by Hines
Dilbert shook his head. “No, I didn’t see him. But—”
Hondo stood up, cutting him off. “Think about it: it makes sense. Donavan waited until his buddy tripped the alarm, then knocked Dilbert out. They’re working together. I can feel it.”
Hondo, gaining confidence in what he said, stood and looked from face to face. “Let’s just say that’s what’s happening here. Maybe we can’t say for sure yet, but let’s just say.” He paused, and a few heads nodded.
A man Lucas didn’t recognize spoke. “So they’re working together to . . . I don’t know, sabotage our projects? Why? Doesn’t get them anything.”
“Blackmail,” Dilbert said forcefully. “I had tapes—several recent scenes—in my pocket. Now they’re gone. Now, I don’t know that it means anything by itself, but when you put it together with the article in the paper—”
Dilbert waited for Snake to hold up the article before continuing. “You see a pattern. I think Donavan, and this Humpty guy, are going to try to blackmail each of our projects. Talk to our projects, show them footage, tell them they need to pay or they’ll end up in the news.”
“How do you know they won’t try to blackmail us?” asked another unfamiliar voice.
“We don’t,” Snake said.
“So what do we do about Donavan and . . . Humpty?” asked Dilbert.
“That’s easy,” Snake said, looking around the room carefully before answering. “We kill them.”
TWENTY
LUCAS STAYED UNDER THE DESK, IMMOBILE, FOR HALF AN HOUR AFTER the last person left the meeting. Only then did he allow his body to come out of its deep state; he felt tiny needles poking his hands and feet as blood flow returned to them. He guessed it was after eight o’clock, based on the twilight descending outside the windows. It would be dark in another hour or so.
Most of the meeting had been spent discussing Donavan’s hangouts, his movements, his proclivities. Obviously, they felt finding Donavan was going to be the key to finding him.
His hole was getting deeper all the time. First the wrinkle from Viktor Abkin, putting his photo in the paper. And now the Creep Club, convinced he and Donavan were trying to sabotage them. So he had at least two dozen people who would like to see him dead. Probably more.
Lucas wasn’t necessarily opposed to the idea of sabotaging the Creep Club, but he was insulted that they thought he’d do it by blackmailing their victims. The victims were precisely the reason why he wanted to bring down the club.
He pushed against the desk, moving it away from the wall and unfolding himself from the small space beneath. He stood, listening to his joints crack and groan.
The room was quiet, the generator silent and the television dark.
He was alone in the building.
And evidently, he was back to being alone in the world. A stupid mistake, befriending Donavan. That had pulled him into this whole Creep Club mess, which led to the ATM2GO fiasco, and Donavan’s disappearance, and who knew what else? He would have been much better off if he’d never revealed himself to Donavan.
He still wasn’t sure, exactly, why he’d responded to Donavan in the first place. But now, look what it had done to him; one way or another, Donavan was in trouble.
Lucas adjusted his backpack and headed toward the door, wondering what his next move should be.
Maybe it wasn’t too late to take his own advice: stay uninvolved. It had served him so well for so many years, and he was good at it. It had left an empty hole inside him, yes, but he could fill that hole just by watching people, inventing their secret histories . . .
He shook his head as he walked down the hallway. No good. He was into the mire too deep now. He was at least partly responsible for what had happened to the missing ATM2GO partners, as well as Donavan.
He thought again of the bright twinkling lights of DC, seemingly just out of the grasp of his ten-year-old hand as he lay on top of the orphanage.
This was his chance to grab those lights finally, be something more than a dishwasher or a panhandler. Or an orphan.
And what about Leila? He had helped her, hadn’t he? If he hadn’t been part of this whole scheme, she’d still be facing beatings, waiting while she thought the police were videotaping her and building a case. So he had done something.
He moved down the stairs carefully, checking his surroundings. No one else was left in the space. He made his way to the broken door and out into the humid evening air. In the distance, he heard a siren wailing; above him, streetlights flickered on and wavered in the gathering darkness.
