by Barb Taub
Bending forward to play with Bain’s ears, she pulled desperately on her connections. Marley was on the game board, facing off against the Dark Dancer, but still there. Alive! She closed her eyes, almost sick with the wave of relief that poured life and warmth through her freezing veins. Gaby might be gone, Harry dead, and Connor lost to her, but Marley was the closest thing to a family she had left.
With a final pat for Bain, she sat up and gave Director Jeffers an admiring glance. “Sexy car, you devil.”
“You devil, sir,” he rasped.
Yosh chuckled, and she groaned. “You’ve got a Jag, don’t you?”
“Lamborghini.” He tried to look modest.
She groaned again. “Of course you do.”
Nobody spoke as the little car purred up I-5, heading north out of the city, while they all watched for any signs they were being followed. Finally they turned around to take surface roads back to Seattle.
“I felt Marley in my connections. She was not in that car.” Carey knew her voice was shaking, but the two grim-faced men nodded. From her position in Yosh’s lap, she twisted to eye him speculatively. “Very soon you’re going to tell me how you knew that car was going to blow. But right now, I’d like to know where we’re going. And how we’re going to get Marley back.”
Jeffers’ voice was the same even rumble as always, but his knuckles gleamed white against the steering wheel. “Yosh has been using my safe house in South Lake Union. We’re heading there to review everything we know. Then we’re going to figure out how to capture your brother and use him as leverage to get Marley back. If she’s hurt, we’ll kill him. A lot.”
Yosh’s arms tensed briefly around her, but she was silent the rest of the trip.
»»•««
The safe house turned out to be a warehouse slated for demolition amidst the massive redevelopment of the old neighborhood along the Seattle edge of Lake Union. Director Jeffers dialed a code into a remote, opening loading-bay doors large enough for two semis to enter side by side. At the moment, its only occupant was the Lamborghini positioned precisely in the center of the empty floor space. Walking around the car, Carey stared at the tennis ball on a string hanging from the ceiling to barely touch the exact middle of the car’s windshield. “You must be the worst parker on the planet if you need a tennis ball to guide you to the middle of an empty room. It’s important for you to park exactly there?”
“You have no idea.” He brushed an imaginary speck from the hood. “I had a run-in with an Outsider few months ago. He wasn’t going to need the car again, so I had her repainted and brought her here.”
“It’s very…red.” She continued her appraisal. “Compensating much?”
He smiled. “You’re welcome to find out.”
Director Jeffers snorted. “Children! Haul ass. We don’t have time to play.”
They followed Yosh up an industrial metal stairway, past a small bathroom, to a room built into a corner of the old warehouse. Filthy windows on the two outer sides looked over the old factory and surrounding warehouse sites, now interspersed with new construction, rehabs, and the thin necklace of restaurants surrounding Lake Union’s southern edge. The other two sides had glass walls providing views of the interior of the warehouse space, darkly cavernous now.
Jeffers and Yosh went to each window, drawing heavy new-looking shades that completely sealed each opening before Yosh turned on the fluorescent lights. Under the merciless glow of overhead lights, Carey looked around a huge, sparsely furnished room.
Peeling industrial green paint on walls and ceiling met wood floorboards whose pine grain emerged through a tired coat of brown paint. Two mismatched office chairs sat before a table holding neatly stacked piles of papers and a laptop. Behind the table stood a blackboard on wheels, the old-fashioned type that reverses to a bulletin board.
“It’s a bit basic.” Iax waved a vague hand. To one side, a long sofa—whose cracked and stained brown leather had abandoned any pretense to charm several presidential administrations ago—faced the ambitious flat-screen TV threatening to crush the cheap table supporting it. Standing next to the TV and plugged into the same power strip was a small fridge with a too-large microwave resting precariously on top. A paint-spattered contractor’s heater also crouched next to the coffee table, sharing the last slots on the power strip.
