A Sense of Danger

by Jennifer Estep

  Rosalita loomed over me, her bloody knife still clutched in her hand. “I expected you to put up much more of a fight, Charlotte. Kind of disappointing, given who your father was.”

  I kept gasping for breath, too focused on that to snarl out some pithy retort. Everyone at Section 47 always compared me to Jack Locke, and everyone always found me lacking. Story of my rapidly ending life—

  Behind Rosalita and the three male cleaners, I spotted a sudden, unexpected flash of color. Maybe the blood loss was already making me woozy, but I could have sworn it was a single, vertical strip of light, bright blue shaped like…a tie.

  Rosalita bent down and snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Charlotte! Pay attention. I’m assuming your laptop is in your apartment. Tell me the code to your safe, and this can all be over. I’ll finish you off quick and painless. Promise.”

  If I’d had the breath for it, I would have told Rosalita exactly where to shove her empty promises, but then her words sank into my brain. What did she want with my laptop? What was this about?

  Once again, I tried to come up with some answers, but another wave of pain crashed over me, and I gritted my teeth to hold back another scream—

  One of the cleaners behind Rosalita let out a low, strangled sound.

  “What was that?” Rosalita straightened up and whirled around.

  She and the other two cleaners looked at the third man, who stared back at them with bulging eyes. A thin red line appeared on his neck, one that quickly widened into a jagged, bloody gash. The cleaner clutched his cut throat. He teetered on his feet, then crumpled to the ground, bleeding out from the gruesome wound.

  Rosalita and the other two cleaners froze. I remained propped up against the alley wall, too injured to move, much less make a run for it.

  A figure strode through the shadows and stepped into the center of the alley. A light out on the street beamed a golden glow into the narrow corridor and highlighted his features. Blond hair, blond stubble, tan skin, blue eyes.

  Desmond.

  He was still wearing his light gray vest, shirt, and pants, along with that rebellious powder-blue tie, although his jacket was nowhere to be seen. In one hand, he was holding his silver pocket watch, with the end of the attached chain in his other hand. Even from this distance, I could see the blood drip-drip-dripping off the thin links. The metal must have some sort of sharp, hidden edge. Not so much a pocket watch as a knife-like garrote. Either way, he looked like a golden angel of death standing in the middle of the alley.

  Desmond stared at the other three cleaners. He tucked his watch into his vest pocket, then grinned and crooked his finger, silently daring Rosalita and the two men to come at him. Arrogant as well as deadly.

  The other cleaners took the bait and charged forward.

  Idiots.

  My inner voice might have whispered danger-danger-danger when faced with Rosalita and her men, but as soon as Desmond had appeared, that voice had risen to a shrieking scream, and DANGER! DANGER! DANGER! pounded in my mind over and over again, matching the pulses of pain ripping through my body.

  The three cleaners were already dead. They just didn’t know it yet.

  As they ran toward Desmond, the two men reached for the guns under their suit jackets. Desmond charged forward as well, then coolly, deftly spun to his right, moving past one of the cleaners.

  The instant the man’s back was to him, Desmond glided forward and closed the distance between them. With one hand, he yanked the man’s right arm down and to the side, away from the gun hidden in the small of his back. With his other hand, Desmond plucked the man’s gun out of its holster, snapped up the weapon, and pulled the trigger three times.

  Thanks to the weapon’s suppressor, the gunshots were little louder than pops of bubble gum. The cleaner yelped and tumbled to the ground, but Desmond was already turning to the second man. He shot that cleaner three times as well, and that man also dropped to the ground.

  That left Rosalita.

  Desmond spun around to face her, his movements still full of that smooth, unnatural, deadly grace. I didn’t know what kind of magic he had, but it was impressive. I’d never seen anyone move and kill, and move and kill, that easily and effortlessly before, not even my father.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Rosalita said. “Do you know what you’re interrupting? And what will happen to you once they find out?”

  A small, humorless smile lifted Desmond’s lips. “Oh, I’m counting on that.”

