But honestly, I don’t care enough to try. Sloan cannot help me now.
I don’t know if Sloan has abandoned us, or if he’s really out of touch, like Kelsey thinks. Either way, it doesn’t matter. He would make the same coldhearted calculation that Gaines did. His vendetta against Preston is real enough—I could read that much from his mind—but that only means that he doesn’t have any leverage to get Preston off our backs. More important, it’s not worth the exposure to him to rescue me or Kelsey.
Hiring guys like me isn’t exactly illegal, but it’s not considered a standard business practice either. If Preston wanted to, he could produce the body of the man I killed, and spin any story he wants. The only reason he hasn’t done that is because he wants to keep this quiet. If Sloan was to get involved, bring in his lawyers, or bring pressure on Preston by other means, then Preston could make things very unpleasant for him, in a very public way. Then Sloan might have to face some real questions from real cops. Of course, the odds are against him ever doing jail time—he’s rich enough to tie any inquiry into knots. But the media would be all over him, and you can never tell how these things will end up, especially if a politically motivated prosecutor gets the case.
Sloan would look at all the negatives of helping us: the chance of exposure, the legal liability, the sheer tiresome inconvenience. Then he’d weigh those against the potential upside: none. So he’d make the easiest decision, and pull up the drawbridge with us on the other side of the moat. It should be easy for Sloan to write me off—it’s an unspoken assumption in every contract I sign. Kelsey would probably be more difficult. Not enough to make a difference, though.
But Kelsey still wants to think her boss is a good guy. And for some reason, I don’t feel like shattering that illusion for her.
So I tell her that there’s nothing I can do.
I’m not sure she believes me, but she doesn’t press too hard. She’s smart. She probably knows the truth, same as I do.
In the grand scheme of things, people like us are disposable to people like Sloan.
Kelsey is practically singing out a list of comfort foods. It’s enough to make me grind my teeth.
I find the employee break room. Sure enough, two giant vending machines are inside, filled with empty calories.
A minute later, there’s broken glass on the floor and a pile of snacks in my hands. I dump them on the bed where Kelsey is sitting.
“It’s not cherries jubilee,” I tell her, “but it’ll have to do.”
She looks surprised. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You don’t have to,” I say. “I might have mentioned that once or twice already.”
“Well, you don’t have to listen.”
I could almost laugh at that. If only it were that simple. “Yeah, you are really not getting it.”
“Heard that too.”
“Serves you right,” she says. “I was trying to be polite. You know, like normal human beings.”
“If I were a normal human being, Kelsey, you’d be dead by now.”
That hits her hard. She shuts up. For a moment, the only things going through her head are images of men with guns.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Clearly I need some space. I move to the other side of the room. It’s not far enough. It doesn’t reduce the volume on the pain and shock working its way through her system. She was working hard to cope. She didn’t need me bringing it up again.
For a moment, I fear she’s on the verge of losing it. Then she reaches for a bag of potato chips and tears it open. Eating is good. Eating means you still want to live, you’re still feeding the organism.
Which reminds me, I really should eat something. But I don’t feel all that hungry.
My hands hurt from the fight today. They’re barely swollen, so I know that the pain isn’t entirely real. This happens from time to time. Most of the ache is psychic. I know it’s all in my head. It doesn’t help. When you get a bad idea, it might stick with you for a while. When I get one, as a consequence of my very special brain, it grows its own legs and crawls around in my head. It takes on a life of its own and becomes real. Real enough to chew at me and grow bigger and fatter on the meat.
I rub my knuckles, try to shake out the hurt. The pain feels like rot and corruption, spreading in from the point of contact, like some nightmare skin infection, passed on by touch.
This is where the bill comes due, I realize. The feedback from the pain I inflicted on the other OmniVore security people. The thoughts of the salesman who gave us a lift, like touching a used condom. Kelsey’s anxiety and fear, hidden behind her efforts to press it down. And most of all, the dead man.
The pain in my hands is just the way it’s all breaking in, getting past my defenses.
I know it’s not real, not the worst of it. But it doesn’t stop.
“Are you all right?” Kelsey asks.
She managed to get close without my noticing. I’m in worse shape than I thought.
“I’m fine.” It comes out almost like a growl. I really need my pills.
“You don’t seem fine.”
Put it aside. Focus. Lock it down. Get it under control.
“Give me a second,” I tell Kelsey.
Over the years, I’ve come up with lots of little ways to help block out the crazy and the hurt screaming from the people around me every minute of every day. I might take a shower. I have an old-fashioned mug with soap and a straight razor that I use to shave. It’s calming. It forces me to pay attention. I spend a good five minutes with nothing but the steam, the scent of the soap, and the sound of steel scraping against my beard and skin. Then I might put on a clean, pressed white shirt, with a decent suit over that. Go to a dark, quiet restaurant, where the waiters don’t wear fifteen different kinds of flair and bother you every five minutes with a suggestion to try the Bacon Balls. A place where they know enough to let you enjoy your steak and your drink in peace. And then I can chase my whiskey with enough pills to block out the constant noise of all of you, all of your whining and pissing and moaning and bitching and running in circles as you think about your pathetic little lives. This is how I keep myself human.
