Double Cross [2] (37 page)

We emerge into the bright winter day, the sky a brilliant blue. Carter’s down the block, leaning against his car.

Packard tilts his face to the sun, eyes closed, cinnamon curls shining coppery. “I won’t die in that restaurant,” he says. “And there’s no more reason for me to stay in Midcity. Especially now.” He turns to me with a pleasant gaze, features soft. He looks more handsome, more kissable, lighter somehow. And then I get it. He’s happy.

Carter comes and takes Packard’s suitcase. Parsons will give me a ride to my place.

“Two hours,” Packard says. “McGonah and Twenty-second.”

“I’ll be there.”

Packard glances at the cars whizzing up and down the street. “Maybe we should stick together.” He comes to me and winds his fingers around mine. “We’ll get you everything you need.”

I put my finger to his lips. “I’ll be there. Let me pack up my life.” And then I kiss him.

I have Parsons drop me off at the end of the block, just in case reporters are around, and I enter the building from the back. Up in my place, I scan through with a laserlike focus. Passport, laptop, my most favorite shoes, boots, clothes, books and jewelry. My Victorian lady sleuth mystery. I don’t even bother to change out of my hospital handoffs.

Not fifteen minutes later, I’m driving over to Shelby’s with two suitcases in the back of my Jetta. My car, my place—I’m leaving everything, and it feels exactly right.

“Good-bye, Gumby,” I say, putting his arms upward. Happy Gumby.

I give her a call en route. Phone off. I try Avery and he answers on the first ring. “Yeah!” He sounds distraught, out of breath. Crashes and yelling in the background.

“Where are you?”

“Shelby?” he shouts over the din. “Is that you?”

“No, it’s Justine. Do you know where Shelby is?”

“With a target. Iceboating.” More crashes from his end. “Fuck! Justine, my factory! They’re destroying my place!”

“Who?”

“The cops! They tossed us out, and they’re smashing everything!”

“What? Since when? Who the hell ordered that?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

Avery’s factory is only a few blocks away. I do a U-turn. “I’m coming to get you. We’re going to talk to Otto.”

“What if he ordered it?”

“He didn’t,” I say. He’s sleeping, or at least he was an hour or two ago. Otto needs to understand that he’s alive because of Avery.

And more than that, I need to tell Otto good-bye. I’ll see Shelby and the other disillusionists later, but I won’t
see Otto—possibly ever again. He deserves a personal good-bye. I’ll leave Packard out of it.

Grimly I think about Dad way out in the boonies. He deserves a good-bye, too, but there’s definitely no time to drive out there. Then it occurs to me that Packard would gladly stop by on the way out. I know that suddenly. I know
him
.

A distraught Avery hops into my car, hair sticking up every which way, dirt and oil covering his clothes. Breathlessly he describes the destruction. That factory’s his life.

“Otto will want to make this right,” I say.

I slam into a parking space reserved for somebody named Kendall Cantrell just a half block down from the hotel entrance. Let them tow me. We hop out and rush through the noontime crowd. We’re almost to the hotel entrance when I spy Otto walking out and heading in the opposite direction. He’s in his disguise—no cap and dark sunglasses—and his gait is slow, hunched, cast arm tucked under his big overcoat. Should he be out of bed?

“Hey!” I don’t say his name. I don’t have to.

He turns. “Justine!” He strides toward us, looking surprised. “Where were you?”

I rub my arms; it’s blustery here near the lakefront, with no buildings to block the wind. “I had some coffee in the lobby, went to see Packard, tried to find Shelby …”

He comes to me; I put up a hand as he comes in for a kiss. “Otto, you have to hear this. This is Avery, who owns the factory that makes the antihighcap glasses. It’s because of him that you’re free right now. Avery, tell Otto what’s happening.”

Otto isn’t looking at Avery; he’s looking at me. He knows something’s wrong.

“Avery saved your life by helping us, and now his life is being destroyed,” I say.