  Then he crooked his finger at her in another one of those clear, cocky challenges. Oh, yes. Most definitely arrogant.

  Rosalita snarled and surged forward, using her speed and not giving him time to get off any more shots. She lashed out with her knife, and Desmond wisely dropped his stolen gun rather than get his hand sliced open. Rosalita whirled back around to gut him, but Desmond spun away from her as coolly and easily as he had from the other cleaner.

  In one fluid motion, he grabbed the silver watch tucked in his vest pocket, glided forward, and looped the attached chain around Rosalita’s throat. Then he jerked the chain to the side, quickly and cleanly snapping her neck. All the motion in her body instantly stopped, and she looked like a puppet waiting for someone to pull her strings and bring her back to life.

  Desmond unwound the chain from around Rosalita’s neck and stepped back. She pitched forward, her body joining those of the other three cleaners on the alley floor.

  It was one of the most impressive and brutal ballets of death I had ever seen.

  Desmond studied Rosalita, then the other three cleaners, making sure they were all dead. Smart as well as arrogant. Then he strolled over, plucked a dirty rag out of the top of one of the trash cans, and used the cloth to wipe the blood off his silver watch and chain. His movements were calm and unhurried, as though this was a ritual he’d done a hundred times before. No doubt he had.

  Once he was finished, Desmond dropped the rag into the trash can and tucked his watch back into his vest pocket. Somehow, despite all the death and violence, not a single drop of blood marred his perfect clothes. I snidely wondered if that was another one of his paramortal powers, along with that eerie, deadly grace.

  I was still slumped up against the alley wall, slowly but surely bleeding out from the stab wound Rosalita had inflicted on me. Desmond walked over and crouched down beside me.

  His gaze flicked to the broken beer bottle I was still clutching. I didn’t know how much he had seen, or what he thought of my pitiful attempt to fight Rosalita, but he didn’t try to pry the bottle out of my fingers. Then again, why would he? We both knew I wasn’t a threat to him.

  He leaned forward and tilted his head, studying the wound in my side. His lips puckered in thought, and I got the impression he was having some sort of internal debate. Probably about whether it was worth the effort to help me, although I wondered why he would even bother. Why was he here? And why had he killed the cleaners instead of letting them murder me?

  Desmond lifted his gaze to mine. An inscrutable expression crossed his face, as though we were children engaged in a staring contest, and whoever looked away first would be the loser.

  “I guess…I shouldn’t have…called you…Crocodile Dundee,” I rasped between waves of pain.

  It was the first thing that popped into my mind, although as soon as I said it, I hoped it wouldn’t be the last sentence I ever uttered. What a cheesy way to go out, Charlotte.

  The corners of his lips twitched upward into a tiny grin. “No, you shouldn’t have.”

  “What…do you…want?”

  “You.”

  If I hadn’t been bleeding out, I would have shivered at his dark, ominous tone.

  Desmond glanced around, his eyes narrowing as he looked at first one cleaner, then another. I had no idea what he was doing. They were dead, so what did he hope to see? Disappointment flickered across his face, but then his head lifted, and he stared at the light out on the street. He nodded, as if something about the light plea
sed him, then focused on me again.

  “Sorry, Numbers,” he said. “This is going to hurt.”

  Numbers? Before I could ask about the impromptu nickname, Desmond leaned forward and clamped his hand on my side, right where Rosalita had stabbed me. I hissed with pain, although I once again managed to swallow the scream rising in my throat.

  Maybe it was the blood loss, but I could have sworn that Desmond’s eyes flashed a bright silver-blue, like live wires sparking in the night.

  A wave of…of…something slammed into my body, and this time, I couldn’t stop myself from screaming.

  The pain crashed through me again, stronger than before, and I mercifully passed out, not sure what sort of oblivion I was heading toward—or if I would ever wake up from it.

  Chapter Four

  Desmond

  The analyst was not what I’d expected.

