“Are you in favor of this, Marty?”
“Guess that depends on what kind of trigger we’re talking about.”
“Nobody has to get hurt,” Charlotte says. “Now that I know what I can do while I’m on it, that’ll be easier. Did you bring a gun, Marty?”
“Yep.”
“Kayla?”
“As a lifelong member of the Democratic Party who supports sensible gun control I refuse to answer that question. And I don’t like where this is headed.”
“Why?” Charlotte asks. “We’re not going to commit any crimes. We’re just gonna find a way to stop someone from committing a crime against me.”
“What’s happening to you, Charley?” Kayla asks.
“I told you what happened to me, and you still don’t believe me, so I’m trying to get you to understand that this is real. That a man who stalked me for most of my life, a man who idolizes serial killers for Christ’s sake, broke into my house, and I was able to bring him down in thirty seconds with my bare hands even though it’s been five years since I’ve gone for a jog.”
“Don’t make this about me. You were administered a drug without your knowledge and without your consent by someone who lied about who he was to get you to take it. Someone who may in fact be a trained killer. That’s the story here, Charlotte. We need to find out who the players are before we do anything else.”
“It’s not the whole story, and you will see that if we do a test.”
Without meaning to, she’s cornered her. If Kayla admits to being afraid Charlotte might snap someone’s neck by accident, then she’s admitting to believing more than she’s letting on about Dylan’s magic pills.
But there’s something else in her lawyer’s eyes now. The fire of curiosity. The gradual acceptance that if this pill is truly what Charlotte says it is, its implications are more than this tiny safe house can contain. But Kayla’s fighting it.
“There could be a corpse in your house right now,” Kayla says. “The corpse of the guy you filed a restraining order against years ago. And when Dylan told you to run, he might have done it so that he’d have evidence against you. We need to deal with that, Charley.”
“I’ve got a cell phone with an extended text thread between him and Jason planning a break-in of my house.”
“And you haven’t gone to the police with it.”
“Is that really what you recommend? Going to the police with this story? When Dylan, a man I don’t know, a man I can’t trust, might be in possession of all the evidence?”
“I recommend a change of focus here.”
“Marty, you’ve pulled drunks out of some of the worst bars in the Central Valley. Take us to the worst one.”
“Charley!” Kayla snaps.
“I’m not going to hurt anyone, Kayla. I’m just going to show you what this stuff does.”
“All right, well, if you’re doing this on my account, forget it! I don’t want to know.”
“Yes, you do. You want to know for every woman who has to walk home alone at night. Just like I want to know for every victim of the Bannings, including my mother, all of whom would be alive today if they’d had something like this in their system.”
“Apparently not, because it only works in you, according to Dr. Nutjob.”
“Well, I guess that means I have a responsibility then.”
“No, no, no! You do not have a responsibility to this insane man.”
“I have a responsibility to them!” She’s spent so much of the past year alone she can’t remember how long it’s been since she raised her voice like this. Kayla flinches as if she’s been slapped. Marty’s still as a statue and trying to keep whatever he’s really feeling out of his expression. They know who she’s talking about when she says them. Maybe, like her, they’ve memorized the faces in the photo collage of the Bannings’ victims the media uses whenever Abigail makes some wacko new statement from behind bars.
“Maybe he’s dead, Kayla. Maybe he didn’t take care of those guys. Maybe he’s one of the eleven bodies out there, and these pills, they’re all that’s left of whatever it was he was trying to do. He’s got the number to Jason’s cell phone, but he hasn’t called. So maybe these pills are mine now, and it’s up to me to figure out if they can ever help anyone the way they helped me last night.”
“You were not helped last night. You were violated. Charley, you’ve spent most of your life afraid. I understand that. And your fears were justified. But don’t let yourself become a victim of this guy’s crazy schemes just because you’ve—”
“Kayla, don’t patronize me, and don’t force me to be alone with what this really is. There is a science to this. A science to what happened to me last night. And that’s bigger than Dylan Thorpe or whatever his real name is. It’s bigger than me. It’s bigger than all of us. You’ll see that if you let me show you.”
