Truth and Consequences

by Sarah Madison

  I didn’t have time to stage an escape. HG was just outside the window. Even if I overpowered Christy, he’d be on me in a flash, and he was armed. I could make a dash for the front door, but I’d have to deal with an armed Rick there, and I suspected my usefulness to them was running out. So I played the only hand I had. “Why didn’t you tell your boss about Mrs. Flynn?”

  “What?” Christy was startled.

  Good.

  “When he called. You told him about me, but you never mentioned Mrs. Flynn. He would have told you to bring her along, wouldn’t he?”

  Her silence spoke volumes.

  “You don’t think your goons, Mutt and Jeff, won’t mention it? They seem kind of chatty to me.”

  “I don’t plan on hanging around.”

  I think she surprised herself, but once the words were out, she gave a little nod, like it was the smart thing to do, and she’d only just realized it.

  “You think your boss will let you go?” I indicated the apartment, an island of expensive good taste in a sea of poverty and crime. There was probably something to that. Something that could tell us more about the guy who was pulling the strings. “He doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who gives up easily.”

  “You don’t know him. He’s never had anything in his life before. He’s had to work hard for everything that he’s achieved.”

  “Spoken like someone who’s making excuses for him. So which is it? Is he the poor boy who made it good, or the ruthless tycoon who always gets what he wants? Or both? Christy, if you’re scared of him, let us help. You don’t have to run. You can help us take him down.”

  “It’s too late,” she said, almost in a whisper. I could see her features harden as she made her decision. “Anyway you’ll find out soon enough.” She was cool again, once more in control.

  I couldn’t push her any further, not if I wanted to keep playing dumb.

  HG came back into the apartment. “No one out there.”

  “Good.” Christy went to the bar. Her hand shook slightly as she poured herself a shot of whiskey. Frowning at HG, she said, “For pity’s sake, put that ridiculous gun down and get yourself a real weapon.”

  HG turned the gun over in his hand, smiling at it. “What’s wrong with this? I like it. Looks like something out of a Western.”

  “It’s a peashooter, and you’ll probably have crap aim with it.”

  HG shrugged. He started toward the bureau as well, but something thumped up against the window.

  “See what that was.” Christy’s voice cracked like a whip. She set her tumbler down hard enough to spill some whiskey. While HG took off at a jog for the garden, Christy opened the gun drawer. I closed the distance between us and slammed the drawer shut as she reached in. Something snapped, a sharp crack like splintering wood. She shrieked in pain and tried pushing me off her, scratching and spitting like a feral cat. She managed to get her hand out of the drawer, and with it tucked into her body to protect it, snatched up a bottle of vodka to swing at me. Punching her in the mouth left her reeling, and I was twisting one arm up behind her back when HG came flying back into the room. I spun the two of us around and held her tightly, so she was between me and HG’s gun.

  “Let her go.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Shoot him,” Christy snarled, morphing into a harpy. She struggled against my grip.

  “Hold still,” HG yelled, clearly concerned that he’d hit Christy.

  “Walk over here and shoot him, you fucking moron.”

  Lips folded together tightly, HG crossed within six feet of us and pointed the gun at my forehead. “Let her go.”

  So I did.

  She whipped around and smacked me across the face with every ounce of strength, even as she pressed her injured hand to her chest. The impact of her hand snapped my head around, sending a sharp jolt of pain from my neck into my arm. I cried out involuntarily and hunched my shoulders to guard my neck. Bad idea. That only made it worse.

  “We don’t need him anymore,” Christy sneered. With blood staining her teeth, she looked like a vampire. She and HG made a nice pair—her with her split lip, and him with his bloodied nose. “Go ahead and kill him. We’ll have what we want soon enough, and we need to be on the watch for Flynn.”

  “Now I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  John’s drawl took everyone by surprise, including me. We all turned to see him standing in the entranceway, cool as a cucumber, as though he were arriving at a party that had started without him.

  He had Rick’s gun and was pointing it at HG. “Drop your weapon. Nice and easy now.”

