Destiny: The Girl in the Box #9 (12 page)

“We work at night,” Grinder said, and I could see by the shadowed look on his face he took a little umbrage at Scott’s observation. Scott, wisely, did not say anything to that. “The rest of the money?”

I pulled open my wallet and pulled two more hundreds out of it. I started to hand them to him and then yanked them back. Like an asshole, yes. “You told us you’d take us to Antonio.”

“I said I’d take you to where he might—or might not—be staying,” Grinder said. He was smiling again now. “You agreed, therefore you owe me the last two hundred.”

“You could have led us into a blind, dead end with wording like that,” Scott said. His voice told me his hackles were raised.

“And maybe I have,” Grinder said, “but you still owe me two hundred dollars, at least based on our verbal agreement.”

“Wow, a homeless contract lawyer,” I said dryly. “Why don’t we take a peek inside and if we find Antonio, you can have the rest of the money?”

Grinder gave that a moment’s thought before he turned toward the curtain. “ANTONIO!” he bellowed, and it echoed through the halls. “COPS ARE HERE FOR YOU! BETTER GET RUNNIN’, PAL!” With that, Grinder turned back to face us, almost apologetic. “Sorry. I was gonna warn him even if you paid. Can’t live down here if we don’t watch each others’ backs.”

“Son of a bitch,” Scott said, and pushed Grinder neatly to the side. He ripped the curtain back, but there were already shouts and echoes in the chamber beyond. “There he goes!”

I flashed a look at Grinder and he shrugged again, almost apologetic. I tossed the two hundred bucks at him and took off at a flat run after the shadow of Antonio, already hauling ass down the tunnel way faster than any human would have been able to.

“Antonio Morales!” Scott called. Our flashlight beams bounced wildly along the dark tunnel as we hurried to catch up with the fleeing man ahead of us. We were passing people on both sides, bedding spread on the floor of the tunnels, possessions scattered around the little stakes held by the owner of each bed.

Someone tossed something in my path, but I avoided it. I assumed we’d get more obstacles tossed in our way if the residents had more time. Something clattered in front of me short of my flashlight’s beam and I neatly dodged it.

Scott did not.

I heard him hit the pavement, the wind leaving him in one giant, “OOMPH!” His flashlight hit the ground and rattled, the beam dancing over the graffiti-covered walls.

“You okay?” I tossed behind me.

“Keep going!” Scott said, and I could hear him a hundred feet back, pushing himself back to his feet. His flashlight beam was rolling in a slow circle now. “I’ll catch up!”

I hit a ninety-degree turn and ran up the slope of the wall. I came back down to earth and pumped my arms. Every step was a fight between trying not to jump and still maintain optimal speed. It was a struggle sometimes.

“Antonio!” I called, and my voice echoed comically high down the tunnel ahead. “I’m here to help you!”

For whatever reason, he did not answer back. Probably wisely.

I saw light ahead. His shadow was highlighted against the sun. It was an opening to the outside. I wondered where it would take me.

He burst out into the daylight and cut left, out of my sight. I was only a hundred feet back now and had been gaining on him. I ignored my first instinct to pull my gun and hoped I wouldn’t regret it.

I burst out of the end of the tunnel and immediately hooked left like I’d seen him do. I halted for just a second, trying to get my bearings.

Casinos stood tall on either side of me. I blinked back against the blinding light, and realized that the side of the Bellagio’s tower stood before me. Someone was running, not that far ahead of me. I saw him look back, and that was all I needed.

It was Antonio.

I tore off after him and ended up on a lane. I could see the strip ahead, the Bellagio on my left. There were trees obstructing my running path, but I followed Antonio as he ran through the midday heat and onto Las Vegas Boulevard. He headed north toward Caesar’s Palace.

The Bellagio fountains were blowing streams of water a hundred feet into the air, a Celine Dion song blasting out of the nearby speakers as my feet hit the sidewalk. It might have been a magical Las Vegas moment if I hadn’t been running hard to catch a fleeing meta.

Antonio was tearing ass, running faster than even most of the metas I’d met. He threw a glance back at me, and there was pure terror written on his face.

