“Clay’s really okay?”
His question was met with an ominous silence. “He’s having difficulty with his talent.”
He twisted to look at Taylor. “What does that mean?”
She gave a shrug. “Just what it sounds like. He’s having trouble managing it.”
Gregg scraped his teeth over his lower lip, trying not to swear at her. Better he talked to Clay.
“Where is he?”
“Out of town.”
“Son of a fucking bitch. Give me a goddamn answer!”
She shook her head. “I’ll give you his number when we get to the safe house. That’s the best I can do.”
Because she didn’t trust him. No more than she trusted the bastard behind the wheel. He couldn’t blame her, even though he wanted to wring her neck.
“How long until we get there?”
“Depends on traffic.” She gestured at the flashing lights, to soften the nonanswer.
Gregg blew out a harsh breath and closed his eyes again, the worming feeling intensifying around the wound on this leg. He could have just travelled to one of his homes, but he needed a better weapon than a handgun, and he needed intel.
“How long has Savannah had me?”
Another ominous silence. “Almost three weeks.”
“Fuck.”
“Yep.”
“All right. Tell me what’s been going on. Tell me everything.”
Chapter 8
Riley
PRICE AND I MADE it to Diamond City in just over seven hours. We drove along South Rim Road of the massive caldera that provided a perch for Diamond City. It poured like an architectural avalanche down one side on three major shelves plus the rim level. The caldera was as deep as the mountain above used to be tall. The bottom was full of snow, with an ice-covered lake and a river running through it. Snow-sugared forested peaks rose up all around, and tall cedars and pines crowded up against the road.
Lead clouds humped low in the midday sky, and flurries of snow threatened another storm later. The inside of our vehicle remained quiet and tense. Price’s face might as well have been carved from rock. He hadn’t said more than a handful of words since we left the safe house near Durango, and I had stopped trying to make conversation. I wasn’t sure if he was mad because I recognized the truth of the situation, or because I’d assumed he’d choose his brother over me. I still couldn’t imagine him doing anything else.
We could see emergency lights strobing as we circled around to the city. It looked like a red, white, and blue disco party.
“This looks bad,” I murmured, then remembered that my brothers had equipped the crew-cab truck with a police-band radio. I flipped it on. Within minutes we’d learned that hours before there’d been a series of six explosions in the city. The hospitals were overwhelmed, as were the emergency response teams. Price and I exchanged a look. I pulled out my phone and dialed Patti first.
She picked up after two rings. “We’re fine,” she said. “It’s gridlock out there. Not sure how you’re going to get into Downtown. See you when you get here.”
She didn’t wait for an answer but hung up. The diner must have been busy.
Next I dialed Taylor. She didn’t pick up. I dialed Leo, then Jamie. Same thing. My stomach coiled into knots.
“They aren’t answering,” I said, even though Price could clearly tell that was the case.
“Do you have Dalton’s number?”
I gave him a startled look. To say Price didn’t like Dalton was like saying seals don’t like polar bears. He despised the man, and for good reason: Dalton used to be—and probably still was—my father’s loyal henchman. I knew he owed Vernon for something big, like saving his life. He’d helped rescue Price on Vernon’s orders, and then joined up with my Scooby squad because of the experiments he and Taylor had discovered in the FBI building where Price had been held for torture. Experiments that Vernon had also known about, which put the two on the outs. He’d become Taylor’s shadow. Calling him was worth a try.
He answered before the first ring finished. “Yes?”
“Taylor and my brothers aren’t picking up. Is everything okay?” I spoke fast and sharp. I didn’t like Dalton much either. Yes, he’d helped break Price out of the FBI torture chamber, and yes, he’d been working to protect me before that. But he’d also tried to kidnap me. And he worked for my father. Supposedly he didn’t work for Vernon anymore, but I’d believe that when monkeys flew out my ass.
Dalton’s hesitation didn’t bode well. I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t swear at him to hurry the hell up.
“There have been developments.”
I managed not to reach through the phone and rip his head off. “Explain.”
“Mr. Touray is free. We are taking him to safety now.”
“Free?” I clenched a hand on Price’s arm. “He escaped? He’s okay? Is he hurt?”
Dalton didn’t answer. I heard the sounds of fumbling, and then Taylor came on the phone.
“He’s been shot, but we gave him one of Dalton’s healing pendants.”
“You’re taking him to the safe house in the Bottoms?”
“Unless he travels off on his own.”
Price was shooting me looks, his expression burning with hope.
“Touray’s free. He’s going to be okay,” I told him. Then to Taylor, “How did he escape?”
“He didn’t.”
“Then how—?”
“I don’t have the full story.”
“Okay. We’re coming into the city now. I’ve got a trace I need to do and then we’ll meet you at the safe house.”
“Can you trace?”
That’s my sister. Direct and to the heart of the matter. Since she’d know if I were lying, I didn’t bother. “Think so. It hurts, still, but this can’t wait. I shouldn’t have to do anything more than a trace, though.”
“Good. See that you don’t. If you die, I will not forgive you. If I can, I’ll meet you at the diner later.”