  When HG hesitated, John said, “That’s my mother’s gun, and she wants it back.” The slight emphasis on back was a pointed reminder of how HG got the gun in the first place, and the accompanying smile was definitely wolflike.

  “How did you get here so fast? I only gave you the address a few minutes ago.” Pain and fury made Christy screech. HG continued to gawk at John in openmouthed disbelief.

  “Oh, just shoot them. You’re already under investigation for shooting the coach.” I waved a hand dismissively. “What’s another body, more or less?”

  HG carefully lowered the revolver to the floor and stood up again with both hands raised. Christy raised her hands as well, her injured hand quivering slightly. She glowered at both John and me with equal venom.

  “You did get here fast.” Not that I was complaining.

  He smirked at me. Downright smirked, damn it. “I was already here when I called. That tracker came in handy. Smart of you to take the box with you.”

  His gun hand never wavering, John took out a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket and tossed them to me. I cuffed HG’s hands together around one of the supports for the loft.

  “I’ve got another set inside my jacket,” John said, indicating his inner pocket with a tip of his head.

  Linking Christy’s arms through one of HG’s, I handcuffed her wrists together. She winced when I tightened the cuffs around her crushed hand, fingers already swelling. HG jerked his arms around the metal support, rattling the cuffs and cursing, the idiot. Like that was going to make the handcuffs magically separate.

  Christy turned her anger on HG. “Stop jerking me around, you idiot!” She pressed her head against the support beam and whimpered.

  “So now what?” I asked, once our prisoners were secure. “We wait for the so-called boss?”

  “Yeah, but he’s not going to be as easy to take down as our friend Rick was.” John waggled the gun in his hand. “I’m looking forward to meeting the bastard, though.”

  “You shouldn’t be.” Christy was no longer furious. In fact, she looked terrified. “He’ll turn you inside out.”

  I exchanged glances with John.

  What are we going to do with them afterward? We can’t exactly turn them over to the Bureau, now can we?

  “We need to call it in.” John met my eye steadily, his gaze telling me what I didn’t want to know, that he’d weighed the risks of reporting their criminal acts to the FBI and decided that he didn’t have a choice. “Might as well let Drover and Harris take the credit for bringing down an antiquities ring. But first things first.” John pocketed the automatic. He surveyed the room and he walked over to a gleaming silver and white metal chair. Tossing aside the seat cushion, he hefted the chair and swung it into the display case. The glass shattered spectacularly.

  “Are you insane? Or do you just like smashing stuff?”

  He shot me a quick, devastating smile. Put a leather jacket on him and a cigarette in his mouth, and he could have been James Dean. Pulling the sleeve of his jacket over his hand, John knocked some of the larger pieces of glass to the floor, so he could safely reach in and pick up the boxes.

  He dropped the first box on the floor—the one that granted telepathy. As he lifted up a heel to stomp it into the carpet, I shouted at him. “Stop.”

  Foot still raised, he looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “
We need to get rid of these things. It doesn’t matter if they’re pieces of history or evidence in an investigation. They need to go.”

  “Yes, yes, I agree. But seriously, you don’t know what kind of effect destroying them like that will have. What if it, you know, releases energy or something?”

  The lift of his eyebrow suggested he hadn’t thought of that, but he raised his foot even higher and slammed it down as though he were kicking in a door. The box splintered and broke apart without any dimming of the lights, unleashing a Pharaoh’s Curse, or causing a tsunami. At least, as far as I knew on the last two.

  I intervened before he could destroy the second box. “We might need that one,” I said, wrapping it in a handkerchief and putting it in my pocket. You don’t know. This could be the one that neutralizes the others. “Here.” I pulled out the fake and removed the tracker. “Break this one if you like.”

  “Of course you have a handkerchief with you,” he said, rolling his eyes. He ground the copy into splinters and then took out the real piece from the Carter-O’Neill museum out of his pocket, smashing it as well.

