Pierce sat in front of a laptop screen at the small office desk in the corner of the room, pot of room service coffee beside him, and began to review it.
He made it through two cups of coffee before realizing what bothered him about the report. That there was nothing to bother him.
Not only had Hugh Swain had an entirely bland life, but there were no chronological gaps of missing information. All bank accounts were displayed, with no unusual deposits or withdrawals. His occupation was listed as accountant. Marital status single, no dependents. Military record showed five years as desk jockey overseeing supplies issues. The list went on and on. Normally it would take days to compile everything in front of Pierce. He’d received it in less than two hours.
As if the information had been packaged and waiting for the day government intelligence might come looking.
He knew what it suggested.
Some sort of witness protection. A relocation. New identity.
But the guy was tied to this.
Easy enough to guess that Caitlyn had sent Razor to Swain. But why?
Pierce knew himself well enough to realize that if he tried to sleep, no matter how tired he was, he’d stare at a dark ceiling and futilely try to come up with answers.
He also knew that waking someone else from sleep for questions would catch them at their most vulnerable.
So he made a team decision.
Without the team.
And was out the door in less than a minute.
FIFTY-SIX
In the dark, safely hidden, Mason watched the soovie shell that contained Billy and Theo. Waiting patiently for the time to strike.
His thoughts took him to earlier in the day, back to the whore who’d pretended to be blind.
What had been important to her was stripping him of his Taser.
It was as Everett had warned him before sending him out into the shantytowns to look for Caitlyn: weaponry was what preserved the lifestyle and culture of the Influentials.
A hundred years earlier, Everett had said, America had been based on principles of fairness and equality, something he believed had almost brought it to ruin. America had essentially neutered itself, listened to liberal softies who didn’t allow America to use its full power in international conflict. Then, Everett had said, America worried about the body count—not its own, but of its enemies. America held back, and because of it, America’s enemies thought America was soft.
Everett had then outlined the military strategy of ancient Rome. Offer a carrot, but have no hesitation using a big stick. City-states were offered citizenship to join the empire, but those who opposed Rome were annihilated in the worst possible way—women and children included. It sent a strong message to other city-states.
America, on the other hand, had been so worried about world opinion that country after country defied it, until the great Water Wars almost destroyed it.
Influentials had learned and had applied their lesson to all aspects of culture. Murders and violent crimes were punished swiftly and decisively.
Weapons ruled. And those with the weapons maintained control.
Technology was on the side of the Influentials. Weapons were matched to owners by fingerprints. Weapons didn’t fire unless fingerprints matched.
There was more to it, Everett had explained.
Those who defied Influentials paid a price far out of proportion to their defiance. Again, Everett had referred to the ancient Romans. If a slave assaulted or murdered his master, not only was the slave tortured and executed, but his entire family as well.
If any Industrial or Illegal in a shantytown was found with a weapon, all shacks within a hundred yards were destroyed, and the families in those shacks were executed. This same drastic reprisal applied even if that Industrial or Illegal tried to obtain a weapon.
Everett had smirked at that point, saying it had been a decade since the punishment had been necessary. As a result, Influentials were able to maintain control of a population base much larger than themselves, much like the Romans had controlled their slaves.
Mason liked this, of course, especially as he was one of the weapon holders. In the animal world, the strong ruled and the weak paid the price. It was natural. It belonged in the human world too.
Settled back against a wall that overlooked the soovie camp, Mason let his thoughts drift to the whore who had not been punished. Yet.
From the Meltdown, he’d followed Billy and Theo here and settled in as dusk, then night, cloaked all of them. There hadn’t been any good chances to isolate them and learn what they knew about Caitlyn. He’d remain a mountain panther. Stalking them patiently until the right opportunity. If he was lucky, they’d lead him to Caitlyn.
It meant in the morning, he’d have to stay on their trail. All day. Even if it meant another exhausting day at the Meltdown. That wouldn’t give him an opportunity to punish the whore.
On the other hand, it wasn’t very likely that Billy and Theo would leave the safety of their soovie during the night.
Too dangerous.
They didn’t have any weapons.
Mason, of course, did. He never slept much anyway.
He decided as long as he returned in a few hours, it was unlikely he’d lose Billy and Theo. Even if he did, he’d be able to find them. As a pair, they were distinctive enough that someone, somewhere, would be able to give him information. All Mason would do was ask about a kid with raccoon eyes.
Not worried about losing Billy or Theo, Mason rolled softly onto his feet.
Time for some retribution.
FIFTY-SEVEN
You know what I miss about Appalachia?” Theo whispered to Billy.
“Nothing?” Billy asked. He set aside a carrot he’d been eating as slowly as possible, deciding to save what remained for a day or two later. Carrots were a luxury, but Billy hated going a week without some kind of vegetable.
“Almost.” Theo was sitting up in the dark in the soovie. “I miss the quiet. Before our family was sent to the Factory, we’d sit outside. Just listening. All we heard were crickets and frogs. I liked that. And once in a while, something in the night would scare them all. And then we’d hear nothing. I liked that.”
