Phantom Instinct (9780698157132) (13 page)

T
hey took his truck downtown to Joe's Cafe on State Street. Aiden walked into the restaurant loose-limbed and self-possessed. In a booth by the front windows, they drank beer from bottles and ordered steaks bloody rare. Harper observed him. In the evening light, his face was angular and strong, his eyes calm. The tension that had thrummed through him, like a string tuned too sharp, was gone, at least for now. He looked at her with what seemed like wonder and an open thirst. She wanted to finish their dinner and drive back to his place.

He held out his hand, palm up, smiling. She took it. He closed his fingers around hers and rubbed the ball of her palm.

“Coffee?” he said.

“I don't need caffeine to get me going again.”

“Speed metal music?”

“Who seduces to speed metal?”

“F-16s strafing a landing strip?”

She laughed. His eyes sparked.

“You look good when you're happy,” he said.

“Then keep it coming, boss.”

She turned his hand in hers. A fine line of scars ran toward his elbow.

“The fire,” he said.

She squeezed his hand.

“You can ask. You were there.”

She hesitated. To ask meant uncaging memories that had claws. “Do you have nightmares?”

His smile thinned. “You know zombie movies? The scene where they swarm a person's car. Dozens, hundreds, moaning, slapping, biting, just everywhere.”

She nodded. “The main stairs at Xenon. I still see them. Flailing like worms.”

“In the nightmare, I'm swarmed by shooters and I can't fire my weapon. I can't get my finger on the trigger. Can't find Sorenstam.” Eyes on her. “Can't find you.”

Heat spread up her neck to her face.

“It happened when I got back from my second tour, too. Meet the new dream, same as the old dream.” He shrugged and peeled the label from his beer bottle. “Were you deployed?”

“Menwith Hill, England.”

His gaze grew shaded. Maybe he knew that Menwith Hill was a listening post.

“I spent my assignment in a Charlotte Brontë novel,” she said.

“Got it. Of course you did. You don't have to send the commando sheep from the Yorkshire moors to kill me.”

Smiling, he peered out the window. On the busy street, red neon and headlights lit the view. In the next booth, a group of people laughed and snapped photos, the flash from their cameras strobing. Aiden shut his eyes and looked away.

“Covering your six is standard for you, isn't it? You were trained to worry,” Harper said.

He paused before looking up again. “I was trained that in combat you do not get second chances. So pay aggressive attention to detail, execute flawlessly, and expect the unexpected.” He glanced at the street. “You can't turn it off.”

“Hypervigilance.”

“I could hardly remember what safe and calm felt like. I was more comfortable pissed off and on edge.”

She took his hand again. No wonder he had paranoid tendencies. Quietly, she said, “Any triggers?”

He continued to watch the street. “Heat.”

Her throat constricted.

He turned to her. “You?”

Thinking of Drew's last moment was a trigger. So were loud bangs, screams, the smell of smoke, and the smell of bourbon.

“Yeah. It's a feed from an electric wire, and you can't shut off the power,” she said. “How do you handle it?”

“When I came home from Afghanistan, I joined the sheriff's department. Being a cop—okay, sure, there's a thrill. But I was trying to lower the volume. Coming out of combat, I wanted a job, something I could be good at, someplace where I could make a difference. But I wanted to dial it all down, back to normal range.” He looked at the street, orange with sunset and lengthening shadows. “Thought I had. Tried to. For a while, anyhow.”

He had turned somber. “Since the injury? Cognitive processing therapy. In rehab, I learned ways to unwind the anger from the depression. You have to fight the cascade of impulsive and irrational feelings. The first line of defense is to slow down, cool off, and think. That helps get an edge.” He looked at her. “So does talking to you.”

She rubbed her hand along his arm. He drank his beer and swept the street again with his gaze.

“And if we ever face a zombie attack?” she said.

“Carry blunt objects,” he said. “But I think you're the one who's going to be prepared. How many jobs are you applying for, once you get your degree?”

She leaned back. He had her. “Homeland Security. FEMA. Air National Guard. Risk Mitigation Associates. Metro Disaster Preparedness, Inc. Spartan Security. Advantech Systems.” She shrugged.

