by Jackson Ford
“Sure. Unless he took a payment too. Probably not the only one.”
“And Salinas?”
“Coastal Cities office of the health department handles water quality. Chase paid Salinas to look the other way on the official side, and paid off Hayden in case his charity did their own independent tests. Either way, Salinas is about to have some interesting conversations with the cops.”
Salinas’s wife and kid come to the front of my mind. I decide not to go there. “So Carlos wanted revenge.”
“Uh-huh. Probably why he came across the border to LA in the first place. Course he didn’t know how to get to Chase without getting caught, and even then it wasn’t just Chase he had to take care of. Must have taken him a long time to dig up what actually happened—who helped cover it up, I mean.
“Meantime Tanner recruits him, he bangs with us and then he meets this Jake kid and realises he’s got the perfect opportunity.”
“Me.”
“You.”
“Hold up. Why wait until we did a job at the Edmonds Building? He couldn’t have known that was gonna happen.”
“He didn’t.”
I frown at her. “I don’t get it.” The answer whacks me around the head before I’ve even finished the sentence. “Chase was never sending money to Saudi, was he?”
“Nope. He’d done some shit but none of that. My guess is Carlos somehow got word to Tanner, anonymously, that this was happening. Of course she wanted evidence herself, which is when we got sent in.”
“Why didn’t he just tell her about the microfibres? And his brother?”
“You think she’d give a fuck? Anyway, we go in, and Reggie brings down the cameras. Window of opportunity for Carlos’s boy to do his thing.”
“And we still don’t know how Carlos and Jake…”
A guilty look crosses her face. “Sorry, man. With both of ’em out of the picture…”
I take a deep, shaky breath. If I hadn’t thrown the truck as hard, if I’d stayed with Carlos a little longer…
Annie reaches over, grips my shoulder. “Hey. Look at me.”
I look at her.
“You did the only thing you could. I wasn’t even there, and I can figure that out.”
“I just… I don’t…” I squint at the sky, hunting for the right words. “It sounds like you’re talking about another person. Carlos, I mean. I know he really did do all this, logically, but it just doesn’t… I don’t get it.”
“I do.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Remember I told you about my dad?”
“Kind of.”
“When we were walking up to Nic’s spot. I told you about how he worked at the children’s library in Carson. Then he’d come home and tune up on my mom?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Same shit. People wear masks. They lie to each other. You know that more than most. But listen to me: I know you and Carlos were tight, but he doesn’t deserve any more energy. He fucked with all of us.”
“And how about you and me, Annie?”
“What?”
“Are we tight?”
She doesn’t hesitate. “Always, baby girl. Long as you don’t throw me out any more buildings.”
“No promises.”
Annie smiles, turns to go. “We’ll be around when you’re ready,” she says.
As she reaches the edge of the roof, right before the drop onto the lower level, her phone rings in her pocket. That gets me thinking: I need to get a new one. Or at least get my old one back from Africa. Shit—Africa! Well, Idriss. I owe him big time, and right now a steak dinner sounds fan-fucking-tastic.
I still don’t have the first clue how to fix Skid Row—how to help the hundreds of people living in tents in the middle of one of the richest cities on the planet. But treating them like human beings is probably a good start, and nothing says you respect someone like buying them a meal. Or cooking them one: Idriss and Jeannette can come over to my place, and I can fix up some—
“Yo, Teagan.” Annie’s back, balancing on the roof’s apex.
“Huh?”
She holds out the phone. “Think you’d better take this one.”
As she heads back the way she came, she starts to hum something. I just catch it before she drops out of sight. “I’m a Slave 4 U.”
I lift the phone to my ear. “Hello, Tanner.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
Teagan
“Good afternoon, Ms. Jameson.”
She’s not in her office; she’s in a public place—somewhere with distant voices, traffic. The joyful scream of a child. A park, maybe? It’s strange to think of Tanner mingling with people, just sitting there while joggers and hand-holding couples and sprinting kids move past her. Vaguely I wonder how she knew to phone Annie and not Reggie or Paul.
