One Wrong Move

by Shannon McKenna

  She shook her head. “All I know is, he and Anabel are driving there now. And it’s tonight. We’ll find out. Call Bruno now.”

  “No, wait,” he said. “First, we look around for a moving vehicle. If we’re on foot, they’ll get us. If we call a cab, they’ll get us.”

  They crept through pastures and outbuildings until he saw the one he wanted, parked next to a barn. A rusting ’84 Ford F150

  pickup. Perfect. God grant it have a few drops of gasoline in it.

  Its front driver’s side window was smashed in, plastic taped over it, so the door was easy to open. Nina climbed in and watched him peer under the dash, struggling to focus on the wiring harness. The tiny pinpoint flashlight on his belt knife saved his ass, lighting up the dusty power wires, connecting to fuel pump and lights. And starter wires.

  He peeled the plastic off the tips of all three, spliced the two that connected power to the components. Touched the starter wire to the splice point.

  The truck coughed, and started up. He was so relieved, he almost burst into tears. He bent the starter wire way back, to iso-late it as best he could, and guided the car without headlights past the ranch-style house, praying that the inhabitants were sound sleepers.

  “Stay invisible,” she murmured. “It’s too soon to be triumphant.”

  But no one stopped them as they pulled onto the main road.

  Less than an eighth of a tank of gas, but that was still outrageous luck.

  Nina handed him the cell. He reached Bruno on the first ring.

  The guy was uncharacteristically quiet when he picked up the line.

  “Who is this?” Bruno asked warily.

  “It’s me,” Aaro said.

  “Oh, God.” Bruno’s voice was thick with relief. “I guess you know about those assholes planting a bug in Lily’s hospital room?”

  “Yeah. It got pretty wild, there, for a while, last night.”

  “And Nina?”

  “She’s OK. Roughed up, but OK.”

  Bruno let out a sharp sigh. “How’d you do it, man? I thought . . .

  I thought you guys were dead meat. I thought we’d killed you.”

  “I didn’t,” Aaro said.

  “Huh?”

  “They kicked my ass,” Aaro said. “I got rolled in duct tape and shoved into the trunk of a car. Nina did it. She got me out of there.”

  “But she . . . but how . . . ?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is, she is the wild warrior goddess with the flaming sword of righteousness. Do not mess with her, man, or she will fuck you up.”

  Nina leaned toward him, impatient. “Later for bullshit, please,” she said. “That guy is still looking for us.”

  “Of course,” said Bruno hastily. “So where are you two?”

  Aaro hesitated. “You sure there’s no more bugs on you?”

  “I’m in the middle of the parking lot,” Bruno told him.

  “OK. We’re on Route twenty-nine, at the southernmost freeway entrance out of Lannis Lake. Driving a stolen car. We need to ditch it real soon.”

  “Hold on, I’ve got my tablet, I’ll Google map it. So what’s the plan?”

  “I don’t have any ID. Lost my wallet. Can’t fly, can’t rent.

  Nina still has the ID Wilder brought for her, and the cash. It was in an envelope in the back seat of his car. But neither of us is really fit to drive right now. A bus is our best bet, I guess. But we can’t take one from Cooper’s Landing or Lannis Lake. They’ll be watching. We need to catch one from farther away.”

  “OK, I’m picking this town at random, OK? Go to Glenville.

  Southwest of here. Forty miles away, population fifteen hundred.”

  Aaro looked at Nina’s blood-stiffened hair, the marks on her face, the lacerations on her goose-bumped shoulders. Muddy, bloodstained jeans. Bloodied toes. Swaying tits with a nipple hard-on under the frayed tank top. “Is there a strip mall? With a Target, or something?”

  “You want to do retail therapy?” Bruno sounded amused.

  “We’re covered with mud and blood,” Aaro said bluntly.

  “Ah, yeah. OK. Right. There is, in fact, a strip mall in Glenville, first exit. I’m sending coordinates. And I’ll order you the tickets. Where to? Want to bus it to the nearest big city? Or all the way here?”

  Aaro hesitated. “Is Miles there with you? I wanted to ask him to check out some data for me before I answer that.”

  “Nope, sorry. Miles is getting ready to head to the airport right about now,” Bruno said. “He’s on his way to Denver.”