“FBI?”

“No. No law enforcement agencies.”

“Your background as a cryptologic technician, fluent in Russian—you'd be an asset. Cyberthreats, especially from the former Soviet Union, are a huge portion of the bureau's current focus.”

“I can see myself as a White Hat but not a cop.”

She meant to sound offhand, but as soon as the words left her mouth, she flinched. He was being forced to see himself in those terms, and she knew it hurt.

“That came out wrong,” she said.

“Forget it.” He held her gaze. “You haven't asked me about the video Sorenstam showed you. What I did at the station that time.”

“When you went after the other detective.”

“Ask.”

Okay. “What the hell was that?”

“Misidentification. It happens when the brain fails to keep an uninterrupted view of the world.” He set down his beer. “The brain normally processes images and predicts what's coming, so we have instant focus. It's a steady cam that helps us see straight. That day, the camera crashed.”

“So what did it feel like when you saw Perez? A roll of film slipping off the reel?”

“A disconcerting feeling. Like déjà vu,” he said. “You saw—Perez's in his fifties, with that gut. But when I saw him, I felt with crystal certainty that I was looking at the shooter in disguise. Complete confidence. It was like an electric jolt that hit me in the head and flew out my fingertips.”

“Even though Perez looked nothing like the shooter. And you knew that.”

“You're trying to be logical.”

“I'm trying to understand how this works.”

“I thought he was taunting me. I thought the shooter was a mad genius who had perfected a disguise so that nobody else could recognize him. It was blowing my mind.” He watched the street. “So I tackled him. I was unarmed, but what I wanted was my service pistol, maybe a Taser and a telescoping baton.” He turned to her. “So now you understand. The department isn't going to trust me with a duty handgun when at any moment I might decide that Santa Claus at the mall is actually a hired killer.”

“Have you done that?”

“There's time. I'm making a list and checking it twice.”

Outside, people strolled along the sidewalk, chatting and laughing. Traffic brushed past. She saw a low swirl of red-brown, canine motion. She refocused.

Aiden followed her gaze. “What?”

Up State Street, in the middle of the pedestrian crowd, a heavily muscled dog stood on the sidewalk.

“The dog.” She leaned forward, trying to see the dog through a stream of people and headlights shining on the road. “Hundred yards away.”

Aiden stood up, flipping the tail of his shirt down. “I see it.”

He stalked to the door and out of the restaurant, intent, a hitch in his step.

She grabbed her things, threw some bills on the table, and ran out the door after him. People swirled past her on the street, music flowing out of a club, loud guitars and an amplified wail. Half a block ahead, Aiden forged through the thick evening crowd. Beyond him, the dog raised its heavy black head. It spun and ran off.

He crossed a street against the light and kept going. At an Italian restaurant, people sat at sidewalk tables. Music rolled from the open windows. A group stood waiting outside the door.

Aiden stormed toward them, the hitch in his step more pronounced. Harper hurried. Aiden plunged into the group. Harper heard a shout and a glass breaking as it hit the sidewalk. She broke into a run.

Somebody cried, “Hell are you doing?”

Aiden grabbed a man and threw him across a nearby table. A woman screamed. Glass and plates flew, hit the sidewalk, and shattered. Chairs tipped over backward as people scattered. Aiden went down with the man, fighting.

Harper ran into the fray.

“Fuck is this?” a man yelled.

She shoved through the crowd. Aiden was on the ground, kneeling on a man's back. Skinny guy, jeans, a hoodie askew over his head. The guy was thrashing. Aiden had one knee in the small of his spine and was twisting his arm back behind him, as if ready to cuff him.

“Shut up and don't move,” Aiden said, breathing hard, his face dark.

The guy in the hoodie kicked and tried to buck out from under Aiden's grip. “Get off me, asshole.”

Harper forced her way to his side. “Aiden.”

Aiden pressed the man's head to the concrete. “Call 9-1-1.”

Confused, she fumbled her phone from her pocket. Behind her, a woman said, “I already called.”

From the restaurant, a young man pushed through the crowd, face dull with anger. “Get off him.”