“And maybe this was his real plan!” Kayla gestures to Charley.
“What?”
“Getting you addicted to his drug. Getting you so amped about what it can do you’re going to ignore the real threat against you.”
“Which is what exactly? The Scarlet Police Department?”
“Try the FBI or the ATF. That’s who’s investigating this biker massacre.”
“Dylan says this is bigger than them.”
“So he mentioned them specifically?”
“No, but since neither of those agencies has a drug that provides superhuman strength, I’m going to assume it is.”
“Oh, I get it.”
“Get what?”
“You’re trying to figure out how to use this drug so you can fight off law enforcement if they come for you?”
“I’m done with this conversation, Kayla. I’m sorry I brought you into this. You’re free to leave. I won’t hold it against you. I promise. But seriously. Enough.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good. Then knock it off! I’m glad that you feel you have a frame of reference when grade-A sci-fi crazy is thrust into the middle of your life. But I don’t, OK? And I’ve had one of the craziest lives of anyone I know.
“I’m doing the best I can with this. But you’re going to have to forgive me for thinking we’re in uncharted waters here and that a lot of the old rules don’t apply anymore. This drug, wherever it came from, it was given to me by a man with crazy black ops skills who assumed a cover identity for three months so he could earn my trust. If you think I’m going to try to fight off a man like that with the FBI, who didn’t capture the Bannings for over a decade, by the way, you’re the one who’s not thinking clearly. I want to know how this pill works, and I can’t exactly walk into a CVS and ask the pharmacist, OK? But if me trying to get some knowledge here freaks you out, fine. I’ll clear out of here and figure out my next move, and you can forget we ever met up today.”
Kayla swallows, but Charley can tell what she’d really like to do is roll her eyes and groan. But she doesn’t do either. Instead she turns to Marty and says, “Why aren’t you helping me here?”
“I don’t know you that well, to be frank,” he says. “It’s Charley I’m here to help. And seems to me if this Dylan guy was such a threat to her, he wouldn’t have given her a bunch of pills that make it easy for her to rip his face off.”
“People can do a lot of harm from a distance,” Kayla whispers. “Especially powerful people. We need to find out how powerful this particular guy is.”
“Sure. But if he were all that powerful, what the hell does he need Charley for?” Marty asks. “I mean, no offense, darling. I’m crazy about you, but you’re not exactly the leader of the free world.”
It’s a damn good point, she thinks for the first time. Things have moved so fast these past few hours she hasn’t stopped to ask the most important question. Why me?
“Look,” Marty says. “Charley’s right. There’s no frame of reference for this stuff. I’d rather see her do something than worry herself into crazy by speculating about who this as
shole is when she could be figuring out what he gave her. If she wants to try to make the most of a colossally shitty situation, I’m in. I’ve got a gun in my truck, and I know my way around some really sketchy places.”
Kayla’s chest rises and falls.
“Fine,” she finally says. “I’ve got a gun, too.”
16
The bar looks like the dirt beside the irrigation canal burped up an old trailer it couldn’t swallow.
There’s no sign, just a smattering of decrepit cars and pickup trucks that suggests most of the clientele inside is more meth than man.
According to Marty, it’s the kind of dive where the regulars find their favorite stool by noon, are singing along to every song on the jukebox by three, and then by dinnertime are lecturing anyone who’ll listen about how the world’s done them wrong their whole miserable lives. By eleven they’re ready for a fight. Or something worse, if they’ve managed to score a pick-me-up from one of the resident dealers, who may or may not also be the bartender.
