Phantom Instinct (9780698157132) (22 page)

No,
she mouthed.
They're listening.

Oscar stirred and fished a phone from his shirt pocket. His eyes widened. He made a slashing motion across his throat.
Stop talking. Get off the phone.

“Piper . . .”

“I'll call you later,” the girl said, and ended the call.

Harper redialed, but Oscar said, “Don't. They sent me a warning.”

Sorenstam said, “What kind of warning?”

“‘Get off the phone and get away from the cops or Piper loses her fingers.'”

“Jesus,” Harper said.

Aiden put up a hand. “They texted you?”

Oscar shook his head. “They sent me a notification. One-time thing, through a network I set up. It shows up on my screen for three seconds and then fades away. It's not captured and recorded in the phone's system.”

Sorenstam said, “You're telling me you just coincidentally got this dire warning and you can't show it to us? You have no proof? It just vanished?”

“Lady, I designed the system myself so it doesn't leave fingerprints, digital or otherwise. It's come back to haunt me.”

“Right,” Sorenstam said.

Behind them, the LAPD detective whistled. “We're finishing up here. There's nothing to see.”

He gave Harper a hard glare. She knew he was half a breath from charging her with filing a false police report.

She made a hard choice. Turning to Sorenstam, she said, “Tell him to go.”

Aiden said, “What the hell?”

“Tell him I've been punked by a bunch of lowlifes I used to work with. They set this up to ruin my reputation, maybe get me arrested and kicked out of UCLA, get my security clearance pulled.”

“Harper, are you kidding me?” Aiden said.

Sorenstam looked at her askance. Harper said, “Tell them. Let them clear the scene.”

Sorenstam looked like she was the one ready to slap Harper now. But Harper said, “Oscar is telling the truth. I know what he's capable of. And everything he built, he built for Travis and Zero.” She stepped closer and lowered her voice. “This is an elaborate game. One that is designed to put me square in the bull's-eye. Do you understand?”

Sorenstam parsed her face.

“Please,” Harper said.

Sorenstam exhaled and walked over to the LAPD detective.

Aiden grabbed Harper's arm. “Hell's going on?”

She said, “They have her. They know we're here. They let her answer calls from people, but they're monitoring them.” She turned again, scanning the view. “They could have a camera out here watching us. We need to get away from the scene. Piper's in danger.”

He held her gaze. His support seemed precarious. “Okay,” he said.

He headed for his truck, beckoning Sorenstam as he went. Harper and Oscar got in the MINI. She knew what she had heard in Aiden's voice: reproach. The unsaid message:
This is your last chance.
But it wasn't. It was Piper's.

Her phone rang. The display read:
Call blocked.

She answered. Travis said, “See? I can do whatever I want to you, and you can't stop it.”

F
ifteen minutes later, Harper paced back and forth by her car in the parking lot outside Eller's Diner in Westwood. Aiden's truck rumbled in. Right behind him came Sorenstam. They parked and walked over to her.

Sorenstam said, “You're about ten seconds from being arrested.”

“We're inside Los Angeles city limits. You don't have jurisdiction.”

“Try me.”

Harper said, “I made a mistake back at the high school.”

“Just one?”

“Travis knew I wasn't alone. And then he knew when I was. He waited until I got in the car to call me.”

Aiden said, “They had eyes on you.”

Sorenstam said, “You believe her? That's it now?”

Aiden gave her a cool look. “I do.”

Harper squeezed his arm and breathed a quiet, “Thank you.”

Sorenstam said, “Where's the evidence?”

Aiden said, “Harper hasn't developed my delusion. This isn't a folie à deux
.
”

“But you didn't see the video. In Santa Barbara, you heard the supposed phone call from Travis Maddox but can't identify his voice. And we have countervailing evidence—Piper's own words.”

“You want evidence?” He nodded at the night. “I'd wager everything I own that the LAPD hasn't found Piper at that basketball game. Nobody will have seen her there. Because she never went.”

“They're checking.” She turned to Harper. “They consider this a waste of resources. They can sue you for reimbursement, you know. Right after they haul you in for filing a false police report.”

Harper said, “Aiden's right. We need evidence.”

She looked at Oscar. He raised his hands.

“Not me.”

