The television showed security-camera footage from the Diamondback. An angle on the casino floor, catching Jessie and me from above as we fled the gunfight. Distant and blurry, but definitely us.
“. . . massacre at the Diamondback Casino in Atlantic City, which left twelve dead, has taken on a surprising twist,” the anchorwoman said. “It appears that the thieves behind the bungled heist were a pair of federal agents on active duty.”
Our photographs, scanned right from our credentials, appeared side by side on the screen.
“The two fugitive suspects, Jessica Temple and Harmony Black, allegedly used their FBI badges to gain access to the casino’s counting room. When employees questioned their presence, an eyewitness tells us, they started shooting.”
“Jesus,” Jessie breathed. “They’re pinning everything on us.”
The camera shifted to a press conference. A podium on windy granite steps, cameras snapping, all eyes on a stone-faced man with a raptor-beak nose and an American-flag lapel pin on the breast of his suit. He held up a commanding hand to silence the gathered reporters as a title flashed at the bottom of the TV screen: FBI DIRECTOR BENJAMIN CROHN.
“Needless to say,” he announced, “we are handling this situation with the utmost gravity. The alleged crime is a heinous one, involving the death of innocents and—if true—the deepest betrayal of these agents’ badges and their oaths of office. A traitorous attack upon the American people. Warrants have been issued for Agent Temple and Agent Black’s arrest, and they will answer these accusations in a court of law.”
“They can’t do this.” Kevin’s grip tightened on my sleeve. “They can’t do this, can they?”
“They just did,” I said.
The news anchor folded her hands on the studio desk as smaller versions of our photographs hovered over her left shoulder. “Director Crohn stressed that these fugitives should be considered armed and extremely dangerous. They are currently believed to be traveling with a pair of hostages, a young Caucasian male and an elderly woman. If you see them, do not attempt to approach. Instead, please call the toll-free number at the bottom of your screen—”
“What I said at the way-stop,” April told me, “about seeing the face of our enemy?”
I looked her way, a question in my eyes.
“I believe we just did.” She tossed a couple of bills onto the table and rolled her chair back. I followed her lead. We hadn’t attracted any attention—yet—but sticking around felt like a bad idea. “Kevin, do you have a means of reaching out to Linder without risking a location trace?”
“Laptop’s in the car,” he said, hustling ahead of us and holding the door for her.
We piled into the SUV and hit the road. I drove slow and easy, watching the speed limit. The risk of a run-in with the local authorities loomed like a shadow over every move I made.
“They know we won’t hurt the cops,” Jessie growled, voicing my thoughts out loud. “They just turned every good guy with a badge in this entire country against us, and if they draw down, we can’t shoot back.”
Kevin fumbled with April’s cell phone, hooking it by a USB cord to his laptop, typing fast and feverish. April sat beside him, her steady gaze as cold as an Alaskan sunset.
“And if someone reports us on that helpful tip line,” she said, “Mikki and her team will have our location instantly. We won’t even know we’ve been tracked. Which, of course, is the entire idea. They don’t want us taken off the grid just yet: they want us to lead them to Aselia Boulanger first. The claim that Kevin and I are hostages will help in that regard. This will encourage local law enforcement to call the FBI for guidance first if they spot us—same result as a call to the tip line—or pin us in place until Mikki can get here.”
“They called us traitors. On national television, they called us—” Jessie shook her head, clenched her jaw, and threw a punch at the glove compartment. The plastic buckled under her fist. It cracked with the sound of a gunshot, falling open, the broken lock dangling by a twisted pin. “Fuck.”
I glanced at April in the rearview. “What did you mean back there, about the face of our enemy?”
“A theory I’m about to validate. Kevin?”
He hunched over the keyboard, working fast. “On it, Doc. Gimme thirty more seconds. I’m gonna bounce your signal to Siberia and back again, then bury it behind a half dozen proxies. Let ’em try to trace this.”
“We knew Linder had juice inside the Bureau,” Jessie muttered, “and half a dozen other alphabet agencies, but I never thought he had this kind of pull.”
