by a b
Vorest’s failure to find Darci was not a disaster – it was the fucking end of the fucking world. Blade knew that Darci was an open door, and whoever came upon her could walk right through into their living room. All of his designs to keep them cut off from the world could be toppled by the stroke of luck that was Darci landing in the feds lap. On his arrival, Blade had slapped Vorest so hard that in the cup of his hand where the air pressure had broken the capillaries just under the skin and a scattered pattern of bright red dots marked one cheek. Blade had almost shut down the entire operation. Then he’d heard Voret’s report: he had overheard one of the FBI agents talking about their reassignment. They hadn’t turned up anything and they were following a new lead in Wyoming. Vorest suggested that maybe she was dead. Blade didn’t like suggestions, but he figured that their door would have already been busted down if they had the slightest inkling of the whereabouts of Darci. If that stupid girl had been laying low this effectively for this long, dead was a good bet.
Blade looked across the room at Vorest. His bright red cheek had faded to violet, like a bruise. The snarl on his face probably kept an unhealthy amount of blood circulating around the curves of his facial articulation. He was a mean bastard, but he’d done what he was told, and he hadn’t slept an hour under a roof since Blade had ordered him down to Provo. He deserved a little recognition. Blue waved him over.
Blade asked him to put his palm flat out on the table, right beside the sour cream dip. Vorest complied, not knowing what to expect from Blade. However, he could see something in Blade’s expression that invited him to play along rather than be ordered. A whisker’s width difference between the two, but like a nick in an artery, that can mean all the difference. Everyone gathered around as the pipe organ chimed at a quicker pace, like it was building to some kind of crescendo.
Blade pulled out one of his razor sharp spike daggers from his boot and let the tip rest gently in the center of Vorest’s hand. “If you can grab it without shedding a drop of blood, it’s yours.”
This was a gift from on high. Stones openly gaped at the thought of Blade giving away his signature knives. Mac and Shane closed the circle around Vorest urging him to pull his fingers up and around the metal blade and claim it as his own. Blade snapped his fingers and spun the hilt, setting it into motion like a top. The smooth tip glided on the flat surface of his palm searching for an imperfection in which to dig in and churn a gushing well of blood, he had to do it quickly. Vorest concentrated waiting for that moment when the flat of the blade presented itself slowly enough to – he took a deep breath – grab.
He turned his hand like he was grabbing the handle on a coffee cup, and snatched the cold silver metal. It hovered above the dip, and a wide smile crossed Vorest’s face. He would be keeping his prize.
A drop of blood fell into the white creamy dip below his hand, a visual representation of the contradiction of innocence or victory. A paper thin line of bright red crossed the length of his hand, creating a spillway at the end where more drops collected, then leaked down the tip of the dagger. Vorest licked the blade clean with a snarl then handed it back to Blade, who slapped his hand with his dirty palm. He then offered him a chip dipped in his own blood. He spit a brown pulp of chewing tobacco lazily out of his mouth, and then ate the chip. The place erupted.
Fists pounded shoulders, thick boot heels, bone-like extensions of their feet assaulted the floorboards and a mixture of anger and joy mingled in their voices sending up noisy mixed signals swirling in tobacco smoke. Blade patted Vorest on the shoulder a signal that he was again his brother. Blade couldn’t hide his respect for brutality and Vorest was the only face in his gang that had no room for mercy. It gave him power. He would never be able to combine his talents the way Blade had and lead his people to the perfect symmetry of sex, violence and money, but he the kind of henchman who would avenge his death equal parts out of loyalty and the excuse to kill. It brought a shimmer of added saline to his sunken eyes.
A static laced voice called the gathering to the far wall. It came from the television.
“Have you sinned?” His southern twang lent a musical interpretation to every stressed vowel sound.
“He’s early.” Stones looked at his watch.
A hand raised by Blade demanded silence. It was time. The boys gathered around the sets, each of them knew to say nothing. It was even a bad idea to chew loudly. Mac pulled the tap on the keg the minute the selection began. Blade had a three and a half hour sermon to choose one face out of an exponentially weighted, ever changing crowd. His eyes twinkled in the cloudy gleam. His eyes no longer had the capability of detecting the colors that poured into his sockets – but that hardly mattered because Blade somehow looked directly into their souls. The beauty and consequence of a much greater mosaic, an unconventional canvas of human domination, which he alone saw.
The preacher croaked out the opening stanza of a familiar verse. “Someone out there is in pain.”
Blade smiled inwardly, the corners of his mouth drew together as his eyes widened soaking in every last ray that radiated from the wall of monitors. Where was she? He moved his lips in exact time with the preacher’s.
“Someone out there is searching.”
And somewhere in the next three plus hours, an image would be plucked off of one of the screens and chosen as the next victim. Blade thought ahead to the course of events that tonight would set into motion. He would select two of his men to ride into the night, one of them straddling a motorbike, the other driving a conversion van. Their orders would be strict, wheels would spin across asphalt without halt, and their engines would not be turned off until they were back at the compound. He protected his men the way he protected his property, with a strict doctrine designed to minimize risk. These forays out into the world were their only necessary contact, and therefore left the only opening to those who wanted to track them.