Unfortunately, all these rituals depend on stuff that’s now gone.
I run through the inventory. Twelve tailored suits in the closet. About thirty good shirts on the hangers. There was an Attolini I had made to measure in Italy. Two backup guns, another Walther and a Glock 9mm, one in the bedside table, one in a drawer in the kitchen.
Not to mention a bar full of whiskey and vodka and a bottle of fifty-year-old Laphroaig I got from a client. Was saving that for a special occasion.
I’m not particularly sentimental, but I’m going to miss that bottle.
Not as much as my pills, if I’m being honest.
My pills. The results of doctor-shopping, duplicate prescriptions, and a half dozen Internet drug dealers. A whole bunch of Vicodin and oxycodone, some antiseizure meds for when the migraines got really bad, and some Ambien, Haldol, and Ativan to help me sleep.
I’d even take an Advil right now, because my hands will not fucking stop hurting.
Out of nowhere, I see it again. Body dropping, blood in the air. That absence in the mental landscape as a man suddenly stops. Stops breathing, stops thinking, stops existing. The freshly made hole in the world where a human being used to live—a little rip that threatens to suck all the warmth and life into the cold and emptiness of the abyss, and take me right along with it.
Every time, I am convinced that this will be the one that drags me down.
I realize I am shaking and sweating. I listen desperately to the sound of m
y own heartbeat, trying to convince myself I am still alive.
I try to block it out. Not working.
“Are you all right?” Kelsey asks again.
No. No, I am not.
It feels like insects are under the skin now. My bones feel like someone is scrubbing them with steel wool. Everything I own is gone. The idea sits there, in my brain, like a chunk of ice that stubbornly refuses to melt. Everything I own is gone.
I spin and punch the wall, trying to block the fake pain with the real thing.
I look down. There’s a hole in the drywall and blood on my knuckles. It didn’t work. The insects are still there, under the skin, chewing away. I can still feel the hole, like a sudden increase in gravity, plucking at me, pulling me down.
“Jesus,” Kelsey says. Her voice drags me out of my head for a moment. “What’s going on? What are you doing?”
“I need my goddamned pills,” I snap at her, biting off each word.
Her eyes are wide. She’s looking at me like I’m a strange dog blocking her path. She steps closer, carefully.
“Easy,” she says. Her voice is very low. “Take it easy.”
“Stay back,” I warn her. I don’t want her picking up on my pain. It can be contagious when I’m like this.
She keeps coming anyway. “I can help,” she says. She reaches out, slowly, like a bomb-squad technician, and takes my hands in her own.
She brushes away the dust. I flinch.
“Take it easy. Breathe,” she says. “Breathe.”
My whole body is a clenched fist now. But I try.
“Come on. Breathe. Listen to my voice. Focus on that.”
Somehow it works. I don’t know how. She’s a calm center in the midst of it all.
She can see me crank down the level of tension, bit by bit. The static and pain begin to clear.
“There you go,” she says. “You’re getting it back, right?”
I nod.
“Prove it,” she says. “What am I thinking?”
I look into her head.
That can’t be right.
She’s got a look on her face. Half smile, half smirk.
“Maybe we can do something to take your mind off the pain,” she says.
“I thought you didn’t want to use my body for cheap thrills.”
She shrugs. “Yeah, well. Tomorrow we may die, and all that. Besides”—she takes a look around the store—“what else are we going to do in here? Build a fort?”
She leans in, with the same half smirk, and I kiss her.
MOST OF THE time, I try to concentrate on the physical, to screen out the rush of emotions that surges forward with sex. This is where we are still closest to being animals, where we can reliably blot out our thoughts, where we can try to respond only to the basic facts of hard and wet and warmth and comfort.
But with Kelsey, it’s different. She’s already inside, has already seen the cracks in my defenses. And she does not care.
She doesn’t have to ask me anything. I know what she wants the second she wants it. I can feel her get close, and I know just what it will take to push her over the edge. We form a circle together, her excitement feeding mine, over and over, locked into the rhythms of each other’s body, shuddering to a finish, and then starting again. Again and again and again.
Honestly, sex with a telepath is pretty great. If you ever meet me, you should try it.
“PROFESSIONAL GAMBLER. YOU’D know what cards everyone was holding.”
“God, no. The times I’ve been inside a casino, it’s like rats scratching their way out of my brain.”
Kelsey lies with her head on my shoulder, one arm and one leg thrown over me. We’re on the mattress, huddled together for warmth under the thin sheets. The store’s air-conditioning is brutal. She’s trying to come up with a new career for me, new ways for me to use my talent that don’t end with me hiding inside a dying mall.
“You could be a police officer. You’d always know exactly who did the crime. Hundred percent solve rate.”
“Most of the time, the cops already know who did the crime. It’s the guy standing there crying over the corpse with a bloody steak knife. Anyway, I thought the idea was to get away from people shooting at me.”
