by Atkins, Dawn
“What do you want?” she snapped. “You’re on duty.”
“I’m taking a break. I have news.” He looked around to make sure no one could overhear, then leaned forward. “A Seattle reporter talked to the police. They said they’ve had five unusual drug deaths in the downtown area over the last eight months. No IDs on the bodies. No signs of longtime drug use.”
“Were there status tats?”
“The reporter’s going to try to find out. If I could get a Seattle Lifer to ID the bodies, it would be a lot easier.”
“Oh, you bet. The Seattle GM will trot right over there.”
“You could ask about Seattle Lost Lives, maybe borrow snapshots.”
“That’s it? Your news?”
“Not all of it. I got a call back from that number Beth had hidden. It turns out that IFO is a chemistry lab. Beth gave them tattoo ink to test.”
“The ink she stole from Day-Day?” Rena pretended disdain, but she flipped a straw end to end, nervously alert.
“The analyst put it through a gas chromatograph, which separates the chemicals in the sample. The equipment they have could only identify the pigments and the fluorescence. The rest showed up as”—he pulled out his notepad and read what Georgia had told him—“L-U-P, which stands for Large Unidentified Peak.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means we need more advanced equipment to break out the components. Specifically, we need a”—he looked at his notes—“high field mass spectrometer/nuclear magnetic resonance device.”
“And where would you get that?”
“In Tempe, as it turns out. When I asked her where I should go, the analyst said universities have advanced equipment for their research. I remembered the new biotech institute at Arizona State got a lot of media attention.”
“So…”
“So I got the analyst to call down there and speak ‘chemist’ to the head of the relevant department. The guy’s interested. All I need is some ink to test. Luckily, I salvaged some from the trash when you got your tattoos.”
“You robbed Day-Day’s trash?” Angry pink flashed on her cheeks again.
“I could use more, if you had a reason to drop in on Day-Day.”
“Not in a million years.”
He needed her assistance to hit the health center, too. “You gave me a week, Rena, but I’m crippled without help. I’ve got too many leads to handle on my own—dead Lifers, poisonous ink, Rockingham’s extortion, the health center numbers.”
“That’s your problem, isn’t it?” She looked up at the waitress approaching them.
“I wish I knew which numbers Beth meant for me to check.”
“As far as the ink and—E, please.” Rena’s last words were aimed at the waitress. “Over ice.”
Rena’s words riveted him. …the ink and—E. He flipped open his phone and clicked to the grainy shot of Beth’s smeared letters.
“Gage?” Rena said. “Your order?”
“Nothing, thanks.” He didn’t look up. He’d thought Beth had written Think & G. But if he tilted his head at the angle she’d have been writing at, the G looked more like an E. E for Electrique. The h was smeared and thick, so it might be two letters—h and e, which made it the ink, not think.
“You have to see this.” He shifted to Rena’s side of the booth and showed her the photo. “It could be The ink & E.”
“It’s a scribble. It could say anything.” She scooted away from him.
“No. Ink & E makes sense.” Excitement climbed in him. It was fitting together like puzzle pieces. “Electrique is addictive and you know it. Why did Day-Day tell you not to drink it after your tats? Think about it. There must be an interaction of some kind.”
“That was the nausea pill. You’re off base.”
He shook his head, more certain every second. The waitress brought Rena’s drink as a glass with ice and a can. The waitress poured most of the can into the glass, then left it. Gage studied the label.
“What do you expect it to say?” Rena said. “‘Hazardous with tattoos’?”
He noticed a black dot next to the seven-digit lot number. Didn’t the second column on Beth’s printout have seven digits? What did the black dot mean? On impulse, when a couple of gamers left their table, he grabbed one of their empty cans. There were seven digits, but no dot.
“What if Lifer E is different from what they serve the gamers? They’d have to mark it somehow.” He showed her the two cans, pointing out the dot on one, not the other. “When I unloaded cartons for the bar, the guard checked the numbers and told me to put my load in an already-packed area. That made no sense, when there was all this room on the other side. Maybe there were different formulas. Baker tracks the Lifer E we drink, too.”
