
Annie’s gaze is needle-sharp. “Nando is my own business. Him and I have our own shit to deal with, but it’s got nothing to do with do with Chase and Hayden and whoever this other dude is.”
“Didn’t you just do that whole big speech about being straight with each other?”
“Uh-huh. And I said that my own shit wasn’t an issue right now. I’ll tell you guys after this over. Until then? It doesn’t matter.”
“I’m not saying—”
“If I could just cut in here.” Paul puts a hand on my shoulder. “We have more pressing things to deal with at the moment, no?”
“Damn right,” Annie spits.
My instinct is to push it. I don’t because Paul is right. We have bigger fish to fry, and then to eat with a squeeze of lemon and a little parsley.
“Respect each other!” Mo-Mo blurts out. “That’s what I’m saying. Let’s just respect each other.”
Annie goes back to work without a word. Soon she’s got the LA County public health website up, along with its logo: the silhouetted faces Africa was talking about.
With Paul’s help, we find the staff directory. The department has district offices and only two of them cover ocean territory: Santa Monica and Coastal Cities. We crowd around the monitor as Mo-Mo leans against the wall, briefly sliding sideways before catching himself.
Santa Monica’s chief is a woman, Angela Baxter, while Coastal Cities is run by a guy called Javier Salinas. I scan the list of areas he’s responsible for: Carson, Redondo Beach, San Pedro, Torrance, Harbor City, Wilmington. Most of them areas
along the ocean.
“Gotta be him,” I say.
“I dunno, man.” Carlos’s voice is a low mutter. “Could have been anybody in that department.”
“Nope.” Annie’s way ahead of him. She’s already googled a photo. Salinas is in his late forties or early fifties, bald, with a bullet-shaped head and a big smile.
“And—” Annie flicks back a tab, pulling up a page titled AnyWho. “—I already got his address.”
“Well, well,” Paul murmurs.
I reach over, grab the back of Annie’s head with both hands and plant a huge kiss on it, forgetting for a moment about Nando Aguilar. “I will never throw you off a building again. I promise.”
“Promise never to kiss me again, neither, then we’re square.” She taps the screen. “Dude lives in Burbank.”
The smile drops from my face. Burbank. Fire.
Annie doesn’t notice. “Got a home number. Can someone—”
“On it.” Nic picks up the handset next to the computer, his fingers dancing across the pad. He listen for a moment, then grimaces. “Answering machine. His wife, sounds like.”
“But what’s the connection?” Carlos says. He moves his hands in front of him like he’s trying to solve an imaginary puzzle. “You got all these pieces—the health department guy, the clothing guy, the ocean charity guy—and you don’t know how they all fit together.”
“What about microfibres?” Mo-Mo says.
We all turn to look at him.
He blinks back at us, suddenly lucid. “Microfibres. Little bits of synthetic material. Millions of ’em come off clothes in the wash, then get swept out to sea and end up in the food chain.”
“What?” Nic says.
“Y’all don’t know about this?” Mo-Mo spreads his hands. “Y’all need to read more, man. A single piece of clothing can shed nearly two thousand fibres. Toxic shit too. It ends up in microorganisms, which end up in the fish. Either they die from shredded stomachs, or we eat them first, and we get—”
“How do you even know that?” Paul says.
Another long blink. “Institute of the Environment and Sustainability,” he says, tapping his T-shirt. “Taking some classes there.”