The Doctor blinked, and gasped, and was about to claw at Kevin’s hands, when the Exile tapped him lightly on the front of his temple. Kevin smiled at him and said, “We have to talk, my friend.”
*
“So, Gabriel, how do you know Kyle?” Kevin Anderson asked as he sat in the Doctor's office. The office was very simple and sparse, just a desk, an old beaten office chair, and a computer. A set of dueling pistols had been over the mantel; one was now in Kevin's lap.
Dr. Gabriel Sieger sat down behind his desk. “Someone was going to blackmail me with...what you found out from the gentlemen you dispatched outside. I had Kyle take him out, promised him medical care. Discounted, naturally. Sort of.”
Kevin smiled. “I'm surprised he trusts you enough to take care of him.”
Gabe shrugged. “Trust is relative. Kyle never really trusts anyone … he has … issues.”
“No kidding. I assume that one of them has to do with why I'm here and he's not?”
The Doctor sighed. “I don't know. Haven't seen Kyle in a week. Neither has anyone else. I'm not exactly the most sociable person in the city, for reasons you can imagine.”
Kevin smiled. “No kidding.” He looked out at the way he came. “Not the most popular, either. I think you're going to need to reset your traps, maybe improve some of the system.”
“No, really?” the Doctor said with sarcasm, rolling his eyes...and then he realized what the man in front of him could do if he put his mind to it. “What are you going to do?”
He shrugged. “Nothing.”
Gabriel blinked. “Nothing? Why not?”
The Exile gave him a look that practically screamed, “Are you kidding?” and said, quite simply, “I have enough problems. I have a small sector of the city to defend, and...” Kevin drifted off as he looked down at the dried blood still under his fingernails. “Anger issues to deal with... who were the killers who came after you?”
“Headhunters... They usually carry machetes. Thankfully, they're a close-mouthed group of buggers—they won't have anyone else come after me, because only this group knows.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because, if they did, they would have fought each other first, to see who would be allowed to get me. Or they would have come in and wiped out the other team, and resumed the attack immediately.”
“Makes sense.” Kevin took the dueling pistol and put it off to the side. “Anyway, unlike them, I have better things to deal with, and I don't have the time. Oh, if you're thinking that you're going to sic Kyle on me like you did your blackmailer, well, unlike the headhunters, I have no problem leaving little packets of information around to be open in the event of my assassination.” He smiled evilly. “And what do you think that Kyle would do if he knew what you were hiding?”
The Doctor flinched and pressed himself up against the wall as though he were trying to vibrate through it. “You wouldn't.”
Kevin laughed. “No. I wouldn't. But if I somehow died, whoever killed me would be releasing all kinds of Hell onto you. And in this corner of the damned, that's saying something.” He walked toward the door. “Look at it this way, Doc, the next time you raise a glass to my good health, I'll know you mean every word of it.”
Kyle Elsen stepped into Dr. Seiger’s foyer, and saw Kevin. He stopped and blinked. “Oh. Hello.” He looked around, and blinked. “Are you responsible for all this?”
The spy smiled. “Only for the bodies that are in relatively one piece.”
“Kyle!” Gabriel screamed. “Where were you?”
Elsen gave Gabriel a casual, unconcerned glance. “I was in the middle of a research project. I fell in. Sorry.” He looked back to Kevin, his expression and tone unchanged. “Thank you, Mr. Anderson. I like to keep Gabriel in one piece. I don’t really want to see if I can sew him back together.”
Kevin nodded, though Gabriel looked a little stunned. Did Kyle just make a joke?
“Not a problem. The Doctor here has agreed to give me free health care for my stay here.” Kevin patted Gabriel on the back. “He feels very invested in keeping me alive.”
Elsen arched a brow, saying nothing for a moment. He studied Anderson’s posture, and then the Doctor’s. “Do you know what they wanted?”
Kevin gave him a broad grin. “Drugs. I asked one of them before I put him down.”
