Now You See It

by Cáit Donnelly

  “Then the house was trashed,” Gemma said.

  Brady looked up from his coffee. “I do know something about that. One of the bad guys cut himself through his glove.” He told them what he’d learned from the bloody piece of glass out of Gemma’s clock.

  “We don’t know whether Ned’s apartment was searched,” Mike added.

  She drew a line out beyond the grid and wrote “Ned’s apartment” and added a question mark.

  “If it was,” Brady said, “it probably would have happened before the house was torn up.”

  “Then Ned’s attorney,” Gemma said.

  “Right,” Mike answered. “SPD thinks that was a break-in, Sam surprised the Bad Guy, Bad Guy panicked, killed him. Same night, Mark Taylor’s office was torched. Only that happened a couple of hours later.”

  As Gemma wrote, he dug through the files on the table, pulled out copies of the arson report. “All the arsons used gasoline as an accelerant. That’s pretty common, but the techs have been able to prove it was the same brand of Premium Unleaded. Not the usual choice for causing mayhem.”

  Mike took a sip of coffee. “So, Bad Guy tries to find something in Ned’s hard drive—I’m assuming it was in Ned’s files, or he thought it was, considering what came next. He has no luck. So, he hires some guys to steal the whole computer and everything else that might have the McGuffin.”

  “McGuffin?” Gemma asked.

  Brady turned to her and grinned. “Somebody in the movie business made that word up. It means ‘whatever everybody is looking for.’ Comes in real handy when you don’t know what that is.”

  “So next, he breaks into Sam Dawkins’s office.” Mike shifted his weight forward on the seat.

  Brady held up a hand. “Yeah, but the timing is interesting, here. He doesn’t go to Dawkins’s place until he’s had time to go through all the stuff from the house.”

  “Right,” Mike said. “It’s late, nobody should have been there. But Dawkins is working after hours, bunking on his couch. Hears the break-in, goes to see...”

  “According to the police report,” Brady said, “Bad Guy clocked Sam, tied him up, beat the crap out of him, before he killed him.”

  “That sounds like an interrogation,” Mike said.

  “Yeah, I think so, too. The office wasn’t burned, wasn’t even seriously tossed. So, Bad Guy interrogates him, kills him,” Brady said. “Otherwise, how would he know Sam had given everything to Mark?”

  “Good question. But why kill Sam?” Gemma asked.

  “Another good question,” Mike said. “We have to assume Sam told him he’d given the box to Mark. Bad Guy knows stuff’s not there. He takes off. Heads for Taylor’s. But first he smashes Sam’s skull with a handball trophy from the bookcase.”

  “Handball?” Gemma suddenly felt very cold. “Ned and Doug played against Sam and his partner in some attorney league championships. And lost.”

  Both men paused.

  Mike took a deep breath and continued. “At Mark Taylor’s office, he lucks out—no one’s around. He goes through whatever he wants to, takes his own sweet time, then torches the place. To cover his tracks?”

  “Or to make sure if he missed whatever it was, the fire would destroy it.”

  “By this point,” Brady said, “he’s got to be pretty sure neither attorney had it. The next logical place, then, is you or Gemma.”

  “But he’d been through everything,” Gemma protested. “He knew I didn’t have it.”

  “Yeah,” Mike said. “They’d already had plenty of time and opportunity to take what they wanted. It makes no sense to torch the rest.”

  “I feel bad for your friends,” Gemma said. “And after they were so great about the lease.”

  “Not your fault,” Mike assured her. “I just don’t see the motive. So he still hadn’t found it, and isn’t taking any chances?”

  “Maybe it’s not just one motive,” Brady said. He looked steadily at Gemma. “Maybe it started out as one thing, and became something else.”

  Her mouth went dry. “Me? It really is about me?”

  “I think so. At least part of it. That’s the only thing I can think of that fits.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Who wants you, Gemma?”

  “You think it’s Doug.”

  Mike stared straight at Brady. “Doug is the one who connected the dots for the police. The divorce, the attorneys, the break-ins—all of it. And tied it all back to Gemma.”

