Off the Edge (The Associates) (27 page)

“I figured out which was ours and it was…one of the worst. Everything hot or burning. And just…all the bodies. Parts of bodies. It seemed unreal.” It tore something inside him to bring it back up.

No. It was too much. He couldn’t function like this. He’d be no good to her.

He said, “There was a study once noting the high frequency of words like unreal and surreal used in circumstances of tragedy. Surreal is used nearly across the board—”

“Maxwell. Fuck!” She grabbed onto his sleeve. “Tell me.”

He swallowed and forced himself onward. “I identified my family by parts. Their clothing. Gwen…a bit of scalp with a barrette attached, still holding her hair in place. It was a long time ago.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

They’d passed by the hunters without incident. But he could feel others around. Better hunters. The ones you didn’t spot so easily.

“There were live people to save in other cars. A group of us worked all night, shoulder to shoulder, pulling people out, trying to calm them in their bewilderment as they died. People who die like that are bewildered. God, I’d never felt so helpless. And we’d try to get people out only to realize it was a part of a person—you would see that too late. There’s a kind of horror in a human body part that no longer looks human,” he said. “There was this hand that I pulled out—”

“Maxwell,” she whispered.

It felt oddly liberating to confide in her. “I held it for a very long time. Too long, actually, but I couldn’t let it go. I don’t know why. I don’t know if you can understand—”

“Probably not,” she said.

“But I want you to,” he blurted, startling himself. “I think you can.”

She turned her clear gaze up to him. “What was it like? Holding the hand?”

“It was like the world fell out from under me,” he said.

She nodded.

“But not like that,” he added. “It was as if, everything was gone. Of me, of the world. Gone forever. I think of it all the time, Laney. That hand. Severed like that.”

“A hand attached to nothing,” she said.

“Yes. Exactly.” She seemed to understand. “And my world fell away,” he added.

The phone sounded. He answered it.

Rio’s voice. “I see you from the room. You’re almost there. Happy Traveler. It’s the lit sign, middle of the block above the drugstore. Room 308. Don’t fucking look around. There’s a white Honda heading south. They’re searching. Don’t know if they see you.”

“Got it.” he hung up.

“It sounds…” she shook her head. “So your world fell away.”

“My world, and parts of myself. The good parts, mostly.”

“People don’t lose parts of themselves—”

“I’m telling you what happened,” he said, perhaps too curtly. “It fell away.”

She bit her lip.

The white Honda slowed. “It all fell away,” he said simply. “I lost the dog’s nose under the table, you know what I’m saying? The kitchen hanging with a spatter on it. The telephone voice, shoes in the rain…”
Everything that made him human.

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“And then you started doing this? This secret agent stuff?”

“Tracking people by language,” he said, but his mind went to his old dictionary, one of his mother’s prized possessions. Sitting in storage. Probably eaten by mice. His mother had sent him off to college with it, and he’d used it and treasured it, feeling connected to his family. They’d used to play games out of it.
Cookbook full of wishes,
he thought with a pang. Fucking song.

“This is us.” He pointed at a blue door underneath a cracked plastic sign lit from the interior by a flickering bulb;
Happy Traveler
was written in Thai across it.

They entered and headed up the steps and into a small, stuffy lobby clad in bright vinyl panels framed by wood. Four ratty chairs were clustered around a glass table, and a gold mobile presided over a dying palm in the corner. The clerk was so absorbed in a book that she barely looked up. That worked. They turned down a slim hall and headed up a dank stairwell.

“I’m so sorry,” she said when they got to the third floor. “I can’t even imagine. The world falling away.”

Except she could; he knew she understood; this woman alone would understand; the goodness of that so overcame him that all he could do was squeeze her hand. She was with him in a way nobody else had been for a very long time. He wanted to tell her more, suddenly, but he wasn’t sure how to start.

It was as if he’d forgotten how to connect. He’d told her this thing, but real connection was like an open valve, and it opened you to pain. He didn’t know if he could stand it. “We have to focus, now,” he said.

“Got it.”

They stopped in front of 308. “Thank you for telling me,” she whispered as she straightened his jacket.

Rio opened up.