  “You do know about the boxes,” Christy said, her voice rusty with pain. “I knew you were faking the amnesia.”

  Ignoring her, I was about to ask about Rick, when I noticed a small, red blinking light reflected on the ceiling. I pointed it out to John. “Do you see that?”

  “Shit. It’s a silent alarm.” John glared at the captives, then added the information he’d gleaned from them, “It’s a private alarm, not one wired to alert the police.”

  “It was probably triggered when you broke the case.”

  John nodded, his mouth tight and angry. “Which means—” He broke off suddenly, pressing the heel of his hand over one eye. “Fuck. He’s here. He’s somewhere close by.”

  Damn it. It was one thing to suspect we were dealing with an unscrupulous telepath. It was another to know it.

  “Block him.” I resisted the urge to fold John into my arms, as though I could safely cocoon him or something. “You know how to shield, use it.”

  It was an odd experience, watching someone who probably had the world’s best personal barriers struggle to lock his shields in place. But John Flynn hadn’t spent a lifetime hiding his emotions for nothing. I don’t know what it cost him, but when he straightened, his face was as blank as a new author’s sheet of paper. With a controlled grimace, he readied his gun in his hand.

  “Where is he? Is he alone?”

  John shook his head, looking white about the gills. “I don’t know. I can’t check without letting him in.”

  Something acrid burned in my nose, causing me to lift my head and test the air like a hunting dog. “Do you smell that? Fire.”

  “Fire?” Christy’s voice rose to a shriek. “You have to let us go.”

  “Yes,” HG joined in, both of them jerking against their restraints. “Let us go!”

  “Hold still,” I snapped. I caught the keys midair when John tossed them to me.

  “I have to—”

  “I know. Go.” I turned my back on John, leaving him to tackle “the boss” as I unlocked Christy and HG. The smell of smoke was getting stronger.

  John was back in seconds. “The front door is blocked somehow. I can’t open it.”

  Like a steer suddenly realizing he was in a kill pen at a slaughterhouse, HG ran bellowing for the kitchen door. A single gunshot cracked as he ran into the garden. Through the window, we saw him pitch face-first into the lawn.

  “Oh, my God,” Christy gasped. “He’s just going to pick us off one by one as we try to leave the building.”

  Why would Christy’s boss so quickly decide they were expendable? The only answer that made sense was that they had always been disposable to him.

  “Get back,” I shouted, pulling Christy away from the window and behind one of the pillars. We were in a goddamned fish bowl, a lighted aquarium on public display. John, acting in near synchrony with my thoughts, hit the lights just as gunfire rained through the glass.

  I dragged Christy to the floor. “Block him. Picture yourself in a soundproof booth.”

  A bullet pinged just over our heads, chipping plaster off the wall.

  “It won’t do any good,” she wailed. “He’ll still know where we are.”

  “He won’t be able to see you as clearly. Do it. And give me my phone.”

  She fished a phone out of her pocket, which proved to be hers. I didn’t care at that point. I dialed 911 and reported a fire, as well as shots fired. When the dispatcher asked me to stay on the line, I disconnected the call.

  “I need a distraction, Lee.”

  I nodded as though John could see me. A distraction, a distraction…. What would work? I had nothing to fight with, not even a gun. The only thing I had was my thoughts. Huh. John might be the King of Shielding, but I was the Master of Information. I opened the mental floodgates, sluicing out every random fact, every famous quotation, every gory crime scene, every sports statistic, anything and everything I could remember in exquisite detail. What it felt like to be kicked out of my house, to walk in on Derek screwing some sweet young thing over his desk, of being locked in the trunk of my car and expecting to die, of almost being raped by Cunningham. No one could remember the details of their past quite like I could, and I knew the in-your-face effect of my memories would have to be confusing, if nothing else.

  John moved through the blacked-out room, the crunch of glass underfoot the only indication of his location. Dimly I could see him take up a position by the window and peer into the garden for our shooter. With a limited amount of ammunition, he had to make every shot count. He was holding the automatic like a divining rod, searching for his target. I realized that he must have let his guard down in order to pinpoint the location of our attacker. As soon as I thought it, I released a barrage of background noise to cover John’s exposure, bolstered in part thanks to my obsession with the Marvel Universe movies.