  “What’s in Denver?”

  “Fucked if I know. He’s got this wild idea. Talked to a secre-tary at Kirk’s faculty office. The prof got a mysterious letter some time ago, telling him to go to this fund-raiser party if he wanted to find out what happened to his missing daughter. Got sliced into chunks before he could go check it out. So Miles is going.

  Nobody could talk him out of it. He’s got this bug up his ass about it.”

  Aaro’s neck prickled. “Fund-raiser? For what?”

  “Something called, lemme see, the Greaves Institute,” Bruno said.

  The air whooshed out of Aaro’s lungs. “Greaves,” he repeated, in a whisper. His heart thudded. “No shit.”

  “Anyhow, I could meet you in Salt Lake City by late tonight, if I stepped on it,” Bruno offered.

  “No,” Aaro said. “Get us tickets for Denver, too.”

  “Denver?” Bruno paused for a long moment. “Why?”

  Aaro started grinning. Having a place to go, any place on earth at all, made him so happy he wanted to break into song.

  “We’ve got a party to go to,” he said.

  Chapter 24

  The damp dawn air blew through the broken window as Roy speeded around the snaking corridors of green on the lake-side road. Broken glass crunched beneath his ass on the seat. He tasted bile.

  Too many disappointments for Rudd lately. This would put Roy’s quota squarely over the top, and Anabel wasn’t even there to distribute the blame. Though Anabel didn’t lose points when she fucked up alongside him, just because she was a pretty girl with a juicy, hot snatch that she offered up to Rudd whenever he needed it for his various projects. Roy’s own talent was just as valuable, but damn, it didn’t seem that way, without the nympho-bouncing-tits-and-gaping-pussy card to play.

  And Dmitri was worthless, as far as distributing blame went.

  He must have been insane to involve that dickhead.

  He’d left the worthless scum lying in his own blood, phone cord noose around his neck, pants around his knees. Nina Christie had taken him. The bitch was tough. Nice tits, too. He’d been looking forward to a piece of that before the long drive to Karstow. A tension reliever, so rare and sweet in these strange days. But no. He never caught a fucking break. Never.

  He jerked the car around into the driveway, bumping over ruts and holes. Goddamn shitty ungraded roads, making his jaw clack and his teeth rattle. He could not get a fix on them. Just fleeting traces of the man, never for long enough to pin down their location. They winked in and out, moving, shifting around. Taunting him. Thumbing their noses.

  He’d tried blundering after them offroad, in the forest, but that quickly proved to be stupid and useless, without a clear scent to home in on. Then he’d tried in the car, within the range they could possibly be. If they were on foot. But what if they weren’t on foot anymore?

  He stared out the broken window at the lake. Fucking fuck.

  Chances were, Rudd would make him shoot himself. Tragic suicide, so shocking, we had no idea he was so depressed, blah, blah. He could actually feel the place under his jaw where the bullet would go in.

  He should just keep on driving. To Mexico, maybe. But that meant driving away from psi-max. His whole being rejected the idea. Without psi-max, he was nothing. He might as well eat the bullet.

  He jumped out of the car and stomped inside, not sure if he was going to revive that asshole or kick him to death
here and now. He was tending toward the second option, just to blow off some steam.

  But when he walked in, Dmitri was no longer on the floor.

  The room was empty, tables and chairs overturned, bloody telephone and tangle of cord spread on the floor. Blood drops dotted the linoleum.

  He heard water running from the bathroom. “Dmitri! Get your ass out here!” he bellowed.

  The water switched off. Dmitri appeared in the doorway, dabbing at his forehead with a towel. He gazed at Roy, cool and expressionless.

  “You asshole!” Roy shrieked. “How did you let her go? You have fucked us so far up the ass, we will never stand up straight again!”

  “She has another talent.” Dmitri’s voice was hoarse, no doubt due to being strangled. There was a bloody line across his throat.

  “She can project images. Same mechanism as telepathy, but active rather than passive. Took me by surprise. Rammed it to me.

  Sneaky bitch.”

  “Like Kasyanov.” Roy shuddered at the memory. “So, she zapped you with an illusion? What did she hit you with?”

  “None of your fucking business.”

  The guy’s eyes were cold. He felt a cold flutter of unease. Before, he’d always had Dmitri by the balls. Roy had the psi-max.

