One Wrong Move

by Shannon McKenna

  They’d taken a bus to the Jersey Shore, and spent almost a month there before they’d been dragged back. His arm and ribs healed slowly and itchily, while he and Tonya and Julie took long, shivering walks on the beach, picnicked on sodden sand under the deserted boardwalk as if it were high summer, watching seagulls squawk over garbage washed up by the surf. They giggled over dumb TV programs on the grainy old set in their motel room, ate greasy food in the diner, went to the movies, played cards. Tonya had told them stories. Fables, from the Ukraine.

  None of them had ever been so happy.

  It couldn’t last. All of them had known that. The pawned jewelry had eventually betrayed them. Tonya had been sent back to the nuthouse, and he and Julie—well. No point even thinking about that.

  That brief taste of freedom had stuck in his mind ever since. It hung there in his head. Like a star. Always out of reach.

  He batted the unhelpful thought away. It pissed him off, this nagging, sucking feeling, of something slipping away from him.

  Like he’d ever really had Tonya, after not seeing her for almost twenty years. What was he losing that he hadn’t already lost, decades ago?

  And why did he feel guilty? Like he could have helped her.

  She’d helped him. She’d been there for him. It cost her big.

  He flinched away from that. He couldn’t help Tonya. He’d failed utterly at helping Julie. He’d run away. Saved his own skin.

  His life would be worth nothing if the remaining members of his family ever came to know his whereabouts. He did not appreciate being held hostage by guilt, from a past he’d done everything to bury. God, when was it enough? His heart had been thudding double time for days. He could not even fucking breathe.

  Voilà, enter Bruno and Lily with their sobbing social worker.

  Fresh guilt, poured over old guilt. Like fudge sauce on a sundae.

  He reached the head of the line at the car rental counter. A perky, snub-nosed girl directed a flirtatious smile into his bloodshot eyes—and it stuck there a moment, a frozen grimace, before fading. Like a rabbit hypnotized by a snake. Chick was smarter than she looked.

  They got through the paperwork with gratifying swiftness, and he headed out to the lot. The headache sucked rocks. A hard, rhythmic thwack with each beat of his heart. He wanted to punish the headache for existing. To kick the shit out of it. But, whoops, it was inside his own brain tissue. Bummer, that. Yeah, he was Oleg Arbatov’s son. A real chip off the old block. For Oleg, it was all about punishment. Since he was on the theme of punishment, his phone beeped. A multimedia message. The 911call. The hard luck suck-ass story, for his enjoyment.

  Aaro got into the 2011 Lincoln Navigator. Dug into his duffel.

  The knives, first. Kershaw in his left jacket pocket, Gerber in his right, the all-purpose onto the belt sheath. He groped around in his clothes for the holsters, the gun cases. FNP-45 in the waistband side holster, the .357 snubbie S&W tucked into the boot grip. Yeah. That let a little more air into his lungs. He pulled out the Saiga shotgun case, laid it on the seat, and just sat there, sucking in more badly needed oxygen.

  When the woman called, he’d tell her no. Let them all hate his guts if that’s what they needed to do. Then off to Tonya, for his next dose of guilt. He’d call Nina back after, if he was still functioning. Ask her if she still needed help. Best he could do. Hell, it was all he could do. With any luck at all, she’d tell him to fuck off, and he’d be free.

  Bruno would be disgusted with him. Lily, too. But he’d withstood massive, prolonged doses of toxic disgust before.

  Come to think of it, he was uniquely trained to tolerate it.

  Chapter 2

  “So, Ben? Can I count on your support for my campaign?”

  Harold Rudd sipped his coffee while exerting a precise, delicate pressure on the stress points in Benjamin Stillman’s decision-making process.

  He did not enjoy the surgical approach to compulsion nearly as much as his usual style, which was somewhat rougher. It was more satisfying to clobber the bastards with his psi talent. Watch them crawl and gibber, pleading for mercy. He liked that. It gave him a buzz that lasted hours. Sometimes even outlasting the effects of the psi-max.

  But reducing Senator Stillman to crawling and gibbering on the floor of the exclusive dining club would not advance Rudd’s cause, however enjoyable it might be in the short term. He needed the man fit and forceful and articulate on Rudd’s behalf, throwing all his political muscle behind Rudd’s upcoming campaign for governor. Not drugged up in a private clinic, being treated for a nervous breakdown.