Billy knew Theo’s story, how he’d escaped the Factory. His parents and sister dead. Theo didn’t talk much about those days, so he guessed Theo had a reason for it now.
“Out west,” Theo said, bringing his knees toward his chest and holding them with both arms, “think it will be quiet?”
“Not many people out there from what I hear,” Billy said. “It’s people noise that seems loud.”
“She’s going with us, right? She hasn’t changed her mind.”
“She wants freedom too,” Billy answered.
“What if she finds a way to get it without our help?”
“Then we should be happy for her.”
Theo hummed for a few minutes. That told Billy that Theo was thinking.
“You would think people could be happy living in cages,” Theo finally said. “That all we would need is to eat and sleep and be safe. But I remember the Factory. If you did your work and obeyed the rules, they took care of you. A person should be happy with that. Should. But it’s not like that. You can only keep people in captivity so long. Then they’ll fight until they are free. Or dead. It’s like humans would rather be dead if they can’t be free.”
“God made us that way?”
“Maybe. But I don’t like that answer,” Theo said. “That can be the answer for anything. It doesn’t explain it.”
“I know,” Billy said. “Remember the rich man who asked Jesus how to get to heaven? When Jesus told him, the rich man walked away. I think about that a lot. Why didn’t Jesus run after him and stop him? He could have done a miracle or something to change the guy’s mind. But Jesus let him walk away.”
“He didn’t want to force him.”
“Right,” Billy said. “Like in the garden, when God let Adam and Eve choose. He could have forced
them to stay away from the forbidden fruit. But he didn’t. He wanted us free, like that’s just as important as air and food and water.”
“If Caitlyn doesn’t show up, will you and me go west without her?”
Now it was Billy’s turn for silence. This was his biggest worry. How long to wait until they gave up. Caitlyn had said she was going to get surgery so that she would be normal and it would be easier to go out west. They couldn’t know if something had gone wrong or if she had changed her mind. All they could do was wait.
“Theo,” Billy said, “here’s something you need to think about. The government is still trying to track us. That’s because they don’t have Caitlyn yet. We have to make sure we survive because, someday, she’s going to need us.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
Pierce had just shown his NI badge to Hugh Swain and tucked it back in his pocket.
Pierce had a good idea of how it looked to Swain, who had opened his front door with the usual type of indignation an Influential would have at this time of night when all that should be waiting outside on an evening like this is warm air and the sound of crickets.
Behind Pierce, on the street, beneath a light, was a standard issue Enforcer car. One of the perks of his government rank was the right to flag that kind of vehicle and use it as a taxi. More importantly, because of layers of bureaucracy, nobody in Pierce’s division would be alerted to his movement for hours, if not days, if ever. And right now, given the Swain dossier, Pierce didn’t want anyone else in the agency knowing what Pierce was doing.
“If you have an issue with this, take it up with them,” Pierce said to Swain, wearily waving a hand back toward the Enforcers. “I’ll get them to turn the flashers and siren on for the neighbors while we talk in the backseat.”
“You can’t intimidate me like that,” Swain said. His silver hair wasn’t even rumpled. He was in pants and dress shirt, carefully buttoned. Pierce hadn’t pulled him from sleep. “If this is government business, come back during the day. Your lawyer can speak to my lawyer.”
Pierce lifted his hand. Made a circle.
Immediately, the red and blues started flashing.
“Siren next,” Pierce said. “Long enough to get the neighbors looking out their windows. Then I’ll make sure you’re in handcuffs while I lead you to the car.”
“Fine,” Swain said, teeth gritted. “You’ll pay for this tomorrow, I promise.”
Pierce made another lazy circle with a raised hand. The lights stopped flashing.
“How about I come inside?” Pierce asked.
The front room was as luxuriously equipped as Pierce had expected for a house in this neighborhood. Dark leather furniture, flat-screen television that covered an entire wall, oil paintings on the other walls, thick rugs on hardwood.
What Pierce hadn’t expected was the woman, sitting back in a love seat, legs crossed, drinking what looked like water from a plain glass. Auburn hair, wearing a tan cashmere sweater and jeans. High cheekbones, expert makeup, and eyes too green to be anything but colored contacts. Exquisite confidence. She was late forties, he guessed, but that was only because of some tightness around the sides of her eyes. Trim, attractive, and that said something about the work she put into it. Twenties to thirties, it didn’t take that kind of work.
She didn’t get up when Swain brought him into the room, but merely assessed Pierce as she sipped from the glass. Exquisitely.
Swain said nothing. He crossed his arms and glared at Pierce.
If this had been a social situation, the silence would have been awkward.
“Who are you?” Pierce said to the woman. Niceties didn’t seem like they’d make a difference.
“She’s not going to tell you,” Swain answered.
“Too bad.” Pierce moved closer to the woman. She had a small, expensive black handbag on the table beside her. Pierce lifted it.
“Put that down,” Swain said. “We’re not Industrials or Illegals. You have no right to anything in this house without a warrant.”
“You’re correct,” Pierce said. “But I do have a right to reasonable expectation for identification.”