  “Doug did?” Her mind came to a full stop.

  “Yeah, but if he’s so into Gemma, why would he do that?” Mike asked.

  “Ever run into a wolverine?” Brady asked.

  Mike looked confused. Gemma shook her head.

  “We had them in Canada. If a wolverine can’t have what he wants, he’ll destroy it out of sheer viciousness.”

  “I can’t believe it’s him,” Gemma said. “I just can’t. I mean, can you see him doing that to Ned? Getting his clothes messy? His hands all bloody? You’re talking about Doug, for God’s sake. That’s just nuts.”

  “Whoever killed Ned is nuts,” Brady asserted.

  “Brady, when you met him, did you get anything like that from him?” Mike asked.

  He shook his head, his eyes dark and troubled.

  Gemma rubbed her forehead. “You even shook hands with him,”

  “I’ve learned to shield my hand when I have to touch somebody. It’s automatic, any more. Unless I’m running on empty. But my batteries were pretty well drained from working on your computer. Besides, we were too busy facing off.”

  “I noticed,” she said, looking at Brady. “And Mike knows what you can do.”

  Mike scratched the side of his nose and said, “I found out when we were in the Navy. Later on, when I heard Brady was out and looking to start a new business, I figured I could use a good Tracker from time to time.”

  “Tracker?’ Gemma asked, looking from one to the other. There was something a little too convenient about Mike’s explanation.

  “That’s as good a name as any,” Brady said. “‘Investigations and Security’ might be more p.c., but it amounts to the same thing. Just not as scary to civilians.”

  Gemma was silent for a minute as she tried to fit the pieces together. The shape that was forming hung just beyond her grasp. She leapt for it. “That must have been some Team.”

  “Yeah,” Brady answered, at the same time Mike muttered, “You have no idea.”

  Brady stood and scrubbed both hands over his face and hair. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Gemma, there’s another reason I might not have gotten anything when I shook hands with Doug. If it is him. Sometimes sociopaths don’t ‘register’ as being wrong. Maybe because they don’t think they are, I don’t know. But it’s something to keep in mind.”

  “What if—” Gemma said, and stopped, almost afraid to articulate another idea that had just come to her.

  “What if—?” Mike repeated.

  “Okay. If there are two motives, could there be two people?”

  “Working together? Maybe, one organized and one disorganized.”

  Brady shook his head. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. There’s a pattern. The attack on Ned looked like someone had lost it—but I think that was staged. That, and the first break-in, were meticulously done. After that, each incident gets sloppier, as if Bad Guy is coming unglued.”

  “Or is under pressure, maybe,” Mike said.

  “The Wallingford house fire was different, too. No break-in, no search, just Molotovs,” Gemma said.

  “Rage.” Mike looked up at Brady for confirmation.

  “But why?” Gemma asked.

  Mike leaned forward on his elbows and clasped his hands. “What changed that day?” This time he didn�
��t meet their eyes, but they were too embarrassed to notice.

  “Brady stayed the night. He was on the couch,” she added with emphasis.

  “Yeah, but someone watching from outside wouldn’t have known that,” Brady said.

  “Listen, you two,” Mike said, still pink along the cheekbones, “I have to take off if I’m going to be ready to catch my plane. We’ll need a place to put all this stuff.”

  “I’ll put it in my safe for now. It’s as secure as anywhere else.”

  “You sure?”

  “Well, we could maybe get Gemma to file them.”

  “Oh, yeah. And maybe get them back in a decade or so.”

  They walked Mike to the door. “So, you’re off to Ohio tonight?” Gemma asked him.

  “Yeah. There’s a one a.m. into Toledo. I’ve got some stuff at the office I’ve got to clean up.” He glanced at his watch. “Gotta run, though. I want to pick up a couple of games for Tim before the stores close.”

  “For Tim, eh?” Brady grinned when Mike looked sheepish.

  “Better you than me,” Gemma said.

  “You don’t play?’ Brady said.