“Go on in.” Macmillan nudged Laney forward and she walked in.

“Good day for room service,” Rio said in a low voice. The Association all-clear.

Macmillan gave the standard reply: “Clears the mind.” He followed her in and Rio shut the door.

Room 308 had pink walls, a small desk, a struggling air conditioner, and a double bed with a jungle print spread that matched the curtains.

“No leg irons.” Laney flopped down on the bed. “That oughta earn a few stars from you.”

He caught her gaze. “It’ll do.”

“You have it for two days,” Rio said. He didn’t imply the
but
. He didn’t need to. They had hours, not days.

Macmillan followed him to the bathroom and was pleased to find a large window that opened easily and silently. “You oiled it.”

“Months ago. Still glides.”

The window overlooked a sea of roofs and twisty alleys dotted with colorful awnings that would help conceal an escape route.

“The fire escape is stable,” Rio said.

“Good.” Macmillan also appreciated the poor bathroom lighting and a mirror spotted with black where the silvering had oxidized. It meant Laney wouldn’t be able to see her soon-to-be-ugly neck bruises. He wished he could race back to that hotel and rip Rolly apart with his bare hands.

“This room has a telltale,” Rio said. “A creak that travels from down the hall.” He went out and demonstrated it. Sure enough, you could hear a creak when he was three doors down.

The window looked out onto a mirrored building across the street; the blue neon sign of an electronics company down the block reflected off it in wavy geometries. The room would be lit blue at night.

“See the muscle out front?” Rio asked.

Macmillan moved to the window, staying near the side. He saw who Rio meant—it was the way they loitered down on the sidewalk—too on-the-nose. When real people loitered, they had an almost vegetative quality. Macmillan didn’t like that he hadn’t seen that man. He’d breezed past, absorbed in his tale of woe. That couldn’t happen again.

Rio stood next to him. “A lot of reasons for a guy like that to be out there. Still.” Food vendors were coming out to set up for lunch down below.

“Trouble?” Laney got up.

“Probably not,” Rio said. “Just don’t stand in front of the window.” He pulled the curtains shut and looked Macmillan up and down. “You look terrible. Sit.”

Macmillan sat as Laney peeked out through a slit in the curtains. Rio pulled medical supplies from a small box. “Take off the wig.” He put a hand to Maxwell’s forehead. “Fever’s gone. For now.” He brushed aside his hair. “Gash the size of Bolivia on your head. Look at this, your hair’s become a pathogen toupee.”

“I hear they were all the rage during fashion week,” he said as Rio pressed his fingers onto his head, palpating the bump where Dok had bashed his head with brass knuckles. He could feel Laney watching him and not liking that he’d made that joke. She took his pain so seriously. It was a strange feeling.

“Take off your shirt,” Rio grated.

Maxwell protested.

“No time. Do it.” Rio produced a white bottle and a wad of cotton as Maxwell peeled off his shirt.

Laney gasped.

Macmillan looked down to see a nasty scrape glowing inside a line of red-pink bruises on his ribs. More bruises bloomed around his arm and shoulder where he’d fallen, some impossibly dark green and yellow. And there were other bruises not as bad, red patches the size of fists with marble-sized dots of red inside them.

“I’m perfectly fine.”

“Aside from being all beat up with a gash on your head the size of Bolivia.”

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“Nothing,” she said. “And here I thought you liked a precise word.”

Rio’s cheeks hardened, as though he was suppressing a smile.

Macmillan winced as Rio palpated his ribs, heading toward the possibly broken one, finally hitting the spot where the slightest touch felt like a dart of fire.

“Here? Here?” Rio asked, continuing the torture.

“Everywhere. Just patch the scrape and we’ll tape all around.”

Rio gave him a look, because of course it wasn’t just a scrape. He started slathering on the topical all the same. When that was done to his satisfaction, he taped a gauze pad over one of the nastiest of the gashes, then bound his chest; it would at least offer a little support.

“Now the feet,” Rio said quietly. “We’ll soak them first.”

They went to the bathroom and ran warm water in the tub. Soaking would be the best way to get the socks off.

When they were finished cleaning and bandaging his feet, Macmillan eased on the socks and moccasins. He saw his friend to the door and clasped his shoulder. “It’s no small thing, pulling us out of there like that,” he said softly.

