I pull open the back door, and she gasps as Packard, Greg, and Rondo jump out, pull her and the vacuum in, and slam the door. I take my time walking around the van, sly eye on the storefront. Then I get in the driver’s seat. Sophia’s filing her nails in the passenger side, pretending I’m not there. Fine. I crawl over the hump into the back.
The shop girl glares at me from the swivel chair they have her on; Greg’s got her on one side by the upper arm, not quite a squeeze—reading her, no doubt. Rondo’s on her left, and Packard’s on a crate in front of her and they’re firing questions at her.
I pick her glasses off the floor and try them on. It’s just like Marty said—all four of the highcaps have blurs over their heads, like heat off cement. The shop girl’s still glaring at me.
“Concentrate,” Packard says. “The Dorks.”
“I don’t know!”
Beside her, Greg nods, confirming that she told the truth.
“Who does know?” Packard asks.
She shakes her head. “Just let me go!”
“None of them know,” Greg says. “They suspect the Dorks are using their glasses, but they don’t know for sure. Her name’s Janie.”
Janie turns to glare at Greg now, clearly offended that he’s reading her.
“Oh, that’s interesting,” Greg says, apparently reading her some more. “You can even tell a dead highcap with those glasses. The waves keep coming off a highcap’s head hours after he dies.”
“Where’s your customer list?” Packard asks. “You must have a database of some sort.”
Janie crosses her arms.
“Yuppers,” Greg says, rubbing his buzz cut. “Flash drive,” he continues. “Avery keeps it. Usually in his pocket.”
Packard asks, “Who’s Avery?”
“Owner,” Rondo says. “I got the visual.”
“Listen, Janie,” Packard says. “The Dorks are likely using this product to identify and kill highcaps. How would Avery feel about that?”
Janie swallows and straightens up. “He’d say if they are, it’s not the glasses’ fault. The glasses don’t kill.”
“But what if the glasses are the only link? Would he be willing to turn over his list for an investigation?”
“Nope. Never.”
I don’t need to be a telepath to see that she’s 100 percent confident of this.
Greg nods. “Avery’s customers rely on him for secrecy. It’s his brand promise. Avery doesn’t break his brand promise.”
“Fine,” Packard says. “So we get the flash drive.”
Janie snorts.
Greg holds up a hand to silence Packard. “Even if we get the flash drive, it won’t help us.” Greg’s nodding. “Thing’s fully encrypted. Not only that, but Avery has committed key portions to memory. So even if you broke the encryption, it wouldn’t make sense without Avery’s knowledge. He guards it with his life.”
“That’s his brand promise to customers, so fuck you,” Janie says. “Avery doesn’t break his brand promise of secrecy.”
“True that.” Rondo’s nodding. “Strong on the brand promise, this guy.”
“You can do anything you want to Avery, but you’ll never get that customer list,” Janie says defiantly.
Packard says, “Maybe we’ll take off his glasses and read him.”
Jamie smiles.
Greg squints. “Yow.”
“What?” Packard asks.
“Avery doesn’t need to wear the glasses,” Greg says. “His contact lenses have the special glass. And the chip that distorts highcap signals is implanted in his body.”
Packard looks stunned. “Surgically implanted?”
Rondo and Greg both nod.
Janie holds her hands over her ears. “Stop it!”
“Surgically implanted in his body?” Packard asks. “He’ll always be immune to us?”
Greg widens his eyes at Packard. “Exactly. She thinks you’d have to kill him to get the chip out, but you can’t read a dead man’s mind. She’s convinced he’ll guard customer names and product formulas with his life.”
“Goddamn,” Rondo says. “That’s some serious dedication.”
Janie pulls her hands off her ears. “It’s his promise. Our customers care about that shit.”
“Because they’re all paranoid,” Sophia observes from the front.
“Where in his body is it implanted?” Packard asks.
“Nobody knows,” Greg says.
