“I assume you already know that was a bad idea.”
Zach looked at the black car, still just sitting there, next to him.
“You could say that. There’s someone after me. Black car.”
“You’re sure?”
Another driver behind the two cars honked. Zach, startled, hit the gas. The black car took off a few seconds after he did, and maintained a steady pace a car length behind.
“Cade, they’re right here.”
“Don’t panic. I’ll be there soon.”
“I don’t know where I am.”
“I’ll find you.”
“Cade?”
“What?”
“You sure this car doesn’t have a rocket launcher?”
“Just keep driving. I’ll find you.”
There was a click, and Cade was off the phone.
Zach made a wild left turn, realized he was going the wrong way down a one-way street.
The black car followed him, keeping its distance.
Definitely not a good sign, Zach decided.
CADE TOUCHED ANOTHER BUTTON on his phone’s screen, and a map of Los Angeles popped up. Zach’s GPS beacon showed him on the edge of downtown—about five miles from where Cade was standing.
Wilshire was bumper-to-bumper with Friday-night traffic.
Cade began to run.
A few people gave him looks, but he reached a side street before he really started to move.
At the end of two blocks, he was sprinting. He stayed in the center of the road, his feet making a sound like a continuous drumroll. In one of the pocket neighborhoods behind the Miracle Mile, a car ran a stop sign, right in front of him.
Cade vaulted it easily. The driver never saw a thing.
Cade kept running.
ZACH WATCHED the rearview mirror, rather than the road. Before he knew it, he was lost. He didn’t even know Los Angeles had railroad tracks, but he’d crossed them several times. Freeway overpasses, offering the promise of escape, were above his head, but he couldn’t seem to find any on-ramps. He’d look up, grinding his teeth, wondering why the hell anyone ever said this city was easy to drive around.
Through it all, the black car stuck to his tail like grim death.
He’d managed to find himself in an almost totally deserted section of town, concrete on all sides, and a bridge—bridge? Since when did L.A. have a river?—in front of him.
A streetlight above went dark. As if that was a signal, the black car revved its engine and closed the gap between them. Its headlights grew huge in the mirror.
The car tapped his bumper.
He slammed on the gas, and the sedan nearly leaped off the road, pushing him back in the seat.
Whatever special government engine he had under the hood, his pursuer had something better. The black car closed the gap, tapping his bumper harder this time.
Zach’s phone started beeping. Not really a good time to take a call, he thought.
CADE PUT HIS PHONE AWAY, with a small amount of frustration. The boy wasn’t answering. That would make this slightly more difficult.
As he thought this, he was running at about forty-five miles an hour on the overpass, not yet breathing hard.
The phone’s GPS tracker put the boy right below him.
He saw both of them—the sedan, driving wildly, and the black car behind it, smoothly accelerating to follow
Slightly more difficult, but not too bad, he decided.
Without breaking stride, Cade jumped over the concrete barrier, out into the empty air.
ZACH SWERVED AROUND A CORNER—and slammed on his brakes.
Dead end. The only thing between him and a concrete drainage canal was a chain-link fence, topped with razor wire.
He didn’t have a lot of time to consider his options. The black car appeared at the end of the street, then accelerated toward him.
CADE STOOD IN THE ALLEY where he’d landed. Zach had raced by a second before. Cade heard the screech of brakes that told him Zach had just discovered the dead end.
Cade put both hands on the edge of the dumpster, filled with metal parts from the machine shop out front.
The pursuit car’s engine told him it had found Zach. He heard it rev and then peel rubber.
He waited, for just a second, calculating the time it would take for the black car to reach the end of the street, for him to reach the end of the alley.
Then Cade put his legs into it and started running, pushing the dumpster along in front of him.
ZACH BRACED FOR IMPACT and wondered if it was going to hurt when he was knocked over the edge.
He couldn’t take his eyes off the rearview mirror. The headlights got bigger again, the sound of the engine roaring—
Something hit the car, knocking it clean off the road. The headlights jerked out of view so fast it was like they were shut off.
Zach turned around in the seat, not believing it.
A dumpster had come out of the alley like a missile, T-boning the black car at the driver’s door.
The dumpster rolled away, crushed from the impact. The black car, crumpled up on one side, rested against a row of parking meters, some of them bent and snapped.
Zach felt eyes on the back of his neck, and turned in the other direction.
Standing in the street, in the sudden burst of steam from the black car’s smashed radiator, was Cade.
Cade walked over to the car.
A thick man in a suit stumbled out of the ruined driver’s-side door, fumbling for a gun in a shoulder rig.
Cade knocked him to the pavement. Then he grabbed the edge of the crushed door, pulling it right off its hinges, and flung it away.
He dragged the passenger out. Zach caught a glimpse of bright blond hair as Cade deposited her on the ground by her companion.
Zach got out and ran to Cade’s side.
Cade examined him. “Are you all right?”
Zach got a really good look at the side of the car now. It was totaled. The wheels were bent off the axle.