  I thought she would be a bland, boring, average sort of person. Another one of Section’s mindless office robots, dutifully going about her work, punching a clock, and counting down the days until she could either find a more lucrative job in the private sector or retire and collect her government pension. Intelligent enough, but with a vanilla sort of life, just like the dozens of other analysts I’d encountered over the years.

  I should have known better. She was a Locke, after all. Nothing about that Legacy family was bland, boring, or vanilla.

  I stared down at the analyst. I had grabbed the electricity from the nearby streetlamp and channeled the resulting energy through my body and into hers. The extra jolt of power had let me heal her deep stab wound and stitch her skin back together. She was pale and unconscious, but her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm. She would be okay in a few hours.

  I left her lying there, propped up against the alley wall like a broken doll, and got to work.

  The first thing I did was rifle through the dead cleaners’ pockets, but none of them was carrying IDs or phones. Disappointing, but not unexpected. Besides, I already had a pretty good idea who they had worked for and why that person wanted the analyst dead—to keep me from getting to her.

  I pulled my own phone out of my pocket and snapped photos of the cleaners’ faces, then used an app to scan and store their fingerprints. Perhaps the analyst could make use of the information later. Once that was done, I dragged the bodies behind some garbage bins and piled several trash bags on top of them, hiding them from sight. I’d properly dispose of the bodies later. Right now, I needed to get the analyst out of the alley before some homeless person wandered in here and started screaming bloody murder about all the actual murders I had just committed.

  I went over and crouched down beside the analyst again. Still unconscious. I’d give her another jolt of energy when I got her upstairs.

  I pried the broken bottle out of her fingers, then grabbed her under the arms, hauled her upright, and leaned her back against the wall. She didn’t stir, so I bent down, hoisted her onto my shoulder, and stood up, holding her in a fireman’s carry. When I was sure she was properly positioned and I wasn’t going to lose my grip on her, I carefully leaned down and grabbed her blue purse as well as the white plastic bag she’d dropped earlier.

  I carried the analyst to the end of the alley, then glanced up and down the sidewalk. No one was in sight, no headlights glowed in the distance, and no traffic or security cameras covered the street, so I stepped out of the alley and walked over to the side door of her apartment building, which I had scouted earlier today. The door was locked with an electronic keypad, but that was no problem. I put my hand up against the keypad, then reached out with my magic, feeling the crack, snap, and sizzle of the electrical current running through the box and its attached wires.

  Just about everything either uses or gives off some sort of electricity, from your common cell phone to the most powerful supercomputer to the smallest spy camera. As a galvanist, I had the ability to sense that power, no matter what form it took, as well as to control, manipulate, and make it flow from one object to another. Basically, I was a human magnet for electricity, along with kinetic energy, chemical energy, and the like, and I could shove that power in any direction—or into any person.

  So it was child’s play for me to redirect the current running through the keypad long enough to get the door to buzz open. I stepped through to the other side, and the door automatically shut and locked behind me.

  I took the stairs and got the analyst to her third-floor apartment without anyone seeing us. She was still unconscious, so I gently set her down on the floor. I used the keys from her purse to open the door, then flipped on the lights. An alarm box was located inside, but I redirected the current inside it until the flashing red light winked back to a steady green. Then I scooped up the analyst and her bags, carried her inside, and kicked the door shut behind me.

  I turned around, fully intending to set the analyst down on the closest sofa or chair, but no furniture filled the apartment, not so much as the smallest table. What kind of person lived in an empty apartment? What had happened to all her things?

  I moved forward, intending to deposit her on the mattress in the far corner, which seemed to be her bed, but she probably wouldn’t want her bloodstained clothes mucking up her sheets and blankets, so I changed direction and put her down on the yoga mat in front of the cold fireplace instead.

  Her arms and legs flopped out to the sides, and I straightened her limbs before folding her hands on top of her stomach, trying to make her as comfortable as possible. I would have snagged one of the pillows from the mattress and put it under her head, but her shoulder-length auburn hair was as filthy as the rest of her.

