“’Scuse me,” Jamal said, and practically ran for the door. “Just—hang on, will you? Damn. Patience, please.”
“Somebody’s whipped,” Scott said, and made the whipping noise. “Ka chish!”
Abby just shook her head at him, sternly. “No. Just don’t.”
Scott looked fully crestfallen. “But—”
“No. Just no.” She centered her gaze on him. “Because someday, probably not with the same girl, that will be you, harking the sound of your master’s whip.”
“Why did you even throw that in about the ‘same girl’ …?” Scott asked, now looking confused. “Isn’t that just automatically implied?”
“Sure,” Abby said, looking a little frozen.
“As much fun as it is to watch Jamal have to run from the room while a girl—” Reed started.
“Woman,” J.J. said. Abby patted him on the hand.
“—Woman,” Reed corrected, raising his eyebrows like he was pained having to say it, “we’ve got other fish to fry. Augustus ran across a meta in Colorado that had some … peculiar properties. Augustus, you want to share with the group?”
“Oh, is it story time?” I asked, then I launched into an explanation of what had happened. My brother came trudging back in around the time I had gotten to setting up my meeting with Omar, taking his seat while looking a little downtrodden himself, like that call hadn’t gone super well. “… And then Mr. I-Thought-He-Was-Just-A-Badass-Poseidon brings down all the snow and ice off the peak in a runaway crazy avalanche that I had to stop through insane, and personally trying acts of heroism—”
“You can spare us the commentary,” Reed said. “Point is, you ran across a meta that seems to have used that drug that Sienna discovered in Portland—the … I don’t even know what to call it—”
“Oh, we’re going with Skill Tree Unlocker,” J.J. said as Abby nodded along. “Not to be confused with the power-up potion Harmon gave you guys, which we have dubbed ‘the Stat Boost.’”
Reed looked like he wanted to argue for about a second. “That’s … not bad.”
“Who will save the world?” I asked rhetorically. “Geeks. It’s geeks all the way down.” I looked at Scott. “You can’t control ice, right?”
Scott shook his head. “Not until it melts.”
“This is why you’re not invited to my parties,” J.J. said. “If you could make ice, you’d be the biggest hit. Especially if you could shape it like a miniature Death Star—”
“But we bought those tumblers for that,” Abby said.
“Yeah, but you have to admit, one of actual ice would be so much cooler—”
“Come on geeks, we gotta save the world here,” I said, trying to bring them back on point. “I’d say this is confirmation that our perps, the ones that are spawning all these new metas—”
“Points for using the word ‘spawn’ in this context,” Abby said.
“—have access to the full repertory of chemical enhancements that Edward Cavanagh was developing across all his enterprises.” I looked around the table. “Anyone care to take a stab at how that’s happening?”
“Well, President Harmon was trying to pull all that together, wasn’t he?” Abby asked. “With Cassidy Ellis’s help?”
“Yeah, but Sienna stopped him,” Scott said uneasily.
“Are we sure about that?” Reed shifted at the table. “Do we have any confirmation other than behind-the-scenes rumors that Harmon is actually, genuinely out of the picture? Not that my sister has ever been reticent to kill people, but the President of the United States—”
“Yeah, he’s dead,” Scott said, then hesitated. “Ish.”
“Oh, I bet there’s a good story in that ‘ish,’” I said.
“Yeah,” Reed said, leaning forward, “and I kinda want to hear it.”
Scott stiffened up, like he was becoming a wall before our eyes. “It’s not really mine to tell.”
“Come on, man,” I said. “This is important. If Harmon somehow escaped his encounter with Sienna—”
“He didn’t,” Jamal said, causing everyone at the table to look at him in surprise. “She was carrying him off to deal with him, and he pawed at her. Like, a lot. And she fended him off, until she realized he wasn’t trying to hurt her.” My brother looked down at the table and gave it a couple taps. “He was trying to make contact with her skin so he could—”
“Holy shit,” Reed said, leaning forward almost double. “You mean he’s in—” He touched the side of his head.