  Roy made the rules. This did not feel like before. Dmitri was different. And that buzzy glow in Dmitri’s eyes, that was different, too. It looked like he’d topped up, but how could he have? He was dry. Roy was doling out psi-max tabs on an as-needed basis.

  Dmitri had peaked almost an hour ago, and was coming down the other side.

  “Get your ass in gear,” Roy ordered. “We have to correct this fuck-up of yours or we are both dead meat, you understand?”

  “I don’t think so,” Dmitri said.

  Roy stared at him. “Who the fuck asked you to think, butt -

  head? Do you have any idea what Rudd can do to us? He can make you swallow your own tongue, or drink a bottle of Drano, or slice open your own bowels! And he likes it, you hear me? He’s a fucking psycho!”

  “Where are your car keys, Roy?”

  “I’m not giving them to you, so what the fuck do you care?”

  Roy cried out at the sudden, painful intrusion in his head.

  “Ah. In your pocket,” Dmitri said softly. “Just as I thought.”

  “Stay out of my head, or I will fuck you up! Yeah, they’re in my pocket. Right here.” Roy held the keys up, rattling them. “So is this.” He held up his Beretta with the other. “So don’t get any ideas, asshole.”

  “Speaking of ideas. You never did hear the recording Kasyanov made, did you?”

  “No, we did not, thanks to you. Fortunately, we don’t need to.

  Anabel read them left, right, and center. She knows everything they knew. Why are you wasting my time with this?”

  “Kasyanov said, ‘Graves party,’ ” Dmitri said. “I didn’t catch it before. I thought it was ‘graves,’ just like Sasha and his whore did. Anabel said something about graves and skeletons. But it’s not graves. It’s Greaves. The fund-raiser for the Greaves Institute. That’s where that bitch Anabel and Rudd are headed, right?”

  “What do we care where they’re headed?” Roy yelled. “We don’t give a flying fuck anymore, remember? We don’t have the goddamn A dose, so the B dose is irrelevant! Focus, Dmitri!”

  “They care,” Dmitri pointed out. “Sasha and his whore care very much.”

  “They didn’t know anything!” Roy yelled.

  “Of course they didn’t. They had no point of reference. I didn’t understand either, until I heard Rudd talk about the Greaves party. But they heard the recording that I heard, and Nina Christie was listening when Rudd ordered Anabel to go to the Greaves party. She’s not stupid. If I put it together, she will, too.

  She and Sasha will go to the fund-raiser. That’s where I’ll catch up with them. Which brings me to my next question.”

  “We don’t have time for questions! Let’s get moving!”

  “Answer me first,” Dmitri went on, with that same eerie calm.

  “The first time you gave me psi-max, at the club. Remember?”

  “Of course. Why?” Roy shrieked, startled. The invasion was violent this time, like someone was stripping away his siding, ripping open his walls with a chainsaw. Slashing, cutting, tearing.

  “Why did you give it to me?” Dmitri asked softly.

  Roy did not have to answer. The question itself brought the information up, as if Dmitri had typed key words into a search engine. Dmitri ransacked his thoughts, his memories, his fears, all connected like sprawling webs, each memory tugging a deeper one loose. His life ran past like a sped-up movie. Roy had no idea that Dmitri was such a powerful telepath. Anabel’s gift was nothing in comparison.

  Dmitri began to laugh. “You meant to kill me,” he said, in a tone of amused discovery. “But I lived. I surprised you. That’s gratifying. I like surprising people. I plan to do a great deal more of it in the future. But for now, let’s just wrap this up. Give me the car keys, Roy.”

  Fuck you, Roy started to say, before he saw the cobra wrapped around his wrist. He screamed, shaking to fling it off. Heard the ka-chunk of jingling keys hitting the floor, the thud as the gun followed.

  The cobra sank its fangs into the fleshy part of his thumb. He shrieked. The pain was agonizing. Trick! It’s just a fucking illusion trick!

  He knew it. Knew it for a fact. But still, his heart raced and the snaked hissed, venom dripping from its milk-white, gaping jaws.

  It bit again. He screamed louder.

  “I learned the trick from her. Great, isn’t it?” Dmitri’s voice came from miles away, over the deafening pound of his heart.