“How the hell does your company operate?” Sophia asks. “What if you need to do something with billing or shipping?”
“Information on an as-needed basis, and deleted after use,” Greg says.
“So I guess you’re shit out of luck,” Janie adds.
Sophia looks at her watch. “We’re pushing it.”
“Yeah,” Packard says.
Janie looks alarmed. “What are you going to do?”
Packard asks, “Who does your shipping?”
Janie presses her lips together.
“They switch it up,” Greg says. “Randomized. Fake account names.”
“Hurry up. They’re going to notice she’s gone,” Sophia says.
“They’ll think she’s smoking,” Greg says.
“Fuck you!” Janie says. “I hope the Dorks kill you all.”
Packard quizzes her about the back of the store, security. Whether outsiders ever come in. Plumbers, techs, delivery. All negative.
“Nurses for a health screening?” I try.
“No,” Greg says. “Wait. State accountants. Auditors.”
Janie’s shaking her head, eyes closed, fighting the read now. I’m surprised she doesn’t know how to skunk her thoughts with an earworm song. “They’re being audited by the state. Sales tax problems. Auditors were there last week. But they’re not coming back. Audit’s done.”
“We have to let her go back,” Sophia says.
Janie casts a careful glance in Sophia’s direction. Sophia’s playing the good cop, paving the way for Janie to allow her creepy, memory-cleansing gaze.
“Where does Avery live?” Packard asks.
“Nobody knows,” Janie says.
“Good God, can we release her already?” Sophia scrambles over the hump and shoulders past me, somewhat roughly, and helps Janie out of the swivel seat. It’s weird to be wearing the glasses, and seeing the blurs over all their heads.
Packard opens the back door and she hops out, then helps Janie out. Sophia apologizes to Janie; they exchange a few words.
I’m the continuity, so I get out too, just in time to see Sophia lock onto poor Janie’s memory. Janie returns her gaze. She seems to think Sophia’s trying to communicate something, and then her face goes dull. Sophia’s focus intensifies, brown eyes so dark they seem opaque. I used to think Sophia sucked the memory out of people, but Otto explained that she blurs it, like taking her finger and smudging it beyond recognition.
Greg leans out the back, reaches into Janie’s ski jacket pocket, and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. Squatting in the back of the van, he lights up.
“What are you doing?”
He hands the lit cigarette to me. “When Sophia’s done, put this in her hand and give her the glasses, like she dropped them. Get her attention off the van so Soph has time to sneak back in.”
Packard glowers at me. “I hate those glasses.”
“I bet you do,” I say, eyeing the haze over his messy copper curls. I pull them off.
Sophia breaks eye contact and slinks back into the van as I stick the cigarette between Janie’s first and second fingers. Then I hold the glasses out to her. “Hey! Don’t lose these.”
“Oh!” Somewhat unconsciously, Janie takes them and positions them on her face.
I quickly bang the door shut. “Thanks for carrying that out. I couldn’t’ve done it myself.”
“Sure.” Janie gives her cigarette a questioning look, then she takes a drag. At that point, I know we’re home free.
“Sorry to put you through all t
his, you know …”
“No problemo,” Janie says.
“Well, have a nice day.” I smile and walk to the front, get in the driver’s seat, and watch her meander back in the direction of the store.
I wait until she’s in, and then, with a shaking hand, I start the van, and drive off as normally as possible. The gang will stay in back and out of sight until we’re clear. I wouldn’t mind if they stayed out of sight the whole way home.
A couple blocks down, I pull off my wig and scratch my head all around. I remind myself why we’re doing this. And that we took—what? Five minutes of her life? Is that really such a big deal?
And I’m thinking I should order some of those glasses.
Chapter
Nine
A NEW TEAM OF TAX AUDITORS will be reviewing the Paranoia Factory operations: Shelby and Simon and me. This is not completely surprising. We disillusionists are masters at infiltrating people’s lives and workplaces. And then there’s the fact that we’re not highcaps.