“Crazier by the minute.”
“There’s dangerous shit in this,” Gage said, setting down the cans. “I’d quit drinking it if I were you.”
“The only dangerous shit around here is coming out of your mouth. I’m done.” She pushed to her feet, poured the last of the likely toxic liquid into her glass and downed it in one long swallow. “Delicious!”
Gage stood to go back to work, frustrated at Rena’s resistance to the obvious. “I’ll be out front at six for the drive back to Phoenix.”
“I’m taking the van with the other managers.”
“You don’t want to drive the Commando?”
She just gave him a look.
“But you’ll come with me to see Cassie when we hit town, right?”
“Like I said, Gage, I’m done.” Her grim expression told him she meant it, and if Rena was done, then Gage was finished. In the Life anyway. Now it was a race to see how much he could accomplish before he got ousted for good.
Chapter Fourteen
That’s it, Rena thought, pounding the thin pillow in her room way past midnight that night. Gage had gone too far with his weird ideas. As soon as she got to Phoenix, she would have him banned. Maybe he was crazed by grief, but his bizarre theory about dead junkies, spiked E, and poisonous tattoos was way over the top. He wanted to believe that NiGo robbed and killed Lifers. Mason might be acting tricky, but no way would Nigel and Naomi allow something so wrong to be going on.
Thinking E might help her sleep, she rummaged in her backpack for a can. Half a can down, she stopped on a swallow. Could she be addicted?
Gage’s doubts prickled like Atalan devil tree spines. Try to quit. See what happens. I dare you. On impulse, she took the can to the motel sink and dumped it, the red liquid fizzing in protest as it circled the drain. Panic blipped in her heart. That was stupid. It was just an energy drink. Yeah, it hit the spot and helped her wake up and go to sleep, but she would be just fine without it.
She emptied her last three cans, one after the other. Gage just wanted to scare her. Anything to make her doubt the Life.
After that, her sleep was fitful and she finally gave up at five to check out early, a headache making her scalp tight.
On the drive home, the Phoenix managers were noisy with talk about the launch party and gossip about the other Lounges. Rena was glad of the distraction, since her headache had swelled to pure agony, giving her real empathy with poor Nigel and his migraines.
She nabbed an aspirin from the driver’s first-aid kit, then traded seats to be against the window, which she cracked for air to fight her growing nausea. By the time they stopped for lunch, her stomach was convulsing with cramps and she’d begun to sweat and shake. Like a junkie going cold turkey.
Gage could not be right. He was a liar and a fraud and crazy to boot. When she thought of him, she felt that quicksand sink of betrayal, bottomless and relentless. Count on no one. That was the lesson of her life.
She’d first learned it as a shadow in the big house, trailing every friendly soul until they quit or got fired, then in her uncle’s basement, and over and over again living on the razor edge of survival until the Life saved her.
How had she forgotten? Gage had weaseled unde
r her radar through the Life, which she trusted. She had to admit that she’d wanted him to fit in. She’d wanted him to prove himself to be a true Lifer. Her problem was she’d liked him too much, let him get away with too much for too long.
In the coffee shop, she ordered chicken soup, but could only get down a few swallows. In the van, she pressed her hot cheek to the cool glass and fought her surging, cramping stomach. Her tattoo began to itch viciously, then her whole body. Inside she felt as though an EverLife spider was dragging its spikes along her nerves. Soon she’d have to puke. She could feel the wave swelling within her. When she couldn’t delay another second, she asked the driver to stop and lunged out the side door, making it behind some trees before she tossed her insides to the dirt.
“You sick?” Baker asked as she passed him on the way back.
“It must be something I ate,” she said, her teeth chattering. Someone found her a blanket. It was obvious she needed E. She hung on for as long as she could, then asked the café manager beside her for a spare can.
The relief was almost instant. She was an addict. Gage had been right. Breathing freely for the first time in hours, her stomach relaxed, her insides smoothed, she looked around the van. Were the others hooked as bad or did her alcohol problem make her more vulnerable?