Yeah, he was in it too deep now. Either he needed to sink, or he needed to keep his head from going under.
He moved down the street, turned back toward the Metro stop, pulled the TracFone from his pocket, thought better of it. He needed to get away from here before he called Saul.
He jumped on the Metro, suddenly feeling exhausted. So he closed his eyes and slept, Snake’s words ringing in his ears.
That’s easy. We kill them.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, HE CAME AWAKE WITH A SUDDEN START, LOOKING around him. He was pretty far north now—just past Fort Totten, and only a few stops from the end of the Green Line. He’d have to ride the Metro back toward downtown. That was fine; he’d call Saul, and if Saul were able to track his location somehow, he’d assume Lucas had been somewhere up northeast.
He looked around, trying to see if anyone took an unhealthy interest in him—especially now that it was dark, and he was still wearing sunglasses—but no one seemed to notice.
That’s easy. We kill them.
Lucas pulled the TracFone from his pocket and dialed Saul’s number.
“Well, if it isn’t Humpty Dumpty.”
“I just came from a Creep Club meeting.”
“Oh?” Lucas heard a bit of pleasure in Saul’s voice, but no surprise.
“Got time for a cup of coffee?” Lucas asked.
“I’ve always got time for a cup of coffee. There’s a shop over near the Washington Monument—”
“Java the Hut? It’s on the ground floor of a blue glass building?”
“Yeah,” Saul said. “You been there?”
“I know where it is,” Lucas said, not telling Saul he’d discovered the place by following his movements with a geopatch. “I’m not far away.”
“SO WHAT DO YOU HAVE, HUMPTY?” SAUL LIFTED A LATTE TO HIS half-smiling lips.
Lucas took a sip of his own decaf, set it down on the table. He locked Saul into a stare. “Donavan’s your boy, isn’t he?”
Saul set his latte down, thumbed off the lid, and blew on the liquid inside. “Way too hot,” he said.
“I noticed,” Lucas said.
“Part of the charm for me.” He stared at Lucas, but his gaze flicked to the wall when he spoke again. “Like to see how hot I can stand it.”
Lucas waited a few moments while Saul fiddled with the drink, then lost his patience. “Well?”
Saul, unhurried, set the lid to his drink aside, then pulled out his pack of cigarettes and offered one to Lucas.
“Not supposed to smoke in here,” Lucas said.
Saul smiled, enjoying the game. “I know,” he said as he lit one. He took a deep drag and blew it at the ceiling. “Now. Tell me why you think I’ve got Donavan in my pocket.”
“One, you don’t have any files on him—you gave me a bunch of files, but nothing on him. Two, he’s gone now, and—”
“Is he?” Saul arched his eyebrows, and Lucas had to admit, he was a pretty good actor. “Where’s he gone to?”
“I don’t know. Hasn’t been to his apartment. And no one in the Creep Club has heard from him either.”
Saul nodded, flicking ashes to the floor. “Interesting.”
“In fact, it seems everyone in the Creep Club is convinced Donavan and I are a team—out to blackmail all the victims. Oh, wait, projects, as they like to call them.”
Saul was nodding more rapidly now. “Because of the article in the paper. The ATM folks
you met through Donavan.”
“Exactly.”
He nodded and blinked several times. Sometime Lucas would have to count just how many times Saul blinked in an average minute.
“Makes sense,” Saul said. “It’s wrong, but it makes sense.”
“I know it’s wrong.”
“No, I mean your little theory about Donavan being part of my plan,” Saul said. He flicked more ashes to the floor.
Lucas was amazed no one ever seemed to challenge him on the smoking.
“So you’re saying he isn’t?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“And you just expect me to believe that.”
“I do. But do a little more thinking here: if Donavan’s my guy, why do I need you?”
Lucas grimaced, took another drink of his decaf.
Saul continued. “You don’t see any paperwork on Donavan because I don’t need anything on Donavan. I have all I need on him. It’s the others I’m looking at—the ones you do have files on.”
