If he hadn’t been a friend of Sarge’s, and if I didn’t need his help, I’d hurt him for putting that look in her eyes.
“Instead of meeting the presenters at the airport as expected, she was picked up by two of Brian’s...girls. One of them is his on-and-off-again girlfriend. Her mother runs an escort service that’s a front for a prostitution ring. Everybody in Boston knows it but every time the FBI gets close to shutting it down, O’Halloran gets wind of it and somehow his lady’s mother is able to clean house just in time. Several of her clients are high up in the echelon of Boston government and society, so bringing her down will be problematic. It was her idea, the FBI thinks, to stage a phony scholarship contest to bring in new young women from other countries. For more than a month, Marta was forced to work as a prostitute but one day, the back door to the home where they’re all kept was left unlocked. She slid outside and ran. The building was being watched by FBI agents, of course, and they followed from a distance, then approached once she was safely away. I wasn’t able to get into all the files, but...” Leo looked away. “My best guess is that SAC—Special Agent in Charge—was determined to get a bust this time and he put her in harm’s way. A few days later, she went back in, wearing a wire. But Tommy knew she’d talked to the FBI. When she got back inside...” He lifted a shoulder.
“They did that to her.” Tia swallowed and looked away. She sighed and it was so deep, her whole body seemed to move with it, shaking slightly as she let the explosion of air leave her lungs.
“You can’t expect them to be any kinder to you. If you go to Atlanta, your brother could protect you. He could request assistance from the local FBI or the state police. But their protection will only last so long and Tommy O’Halloran hasn’t been brought to court even once, only his brother.”
She shot me an angry glare. “I don’t want to live my whole life hiding because of that fuckhead.”
“You won’t.”
“I don’t know what else you think will...” She stopped then, understanding dawning. Her lids flickered and she swallowed nervously. “You’re planning on killing him. Aren’t you?”
I didn’t answer.
She laughed, the sound a little hysterical. “There are laws about that kind of thing!”
“Those laws never stopped him.”
Chapter 12
Tia
You’re planning on killing him. Aren’t you?
There are laws about that kind of thing!
Those laws never stopped him.
I don’t know why those words were still lingering in my head. It had been eight hours since we’d hit the road and driven steadily west.
He’d blindfolded me when I’d climbed into the car and I’d been too drained to argue. Sometime later, he’d removed the black cloth obscuring my vision and since then, he hadn’t done anything that would keep me from knowing our location.
Not that it mattered right now.
My focus was elsewhere and like any other time I’d locked my attention onto something specific, nothing else was going to get in the way.
Not easily at least.
“Are you hungry?”
I heard him speak, but the words didn’t exactly penetrate.
He couldn’t just kill him.
“You’re going to kill Tommy O’Halloran, aren’t you? You’re going to murder him.”
The decidedly heavy silence instantly became heavier. He didn’t respond for so long, I wasn’t sure if he would answer. Looking over at him, I caught the way his mouth tightened on a grimace but as soon as he realized I was watching, his face smoothed out. “Murder is something that applies to humans, Tia. Tommy O’Halloran qualifies in only the most basic sense. He breathes, eats, bleeds. But he doesn’t think like a human, doesn’t feel, doesn’t care. Humans, by nature, don’t enjoy the suffering of others. They may not go out of their way to ease it, but that doesn’t mean they derive pleasure from it. He does. He seeks it, chases it, avidly does whatever is necessary to cause it. Killing him is akin to killing a rabid dog, one that has started attacking other animals, but a dog doesn’t think. Tommy does. A dog doesn’t enjoy it. Tommy does. A dog with rabies will die. That’s the course of the disease. Tommy doesn’t have rabies. He’s a sick, mean bastard and the cops can’t seem to stop him. He needs to be put down.”
I hated that it made sense.
A soft whining noise came from my left elbow. Looking down at Valkyrie, I rubbed her head and scratched around her ears. “Is that what you think?”
Her big eyes stared into mine, soulful and intense and I tried to think about how she would handle somebody who was crazy enough to kill and kill and kill. She was a dog. Dogs were animals and their instincts were basic and focused on things like life and food and sleep and attention...and I guess, if you weren’t fixed like Valkyrie, getting screwed. If somebody tried to hurt you, then the instinct was to attack and defend and fight.
It was simple, in a way.
I didn’t have what it took to fight somebody like Tommy and he...
“I don’t know your name.”
His shoulders hunched as I shot him an accusatory look. That made me mad.
“What the hell is that? You grab me from my home, made me think you’re going to take me to Tommy, drag me across the country...and you kissed me. Then you get all pissy because I want to know your name? What the fuck?”
“In my line of work, how often do you think I tell people my name, Tia?” he snapped, irritation coming through loud and clear.
It amused me, satisfied something in me I hadn’t even known existed and I found myself giving him a look of wide-eyed confusion and the sort of puzzled smile Bianca liked to give people when she was about to teach them a lesson in what she called Smart-Ass 101. “I really couldn’t say because I’m not familiar with your line of work, Mr....?”
He snarled, then abruptly started to laugh. “You hid that sarcastic bitch very well. Call me Spectre.”