“Yeah—I just—holy shit, Cade, how did you do that?”
The blonde shook herself and tried to stand.
Cade moved between her and Zach. She staggered a little on her high heels.
Zach felt a little ridiculous, being protected from a 105-pound. He stepped forward, brandishing his fake creds like a shield.
“You’re in big trouble, lady,” he shouted. “We’re with the Department of Homeland Security.”
She focused on his badge. Then she laughed and stood up straight.
At first glance, you could have mistaken her for a corporate lawyer, or maybe even a TV reporter. She had that kind of brassy, too-perfect attractiveness.
“No, you’re not,” she said, as she brushed the broken safety glass from her blouse. “We are.”
She flipped out her own badge.
“Helen Holt,” she said. “Special liaison to DHS.”
Zach stood there looking at it for what seemed like a long time. Cade didn’t say anything.
Zach looked at the blonde again. She gave him a smile that would put any spokesmodel to shame.
“Well . . . crap,” Zach said.
TWENTY-FIVE
1957—“Teenage Monster” incident, Camden, New Jersey—Another experiment with Konrad’s work leads to a local doctor, last name Carlton or Karlton, assembling a creature from the parts of several deceased teenage athletes. After the creature murdered several people, Operative Cade dealt with the doctor and his experiment.
—BRIEFING BOOK: CODENAME: NIGHTMARE PET
The other man got up off the pavement.
He was limping, but didn’t say anything about it. He showed Cade his own badge, which ID’d him as Reyes, also with DHS.
“Mind if I pick that up?” he asked. He pointed to his gun, still on the ground.
“I wouldn’t,” Cade said.
Reyes grimaced, puffed up his chest. Looking to salvage some scrap of his pride. “You going to stop me?”
“So you guys going to give us a ride, or what?” she asked.
Cade ignored the question. “Why were you following him?”
“Your colleague was stalking one of our assets,” Helen said. “That caught our attention, you might say.”
“You’re protecting Konrad? Why?”
“I’m afraid that’s classified,” she said. “Let’s just say Konrad is vital to national security interests that don’t concern you.”
“I don’t suppose the president knows about these interests.”
“Oh, do grow up. Plausible deniability. Ever heard of it? The politicians can’t be trusted with the hard facts. You should know that by now.”
Cade stepped closer to her, radiating menace now.
“Perhaps you want to let me in on the secret.”
Zach could feel Cade’s anger. Even Reyes flinched a little.
Helen stood there, serene. “I’m not afraid of you,” she said.
Cade evaluated her for a moment. “No,” he said. “You’re not. You’re taking all of this quite well.”
“Come now, Mr. Cade. You don’t really think you’re the only extra-normal operative working for the government, do you?”
Cade’s mouth twitched. “Extra-normal. Clever.”
She shrugged. “Government jargon. What are you going to do?” Still looking amused, she didn’t seem willing to offer any more information.
Abruptly, Cade turned away and put his phone to his ear.
Which left Zach standing there, talking to the two agents alone.
Reyes glared. But Helen looked him over, sizing him up.
“How do you like the new job, Zach?” she asked.
That caught him off guard. “Do I know you?”
“Nope.” Still smiling. “But I know you.”
Christ. More mind games. Like he hadn’t had enough of those today. “Whatever you say.”
“You should listen to me, Zach,” she said, still infuriatingly calm, as if someone—some thing—hadn’t just broken her car nearly in half.
“Why is that?”
She gave him another million-watt smile. “Because we’re the good guys, of course.”
Zach laughed. “Yeah. I can tell.”
Her expression changed to pity. “You can’t. You’ve been fed a pack of lies. You joined the wrong team. I mean, really, would the good guys have a vampire working for them?”
Zach looked away from her, over to where Cade stood, phone still to his ear.
She kept pushing. “Ask him a question: how many people has he killed? Not in the line of duty. How many innocent people has he killed, just so he can feed?”
“He doesn’t feed on people,” Zach said.
“And you believe that?”
Zach didn’t have an answer.
She laughed at him. “Poor Zach,” she said. “You don’t know who ” to trust.
CADE HIT THE BUTTON for Griff. It took the man a moment to answer. His voice sounded rough.
“Yeah?”
“We’ve run into some people from the Agency.”
“You sure?”
Cade listened to the woman as she worked to turn Zach against him.
“Fairly certain, yes. What should I do with them?”
“They look dangerous to you?”
Cade almost smiled. “They never do.”
Griff thought about it for a moment. “Just get out of there. You don’t need the Agency on your ass.”
Cade looked back at Helen and Reyes. Saw the troubled look on Zach’s face. The woman was talking to him, and he was listening.
“It might already be too late,” Cade said.
He hung up, got Zach and got back in the car.
HELEN WATCHED Cade and the boy leave. She knew Zach was looking back at her. She smiled and waved.
As soon as their car turned the corner, her big smile shut off.
She checked her watch. Past three a.m. Sunrise in a little more than four hours. Cade would have to go to ground soon.