  John let off two shots in quick succession and dove under the windowsill ahead of the return fire.

  “He’s going to kill us. He’s going to kill us all.” Christy kept repeating, not really speaking to me. She coughed harshly.

  “Shut up.” I nudged her for good measure. “Keep blocking him. If you can’t block him, then think of something distracting.”

  “You don’t know him like I do.” She gripped my arm painfully. “He’s cutting his losses.”

  I shook off her grasp and focused on recounting Chick Anderson’s blow-by-blow account of Secretariat winning the Belmont Stakes. Without warning, it felt like someone boxed my ears. I reeled from the blow, my ears ringing. The room spun, and I scrabbled to remain upright. The stunning force of it felt a lot like being hit with a baseball bat, something that was only all too familiar. Only there was no one there but Christy, who was clutching her skull and weeping.

  Obviously our friend the telepath had been practicing a few mental tricks of his own.

  Ignoring the sensation of a screwdriver being forced into my eye, I crawled toward the bureau. There had to be at least one more gun in the drawer. Christy had been reaching for one when I crushed her hand. I didn’t warn Christy what I was doing because that would be tantamount to warning our opponent. I could only hope she wouldn’t think too much about my obvious destination.

  “Who is this freak?” I muttered, shaking off the remnants of the psychic attack.

  “He’s in my head,” Christy screamed, staggering to her feet.

  Before I could catch her by the arm and pull her down, a hail of bullets showered us. I ducked, but Christy gave a little gasp and fell across me. When I rolled her to one side, I felt a warm liquid between my fingers and smelled the distinctive metallic odor of blood.

  John fired off four shots in rapid succession, the muzzle of his gun flashing in the dark. I could hear the wail of sirens in the distance, and I sensed John coming toward me. I felt for a pulse in Christy’s limp body.

  “He’s gone. The sir
ens ran him off.” John sounded incredibly tired.

  “Is she…?” I couldn’t feel a heartbeat, but I knew John would know for sure.

  “Dead. He killed Rick too, before he set the fire. I left the guy unconscious in the alley, and this bastard came along and just killed him. Come on, we need to get out of here.”

  “She said he was cutting his losses. This has less to do with us and more to do with his maintaining his secrecy. He knew if we’d taken even one of his lackeys in, they’d have been able to identify him by name. Did you pick up anything from him?”

  “Not too much. He was blocking me too. But we’ll get him. If it’s the last thing I do. We’ve got to go.”

  “Okay, okay.” I lowered Christy to the floor and removed my phone from her pocket. I’d disliked hurting her, and I certainly hadn’t wanted her dead, but we had bigger problems to deal with. “We need to make sure the surrounding buildings are being evacuated too.”

  “The word is spreading. There’s a crowd on the street already. We’ll blend in.”

  I let him pull me to my feet. Outside, the sweet smell of the garden was a welcome relief from the choking fumes we’d left behind. I took several deep breaths and started coughing. I thought John was right behind me, but when I turned to say something to him, he was nowhere to be seen. I stared at the open door and the dark smoke billowing into the night.

  He’d gone back inside.

  Chapter Twenty

  I WAS on my way back at a run when John came through the door, his sleeve over his face, but he was coughing just the same.

  “You idiot. What the hell did you go back inside for?”

  He handed me Jean’s gun. “It’s registered in her name. I couldn’t leave it here. Besides, I had to wipe my prints off the chair and Christy’s phone. They were the only things we touched when we were inside.”

  We cut through the garden, where we found a gate leading to the street. There, we ran into a scene of controlled chaos. People from the surrounding buildings were milling about on the street, shouting for friends and neighbors, and filming the fire with their cell phones. Between the noise, the flashing lights, and the number of people holding up their phones, it almost felt like a rock concert.