“Another soul in the collection,” Scott agreed. “A willing sacrifice this time, apparently.”
“I don’t know if I believe that,” Reed said, like a wall had come down on his face, all serious suddenly.
“Believe it,” Scott said. “When we were working that case together in Florida, Harmon talked to me in my head, from Sienna’s. He did it to himself.”
“Look, you may want to believe my sister is blameless in this—” Reed started.
“No, it’s true,” Jamal said. “He thought she was going to kill him, so he took the only way he saw out. They were antagonizing the hell out of each other when I worked with them, though.”
I stared at Jamal. “You been working with Sienna?”
Reed sat back in his chair like he’d been punched. “Anyone else at this table been secretly working with my sister?”
“I wasn’t doing it secretly,” Scott said. “You knew about it.”
“I worked with her before I came to work for you,” Jamal said. “Didn’t know I needed to mention prior hangouts with your family members.”
“It would have been nice,” Reed said, a little testily. “Just a little heads up, you know, something like, ‘Hey, I saw your sister just before I started here. Worked a case with her. Probably killed five hundred people in the process, FYI. Let your lawyers know.’”
“Your lawyer already knows,” Jamal said with an offhand shrug, “so I guess you’re covered.”
“You told Miranda?” That almost caused Reed’s eyes to pop out of his head, but Jamal just shrugged again. Reed whirled on me. “Did you know about any of this?”
I shook my head. “No. I been Sienna-clean for months now.”
“Me too,” J.J. said. “Though you kinda say it like helping her is a bad thing. She did help capture that dangerous meta in Florida.”
“And she kept all of your secrets, dirty and otherwise, from being exposed when the two of us teamed up to stop an uber-hacker down in the Virgin Islands,” Jamal said.
“Wow,” Abby said, “she’s on the run and still heroing. That woman is a badass.”
Reed stared at the surface of the conference table, shaking his head. “Unbelievable.”
“I find it totally believable,” I said, drawing an ireful look from Reed. “Come on, man. You know your sister. She was on the run from the law when that whole Harmon thing came to a head, too, and that didn’t stop her from wading in and deposing the sitting president to the point where he felt the need to commit suicide via absorbing himself into her head in order to ‘win’ against her.”
“Not sure how putting yourself in my sister’s head is considered ‘winning,’” Reed said.
“Better than dying, right?” I asked. Scott gave me a wary look. “Maybe I’m the only one thinking that. Anyway …”
“Anyway,” Reed agreed, dragging himself back up but looking a little wearier and more pained than the effervescence he’d started the meeting with. “So … someone’s out there with all the chemicals. Harmon’s dead—or at least trapped in Sienna’s head. If he could talk to you, Scott … what are the odds he could still be pulling strings from in there?”
“No idea,” Scott said. “You’d have to ask someone who knows telepathy from that side, like Zollers. I mean, we all know firsthand that when Harmon had a body, he could yank our puppet strings with all the ease of a kid playing with dolls. Now that he’s disembodied—”
“Heh,” Abby said, looking at Reed. “He’s s
is-embodied.”
Reed swore under his breath in reply, and Scott went on, “—he is still powerful. He transferred all the memories Sienna stole from me back into my head. Whether that power extends to being able to run some kind of … behind the scenes continuation of his earlier world domination scheme …” Scott shrugged. “Hell if I know.”
“You really think Sienna would fail to miss him actively scheming from inside her own head?” J.J. asked, all afrown.
Scott drew a deep breath and then held it. “Maybe. I don’t know. They didn’t have the best working relationship when I dealt with them, but that was a couple months ago.”
“When did you work with her?” Reed asked Jamal.
“January,” Jamal said.
“How did the two of them get along when you were playing detective together?” Reed asked.
“Not that well, I don’t think,” Jamal said. “He didn’t talk to me like Scott, but I know she was arguing with the voices in her head back then, so …” He shrugged.