“Is that a first or last name?”
“Neither.” He shot me a level look. “And I expect you know it.”
Instead of answering, I looked back out the window. I did it in time to see a sign, green and white, marked with the upcoming cities. “Where are we going?”
“I’d rather not tell you that,” he said softly.
A headache started to pulse behind my eyes and I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“When are you going to let me call my brother?”
“I have a secure sat phone at our target destination. I’ll call him from there and you can speak to him briefly.” He shot me a narrow look before returning his attention back to the road. “You’re not allowed to give him any information about where we are. I’ll end the call the second you try.”
“Perhaps you should try couching that in some other terms, Casper,” I said sharply. “I don’t respond to not allowed very well.”
He was quiet for a long, long moment, so long that I shifted in my seat to give him a wary look. He had a puzzled frown on his face and after a few seconds, he asked, “Why did you call me Casper?”
“Spectre...ghost.” I waved at him.
“I’m not following.”
I blinked. “Are you serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? What does Spectre, or ghost, have to do with the name Casper?”
“Were you dropped onto this planet by aliens?” I asked. “Or have you never seen cartoons before?”
My first comment had teased the start of a smile from him, but by the time I finished talking, the smile had faded. And unless I was mistaken, there was a faint but unmistakable tension now, in the strong line of his lean shoulders, in the forearms, left bare by the rolled-up sleeves of a plain denim workshirt.
“My childhood didn’t allow much time to indulge in cartoons, I’m afraid,” he said.
There were entire untold stories there, delivered in those simple words, in his bland, emotionless voice.
But for some reason, they left a strange ache in my c
hest. No, I told myself. He can’t make things in your chest ache, damn it.
“That’s kind of sad. Explains a lot, though.”
I directed my attention back to the front window and stared at the filthy back doors of a semitruck. Somebody had scrawled a giant smiley face through the dirt. Casually, I looked at the license plate and committed it to memory, then noted the time on the clock. It wasn’t much of a reference point but if I could get enough licenses stored in my memory, and a rough idea of the time, I’d have something to give my brother. I didn’t know how I’d pass the information on, but I’d worry about that later. Right now, I needed to focus on creating a moving path of breadcrumbs across the middle of America.
“What does it explain?”
His voice distracted me. Irritated, I looked away from the green Hyundai I’d picked out even as I’d tried to more carefully form a plan. Still in its abstract, the idea fell apart and I scowled at him. “What?”
“The cartoons I’ve never watched. What does it explain?”
This time there was something in his voice, an odd, almost wistful sort of curiosity and damn if that didn’t make that ache in my chest expand. Irritated even more, I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at the filthy semi with enough intensity that my will alone should have melted through the steel.
“That’s easy. It explains why you have more in common with a droid than a person. What kind of kid doesn’t have time to indulge in cartoons? Was your daddy too busy trying to build you into the ultimate assassin or something?”
Spectre’s mouth tightened. “No, Tia. His intentions were to make me into the ultimate monster. That’s even worse than an assassin.”
The ache in my chest was gone now, replaced by an awful cold.
I wished I hadn’t flung that last bit out at him. But it was too late to take it back.
TWO HOURS LATER, WE stopped. He’d left the highway for a series of meandering side roads and he finally pulled into the parking lot of an old gas station that looked like it predated the start of the Cold War. Thanks to previous stops, I already knew what to expect and I sighed as he pushed a hat and a pair of glasses at me.
For a second, I considered refusing him but even as I pondered the possible outcomes, my mind drifted back to the images I’d seen on Leo’s computer. Although I realized I’d been looking at what had once been a human, it was hard to really believe it—hard to process it. She’d been...destroyed. No other words for it. Fear shivered through me and this time it wasn’t because of the man next to me, but because of the man who’d set Casper and me on this bizarre collision course.
Aware of his watchful eyes, I pulled on the hat, turning it backward and mashing my hair down before putting on the glasses. The lenses were plastic and too large for my face. When I put them on, they gave me a decidedly waifish look, making me look five years younger. Thanks to the oversized jacket he’d given me, my own sweatshirt and leggings, I looked more like a college kid than a twenty-seven-year-old woman. Glumly, I checked my reflection and climbed out. He was halfway around the SUV before my feet hit the ground.
“In a hurry, Casper?” I asked sarcastically.
“You can use the restroom. I’ll grab some food while we’re inside. I’m hoping we won’t have to stop again after this.”
That got my attention. “Are we close?”
No answer. I wanted to punch him but settled for looking around in hopes of some sign of where we were. Before we’d pulled off, I’d been able to memorize thirteen license plates, strategically placing them out over a period of an hour, but after we’d left the interstate for the rural road, my chances to keep up that process had dropped drastically. I’d caught one license plate. Just one. That plate had been a Texas tag and I was almost positive we weren’t in Texas. We really must be in the back half of beyond.
There were two cars parked but they were on the far side of the building, no way for me to get a look at the license plates. As we approached, I surreptitiously studied the little store’s windows for some sort of identifier—anything. I couldn’t even find a state lotto sticker. All I saw was one handwritten sign on cardboard, taped to the door.
It read:
If you come in here to rob us, you better be right with Jesus.
