Hush Money (Talent Chronicles)

by Susan Bischoff

  “What the hell did you do to him?” Marco snarled, grabbing Kat’s arm and jerking her around to face him.

  “You…probably don’t want to do that,” I said. Suddenly I was shocked that I had even followed him, let alone opened my mouth to get involved. I immediately wished I could disappear. But it worked. Marco let go of Kat like she was made of fire.

  Kat looked at me, and I didn’t like what I saw on her face. I could feel my cheeks getting red and my stomach sinking, wondering what she was thinking about me just then. About what I was doing up there with Marco. Watching.

  “I didn’t do anything to your friend. I don’t know why he got all freaked out. Go see for yourself; he’s probably fine.”

  Marco shoved past her and down the stairs after Jeff. Kat shot me another glare and turned to Trina, reaching out.

  “You okay? Come on, let’s—”

  Trina jerked back against the wall, away from Kat’s touch. “You stay the hell away from me. What the hell are you?” She flashed a glance at me, a glance that spoke eloquently of shared memory, perception—however false—and loathing. I wanted to open my mouth to deny what I knew she was thinking, but I didn’t. I felt myself take a step back from the force of her glare, which she turned back on Kat. “Why don’t you just mind your own damned business? I want you to stay away from me, you freak. Clear?”

  “Crystal.” From the set of Kat’s jaw, I know she was dying to lash out at Trina, but she held it in. I thought that was really decent of her.

  Trina hurried down the steps away from us, clutching her bag across her chest with one arm, the handrail with her free hand. She was obviously really shaky, but determined to get away from the scene, from Kat, from me. She made the second floor landing safely and hurried out of our sight.

  Kat turned to me. Or, I should say, on me. “Was that fun for you?”

  “Um, no,” I said with as much bitch as I could put into it. Because I didn’t really know what else to say. I knew how it looked.

  In my head I saw the accusing way Trina had looked at me. Like she thought I’d waited all these years for payback. Yeah, right. What was the point? Nothing I could do to her would fix what she’d done when we were kids. Nothing was going to make me feel better about it. Ever. And you know, that whole time I was stuck up there with Marco, none of that stuff about the fire went through my head. It was just about what Jeff was doing to this other girl, this other girl who maybe could have been me—maybe. Not what Jeff was doing to Trina who’d ruined my life and totally deserved what she was getting. No one deserved that.

  “Well I hope you enjoyed the show.”

  Kat started to leave and I reached out for her arm. Something I never do, but I was in a weird place just then. She looked at my hand, looked at my face.

  “You probably don’t want to do that,” she mocked me.

  I yanked my hand back, not because I was scared of her, but just because I could hardly believe I had reached out to her in the first place.

  “I’m sorry. Look, it’s just…You shouldn’t have done that. I mean, it’s bad enough to get on Marco’s bad side, but showing those guys what you can do like that is just stupid.”

  “Is that what you were doing up there? Staying on Marco’s good side?” Kat’s voice was dripping with nasty innuendo.

  “No!” and, maybe kinda? In a way? Ugh. I’m subhuman. “I was already there, ok? I like to hang out there. It’s my spot.”

  “I know. I was looking for you.”

  How would you—? Whatever. “And then Marco came up, and Jeff and Trina were behind him and that whole thing started and he made me sit there and—”

  “He made you.”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, what was I supposed to do?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Joss, stick up for her? Say something? Call someone?”

  “She didn’t. Look, I didn’t understand what was going on and it wasn’t any of my business. So I stayed out of it. And that’s what you should have done because now you’re totally on Marco’s shit-list and that is not where you want to be. He’ll do nothing but make trouble for you. And now he knows about your…Jesus, Kat. Who knows what he’s going to do with that?”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “I? What, like you think I’m going to tell someone about this? Who would I even tell?”

  She sniffed. “Yeah, I guess.” She started down the steps, stopped, and didn’t turn to look at me.

  “You’re not who I thought you were.”