Harper said, “Leave him alone. He's making a citizen's arrest.”

He shouldered her aside and pulled on Aiden's shirt. It exposed the pistol in the waistband of his jeans. Skittishly, the man stepped back.

“He's got a gun.”

The man pinned beneath Aiden clawed at the concrete. “Get off me.”

Harper knelt at Aiden's side, heart pounding. She pulled the hood of the sweatshirt off the man's head. He continued to thrash.

Aiden reached around to the small of his back. Harper's fear ran out of her fingertips like sparks.

She grabbed his hand. “No.
No.”

Aiden gave her a look, seemingly taken aback by her reaction. Then he moved his hand away from the gun. Faintly, she heard a police siren.

Aiden pressed his hand to the man's neck. “That's them. Flag them down.”

“Aiden,” she said.

He bent to the man's ear. “Did you think you could get away with it forever?”

She took hold of Aiden's shoulders. “Who is this?”

Breathing hard, Aiden said, “Him.”

Harper's scalp tingled. The man beneath Aiden's grip was in his early twenties, with East Asian features.

The sirens grew louder, and flashing blue lights cut across the crowd.

Harper said, “Aiden, I don't know who this guy is.”

Aiden looked up. “Him. Zero. It's Azerov.”

T
he music pounded from the makeshift stage in the beer garden. The wind rattled the hanging lightbulbs, and a crowd slammed pitchers on the worn picnic tables under the trees. Out front, a rank of motorcycles was parked on the dirt, mostly Harleys. In the deepening night, Rosalita's was hopping. People came from up and down the coast to this two-lane strip in Ojai to eat and dance and knock back some of Rosalita's thirty varieties of tequila and four brands of beer. The band was hammering at outlaw rock, the guitarist bent over his ax like Stevie Ray Vaughan. In the kitchen, Jasmine Hay dragged a trash bag from the can, tied it off, and lugged it out the back door.

Behind the restaurant, she slid the bolt on the gate and hauled the rattling trash bag down the alley. She chucked it into the Dumpster. When the lid banged closed, she wiped her hands on her waitress's apron and took a pack of Winstons from her pocket. It wasn't officially her break, but her feet ached and her ears were ringing. She cupped her hand to light a cigarette and stood in the alley, blowing smoke at the dark sky.

The fence muffled the music. The foothills that separated Ojai from the coast loomed pale in the moonlight. She smoked the Winston and stamped out the butt and headed back up the alley.

Outside the gate, the saucer she regularly filled with food for the alley cat had been kicked over. She righted it. The manager of Rosalita's didn't want employees feeding strays. The manager didn't want employees boosting cash from the registers either, but Jasmine was smooth. She had learned not to be greedy. That's how she had kept the job for nine months. Keep things quiet. Just slide by and nobody notices what you're really doing. Besides, she needed the cash. The other waitresses had husbands and parents and boyfriends. She had only herself to count on. At minimum wage, that didn't cut it.

She peered around for the cat, making a kissy sound to attract it.

She heard the click of tags rattling on a collar. She turned. Down the alley, near a streetlight, a dog padded into view. Three heavy steps, and it stopped.

She stood there.

It was half-visible under the streetlight, a soot-faced ghost that cast a heavy shadow. Something hung from its mouth.

She didn't want to know what that thing was. She knew what it was. She took a step toward the gate.

The dog took a step toward her.

The thing in its mouth swung heavily. Feet limp, tail dragging on the pavement. The dog held the cat by the neck, clamped tight in its teeth. She felt a lightning moment of nausea.

She looked around for a rock, something to throw. Nothing. When she looked back, the dog was closer. It didn't seem to walk, just to be nearer. It was breathing easily, its eyes glittering under the streetlight.

Her nausea spread into fear. Unreasoning blank
get the fuck out of there
fear. She backed toward the gate and grabbed the handle.

It wouldn't open.

“Shit.” She rattled the gate. It was locked.

The dog was closer. Standing there with the cat in its mouth, back feet dragging on the road. She rattled the gate again. Something was jammed into the latch on the other side. She thought she might be sick.

She pounded on the gate. “Hey!”

