Puzzled, Sunny remained outside number 5043 for several minutes. How long did the man sleep? And why was the freakin’ BPI letting him wander around if he was a serial killer? She checked the time. 3:34 am. He had to be back at school at 7:00 am. She was totally exhausted, falling asleep on her feet. Did he really only sleep for three hours? When did he find time to grade the homework that seemed to be driving those A-students batshit?
It didn’t make sense. Gabriel looked and acted like an insecure geek with little-man syndrome. Something, however, felt out of place. If what she had witnessed was his usual pace, he was only getting, at max, three hours of sleep a night. Three hours of sleep that she had to assume he was using to grade tests, instead, because the preppy kids at New Republic had told her he was religious about always having the previous day’s freshly-scored homework and exercises with him.
Sunny went back to Bertha that night with those cold tinglies crawling up her spine as she tried to piece together exactly what the hell was going on. An insomniac who was taking out his sleepless misery on other people? A sadist who enjoyed screwing up people’s lives? Just some asswipe on a power trip because his girlfriend had left him for a guy with a bigger dick?
None of it really made sense, because it was vividly clear to Sunny that the man had a schedule . He had gone from place to place with a brisk pace, arriving right on time, only to leave at precisely the right time to arrive at his next destination ahead of the clock. It showed a high degree of planning and efficiency to juggle all those jobs and still manage to spend some time at home before starting it all again in the morning. She was actually a little jealous.
Then she remembered the way those kids had cried after his classes—good kids, ones who had otherwise been set to become the Republic’s best—and she had to wonder what kind of teacher would pass out such devastating grades to highly-motivated students without explanation. It seemed…off.
Hell, the whole thing had seemed off. The constant negativity, the holding four jobs, the three hours of sleep, the crying kids, all of it. Instead of driving home, she slept in Bertha’s cab, deciding to pay the overnight parking penalty rather than try to drive home at four in the morning.
As she lay there across Bertha’s ancient fabric seats, she tried to figure out why the BPI would put out a wanted notice with Gabriel Dortez’s face and information on it rather than simply hunt him down and drag him in themselves.
By morning, all she had been able to come up with was that he was some sort of creeper about to snap. Like maybe the lack of sleep had driven him to post some warning sign comments on social media that the BPI had picked up in its routine surveillance and with investigation, they had realized he was bad news.
But a hundred thousand dollars for a geeky guy in a baggy cardigan? That seemed a bit steep. Why hadn’t they just brought him in? It didn’t make sense…
She definitely needed to get a better look into the guy’s head, and so she decided to try her luck as a therapy patient. Maybe she could figure out what Dortez was up to with some legitimate one-on-one time. She hesitated, remembering the weird feeling from their last one-on-one meeting when he’d caught her eavesdropping in her office. He’d been too smug, too confident…
Remembering the arrogant look on his face, the disdain , Sunny instinctively knew that had she been some regular Joe off the street, not someone with an unholy ability to be forgotten, something horrible would have happened to her. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but the man made her uncomfortable—and it wasn’t just the way he seemed to get off on making people miserable. There was something more there, something dangerous, and every instinct she had was screaming at her to go back to Willow and hide.
…hide ? From a condescending hundred-and-twenty-pound math whiz with a superiority complex? She’d rather put herself out of her misery with a wood chipper. Sunny Day did not run.
Still, the guy made her nervous. Really nervous. Kinda like watching a cannibal eating an unknown pot roast. And if the BPI wasn’t able to capture him…
Then Sunny’s mind wandered to whether she was going to be able to afford to pay the parking ticket for Bertha if she spent much longer in the outdomer garage, much less put together the rent that was due in four days.
The next morning, at 6:15 am, she reluctantly pulled out her phone and found the counseling office.
“Yes?” Dortez answered immediately. She would recognize that impatient sneer anywhere. In the background, she was pretty sure she heard the bell of an elevator.
“Oh, wow,” Sunny said, surprised he answered—she hadn’t expected the therapy office to patch directly to his cell phone. “I, uh, was just expecting an answering machine.”
