by ASF
“I know,” she said. “But not now.”
Outside, wasn’t the right time, either.
“I’m going up with you,” Denise repeated.
“That’s not a good idea.”
“Why? She’s my daughter too.”
I looked at Laurel for support, but she’d been oddly silent ever since the Starbucks.
“Because he might recognize you.”
“Jerret? I don’t think I met him more than a time or two, and only in passing. He’s more likely to recognize you.”
“Hopefully not.” But that had always been a risk. We had to find the right floor, and the only way to do that was to go up the elevator, with no real excuse for stopping at Perkins’ floor. I was just hoping enough people pushed the wrong button each day for it not to be suspicious. At least Jerret wouldn’t have bugs in the elevator—way too much metal for that to have even a chance of working—but I wouldn’t put it past Perkins to have tapped into the security cams.
I’d thought about that earlier, but it was a big building and we hadn’t been doing anything out of the ordinary. Now, I reached into my bag and presented three of my Rite Aid purchases: sunglasses, a Chicago Bulls jacket two sizes too big, a matching baseball cap, and wrap-around sunglasses that came to weird, streamlined points at each temple. For good measure, I was also thirty-plus hours unshaven.
“How do I look?”
Denise hesitated. “Different. I’d walk right by you on the street, that’s for sure.”
Laurel snorted. “More like cross the street to avoid you. You look like hell on a hangover.”
I stopped mid-stride and stared at her. I hadn’t really been all that afraid Jerret would recognize me by sight. If he felt anywhere at all like I had with Laurel’s bugs, he’d be far more tied into his swarm than into any other sense. The disguise had been for me: to help quell doubts, so I could flatten my emotional state when I met his bugs. Because what I was really afraid of was the emotional read.
I started to explain all that to Denise . . . but instead I looked again at Laurel. Short, dark hair curling around her ears. Tailored suit, skirt short enough to show toned legs, but long enough to say not-for-you. A woman who belonged in a place like this. Denise fit in, too: softer, more feminine despite the age difference, comfortable in her own skin but aware that first impressions can be everything.
This type of place wasn’t me and never would be. Maybe I was going at this backward.
Another trip to the Rite Aid got Denise a pair of schoolmarm reading glasses. For good measure, I had her pull her hair into a severe bun. The net effect was to make her look five years older and twenty years grumpier.
Then we waited for happy hour in the lounge. My original plan had been to ride the elevator alone. Total-cool, total-in-control: fake sociopath. If I could manage to shut down my feelings. Now the goal was to have as much company as possible.
Another of my new supplies was a bottle of beer. The cheap forty-ounce type, whose only purpose is to get you really drunk, really fast. I had it in a paper bag, wino-style, and as we walked back to the condo building, I twisted the top and took a long, noisy slug.
Denise stared at me.
“I kind of need it,” I said, which was true, but not for the reasons she’d be thinking. I would have preferred slipping into a bathroom and dumping most of it into the sink, but she needed to see me drinking it, so I saluted her with the bottle and tossed back as much more as I could in a single swallow.
Once, when I was young and stupid, I’d joined a group at a high school track for a midnight “beer mile.” Four laps, four beers. A good way to get arrested if the cops caught you, but it had taught me what alcohol and I could and couldn’t do together. I’d won the race, in a little under eight minutes. Soon after, the alcohol got its revenge. In about ten minutes, I was going to be very, very unhappy.
As hoped, there was a crowd waiting for the elevator. I drained the rest of the beer, and stuffed the empty bottle in my jacket pocket. Thought about throwing up. Belched instead.
Then I shoved my way in, angering as many people as possible. Laurel looked at me appraisingly, but Denise’s glare felt like losing her all over again. I desperately wanted to take her elbow, give the squeeze that said: hush, wait, I’ll explain.
But I couldn’t. That was the whole point. The stronger, more confused the emotions, from both her and me, the less chance Jerret would see anything other than what I wanted. Domestic drama, no threat.