“So if you know everything about Donavan, why not just use him? He’s already part of the Creep Club; he was a better contact than I’ll ever be.”
“Because he’s a junkie.”
Lucas stopped, his cup halfway to his mouth. “What?”
“A junkie. I talked to him a few times after he got in, but he was already hooked. He loved creeping, so there was no way he was going to cut off his high.”
Lucas went cold, remembering the crazy look in Donavan’s eyes as he talked about the Creep Club. The coldness turned to a shudder as he once again recognized the need inside his own skin, even now.
“So,” Saul said. “No Donavan. But you—” Saul pointed at him, his cigarette clenched between two fingers. “You, I knew, would be different.”
“How’d you know that?”
Saul shrugged. “I don’t think you like yourself very much, Humpty. And I mean that in a good way, for what we’re talking about here. You’re not gonna be a junkie.” He tossed his cigarette on the floor, picked up his drink, and tried another sip. “Ah, much better.” He replaced the lid, leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs. “But now we have a problem, don’t we?”
“What’s that?”
“You.”
“What about me?”
“You’re becoming . . . a little too visible. Somehow I doubt I’ve seen the last of you in the paper.”
“Fine. We’re done. I didn’t want to be part of your little game anyway.”
Saul sipped at his latte, pursed his lips, sat the cup down on the table, tapped his fingers a couple of times. “Yes. Well. It’s not quite that easy, is it . . . Lucas?” He smiled, watching Lucas’s reaction.
Lucas went perfectly still. “You know my real name.”
“I do.”
Lucas felt his throat click as he swallowed. He tried another drink, but his throat stayed dry. He tried to look Saul in the eye. His hand was trembling, so he put his cup down, put his hands palms down on the table.
Saul kept that idiotic smile on his face the whole time.
“So what happens now?” Lucas finally asked.
Saul shrugged, an aw-shucks gesture that was somehow filled with menace. He saw Lucas’s reaction and chuckled. “Ah, you think I’m going to pull out a pistol and shoot you here in the middle of Java the Hut? Not my style. I don’t kill informants.” He picked up his coffee again.
Lucas waited a few moments. “But you have people who do.”
Saul sat down the cup, dabbed at his mouth with a paper napkin, saying nothing. “You really have some trust issues. All I want is what I want,” he said. “A bit of information—especially on the one who calls himself Snake.”
“The guy who started the Creep Club.”
“That would be him.”
“So then you just kill me after that. Or have your thugs do it.”
A pained look crossed Saul’s face. “Please, please, Humpty. You think I’m a monster or something?”
Lucas thought it best not to answer.
LATE THAT NIGHT, HIS FLASHLIGHT CONVERTED INTO A CANDLE, LUCAS huddled in his small space on the fourth floor, cataloging his totems.
He picked up each item, lingering over it, before replacing it in its assigned spot. This was a pattern, a ritual, that calmed him whenever he felt uneasy.
But tonight it wasn’t working. Images of Saul, of Leila in her home, of the Creep Club, kept intruding.
He had no family, no future, no past. And now he was a fugitive from the police, from the Creep Club, and from at least one government intelligence agency. He wasn’t safe anywhere.
Humpty Dumpty had some great falls.
He caressed a photo, enjoying the smiling faces of the people in it. But now the smiles seemed sinister, as if the people knew what he held in his Dark Heart.
Nothing.
He was hollow, meaningless.
And the people in these photos—his mementos—knew it. He could see it in their faces now; why hadn’t he before?
With a roar of rage, he swept his arm across his carefully constructed shrine, scattering photos and frames across the floor.
Not far away, he heard something move in reaction. A scrape.
He grabbed his candle, unscrewed the base, and extinguished the light. He moved quickly to the nearest wall, pressing against it, and waited in the darkness.
Was someone in the room with him, sent to take care of the problem for Saul? The man knew his real name, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to figure he knew his location as well.