“You’re ignoring the big piece that’s still on the board in favor of one that’s on the sidelines,” Abby said. “Cassidy Ellis is still out there somewhere, and if she was in charge of President Harmon’s attempt to bring all this power together …?”
“That’s a damned good point,” Reed said, pulling out his ponytail and rubbing his hands through his hair self-consciously. “Cassidy is no gentle flower, I can tell you by experience.”
“Because she blew up your car?” J.J. asked. “Oh! Is that why you’re stroking your ponytail? Because it burned your hair off when that—”
Reed stopped playing with his hair. “Yes, probably. Thanks for pointing out that little psychological tic I hadn’t even noticed.” He left his hair flat, hanging over his shoulders. “So … two leads, maybe. Cassidy Ellis and President Harmon. One’s in the wind, the other is in my sister’s head. How do we get after them?”
“I could, uh … call your sister,” Jamal said uncomfortably. “Errr … call her back.” He touched his phone.
Reed just stared at him, jaw slightly open. “That was … that was her …?”
“My subconscious totally nailed that ‘master’s whip’ thing,” Abby said to Scott, smiling with incredible self-satisfaction. “My ‘with the same girl’ comment is looking pretty prescient now, isn’t it?”
Reed erupted from the table and a wind stirred the blinds, rattling them against the window to the bullpen. “Fuck’s sake! You’re still talking to her?”
“Hey, not all of us have an axe to grind with her,” I said under my breath. Everyone heard it anyway.
He fixed me with an icy stare. “You don’t know what I’m thinking, Augustus.” He looked down the table at J.J. and Abby. “Find me Cassidy Ellis. If she’s involved in this, I want to know.” He snapped his attention to Scott. “Give Dr. Zollers a call, ask him about—about all of this, about Harmon. See what he thinks.” He turned his gaze to Jamal. “And you … go talk to my sister.” He looked like he wanted to say something else, but he just gave up and left it at that, hair flowing over his shoulders as he walked out of the conference room, the wind stirring the blinds wildly in his wake, as though a tornado had passed with him.
25.
Sienna
“Where are we going again?” Friday asked as we shot over Bakersfield, California, at an altitude of 5,000 feet and over a thousand miles per hour.
“I told you,” I said. “Los Angeles, to talk to your pal Theo about what he saw when he lost his blindfold.”
“Oh,” Friday said. He was sweating profusely and so was I; May was a warm time in California, even at this altitude. “Are you sure he’s even there?”
“Jamal said so.” I’d called Jamal again, of course, because this time Google had failed me. Honestly. I had actually tried this round, and it came up with like a million results that didn’t seem all that related to Theo Moreau. I mean, was that even his full name? Or was he Theodore? Or something else, like Theophilus? Sounded like a job for Jamal to me, no matter how displeased he sounded when I dragged him out of that meeting.
Besides, he got me my answer in like two seconds and got back to listening to my brother bellow about whatever was on his mind with no one the wiser about it being me who called him.
Hahahahah, Harmon said in my head, but I ignored him, because I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to answer me if I asked him why he was cackling like an old hen.
“What if Jamal is wrong?” Friday asked. He sounded pensive, and he looked … worried.
“Jamal’s not usually wrong,” I said. “He tends to be solidly on target for these things. And hey, maybe if we’re lucky, this Theo might be able to point us in the direction of a motive for Greg wanting to kill you.” But I wasn’t holding my breath on that, because based on our experience with Jon, I had an inkling this could be another wild goose chase.
But at least it got me out of the house, which was pretty key since my Portland apartment was now a charred ruin. Whatever. That town was too ironic for even me.
“Maybe Greg just resents my good looks and sexiness, did you ever consider that for a motive?” Friday asked. Way, way too earnestly.
“Strangely, no.” I kept the eyeroll to a swift 180 degrees and back. “Did you ever consider that maybe you just really, really pissed him off?”
“Impossible,” Friday scoffed.
“Oh, trust me,” I said a little warily but with surprising good cheer, “you pissing people off is more than possible.”