“I very much doubt that he does,” April replied.
The phone, set to speaker mode, trilled. Kevin double-checked the cable link, rattled off a few more keystrokes, and passed it to April.
“Dr. Cassidy,” Linder said, “I assume you’re calling about the new development. I’m sorry, but as I told Agent Temple, this situation is out of my hands—”
“And firmly in Ben Crohn’s,” April said. “Tell me—how long has he been a part of Vigilant Lock’s inner directorate?”
We knew about Linder’s higher-ups, the shadowy figures in DC he reported to, in a general sense. There were a couple of senators, at least one retired military official, a few intelligence-sector officers—but we dealt in abstracts, not names. Everything in Vigilant Lock was compartmentalized to keep the entire illegal program safe from collapse in the event of compromise. The sole point of contact, from the bottom to the top, was Linder himself. The linchpin at the heart of the labyrinth.
“You know I can’t discuss the identities of anyone who may or may not be associated with—”
“Cut the shit,” April snapped. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever heard her curse before. From the wide-eyed look on Jessie’s face, neither had she.
“Excuse me, Dr. Cassidy?”
“You heard me,” April said. “Every step of this debacle has Ben’s fingerprints all over it. What did he tell you when he went over your head and brought Mikki onto the assault team? Let me guess: he wanted to rub my nose in my own failure.”
“It wasn’t—” Linder stammered. “I mean, I can’t comment—”
“Did he tell you that he taught me everything I know?”
Silence.
“He was always fond of that line,” April said. “What he didn’t tell you is that I taught him something once, too. I want you to do something for me, Linder. I want you to deliver Ben a message. From me, with love.”
Another pause. “I’m listening,” he said, grudgingly.
“Ask Ben if he misses being a real FBI agent. He’ll know what I mean.”
She hung up on him.
Kevin blinked, unhooking the cable, lost for words. Jessie just stared at her, looking confused.
“You know the director of the FBI?” I asked her. “Like, know him?”
April sat back, easing against the headrest.
“A long time ago, and well before his presidential appointment. Benjamin Crohn started out in the Bureau just like I did: in the Behavioral Science Investigative Support Unit. He was my mentor. He was bright—no, brilliant. A giant in the annals of criminal psychology. And . . . a friend.”
“Considering he just sent a whacked-out pyrokinetic and a hit squad after us,” Jessie said, “I’m gonna guess that relationship went sour at some point.”
“Correct.”
We waited to see if April was going to elaborate on that. She didn’t.
“So we know who’s pulling Linder’s strings,” I said. “The important question is, what can we do with that knowledge?”
April rubbed her chin. “I’ll be working on that. For now we’d best make the most of our lead time and get to Ms. Boulanger. Quickly.”
SWAMP TOURS read the sign just off Up the Bayou Road, and the setting sun shone copper against the dusty windows. We parked out front, and I kept my ears perked for the sound of a television set as we approached the front door. I wasn’t sure how much coverage we were getting, but I had to imagine “rogue
FBI agents on a killing spree” would pretty much dominate the news cycle.
Jessie glanced sidelong at Kevin as he lugged a heavy black plastic case from the SUV. “Really? You’re bringing your computer and your drone? You know we’re probably getting on a boat, right?”
“I’m not leaving my stuff here.”
The man inside the front door, his boots up on an empty desk, looked like he was born with the butt of a cigar in his mouth. He swung his legs down, sat up, and snuffed his smoke in a grimy ashtray as we walked in. When he smiled, sweat glistened on his whiskers.
“How y’at, folks! I’m Beauregard, owner and proprietor. Y’all lookin’ for a tour?”
“We’re looking for Aselia Boulanger,” Jessie said. “Lady at the Bait Bucket says you can take us to her.”
His eyes narrowed. “Can. Can don’t mean will.”
“She’s got trouble coming,” I told him. “We need to warn her before it’s too late.”
Beau’s steady gaze swung my way. He looked me up and down.
“Could be. Could be you are the trouble.”
“Tell us how we can prove it to you,” I said.
“We don’t mean her any harm,” April said. “Just the opposite.”