She shouted it, but the restaurant's back door was securely shut and the band was thrashing away in the beer garden. Unless someone happened to be standing directly on the other side of the fence, nobody was going to hear her. And all the businesses on the other side of the alley were shut for the night.

She backed away from the gate, slowly. To escape from the dog, she would have to back all the way out of the alley and run around to the front of Rosalita's. The dog stood in a shadow, and its tags rattled, a cold sound. It appeared again, closer. She could see its teeth now. It looked at her and never blinked. She kept backing up. The exit from the alley was about sixty yards away.

Behind her came the purr of an engine and the crunch of car tires on broken glass. She looked over her shoulder.

The dark outline of a car blocked the exit from the alley. Headlights off. Inside, behind the wheel, the red tip of a cigarette glowed as the driver inhaled.

Jasmine looked at the dog. It dropped the cat, watching her.

Into those teeth, or the grille of the car?

She knew who was behind the wheel. Knew why he was here. Had told herself—for a year—that everything had gone quiet, that the fiasco was over with and forgotten because nobody wanted to mention Xenon ever again. As long as she stayed under the radar and didn't get arrested for shoplifting or receiving stolen property, as long as she didn't get a speeding ticket, as long as the car she had driven that night remained at the bottom of Lake Casitas, nobody could connect her to what had happened. Nobody had seen her driving Zero away from the burning club. Nobody had seen her drop him in Hollywood. Nobody even knew about it. The only person she'd told was Feliks Galkin, and he for damn sure wouldn't talk. Would he?

Idiot. She stood in the alley.

If she didn't move, she had about sixty seconds until she was dead. The car was old, a granny's car, big American thing with a huge hood that drooped toward the ground, maybe a New Yorker. Two tons, probably. It filled the alley. She couldn't squeeze around it.

The dog stood over the cat, facing her, panting. Drool slid from its jowls to the pavement. The music thudded from the distant stage. She inhaled and tensed.

Jasmine turned and ran straight at the darkened car. Fifty yards, forty-five. Her only chance was to leap onto the hood and climb over the roof and jump off the trunk before Zero managed to accelerate and hit her at a speed that would kill her. Forty yards. Tires spun and the engine gunned and from the darkened interior, the cigarette glowed hotter. The car slowly gained speed, looming in front of her. She sensed more than heard the dog behind her, coming.

Fool.
This was inevitable, she knew that now. Zero, Rowdy Maddox, Travis—they went back years together, and she was only a street kid, somebody they'd used for their own purposes.
Drive. One night only. Don't even have to be outside the club. Wait two blocks over. We'll cut out the back door and down the alley and over the cement wall. Meet us at the vacant lot. Nobody will see you. In and out. Dump the car. Go on about your business. Five hundred bucks.

She ran, gauging it. Thirty yards. The car was closing, gaining momentum. The music continued pounding in the beer garden, but she heard only the roar of the engine, saw the hood, and prepared to jump.

She dug in, twenty yards.

The dog sank its teeth into her ankle. She cried out, shocked, and went down. She heard its growl and felt an agonizing pain, teeth biting down on her Achilles tendon. She tried to roll and kick free, but the dog held tight, jaws clamped, ripping her, holding her in place while the car roared toward her. She screamed.

The car braked sharply. Three feet away from her, it stopped. The dog continued tearing at her leg.

She screamed again and knew that nobody heard her: 110 decibels from the amplifiers on the stage, two electric guitars, mikes turned all the way up. Noisy kitchen, the only other place somebody might take notice. Mariachi music from a portable stereo there.

“No,” she yelled. “Get off me, you fucking thing.”

She tried to roll and kick the dog away. She cocked her knee and booted the dog heavily in the head. Its grip weakened. She kicked it again. It squealed in pain and let go.

She rolled and tried to stand, and her foot was useless. She started crawling.

The door of the car opened. The cigarette came out first, hitting the ground with a confetti of red sparks. Then two boots hit the ground. She could see only legs beyond the open door. She crawled, gravel digging into her palms. Then a heavy object appeared, hanging beside the man's leg, swinging from his hand. It was a sledgehammer.