“I'm asking you to help me with some tech.”

“Like what?”

“Travis is going to contact me. He has my phone number. I will lay odds that the next time he calls, he'll either ask me to go to a pay phone or to go to a public place where he can observe me from a distance to verify that I'm alone.”

Aiden said, “He'll want to make sure you aren't wearing a wire. And he'll ask you to get rid of your phone so the cops can't use its GPS to track you.”

“I need another device to mirror my calls and messages. I have cloud services set up. If I can get Travis to text me, the message will arrive on my phone, my tablet, and my computer if they're turned on. I can hang on to my phone and give you the other devices, Detective.”

Aiden said, “Erika won't be convinced unless she hears Maddox identify himself, implicate himself, and show himself to her.”

“Please, give it a try,” Harper said.

Sorenstam said, “Okay.” She still looked dubious.

“I don't know why you think I would invent this,” Harper said.

“You'd be amazed what people do for their own reasons. And how often they involve the authorities. Ever hear of mailing ricin letters to the president? Then blaming a rival?”

“Please, Detective.”

Sorenstam thought about it. “One shot.”

“I'll take it.”

“If all this is true, these people will try to lure you to unfamiliar ground and isolate you.” She glanced at Oscar. “And they'll insist that he accompany you.”

He crossed his arms, hugging himself.

“It won't happen,” Harper said.

Aiden looked him up and down. “Follow me.”

He led Oscar into the diner. Harper turned to Sorenstam.

“I know about you and Aiden,” she said.

Sorenstam took a slow second to look at her. “And?”

Don't blow this.
“You may know him better than anybody except his brother. I'm relying on him for help. If you can tell me whether that's the right decision, please do it now.”

“I've been telling you what to watch out for since the day you came into the sheriff's station.”

“You were angry at him that day.” Harper looked at the pavement. “And you were on the money. I've seen what happens when things go wrong.”

“It happened while you were with him.”

Sorenstam didn't phrase it as a question but a statement. Harper nodded.

Sorenstam glanced toward the diner. “Did he hurt somebody?”

When Harper hesitated, Sorenstam dropped her head.

“That's how he got that black eye. And why he's limping,” she said.

“Later he tried to apologize, but the guy he took down wasn't in the mood.”

Traffic rolled by on the boulevard, slow and unobservant. After a second, Sorenstam looked up. “If you've seen it, why are you asking me whether he's okay? You know he's not. You asking if he's dangerous? You have the answer. Why are you asking me whether to trust him?”

“Because I see the expression on your face.”

Sorenstam turned her head toward the street but not in time to hide the pain in her eyes. If Harper had ever doubted that Sorenstam still cared for Aiden, she didn't now. Her anger shone with grief at what Aiden had lost.

“I know you're furious at everything that's happened to him, and how it affects him,” Harper said. “I want to know if the partner you trusted is still there, somewhere.”

“I don't know.” Sorenstam turned to her. “I tried, for a long time, to tell myself that the man I knew was going to heal and come back. But that's not the way it works with traumatic brain injuries. Especially not to veterans and cops. TBIs don't scab over and repair themselves. They scar. Sometimes the scars rewire you so you look the same, move the same, sound the same. But your mind has been fragmented, and when it reassembles, the spirit that's there is somebody else.”

“Like the flip side of Fregoli's syndrome,” Harper said.

“I'm not a fan of painful ironies.”

“You still love him.”

“I love what we had. I'm confused by this man who looks at me with Aiden's eyes and wants me to love him now.”

“Would you still trust him?”

“That's irrelevant.”

“Not to me.”

Sorenstam's white-blond hair reflected the lights of passing traffic, like a halo. “You hooked up with him. Didn't you?”

“Not a hookup.”

Sorenstam blinked. “Okay. You want relationship advice from me?”

“No. Detective—”

“Erika. No point in standing on formalities at this point.”

“If I survive all this, it would be fun to get drinks so we can bitch about other people instead of snarking about me. But I need to know if Aiden can stay steady when the pressure hits.”

Sorenstam looked conflicted—maybe jealous and hurt. But after a second, she stood straighter.

“Yes. He can.”

Relief and hope bucked Harper up. “Thank you.”