“The doctors tell me there’ll be no permanent damage from the smoke,” she continues. “And I wanted to check in with you, since you’re back on your feet. See how you were holding up.”
“Did you now.”
There’s a pause, as if she’s weighing up whether or not to call me out. Instead, she says, “I’m glad you’re back. We still have a lot of work to do. I trust you’ll keep working with Ms. McCormick’s team as before. I know you recently lost a team member, but we should be able to replace—”
“Lost a team member?”
Carlos—Angel—impaled, begging me to help him. I shake it off.
“Indeed. We’re scouting for another driver as we sp—”
“Did you know? About El Agujero?”
“… As I said. We’ll be finding you another driver. You’ll need to bring them up to speed.”
“You didn’t, did you?”
It’s been dancing around the edges of my mind since Annie told me. If Tanner had known about Angel’s background, about what happened with his brother and the factory and the microfibres and Ultra, then she would have viewed him as a suspect in Chase’s murder from the start. She would have brought him in—or at the very least, she wouldn’t have put it all on me. And if she’d known about what happened at El Agujero, she’d never have hired him to work in the same city as the people who got his brother killed. Tanner would never take that risk.
“No,” she says, her tone icicle-cold. “And we’ll be re-evaluating our intel gathering mechanisms in Mexico. It appears that Mr. Morales—Campos—used a particularly good information broker. They do exist in that part of the world, if you can pay them. His identity checked out when we investigated it. Our due diligence in that regard was clearly lacking, which won’t happen again. Whoever joins the team next will be rigorously vetted.”
“And Jake?”
“What?”
“He wasn’t on your radar.” I sit up a little straighter. “When Chase was killed, you didn’t even consider that there might be someone else out there.”
“Careful, Ms. Jameson.”
“You missed it. You didn’t even know he existed. You thought my parents got lucky, and that I was the only survivor, and you figured you had it all under control. But you didn’t. All this time he was out there, and you had no idea.”
I’m out of breath, and for once it has nothing to do with my damaged throat and lungs. Up until today Tanner’s power and reach had seemed infinite. I didn’t dare disobey her, because she could do anything. Her office in DC was the centre of a vast spiderweb, a million strands reaching out across the globe. Pluck one, pluck two, listen to the signals that come back, then act, safe in the knowledge that the strands went everywhere.
Except they don’t. Even the biggest spiderweb doesn’t go on for ever. The strands have to stop somewhere.
What else does she not know? What’s out there in the dark places where her web doesn’t quite reach? A spider like Tanner might seem terrifying, might be able to hurt you if she wants to. But if you’re beyond her web, she won’t even know you’re there.
“So you’re looking now,” I say. “If there was one, there might be more, right?�
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Now there’s real venom in her voice. “Let me remind you, Ms. Jameson: the terms of our arrangement haven’t changed. I am still your advocate here. I’m the one keeping you where you are, free as a bird. You would be very wise not to forget that. You are going to keep working for me. You’re going to keep up with your assignments. If or when I have information that is relevant to you, I will decide if it is worth sharing. Am I clear?”
I’m about to tell her no. How dare she? How dare she mess up this badly and still try to give me orders? How dare she stop me from finding more of the people my parents… changed? There might be more. Many more. If she thinks I’m not going to search for that, she can…
But I don’t tell her, fuck you, like I should.
Doing that would mean being on the run, probably for ever. It would mean leaving behind everything: my car, my apartment, my books, my dreams for a restaurant. Nic. And most importantly Annie, Paul and Reggie.
How could I leave them? How could I just vanish after everything we’ve been through? It’s not just that it would be wrong to ditch them; it’s that I can’t even bear the thought. Throughout that whole insane day, the twenty-four hours—excuse me, twenty-two—when it felt like the entire city wanted us dead, they stuck with me. They helped me and put themselves in harm’s way to do it.