He would send his men tonight, and they’d be back in two days. With the take of the sales counters on his video empire reaching near a hundred million, he predicted Laura would double it leading into the next girl. That was enough. Anyway, dumping their bodies together right after the initiation would end their exposure. This was their last pass as predator on society and with the dawn, two days in the future, he could see their identities melt into the rocky mountains splashing off the rocks like a spring run off.
A close fit on a screen in the upper left brought him back to the moment. Her smile asserted a kind happiness not echoed in a perturbed flicker of her eyes. The conflict between how she felt and how she wanted to be perceived fascinated Blade for a moment, but he knew it was a brief flirtation only. The perfect girl had eyes that knew what her mouth was doing and approved. His eyes read the annoying logo that lived in the left hand corner of the image. The perfect girl wasn’t on channel five Boston tonight.
The room flinched as they saw Blade’s interest spike. In the silence they waited for the command that would set everything in motion. It didn’t come, in fact the energy stored in Blade’s clenched fist released and he grabbed for a beer. He loved to sit in his seat surrounded by the warm bodies of his friends and proceed to fill his bladder until it nearly exploded. It gave him the sensation of an unconventional yearning. The smell of this group would never wash out of the curtains; they were the component parts of human wrong. Blade was their brain and conscience. He was saying no to girl after girl, but there would be more, and anyway it gave him time to be with his men. He could feel their attention upon him. It wasn’t so bad to let this part of the ritual continue. His last choice had to be his grandest stroke, but how could he do better than the daughter of the FBI director? Even as the question flashed through his mind he knew the answer, he knew it would come. The perfect girl was already streaking toward him on the airwaves. The image alone remained to be seen.
Blade pulled the flame of his lighter toward the tip of his unlit cigarette with a long intake of breath.
Several cigarettes later, Blade ro
se from his seat. He was standing taller than he ever had in his life. Two fingers extended toward one of the screens, a pronouncement, a proclamation, a damnation coming to his lips in a single invective syllable “go.”
Chapter 51 Catch Up
Legacy paced in front of the “mission control” setup of Tyke’s that NASA would envy. The elegant curve of an eggshell made up the front of his designer workspace. Tyke fused with the computer controls around him, and wasted no energy moving around in his space on a four caster stool attached on rails that let him glide silently from station to station.
They were reaching the end of the three and a half hours and Legacy, buried in Blue’s persona scowled in triumph each time he called out a new position on the grid. But doubt began to climb into the lower chambers of his consciousness. Was three and a half hours really the cut off point, or had Blue always simply found his victim in this window? Had he missed a fleeting image that could possibly be Blue’s perfect fit? They could always go back over each video feed again and again, but given the fact that riders had already been dispatched in pursuit of the girl, time was of the essence. Indecision could easily turn this into the foolish sidetrack venture that Wilkes had pointed out in the conference room. Legacy’s concerns didn’t end there. He worried that he would fixate on some aspect of the girls that he personally considered perfect. His own personality threatened this hunt as much as the limitations of mimicking Blue. One slip out of Blue’s mind frame and the picture would not emerge. They had to get it right on the first time through, that’s what Blue had already done.
And while others might have become tentative and unsure coming into the last minutes before 8:30, Legacy called his last shots with detached confidence. Tyke practically collapsed onto his keyboard as the alarm sounded, indicating the time was up. Sweat made his shirt cling to his body; he was drained physically and mentally. He looked like he’d ridden a stage of the Tour de France while playing a Russian grandmaster of chess at the same time.
“That was intense, dog.” He said with raised fist, like a great realization had been made. “I need some Sunny D.”
He barely recognized Legacy’s voice; it froze him in his tracks.
“When we’re done.” Legacy slid the stool across the floor, tapping the back of his knees and causing him to fall into his seat. “Dog.”
“I’m feeling you.” He replied sensing Legacy’s presence beginning to return.
They went through the saved images, restoring each one in full screen to get a better picture. Two hours passed. A blunt nod meant the girl had passed the first test, a shake of the head meant she was erased.
After a bathroom break, Legacy noticed stains down Tyke’s shirt and the smell of tangerine wafted into the room. Legacy’s fist clenched. Normally he would think nothing of an unscheduled break, but in Legacy’s current state, mimicking Blue’s every tick, he had to restrain himself from slapping Tyke silly. Instead he cracked his knuckles hard. The look of discomfort from Tyke made him feel a little better.
Three more passes and Legacy was happy, he’d whittled it down to only those trophies that Blue would surely notice. Tyke noticed that he hadn’t only picked the beauties of the bunch. “You passed on some pretty fine ladies.”
“How many are left?” Legacy croaked. He knew the number he was looking for: it was one.
“Seventy-two.” Tyke read the counter.