“All right, then. Therapist. You could find out what’s really bothering people. Give them exactly the advice they need. You could probably even undo their problems yourself. Go inside their minds and find the clogs and fix them up. Like a plumber.”
I laugh at that. “I think plumbers make more money than therapists. And either way, it’s not enough.”
“Because you need the money for your own island.”
“Exactly.”
She props herself up a little so she can look at my face. “Is it that bad?”
My voice is a little tight when I answer. “You think I was faking before?”
“No, no,” she says quickly. “I’m asking if it’s always that bad. If there’s no other way to handle it.”
I search for the right words. Come up empty. “It’s that bad. Yes.”
“Is running off to a deserted island really the best idea you’ve got?”
Good question. One I’ve asked myself many, many times. “The drugs won’t work forever,” I tell her. “I’ve already got a high tolerance for painkillers. The standard antimigraine meds might as well be sugar pills to me now. I’ve seen the end of this curve with other guys, and it always leads to me with a needle, looking for a vein.”
“Have you tried anything else?”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“Meditation?”
“Doesn’t work,” I tell her. “The quieter my mind becomes, the louder everyone else’s thoughts get. It’s like that right now.”
“Really?”
I nod. “Aside from you, the closest person is a homeless guy camped out at the bus shelter at the edge of the parking lot, about a thousand yards away. Ordinarily, he’d be way out of my reach. He’s asleep. If he was awake, I’d probably be screaming about the black helicopters and the Bilderbergers and itching the staph infection he’s got on both arms.”
“Jesus Christ,” she says. “So why haven’t you just stolen enough money to buy your own island already?”
She’s laughing, but she’s not joking. Not entirely. Even someone like Kelsey, with her healthy respect for the rules and love of structure, knows that pain can push you outside the lines of what’s good and proper. And she’s already seen me break a half dozen laws and commandments, including the big one about killing.
Sloan asked me something similar. It makes sense. It’s like the Vegas-act question. If someone can do what I do, why not just take anything I want? I ask myself sometimes.
Sometimes it’s good to remind myself of the reasons by saying them out loud.
“It doesn’t work like that. You’ve tried separating rich people from their money before, right?” I ask.
“Oh my God, yes,” she says, and I get a quick montage of all the moments when she’s had to persuade Sloan’s clients and partners to write checks, to make an investment or pay their debts; it’s like climbing a mountain every time, even when Sloan was doubling their money.
“So you know. It’s like the old joke: a rich man doesn’t get that way by reaching for his wallet all the time. It goes against almost everything in their nature. They don’t give away their money without a really good reason. And even then it’s a struggle. So I could push and prod, and I might fool their brains into accepting some bullshit excuse to write me a check. For a while. But it wouldn’t last. Eventually people always go back to who they are. They do what they want to do. They’d recognize that something was wrong. They’d start making noises, asking around with other people who know me. They’d talk to each other, and pretty soon I’d have a price on my head. I already told your boss: I don’t want to live that way.”
Kelsey takes an exaggerated look around the store. “Yeah, this definitely seems like the safer alternative.”
> She has a point. “There are degrees of risk,” I say. But that’s not the whole reason, and she knows it. I’m not sure why, but I decide to tell her the rest.
“Anyway. What would you call someone who does that? Who worms his way into someone’s trust and takes a chunk out of their lives?”
It jumps into her head:
“Right,” I say. “My whole life, everything I ever got, someone was always sure to tell me that it wasn’t really mine. There was always some foster parent or social worker or church volunteer who would remind me that my whole life depended on them. My food, my clothes, whatever I had—the money always came from the state or some charity or someone else’s pocket. They were so happy when they told me, too. I could feel it. Sometimes they wanted me to know how generous they were being. Or they wanted me to seem more grateful than I was. But most of the time, they wanted me to know I was draining the blood right out of their veins. That whatever I got, they could rip it back at any moment. So now I don’t take what I don’t earn. I do my job, and I get paid for my services. And nobody can ever tell me I don’t deserve it.”
An awkward silence. She picks up on my discomfort and changes the subject. Which is kind of her.
“Well, at least now I know you didn’t ensorcell me into jumping into bed with you,” she says.
“‘Ensorcell’? Is that even a word?”
“Pretty sure. I read it in a book about witches having a lot of sex with vampires.”
“How appropriate.”
“Thank you, by the way,” she says.
“For what?”
“For not asking. Every guy always wants to know.”
“I think it was pretty obvious.”
“Don’t get overconfident. There’s always room for improvement.”
“I’m willing to put in the hours if you are.”
She laughs again, sits up, and stretches. I see the muscles moving under her flawless skin, feel the animal contentment purring through her body, and share in it for a moment.
Then she turns and sees her clothes—literally the only thing she owns right now—crumpled on the cheap carpeting, and the reality hits her again. How far away she is from home, how far away she is from her actual life. It’s like a wave that threatens to swamp her with fear and loneliness.
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