The doors sighed shut and the elevator shifted into motion—more smoothly than I’d have liked, but you can’t have everything. I staggered anyway, reached out, cursed, and managed to hit about half the buttons as I braced myself. I got another four or five pushing myself back vertical. During my brief stint in college, we’d called this Christmas-treeing an elevator—as in lighting up all the buttons with the old Yule spirit. A really good way to make friends with your fellow passengers.
Seven, fourteen, nineteen, and twenty-four. I’d managed to get all but nineteen. Damn.
If Denise had been watching, judging, I might not have had the nerve to push that last one. There was only one chance in four it was the one I wanted. But she was occupied with some guy in charcoal worsted who was telling her she needed to keep her husband under better control.
“He’s not my husband,” she was saying. “Not any more.”
It was another stab to an already queasy gut, but I took advantage of her distraction to put my thumb on the button for floor nineteen. “Bing!” I said in my cheeriest drunk-voice. I hit floor eighteen for good measure. “Bing! Bing!”
Charcoal Worsted grabbed my arm. “Enough, or the next bing will be me calling security.”
Floor nineteen proved to be the one.
I was glad it wasn’t one of the lower ones, because each time the door slid open, the rest of the passengers got angrier and angrier. Charcoal Worsted had taken to jabbing the door-close button before the door had finished opening: a move that might have felt satisfying, but did nothing to speed our progress.
By the time we reached floor nineteen, my stomach was very much in rebellion and my head already starting to spin. Why hadn’t I eaten something before trying this nonsense?
Luckily, checking each stop for flies had become nearly automatic. All day long, I’d been studying the elevator lobbies, trying to figure out where I would put bugs if they were mine. Especially if I was limited to Musca domestica, gene-modified or otherwise. Houseflies are great for surveillance, but if people see too many, they tend to react.
But I’d forgotten what it meant for Perkins to have an entire floor to himself. Jerret hadn’t shown the greatest subtlety in the way he’d stalked Cora, but now, with no need for it at all, he’d planted several dozen flies on the ceiling, fanned out to give plenty of angles into each elevator’s interior. It was arrogant, the implicit assumption of someone who felt like king, in the country of the blind. Though even if people noticed, how many would have a clue what it meant?
Charcoal Worsted muttered and again jabbed the close-door button, this time after the door had finished opening. Five seconds later, it was safely closed. I now knew where Jerret was. Hopefully, he didn’t know I knew.
Maybe it was the beer, but suddenly, I felt all the emotions I’d been cultivating strike with renewed force. Still, I was extremely happy I’d changed the plan. With that many flies scanning me, I doubt my fake-psychopath demeanor would have held up. Jerret might not have known exactly what was up, but he’d have smelled something.
By the time we reached the lounge, I was definitely buzzed. Denise stomped out, but I reached forward, took her arm. Forget the elbow squeeze. I needed to talk now, save what I could of our relationship. If I could.
“Floor nineteen,” I said. “That’s definitely it.” My stomach lurched. “I’ll tell you more in a minute. First, I need to throw up.”
Clearer-headed, I joined her and Laurel a few minutes later at a tiny table with a to-die-for view of t
he lakeshore. No flies. I looked, but Jerret wouldn’t dare invade this place. He’d get swatted for sure.
Denise was still angry. Laurel was working at some kind of straw-colored drink, no ice. Denise was sitting on a leather couch big enough for two, but she wouldn’t move over, so I sat next to Laurel.
“So that was all some kind a game?” Denise asked, even before I was fully settled. “First you want to be the big hero, charging off while I stay home—just like old days. Then, when I won’t let you, not again, not when its our daughter’s life that’s at stake, you pull this, this stunt, and make me think you don’t even care—treat me like . . . like, like a damn Army wife. Not a real one: the imaginary kind. The kind they tell you you should be, but who’s not really a person. A woman whose only role is to say, ‘Yes, I understand,’ ‘Yes, I’ll do what they tell me,’ ‘Yes, I’ll stand behind you,’ ‘Yes, I’ll be everything you need and never ask anything for myself.’ Yes, yes, yes, because . . . because you’re the one who’s always almost dying, and compared to that, what the hell difference do I make?”