“Who are you and what do you want?” He sounded rushed, harried. She heard a doorman tell him to have a nice day.
“Oh, uh, I saw a sign on 5th Avenue for Knik Counseling,” Sunny said. “Do I have the right number?”
“Sure, sure,” Dortez said, as she began to hear the sounds of the street.
“Okay, well, uh, I’m looking to book a therapy session.”
“The sign clearly says we specialize in resolving depression,” he snapped. “You don’t sound depressed.”
Sunny’s eyes narrowed. She knew for a fact that wasn’t the clinical way to address potentially depressed people. “It’s complicated. But…yeah. I’m afraid if I don’t find someone to talk to soon, I might kill myself.”
“Are you local?” Dortez asked. “With a residence in the Dome?”
Sunny thought that was a weird question. “Yes,” she lied. “I have an apartment on 8th .”
“Perfect. Does nine-thirty at the office tonight work for you?” No intake questions, no forms to fill out, no disclosures or warnings. Sunny got those weird goosebumps all over again.
That’s not normal, she thought. Other, legitimate psychotherapists would have referred her to a suicide line to talk her down, or at least kept her on the phone to assess her condition. Instead, he seemed to be…excited…by the idea of meeting her. Combined with the A-students’ suicides in her nephew Jake’s class and the way he had broken the bad accounting news to Mr. Yansu, Sunny was getting totally creeped out. Is he trying to get people to kill themselves? she thought, stunned.
“Miss?” he asked. “Can you be there tonight at nine-thirty?” He hadn’t even asked her name.
Sunny cleared the tightness from her throat. “Yeah. That works.”
“Great, I’ll look forward to seeing you!” Now he actually sounded…polite.
“Yeah, okay,” Sunny said. “Nine-thirty. I’ll be there.”
“Wonderful! Just hang in there, Miss. We’ll get you taken care of.” The phone went dead. Sunny frowned, realizing he hadn’t even talked to her about payment. The sign had said they worked on a sliding scale, but did that include ‘free’?
The entire conversation left her in a deep state of unease. Whatever he was doing as a psychotherapist, she doubted that it was helping people. That fact, combined with the BPI’s strange avoidance of him, left her disquieted.
In the end, though, after debating the pros and cons all day, Sunny decided to go to the nine-thirty appointment. She figured she had an escape—just make him look the other way if things went south—and she had seen enough mental disorders as an EMT that she was pretty sure she could fake one. She showed up on his doorstep at five minutes to nine and was surprised when Dortez opened the door for her—it would have meant he had left his post office job early to get there early. Which, if she’d learned anything at all in her day of following him along his strict, monotonous routine, was something he probably would have been reluctant to do.
“Good evening!” he cried, ushering her into the outer waiting room of the counseling office. He was wearing another atrocious plaid sweater, probably wool. “You’re early—I was just setting up, but come in, come in!” Unnervingly, he sounded like a kid who had just gotten the latest fad toy imported from China and was excited to try it out.
“No need to be nervous,” he said, closing the outer door behind her. His face oozed caring like food coloring from cheap candy. “I can always tell when someone’s nervous, and I swear to you, you can trust me with anything. It’s my job to help people get back on their feet.”
The charm he was displaying to her was in stark contrast with the way he had treated every other human being Sunny had seen him interact with the day before, and instead of making her feel better, it made her even more uneasy.
“So how much do you charge for a session?” she asked, cautiously peeking into the therapy room through the open doorway opposite the exit.
“Oh, you’ll find it very affordable,” he told her, walking inside the office and offering her a couch. “Come on in and relax and let’s see what’s troubling you.”
Sunny stayed in the entranceway, that tingling of instinct once again troubling her. “You haven’t even asked my name.” The décor of the office in general was marine in nature, but even without stepping beyond the entryway to the office, she could tell that the specimen displays were impressive and unique.
“It was on my caller ID,” Gabriel said, still smiling. “Cute name. Sunny Day?”