Elsen looked back down the hallway, over the piles of remains. There were guns, and knives, and baseball bats. And enough pieces and parts to put together over a dozen people … more, if you only wanted to count one right arm per person. “They do not strike me as Brokers. Were you aware, Mr. Anderson, that Brokers tend to kill their competition, if they are not of the association?”
“Of course,” Kevin answered. “I also know that street dealers have a bad tendency to think that they’re smarter than the big shots.” He shrugged. “As an old San Francisco cop once said, a man’s got to know his limitations. They didn’t. Heh.” He looked to both of them, and gave a little wave. “Anyway, I gotta get going, you two. I’ll see you around.”
Elsen blinked, and stepped out of Kevin’s way. The assassin watched Kevin leave, and looked to the Doctor. “I now know something about Mr. Anderson that I did not know before.”
Gabriel sniffed. “Didn’t we already know he was annoying?”
“He is a very good liar.”
“He can’t be a very good liar if you picked up on it.”
Elsen’s bland expression didn’t change as he met Gabriel’s eyes. “He’s better than you.”
Chapter 23: Shock Therapy
June 3rd, 2093
Kevin Anderson looked around the Ground Zero at four the next afternoon, and smirked at the sign over the bar: “Zero Hour specials.”
Shoot me now. He nodded at the bouncer, Leo, and moved straight to the bar, smiling at the gorgeous Lotus, who simply looked up from her laptop and nodded at him before going back to work. Dr. Sieger was already at the bar, talking with Mickie and Mac. Anderson slipped in beside the good Doctor, and sat with his back to the wall, his side leaning against the bar.
“Hi there, what's up, Doc?”
The three of them looked at him warily, as though he were about to pull a gun and start shooting. “We need to do something about Kyle.”
Anderson shrugged. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“We just want you to hang around,” Mac said.
“And be his friend, funny man,” Sieger added.
Kevin looked at the doctor and smiled. I guess he believes me when I say I'm not going to use his secret against him. That's something. “What am I missing?”
“Kyle's turning into a human being,” Mac said, “or at least it looks like it. You're a curiosity to him.”
Mickie rolled her eyes. “We want you to at least associate with Kyle so that he has something else to focus on other than killing people, reading about killing people, and booze.”
Anderson glanced at her. “He doesn't seem like that much of a lush. I'm trying to remember how often I've seen him drink, and it may have been a few shots.”
“Yes. While you've been around. He's been less in his head since you've been here. You're a puzzle.”
Kevin considered this, and nodded slowly. “Jigsaw or Rubik's cube?”
Gabriel sighed, and slapped the bar top. “Have you ever met a flaky academic?”
The Exile laughed. “I have an engineering degree. All of us are crazy. If you don't believe me, I'll introduce you to electrical engineers.”
“Shocking,” Mac muttered. Mickie smacked him upside the head.
Kevin looked at Mickie a moment. There was something about a person named Mickie being a bartender that didn't sit right with him. “You know, if all of you people are information specialists, Mac is the people person, Lotus is computers and hacking, and Mickie … none of you people are named 'Finn,' are you?”
“No, of course not,” Mickie said with a smile.
He laughed. “So, you’re a chemic
al specialist, are you? And you dealing with a doctor—who, I can only imagine, in San Francisco, has to be able to make some of his own meds. Two chemists, same bar... and San Francisco did turn ‘Shanghai’ into a verb. I think I'll just stick with water.”
When you're a spy in hostile territory, everything should be suspect. Friendly gestures are never to be accepted at face value, and there's almost always a price tag attached. But to say that would be giving the game away. So, when in doubt, play along, and see if you can play the angles.
“Why me?” he asked. “What makes all of you think that I'm going to play along? Sure, Kyle doesn't seem like a bad guy, a little weird maybe. But what do you folks get out of this?”
Mickie's eye twitched, and she was the one who snapped at him. “Because he's our friend, you little prick.”