Finally, Otto addresses Avery. “I need to hear this,” he says gravely, looking up the street, mumbling something about reporters. “Come.” We cross the street at the light and head into the lakefront parklands. Smart. Nobody in their right mind would go strolling out there on a cold, windy day like today. It’ll be obvious if anybody follows us now.

We walk along the paved path, heading toward the lake, as Avery tells the story. Otto asks Avery questions. Did the cops show a warrant? Are they searching for something? As Avery describes the violence, the destruction, Otto pulls off his sunglasses and puts them in his jacket pocket; he’s looking at Avery, but he doesn’t seem to be listening. He shouldn’t be out of bed.

We pass Kotton Krazy, a little cotton-candy stand with a clown painted on the side. It’s shuttered for the winter.

The wind blows stronger as we near the shore, and I pull my hoodie hood up and push my sleeves down over my hands, looking all around. “I don’t see any reporters,” I say.

“Good,” Otto says.

We stop beside the jumbled rows of boulders, the size of monster truck tires. Otto places a foot on a boulder and glances at me, a question in his eyes. Beyond him, more boulders, and then the waves, whipping up into whitecaps. I pull the strings of my hoodie hood tight, wishing I’d grabbed a proper coat, but who needs a coat in Mexico?

Again I remind him that if it wasn’t for the list Avery gave us, the Dorks would still have him.

“I’m grateful,” Otto says, not even looking at Avery.

“And now he’s in trouble because he helped us, Otto. He’s a friend to the highcaps. Can’t you call somebody? Call off the raid? The city needs to make this right.” The wind blows clear through my skirt.

“Justine—” He turns to Avery. “I need a moment.”

Avery shoves his hands into his pockets and walks over to a nearby picnic table.

Otto fixes me with a deep, tender gaze. “What’s wrong?”

“Otto, Avery’s factory—”

“No, us. What’s going on? Last night I thought it was just the events, but then today …”

I shake my head. “Otto—”

He looks at me, eyes dark, hair whipping in the wind.

I put a hand on his arm.

He shakes me off. “What’s going on?”

“I can’t be with you.”

“What? Of course you can. We belong together.”

I say, “I think we depend on each other for solace and we confuse that with affection.”

“I never confuse it with affection,” he says. “Neither do you. You fought to find me. You risked your life.”

“And I’d do it again, but it’s not love, and it can’t be.”

He dips his head, like he’s not quite seeing me right, not quite hearing me right. “Is this because of what I told you? What I did to the Goyces?”

“It has nothing to do with that. It’s just things I realized today. I realized I’ve been making my decisions out of fear. And …”

He stills, eyes glazed. “No—” He seems so far away, suddenly. Like a stranger. “It’s Packard.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Packard did this.”

“I did it,” I say. “I realized it. I saw him … that’s all.”

“You’re confused. You shouldn’t make decisions after what you’ve been through.”

“Otto, I’m clear for the first time.”

Otto’s eyes look distant, as though his thoughts are spinning far away. The wind whips his hair against the side of his face, his mouth, and he lets it. He’s starting to make me feel nervous.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“You’re telling me that you went to see him this morning, and all at once you realized …”

“Yes.”

He casts a dour glance at Avery, who’s huddled on the bench.

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

He pulls out his phone, and I sneak a look at the clock tower. Forty minutes to get to the rendezvous spot.

“I need you out here,” Otto says to whomever he’s dialed. “Lakefront.” He turns and waves at the street.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m handling this.” He gestures Avery over. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Did he have guys sitting in an unmarked car up on the road? Is he going to send them to investigate the destruction? “Otto, I want you to help Avery because it’s the right thing to do. I’m not going to change my mind.”

Avery comes up. Otto doesn’t say anything, and there’s this long, weird silence where Avery scuffs his foot against one of the boulders.

“I understand I owe you,” Otto says to him.

Avery pushes his hands deeper into his pockets.

The tips of my ears are starting to freeze. Why are we standing out here? “We should go in soon,” I say.

Otto casts a glance around. “Soon enough, my sweet.” Slowly and casually, as if he’s extracting a cigar, he slides a hand into his breast pocket, pulls out a gun, and points it at Avery.

