by Huang, SL
“I still say it’s a stupid risk. She’s never done anything like this before.”
“Only one way to learn,” I said. “This is an easy job. Besides, she’s successfully represented to both a Mafia boss and the NSA, neither of which you were able to do without being reduced to a gibbering mess.”
“Those weren’t the same thing. I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to.”
We sat in tense silence for a moment. I finished my sandwich and brushed the crumbs off onto Checker’s couch. He winced. “Can you at least spare my coffee table?”
I let my boots thunk back down to the floor. “If you’re thinking about backing out of your part of the gig tonight, we’ll still find a way in without you. Only it won’t be as clean.”
“God, Cas! I said I would help. I don’t like what you’re doing and I don’t like you involving Pilar, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to go off and sulk and let you get yourselves caught.”
“We still wouldn’t get caught.”
“Sure.” He groped at an end table behind him and came up with a tablet. “Speaking of people’s pasts, let’s hop back on yours. Arthur’s digging into this Simon fellow; he needs intel.”
“Oh, look at the time.” I stood. “I’d better prepare for the heist.”
“Prepare what? You’re just walking in and walking out. Pilar and I are the ones doing all the work. Sit yourself down.”
I tried to rustle up a comeback to that and failed. I sat down.
“Right,” Checker said. “So. We were talking about…um.” He cleared his throat. “How you met Rio.”
My irritation slammed up against a massive wall of weighted memory, a black tar seeping up over the present.
The Lord guides my hand—
Cassandra. We picked the name Cassandra. Remind her.
I flinched.
“Cas? Cas, are you all right?”
“No.”
“Do you…are you remembering something?”
Cas. Do you recall who I am?
One of the people who killed me—
My mind cringed away, the spikes of image and sound stabbing and leaving my thoughts speckled with blood.
“I can’t do this right now.” The words came out steadier than they had any right to, as if it were another person talking.
“I’ve been thinking,” Checker said. “I’ve been thinking, um…maybe I should talk to Rio.”
The sentence whiplashed me back to the moment like I was a drunk who’d been dropped into a freezing lake. My eyes snapped into focus and I stared at Checker for a full four seconds, my jaw working. “What?”
He fiddled with his tablet and didn’t drop eye contact with me. “Well, I’ve been putting this together since the last time we talked. It seems like you’ve known him a long time, longer than anyone else you remember, and you keep dodging my questions about it.”
“Because I don’t want to answer them,” I said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“I think it might.” Checker’s expression softened. “Cas, I’m not sure you even know you’re doing it, but it’s like a…a reflex with you. Every time I ask you something that might get close to what you did before this, you deflect.”
“No, I don’t.”
His mouth twitched. “Then tell me how you met Rio. Or give me a phone number or email address so I can ask him.”
That concept was still derailing my brain. “You. Want to talk. To Rio.”
“Want? No, no, no. ‘Want’ is far too strong a word.” He flailed his hands and swallowed visibly. “What I want is to help you, and in order to help you, I am willing to attempt some extremely delicate inquiries of your friend who also happens to be the pure embodiment of blood-curdling evil. That’s just how good of a person I am.”
“Or you have an obscene level of curiosity and are like a pit bull when you want the answer to something. I can’t believe you want to talk to Rio.”
I expected Checker to snark back at me, maybe something about how obscene curiosity was the best kind, but instead he winced away and turned the tablet over in his hands. “Cas,” he said, without looking at me, “if you don’t mind, this is really rather a terrifying thing for me to be asking to do, and I wouldn’t do it if I weren’t trying like hell to help you, so please give me the damn contact information before I lose my courage entirely.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that. I wrote down Rio’s phone number for him.
Chapter 9
I half-expected Checker to call Arthur and try to get him to thwart my plan for the night, but he didn’t. Maybe he was worried enough about Arthur’s injury that he didn’t want to be responsible for him volunteering to take Pilar’s place.
I didn’t care which of them served as my diversion. It was an easy part to play, and even if things went wrong, I didn’t anticipate any danger.
When I came back from making a run for backup gear, Pilar met me in front of Checker’s house in a black cocktail dress with tasteful cleavage and more makeup than I was used to seeing on her.
“What on earth are you wearing?” I said. “We’re committing robbery, not going to a wine tasting party.”
“And my role in your robbery is to be as trustworthy and vulnerable a person as possible. I was coming from a party when my car broke down, for your information.”
I pointed at her heels. “You can’t run in those.”
“Cas, honey? I know you have way more experience than me when it comes to pretty much everything involved in this. But you gave me this job because you thought I could do it, so trust me when I say this is the one place I know way more than you do about how to make someone want to help me.”
To be perfectly honest, I’d recruited Pilar because she volunteered, not because I’d given consideration to her capability of looking nice in a dress. Maybe Checker was right, and I hadn’t thought this through.
Or maybe I was more right than I knew, considering that Pilar clearly had.
I sighed. “Where’s your sidearm?”
“In my purse.” She lifted her sleek clutch.
“That’s not the best place for it.”
“The dress is worth it. Trust me on this one.”