Anderson said nothing for a moment, and Mac held his breath, obviously worried that his sister had just alienated him. If you can't play nice, blame someone else. “Forgive me for saying so, but I've been informed by my benefactors that no one in San Francisco does anything for anyone without a price tag. So, I have to ask what you folks get out of it.”
“Aside from a sober assassin?” Mac griped.
Kevin Anderson smiled. “Point taken. And you guys come to me with this? A stranger?”
A glass of water appeared at his elbow, and Anderson’s glance landed on Lotus, standing right behind the bar. Wow, she’s quiet.
“Because you will do the right thing, Lt. Anderson,” she said quietly. “You are not a stranger.”
Kevin Anderson blinked. And just how much research have you done on me, little girl?
He looked at her as though she had grown three heads. She wasn't anything like a Gorgon, but from his look, one would have thought otherwise.
“Did you hear me?” Lotus asked softly.
He blinked, shook his head, and then blinked again, harder. “I'm almost certain I did. Which is a shame, really, I always thought you were the sane one of the three.”
She gave him a small, shy smile from the other side of the bar. “I am.”
“That depress you as much as it does me?”
Lotus shrugged. It was cute, on her. She was truly supermodel pretty, even if she was only around five-feet tall, and trapped in San Francisco. “You can get through to him.”
The door opened, and Kyle walked in. His right hand was free, his left arm curled around three books, each easily four hundred pages.
He grabbed his glass, and thought for a moment. What exactly was he going to start in with? The mark in this particular con was an Assassin, and if he picked up on what was going on, Anderson would probably be the one who’d have to put him down …
Yeah, because that's going to be fun.
Kyle came directly to Anderson, and said, “You are in my seat, Mr. Anderson.”
Anderson blinked, and looked down. “No nameplate.”
“I always have my back to the wall.”
“Ditto.” Anderson shrugged. “Can't imagine someone trying to kill me here with you around … well, not again, anyway.” He shifted over one chair.
“Water, please, Lotus,” Kyle said.
“Not bourbon?” Anderson asked.
The books landed on the counter-top with a thud. “I don't drink on Mondays.”
Anderson blinked. “I thought everyone drank on Mondays.”
“Not me.”
“Uh huh.” Behind Kyle, he could see several women opening the door in the back of the room. He squinted, and saw an unlit sign that read VIP Lounge. “Is there a private party back there?”
Mac cleared his throat. “After a fashion.”
Anderson nodded to himself as more women steadily got up and walked to the back of the room, straight for the VIP section. “A private party of a dozen women? Either this is a bachelorette party, a lesbian orgy, or one lucky guy.”
Kyle smiled, and quickly downed his water in one swig. He got up, and he also went into the VIP lounge.
Anderson blinked, then looked back to the others. “And you thought he just had an occasional drinking problem?” He laughed, and then shook his head. “Well, at least we know some part of him is functionally human.”
The next sound he heard was a brief, beautiful sound, like the tinkling of bells.
Lotus laughed.
*
Kevin Anderson was still in Kyle's seat while the assassin was in with “his harem” as the spy called it. There had been the occasional grunt and scream from the VIP room, but aside from that, there wasn't much noise coming out of it. Anderson only noticed the sounds over the music because he was paying attention. No one else noticed because the volume on the music had actually gone up once the VIP room door closed – at the very least, the bass went up a whole heck of a lot.
However, the more Anderson thought about the VIP room, the more he questioned his own original theory. Nothing about Kyle Elsen said sex maniac. Nothing even hinted that he would pay for sex – and that much sex – and he certainly didn't have the charm to convince all of those women to hang around and have sex with him all at the same time.
So, if he's not getting laid, what's he doing? Teaching a cooking class? Group therapy?
After eighty-nine minutes, the VIP room door opened, and Kevin Anderson was next to it when it did. All of the women were chatting with one another. In fact, they were all downright pleasant and sociable. There were so many, he could only catch snippets of conversation as they went by.
“That was an awesome session.”
“He should have gone harder on us. We can take it.”
“I don't think he wants to hurt us by accident.”