Reyes was on his phone already, calling for backup. He was bent over with pain now. He’d put up a good front, but Cade had hurt him. Helen wouldn’t have been surprised if he had broken bones.
Not her problem. Helen crossed her arms and leaned back against the trunk of the car again.
Reyes snapped his phone shut. “We’ll have a ride in five minutes.”
She sighed irritably. That would have to do. She still had another meeting tonight. She wasn’t looking forward to it, but she wanted to get it over with.
God, she hated to wait.
TWENTY-SIX
And you thought all we had to worry about were earthquakes. According to mining engineer G. Warren Shufelt, Los Angeles sits above a lost city filled with golden treasures and mysterious inventions left by a race of Lizard People with intellects far in advance of our own. Shufelt says he found records of this reptile race in the ancient legends of the Hopi Indians, and is presently raising funds to drive a shaft 250 feet under the ground beneath Downtown.
—Los Angeles Daily Tribune, January 29, 1934
Zach kept looking through the back window as they drove away.
“We’re just going to leave them there?”
“Yes.”
Zach watched them through the back window until Cade turned down another street.
“Yeah, I suppose they can call DHS for a tow truck.”
“They weren’t from Homeland Security,” Cade said.
“How do you know? Were the badges fake?”
“Not the badges. The names. There are no employees of DHS named Helen Holt or Augusto Reyes.”
“How can you be so sure? You know the name of every Homeland Security employee?”
Cade didn’t respond.
“You know the name of every Homeland Security employee, don’t you?”
“And their positions,” Cade said. “Those two, whoever they are—they don’t exist.”
Zach wondered what that meant. Before he could ask, Cade spoke again. “I would have expected better driving from a car thief.”
Zach looked over at him, stunned. Nobody knew about that.
“I never—” Zach started. Then decided fuck it, no use lying.
“That was a long time ago.”
“It was nine years.”
“Right, I forgot. That’s like waiting in line for a latte to you, isn’t it? What do you care anyway?”
“I’m wondering how you ever got away with it.”
“Well, I didn’t, obviously. I got caught.”
“Only once,” Cade said.
“Once was enough.”
At first, Zach told himself it was little more than a practical joke. People in his hometown still left their cars unlocked. If they didn’t, Zach had figured out a way to pop open most doors. If he couldn’t bust the lock, he’d learned that a spark plug, tossed just so, would shatter a car’s window instantly, with barely a sound. He taught himself how to hot-wire from a schematic he found on the Net.
It was a challenge. And it was dangerous—miles away from the hours in class where he was the predictably bright student, the kid who got along with everyone, who always said and did the right things.
The money didn’t hurt, either. Tyler, one of Zach’s buddies, was pretty much aimed at prison from the moment he came out of his mother’s womb. Absent father, abuse from Mom’s boyfriends, too little money and too much time on his hands.
He and Zach were friends in grade school, before either knew they shouldn’t be. Both latchkey kids, with single moms. Tyler came over to his house after school. They stuck together, like some bad movie version of themselves, the tough guy and the brain. If he stopped to think about it, Zach knew Tyler counted on him for stability. And he knew that once he went off to college, he’d never see Tyler again.
In the meantime, Tyler kne
w a guy who was willing to pay them for the cars they brought him. Laughably small amounts, really. But Zach wasn’t exactly rich himself. He needed cash for that Ivy League escape he’d planned.
So, while he spent time after school and weekends doing Mock Legislature, Poli-Sci Club and volunteering for campaigns, Zach also ran around a few nights every month stealing cars.
Then they were caught.
The cop who wouldn’t buy into Zach’s bullshit—the one Griff resembled so much—also figured out this was the reason for the recent rash of auto thefts. He and the prosecutor gave Zach a choice—go to juvie or turn in Tyler and his buyer.
Zach, sitting in a grimy conference room in the courthouse, didn’t have to think about it long. He saw his whole future turning to dust. He asked for only one condition: that his arrest record remain sealed.
Tyler went to juvie. His buyer went to prison. Zach made his escape.
And this was where it got him. He tried to settle back into his seat.
“You’re not as different as you think, Zach,” Cade said. “Everyone has secrets. You’ll see.”
Zach wasn’t sure what that meant. He wondered if Cade had heard Helen’s conversation with him. Then he yawned so hard he nearly passed out. He looked at his watch and wondered when he’d get any sleep.
“Almost sunrise,” Cade said, as if in answer. “We’re going to the safe house.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
While many of the subject’s organs have shrunk from lack of use—most notably the stomach and intestines—other organs have shifted, enlarged, and re-purposed. His lungs have filled with dense “stacks” of blood vessels that draw liquid blood directly from the esophagus upon feeding. These stacks have also expanded to fill the empty abdominal space left by the shriveled digestive organs. They store the subject’s liquid meals, and release the blood when it is required by other organs or muscle. Kidneys and liver have enlarged as well, and appear to filter the subject’s blood for foreign particles down to 15 microns.
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