Then the noise came again. And this time, with his attention focused, he was able to make out what it was. A scraping sound, yes. But there was a deeper, more organic element to the sound as well—something like the slither of a snake. It was at the office’s locked front door; someone, he realized, trying to pick the lock. He heard a soft click, and then the door swinging open in the darkness.
Lucas forced his body to relax, even as he felt his heart rate spinning wildly out of control. An unusual, almost unheard of sensation for him. He never sweated, but he felt a fine sheen of it oozing through his pores.
There was something . . . other . . . entering his room, and his whole body was telling him to get out.
He took a deep breath, surprised at the panic that was coursing through his body, and forced himself to relax. After a few beats, he held up his flashlight and thumbed it on.
A tall, thin figure, its face bathed in light, stared back at him. Lucas recognized the face immediately and wished he hadn’t turned on the flashlight; he had to get away, as far away as possible. Now.
Flashlight and backpack clutched in his hands, Lucas turned and scrambled to the rear part of the office, then slid out the window onto the fire escape, stumbling to his knees as he landed on the steel steps.
But the . . . thing following him would expect him to run down the stairs, wouldn’t it? Perhaps he could take advantage of those expectations.
Instead he raced up the iron stairs to the fifth floor, and then up a final flight to the roof of the building, dropping over the edge and pressing himself into the dark crease of the wall around the building.
A few seconds later, the main door to the fourth-floor fire escape slammed open below. The thing hadn’t followed him out the window but had chosen to go out the emergency exit in the hallway. Odd. He paused for a few seconds, heard the labored breathing. A few exchanged words he couldn’t make out (so the thing wasn’t alone), and then the iron rungs of the fire escape began clanking: his pursuers were making their way down to the street.
Several seconds later the stairs stopped shaking, and Lucas dared a peek over the top of the building. In the glow of a single weak streetlamp down the alley, he saw two figures moving away at a brisk pace, guns drawn and held ahead of them. At this distance, they were blobs, so he couldn’t see their features. But they had to be his pursuers. They hadn’t shot him in his room, even though they’d had the chance. And now they were running down the al
ley as if they were still following him. Something didn’t add up.
Lucas let out a small sigh, letting himself sink back to the surface of the roof. He waited, making his body go into its deep trancelike state. After half an hour without moving, and without hearing any other sounds, he removed himself from the dark corner, slipped over the edge of the building, and made his way carefully down the fire escape. The iron framework tried to quake with each of his steps, but he moved lightly, making sure it swayed only a bit. As he made his way to the alley level, he kept a careful watch on his surroundings, looking for danger.
Finally, on the relative stability of the paved alley, Lucas felt the fear amplifying in the back of his throat again. This was the Dark Vibration at work, yes, but in this guise, the vibration wasn’t a hunger, a need.
It was innate, naked fear.
Because Lucas had looked at the first figure who had broken into his secret hiding place, and he had seen something that terrified him more than anything he could imagine.
His own face.
TWENTY-ONE
SWARM STOOD IN THE RETREATING SHADOWS AND WATCHED THE CITY around him awaken. Cars and buses belching exhaust on the street. People on foot, holding their arms close in the morning chill as they hurried to their destinations. Chain-link fences rolling away from storefronts with a dull chatter.
Even the cloud of wasps, his constant companion, showed more activity. He felt their incessant buzz in his own bones as their numbers grew from a few dozen to a few hundred in a matter of minutes. That number would stay constant until nightfall; some wasps would die, torn apart by others, while others would fall away listlessly. Even so, those left behind would be replaced by others as new wasps joined the cloud, pulled by some elemental magnetism.
Swarm felt one of the wasps alight on his forehead and begin to crawl across his skin. He smiled.
The End Game was beginning, and the person who would set that End Game in motion had left the building in front of him no more than an hour ago—just after he’d sent in his Dark Fear recruits.
He hadn’t really wanted to send them into the building, but it had been necessary; this young man—this Lucas—had to be prepared. Watchful. And so Swarm needed to make sure he kept his edge.