In the far corner under the two outside windows, the bright red and blue blankets wrapped in military precision around a new cot formed an incongruously pristine island in a sea of scavenged furnishings. Yosh swiped up the clothes scattered across the sofa and hesitated before dumping them onto the immaculate cot.
“No, really.” Carey turned in a slow circle. “This is just awful. If you need us, Bain and I will be in the Lambo.”
“Get your lazy butts over here and let’s get started.” Director Jeffers’ voice never changed pitch but both Carey and Yosh lunged for the table. Jeffers waved her into the chair next to his and turned to Yosh. “Okay, son. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
“Wait.” Yosh surprised her by crouching down before her chair to take both of her hands. “I planned to set you up. I thought you had to know what your brother was doing.” She pulled at her hands, and his tightened and then let go. “Carey, I’ve just met you. Jeffers always told me I take too many risks, and rely too much on my gift. But the risk I’m taking now isn’t just with our lives and Marley’s. If we can’t stop your brother, and if the Outsiders’ agenda is to bring down Null City and the Metro, then thousands are going to die. So I’m going to risk trusting you. And I hope you don’t hate me after you hear…and see…what I’ve put together.”
She leaned back, trying for distance between them. “Show, don’t tell, Rambo.”
His eyes searched hers, and as if they were alone in the room, his hand lifted briefly to her cheek. “I wish we could have met some other way. Maybe we could have been friends. Now you will just hate me—hell, I hate myself—for what I’m going to show you.”
“I don’t do so well with the friends thing.” Her own hand reached to fit the mark of her slap still flaring red across his sharp cheekbone, and she leaned forward to whisper in his ear. “So it’s time to pull up those big-girl panties and get moving.”
He didn’t laugh as his dark eyes gazed into hers. Finally he nodded and pulled away. But he watched her face as he flipped the standing blackboard over to the bulletin board side. “I was using a telephoto camera on surveillance of a man I was fairly sure was a member of the Outsiders.” He picked up the first photo from the stack in front of him and tacked it to the board. With a red marker, he drew a circle around the face of a balloon seller carrying a huge batch of inflated balloon shapes down a crowded street toward the camera. He was dressed as a pirate with a patch over one eye, scarf covering his hair, and flowing mustache and beard. She didn’t recognize him, but he was too short to be Connor.
“Seafair?” Carey guessed, naming Seattle’s annual city-wide celebration of all things pirate.
Yosh nodded and tacked up the next photo, marking a circle around the young parents walking in front of the pirate. The father was carrying a baby girl. “The young father’s name was Simon Calder, one of the new Wardens in the Vancouver Accords office. Just like me, he suspected the Outsiders had informants inside Accords. He approached me about working together, but I told him to talk to Kurt Jeffers.” Without explanation, Yosh put up the next photo. This time his circle enclosed the pirate and the young father with the baby reaching out for a balloon. Carey started to feel sick.
The following photo was confusing. It looked like the father had leaped in front of an oncoming city bus and turned in midair, almost as if he was trying to throw the baby to the pirate. The final photo showed the stunned young mother, face raised in a silent scream as she kneeled over the destroyed bodies of her husband and tiny daughter. But this time Yosh wordlessly drew a circle around a figure standing behind the crowd. His face was in shadow, but he was tall enough. His hair was dark e
nough.
She didn’t even call the game board, but it blazed to life. Connection. Connor.
“That day I was there to follow the balloon-selling pirate, a Seattle Warden named Jack Eversley. But Eversley was there for Simon.” Yosh’s voice was an apology, from a well of self-blame and disgust. “I was too far away. I couldn’t stop him. I didn’t even know Simon would be there with his family that day, so I wasn’t near enough when Eversley pushed Simon and his little girl into the path of that bus.”
He waited a minute, and she knew it was so he could watch her. This isn’t going to be good. What did you do, Connor?