“My sister and I were born on the Solstice,” Sunny said, grimacing. “My mom was drugged to the gills and she thought it’d be funny.” At least she hadn’t been born second. She wasn’t sure how she would have managed high school named ‘Summer Day’. As it was, her sister usually went by her middle name to avoid these kinds of questions, using ‘Daphne’ on everything except official documents. Sunny, being the stubborn one, had stuck it out to the bitter end.
“Twins?” Gabriel seemed delighted. “Do you talk to your sister much?” He was still holding his arm out, waiting for her to step inside with him and take a seat. She got an unnerving image of a trap-door spider.
“Not really,” Sunny lied. “Estranged.” She didn’t want Daphne involved.
“Coming, Miss Day?” He smiled, and it was clear he was going to start getting suspicious if she continued to loiter.
Reluctantly, she stepped inside and walked over to sit stiffly on the couch.
“I have to admit, Miss Day, that you don’t really have the appearance of a chronically depressed person.” He had gone to a desk in one corner of the room, and was fiddling with something in a box. He seemed to consider that a moment, glancing over his shoulder at her. “And I can usually tell. Call it a…” He held something up in his hand and tapped it with a plasticky sound. “…gift.”
“I hide it well.” She glanced nervously around the room, looking at the massive aquatic shell collection lining his walls and tables. She saw beautiful, ancient conchs, massive two-foot nautiluses, and tiny, intricate snail shells. Each had its own light and custom-made glass stand. A couple had actually been dipped in what looked like gold. “Wow,” she blurted, “you really like clams.”
Even though his back was to her, Sunny could see Gabriel tense. When he turned back to face her, his expression was pinched. “They’re mollusks, not clams. Of the families Strombidae and Nautilidae, to be exact.”
“Pretty,” Sunny commented, nodding at the shells.
He beamed immediately. “Magnificent animals, all of them. True jewels of the seas.” The pride in his collection was obvious.
Sensing a weakness, Sunny had to keep the evil smile off her face. As innocently as she could, she said, “I’ve always liked clams. Especially in linguini.”
The shift that came over his face was terrifying in its intensity. One moment, Gabriel was smiling, and the next, his face was a mask of rage. It was just for an instant, just a brief glimpse of something horrifying, then it disappeared, once again replaced by the polite smile.
“Many people underestimate the creatures of the sea,” Gabriel said. “Cephalopods, especially.” He started towards her, something in his hand.
Sunny, delighted, knew that she had discovered a weakness. “You mean calamari?” she asked.
Gabriel stiffened. “Squid, octopus, and cuttlefish are not food. They are smarter than most apes—it’s just the apes are too stupid to realize it.”
“I always liked calamari,” Sunny said wistfully. “Sometimes the local sushi shop will put it in my seaweed salad. Sometimes I just pick it off, though. Too chewy.” She shrugged. “Depends on my mood.” She didn’t know why it felt so good to taunt the man, but she was pretty sure it had something to do with the last two days of watching him delight in hurting his fellow human beings. She considered it letting off steam.
She was still letting off steam, about to tell Gabriel that her favorite dish was clam chowder, when he jabbed a needle into her shoulder. She saw the syringe way too late.
Sneering over her shoulder, Gabriel said against her ear, “You don’t actually think I wouldn’t recognize a DPS agent the moment she walked through my door, do you?”
Horrified, Sunny lurched to her feet, but found herself stumbling.
“You won’t get far,” Gabriel said, chuckling. He was already disposing of the syringe, replacing the little cap on the needle. “Don’t bother running,” Gabriel said lazily behind her. “You have thirty seconds until you collapse.” He smiled. “But don’t worry. I won’t eat you. I’ll give you a child.”
Sunny dodged towards the reception area. Instead of following, Dortez turned away from her to drop the needle into the trash.
True to his word, she was finding her extremities rapidly going numb. Sunny stumbled into the waiting area, out of his sight. Inside the office, she heard movement near the trash, then his footsteps as he went deeper into the room.