“Otto!” I say, thinking he’s playing some sort of joke.

Avery puts up his hands and steps backward, losing his footing in the boulder bed.

Pop!
The sound sends a jolt through me. Avery falls into the rocks. Shot. In the chest. Then,
Pop!
His head jerks.

I gasp. Avery stills.

“Stop it!” I scream as Otto steps closer, casually shooting him two more times.
Pop. Pop.
A silencer.

Otto lowers the gun, eyes on Avery, sprawled in a crevice between two boulders.

And then there’s just the wind.

“Oh my God!” I clamber over a boulder, near as I can get to Avery. Wave spray soaks his clothes. I grab his arm and his hair and pull, trying to get him unstuck from the crevice. I let go when I see that his face is half gone, all bones and brain. I clap my hands to my mouth. “Avery!”

I turn to gape at Otto, who stands stiff as a statue, eyes on the horizon. “What the fuck?” I search for Avery’s hand, thinking to hold his hand, just in case there’s life still in him. “Fuck!” I find it and grab on. Still warm, but his body is twisted all wrong. I don’t know what to do. Did this just happen? I can’t think what to do. I hold his hand.

A hand on my elbow. Otto. “Come out of there.”

“Fuck off!” I yank out of his grip, but he grabs me again—hard—and hoists me off the boulders back to the dirt. I try to shake him off. “Get away!”

But he has his good arm clamped around me. It’s like an iron vise around my chest, holding my back to him. I feel the hard outline of his cast on my shoulder blade.

“You killed him!” I claw at his forearm, kick his legs. “You fucking killed him!”

And then Sophia’s in front of me. “Sophia!” I say. “He shot Avery!”

She smirks.

“It’s not a joke. He shot him!”

She just gazes at me weirdly and says, “Maybe Avery shouldn’t have had that antihighcap chip implanted in himself.”

“What? He was a friend to highcaps.”

She keeps gazing at me. Is there something wrong with my face?

Shit!

I clamp my eyes tight, trying to jerk out of Otto’s grip. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she says. I feel her fingers on my eyebrows, my cheekbones, spreading the skin around my eyes to make my eyelids come open. I fight her with all the facial power I have, but she’s digging into my eye sockets, forcing my lids open. I try to jerk my head around. “Get away from me, you freak!”

“Shh.” Otto’s chin comes down like a pike in the top of my head. “It’ll be over soon.”

“Fuck off! Fuck!” I squirm as Sophia comes closer, brown eyes and sharp womanly brows blotting out the lake and sky behind her.

“You can’t do it!”

I can feel her breath on my lips. “I am doing it.”

I jam my elbows back into Otto’s chest—there’s a broken rib there somewhere—fighting to get my eyes shut. Sophia’s fingernails gouge the tender skin around my lids. Air on my eyeballs. I can’t shut them!

“An hour?” she asks.

“Take the day,” Otto says.

“An hour would probably do it.”

“Take the day,” Otto commands.

“No!” Frantically, I picture Packard, the way he looked when I told him I loved him. Our kiss. “I won’t forget,” I say.

Otto’s voice sounds distant; something about my having coffee in the lobby. I start to feel fuzzy. I cling on to the vision of Packard. Fingers around mine. Happy for once.
I love you
.
I love you. You know that, right? For so fucking long, Justine.

Sophia’s giant face starts to blur.

T
HE
9-1-1
OPERATOR
wants me to stay on the line, but I don’t want to talk anymore. I hang up, hazy with shock. How could he? I climb over a boulder to get nearer to Avery’s bloody, twisted body, clichés about dead people looking like broken dolls running through my mind. He does look like that, and I have this urge to right him. I pull on his arm, thinking to unwedge him, but he slips down farther, and I almost fall right into him.

What am I doing? I move back to the flat dirt and crouch, hugging my knees, tears cold in my eyes, or maybe that’s the spray from the waves.

“It’s okay,” I whisper. But it’s far from okay. I guess I’m saying it to his soul, like,
Things will be okay, don’t be scared.
Not that I really believe it. I don’t know anything. I don’t trust anything.