Double Cross [2] (32 page)

I wait, straining to make out anything inside the dark rectangular hole where the door was. There’s a pale area to the side that might be stairs or a table.

Please let him be all right
, I whisper, clenching and unclenching the strap of my bag. I wait. A minute. Two minutes. Cars go by now and again, but nobody comes out of the blue house, and the ram just sits there in the open door. A jogger comes up the street, but he doesn’t seem to take note that it’s like twenty degrees and the neighbor’s door is wide open.

I wait. The second hand on the dashboard clock clicks around.

What does it mean? We should’ve had a signal.

Movement at the door. A person? The ram disappears inside the house and the door shuts.

I stiffen. Who was it? One of our guys? A Dork? I would’ve thought one of our guys would’ve waved or given the thumbs-up.

I slide lower in my seat. A neighbor two doors down gets into his car and drives away. An empty school bus rumbles past. The Harrington home stays quiet. How could we not have developed a backup plan or at least a signal? And they turned off their cell phones before they went in.

I wait. Four minutes go by. Six. I consider calling the cops, but they never wanted the cops involved. I try Carter to get his advice on it. Voice mail. I try Packard. Voice mail. I dial Simon and he answers.

He’s on the beach with Ez; at least something’s right.
I tell him what’s happening. He is very strong on my not calling the cops. He thinks I should creep as close to the house as possible and get a better sense of the situation. It’s only dangerous if they catch me, after all. Simon’ll call the cops if he doesn’t hear from me in twenty minutes.

It sounds like a good plan to me. I look around for a weapon to bring. Nothing. My stun gun will have to do. I climb out of the van, shut the door softly, and start off around the block; I’ll come at the house from the back like the mercenaries did.

I feel like a criminal, especially when I get to the other side of the block and have to traipse through a person’s yard and up along their hedge. I hide behind a tree at the corner of four yards. The Harrington yard has no trees, though you can see tree stumps where they recently had them. Most of the snow has melted.

Still no sound or light from the house. The back glass sliding door is broken—it looks like the Kool-Aid Pitcher guy burst through it. If I got nearer, I’d be able to hear what’s going on. I take a deep breath, put my head down, and dash up along the hedge and creep along the side of the house, stopping just shy of the bashed-in door. No sounds at all. It’s weird.

I listen, watching the gray sky, gripping my stun gun tightly. Just quiet. What does it mean? Is everybody in the basement? Slowly I slide my head toward the opening. I feel the heat of the home on my cheek. And then the end of a gun barrel on my forehead. A hand grabs my hair, pulling me into the room. A sting on my arm where glass from the door frame scrapes. Somebody takes my stun gun, my phone.

Otto’s voice: “No!”

My eyes adjust to the dimness and I spot him tied to an elevated chair. “Otto!” One side of Otto’s face is covered in blood, his shirt is ripped nearly off him, and his
cap is gone. The hair on the side of his head looks clumped, like his head’s been bleeding. But he’s alive. Relief and alarm rage through me. “Otto!”

It turns out to be a woman who pulled me in. She lets go of my hair, but she keeps her gun on me. “Where’d you come from?” She’s maybe forty years old, all muscle-bound, wearing antihighcap glasses, of course.
Deena Harrington.
“You hear me?”

“I was out there. Waiting.”

Otto casts an angry glance across the room; I follow it and see Francis, Rondo and the mercenary with the braid, all laying prone on the floor, faces down, hands knit behind their heads. Two Dorks, also wearing the glasses, stand over them holding guns.

“She was supposed to wait,” Francis says.

Did the mercenary with the shark’s tooth necklace escape? My spirits lift. Surely he’ll know what to do, who to call. Then I spy him sprawled next to the wall, near the front door. He’s bloody, and his neck looks severely wounded. “We need to call an ambulance!” I say. “He needs medical attention!”

“Not anymore,” Deena says, practically squeezing my arm off.

“Oh my God,” I say. “Oh my God!”

She gives me a jerk. “Cry and we’ll kill you next. Heads up, T!” She throws my phone to one of the Dorks guarding our guys. “See who she called.” Clearly Deena’s the leader.

T is a short guy with a red nose and eyes that droop at the sides, antihighcap glasses riding down low on his nose. He checks my phone.

I turn back to Otto. “You okay?”

He just shakes his head. Does he mean,
No, I’m not okay
? Or,
Don’t talk
?