I supposed I’d already made that decision. I jerked my head at her and got back into the car. She trotted after me and slid into the passenger seat, opening the clutch to take out a few gadgets.
“From Checker.” She handed me a cell phone, an earpiece, and a small plastic stick about the size of a flash drive. “I’ve got a dongle of my own on me, but here’s one for you, too, just as backup.”
I snugged in the ear piece. “Checker?”
“Here,” he said.
“Don’t sound so excited.”
He harrumphed at me.
The warehouse was several hours outside the city. Pilar didn’t sleep on the way, but she didn’t seem nervous, either—she sat with her hands folded loosely in her lap, staring out the windshield. When I finally pulled over a few blocks from our destination, she took one steady inhale through pursed lips and then got out of the car.
“You sure you’re ready for this?” I said.
“Yeah. I am.”
“Good, because it’s too late to say no.”
She looked around. “I—I’m not oriented; I’m sorry.”
I pointed. “That’s San Alvarez Street. Turn right. You should see the guardhouse. Are you with it now?”
“Yeah. I got it.”
“Tell me what you’re telling the guard.” We’d been over this earlier in the evening, but the last thing I needed was Pilar freezing up on me.
“That my car broke down, and I’m waiting for Triple A but I didn’t want to wait out on the street, because it’s dark and dangerous and all, and can I please hang in the guardhouse for a few minutes. And then just chat. Chatting I can do.”
“What’s your signal to leave?”
“Once you’re out, Checker’s going to call me saying he’s the tow tru
ck.”
“Good.” I popped open the hood of the car and reached down to unscrew the distributor cap and pull it off. “Just in case the guard tries to be gallant, your pretend car now will truly pretend to not start.” I tossed her the keys, which she caught clumsily and tucked into her clutch. “Now go.”
She paused for long enough to take one more deliberate breath, then started swiftly in the direction of the intersection.
“You’re at least keeping half an eye on her, right?” Checker said in my ear. “This plan only makes sense because this is a deserted and scary neighborhood. If Pilar gets mugged or assaulted because she was walking around there alone—”
“I’m following, I’m following,” I groused, and hurried after her, keeping to the shadows.
Pilar’s heels echoed on the pavement. She turned the corner and made a beeline for the guardhouse. I lurked, out of range of the warehouse’s security but still within sight of her.
Once she was on the security cameras, she didn’t pause. She approached the guardhouse with a half-wave as whoever was inside saw her, and hugged her arms as she leaned to converse through the sliding window.
“She’s close enough,” Checker said. “Taking control of the security cameras in three, two, one. You’re set for as long as she’s in range.”
Nodding and smiling, a white-haired man in a security guard’s uniform opened up the door and ushered Pilar inside with him.
“You can see her on the cams, right?” I said to Checker.
“Yeah. She’s in. He’s facing away from you and talking to her. Go.”
I turned and ran smack into Simon.
“What the fuck!” I barely managed to keep the exclamation to a hissing whisper.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I drew my Colt on reflex. Not that it would do me much good. “What am I doing? What are you doing!”
“I’m sorry, Cassandra,” he said, hugging himself. “I didn’t want to follow you again, but you don’t know what I know. I’m concerned. And now I’m more concerned. After putting yourself in so much danger the other night, and now—what are you doing here? What are you involved in?” His forehead wrinkled in worry.
He must have followed us from Checker’s—I realized I’d forgotten to tell Arthur that Simon knew where Checker lived. I’d forgotten to tell any of them.
Or maybe I hadn’t forgotten. Maybe he’d made it so I just wouldn’t think of it.
If I had, would it have made a difference? Would we have been able to figure out a way for me not to pick up a fucking tail again?
“Cas!” Checker’s voice in my ear grounded me. “Cas, what’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all is going on. Is Pilar still keeping the guard busy?” I re-holstered my weapon and pushed past Simon.
“Yes. I think he’s showing her pictures of his grandchildren. Who are you talking to?”
“You’re about to see,” I said. “He’s following me.”
“Holy shit,” Checker said. “Is it that Simon guy? Tell me it’s not the Simon guy. Abort. Abort right now.”
“No,” I said.
“He’s going to blow the whole thing! Cas, you’re probably not thinking clearly—call it off!”
“No,” I repeated. I was closing in on the chain-link fence. Simon scrambled behind me, every few breaths pleading for me to stop and talk to him.
“This isn’t right,” Checker said. “I’m pulling Pilar out of there.”
“You do that, and you’ll expose me,” I said.
“Dammit, Cas!”
The metal of the fence was chilled to the touch, and my scabbing, bandaged fingers curled stiffly, the links digging into the still-healing flesh. But chain-link fences were easy to climb even without mathematics, and the horizontal lines of barbed wire at the top only required a careful shift of my center of mass before I was over.
My boots landed lightly on the pavement of the other side. I tried to ignore the noises still coming from the top of the fence. Simon deserved it if he got skewered.
But he was also going to crash my whole operation if he kept it up, and I didn’t trust a nickel’s worth that he’d help us get out of the consequences if he did. I unslung the empty backpack I wore and took off my jacket to throw it in a swooping parabola, the air resistance catching it neatly to drape on top of the barbs. Simon flailed over it and tumbled next to me, hitting the pavement in a heap. I didn’t make a move to break his fall.