Gage had been right about E. Could he be right about the rest?
…
In the spring dusk, Gage watched the manager van finally roll into the transport office parking lot. He walked closer, watching for Rena to climb out so he could take her to Cassie’s shelter—his last chance to prove his case before she blew the whistle on him. There she was, tall and pretty in the doorway, but she wobbled stepping down and he saw she was sick—feverish and pale. “You all right?” he asked her.
“Leave me alone,” she muttered fiercely. Two managers glanced over, so Gage didn’t argue. He’d get Cassie from the shelter and bring her here or get her to call Rena, so he backed away and let Rena make her way into the Lounge.
The lobby of the homeless shelter when he got there was busy with people talking or reading. Kids played with dolls or pitched game pieces at each other, laughing and ducking. The air smelled of canned spaghetti—dinner, no doubt. The man at the counter checked the roster for Cassie. “Sorry. Not here.”
“Are you sure?” He pointed to the photo of Cassie he held.
“Haven’t seen her.” He shrugged. “She must have left before I started. This is my third day.”
“Can you find out where she’s gone? It’s important.”
“You can check the bulletin board. See if she left a note.” He pointed down the hall.
Gage turned toward the dozen adults in sight. “Anyone know Cassie Fletcher? Mouthy, has leopard spot tattoos by her eyes? Anyone see her?”
A few faces watched him, most ignored him, so Gage went to the bulletin board hanging above a sofa where a large black woman sat in a colorful dress. He scanned flyers, notes, and ads for tree trimmers and babysitters and mechanics. No note from Cassie. He didn’t really expect one.
“You right about that mouth, for sure,” the black woman below him said, nodding her head.
Gage sat beside her and held out the photo. “You know this girl?”
“Oh, yeah. Heard her bitchin’ all the time.” She looked straight ahead. “Then her dealer show up a few days back. That was the end of her.”
“She left?”
She shook her head, slow and sad. “She die.”
“She’s dead?” Not Cassie, too. Anger locked his jaw.
“With Satan’s dirty hoof prints in her veins, yes sir. Saw her myself. I don’t sleep too much now. Heartburn keeps me up.”
He had to find out all he could. “You saw her dealer, you say?”
“Mean-looking white dude. Face beet red. Arab swords tattooed on his arms. All built up.”
Sounded like Roland, the Watcher who’d dragged Cassie out of the Lounge in the first place. “Did she seem afraid of him?”
“Nah. She was smilin’. Relieved-like. That’s drugs for you. Do they nasty business while you grinning like a fool.”
“Then what happened?”
“A while after she left, I step outside for air and there I see her, ’cross the street, between the buildings, slumped over. She look bad. I called the ambulance my own self, but she already dead.”
“Thank you for telling me,” he said.
“She in a better place, you must know that.” The woman patted his hand and gave him a sympathetic look.
He nodded, then left. Whatever Roland had said to get Cassie into that alley, she’d been killed as surely as Beth and with the same hot shot. He left a voice mail for his detective friend, asking him to verify the black woman’s story and offering to ID the body. In the meantime, he would check the county’s site for her Jane Doe picture. Ghoulish as it seemed, if he had any hope of getting Rena to believe him, he’d have to show her Cassie’s dead face.
…
Rena had barely stepped into the Lounge when her cell phone buzzed with a text from Maya: cu n my q…must talk.
Perfect timing. Rena could tell Maya about Gage’s crazy accusations and Maya could arrange for his dismissal.
“You don’t look well,” Maya said the minute Rena stepped into the elevator so Maya could card them up to Maya’s Quarters. Her radar for Rena’s condition never missed.
“I’m just tired. It was a long trip. You don’t look so great yourself.” Maya’s pale face was blotchy and her eyes red-rimmed. She’d been crying? What could be so awful as to make cool, calm Maya cry? Rena felt a flutter of panic. Something was wrong. Something big.