  The analyst still didn’t wake up, although her eyebrows were drawn together and a worried crease ran across her forehead, as though her subconscious mind was churning, trying to make sense of everything that had happened.

  I leaned back on my heels, reviewing everything I had read in her official Section 47 file.

  Charlotte Jo Locke. Age thirty-five. Granddaughter of Jane Locke, the first member of her family to work for Section. Daughter of a librarian and infamous Section cleaner Jack Locke. Employed as a Section analyst ever since her graduation from university at the age of twenty-five. Stuck in the same position for several years now, thanks to her grandmother’s illness, her father’s reputation, and general office politics. On record as being a moderately powerful synth with a form of magical synesthesia that let her see mistakes other people made. A fairly common ability, but one that probably helped a great deal with her job.

  Those were the highlights from Charlotte Locke’s official Section 47 file, and they were all more or less exactly what I’d expected.

  What I hadn’t expected was how coldly and abruptly she’d dismissed me in the cafeteria earlier, her second job at that greasy-spoon diner, the dangerous man she owed money to, and how many cleaners had been sent to kill her. I glanced around, adding the depressingly empty apartment to that growing list of unexpected things about Charlotte Locke.

  Seemed as if I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets from Section.

  Since it didn’t look like the analyst was going to wake up anytime soon, I searched her apartment, but it was as empty as it appeared at first glance. No furniture to speak of, and only a few mismatched plates, glasses, and silverware in the kitchen cabinets. The only other thing in the kitchen was a small crystal bird perched in the middle of the island counter. I didn’t know what kind of bird it was, but I didn’t want to break it, so I scooted the figurine off to the side.

  I upended her purse on the island and looked through the contents. Wallet, phone, lipsticks, tissues, pens, a small notepad. Nothing unusual, so I stuffed everything back inside. The white plastic bag she’d been carrying contained a couple of generous portions of peach pie.

  Since there was no refrigerator, freezer, or microwave in the apartment, I was guessing the analyst ate most of her meals at the Moondust Diner. No wonder I’d had to drain all the juice from the streetlamp to
heal her. Food also contained energy, and the cleaner and healthier you ate, the more natural energy your own body absorbed and produced in response. It seemed as though all the analyst consumed were greasy, empty, sugary calories. Sure, those calories might light up her taste buds, but they weren’t doing her body any favors in the long run.

  Since I was finished with the kitchen, I headed into the back of the apartment. One of the bedrooms was completely empty, while the other seemed to be Charlotte’s. No furniture back here either, although the closet did contain clothes.

  Earlier in the cafeteria, Charlotte had worn a black cardigan over a gray T-shirt and gray cargo pants. Her sneakers had been the same hot pink as the broken heart on her T-shirt. Her closet contained more of the same—cardigans, T-shirts, cargo pants, sneakers.

  Lots of sneakers.

  More than two dozen pairs of sneakers were lined up neatly along the closet floor, running the color spectrum from white, light gray, green, blue, red, purple, and black. No other shoes. No heels, no sandals, not so much as a pair of ratty house slippers. Just sneakers. Odd.

  I closed the closet door and stepped into the bathroom. Brushes, combs, and hair ties were lined up on the countertop, along with bottles of makeup, shampoo, and lotion. Nothing unusual in here either, so I returned to the bedroom.

  Some cardboard boxes were stacked up in the corner, so I pried the lid off the top one and dug through the contents. Photos, mostly, of Charlotte with her grandmother. Her mother was also in several pictures, but her father wasn’t in very many of them. Then again, if Jack Locke had been anything like my father, he hadn’t been around for much of Charlotte’s childhood.

  The others boxes contained more of the same, along with old school papers, a few books, tickets to long-ago museum visits, and other mementoes. I restacked the boxes and returned to the main living area, surveying the empty space again. And that was all she had. There was seemingly nothing else of interest in the entire apartment.