Once, a very long time ago, I had a family. People who knew me. Accepted me. Took care of me. That family destroyed itself—destroyed us—but I’ve found another.
And more than that. Reggie’s words from before we outran the chopper come back to me, spoken as we were sitting in Paul’s truck. What happened to you… what you are, you didn’t choose any of it. And God knows, the situation with Tanner isn’t something I’d wish on anybody… We may not always know the exact effect we’re having on a particular situation, but I can tell you… we’re making a difference.
I don’t trust Tanner. But I trust Reggie.
I’ll keep doing the work. I’ll make my PK mean something. It means it’ll be harder to find out if there are more people like me. Tanner isn’t going to share what she discovers—there’s no way. Not unless it’s to her advantage. I’ll have to build my own web. Start sending out my own strands into the dark places. It’ll be harder, but I can handle it. I have Annie’s connections. Reggie’s hacking. Paul’s logistical skills. And of course I have my PK. An ability which is way, way more powerful than I thought it was.
I reach out with it. I don’t have the energy to really use it, but that doesn’t stop me from sending it out anyway. My range has increased, even now. I can feel everything within fifty feet, my energy wrapped around it. The garbage cans. The power lines. The glass in the windows of the houses lining Brooks Court. The basketball being bounced by a kid in a yard across the way. The chain he’s wearing.
I bring it all back in and wrap it around the Batmobile.
I don’t lift it, but I do give it a very slight tug. The Jeep shifts on its balding tyres, rocking every so slightly.
For everything she can do, and as wide as her web is, Tanner is still human.
I’m not.
“OK,” I tell her. “I understand.”
“Good. I’ll be in touch.”
“I wasn’t done.”
“Excuse me?”
“Just because I’m still working for you doesn’t mean it’s gonna be like it was before. I’m changing a few things.”
“You don’t get to give me—”
“Number one: if you ever send a group of black-ops guys my way again, I will send them back to you in body bags. You don’t believe me, go ask Burr what I can do. Tell him I hope his finger gets gangrene and falls off.”
Dead silence over the line. Even the children in whatever park she’s in have stopped playing.
“Number two: you’re gonna share what you find. If there are other people with abilities out there, you tell me.” She probably won’t, and I’ll have no way of knowing if she does find anything, but it’s worth a shot. “I find out you’re not being straight with me, and we’re gonna have words.”
“Is that so?” She’s gone dangerously quiet.
“Number three: Nic Delacourt. He knows about me and about what we do here, but you’re not gonna touch him. You’re not gonna contact him. You’re not gonna put him under surveillance. You’re gonna forget he exists. Otherwise, you’ll be the one going home in a body bag.”
I’ve pushed it too far. Telling her how it’s going to be is one thing; threatening her is something else.
But after a very long moment she says grudgingly, “I suppose an exception can be made.”
“Damn straight.”
“Anything else I can do for you, Ms. Jameson?”
“Nah. I’m good.”
“Well, if that’s all, then—”
“Wait. I changed my mind. There is something else.”
“What?” It’s a single syllable, but I swear if I were standing in front of her, it would turn solid and stab me in the heart.
“Stop calling me Ms. Jameson. My name is Teagan Frost.”
I hang up.
I expect her to call back to demand the last word, but she doesn’t. I sit for a while, face turned up to the sun, letting the afternoon wash over me.
I need to be careful. Just because Tanner is fallible doesn’t mean she isn’t dangerous. The cage I’m in is bigger, but it’s still a cage. If I’m going to break out one day—live my life, own my restaurant, be more than what my parents made me—then I’m going to have to watch what I do.
Look at me, planning ahead. See, Reggie? I’m learning.
Speaking of which…
They’re in the living room when I come down off the roof. Annie and Paul are on the couch, holding hands, talking quietly. It’s the first time I’ve seen them do it, and I kind of hope they don’t stop. This place has had enough secrets for a while.