  “Computer games? Not really. I love my Wii Fit, but otherwise, assorted kinds of solitaire is all. Mah-jongg games. Ned gave me MYST once, installed it on my computer. I never could get into it. I don’t have the patience for figuring it all out, and I can’t cut ahead to the end and get the answers.”

  “Don’t know what you’re missing,” Mike said.

  “Fly safe, Mike,” Gemma whispered, holding him tightly. “We’ll see you when this is all over.”

  * * *

  They didn’t talk about the case again until they were in bed.

  As Gemma settled in, Brady punched up his pillows, turned to her and said, “The attack on Ned is the anomaly. Take that out of the equation, and Doug looks pretty good for this.”

  “He says you did it,” Gemma said.

  Brady stiffened and blinked. “What?”

  “He’s said from the beginning there were too many mysteries around you. He keeps asking how well I really know you. Where you were when these things happened.”

  “And what do you tell him?”

  “That I trust you.”

  “I’ll bet that really pisses him off.”

  She was quiet for a beat. “It does. But I don’t care, any more. You know, I never learned all the boy/girl games. First there was Trevor, and then Ned came along and was so insistent. He caught me when I was really vulnerable and just swept me off my feet. I never dated, really. If I’d been more experienced, I’d probably have known better than to ever get involved with him. I was such a fool.”

  “So, should I leave you alone for three or four years until you catch up?”

  “Just try it.” She smiled at him. This was what had been missing, she realized. Just this. She linked her hands behind his neck, looking up at him. He rolled over so she was on top, balanced heart-to-heart. “I belong here, with you. When you hold me, it’s like coming home.”

  Brady suppressed a shudder. Gemma’s last two “homes” had been destroyed out from under her. Maybe the third time was the lucky one, but somehow he didn’t think it would be. He didn’t need any extra senses to know something bad was coming.

  All evening he’d been preoccupied with thoughts of his Team. They’d been something else, all right. Gemma had been dead on about that. He wished he could talk to her about them all, but their existence was buried probably one thin layer above the real records of Roswell and the Kennedy assassination.

  Brady still didn’t know which genius in the Department of Defense had come up with the idea. It was probably bound to occur to someone eventually. There was no way to entirely hide something like a psi ability in a group as tightly knit as a SEAL team. And guys always talked—even the SEALS talked to other SEALS. Probably decades of scuttlebutt about this guy or that one with “something extra” that gave his Team or squad or whatever an edge had finally penetrated what passed for brains in the Pentagon’s rarified atmosphere. So somebody had the brilliant idea to pull a bunch of them together into a single Team.

  Brady was the Tracker, for obvious reasons. Mike was communications and their link to standard intel. Gemma was wrong about Mike’s abilities. Under the stress of a military operation, he could sense other Next Steps, tell if they were dead, or wounded, or in more trouble than expected—handy information in an ambush, or in the dark. It just didn’t work on “Ords,” as the Team had called Gemma’s “Normals.”

  Brady missed the team. There had been some talk that threatened funding: no sane government functionary wanted to hang their reappointment hopes on a SEAL Team from the X-Files, and they’d been disbanded after only a year and reassigned to other Teams as replacements. He wondered what had happened to them all. If they’d grown as restless and rootless as he’d felt in his new Team, surrounded by men who didn’t know and never had time to learn what he really was capable of. Until he got them blown to hell.

  * * *

  Mike pulled into the brick-lined parking garage under his office building. For a happy surprise, no theatergoers had taken his parking place. They usually didn’t respect the “Reserved” sign on the wall after business hours.

  Someday, he vowed as he went through the painstaking and stressful process of angling his car between the wall and a concrete pillar, I’m going to get a better parking space. If one ever opens up. Or maybe a better office building. The trouble was, he loved the old rattletrap. The exterior was original and ornate, and in spite of the inconveniences, the whole building had a solidity and strength of character that felt like home to him.

  He opened his car door carefully to avoid dinging it on the concrete and squeezed out with a sigh. This garage was still better, and a lot less expensive, than one of the commercial lots. He reached into the backseat for his briefcase, and stiffened as the hairs rose on the nape of his neck.