With that, the phone cut out. I made a face at it and slid it back in my pocket.
“What did she say?” Price’s hands were tight on the wheel. The air in our vehicle pressed hard against me, as taut and tense as he was. I rolled my window down to see if that would cut the pressure. It did, but it also froze me to the bone.
“Sorry.” He rolled my window up again, and though a breeze continued to blow through the vehicle, I no longer felt like I might suffocate.
I repeated my terse conversation. He sagged back against his seat in relief.
“Thank God.” He thought a moment and scowled. “What did she mean—Gregg didn’t escape? Why would Savannah let him go? Or maybe someone in her organization did it?”
“No idea. We’ll find out soon enough. But first we have to get to the diner. It’s a fucking mess down there.”
We pulled into an overlook near the southern entrance into Diamond City. A smoky haze made it tough to see any details of the city. The stench was bad. Chemical and rubber and wood and tar. Breathing it gave me a headache and made my throat hurt.
“We’re not going to get to the diner until late tonight in this mess.” Price crouched at the edge of the overlook. “Subway will be down. If there’s a chance of tunnel collapse—natural or not—protocol is to close it. We’re going to have to hoof it if we want to get anywhere.”
I nodded and pushed to my feet. “Better get started, then.”
He tossed me a glance. “Or we find a bike.”
That was code for “steal a motorcycle.” He sure as hell wasn’t talking about the pedal variety. “Sure,” I said, helping him up. “Let’s go.”
Archer Highway, the southern artery into the city, was a six-lane road. It was backed up all the way to the Rim. A parking
structure on the west side offered a place to stash the truck. We locked it, invoking the stay-away charms tied to the mechanism with an extra sweep of one finger, before shouldering our packs and heading out to the road.
A red neon sign for the subway station just below the parking structure flashed Closed. That made me happy. I hated being underground. Or in small spaces like elevators. Just going into my basement turned me into a gibbering idiot. I’m not a coward. I use the subway and elevators whenever I have to. I just prefer with all my soul not to.
It was cold enough outside that people sat in their cars with the motors running. Sooner or later they’d run out of gas. I wondered what they’d do then. Of course, they’d probably need bathrooms long before that. I didn’t let myself think about how they’d solve that problem.
Finding a ride wasn’t going to be so easy. Any bikers who might have been caught by the gridlock had just ridden between the stopped cars and gone about their business. All the same, we had to find something. The diner was still a good forty miles away.
Price is a strong man. He’s got a whole lot of muscle and hardly any fat, but he doesn’t spend a lot of time walking, or jogging for that matter. And he was barely recovered from a first-class torturing. We’d gone about three miles when he began to slow down. I was kicking along at a rapid pace. I walked just about everywhere unless I was in a hurry. In the summers, I used a bicycle. The winters, I grabbed an occasional cab or, more likely, I suffered through a subway ride. I hadn’t done a lot of walking in the last few months, but my body hadn’t forgotten how, and my joints and muscles only ached a little until I warmed up.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I’m upright and breathing,” was Price’s sardonic reply.
“Got any ideas where we’re going to find a bike? There’s a shop about ten miles or so from here. We could head for it. Break in.”
He shook his head. “Once we hit Downtown, we’ll find something. Bikes are a lot easier to have in the city, not to mention less expensive and easier to park.”
A few miles later, we reached the long, sloping ramp into Downtown. It went through the Jeffrey Michael Howe tunnel, aka the JMH. The tunnel snaked back and forth in four lazy curves. A sidewalk ran alongside, and more than a few people had been killed walking it. Demands for a covered stairway to Downtown had been met with inaction. Tonight, though, traffic wasn’t an issue. Breathing was. Well, that and being in a teensy tiny tunnel.
Motors continued to run, filling the zigzag space with carbon dioxide clouds. The areas without a direct opening to fresh air would be bad. “This could get dicey,” I said. “We need to go quick.”
“At least it’s downhill,” Price said. “Lead the way.”
I broke into a fast jog. Luckily, the sidewalk wasn’t icy. I wasn’t going to slip and fracture my ass. Behind me, I heard the reassuring thump of Price’s feet. He had a longer stride than I did, so I put on a little more speed.
By the time I’d reached the second turn, I’d forgotten what oxygen tasted like. My mouth and nose were filled with cloying fumes. My lungs ached from trying to sort oxygen from the miasma. I didn’t think the motorists were in any real danger, unless they had asthma problems. Vents in the tunnel ceiling every twenty feet or so allowed some of the exhaust to escape. I slowed whenever I passed under one.
At the bottom, I flung myself outside and braced myself against the wall. My lungs bellowed, and I gasped. Price leaned beside me, his face flushed and sweat gleaming along his cheeks beneath his knit hat.
“I may have just developed stage ten emphysema,” I said before breaking into a hoarse cough that sounded a lot like a donkey braying. If that donkey smoked a dozen cigars a day for fifty years.
“Is there a stage ten?” Price panted.
“There is now.”
After we managed to gulp enough oxygen to breathe normally again, we speed-walked down into a nearby residential area. Lights were still working here. People stood in clusters on street corners and in apartment parking lots, staring off toward one of the emergency sites and talking rapidly.
