Double Cross [2] (16 page)

I grab Otto’s sleeve. “Where did you find out about this book?”

Mysterious smile. “Am I not a detective?” He reads on.

“Do you think we should be reading this before bed?”

“It ends well,” he says.

“It better.” I shift so his arms circle around me, and the book is in front of me. I read along with him and we excitedly discuss the details. Benvenuto tries to crush and grind a larger shard, and soon determines that he has consumed glass, not diamond dust. He thanks the Lord for the poverty of the Pope’s underlings.

I sigh my relief. “What a story!”

Gently Otto closes the book. “I know,” he says. “The Pope’s son, killing with diamonds.”

“What a horrible way to die.”

“You can borrow it for Ez if you like,” he says. “Seems right up her alley.”

“It would be almost too much.”

“Isn’t that the point?”

“Right,” I say, taking the book, running my finger over the cover. That would be the point.

I
’VE GOT HIM
in a bear hug at the top of the steps. He twists and struggles and I nearly lose my footing, then I jerk him backward and we fall together on the broken concrete—me on my ass, him on me, on my balls. Pain shoots through me, but I keep hold. He’s already torn away a lot of the wall. More of the bodies show now. I can’t let him back down there, but he’s not so easy to keep hold of these days. He’s nearly my size now.

Henji pulls up and off, but I grab his arm and jerk him down on top of me. He fights me, all knees and elbows, hair in my face. We roll. Glass shards gouge my back. Blood in my mouth.

He tries to get away again and I grab his sleeve, but it rips. I heave up, swing an arm around the back of his neck, and wrap my legs around one of his legs, trying to keep him down with me, but he pushes up, hand on my throat, knee in my balls. Pain. I can’t breathe. Coughing.

I feel fuzzy. The tiles on the ceiling look funny, the words go double.
Riverside Elem
, spelled out twice, diagonal, then floating back together again. He needs to be protected. I can’t let him see in the wall.

“Who are they?” Henji yells, voice cracking. I keep hold of him. “Who are they?”

He thinks it’s Goyces.
He’s right.

But he’s not sure. Maybe it’s not too late. The glass grinds deeper into my back as we wrestle. He finally gets the hard side of his forearm past my chin and smashes it down into my throat. Choking, I twist his finger until I feel a pop, and he cries out and heaves off. I grab his pants pocket, but he pulls away, ripping it, and clambers back down to the broken wall and starts pulling it away.

I jump up and try to stop him, but he’s too strong, too crazed. The concrete parts like rubble when he digs in his hand. He gets hold of something and pulls it out. One of the bodies.

Shit!

He jerks it out of the wall, lets it collapse onto the stairs—a dirty body held together with clothes and something else, like dirty tissues and rags glued to its skull face.
Skin
. All stone-dusty from the wall.

“Who?”

“Leave it, Henji!”

“No!”

He’s brushing pieces of rubble off the body. I grab his arm, but he flings out of my grip; he has more strength than ever.

He brushes dust from what’s left of the Goyce’s shirt—one of the bowling league shirts they always wear, the circle patch over the pocket that says the name in cursive. He’s ripping the shirt. I try to stop him, but he’s crazy now, ripping off the name patch. When he has it off, he comes at me, holding it. “Does that say
Goyce
? It does, doesn’t it? It says
Goyce
!”

“No, Henji!”

He smashes the little patch against my cheek. “Say it!” He pushes me against the wall, pushing and smashing the patch into my cheek. Blood in my mouth. “One of the Goyces! I’m not dumb. It’s from a Goyce!”

He’s right. One of the Goyces from rabbit night. The first Goyces.

“It is, isn’t it?”

Hands on my shoulders. Jerking.

“It was one of the Goyces from rabbit night.” He jerks my shoulders and I shake him off.

“Hey!” I try to get away. A stronger jerk. “A Goyce from rabbit night!”

“Justine!”

I open my eyes. He’s over me, looking at me wildly. “Henji?”

Otto’s gaze darkens.

“I mean—” I’m disoriented. It’s Otto. I’m in Otto’s bed. I was dreaming.

“He told you?”

“What?”

“He told you!”

I look at him blankly.

“What were you just saying?”

“It was a dream.”

Otto grabs my shoulders and pulls me up. “I heard you. You were dreaming about the Goyces.”

I shake my head, trying to shake out the confusion.

“He told you. What did he tell you?”

“I don’t
—
”

“I didn’t hear wrong! Don’t lie to me.” He sounds a little out of breath, dark curls wild under his crooked beret. “You know about the Goyces.”

“No, it was a dream.” I draw back until my shoulder blades hit his paneled headboard.

“A
Goyce from rabbit night
. That’s what you said. I heard you.”

“Yes, but I don’t
know
about them.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Nothing,” I say, heart racing.

“How could you possibly dream that dream?”

“I didn’t. It’s Packard’s dream. I was dreaming
Packard
’s dream. Just these bodies and you guys called them Goyces.”

He leans nearer to my face, as if proximity will make things clearer.

“Otto, it’s Ez, the dream invader. She got us.”

“Ez?” He stills. “Both of you?”

“She linked to us,” I say, wishing very badly that I’d told him when I had the chance. “She conferenced us.”

I watch the emotions flow across his face. “That was you … sharing Packard’s dream?”

“Yes.”