I spend a boring yet exhausting few hours back at HQ waiting for everything to get arranged. Phone calls are made; emails are sent; pizza is ordered and eaten.
It turns out that the state subcontracts tax audits to private companies, and somebody knows somebody who has the power to fix a work order of some sort.
Eventually the story is hammered out: the team of state tax auditors that was sent last week screwed up. The three of us are the replacement auditors, charged with redoing the sloppy work of our predecessors.
In truth, we’re going in there to figure something out, as Packard puts it. “Products were shipped; customers were billed. The information is there,” he says. “And if nothing else, get that flash drive.”
After dinner, Packard and I head to the office supply superstore where we’re supposed to rendezvous with Shelby and Simon. Packard picks out a nerdy, wire-rimmed pair of reading glasses. “For Simon,” he says.
“As if he’ll wear those,” I say.
Packard tosses them into the cart.
Simon’s going because he’s good with numbers. Shelby’s going because she’s an immigrant; apparently paranoid inventor-CEO Avery is more likely to trust outsiders—another tidbit Greg pulled from Janie’s mind. And I’m already involved. Plus, I have bookkeeping experience from the dress shop.
The office store’s nearly closed. I select a neon-yellow folder with a kitten on it and throw it into the basket.
“What’s that for?”
“The papers from the real auditors.”
“They all use leather-bound folders.”
“I’m the deviant auditor. It’ll add verisimilitude.”
He thinks about this. “Okay. I like it. Now, let’s see …” He pulls out the shopping list Sophia and Greg made. They visited one of the real auditors—yet another person who got the ol’ read ’n’ revise.
Packard tosses three Accounting for Dummies books into the cart. “What’s wrong?”
“I hate when Sophia revises,” I say. “Even a day. It seems worse than Ez invading our dreams.”
“Wait a few nights and you might change your mind on that.”
“How would you feel if Sophia did that to you? If she revised even an hour?”
“This is about catching killers.”
“It doesn’t bother you when she does it to innocent people? Takes their day or whatever?”
He pushes his hand into a bin of brass brads and pulls it up, letting them run through his fingers. “When you see people’s motivations like I do, innocence isn’t a word you use lightly. Or often.”
“Okay, how about relatively innocent?”
“That’s not my concern.”
“Not your concern. That’s admirable.” I pick out a fancy pen.
“Yeah, well, the whole knight-in-shining-armor thing never worked so well for me.”
Something stops me here—something sad beneath his flippant tone. “No?” I say, hoping for more.
He ignores me. I think about the dream, the sense that he needed to protect that place. “Tell me, Packard.”
He turns to me. “About my knight-in-shining-armor days? My tireless work on behalf of the weak, the downtrodden, and the stupid?” This, like it’s a joke.
“In the dream, you were concerned about protecting that place. The kids in that place.”
“You’re back to that?”
“What happened with you and Otto?”
He grabs the pen right out of my hand and puts it back. “Accountants use pencils.”
“Why do they have pocket protectors, then?”
“For pencils.” He consults the list. “We need briefcases.” He leads deeper into the store.
I catch up to him. “Tell me your and Otto’s secret and I’ll never mention how you deceived me ever again.”
“Mention it all you want. I know what I did to you.”
“Come on,” I say.
“I can’t tell you, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t.”
“You made a pact of secrecy?”
He stops and turns to me. “Yes, we made a pact. Whatever you think of me, I’m good for my word, and I take my pacts to the grave.” He turns into the portfolios aisle.
“It’s not telling if you dream the memory.”
He continues down the aisle without answering.
“You and Otto and the castaway kids, that school like Peter Pan Island. The stairwell.”
“Right,” he says.
“What happened in there?”
“Boyhood adventures,” he says casually.
“It was more than that. I was in your head.”
He picks up a briefcase, pops the clasp, and opens it.
“How did those bodies get embedded in the wall? Were they highcap children you couldn’t protect?”