  Chapter 6

  Dylan

  Eric was telling me something about some car. He was always talking about cars, and even though it was usually interesting stuff, I wasn’t listening. I was watching Joss.

  Truth be told, I was watching Joss a lot lately. One minute I was like—to hell with you, Marco, get over yourself. And the next I went back to thinking that things between Marco and me were bad enough already right now without causing more trouble.

  Not like other girls. There’s an understatement. It’s like there were all the other girly girls with their hair-flipping, laughing at everything you say, talking about the labels of everything they wore… All the other things they did to get attention. And then there was Joss, who wore a bulky field jacket over jeans and t-shirts all year ‘round. With combat boots. And who seemed to do whatever she could to be as invisible as possible.

  Man, would she be jealous if she knew what I could do. Or not. Maybe she’d be freaked out.

  She was talking to Kat, which was unusual. Joss pretty much always left right after the bell, without talking to anyone. But she’d been acting strange—stranger than normal—all day. She was quieter, more withdrawn, more troubled. And yeah, that was Joss…only moreso.

  Besides the fact that just her being there and seeking someone out to talk was weird, the way they were talking was weird. They were too close for Joss, who always seemed to need a lot of distance, with their heads bent together, their conversation obviously private and intense. Joss’s expression was more than her usual blank mask. She looked like she was asking for something. That glossy dark hair of hers was down, curling around her face. It blew across her cheek and she reached up to tuck it behind her ear.

  Damn, even that was hot.

  I was turning into a stalker.

  Eric nudged me in the ribs. Eric was one of those guys who always seemed to see what was going on, even when you thought you were being cool. He probably knew I wasn’t listening to a word he was saying, knew I was watching Joss, and knew I wouldn’t want Marco seeing me doing it. Which was cool of him. Marco was finally showing up; he had Rob Grayson with him.

  This was not a good sign. Rob didn’t hang with us; he was a geek. And I’m not saying that means he wasn’t good enough to hang with us. More like he was too smart to want to. We didn’t really have much in common, and Rob might as well hang an I’d Rather Be Playing Chess sign around his neck. The only time Marco dragged him into our group was when he wanted Rob to do something for him. Something criminal.

  Last time he’d had Rob hack into some computer and place fake orders for some stereo equipment, marked paid, to be delivered to his cousin’s house. He and his cousin had sold most of it. I didn’t know if Rob had done it for a cut of the money, which he’d gotten, or if it was just ‘cause Marco intimidated him.

  Marco liked money. And he was enjoying coming up with this kind of stuff and getting away with it. I think, for him, the stereo plot was just a test. A test for Rob. Now Rob was in, whether he liked it or not.

  Just like I was.

  “All right, listen up. Jeff, you’ve heard this already, so you’re on look-out right now. Look cool, but ignore us and just give us a heads up if someone gets too close.”

  Jeff nodded, pleased. He liked knowing things first. He actually liked it when Marco told him to do stuff, singled him out. I’d been friends with Jeff almost as long as I’d been friends with Marco, but sometimes I had to wonder about him.

  “So wh
at’s the deal?” Eric asked.

  “We’re goin’ beer shopping.”

  “Beer?”

  “Lots of beer. We’re gonna hit FoodsMart.”

  “A supermarket?” Not good. Not good. Lots of security, and way too much temptation for these guys once we were inside. And no way was I doing this. “You can’t just boost a few cases from a mini mart anymore?”

  “No, I said a lot of beer. Kegs, cases, whatever. Party.”

  “But—”

  “I’ve already got a couple buyers lined up. We’re committed to this. And it’s not rocket science. Dylan. You and Rob are going in the store while it’s still open. You’re going to cover Rob and sneak into the storeroom. Find a place to hang tight until closing. Jeff and I have been watching. On weeknights they close up at eleven and everyone is gone before midnight. So you guys are going to wait until midnight. Then you work your way out of the storeroom, back to the front of the store. You’ll be doing your thing and staying between Rob and cameras. There’s an Employees Only door near the bathrooms, across from the checkouts. The lock’s electronic and shouldn’t be any problem for Rob, here.” He slung his arm around Rob’s shoulders, a move that looked more like imprisonment than friendship. Rob continued to watch his own feet.