“You saw Goyces?”

“I saw a decomposed body, and you guys kept calling it a Goyce. Otto, what’s a Goyce? What happened with you two?”

“So you don’t know.” His failure to hide his extreme relief says everything about the enormity of what I just dreamed. He switches on his bedside lamp.

“What the hell happened in that old school?” I ask.

He takes a deep breath and sits up. “Ez has you two conferenced?”

“Yes.”

“How long? How deep? Can you feel her yet?”

“No, it’s nothing, and she’s nearly rolling. It’s nothing.”

He frowns. “She has you two and you didn’t see fit to tell me? You call it nothing?”

“I didn’t think … Oh, Otto. I’m so sorry.”

“Why wouldn’t you tell me? Did Packard threaten you?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

I see all my rationalizations now for what they were—excuses not to tell. “I didn’t want you to know. I wanted to solve it and have you never know.”

There’s a new tightness in his expression; even his eyes seem smaller. I reach up to right his crooked beret, but he pushes away my hand. Like he doesn’t trust me to touch his head now.

A hoarse voice: “Why?”

Panic rises in my chest.
Here it is
, I think. I kept it from him when I shouldn’t have, and now he’s angry.

“Why?”

I go on incoherently about feeling guilty for causing it, and the Dorks, and the stress of the imprisoned highcaps, but I know that if I’m not honest now, he’ll never trust me again, so I dig deeper. “Because the dream invader, you know, she plunges you back in old memories and scenarios. And because Packard and I were conferenced, I felt scared that my old memories of when we were close, when we were almost, you know …”

“Yes, I know,” he says impatiently. “Together.”

“I thought they’d be the ones Ez would grab and stir up and explore, and I would be reliving that whole time with Packard—with
him
following along in my mind. It felt so …” I pause. “Like cheating. That reality isn’t my reality anymore. I didn’t want to go back there with him riding along. I just wanted to unlink us before you ever had to feel upset about it. Because you have so much to deal with.”

“To prevent me from being upset. To protect me from
you
reliving your past.”

“I know it sounds so …” I can’t find a damning enough word.

His eyes look cold, stony. “You felt it was best to keep me in the dark to protect me.”

I have nothing to say. Of course he’s right.

“What do I care that you have a past with Packard?” he demands. “What do I care of memories? I care what you do
now
. I care who you
are
.”

I feel small and despicable under his anger.
Who I am
is not looking so good. “I’m sorry.”

“One thing! One thing I asked of you!” His eyes are so cold, I can’t see into him anymore. “What was the one thing I asked of you? The one thing?”

“Never keep you in the dark.”

“That’s right. Because managing me, and lying to
protect
me, is the best way to destroy me.” He flips the quilt off himself and gets out of bed. “My not knowing suited you, and everything else be damned.” He grabs his trousers. “Your only allegiance is to yourself. Just like Packard.”

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“Apparently so.”

“Where?”

“Out.”

“It’s four in the morning.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“What about the Dorks?”

He shrugs on his long coat over his bare chest. “I will not be kept ignorant. I will not be managed.”

“Otto, at least take one of your bodyguards.”

“If I can’t walk in my own city alone, then I really do have nothing.” And with that he strides out of the room. Part of me wants to run after him, but it would be futile. I listen to his steps down the hall, then the soft thunk of the elevator doors.

I rest my hand on his side of the bed, move it under the sheet, searching out the last of his warmth. What have I done? Don’t keep him in the dark—it was all he’d asked. A dangerous dream invader had Packard and me linked up; Otto deserved to know that. Even Packard warned me to tell him.

I go to the window and look down at the empty sidewalk,
pale under the streetlights. A bus rolls by; from up here it looks like a fat, white rectangle. A dark figure emerges out onto the sidewalk and trudges northward, hunched against the bitter wind.

I think about calling one of the bodyguards to head out and follow Otto, but that would just be more managing him. He’s right about so many things.

The dream seeps back down the sides of my consciousness. Packard, keeping Otto from some truth—
protecting him
—those were the words in the dream.

I press my nose to the cold window, feeling so ashamed. I pretended to myself that keeping the Ez problem from him was in his best interests, but it was all about what I wanted. He was right about that, too.

People love Otto because of the way he looks at you, the way he inspires you to rise beyond yourself. It’s such a wonderful feeling. I didn’t realize until tonight how awful it feels when you let him down, and that warm regard drains away.

He disappears around a corner.

He deserves so much better. I have to find a way to make this right.

A
T
6:30
A.M.
Shelby, Simon, and I meet with Ken—the one highcap accountant anybody could locate—at a coffee shop by the river. The wind’s not coming off the lake for once, and the river’s sweetly putrid scent fills the air. The Midcity River never freezes.

Ken gives us a mind-numbing tutorial on tax audit terms and processes. Afterward, we ride in my car to the Paranoia Factory, and Simon takes the opportunity to fill me in on his Ez investigation, which has hit some
suspicious dead ends
, as he puts it. “Two of the people the cops originally interviewed are missing,” he says. “Vanished into thin air. I also reinterviewed the suspect—”

“Ez?” I say. “You went and saw Ez?”

“Any investigator worth his salt would.”

“That is
not
okay.”

Shelby harrumphs in the passenger seat. “Reopening target cases. Down this road you will find ruin. Both of you,” she says.