We sidled up to one group. “What happened?” I asked.
A dark-skinned man wearing a heavy flannel jacket lined in fleece glanced at me with suspicion. “An explosion. Six of them. Where the hell have you been?”
“We just drove in from Mesa,” Price lied. “Haven’t been listening to the radio. What was blown up? Was it terrorism?”
A woman about the same age as the man, her arms folded tight just above a swelling belly, shook her head. “News says it was Carre Elementary, Sacred Heart Church, Café Trevor, Keyes Inn, the Andrea Movie Complex, and the Wallace-Lees Medical Center.” Tears rolled down the woman’s cheeks, and the man pulled her into an embrace. “What kind of monster would do this?”
“Damn sure someone ought to pay,” an older woman said, a scarf covering her curlers. She wore a print dress, with heavy tights, and sweater pulled over it.
Another man snorted. He was wiry and small, with long brown hair and glasses. “Cops don’t care. Tyets drop money in their pockets like Vegas gambling machines and they pay out in favors and cover-ups. Isn’t going to be any justice. You can bet one or more Tyets will be hitting back. Gonna be a war. Be a smart time to get the hell out of the city.”
I pulled Price away. His body was rigid, his hands clenched into fists. He shook with rage.
“Whoever did this is going to pay and pay hard.” He spoke through clenched teeth. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“We,” I reminded him. “We will make sure of it.” I spoke quietly, but my blood burned, and if I could have, I’d have dropped the bombers into a woodchipper and watched them scream.
He glanced at me and gave a short nod. We both knew that there was nothing we could do right now. It was going to take research, planning, and man power.
We wandered through the gridlock until we found a residential area and a likely target in the shape of a pair of bikes parked under a carport beside a tidy blue pillbox of a house. Snow mounded on the front lawn of the house and blocked most of the driveway, except for a cleared path from the carport to the street and another to the front door.
“What now?” I asked. I could pick a lock, and back in the storage cabinet in my house I had a couple of spells to open electronic locks. But when it came to vehicles, I was about useless, except for maybe cheering Price on. I just didn’t have experience swiping them.
Priced glanced at the sky and then up and down the street. The sun had already begun to set, but there were people still on the sidewalks and moving in and out of their houses.
“We need to wait until it’s darker and it quiets down. There’s a steak house a couple miles from here. Let’s go get something to eat and warm up.”
I wanted to argue, but I was freezing and starving, not to mention thirsty as hell. When he took my hand and slid it inside his coat pocket with his, that warmed me more than just about anything else could have done. I squeezed his hand.
We returned around three hours later, after a good meal. I felt a lot better and the exercise of the day, while making my muscles ache, also felt good. It was good to be outside. Price had been quiet, but he’d managed to find ways to touch me all along—holding hands, nudging up against my leg with his, rubbing his shoulder against mine.
The street of our target house was empty now, and flickering lights inside a couple places revealed TVs. Hopefully everybody was glued to the news reports and wouldn’t notice us.
“Wait here,” Price ordered, striding under the carport. He carried himself like he had a right to be there.
After about three minutes, he wheeled one of the bikes out of the driveway and kept going up the street. All I knew about the machine was that it was a Honda, which I read off the orange gas tank. It looked older, like it had been well used. Price waited unt
il we were two blocks away before he pulled out his pocket knife and set about hot-wiring the ignition. A minute later, the bike started with a rumbling growl.
“Nice work.”
Price threw his leg over the seat with a grin, reaching out to steady me as I slid on behind. I wrapped my arms around his waist.
“Ready?”
I nodded, and he hit the accelerator, shifting gears smoothly.
Even aboard the bike, it took us another three hours or so to get to the diner. We kept running into roadblocks and detours, and a couple of times stopped to help push stalled cars off the road. A lot had run out of gas, and the owners had walked away to find warmth. By the time we arrived, it was nearly midnight.
Despite being closed for two hours, lights still gleamed inside. This area was pretty well protected from the electrical issues plaguing much of the rest of the city. A copshop was right across the street, with a hospital a couple miles away. The whole area was on a side system with its own backup generators fueled by magic.
Price went around behind the diner and pulled into the parking lot, stopping by the dumpster. He shut off the bike. I slid off. My face ached with cold. I’d pulled my coat up as high as I could, but the chill of the wind crept beneath and burrowed into my bones. Price swung his leg over the seat and stood, pulling his gun from his pocket and thumbing back the hammer. He didn’t do unprepared.
I drew my own weapon, holding it at my side as he went to the door. He depressed the handle. It didn’t open.
“It’s locked,” he told me.
“We could go around front.”
He shook his head. “Better we stay out of sight. Knock and let them know we are here.”
I pulled my right glove off with my teeth and gave a couple of sharp raps against the steel. We waited. Price shifted so that he stood behind me with clear views of both the parking lot and the door. He lifted his gun, pointing toward the street. I didn’t question him. At the moment, we were fugitives from both the law and most of the criminals, which meant about sixty or seventy percent of Diamond City was hunting for us. Assuming they knew we were alive.
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