Maya led Rena into her Quarters, then continued to the kitchen for a can of E she poured into a fancy goblet, handing it to Rena. Rena noticed Maya’s mood ring caught the light. It seemed to glow like magma.
“I’m cutting back,” Rena said, setting the goblet on a marble coaster on Maya’s grandmother’s antique table. “It makes me too shaky.” It dawned on her that Maya always offered Rena E, but rarely drank any herself. Why was that?
“Really?” Maya sounded concerned. She sat close to Rena, her sweet patchouli masking the mothball smell of the horsehair sofa. Maya’s Quarters were completely different from Lifers. For the first time, Rena wondered why.
“I’ve been queasy and my tattoo itches.” She paused, then found herself adding, “It’s like broken glass is in my blood.” That was how Cassie and Gage’s sister’s boyfriend had described their condition when they went to the health center, according to Gage.
Maya stiffened, her eyes full of alarm, swirling like her mood ring. “That’s not good. Let me see your tattoo.”
Rena pushed up her sleeve. “I got three levels at once.”
“That could account for the itching, but…” Maya frowned. “We should be certain.” She took her cell phone from the bag at her feet and punched in a number. “Penelope?” she said into the phone. She was talking to Penelope Cramer—Dr. P—the health center physician. “Sorry to bother you, but we need an appointment ASAP…” She shot Rena a quick smile.
In a few seconds, Maya had arranged an appointment. “Nine sharp, Rena, for a blood test, then Penelope wants to see you herself.”
“Thank you.” Rena sure wasn’t being ignored or sent away without treatment, like Gage said had happened to Cassie and Beth’s boyfriend. “Could Electrique ever be too strong?” she asked.
“What makes you think that?” Maya’s voice edged a tiny bit higher.
“Because when I go without it I feel awful. Coffee does that, too, right? And energy drinks? Caffeine is naturally addictive, right?”
“Mildly so, yes.”
“Is there another ingredient? Something stronger that could do it?”
“Let’s just see.” Maya whisked back to her kitchen and returned with the empty E can. “Read the ingredients.”
She looked over the list: various vitamins, fructose, corn syrup, sugar, ginseng, caffeine, another “ine” o
r two, plus long chemical names that were probably colors and carbonation. It didn’t look any more dangerous than any other energy drink she’d had. Beneath the list was a black dot and a seven-digit number. Did the black dot mean Lifer E? “I can’t tell.”
“I wouldn’t worry about Electrique, Rena, and Dr. P will let you know if anything’s wrong.” Maya shifted her body toward Rena, intent now. “We have to discuss something very serious.” With her hair pulled back, Maya’s eyes, now watery and red, seemed more dramatic, their almond shape more familiar than ever. “It’s about your Recruit.”
“Good. I wanted to talk about him, too.”
“Turns out you were right to be suspicious.” Maya took stapled papers from the shelf beneath the table and held them out to Rena. They were a printout of a magazine article with the headline “Preschoolers Molested by Beloved Teachers.” It had been written by Gage Stone.
“He’s a reporter. Just like that one who wrote the hatchet piece in News Day News.”
“Gage is a reporter?” Her brain froze. “He never told me.”
“Of course he didn’t. Investigative reporters work in secret like the slime they are. They’re byline whores who will do anything for a story.”
All Rena’s blood had drained from her brain, leaving her dizzy.
Maya flipped to the contributor page, where Gage’s picture appeared with a blurb about other exposés he’d written. “Just look at that smirk.” She held the photo under Rena’s nose, gripping it so tightly it shook in her hands.
He looked arrogant, mean, and cold—a completely different man than the one Rena thought she knew. He’d sworn he’d told her the truth—all the truth—but he’d lied about who he was. Was everything else a lie?
Had he faked his grief? Did he even have a sister? She picked up the goblet of E and downed it in one long drink. “How did you find out?”
“We have an agreement with the News Day News reporter to alert us to any media contact regarding his poisonous article. He ran across this article by Mr. Stone and realized the guy had contacted him, claiming he had a sister in the Life.”