In fact, after jumping to pop my jacket off the barbs, I kicked him in the stomach.
“Cassandra!” he coughed, his eyes filling with betrayal. “Why?”
“Because you’re stalking me and trying to blow my cover,” I said. “Now get up and out of view of that guardhouse.” I dragged him upright by the collar and then marched for the main building. Somehow I knew he would hurry after me.
“Cas,” Checker tried again. “Please listen to me. You are being stupid and dangerous and dangerously stupid. You cannot take this guy on a mission to steal a top-secret prototype. Are you hearing the words I’m saying? Stupid. Dangerous. Top secret. Cas, I think—I think you might be compromised. And Pilar’s in the middle of this with you. Will you please listen! You have to abort!”
“Keep distracting me and I’ll mute you,” I said.
“You know you can’t do that. That would be even more stupid than what you’re doing right now, which is—”
“Five. Four,” I said. He shut up.
I reached the heavy metal security door and pulled out a set of lock picks. Not my usual MO, but the plan had been not to leave a trace. I picked the lock with algorithmic precision, the pins dropping neatly onto the edge of the shear line one after the other, and pushed open the door into the darkness of a cavernous hallway. The LED flashlight I snapped on just after the door closed revealed a cement floor large enough to drive trucks down, flanked by enormous metal roll-up doors on each side that gleamed in the slashing beam. Almost like a storage facility, except bigger and way more oppressive.
“What is this place?” Simon’s question echoed off the concrete and metal.
Now that the guard couldn’t see or hear, I spun around, grabbed him, and shoved him against the wall hard enough for his body to ricochet like a rag doll. “I am not letting you interfere with my life,” I said. “You hear me? You are a ghost. A nightmare. I don’t care what you think you know about me. You have no claim on me. If you keep following me, I will work my ass off until I figure out a way to kill you, and in the meantime maybe one of my enemies will shoot you for me. Now stay out of my way.”
I strode off down the corridor without looking back. No footsteps sounded behind me.
At the second-to-last vault on the right, I entered the code Checker had looked up for me earlier and hauled the door up high enough for me to duck under. The Signet Devices had been listed as lots 466 to 487, and it took less than four minutes of searching for me to find a working model. It was a bit large and cumbersome, with a scattering of additional pieces outside the main casing, but I managed to stuff everything in my backpack. I also found what looked like the technical specifications in the next file box over and jammed those in, too. They’d save me a good deal of reverse engineering.
“Checker,” I said. “Are the dongles traceable to you?”
“No,” he answered instantly.
I hadn’t wanted to leave anything behind, but the dongle was probably a lot less obvious than a creepy, bruised psychic. I had no doubt Simon could get back out past the guard, but he wouldn’t be able to erase himself from the security cameras…which meant Checker was signed up to cover his exit, too. Total stealth, I reminded myself, leave them no reason to take inventory. It was a shame, really—under other circumstances I would have enjoyed blaming him for my little theft.
I tucked the dongle in the bottom of a file folder fat with design specs for a different project and put everything else back the way I had found it. “Checker, if you’re picking
up my signal for the cameras, pull Pilar out now.”
“What about the guard? Your exit—”
“You keep me off the monitors; I’ll worry about the guard. Now pull her.”
“Pulling her.”
He kept the line open, and I caught the low murmur of him faking the tow truck call to Pilar as I jogged back through the dimness. It took him longer than I expected—I gathered the guard wanted to walk her out after the third time Checker had to assure her he was right down the street at her car—but he ended the call about the time I reached the outside door. I shined the LED flashlight around, but Simon was gone.
“I’m headed back outside. Where’s the guard’s line of sight right now?”
“He’s looking at his monitors. They’ll stay blank.”
Good.
The guardhouse bisected the front section of chain-link fence. I had a vast open area of pavement to cross, and it would only take the security guard lifting his eyes unexpectedly to nail me. And I had to go through the front—behind me the warehouse property abutted buildings with even tighter security, and to the right the fence divided the property from a blind alley that had been built over at the ends. No egress that way.
No egress, but maybe still a better way out.
I cut sideways to the fence against the alley and scaled it, my loaded pack bumping my shoulder blades. At the top, instead of swinging over to the other side, I kept running straight up the links like they were a ladder, up the links and then up the strands of wire between the hooked barbs, my momentum bringing me up and up and straight up and stretching me to the heavens in direct opposition of forces until I stood balanced on the barbed wire. The strand pressed through the soles of my boots, swaying gently below me. I let my muscles compensate, shifting my weight minutely so the vectors lined up equal and opposite.
And then I ran.
The barbs were spaced five inches apart, and the soles of my boots were almost twice that. I ran between them on the balls of my feet, a springing prance, the wire absorbing and rebounding against the vertical component of the tension as it rocketed me down my knife-thin path. The front corner had a tall, fat brick pillar interrupting the chain link, but just before I reached it I leapt diagonally, cutting the corner and turning my skipping dash so I was running along the front side of the fence.