Laurel started to rise. “Maybe I should meet you in the—”
“No, you stay here. You’re as much a part of this as he is. What did he do? Explain it all to you when he wouldn’t to me?”
She shook her head, but dropped back into her seat. Held up a finger to a waiter, pointed to her glass. “No. I just live a little closer to the world he comes from.” She looked at me. “The offer’s still open, you know. Once the big police forces get in the act, we’re going to have to train undercover agents. And in the interim . . . we probably need to keep a better eye on our subcontractors.”
This time, I didn’t even hesitate. “No.”
“I figured, but I’d be remiss in my job not to ask.” The waiter was back, with a second whatever-it-was. She nodded, handed him a bill, waved off the change. “And I’m good at my job. Very good. When we go public, I’ll be worth millions.” She stirred her drink, stared at it, stirred again. “Then, if I’m smart, I’ll get out, retire at thirty-five. If not . . . well, at least my father would be proud.” She took a swallow. Made a face. Took another swallow. “He made his first million in some damn dotcom before he was twenty-five. I don’t even remember what it was called. Lost it all two years later. Spent his whole life trying to get it back.” She stared some more into her drink. “Drank himself to death by the time I was in high school.”
She was looking at me now, her eyes so dark they were almost black. “You don’t think I didn’t figure all of this out? Shit, this whole situation just reeks of what I grew up with. Dotcoms? Military? It’s all the same. You get that daughter of yours back, you treat her right, do you understand me?” She drained the rest of her drink in a single gulp, rose, then turned one final time to Denise. “And all that stuff on the elevator? It’s because he knows you. You’d have given the whole show away simply by caring, like a normal person.” She snatched her purse, and for a moment, I saw a glint of moisture in her eyes. “See you at the hotel.”
The rescue plan was something we’d worked out two days earlier. When I woke the next morning, it looked just as risky as before—but neither had any new alternative magically materialized.
This time, Laurel had booked us separate rooms, but Denise and I had spent much of the evening in one of them, not holding each other, but talking like we hadn’t in years. It wasn’t just psychotics and sociopaths whose motivations could evade the Sense. Deeply suppressed feelings could do it, too, I was beginning to realize. When we’d married, the Corps was a presumed part of our lives. I’d never understood how much she’d come to resent it.
Laurel was the first to knock at my door, holding a nylon bag with a flat, angular shape inside.
“What’s this?”
“What’s it look like?”
I took the bag, but didn’t open it. “We talked about this.”
“And if it comes down to him or you?”
“That won’t happen.”
“Him or your daughter?”
Reluctantly, I opened the bag. Pulled out a 9mm Beretta . . .
. . . and suddenly was back in the market.
Flashback, hallucination, or phantom eye? If there’s a single flashback that dominates all others, this is the one.
You do not want to shoot somebody when you have the Sense turned on them, full-power. You feel the impact, watch the life drain away. Even sociopaths know pain, fear the darkness.
The whole thing lasted perhaps three, four seconds. I’d seen the man in the sheepskin coat reach inside his jacket, Sensed the sudden pleasure. Knew it was him or me . . .
Or maybe he was just reaching for a love letter from his girlfriend.
For two, maybe three seconds, I didn’t care. Three wild, unaimed shots, and he was down, the market suddenly still. Somehow, my sidearm was in my hand—my rifle still slung over my shoulder because, no matter how good you are at bifurcation, there’s always a risk of losing perspective and thinking you’re shooting from the position of one of your insects. Better to keep the rifle slung unless you consciously decide you need it.
I’d thought guiding others in for the kill was the same as pulling the trigger. I’d been wrong. I walked forward in a daze, oblivious to the possibility of additional attackers, ignoring everything but the body on the street. I had done this. All by myself.
He was lying on his back, the jacket half-open. Slowly, with thumb and forefinger, I pulled it all the way open.
The blocks of explosive strapped to his sides should have silenced any qualms. And at the time, they did. The Sense surged back and I felt the relief of my platoon mates, knew I had saved not just my own life, but dozens of others, knew the man before me would have been dead of his own hand, regardless of what I’d done.