He sighs theatrically. “And the tragedy haunts me still.” He shuts the briefcase and puts it back.
“Ez asked me if you were ever in a war zone.”
He pulls out another briefcase, as if I’m not even talking.
I say, “I know the memory of those corpses in the wall is real, but at the same time, it feels metaphorical, doesn’t it? A secret that’s buried. Bodies entombed. It’s bad to keep secrets like that. It always feels better for secrets to come out. To just relax and remember them clearly, start to finish.” I’m copying the way Ez used the power of suggestion, when she painted that picture of me giving her the descrambler bracelet.
He unsnaps the clasps.
“That one hand seemed bigger than a child’s, though,” I say. “Pushing out. The hand, the truth, all coming out.”
“Like a zombie.”
“You felt so wary, and all that dread. Alone in the school stairwell, with glass stuck in your foot. How did those bodies get in there? And what happened next? It would be such a great relief to relive it,” I say. “Replay it start to finish, in a clear and open way.”
He freezes, midinspection. I’m guessing he’s finally realized what I’m doing—trying to charge up his stairwell secret.
“And then there was a crack in the wall, right where you didn’t want one—”
“It won’t work,” he says casually. “I can’t blame you, though.” Gently, he places a briefcase into the cart between us. “You certainly can’t afford to let your memory of us last summer run loose in a dream. You work so hard to hide it, even from yourself. The power of it.”
He’s doing it back to me, but I keep going; it’s what Ez would do. I say, “You lit your lighter and held it up to the crevice so you could see in. You didn’t want to see, but you had to, and there were fingers showing, like a body was embedded in there.”
He rests his fingers lightly upon the top of the shopping cart’s metal caging. “I’m thinking about that afternoon you came to the empty restaurant, that day after the Alchemist. You were so alone.” He pauses. I was. I’d never felt so alone. “Nobody saw it, but I did. I always see you. And you came in that door and came up to me and everything was n
ew.”
My blood races; he’s two feet away, on the other side of a shopping cart, but I feel his presence, his heat, his maleness. It’s like he charges the air around us.
“And I touched you.” He runs a finger along his side of the cart. “Your skin was electric—I half thought there should be sparks.” He lowers his voice. “I know you felt it. You looked so beautiful. And then you came closer.”
He starts to roll the cart sideways. I clamp down hard on my side, stopping it, shocked that he’d talk so dirty in an office superstore. Then I realize that he hasn’t said anything dirty at all.
He leans in and talks low. “Your skin was so warm, and you smelled like girl soap, and you were trembling. I could feel you tremble with my lips.”
The trembling wasn’t about fear; it was about the aliveness of being with him. And how the brush of his lips felt kinetic. I curl my fingers into the cool metal crisscross of the shopping cart. “I’m thinking about the stairwell.”
“I’m not. I’m thinking about how you sighed this little sigh when you sank into the feeling of us together. We both sank into that feeling together—I’ll never forget that. And then you pushed your hands under my shirt and slid them across my back, and your palms made that skin-on-skin sound.”
I swallow. The lights are too bright.
“The slide of skin on skin. A kind of whisper.” He rolls the cart aside now, and there’s just blank space between us. We’re too close. “The heat of your touch, the whisper of it. And I remember how it felt to hold you, and how holding you made my prison walls seem to vanish for once.”
I take a half step back, unable to breathe, overwhelmed by this raw confession.
“There you are!” Shelby’s voice cuts the energy between us.
She’s a clashing heap of mittens, scarves, and a big floppy knit hat; Simon trails behind her in his shaggy coat. She steps right up to Packard and launches into complaints about us having to pose as auditors. “With our large target load, and now this? Is too much!” Her accent thickens with emotion as she recounts her oppressive duties as a disillusionist.
Packard wears his listening face, brows drawn slightly together, but he’s not listening; he looks a bit dazed. Rosy cheeks. Simon gives me this look; he senses that they’ve interrupted something.
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