I was gaining on him, but slowly. Pedestrians were in the way now, for both of us. I watched Antonio steer around a blond tourist wearing nothing but a bikini as I dodged some guy wearing a Chewbacca suit. That had to be the crappiest job of the day. Other than mine.

Then Antonio bumped into a guy with a sign that went flying into the air as the guy went down. Antonio went on, but the guy lay there on the street cursing after him. I read the sign on the ground as I passed: “For $20 you can kick me in the nuts as hard as you want.”

Never mind; that guy probably had the worst job of the day.

We blazed down the sidewalk in front of Caesar’s Palace. The crowds were starting to thicken, and we were pushing them out of the way left and right. I pirouetted around a stroller in a move that would have looked much cooler on a football field, while ahead of me, Antonio was crossing the driveway into Caesar’s without regard for the traffic. He rolled across the hood of a BMW amid a bevy of horns.

I just leapt the road when I got to it. What was the point of being stronger than a human if you didn’t use it?

We were coming up on Treasure Island and I was only twenty feet behind him. At ten, I could probably launch into a tackle that would get him. Probably. He looked like he was wearing down. The foot traffic wasn’t working in his favor because he wasn’t shoving them aside the way someone like Weissman would have.

He was being gentle. He was trying not to hurt people. It was a mark in the column for him, as far as I was concerned.

“Antonio!” I shouted. “I need to talk to you!”

This time he actually answered. “I won’t let you kill me!”

“If I was trying to kill you, I would shot your ass blocks ago!”

“I’m not gonna let you take me!” Well, that answer wasn’t much better.

“Don’t be an idiot!” I shouted. I was close to the ten-foot mark, but I honestly wondered if a flying tackle would be a great idea at this distance. Waiting would be preferable. The hot wind whipped over my face, and the smell of coffee from a Starbucks ahead filled the air. “I just want to talk!”

That time he didn’t say anything. I could see the corner of another street ahead of us. We’d already crossed two major roads without using the overpasses. I couldn’t chance another, not the least of which was because of the traffic streaming across the intersection at high speed.

If Antonio didn’t leap, he’d have to be hella lucky not to end up splattered on some cabby’s bumper.

I was only six or so feet behind him now. I leapt and hit him in mid-back, sending him tumbling to the ground.

The world whirled around me. I hit my shoulder on the sidewalk and rolled out of it. I heard Antonio face-plant and roll then hit a trashcan. I felt a little bad about that.

I sprang back to my feet, feeling the shock of the jump run through my knees. There were aches and pains all over me—some from what I’d just done, some from what had happened in the casino fight earlier. The air smelled of car exhaust as I stood on the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and stared at Antonio Morales as he pulled himself off the ground.

He looked younger than he had in the memory I’d pulled from Samuel. And taller. He unfolded himself, bracing against the trashcan, and stared at me with hard eyes. He stood there, slumped, for just a minute, breathing hard.

And then he pulled a gun out of his waistband and pointed it directly at me.

I didn’t hesitate before rolling to the right. It was pure instinct, a flashy move designed to disrupt his aim. I’d seen him stick an un-safetied gun in the front waistband of his pants; this was not a man used to handling firearms.

My suspicion paid off, apparently, and no gunshot rang out. I lost sight of him for a moment as I rolled, faster than any human could have. I angled myself toward him. Still no shot rang out and when I came out of my roll he was adjusting his aim toward me, a second behind.

Like an amateur.

I’d put myself close enough to be within leg’s reach of him. For most people, this wouldn’t have done them any good. Close for most meant point-blank range. An easy shot, easy kill.

For me, point-blank range meant I was close enough to sweep his leg.

And that’s just what I did, kicking them from underneath him with only a little thought to mercy. I didn’t break his ankles, though—and I could have—so mercy wasn’t totally off the table.

He hit the ground and I rolled on top of him, getting a hand on the gun and twisting it to trap his finger in the trigger guard. It was a nice little Sig Sauer. The safety was still off, though, so I fixed that problem immediately.

“Ahhhhh,” he said, making little noises of pain. His finger was at a very uncomfortable angle. “Please—!”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, using the gun’s grip on his finger to twist his arm and turn him face down on the pavement. “But I’m not going to let you shoot me, either, Antonio.”