“Two disconnects, and a connect to a Simon five minutes ago.” T looks up. “Simon.”

Otto’s expression darkens. Simon’s not the team player you want in a pinch.

Deena yanks my arm. “What do you have arranged with this Simon?”

“Nothing!” The strangest thought occurs to me here: I could zing her. I’m touching her, after all. But I can’t bring myself to. For so long, I believed zinging random people would fry my brain. You don’t just turn that off.

“Don’t fuck around,” Rondo says from the floor. “Call Simon and tell him we have things under control.”

“Okay …” I can’t tell if Rondo means it. I’m wondering if I should pretend to call it off, but really not call it off.

“No pretending,” Rondo snaps.

Does he not want the cops there? Does he want the Dorks to
think
he doesn’t want the cops?

“Just call it off, plain and simple,” Rondo says angrily.

“Stop reading her mind.” Deena thrusts a pair of antihighcap glasses at me. “On! Now!”

I put them on and Deena shoves me at T. “Call Simon. On speaker. Tell him things are under control and you’ll call back later with details.”

T redials Simon, puts it on speaker, and hands the phone to me, gripping my arm way too hard.

We wait. Deena frowns at us all from her post next to Otto, bound and bloody in his chair. T stands ready to take the phone back from me. The other Dork, a lanky fellow in a hoodie and antihighcap glasses, aims his gun at the three guys prone on the floor.

Ring.

I exchange glances with Francis, who nods, best he can with his face on the floor. The lanky Dork kicks his shoulder.

Ring.

I could zing this one, this T who’s holding me now. I start stoking my fear. It still feels like Russian roulette,
but Packard wouldn’t have said it was safe if it wasn’t. He was sleepy, not crazy.

Ring.

But is fear the right emotion for this situation? Isn’t there some saying that you don’t want a jumpy kidnapper? But I won’t give him jumpy; I’ll give him terror.

I’m stoking more than I ever have in my life—I feel it roiling up in me, cold-hot. I suck in a ragged breath as I move on, in my mind, to my hospital equipment triggers. It’s so much fear.

Simon answers. “Justine?”

I swallow. “Well, it’s a good thing we don’t need the cops after all,” I say as I start using my focus to rip the hole in T’s energy dimension. “Were you making a sandwich or what?”

“You’re cool there?”

“Yeah, we’re cool.” I’m feeling shaky. It’s such a risk.

“What happened? Did you find Sanchez?”

I say a little prayer and let the fear rush into T. “Nah, it was a false lead. They busted in on a regular family, who is now pissed about their bashed-in door.” I feel it whoosh out—hot jagged energy—so much fear! Every muscle in me tenses for the mind-crushing blowback. When I’ve given him half of the fear I’ve got, I let our connection close.

The blowback doesn’t come.

“Too bad,” Simon says.

“Yeah.”
The blowback never came.
“You kids have fun.”

“Later,” Simon says, clicking off.

T pulls the phone away and clicks off, staring at it, eyes looking glazed behind the antihighcap glasses. “That wasn’t right. That was a code.” He crowds his pale face into mine. “Was that a code? The sandwich?”

“The sandwich?” I give him my alarmed-nurse trying-not-to-look-alarmed face.

“Jesus Christ!” T screams.

“Get a grip, T!” Deena says. “There was no code there.”

“Yes, there was.” He tightens his grip on me, positively vibrating with fear. My fear.
The blowback never came. I can zing anybody anytime. Or nobody.

“Look at me,” Deena commands. When T looks at her, she bores into his eyes. “There was no code. I heard it same as you.”

But then T looks back at me; now that my fear is inside him, we’re connected. I give him a new look, another one I use to freak my targets out. He lets my arm go and backs away. “It was a code.”

The lanky Dork grabs my arm, gun still on the three guys. “T! The guy bought it.”

Deena glowers at T, who’s wild-eyed, like a cornered animal. The lanky guy and Deena exchange glances. They don’t get why he’s melting down.

Meanwhile I’ve ripped the energy hole between me and the lanky Dork, and I let go of everything else I have in me—the highest-octane fear on the planet. I know when it hits deep because he clenches my arm twice as hard. I’ll have bruises tomorrow. It’s okay, I think, as total peace and calm rain through me. Glory hour.

I turn to him. “Nobody’s coming. Everything’s cool.” My unreassuring reassuring voice. There really is no end to my screwed-up specialties. “Nobody’s going to be shooting poison into the windows or dropping on the roof from black helicopters.”