  “Tell me, Roy. Where is the Greaves Institute party taking place?”

  It’s just a trick, an illusion, you asshole! He tried to look away from the fake snake, from the burning, freezing agony in his thumb.

  It stopped abruptly. Dmitri picked up his keys, and his gun.

  “Spruce Ridge, Colorado,” he said. “Thank you. Roy. But the snake is not the real monster in your closet. We should go for the big guns. Like Kasyanov did, yesterday morning. Do you smell it, Roy?”

  He did smell it, then . . . and he forgot all about the snake.

  That smell. He hated it. It made him want to vomit, made his head pound, his scar itch. It made him feel small, helpless, lower than dirt.

  “No.” His voice broke. He backed up. It was kerosene. Everywhere. The fumes. They made him queasy. He was dripping with the stuff.

  Dmitri smiled. But it wasn’t Dmitri anymore. It was Bobby, Roy’s big brother. Braces flashed as Bobby grinned his evil grin, a rash of pimples hot and inflamed on his freckled, thirteen-year-old face. Blue eyes glittering with joy as he walked toward Roy with a lit match.

  Roy watched Bobby, pleading, babbling. He was only six, and just a little dumb shit, a piece of whining crap, like Bobby always said, and he should just die already and nobody would care. The match flickered in the dim garage, lighting up Bobby’s face grotesquely with shadows from below. Roy was huddled, trapped in the corner, the driving lawnmower blocking him on one side, the ping-pong table on the other.

  Bobby came closer. The trembling flame came closer. The flame seized onto the fumes, and embraced his arm, flickering and spreading, licking and swirling, as the flames consumed fabric, then skin.

  He broke past Bobby and ran for the garage door, but when he burst outside, it wasn’t the lawn and pool of the suburban ranch house where he grew up, but darkness, rustling trees, moonlit water.

  Water. Yes. Please.

  He ran for the water as his skin blistered, charred. Flames licked his chin, agonizing, unbearable. The dock swayed and gurgled beneath his feet. The water was illuminated by the flames. He was a screaming human torch, stinking of kerosene, wreathed by greasy smoke.

  He leaped into the air, legs pumping. Hit water, went under.

  Came up, gasping for air, but the fire sear
ed his lungs afresh.

  When he opened his eyes, he saw Bobby at the edge of the dock, holding Roy’s car keys and Roy’s Beretta, laughing. His face was lit up by the fire flickering on the water. Fire that came from Roy.

  The leap into the lake had not put the fire out. He screamed, and kept on burning, burning, burning.

  “Fucking ouch!” Aaro jerked away as she made the ump teenth attempt to tease the strip of duct tape out of his hair.

  Nina glanced around, and caught the disapproving glare of the blue-haired lady ahead of them. “Shhh,” she hissed at him.

  “You’re being a baby. And you’re making a scene.”

  Still, he jerked away again when she reached for his head.

  “Aaro,” she coaxed. “Get real. You can’t go around with that thing stuck to your hair. It’s like wearing a sign that says, ‘I just escaped from the trunk of a car.’ Come on! We don’t want to ad-vertise it!”

  “You’re ripping out all my hair! It hurts!”

  “So I’ll cut it. Give me your belt knife.” She made an impatient sound as he continued to hesitate. “Don’t be such a wuss,”

  she complained. “You chopped all my hair off, remember?”

  “That was different,” he muttered, producing the knife and passing it to her with obvious reluctance. “I had scissors.”

  “Of course, I can’t promise a perfect salon cut, but even so.”

  She sawed at his hair, trying to be careful, but the tape was horribly gummy, and had latched onto a wide swatch of the hair on the back of his head. There was no graceful way to do it, stuck so close to his scalp.

  Aaro stared at the clump of hair and tape when it finally came loose, and gingerly felt the jagged, shorn place at the back of his head.

  “Oh, fuck me,” he muttered. “Looks like shit, right?”

  Her mouth twitched. “You will need a remedial haircut, yes.

  But look on the bright side. You’re not still in the trunk of a car, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “About that. My cousin. Did he hurt you?”

  She met his eyes. “He didn’t rape me,” she told him.

  She felt his mind edging cautiously up to hers, searching for the truth. “How?” he asked softly. “How in the hell did you pull that off?”