  Self-control. Rudd was a practical man. Smile at the bastard.

  “I don’t know, Harold.” Stillman shoveled a chunk of brunch omelet into his mouth, shoved a triangle of toast after it. The man’s flabby cheeks distended as he chewed. “You don’t really have the kind of experience that I think is necessary for the . . .

  for the . . .” Stillman stopped, choking and coughing.

  His face reddened. His eyes darted, confused. He’d lost his train of thought. People in Rudd’s vicinity tended to lose trains of thought that did not further Rudd’s own ends. That trick gave Rudd no end of entertainent. Rudd pushed. Hard enough to confuse the man. Then a little more, hard enough to hurt.

  He released Stillman. The man coughed into his napkin.

  Rudd patted his back. “Ben? Are you all right? Should I call someone? Do you need medication?”

  Stillman shrugged him off. “No,” he gasped. “I’m not taking any goddamn medication. I just . . . ah . . . had a moment there.”

  “We all do, now and then.” Rudd poured the man a glass of water. Yes, one did. Particularly when one had brunch with Harold Rudd. But Stillman would never make that connection.

  He could count on the man’s antiquated worldview the way he could count on the sun rising. Rudd’s secret talent would never show up on Stillman’s radar.

  He recommenced delicate pressure as Stillman gulped water.

  Being taken down a peg had softened him slightly, but there was still a wall. Shoveling horseshit back in his youth had been easier than this. He pitied the senator’s wife. The guy must be a dominating asshole at home. Perhaps the senator had a bit of latent psi power of his own.

  Or perhaps Rudd himself was the problem. He was due for another hit of the precious psi-max to bring his talent of compulsion back up to full strength, but he’d been making a painful effort to pace himself. He had a supply, but it was not bottomless.

  And that business with the Kasyanov bitch making a run for it made him frantic. He needed her to produce more. Develop the perfect formula. He was so close to the big time. So much power to be grasped, if he did it all just right. Everyone had to be on board. Everyone had to be good.

  When he got his hands on Kasyanov, she would pay for defying him. Without incapacitating her, of course. Kasyanov was the only one who could cook up a stable dose of psi-max. Rudd had funded labs full of useless eggheads who had been trying to duplicate her formula for eighteen months, but their efforts had all fallen short. Yes, Kasyanov had been holding out on them for a while. Lying hag.

  He tried again, harder. Ben Stillman shoved a wad of egg and smoked salmon into his mouth and frowned out as he chewed, at the dark wood paneling, white tablecloths, white china. Come on, bastard. Give it up. Rudd bore down. A little bit more . . . almost there . . .

  “Sir?”

  Rudd whipped his head around, concentration broken, and Stillman grunted, shaking his head like a dog shaking off water.

  The moment was lost. Shit. Rudd glared at his aide, who blinked apologetically with his big puppy dog eyes. Fucking idiot, interrupting him at the worst possible moment. He smiled benignly.

  “Yes, John?”

  “Sir, Roy is here to see you,” John murmured, eyes darting nervously toward the door. “He said it was urgent. I just thought I’d, ah, to be on the safe side—”

  “I understand.” Rudd’s hound, Roy, had intimidate
d John into soiling himself.

  Rudd glanced at the door. Yes, there was his problematic henchman, Roy Lester, slouching in the dining room where anyone could see him. Idiot.

  Roy could wait. Rudd fumbled for contact with Stillman’s mind. It was easier to find this time. When he had it, he locked eyes with Anabel, who was sipping soda water at a nearby table.

  He smiled, as if only just noticing her, and gestured her over.

  Stillman turned to look, and did a double take. He dabbed with his napkin at his purplish, discolored lips.

  Time for the big guns. Which was to say, Anabel’s tits and ass.

  She used them the way a terrorist used a fertilizer bomb. No mercy.

  Anabel’s face brightened. Her finger flutter said Oh, goodie!

  What a coincidence! She jumped up and headed toward them, weaving gracefully between tables. Beaming. Shining. For the love of God, she’d dosed up, the naughty slut, and after he’d expressly ordered her to wait. His teeth ground. Her psi-max-enhanced glamour had taken hold. Rudd winced, as heads turned all over the club. Don’t overdo it, you vain, whorish bitch. It’s just Stillman. You don’t have to fuck the whole room.