Sunny glanced at the outer door, which with her disorientation and growing numbness, she knew she wouldn’t reach in time to make an escape. Even if she did get outside, the creep would see her when he left for his accounting job and might make the right connections.
I’ve gotta get out of sight, she thought, her mind already starting to go dark.
Desperate, holding herself up on the doorjamb because her legs were failing her, she glanced at the couch beside the office entry. There was a very small space between the couch and the wall…
Inside the office, Gabriel’s phone rang. “Yes? No, I know I left early. I had a very important appointment, but it looks like the other party is late…”
Sunny stumbled to the couch and fell into the space between it and the wall. Already, she was losing all control of her muscles.
In the other room, she heard Gabriel moving back and forth in the office. “Why can’t apes ever be on time?” he growled. “I thought government agents were on time.” She heard the leather chair behind his desk creak as he sat. After a few moments, fingernails started to tap the hardwood desk impatiently.
The chair creaked again as Dortez stood. “I can’t believe I wasted a perfectly good meal on this.” Completely paralyzed, now, Sunny heard feet coming towards the waiting room. Sunny cringed behind the sofa, but couldn’t make herself move even the slightest twitch. Horrifyingly, she heard herself make a tiny sound.
In the entryway to the waiting room, right beside the couch, the would-be serial killer stopped and she heard that deep cave-like whoosh again. Sunny was acutely aware that, should he turn slightly and look down, he would see her boots sticking out of the crack between couch and wall. For what seemed like centuries, he hesitated in the doorway to the waiting area. Then she heard him sigh and close the door behind him. “What a waste,” he said again. “Now I’ve missed dinner…”
Still muttering to himself, he turned and walked across the lobby area and let himself out of the office. Sometime immediately thereafter, Sunny lost the rest of her sensory inputs entirely and plunged into darkness.
Chapter 5: The Dreamer
“You’re dreaming.”
Sunny glanced up from the ambulance gurney to look at Harris. He looked like an old Athabascan man with bra
ided silver hair, dirty jeans, and a worn plaid shirt—not the sleek, urbanite Inuit she remembered. Now he kinda reminded her of a lumberjack or a farmer…
Which was weird. She knew for a fact Harris wouldn’t be caught dead in plaid.
Oh well. Sunny got back to work checking the little girl’s multiple gunshot wounds.
“Watching it over and over again won’t change the outcome,” Harris said. His kindly dark brown eyes—oddly, she remembered Harris’s eyes as lighter—were focused on her face, not on the child that was dying on the gurney in front of them.
“Get it together, Harris!” Sunny cried. “She’s having trouble breathing. I think we’ve got a tension pneumothorax that needs drainage.”
Harris didn’t even look at the girl she was struggling to save. “The girl is dead. There was nothing you could do.”
Harris had never been so old or annoying. “If you’re not gonna treat the girl, at least figure out why the driver’s all over the road. I’m having trouble finding veins.”
Harris glanced at the front of the ambulance, then leaned towards her and conspiratorially said, “You’re a girl, right?”
That was a stupid question, considering he’d had sex with her. Though, when Harris had had sex with her, his hair hadn’t been long or silver, and his skin definitely wasn’t wrinkly. Strange, how he looked so old now.
Harris still wasn’t looking at their shooting victim, and they were still six minutes from the hospital. “Come on ,” Sunny cried, “Focus, Harris. She’s gonna bleed out!”
The man continued to look her in the eyes. Then, with a dismissive wave of his hand, the ambulance, the siren, the gurney, and the girl all vanished around her, swept away as if dust by a broom.
“You’re a girl, right?” he said. “Sometimes dreams can be…odd…and it’s hard to tell.”
Sunny blinked at Harris. She looked down at her hands, expecting to see surgical gloves and blood, but she was wearing the leather and rock dust of a blockker.
Sunny with a Chance of Monsters: An Urban Fantasy Action Adventure (Sunny Day, Paranormal Badass) Page 8