“Could be. All the same, trouble ain’t a thing I like bringing into the bayou. See, Aselia’s known in these parts as a miracle worker, though I suppose her miracles ain’t entirely of the Christian variety. She works the gris-gris—get my meaning?”
“So do the people who are coming to hurt her,” I said. “And they will, if we don’t find her first.”
“My reluctance, that’s not for Aselia’s sake.” Beau looked past us, over my shoulder, his gaze going distant. “Few years back, some men from out west came asking around about her. They had guns and money and bad attitudes. So, I took ’em out into the swamp. They never did come back again. And the gators? They looked fat.”
Beau locked eyes with me.
“I’ll take you,” he said, “but if you’re lyin’, I’m not the one you’re gonna have a problem with. The bayou protects its own.”
TWELVE
Beau’s airboat was around back, an old and battered warhorse propelled by a giant fan mounted on the stern. The hull rocked under my feet, wobbling in murky olive waters. He passed out earmuffs, bulky yellow plastic headphones, and fired up the engine. The fan roared like the open belly of a truck engine, harsh and hungry.
We cast off. North. Into the swamp.
The airboat cruised slow and smooth between tangled clumps of oak trees. The trees stretched out twisted limbs, their boughs dripping with long spiderweb strands of Spanish moss. Beau pointed to a dangling branch up ahead. The dying sunlight shone off an antique key, heavy and forged from hammered brass, dangling from a gray string and slowly twisting in the breeze.
“Gotta follow the keys,” he called out over the thrum of the fan. “Follow the keys, you find Aselia. Gotta watch careful, though.”
I looked back over my shoulder as he steered the boat with a rudder, turning us to starboard. “Yeah? Why’s that?”
“Sometimes the keys move.”
We sailed through the bayou deeps. The sun was a smear of blood on the horizon now, shimmering and low, sending long shadows across the brackish water. Some of the shadows squirmed. A gator’s head broke the surface, and the beast lazily undulated past us, eight feet of scale slithering in and out of the brine.
“Gonna see more of those as we get close,” Beau said. “Gotta watch the snakes, too. We got cottonmouths, canebrake rattlers . . . you get bit out here, you’ll be dead before you ever catch sight of dry land.”
The oaks parted. Up ahead, the glow of lantern light. Soft fires mimicked the orange of the setting sun, washing the bayou waters in the colors of autumn and silence. The lanterns dangled from posts and eaves of an old gray shack, propped up on a lopsided, leaning pier. Beau killed the engine.
As the airboat glided in, the front door of the shack groaned open. Aselia Boulanger barely looked a day older than her picture, though her long raven hair had turned as gray as the worm-eaten wood at her back. The hem of a long and worn lavender dress swayed over her bare feet, and she cradled a double-barreled shotgun in an easy grip.
“That’s plenty close enough,” she said. “What are you bringing to my doorstep, Beau?”
“Say they’re here to help,” he called back. Ten feet of water lay between us and the pier. And the water was moving. Long, wriggling shadows, snakes under the surface, circling our boat.
“Help, huh?” Aselia said. “Read my cards this morning. Said a bad wind was comin’ my way. Fire and death.”
“Sounds like Mikki,” Kevin muttered.
I stepped closer to the prow. “Houston Coe sent us.”
Aselia’s fingers curled a little tighter on the shotgun.
“Don’t see him on the boat,” she said.
“I’m sorry. He’s dead. He was murdered in Atlantic City.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Ain’t that convenient.”
“He said to tell you—” I paused, racking my memory. Remembering Houston’s last words before he went up in flames. “He said to tell you, ‘Paris was nearsighted anyway.’”
The ghost of some painful memory, some old heartbreak, swept over Aselia’s face. Then she gave me a slow, wistful smile. Her hands relaxed.
“Old inside joke,” she said. “We liked using those as pass phrases, back in the day. He figured anyone could torture a formal password out of you. We had a thing for that. If you came in here, telling me he said to say ‘wormwood’ or ‘sigma fifteen,’ it’d be a sign Houston told that to you under severe duress.”