“After the murders, I followed those damn balloons as Eversley moved back through the park toward the parking lot. He was just at the tree line when someone met him. I was still too far away to hear what they were saying, but I got out my camera with the long-focus lens, set it to record video, and propped it up on a rock while I circled around to try and get closer.
He turned the laptop screen toward them, queued up a file, and pressed start. “My camera was too far away to pick up their conversation, and I couldn’t catch every word, but here’s what the camera recorded.”
Eversley comes into focus, one of those men where everything is medium—medium height, medium brown hair, even a smug medium-size grin on his unremarkable face. He stops to tug off the fake beard and eye patch. Connor—there was no doubt in her mind that it was her brother—steps into the view field and turns to face Eversley.
Yosh continued his commentary. “The Outsider’s voice stayed so low and calm that I had to strain to hear it. But I think he asked Eversley why he’d killed the Warden and the child.”
On the laptop screen, Eversley is still smiling, and he gestures as his mouth moves.
“I could hear Eversley just fine, though. He said Director Jeffers was being called back to take over the Seattle headquarters, and they couldn’t risk having Simon sharing his suspicions with Jeffers.”
Eversley puts a hand on Connor’s arm and smiles confidently.
“So then Eversley tells the Outsider that they should thank him because he has taken care of the problem.”
Connor’s flat eyes and emotionless face could have been carved from ice, but he doesn’t remove Eversley’s hand.
“The Outsider tells Eversley he’s a fool if he assumes for one second that Jeffers doesn’t already know. Hell, that’s probably why he came back to the Seattle office.”
Eversley stops smiling, but he continues to speak, waving his other hand and shaking his head. Connor eyes him calmly, places his free hand on Eversley’s cheek, and says one word. Maybe two.
“This is the part I still can’t believe. I might have missed something, but I think the Outsider just told him to stop breathing.”
Eversley freezes and in a moment he starts to shake. His face gets dark and then even darker, and he opens his mouth as if he’s trying to eat air. He’s still got the balloons fastened around his wrist, and they wave gently like dancing partners in a child’s nightmare.
“Eversley looked like he wanted to scream but nothing came out. I never heard him make a sound, just those balloons rustling against each other.”
Eversley slumps toward Connor, who eases him to the ground, hand still across his face like a benediction. Connor pulls out a knife and stoops toward the man on the ground. Pulling up a limp wrist, he slices free the balloon strings and releases the rainbow cloud before stepping back out of the camera frame.
Yosh was saying something about Eversley being dead by the time he got to him, but she was already running for the small bathroom in the hall. Flinging herself at the toilet, she vomited as she remembered burning, unable to breathe, on fire with Connor’s gift. Oh, Twin, what did they do to you?
A strong arm came from behind her, supporting her shoulders. He gathered her hair, holding it back from her face as she heaved helplessly. She was still gagging as he wiped her face with a cool wet towel and handed her a cup of water to rinse her mouth. Finally she turned to tell Director Jeffers she was okay. But it was Yosh’s arms around her, his dark eyes filled with shame.
He flushed the toilet and put the lid down before lifting her against him and twisting to sit back onto the toilet. She never knew how long they sat there.
Chapter Thirteen
March 2011: Seattle
“Yes, you’ll love me forever, right?” Carey smiled at Bain’s preoccupied expression as the dog took care of his business on the little strip of parkway next to the harbor. Normal. Just keep it together and act normal. You’ve got this. “You’re the only man I’ll ever need.” Her voice deepened to a sexy croon. “You wouldn’t pretend to believe I can take care of myself, but then sneak behind me in the shadows, would you, Wigglebutts? No, because you trust me. Right?”
Without turning her head, she raised her voice slightly. “So anyone who’s following us must have come along to bag poop.” She held out a small pink plastic bag from the roll clipped to Bain’s leash, currently worn around her waist like a belt. Bain did not approve of leashes. A sigh came from behind her as Yosh stepped out of the shadows, accepted the bag, and clumsily tried to scoop. Bain stared.