He’d gone through all of the criteria and he was 71 off his ideal. “That’s too many.” Legacy moaned. “Blue picked one, why can’t I see it, with that same certainty? He wants strength, he wants rebellion, the kind of mind – “ a sudden question made him veer off topic. “Are any of these girls famous?”
Tyke replied, “I recognize three, one of them was my wallpaper –”
Legacy interrupted, “Don’t tell me which” he knew the dangers of beginning an experiment presupposing the end. In interrogation there is no worse sin than expecting a result. An interrogator that pushes for an answer usually gets it, but most of the time it isn’t worth a damn. If they wanted the interrogators ideas instead of the captives, they’d turn the lamp around and ask him what he thinks. Legacy wanted an answer so bad that he could supply it himself if he weren’t careful.
Tyke looked like he needed some clarification and a shower, but Legacy only had time for one.
He began “It’s just like in physics when they tried to prove that light was a wave, they proved it, and when another group of scientists got together and designed an experiment to show that light was a particle, they proved that, too.”
“You sound like you need a light beer.”
“Neither group got the answer completely right, that’s why I don’t want you to tell me which of the girls are famous, just keep them playing in a loop. I need to get this answer completely right.”
The phone rang, Legacy looked at the receiver annoyed that it would enter their conversation uninvited. Tyke moved to pick it up, giving an excited excuse along the way, “It might be Kelly.”
Legacy waved him off, turning his attention back to the screen. The pictures flashed before him. Who did he most want to dominate, diminish and destroy? Who would entertain him most watching the struggle between her own identity and the one he would cruelly impress upon her? He tried to recreate Blue’s needs within himself, the need for other people to validate his position of power.
A voice broke his concentration, “Legacy, it’s for you.”
“Who?”
“It’s your daughter.”
A singsong squeal of saccharin delight greeted his ear. “Daddy.” Her tone reminded Legacy of a pistol firing.
“Let me guess, auto-dial in my study.”
Chess continued as if he’d said nothing. “It was so nice of you to have me picked up after class by your friends.”
Legacy imagined her sitting in a room with two immaculately dressed agents. Dark suits, dark demeanors, and loaded weapons, the assurance kept him focused, but he didn’t think Chess would appreciate it.
“And coding me A05 was so – considerate.” A05 was code that spanned key witness to fugitive; it influenced the amount of security and conduct of the detail guarding her. It was supposed to keep her from having access to a phone. Chess continued like she was continuing Legacy’s chain of thought. “And it looked like I was being arrested by six officers, in front of my friends! What a common mishap between a teenage girl and her peers!’
“I’m sorry, I needed to – do something and I couldn’t leave you alone.” Legacy explained.
Chess forced nonchalance “And you have me under house arrest? That is not normal, you are not normal, and I’m OK with that until “not normal” turns into this. I don’t even know what this is. So I don’t know that I’m OK.”
“Don’t blame yourself.” Legacy said evenly.
“I blame you. And don’t try to undercut me by agreeing with me.”
The maturity of her tone bit into him like no tantrum could. “You know, my friends, by the age of 15, they’ve all said fuck you to their parents, most of them out loud. And they all keep waiting for me – it’s considered the modern right of passage. Well I’ve never even thought it – but guess what?”
Silence on the other end of the receiver, followed by a dial tone.
Chess slammed down the receiver then turned to a young agent sitting across the room, hiding a smile. “Is there any rule about smoking?” He shook his head. “Does anyone have a cigarette?”
Moments later she took a long drag, which burned down deep into her lungs. Her body tensed wanting to expel the foreign substance in a coughing and sputtering fit, but she held it down in an act of sheer will. She wouldn’t be embarrassed again today. She caught a glimpse of the young agent watching her out of the corner of an eye. He looked away, sounding amused. “First time?”
She exhaled slowly and let the air clear, knowing that her speech would sputter otherwise. “I’m a dangerous fugitive, can’t you tell? I’ve been doing things like this
all of my life. Now I’m going to my room where I’ll be hatching a plot to overthrow the government, and my first act after the coup will be to fire you.”
Chess had to pass by the agent, and as she got closer she could feel her skin glowing from the embarrassment of being rude to him. She tugged her hair around her ear in a self-conscious gesture, if she didn’t look at him, everything would be OK. Two steps and she would be past him, she glanced up to check her own math and found herself staring at him. Blonde hair, tall, with a boyish face. The glow turned into a full bloom of red when he mumbled. “Aren’t you just something?” The vagueness of the words and the slight drawl on the vowel sounds left her breathless. Chess found poetry in the delivery of the words whether it was intended or not. His voice went up and down her spine, round trip in a heartbeat, interfering slightly with her motor skills as she scuffed both feet and lurched forward almost falling not once, but twice. It ruined her plans to level a judgmental stare at him, and at the last moment she switched to a perturbed inward pout. The problem with the pout was that, she couldn’t look at him to see the reaction without ruining the effect. Chess suddenly had a deep need to be perceived as a malcontent, and she had absolutely no idea why.