“Next time, choke me harder, I could still breathe.”
“I'm going to have bruises on my ass for a week.”
“How am I going to explain that bite mark to my husband?”
As Anderson tried to catch it all, he noted something. The VIP room did not smell of sex, but of sweat and hand sanitizer.
The spy leaned against the wall with one shoulder, and tipped forward slightly to glance into the room. All of the surfaces had been covered with padding, and there were fake weapons strewn all over the floor.
Anderson didn't take the time to reach a conclusion with his observations, but he spotted Kyle as he slipped a shirt over his head.
The assassin’s body was covered in scars: burns, stabs, slashes, friction burns, bullet wounds, calluses from weapon usage, and old welts that Anderson noted, but didn't want to consider too strenuously. Much of it could be explained by his profession. Bad things happen in wetwork.
But there was one distinctive mark that Anderson recognized. Back in his youth, when he tried for creative solutions to everyday problems (like that compulsion ever went away), he had gotten it into his head that he could melt the snow outside his house by using the residual heat from products used in the house – such as what was left in a kettle after his father made tea, or the one time that Anderson had taken a fry pan off the stove after dinner was cooked, and he pressed the flat of the pan against the icy sidewalk.
The impression Anderson's fry pan had made in the ice matched the scar between Kyle Elsen's shoulder blades. After that, the cigarette burns were just a minor detail.
Anderson blinked, and the throwing knife twanged in the doorframe before he had even noticed Kyle had put his shirt back on. Kyle's hand was still outstretched. For the time that Anderson had known this assassin, he had been a little flaky, more like an academic who killed people than anything else. Now, the eyes had gone flat, the posture stiff, and there was a storm behind those plain eyes.
“Mr. Anderson,” Kyle began, “may I help you?”
He smiled, and treated the knife like it was a simple hello – which, given the behavior he'd seen thus far, it might have been. “Just curious to see what was going on in here, that's all. Given the participants, the layout, the comments on the way out, and the smell, I'm going to hazard a guess at, oh – women’s self-defense traini
ng?”
Kyle gave a small smile, and a smaller nod. The eyes lit with appreciation. “Very astute, Mr. Anderson. Most people presume sex is involved.”
Anderson scoffed. “Yeah, I know. I thought that for about ten seconds myself. But then, I hope most of those people have never actually met you. Because, frankly, if they have, sex is lower down on the list of possibilities.”
Kyle nodded. “Indeed. I would ask that you tell no one else about this.”
He arched a brow. “Item one: Who would I tell? Second: who would believe me? Third: who'd care? You're being altruistic. I don't think anyone in this city even knows the meaning of the word anymore.”
The assassin didn't blink. “And what else you saw?”
Kevin Anderson didn't even hesitate. “What? There was something else to see?” Anderson tipped an invisible hat to him. “I'll see you around, Master Assassin.”
He turned around without another word, heading for the doors. As he passed the bar, he could feel the eyes of the Doctor and the triplets on him. At the end of the bar counter, he stopped and turned. “Oh. While I think about it, I believe I can help you with that thing you have in mind.” He smiled. “I think I've already started.”
Anderson walked out the door.
Soon after, Kyle Elsen took his usual seat at the bar, facing the door he had watched Kevin Anderson walk out of. His hands were on his books, but he didn't open them. Mickie all but waved a bottle of his favorite scotch in front of his face. The assassin just frowned thoughtfully at the spot where he had last seen Anderson. His brow was deeply furrowed in thought, and his lips were pursed in concentration.
“That man,” he said slowly, “is strange.”
*
June 15th, 2093
Kevin Anderson was a puzzle Kyle could not figure out. And he tried.
Kevin Anderson had seen Kyle's deepest secrets – the both of them. He treated one like a joke, and treated the other like it didn't exist. Why? There had been no bargains, no threats, and no blackmail, not even a suggestion that the Exile had wanted anything from him for the bargain.
Codename: Winterborn (The Last Survivors Book 1) Page 26