Charming.
“Are you right with Jesus, Casper?” I asked solemnly as he opened the door.
“No. But as I have no such intentions, it’s a non-issue.” He ushered me inside.
The smell of cigarette smoke wafted around us, thick enough to make me want to dash outside, but the panging in my bladder had grown noticeably more demanding since climbing out of the car, so instead of fleeing, I let Casper urge me to the back where the peeling restroom sign was located.
“You cain’t use that toilet unless you’re buying, girl!” a belligerent voice snapped.
My spine stiffened.
“We’ll be buying gas,” Casper said without breaking pace.
“I got cameras back there!” the guy at the counter shouted.
“They aren’t even connected.”
I looked over at him, gaping. “Are you trying to get him to call the police?”
Casper frowned at me.
Unwilling to discuss realities I’d started to understand only in the past few years, I shook my head and ducked into the bathroom. I wasn’t going to bother trying to figure out where we were now. If the asshole owner was even remotely indicative of the typical citizen in this part of the country, I wanted to be gone before any cops showed. Nerves made my bladder lock up on me and I had to jerk my jeans up over my hips, go to the faucet and turn the water on to coax the damn thing into relaxing so I could pee, but finally, I managed. The closet-sized space was dank and dark, but mercifully clean, smelling sharply of bleach. If it had been dirty, there was no way I would have been able to take care of business in there.
The soap might as well have been pure lye, drying my hands out so bad they were itchy even before I dried them on my jeans. No paper towels and I didn’t trust the wall-hung hand dryer. Pulling the overlong sleeve of Casper’s jacket down over my hand in a makeshift glove, I opened the door. He wasn’t standing guard immediately outside, but I didn’t even spare a glance at the emergency exist, partially blocked by a pallet stacked with cases of coke and shitty beer. Instead, I walked straight back into the main area of the store.
Casper stood at the counter, emptying a basket onto the counter. His eyes met mine in the smudged, dirty mirror hanging behind the counter. “Do you need anything?”
Behind the counter, the man’s lip curled as he stared at me.
My face flushed and I started to say no, jerking my gaze from the store clerk. His face went blank a split second later and I realized Casper had shifted his attention from me to the clerk with his scraggly beard, the brown giving way to gray despite the fact that he was probably only in his forties.
“Is there a problem?” Casper asked coolly.
“No,” the clerk replied, his voice sulky.
He wasn’t staring at me any longer though, so that was all that really mattered. Instead of approaching the counter, I wandered the small store. Spying a small personal care and hygiene section, I grabbed a package of elastics for my hair and a wide-tooth comb.
Then, feeling mean, I grabbed a box of tampons. They were the cheap kind I’d use only under threat of death, but that wasn’t the point. I didn’t even need them thanks to my IUD.
Bianca always told me I had to stop oversharing, it made people wig out. I used to tell her that was their problem, not mine, but had finally come to see that she had a point. People were much more comfortable talking to somebody who didn’t mention extremely personal details within minutes of meeting of them.
Cradling everything against my chest, I made my way to the counter. “I need a few things.”
Casper gestured to the pile. Dumping everything down, I looked at the clerk. “Those are crappy tampons. They’re like sandpaper going in. You should buy a better brand
for your customers.”
He went stiff, face going red as his eyes jerked from the box up to me, then back to the dusty blue box that had probably been sitting on his shelf since before Barrack Obama took office. “Nobody said you had to buy ‘em, girl.”
“It’s that or bleed all over the place. I wasn’t planning on starting my period out here in the middle of nowhere. I can’t help if I’m early.”
He opened, then shut his mouth. His cheeks puffed up and his Adam’s apple bobbed, as if words were choking him in their effort to spill free. But a quick look at Casper had the blood in his cheeks fading away and he resolutely went back to ringing and bagging.
“I don’t think that’s none of my business,” he said sourly, not looking at me as he jammed the keys on his old register with enough force to break the springs.
“I thought you might like to know there are better quality products out there.”
He opened his mouth.
Next to me, Casper shifted.
The clerk’s mouth snapped shut and he said nothing. As he slanted a quick look at me, I grinned.
The muscle in his jaw bunched up tight and pulsed.
Three minutes later, we were out the door, striding to the SUV, parked at one of the two fuel islands, the nose of the car pointing toward the store. Casper lingered a moment. “Do you need to use the restroom once more?”
“What?” I frowned at him.
He held up the bags of merchandise from the store, a brow cocked.
“Oh.” Deliberately turning away, I went to the car door and waited for him to open it. A moment later, he thumbed the key fob and locks clicked open. “No. I have an IUD and I don’t like that brand anyway. I wanted to screw with him. He’s an asshole.”
“Buying tampons was a way to screw with him?” Casper asked, sounding bemused.
Bemused...not uncomfortable. I couldn’t help but wonder at that as I glanced at him.
“Men generally shy away from discussing the realities of female biology.” I paused and added, “Unless, of course, they’re you. Now toss in the fact that I’m a black woman who rambled on about bleeding all over the place, then insulted his lousy buying choices...well, I’m surprised he stayed quiet. Although I think that was because of you.”
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