He stiffens with a jolt that seems to reverberate through his bones.

T says, “What if there was something she was supposed to say on the phone that she didn’t?”

“Pull your shit together, T!” Deena barks. “The woman lurched in here like a drunken bear. Carrying a stun gun! She’s not part of the plan.” She tips her head at me. “What’s your name, honey?”

I give her a frown I don’t feel. “Justine.”

“Justine, here’s what’s going to happen.” A calming voice—for the benefit of her underlings, I’m thinking. “Mayor Sanchez is going to gather all the highcaps in a stadium for a big announcement. All we want is for the highcap people to come forward and be known. A public announcement—that they exist, and here is their social contract with us.”

“Gathered for a slaughter,” Otto says.

“No, just an announcement. Does that sound unreasonable to you, Justine?”

“It will never happen,” Otto says.

Audible breathing beside me. Lanky’s respiration has sped up. He’s also swallowing a lot.

Deena says, “We’d like it to be Mayor Otto Sanchez who gathers the highcaps and makes the announcement, but we don’t need it to be. For every hour he procrastinates putting the event into motion, one of you will die.” She eyes me. “Ending with you. Or maybe starting with you. It’ll be a spur-of-the-moment decision.”

“Let her go,” Otto says. “She’s no threat. She’s not even a highcap.”

“So we’re moving ahead with the event?” she asks.

“It will never happen,” Otto says.

She stalks over and grabs my hair. Yanks.

Horror in Otto’s eyes.

“I’m fine,” I say to Otto. “There’s no problem here.”

“What does that mean?” T demands. “No problem? She knows something. It’s that call! They’re coming!”

“Fuck!” The lanky one says. “We’re fucked!”

“Shut up!” Deena pushes me to the floor. “On your belly. Fingers knit.”

I comply, stretching out and knitting my fingers behind my head, facedown into the carpet, which smells like citrus chemicals. My stomach wound from the cannibal’s stings—did it just open? Then Deena smashes her
boot onto my knuckles, and that hurts, too. This would all concern me a whole lot more if I wasn’t glorying.

“I want to check the perimeter, just in case,” T says. “This isn’t right.”

“It’s not,” the lanky one agrees.

“Get a grip!” Deena pushes her boot harder onto my knuckles. “You’re not going out to check anything.”

The lanky one works his mouth. He’s tasting my fear, buzzing with its vibration, its pitch. I used to avoid knowing my fear so intimately, but Packard got me to turn toward it and understand it.

“This is wrong.” The lanky one backs toward the front door, nearly stumbling over the ram. “I say we kill and run.”

“The fuck we do.” Deena levels her gun at him. “Not one more step.”

He freezes, eyes wide.

“Stop it, you two!” T plunges his hands into his hair, even his gun hand. “They’re coming. We’re running out of time!”

“He’s right.” The lanky one turns to look at the door. “Fuck! We’re fucked! Why did we listen to you?”

“Away from there!” Deena yells, shoelace tickling my hand. I loop my finger into it. “One more step and I’ll shoot you.”

“Fuck you.” The lanky one raises his gun at her, backing away. “I’m outta here.”

“Stand down,” Deena growls.

“Fuck!” says T. “Fuck!”

“Stand down!” Deena shouts.

“You said we could leave at any time,” T says.

“Not now, you can’t!”

“I can’t do this!” The lanky one bolts for the door.

Gunfire. I curl my finger tightly around the lace. I hear a thud, which I assume is the lanky Dork. T yells. More shots. I stay down, eyes shut, trying to pull into an
imaginary little turtle shell as the fighting rages above and on top of me. A shout. Deena’s boot jerks; I hold the lace tight. She stumbles. “Goddammit!” She shoves her boot heel into my jaw. My cheek burns and the inside of my mouth fills with blood, but I don’t let go of her bootlace.

More shots, and Deena falls heavily onto my back, knocking the breath out of me. A sharp pain in my chest. Was I shot? I gasp for air. I can’t feel my finger. I let go of her bootlace. Hands around my neck. I cough and tear at her fingers.

There’s another shot and another. I feel Deena jolt, then go still. Heavy. I lie frozen underneath. A sensation of warmth on my back, like warm liquid, spreading over me. It feels kind of good, until I realize it’s either blood or piss. I’m too freaked to move.

“Justine?” Francis’s voice. The weight lifts off me. I try not to think that it’s her body.