  “Behind the door are the steps that go up to the office. I know someone who used to work there, and she says there are no cameras beyond the door and all the locks are electronic.”

  “Damn, Marco, how many people know about this?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Once you’re upstairs, you just shut down the cameras and alarms. Get the keys to unlock the back door, the one where the employees hang out and smoke. Come back and let us in.

  “Eric, I’m gonna need you to boost us a delivery truck. Nothing too flashy, something that would be out at night, but not something anyone’s gonna miss either. You’ll need to start looking around for that.”

  “Right.”

  “Once we’ve got what we came for, Eric, Jeff, and I are leaving in the truck. But you guys need to get back to the office. I’ll take care of breaking the camera over the back door while we’re in there. You guys turn all the cameras and alarms back on—except you’ve gotta disable the sensor on that back door. If you can’t do it, you’re gonna have to sleep there and leave in the morning.”

  “I can do it,” Rob mumbled.

  “Right. So Dylan, you cover Rob, just like before, on the way out. You can leave the keys in the door like someone forgot them, or you can pitch ’em in a Dumpster somewhere. Whatever. Meet us back at the shack when you’re done.”

  “I don’t know, Marco…” I started, getting ready to argue.

  “You don’t have to know. That’s my job.”

  “It’s one thing to cover Rob hiding out in the store room in case anybody sees us. Standing still, that’s no big deal. But moving around like that? Multiple cameras? I just don’t know.”

  “But you’re gonna find out. You’re gonna need to spend some time in the store, getting the lay of the land. You’re gonna get back into the storeroom and watch what people go for, and where they don’t go. Find the best place for you and Rob to chill out until closing. And you’re probably gonna do a dry run of the offices, during business hours, before we do this thing.”

  “What the fuck, Marco? I’m not breaking into any office during business hours. Have you lost your mind?”

  Marco gave me a hard glare. “You guys are gonna want to get into that office before we do this so Rob can access the cameras and get downloads from all the feeds. So you’ll be able to find the blind-spots—or the blindest spots. You’ll want to know where you’re going when we do the job, right? You’re also gonna log some practice time, you and Rob, moving together, and the rest of us are going to watch to see how good a job you do keeping him covered.”

  “This is way too complicated. And for beer? Come on, Marco. Give me a break. You want beer, let’s hit Casey’s. One camera, one employee…”

  “This is what we’re doing, Dylan, and I’m getting tired of your bullshit whining.”

  “Seriously, grow some balls, man,” Jeff put in, still casually scanning the grounds.

  “This isn’t about balls, it’s about brains,” I told Jeff. “And if you had any at all—but then what do you have to do but go in the back and put some beer in a truck? Or is Jeff just gonna be the lookout?”

  It was dumb to antagonize them, but damn. I saw Marco look at me hard before Jeff shoved me into Eric. Then he was all up in my face, with Eric trying to get between us.

  “Knock it off.” Marco grabbed Jeff with one hand and yanked him off me. Jeff worked his shoulder, trying to be casual, but I knew that had to hurt. “And you too,” he said to me. “You wanna know more about the plan, you ask me later. But we’re doing this, and that’s the end of it.”

  Marco took a step back and looked around, scanning the grounds to see if anyone was taking too much notice of us or the scuffle. Then he smiled, and was looking off in the direction where Joss and Kat were sitting on a rock wall near the street.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I see some ladies who need my attention.”

  I pushed away from the wall, ready to follow him, but Eric grabbed my arm. I looked at him. He shook his head.

  I got the message.

  Not the time to mess with him.

  I knew he was right. And I hated it.

  * * *

  Joss

  “It wasn’t how it looked.”