That’s how it stood for years. Until the flashbacks. Now, all I see is his face: broad planes with incipient crows-feet. Startlingly blue eyes. A blunt, square nose. Matching jaw.
In the flashbacks, there is no suicide vest. Instead, he’s clutching a paper, covered in feminine handwriting. Handwriting just like Denise’s.
What would my dreams be if I had to shoot Jerret? I didn’t want to think about it. But when Laurel gave me a handful of clips, I took them.
The rest of the supplies were exactly what I needed. I didn’t ask Laurel where she’d gotten them and she didn’t volunteer. All those police connections, perhaps, though a lot of it was easy enough to get elsewhere.
Denise arrived shortly after. The night before, we’d argued about roles. I’d lost. I tried again now, but she was adamant: no more waiting at home. We also argued about timing. Laurel and Denise wanted to go in right away, perhaps catch everyone still sleeping if Perkins kept the type of hours guys like him do in movies.
But that was the type of nerves you see in soldiers on their first patrol. We’d do better later, when there were more people going up and down the elevators and when Jerret had had all day to become jumpier himself.
What I didn’t want to do was think about Cora, so I took Laurel and Denise to the Art Institute. A Picasso exhibit, I think. Afterward, I couldn’t have described anything I’d seen. Nerves aren’t just for first-timers.
Happy-hour found us again in the lounge: just Denise and me, no alcohol, waiting. I wanted the lounge at its fullest when the alarms went off. The more confused people filling stairwells and elevators, the better.
Her part of the plan was the simplest. Thanks to Laurel’s bag of goodies, her purse was full of smoke pellets—easy-to-use ones, made for paintball and for training firefighters. Better for our purposes than the military kind because they were smaller and non-toxic.
Denise, again in her schoolmarm glasses and tight bun—home-dyed a rather severe gray this time—would hit the eighteenth floor. That was a hotel floor, so she’d be looking for a supply closet, or better, a maid’s cart with a full trash bag. If she could do it without getting caught, she’d light a trash fire and supplement it with enough smoke p
ellets to make an impressive smudge. Then she’d be down the nearest stairwell, pulling fire alarms and dropping more pellets—anything to increase the confusion. Meanwhile, I’d go to the twentieth floor and wait for the alarms.
By 6:30, the lounge was standing-room only. Denise looked around. “Time?”
I nodded, reached across the table, took her hand. “Be careful. Stick to the plan and let me be the one to improvise. It’s what I do . . . did.” Her hand felt warm, natural. I gave it the tiniest of squeezes. “I—” My throat felt blocked, the words trapped. “I never—”
She squeezed back. “I know.” She gave a tight-lipped smile.
“Yeah.” There really wasn’t any more to say. “Let’s go get her.”
No battle plan ever goes off without a hitch. This one’s was an unexpectedly long wait for a second elevator, after Denise’s had left. Maybe I should have used the same one she did, but that would have left me on the twentieth floor, with nothing to do while waiting for the alarm.
As it was, I’d barely stepped off when the alarms sounded. Distant at first, muffled through multiple floors, then ear-splitting. I pulled the striker pin on a smoke pellet and tossed it in one of those useless brass wastebaskets hotels, banks, and convention centers love so much. Found another wastebasket on the far side of the lobby and dropped one in it, too.
Down the hall, a door popped open and a head peered out.
“Fire!” I yelled. “Get everyone out!”
Then I ran the opposite way, shouting and banging on doors. This was a condo floor, but it had a supply room, unlocked, as I’d hoped. I wrenched open the door, pulled down a shelf of paper towels, wadded them up in a big pile, and struck a match. Tossed in a half dozen smoke pellets for good measure, along with a couple of interesting-looking aerosol cans. By the time I left, one of the cans had already produced a satisfying bang, the sprinklers were starting to fire up, both in the closet and the hallways, and the smoke was thick enough that other people, hurrying for stairwells or elevators, were merely shapes in the gloom.