He started to open the handbag.
“Her name is Jenny Owen,” Swain snapped. “Put the bag down.”
“Sure.” Pierce opened the bag. “But it would be good to confirm that.”
All he saw inside were blood vials and syringes.
“Interesting,” Pierce said.
“She’s my nurse,” Swain answered. “Satisfied?”
Which told Pierce that Swain knew what was in the purse. That was interesting too.
Pierce put the bag back down. Nurses couldn’t afford the kind of exquisiteness this woman projected, nor the cashmere draping that exquisiteness. His eyes met the woman’s. She still had not moved.
“Interesting hours for a medical call,” Pierce said, turning to Swain.
“My private life is not your business. Nor the business of the government. I will be taking action on this.”
Pierce took a chair, sat, and crossed his legs too. “Tell me about a visitor you had today. An Industrial. Late afternoon. He told you that someone named Jordan sent him.”
“No,” Swain said.
“No? We’ve got witnesses that say otherwise.”
“I mean no, I won’t tell you about it. Or anything else. The only reason I invited you inside was to be spared telling you the same thing in the backseat of that car.”
Approaching headlights out the front window caught Pierce’s peripheral vision. Was it his imagination, or had Swain straightened slightly?
“Expecting someone?” Pierce asked. “This late?”
“Our conversation is over. Unless it involves my repeating that our conversation is over.”
The headlights came to a stop beside the Enforcer car. A few seconds later, the headlights moved forward again. As the body of the car cleared, Pierce saw it was a private vehicle. Very few of those.
“How long have you lived here?” Pierce asked.
“Our conversation is over.”
Pierce stood again. He wasn’t in a position where any kinds of threats were going to leverage answers. But maybe he’d learned enough.
And maybe he could learn more.
Pierce dug his NI badge out of his pocket. He tossed it gently onto the woman’s lap. “How about Jenny photocopies this, just so you’ll have a record of who I am. Your lawyer can call my lawyer.”
“Our conversation is over,” Swain said. “You are leaving.”
Pierce shrugged. He held out his hand for the badge, and Jenny took it from her lap and handed it back to him. Pierce was careful to hold it by the edges as he slipped it back into his pocket.
At least now he had the woman’s fingerprints.
FIFTY-NINE
Mason took the girl first. The one named Thirsty. He took her from her bed at the side of the shanty where the whore had trapped him earlier in the day.
He was impressed the girl didn’t shriek. It’s what saved her life.
Mason wasn’t stupid. He assumed that among the shantytown people, there was a common loyalty. They’d fight each other but would join forces against outsiders. That’s why when, in the dark, he’d been approached by a boy offering any kind of service, he’d made sure the boy didn’t run away after Mason’s bribe to learn where Thirsty and her mother lived. He’d stayed right beside the boy all the way up to the shanty, not trusting that the boy wouldn’t look for friends to interfere with his plans for the whore. The boy had knocked on the door—a familiar voice, saying he had a message. Mason had pushed his way inside when the whore opened the door. That boy was unconscious now, dragged inside the whore’s shanty, his body blocking the closed door. Mason had dropped him after Tasering him, ignoring the whore and going straight to the bed for her daughter.
Yeah. Mason loved his rechargeable Taser.
Now Mason had Thirsty by the hair, knife to her throat. The shanty walls were thin enough that noise would likely carry
to other shanties in this crowded area. Yup. Good thing she was smart enough to stay quiet.
“You got some light?” Mason asked in a conversational tone. “Let’s brighten this place up.”
“Who are you?” the woman asked.
“Get some light. And don’t think about yelling for help. Your little girl won’t live but a second or two if you do that.”
Rustling. Then the strike of a match, the flame touching a small oil lamp.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Mason said. He pulled back on the little girl’s hair, exposing her throat even more. “I’m sure you can see this knife. If you’re smart, she’ll live. I like her.”
“You,” the woman said. Horror and shock. Mason liked that.
“Me,” Mason answered. “I had a few hours to kill, thought I’d spend them killing. Didn’t like the way we were interrupted the last time we were together. Thought I’d make up for it.”
“It wasn’t me,” the woman said. “I have no choice. Working for those men.”
“I’ve been giving it thought,” Mason said. “The last thing you said. Something like, ‘Take out his good eye. Let him live.’”
He paused to enjoy the sight of the woman biting the inside of her cheek. Mason had no doubt that he looked like a nightmare to her. His face still dirty with the smudged soot. And his stitched-shut blind eye no longer hidden by the patch. He’d put that in his pocket, wanting her to see it in all its rat-bitten glory.
“You want me scared, don’t you?” she said.
“I usually don’t think ahead when I do something like this. I like to go with the flow.”
“I’m scared,” she said. “Don’t hurt her.”
“Thought she was your weakness.”
“Take from me what you want.”
“Maybe I want to take her,” Mason said, stroking the knife against the girl’s throat. “You were going to let me live without sight. How about I let you live without her?”
He expected a big reaction from the whore, but instead she grew very still as she dropped her voice to near silence.
Flight of Shadows: A Novel Page 20