“I know who you are,” he said, and his words came out with more than a few grunts of pain interspersed between them. If he tried to resist me, he’d lose a finger. Even for a meta, that’d ruin your day.

“You have no idea who I am,” I said, and pushed him over. He didn’t fight, to his credit. Probably out of fear for that finger. Pain is a powerful motivator. “I’m with the—well, with the government agency responsible for policing metas.”

“Oh, yeah?” He was face down on the sidewalk now, and I was trying to decide whether to cuff him or not. If I did, it was only because I feared his belligerence, not because I really wanted to arrest him. He’d capped a Century operative in the head; while that may have been against the laws of the city of Las Vegas, it had looked like self-defense to my eyes.

“Yeah, but don’t test me,” I said, “you go into Treebeard mode and you’ll need to regrow some limbs—litera—”

“Oh, ha ha,” he said, face muffled against the pavement. “Like I’ve never heard that one before.”

I cuffed him. I didn’t really want to, but it was as much for his safety as mine. If he tried to run again, I’d have to chase him, and by this point I was tired and fed up enough to shoot him just to get it over with. I pulled the gun off his finger when I was done, but none of his tension dissolved as I finished.

The crowds surged around us. A few lookie loos stopped, taking cell phone videos of us. I flashed my badge. “FBI. I’m going to have to ask you all to step back, please.” Most of them cooperated, save for a drunken guy with a beer flask that was almost as tall as me. I thought about pushing it, but I didn’t need trouble right now. “Let’s go talk over here,” I said to Antonio, lowering my voice. I helped him to his feet and steered him toward the footbridge ahead.

I sighed. I’d recognized where we were but hadn’t given it much thought. We were standing on the corner of Treasure Island’s block, just across from the mall. I pushed Antonio gently along, his gun in my hand, and under the footbridge, I saw him glance at the broken concrete wall where Charlie had died. “Your handiwork?” he asked.

“No,” I said quietly. “Someone killed my aunt right there.”

I felt him tense. “It wasn’t me—”

“I know it wasn’t you,” I said and leaned him against the wall a few feet from the place where it had happened. The heat was getting to me again, and I wished I could strip off my suit jacket. “It was Century, I think. The same people that came after you in the pawnshop.”

“I know who they are,” Antonio said with a slow nod and more than a little resentment.

“How?”

“They tried to recruit me,” he said, dark eyes focused on the road ahead. The sounds of traffic seemed especially loud here under the pedestrian footbridge, and the shade provided did little to diminish the Vegas heat. All around us, the sun-lit streets were bright enough that I felt like I needed sunglasses, even here in the shade. “I declined.”

“I don’t know anyone else who’s declined and lived to tell the tale,” I said, keeping my hand fastened around his upper arm. “They’re pretty persuasive.”

“They have this woman,” he said. “Short, kind of … well, chubby. She’s a mind-reader. But she can’t do anything to me when I’m even partially in tree form, because I’m not human, see?”

“You mean the one that was outside the pawnshop when the big guy came at you?”

“Yeah, her,” Antonio said. “Claire or something.”

“I met her yesterday,” I said.

“How’d that go?” he asked, voice laced with irony.

“She’s not going to be dancing anytime soon,” I said. “I sent her off to our prison in the Arizona desert. Unconscious, so she couldn’t cause anyone any problems.” I glanced at him, and he seemed to be looking at me with guarded disbelief. “Listen, these guys—Century—they’re killing everyone. All our people.”

“I know,” he said, nodding slowly. He looked away. “They came to me wanting help with that. Said if I killed for them, I could live, could be part of this … new order they were building. A new world.” He looked back at me and the fear in his eyes was tangible. “Every word they said scared the shit out of me.”

“How’d you get away?” I asked.

“That woman—Claire. Mind-reader? She was there, and she was supposed to tell the guy who came to talk to me what I was thinking.” Antonio’s shoulders were slumped. “When they confronted me, I went to tree form. You could see the panic in her face. She was whispering to the guy, telling him how she couldn’t do a damned thing, couldn’t read me. She was talking loud, her eyes all wide. You could see she was just … she didn’t know what to do. I don’t think she’d ever run across someone she couldn’t … dominate before.”

“What did they tell you?” I asked. “About what they were gonna do?”