“And then?” I asked.
“And then I’d take this shotgun and blow your goddamned head off.” Aselia shrugged. “But you said the right words, so I guess I gotta find somebody else to shoot. Knew this was coming. Heard about Douglas biting it up in Michigan. Once he was gone, only a matter of time before the dominoes started tumbling my way.”
“He arranged it that way,” I said. “He left a trail of bread crumbs for us to follow. I think he wanted us to find you. To warn you.”
Aselia smiled. “Man had contingencies inside contingencies. He always did. And you are who, exactly?”
“We’re with a—I mean, we were with a—” I shook my head. “It’s a long story, and we should probably talk it out someplace safer than here. Will you come with us?”
“Let me get my boots on,” she said.
We didn’t have to wait long. She came back out of the shack with a pair of battered steel-toed boots on and a frayed duffel bag slung over her shoulder. Beau steered us in close, and she jumped down from the pier, into the belly of the boat.
“Gonna miss this place,” Aselia said. “Still, operational dictum: never have a life you can’t walk away from in thirty seconds; never care about anything you can’t pack in a bugout bag.”
I looked past her, at the smoke starting to billow from the shack’s windows. Flames licked the inner walls, growing fast and hot.
“You set your own house on fire?” I asked her.
“Basic occult-forensic countermeasure.”
Jessie flashed a broad smile and clapped Aselia on the shoulder. “Oh, I think you and me are gonna be friends.”
Beau fired up the engines and turned us around. A little slower now, a little closer to the waterline, but we made good time despite the growing dark. Glimmering stars rose up to light our way. Steering us back to civilization, Beau put on speed as the tangled oaks broke and we hit the open swamp water.
He squinted into the dark and pointed up ahead.
I saw them, too. Another pair of airboats, headed straight for us.
“Go around!” I shouted, just before the first gunshot rang out. Beau yanked the rudder hard and veered left, my footing almost jerking out from under me as the boat careened. The twin boats turned like circling sharks. They came at us broadside, bullets peppering the water.
Aselia t
hrew up her arm, pointing, and shouted to Beau. “That way, it’s tighter over there—harder for ’em both to come at us!”
“Easier for me to wreck this damn boat, too,” he shouted back.
She yanked a shotgun from the bag. Not the old pump action she’d brandished on the porch, but a nasty little sawed-off number.
“Do it anyway,” she yelled and shouldered the gun.
To her left, Jessie dropped to one knee, steadying her Glock in a two-handed grip. One eye squinted as she took careful aim. I reached to the canopy of stars, gathering my power, as I strained to see our attackers in the dark. If Nadine had found us, we were about to battle an incarnate demon. If it was Mikki’s crew, a pyrokinetic who could kill from a distance.
I got my answer in a heartbeat, as tiny fireflies danced across Aselia’s flesh.
Line of sight. She couldn’t burn what she couldn’t see. On instinct, my mind brushed the face of the bayou. Ancient, brackish waters, teeming with life and secrets. And I pulled. A wall of water erupted into the air between us and the oncoming boats, eight feet high, roaring as it cascaded in a churning wave.
The fireflies died. One of the airboats crashed into the water wall at full speed, shattering it, the other veering hard to go around and slipping behind us. A bullet pinged into the fan grating. The drenched boat shot up on our right, a wall of tangled oaks coming up fast before us. I hit the deck as a gunshot cracked a few inches past my ear. Beau took the hit. The bullet splintered his skull, straight through the temple, and suddenly we were kicking up water and veering out of control as his dead hand yanked hard on the rudder. Aselia’s shotgun roared. She staggered off balance, spent her shells to force the other boat back, then the empty piece clattered at her feet. She ran over and grabbed Beau’s body, shoving him overboard and taking his seat. We spun hard in the other direction, the boat skipping hard and the engine redlining.
Jessie fired off a couple of rounds, staying low. “Can you drive these things?” she shouted.
“Not drive. Pilot,” Aselia said through gritted teeth. “And I can pilot anything.”
Cold Spectrum Page 8