Carey snorted. “Seriously?” Pulling off another bag, she turned it inside out over her hand like a mitten, expertly scooped, inverted the ends of the bag over her hand and twisted it into a knot. “How is it you’ve never picked up after a dog before?”
“Well…” He stared as he caught sight of the dog waste container’s icon depicting a dog caught in mid-action, complete with little wavy heat lines coming from the pile behind him. “That’s just disgusting. And no, I’ve never had a dog. Although once in the Mojave…”
“If you say you caught and ate a dog, I’ll have to let Bain hurt you.”
He just smiled. It didn’t look any better than her smile, but she figured they’d both take what they could get.
She deposited the plastic bag into the trash bin and turned back to him. “We never got a chance to eat that pizza Director brought, and I’m starving. Do you have any cash on you?”
He shook his head.
She raised her voice. “Sir? You’re out there too, aren’t you? Any cash?”
A rumble came from the shadows behind one of the boat trailers in the lakefront lot. She stepped closer to the pool of shadows and held out a hand. Without looking at the bills, she shoved them into her jeans, whistled for Bain, and headed for the Italian restaurant up the street.
When she emerged with a bag holding the tray of lasagna and sides, Yosh was crouched on the ground next to Bain, idly rubbing the dog’s ears. As he stood to take the bag from her, Bain rubbed hopefully against his legs. “Traitor,” Carey told her dog.
They were almost back to the safe house when they heard the scuffle in the shadows to their right. “Bain! Guard,” she whispered, placing the lasagna and the dog against the shadows of the building. Carey and Yosh melted into the darkness in opposite directions, racing soundlessly to come at the little side alley from either end. Because they were closer to her end, she was the first to reach the two figures struggling in the shadows. Two more lay at their feet, unmoving in the weak light reflected from the street behind them.
Carey caught a flash of silvery beard on one combatant, and without hesitating threw her bowie knife at his opponent. The figures stilled, locked in their macabre dance, before her target slid to the ground. Jeffers stood for a moment, chest heaving, before aiming those eyebrows at her in a world-class scowl as Yosh pounded up to them. “Damn it, girl, I was trying to keep at least one of them alive for questioning.”
“You’re welcome.”
Yosh bent over the two bodies and began going through their pockets. “They mostly take poison anyway.”
Empty-handed, he looked up as she bent over to retrieve her knife. “He got two and you only got one?”
She made a very rude gesture.
»»•««
Over a paper plate piled with lasagna, Carey frowned at Yo
sh. “Yes, but I don’t get how you connected the Outsiders with Connor or with me?”
“Not my first rodeo.” He looked sadly at the empty lasagna tray and gestured to her still-laden plate, one eyebrow raised in query.
She pushed it halfway between them. “Are you sure you didn’t have to trap and kill range-fed lasagna out in the Mojave?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He paused, another forkful of her lasagna halfway to his mouth. “They’re an endangered species. It’s a federal crime to hunt lasagna out of season.” He eyed her garlic bread. “Are you going to finish that?”
“Knock yourself out.”
“So to answer your first question. I found you both with my professional investigation skills and expertise.”
“No good, son.” Director Jeffers, his empty plate shoved to the side, was methodically reviewing Yosh’s research files. Without looking up, he shook his head. “Just tell her. Trust me: she’s going to find out anyway. I don’t think she received a single grade at the Academy that she hadn’t already managed to sneak in and view first.”
“It’s true.” Carey attempted a modest smile. “I’m the best snoop he’s got.” Jeffers grunted and she turned to him. “But I still think it wasn’t fair for you to give me that F and put a note in the registrar’s file that said if I brought it to you, my grade would get changed to an A.”
He grunted. “You didn’t bring it.”
“That would have violated everything you taught me about never leaving a trace. I did give it to you after graduation.”
“And that’s why I gave you the A.”