It’s ten to eleven now. She’s showered and brushed her hair out, and she’s wearing a fresh outfit Kayla picked up for her at the nearest Walmart. Jeans and a baggy powder-blue T-shirt. She looks like a lot of women do when they go grocery shopping, but in this hellhole she’s bound to draw attention just because her clothes don’t stink of spilled beer.
Attention is exactly what she gets when she pushes the door open.
A blast of stale beer along with something more acrid and unidentifiable hits her with enough force to make her eyes water.
There’s a pool table off to her left. At first she thinks the men gathered around it are in the midst of some verbal altercation that’s about to turn physical. Two of them are nose to nose; one’s shouting into the face of the other in a high-pitched, barking voice. And he’s using lots of hand gestures while he does it. It takes her a second to realize the man’s aggression is reserved for the asshole supervisor he’s describing in his shrill tale of workplace woe. His volume and his movements are probably the result of whatever’s got him hopped-up, and the guy he’s talking to doesn’t put distance between them because he’s too drunk to be bothered. The most unnerving thing about this little scene is that no one, not his friends and not the bartender, is asking him to quiet the hell down.
Heads turn as she passes. She feels the men’s stares like pinpricks on her skin. Each look almost slides past her, then catches on the sight of her bare arms and braless chest and youthful features, and locks in like motion-activated security cameras finding an intruder.
She counts two other women in the place.
One’s passed out at one end of the bar; the other’s sandwiched in a corner booth in between two hulking guys who look like bikers. Her glazed eyes focus on nothing in particular while the men talk across her. Occasionally they slam the table with the sides of their fists to make a point. The impacts are strong enough to jostle their beer bottles, but the woman, who wears an outfit slightly more revealing than Charlotte’s, doesn’t even flinch. She’s somewhere far away from this place. Maybe someplace with blue sky and birds and men who acknowledge her presence.
Charlotte takes a seat at the bar.
The pill’s been in her system for an hour. That’s about the same amount of time it took her to get from Dylan’s office to her house.
To distract herself from the looks she’s getting, she makes a mental checklist of the symptoms she’s on the lookout for. The shaking hands, the throbbing in her bones—the phenomenon she’s nicknamed bone music. The former, she thinks, is a sign the drug’s about to kick in, the second that it’s in full bloom throughout her body. But these are just guesses. There’s a lot she’s still not sure of. Not yet. That’s what tonight’s about.
The nearest bartender glares at her, but he doesn’t come over. His glare seems both a warning and a dismissal.
When she hears the bar’s door open, she fights the urge to look over her shoulder. But she’s sure it’s Marty. He’s changed into a baseball cap and some paint-splattered clothes from his truck that conceal the gun he’s now carrying on his hip. The plan is he’ll keep her within sight at all times while he tries to hang back.
Marty only told her one story about this place. It was general, but it was enough.
One of his AA sponsees had to make a serious amends for something he’d done here. An amends that involved him turning himself in to the police and pleading guilty to a charge that got him ten years in Folsom. And the reason he’d had to turn himself in is because no one in this place reported what he and two of his buddies did to a woman in the corner while everyone else drank beer and played pool. Not even the woman, even though she’d lost most of her teeth during it.
Outside, Kayla has parked her car a short walk from the bar’s entrance, next to the tall, spiked steel fence designed to keep drunks from driving into the water supply for the nearby farms. If all goes as planned, she’ll have a front-row seat to Dylan Thorpe’s magic show. And so will Marty. And so will whoever makes the mistake of following Charlotte out of this place.
“Can I get a drink?” she asks.
It’s not that she’s rude; it’s that she doesn’t keep her eyes averted or soften her tone. She doesn’t ask the question the way these men believe a visitor, especially a female one, should. She doesn’t address them in a way that says, You’re in charge, big boy, and I remain here at the pleasure of your bad attitude. The wording alone calls attention to how brazenly the bartender’s been ignoring her and sends a ripple of tension through the two men seated at the bar next to her. They rouse like coiling snakes. One of them runs fingers over his sweating beer bottle; the other taps out a frenetic rhythm on his. Both study her, their jaws working, as if the five words she just spoke have awakened a predatory energy inside them.