“I think he just has the smell of a bigger, more dominant alpha dog in his nostrils and he can’t get it out,” Friday said.
“That would explain why he keeps coming after me. But why is he still trying to kill you?”
“Oh ha ha,” Friday said. “Let’s just put it out there … I have a nemesis.”
I yawned theatrically, trying to express my eyeroll without eyerolling. “Yeah … that’s why I just kill all my enemies. That way I’m not constantly dealing with these pain-in-the-ass revenge seekers.”
Friday thought that over for a minute. “That really worked well for you in Eden Prairie last year.”
Not gonna lie, my cheeks burned a little when he scored with that jab. “Touché. But it proves my point, no? If I’d put those bastards in the ground over the last few years instead of in the Cube, that little incident might not have happened.” And by incident, I meant “that time I made a smoking ruin of my life.” I didn’t really believe what I was espousing, having more or less passed the indiscriminate killing phase of my career, but if he was going to snark at me—at me, of all people—I wasn’t going to just lie there and take it.
“Maybe,” Friday said. “Still, if Theo doesn’t have the goods on what Greg is, or why he’s trying to kill me … what do we do then?”
“Well, then,” I said snidely, “I’m sure you’ll favor me with yet another fable from your tall tales that draw upon your adventures with the Inglorious Bat-turds.”
He stared up at me blankly for a good ten seconds before he dissolved into laughter so fierce I was afraid I’d drop his ass five thousand feet into the chaparral below where I’d have to waste my valuable time and innocent eyes pulling a stray scrub brush out of his nether regions. “Hahahahahahahhahaha!” he said, doubling over, slapping his thigh and making it infinitely harder to hold him. “‘Inglorious Bat Turds’! Like Inglorious Basterds, that movie, but with Bat Turds—”
“Yes, that’s the joke,” I said, wondering maybe if this Theo thing didn’t pan out if perhaps my civic duty had kind of reached its apex and I could go ahead and call the whole case quits. “What’s Theo’s power, just out of curiosity?”
Friday got grim on me. “His power is incredible. Enemies quake at the sight of his coming, and even his friends shudder at the thought of him unleashing—”
I blew up. “If you don’t know, stop trying to blow smoke up my ass, all right? For crying out loud.”
Friday went quiet, taking his chastening with
a bowed head. “Yeah. All right, you got me on that one. I don’t know.”
“Geez, just say it, next time, okay?” I shook my head. “I’m here helping you, all right? Just … be honest with me. I don’t have a high opinion of you, so it’s not like you’re impressing me when you lie. In fact, my opinion of you couldn’t get much lower. You could literally tell me you’ve shit yourself in fear twelve times during the last day and I could not possibly think less of you. I’m still here, helping you, all right? But if you don’t start being straight with me, Friday—so help me—I’m gone, and you can just die at the hands of Greg Vansen. Capische?”
“I … yes, I understand,” Friday said quietly, and settled with his head down so I couldn’t see his face as we flew onward, toward the fading western sky, trying to get to Los Angeles and maybe—however unlikely—some answers.
26.
Greg
At work in his shop was a pleasant enough place for Greg to be. He didn’t usually have any interruptions here; Eddie couldn’t get in yet, and Morgan … well, she tended not to come and visit him here, especially since she didn’t know he was back.
He looked out over the lines of all the machinery he’d collected over the years. There were racks of weapons, rows of tanks and bombers and planes that would have been perfectly in place in any military base the world over. He could see them from his place under the SR-71, where he tinkered with his tools, the smell of oil and aviation fuel a little too thick in the air. He’d have to take care of that shortly.
If any of his neighbors had known how close they stood to these awesome engines of destruction … but no, that was the secret, that they were here, in the outskirts of Chicago, unbeknownst to anyone but him and Morgan. And Greg suspected Morgan tried to forget what all his workshop contained. She wasn’t a squeamish woman by nature, but …
Who really wanted to contemplate having such engines of destruction in their home?
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