  Too late. Slim, curvy, blond Anabel was lovely enough to turn heads even without a psi-max-fueled push, but there was nothing she liked better than starting to sparkle, watching men trip over their feet, forget that they were arm in arm with their own wives. Anabel had been known to cause car accidents when she sparkled at peak dose. And that was on top of telepathy, her pri-mary talent. She stopped at the table, and bent to give Rudd a peck on the cheek. “Hi, Uncle Harold!”

  He beamed at the self-indulgent slut. “Anabel, this is Senator Ben Stillman. This is Anabel Marshall, the daughter of a family friend,” he explained to a transfixed Stillman. “She’s working on my campaign, and she’s a pearl beyond price, so don’t even think of trying to steal her!”

  The two men chuckled. Anabel blushed. Stillman eyed her jutting bosom, beautifully showcased in the tight black ribbed turtleneck. Anabel preened and posed and sparkled, extrava-gantly beautiful. In that unguarded moment, Rudd gave the final, tipping shove . . .

  . . . and Stillman’s decision clicked into place, covered by Anabel’s tinkling laugh, her chatty bubbling. Stillman’s support was his. Yes.

  He smiled at her. “My dear, would you be kind enough to entertain Senator Stillman for a few minutes while I go see what Roy needs? We shouldn’t be more than ten minutes or so in the suite.”

  Anabel knew just what to do. “My pleasure,” she cooed.

  Rudd made his way to the door, allowing his disapproval to fla-gellate Roy’s sullen, unresponsive mind, as soon as he was close enough to make it really sting. “Let’s find a private place,” he hissed.

  Roy was cowed on the ride up to the suite where Anabel would soon bring Stillman. The senator was in his pocket, yes, but a sweaty bout with Anabel with the cameras running would not be a bad addition to the archives. Rudd had an extensive video collection of Anabel’s exploits. Political figures, judges, corporate heads. Men, women, young or old, Anabel wasn’t fussy.

  She would do anything for her dose.

  Rudd followed Roy into the suite and slammed the door.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing here? I told you to stay away!”

  Roy reeled as the punishing energy of Rudd’s compulsion battered his mind, stumbling into the architectural model that dominated the room. The costly model his staff had painstakingly finished putting together just that morning. “You idiot!” Rudd bellowed. “Get away from that! Do you have any idea how much that thing cost?”

  Roy jerked away, bouncing off the wall, and thudded down onto the king-sized bed, cringing. “Don’t,” he pleaded. “Stop.”

  Rudd strode over to inspect the model of the future Greaves Institute, to make sure nothing had been broken. “You knocked off four trees. Clumsy idiot. This just arrived today! I need to have it delivered to the Convention Center at Spruce Ridge before Saturday, so if you could avoid crushing it to splinters, I would appreciate it!”

  “Uh, yeah.” Roy rubbed the mottled, purplish burn scar that covered his entire neck, extending up under his chin like a turtleneck sweater. Rudd found the man’s nervous habit intensely annoying.

  “What on earth are you doing here?” Rudd hissed. “You should not be near me in public! We had this talk! I am in the public eye! It was not a gentle suggestion to stay away, you idiot, it was an order!”

  “Stop whaling on me! I can’t fucking think when you do that!”

  “You have trouble with that in the best of circumstances,”

  Rudd snapped, but he scaled back his attack. Roy sagged, panting. “And watch your language,” he added, as an afterthought.

  “Family values.”

  “My ass,” Roy spat out. “Hypocrite.”

  Rudd was unoffended. It was impossible to hide one’s true nature from employees who were enhanced with psi-max, but he knew the ugly secrets squirming in Anabel’s and Roy’s minds just as they knew his. It balanced out into an uneasy parnership, if he managed to control them. Between the heads Roy had broken and the dicks Anabel had sucked, the two might soon become a liability for his shining future.

  But that was an issue for another day. “So what’s the crisis?”

  “It’s Kasyanov, boss.” Roy wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I lost her.”

  Rudd’s guts chilled at the implications. “Lost her?” he repeated. “How is that possible? You can follow a target at a mile or more! You said you couldn’t lose her frequency if you wanted to!”

  Roy’s high, balding forehead was shiny with sweat. Rudd suddenly noticed the purplish knot on the side of his head. “She was at this house, out in Brooklyn. Anabel told me she was planning on trying to get to JFK or LaGuardia today, so I was going to take her when she came out to get in her cab. And she, uh . . . she got me.”