  He pulled back quickly and looked around, but saw nothing that should have spooked him. The garage tended to feel a little eerie at night. It was always badly lit, but for some reason, at night the shadows seemed to fall differently. He stared across the rows of cars, hardly breathing, listening with every pore in his body. Nothing. He shook his head. He was losing it. Between the murder—shit, two murders, a vandalism, three arsons, but who was counting? Then a fight with Mary Kate—he swallowed bitter bile. He was glad she and Timmy were safely away, but he hated having them gone. Mary Kate was the only woman he’d ever loved, the only one he’d ever wanted for more than ten minutes. He wasn’t going to lose her over anything smaller than Armageddon. So she’d just better get ready to work this through.

  Even thinking of her leaving made his stomach hurt.

  The interior of the building had the olive-oil and oregano smell of aging, real wood and floor polish. Mike took a deep, appreciative breath as he stepped blindly into the elevator and pushed the button to the fifth floor. He rolled his shoulders, unable to shake off a sense of menace.

  The corridor to his office was deserted. The nighttime lighting left darker areas along the hall that seemed to breathe in the silence. Nonsense. Buildings don’t breathe. Chiding himself for his foolishness, he unlocked the office door.

  His paralegal sat behind a stack of books. The legal tablet she was hunched over had half its pages rolled up over the top of the pad. “Cinda. What are you still doing here?” he asked.

  She finished the note she was making before she answered. “Trying to study. It’s quiet here.”

  “It’s dangerous. I told you, I don’t want you here alone, especially at night.”

  “Well, I’m not alone now, am I?” She bounced the butt end of her pen against her thumbnail. “Do you need me to help with anything?”

  “‘She offered with mock sincerity,’” he said. “No, t
hanks. I just want to pull few things together, then I’m heading out—and so are you.”

  She started to protest, but gave it up when she saw his face. “Okay. The kids will be asleep by the time I get home, anyway.”

  “Your mom waiting up for you?”

  “Always,” she laughed. “That woman is relentless.”

  “No doubt.” Mike smiled. Clarissa Barstow was a force of nature. She and Cinda were both well over six feet. Cinda was almost too thin, but Clarissa carried her two-hundred-plus pounds with the pride of royalty. And she had passed her assurance on to her two daughters and five grandchildren.

  Two years ago, she had come to Mike when a nephew ended up on the wrong side of a weapons charge. She had insisted on paying all his fees in full. And she had dragged the young miscreant into Mike’s office afterward for a full apology. Mike shook his head. Great family, he thought, as he unlocked the inner office door.

  He stacked up files and tablets, opened his briefcase, and set it on his chair. As he loaded up handfuls of folders, he double-checked the label on one file, set it back on the desk, and snapped the case shut on the rest of the stack.

  “Cinda? You about ready?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but flipped off the light and pushed through the door into the outer office.

  He had a split-second sight of a man in night camos and Cinda lying boneless on the floor at his feet. He caught a quick, coppery scent of blood before a blow like a hot sledgehammer hit his chest and his vision grayed as he staggered backward through the doorway. Instinct had him rolling to the floor before his mind grasped that the intruder had a gun.

  Mike fell heavily on his left hand, unable to raise his right arm to catch himself. He twisted toward his desk and rolled to reach the handle of the bottom-right drawer. He heard his assailant panting, closer, closer. Mike pulled the drawer open just enough to grasp the Glock 17 he’d kept in the office since Sam Dawkins’s murder. He tried to chamber a round, but couldn’t grip the weapon tightly enough to work the slide. He jammed it between his knees for leverage and was rewarded by a slight snick-snick as the shell slid into place.

  Ferocious pain thumped through his chest and right arm, and he knew he was losing too much blood, too fast. The gray was back, narrowing his field of vision. Pulling out his last reserves, he lifted the 9 mm semiautomatic just as Camo Guy arrived backlit in the doorway. Mike fired, and had the satisfaction of seeing the creep recoil from impact before the darkness closed in. He never heard the bottle shatter against the row of wooden files, or saw the flames licking their way across the gasoline-soaked carpet.