“Just make it right,” Rio said.

Thorne knelt in front of the rusted gate to the stall, fingering the smashed lock. Macmillan had been in a hurry to get himself and the former Mrs. Rolly Jazzman out of sight. But you could never hide, not really.

He went into the space and found multiple sets of dusty footprints, and he could see where they’d sat behind the crates. It didn’t mean much.

Yet.

He stood and took it all in. The dusty case. The pattern of broken cobwebs. The ripped Orangina poster. There was always a clue to be found, even with one fugitive. Two people multiplied the likelihood. Three even more. Other people were a liability, even when they were helping you. One of the reasons Thorne was glad to be a lone wolf.

Being a lone wolf was especially safer when you operated under deep cover, the way Thorne did. The other Associates had no idea he worked for Dax—that’s how deep his cover went. Technically, he wasn’t even an Associate. He didn’t have a brainy specialty or wear glasses, and his only talent was knocking heads and creating chaos. Definitely not a team player.

Thorne knelt next to a cigarette butt outside the gate. Judging from the pattern in the dirt, somebody had stood in that spot for a while. The ashes suggested a cigarette held, but not smoked. He picked it up with a tweezers and determined that it had been dropped well after the rains of the night. No way would Macmillan or Mrs. Jazzman have stood in front of their hidey hole, smoking. No, whoever smoked that cigarette was probably a third player. He eyed the windows that looked out onto the sidewalk. Somebody would’ve seen.

One hour, five busted doors, and twelve frightened people later, Thorne had his description. It was Rio who’d been standing out there, waiting for the coast to clear before pulling them out.

Gloomy, ruthless, stylish Rio the assassin.

Even though Thorne wasn’t a proper Associate, he knew all about them. They were like a baseball team he followed from afar; he collected their cards, memorized their stats, and followed their games. He even knew the code they used between them, thanks to Dax: One Associate would say,
Nice day for a walk
or
Nice morning for doughnuts
, something along those lines. And then the other would reply,
Clears the mind.
The exchange was a kind of secret handshake that meant
all is well.
Not saying one of the two parts was a heads up: SOS. Trouble.

Thorne sometimes wondered what it would be like to be in a tight group like that with their codes and back-slapping camaraderie, though he understood perfectly why Dax wanted to keep him on his own.

In the animal world, you had species that were universally despised—Fleas. Cockroaches. Rats. People put a lot of ingenuity into killing them or at least driving them off.

You had that in the human world, too. All his life people had been trying to figure out how to send him away or else kill him. He’d been putting up with it for so long, he was used to it. In short, he was a natural villain. He fit right in with the guys at the auction.

And Dax couldn’t have found anybody more suited to infiltrate that group of crazy, fucked-up, dangerous cretins known collectively as Hangman. Hell, even the Hangman guys were wary of him. Thorne was Hangman four now, and he’d be Hangman three soon, and he planned to climb all the way to the top. He didn’t know how; he never knew how he’d do a thing until he did it. His idol, Bruce Lee, always said to be open to every possibility.

He got Dax on the line. Dax was surprised to hear Rio had been there. Rio should have been on a hit across town during that time frame. Pinned down, Dax thought.

Dax got over his surprise soon enough and gave him a list of the Bangkok hotels Rio liked. Thorne assured him again he’d take the girl away from Macmillan and hand her off to Dax’s own buyer. It wouldn’t be easy, but Thorne would make it work; a reputation as a crazy bought you some leeway, that’s for sure.

No way could the TZ get out—Thorne understood that better than anyone, thanks to his position inside Hangman. In fact, Hangman was possibly the worst group to win the auction. They loved chaos and senseless violence way too much.

He’d never gone up against one of the Associates, but he’d do what needed to be done, even if Macmillan stood in his way, which he would.

Macmillan: Cool and smooth, even in a firefight. Always ready with a joke. A shining golden boy, loved by all. Macmillan was everything Thorne could never be.

Well, he’d fight him all the same.

After Rio left, Macmillan used his phone to log into his personal cloud storage. Working on this tiny screen would be hell, but he could do it.