  “Got me,” Rudd repeated, his voice like stone. “Define

  ‘got me.’ ”

  Roy squirmed as Rudd battered at him, using his psi on Roy the way a lion trainer used a whip. Roy’s jaw shook. “It was the drug,” he choked out. “The new one, Psi-Max 48. Stop it, boss, if you want me to tell you, ’cause I’m gonna puke, right here on the bed, I swear.”

  An odorous mess would be inconvenient for Anabel and Stillman, so Rudd grudgingly released the pressure. Roy sagged, wheezing.

  “Fucking asshole,” he gasped out. “Cut that shit out!”

  “Just tell me,” Rudd said, with chilly patience.

  “Like I was trying to say! It was the formula you shot into the doctor’s arm last weekend, up at the lab! Remember that tantrum, Mr. Fucking Family Values? When you got into a snit, and decided to conduct your own little private medical experiment?”

  A snap of the mental lash made Roy grunt and twitch. “Do not presume to scold me,” Rudd said. “Just tell me what happened.”

  “I had her pinned, in Brooklyn. But . . .” He trailed off. “It must have been the drug. She made me see things. It was . . .”

  He shook his head, speechless. His eyes looked haunted.

  Rudd folded his arms over his chest. “What did she make you see? Come on. You know telepathy isn’t my thing. Tell me.”

  Roy’s reddened eyes flicked away.

  Rudd laughed. “Oh, something personal? Mean Mommy, coming into your bedroom to put the nightly clothespin on your dick? Straight pins to the testicles? Something sadistic and inces-tuous?”

  “Fuck off,” Roy muttered.

  “Interesting,” Rudd mused. “So the enhanced formula gave Kasyanov a brand-new talent. How would you characterize it, Roy? Illusion? Invasive telepathy, like Anabel?”

  “Worse,” Roy blurted. “Deeper. A mix, maybe. She pulls it from your head, and then she throws it back at you. Sick, crazy bitch.”

  “Enterprising of her,” Rudd murmured. “But what I don’t under stand is how she got away. No matter what she hit you with, on ten mg’s of psi-
max, you should have been able to narrow in on her frequency afterwards, from miles away! How the hell did you lose her?”

  Roy’s eyes slid down. “I was unconscious,” he muttered.

  “When I came to, she was out of range. No trace at all. Just gone.”

  “You fainted?” Rudd started to laugh. “Scrawny Helga Kasyanov, scared you unconscious? Roy. I’m disillusioned.”

  “I hit my head when I fell down,” Roy protested, gingerly prodding the lump on his pate. “And when I came to, I—”

  “Shut up, Roy. The details of your failure are not interesting to me. So you have no leads?”

  “Not exactly. Our guy in the NYPD checked out the nine-one-one calls. A guy at a corner grocery on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn called an ambulance for a woman found lying on the sidewalk only fifteen blocks from the house where I lost Kasyanov. She was gone by the time the ambulance arrived, though. A car service driver stopped, some guy who spoke Ukrainian. He took her away in his car.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “The clerk gave me the number of the car service.” Roy looked pleased with himself. “I called the dispatcher, described the guy, told her I’d left a briefcase in his car. She gave me the guy’s name and cell, just like that. Such a nice girl. So sweet and helpful.”

  “People are such idiots,” Rudd said, with dark satisfaction.

  “Yeah. Yuri Marchuk. Came from Odessa fifteen years ago.

  One divorced daughter. Preschool-age grandson. Apartment on Avenue B.”

  Rudd pondered that for a moment, rubbing his chin.

  “Well, boss? How far should I go with this Yuri character?”

  “As far as necessary. We don’t want tales told, do we?”

  “You want me to outsource this one?”

  “What, Roy? Lost your nerve?” Rudd taunted.

  Roy waved that jab away. “I have contacts in Brighton Beach who can communicate with this clown in his native language,” he said. “Dmitri Arbatov is good. And in my experience, once the hedge clippers come out, people tend to revert to the mother tongue.”

  Rudd considered that. “Fine, but Anabel should be there when this guy talks, no matter what language or what methods of persuasion you use. Your telepathy’s not strong enough. You’re only good for long-range surveillance. You’re a tracker, Roy.