The bartender comes over, stands in front of her. This isn’t the type of place where a napkin precedes a drink order.
“Diet Coke,” she says, staring him in the eye.
“You want a lemon in that?” the bartender asks.
“Sure.”
“There’s a Save Mart about ten minutes from here. I hear they got ’em on sale.”
The bartender departs. The guy closest to her at the bar cackles, punches his friend lightly in the elbow.
Charlotte locks eyes with him.
For a second she worries that her gaze is too steady, too intimidating. That her knowledge of what she might be able to do to him if he tries to harm her has given her a confidence that might frighten the guy into submission.
She’s wrong.
His mouth curls into a sneer. It’s a similar reaction to the one Thor the biker gave her when she refused to pull over on his command; only now she’s seeing it up close.
His baseball cap is on backward, giving her a full view of his bloodshot, rheumy eyes, his bulbous drinker’s nose. He’s stocky and about her age, but years of hard living make him look ten years older, and she’s not sure how much of his bulk is muscle or just beer fat.
His buddy is watching her, too, only his baseball cap is turned forward, hiding his face in shadow. He’s slouched forward on the bar, staring at her. Either he’s the more focused of the two or the more drunk.
She tries to imagine both men crying out in pain the way Jason did the night before when she broke his shoulder. It feels like a version of that old mental trick people recommend when you have to speak in front of a large group. Just imagine everyone in their underwear. But the trick backfires. It doesn’t make the men glowering at her now seem more human or less threatening. It doesn’t, in her mind’s eye, at least, dim the flames of their evident hostility toward her.
“You a cop?” Backward Cap asks.
“You a criminal?” she asks.
“Cops wear bras,” Forward Cap says, his voice just above a growl.
“The lady ones do at least,” his friend adds.
“I wouldn’t know,” Charlotte says.
She turns her attention to the television
above the bar.
Both men fall silent, but she can feel their stares.
She’s here to attract a criminal, not create one. But for this to work, the line between incitement and entrapment will be thin. And right now she doesn’t see a lot of other options.
Marty had insisted on his ridiculous test on the way over, and it had been a total flop.
Right after she’d taken the pill, he asked her to start slowly walking toward the nose of the car, into the glare of the headlights so she couldn’t see what he was doing behind the wheel. Then he’d tried startling her with bleats of the horn to see if he could trigger the drug. When that didn’t work, he’d put his foot on the gas and accelerated toward her, slamming on the brakes at the last possible second. It had scared the crap out of her and almost caused Kayla to put a bullet in him. But it wasn’t enough. It didn’t re-create the raw, primal fear of being attacked by Jason in her own home. And neither, apparently, does sitting in this bar, surrounded by guys who look like they want to eat her alive.
When the bartender delivers her Diet Coke—which he’s poured, without ice, into a grimy-looking glass—she grips it gently, realizes she’s in no danger of breaking it, and takes a sip from it like an ordinary person.
The shitty presentation of her drink sends a message. Hit the road. Maybe the guy’s pissed because she asked to be treated the same as his male patrons. Or maybe he thinks she’s in real danger and doesn’t want to deal with the resulting mess if she sticks around.
She pulls out the money clip Marty lent her. The one Kayla gave her a hundred dollars in twenties for. She flashes the bills conspicuously. If her words, attitude, and outfit don’t end up making her a target for a bastard, maybe the money will. The bartender watches her as she pushes a twenty across the bar; then he picks it up, pockets it, and says, “I’ll start you a tab.”
She’s been only pretending to watch the television over the bar, but now the images on-screen capture her full attention. They also take her back to two different places at once, which makes her head spin. Her house, when she’d come across the story of the first murder—The first face, she corrects herself—online a few weeks ago, and Dylan’s office the day before. A lifetime ago.
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