  “Really? ’cause it looked like you and Marco—who I thought you didn’t like—were getting all cozy up there in the stairwell, that you knew Jeff was messing with that girl and you did absolutely nothing about it. Do you really have something against Trina? Did you think it was funny, or you just didn’t care?”

  I opened my mouth and closed it again. I didn’t even know which of those to deal with first. I thought about the look Trina gave me before she left, the one that said she thought I’d enjoyed watching Jeff mess with her because I hated her.

  “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t do anything and you had to get involved, ok? I was having some of my own problems at the time, and if Trina didn’t make any effort to help herself, what was I supposed to do?”

  “She was scared.”

  “So was I!”

  Kat gave me her piercingly assessing look again. I’d never thought of myself as prone to blurting out stupid things like that, but I wasn’t used to talking a whole lot. I realized I had people avoidance almost down to an art form. I never had to have personal conversations unless it was deflecting my parents, which didn’t count.

  “Anyway,” I said, trying to redirect, “I’m sorry for what I said to you after. It was cool, what you did—whatever it was. You stand up, and that’s cool.” How many times was I going to say ‘cool’? “It’s just I’ve been on Marco’s bad side for a while now and I know it’s a lousy place to be. You’ve pissed him off twice in two weeks.”

  “Which gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.”

  “See? This is what I’m saying. You’re not taking me seriously.”

  “Why Joss, it almost seems like you care.”

  What was I supposed to say to that? She was teasing me, but it was friendly. I didn’t know how to deal with that. So I decided it was time to shut up.

  “I made him blind.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “When I grabbed onto Jeff, I concentrated on how pissed off I was and he went blind. Just temporarily. Like maybe a minute or two.”

  What the Hell was wrong with this girl? “Why did you tell me that? That’s exactly what I’m talking about. It’s like nothing I said to you on Saturday sunk in at all. It’s bad enough you’ve got a Talent, but you’re in Fairview now. I told you we’ve got way more than other places and it’s always on people’s minds. I’ve seen way too many kids disappear because they were careless, because they trusted the wrong people. So don’t be stupid.”

  “Yep,” she grinned, “you like me
. We’re going to be really good friends.”

  “That’s great,” I said, getting up from the stone wall we were sitting on, “I always like it better when the school day ends with a threat.”

  “Hey, you’re funny!”

  “Of course she is.” I cringed the moment before Marco’s arm landed across my shoulders. “That’s our Joss. It’s cool that I find you two together, because that means Joss gets to see more of this unfolding drama.”

  I groaned inwardly. When Marco started waxing like that it meant he had been thinking too much.

  “What I’ve been thinking,” he continued, as though he could hear my thoughts, “is that I am now in possession of valuable information. And before you both insult me by playing dumb, I’ll spell it out: Kat, here, has a Talent. She blinded Jeff when she grabbed him this morning.” Marco snickered. “You really scared the shit out him—for the whole two minutes it lasted. He’s really pissed at you, by the way. He was ready to tell anyone who’d listen until someone came to haul your ass off to State School.”

  “Marco, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “See, that’s what I mean about the playing dumb and insulting. But that’s ok, because you’re cute when you’re helplessly screwed. So, like I was saying, Jeff’s ready to blab your secret all over town, but don’t worry, because I stopped him from doing that.”

  I wanted to say Gee that’s nice, or something snarky, but I couldn’t bring myself to open my mouth.

  “And that’s really nice of me, right? I mean, standing between you and Jeff like that—well, really, between you and the State School and who knows what they do there. Seems like that ought to be worth something.”

  “All this, assuming I had a clue what you’re talking about, which I don’t.”

  “See, I’m betting that it doesn’t matter if you admit to what you did or not. Jeff knows you did. I saw you do it. So what you’ve got to ask yourself is: will anyone believe us if we tell? Now…you might want to tell yourself that you can toss your hair and flash a smile and talk your way of—whatever. But really, we’re talking about two witnesses vs. a suspected Talent who allegedly used her ability against another person. I’m thinkin’ that plan’s not going to work too well for you.