I can’t stop myself looking towards the kitchen, as if Carlos is going to be there rooting through the cupboards for the coffee. His absence feels like a missing tooth. After what he did, I should be glad he’s gone. Where is he now? Still in California? Did he go back to Mexico? Is he even alive? The thought of him still out there… I can’t even begin to figure out how I feel about it. It’s too much.
Reggie is off to one side, tapping at something on her phone. She looks up as I come through the door. “Oh, thank God. Someone to distract me from these two lovebirds.”
“Please,” Annie says. “You been playing Clash of Clans for the past ten minutes. You don’t even know we here.”
“So you didn’t know?” I ask Reggie, nodding to Annie and a sheepish, grinning Paul.
“About them? Uh-uh.” Reggie shakes her head. “Well, I had my suspicions. They were pretty good at hiding it.” She gives me a sly smile.
“Hey,” I tell her. “I never said. Thanks for your… well, what you did at Nic’s apartment.”
“How do you mean?”
“The fake seizure.”
“Oh!” Her eyebrows shoot up. “I’d almost forgotten. You’re welcome, dear.” The smile returns. “You should come see one of our performances some time. I do a mean Blanche DuBois.”
“I… I don’t know who that is.”
“You can’t be serious.” She turns to Paul. “How does she not know that? Haven’t we been teaching her right?”
Paul looks embarrassed.
“You don’t know either?” Reggie says. “You’ve come to my shows before!”
“Yeah, but that was Shakespeare. I think. I’m into more modern stuff. Arrested Development, that kind of thing.”
“Modern my ass.” Annie rolls her eyes. “He watches that shit on DVD, if you can believe that. Refuses to get streaming.”
“Not true. I don’t refuse, I just like having my own copies.”
Paul gets to his feet, dusting his hands off, even though all he’s been doing is sitting on the couch.
“So I was—” I start.
“Well, I don’t about the
rest—” he says at the same time.
We stop, and I gesture to him. “You go.”
“I was going to say, we’ve actually got a job lined up this afternoon. A moving job, not a Tanner job,” he says as if trying to reassure me. “Just a small one. Some boxes for an old guy up in Santa Monica. Annie and I could do it, but it’d be great if you wanted to join us…”
“Actually, um, I’m kind of gonna head home,” I say. “Something I gotta do.”
“Oh.” He looks a little crestfallen. “Right. Of course. Sure.”
“Hey.”
I meet his eyes. “I’ll be there on the next one. Don’t worry about it.”
“Take your time,” Reggie says quietly. “We’ll be here.”
Annie’s phone is still in my hand. I’m about to pass it back to her when a thought occurs. “Actually, can I make a call real quick?”
She shrugs. “Sure.”
A few moments later she looks up to see me still staring at the phone. “You OK?”
“What? Oh. Yeah.”
“You don’t know his number in your head, do you?”
“No.”
“Don’t worry,” Reggie says. She spins her chair, heads for the door leading to her Rig. “I’ll find it for you. I don’t what you’d do without us.”
Neither do I.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Teagan
Two weeks at the LAX facility, which means two weeks since I’ve been at my house. The thought of sleeping there again—assuming I can sleep the whole night through—is almost too much to think about.
Two weeks. Jesus. At least I don’t own a cat.
Nic is waiting for me when I arrive. This time he doesn’t bother parking around the block. It’s around 2:15 when I pull the Batmobile up to the kerb behind his blue Corolla. He’s wearing dark jeans, a pair of old Tims, a grey button-down with the sleeves folded to mid-arm, leaning on the hood with his eyes hidden behind big Ray-Bans.
I climb out of the Batmobile and just stand there for a second, savouring how normal it all is. The quiet Leimert Park street, middle of the day, sun beaming through the jacaranda trees. Distant traffic. A retiree walking her just-as-ancient Dalmatian on the far sidewalk. The air smells of jasmine with just the faintest hint of wildfire smoke. The world has that amazing hot, liquid light you get at around two o’clock on a summer’s day.