“His bravery . . . he's the same fearless bastard he always was. The face blindness, altered perception—sometimes he knows it's happening. If he heads that way, the important thing is to stop it in its tracks. Help him understand that he's off on a dangerous tangent.”

Aiden and Oscar came out of the diner and walked toward them.

Harper said, “I appreciate it. I hope this discussion doesn't come into play. I hope everything turns out fine.”

“You have a fairy godmother?” Sorenstam said.

“Just like you have a magic dolphin you ride to work.”

Sorenstam smiled, just for a moment.

Aiden and Oscar approached. Sorenstam said, “It'll work.”

Aiden was wearing Oscar's fatigue jacket, T-shirt, watch cap, and sunglasses.

Harper felt both relieved and on edge. “Really?”

Sorenstam said, “Light disguise, and in the dark, if he's a passenger in your car . . .”

“At speed, or at a distance,” Aiden said. “That's all we need. Azerov saw Oscar wearing these things last night. And I'm not that much older than he looks.”

“Hey,” Oscar said. He was now wearing Aiden's shirt. “I . . . wait.”

Harper's phone chirped. The skin on her arms tingled. A text notification hovered on her screen.

She stood motionless in the parking lot with lights from the diner throwing them all into sharp shadow.

The text notification stood out starkly on her phone's display. It had no identifying information—no name, phone number, URL, not anything.

Buy a new pay-as-you-go phone. Activate it. Go to the pay phone at the corner of Wilshire and Federal. It will ring in 60 minutes. If you don't answer, Piper dies.

TICKTOCK.

She held up her phone. Her mouth was dry. Sorenstam and Aiden crowded in to see. The notification faded.

“It's gone,” Aiden said, “What did it say?”

Sorenstam said, “Answer his call at a pay phone in one hour or Piper dies. Ticktock. Asshole.”

“Let's go.”

He glanced once at Sorenstam, maybe to see if she was going to stop him. Maybe for other reasons. But Sorenstam was watching Harper.

Harper returned the look. She nodded at Sorenstam. Then she walked with Aiden to her car. They got in and she fired up the engine. Fifty-nine minutes left. She peeled out of the parking lot.

T
he sun had fallen to the horizon. Dusk was dropping a cloak over the electric splay of lights along Wilshire Boulevard outside the street-front shopping center. Harper stood in line at the kiosk in the first-floor promenade, harried by the echo of conversation around her. A hundred yards away outside the doors, beneath a picket line of palm trees, the pay phone caught the pewter flash of headlights. She had eight minutes left to purchase a cell phone at the kiosk, register it, and get to the pay phone before Travis called. Nearby, Aiden prowled the aisle inside a bookstore, watching her through the windows.

Three people stood in line ahead of her. A single clerk manned the kiosk, a twentyish guy in a black T-shirt with boy-band hair, doing his best to help two teens choose between the pink and the silver sparkle phone cases.

Harper checked the time again. Seven minutes. The teens settled on a rainbow phone case. The woman waiting in front of Harper was purchasing a set of earbuds.

Harper said, “Huge favor. If you'll let me go first, I'll pay for those earbuds.”

The woman looked at her askance.

“Big hurry. It's urgent.”

“You couldn't have thought of that before you stood there squirming and breathing down my neck?” the woman said.

“No.”

“What could possibly be so urgent?”

“Friend's been kidnapped. If I don't buy a new phone so the kidnappers can call me, it's going to be a shit show,” Harper said.

The woman pulled back a step. “Sheesh. Go ahead.”

The teens left. Harper took the woman's earbuds and stepped to the counter. The woman pulled a hands-free headset from the rack and added it to Harper's purchases. “Plus this.”

Jaw tight, Harper paid, tapping her foot as the clerk scanned each item. Five minutes. The noise in the shopping center sounded like an avalanche, cascading onto her. She handed over her credit card. The clerk had a merry air. He whistled while he rang everything up.

“There you go, miss. Would you like our three-year extended warranty?”

She grabbed the phone and tried to rip open the packaging. “No.”

“May I have your e-mail address?”

She tugged on the plastic shrink wrap. “No.”

“Would you like to be kept up to date on our promotional offers?”

The plastic remained slick and impregnable. “I need a knife.”

“What?”

“Pair of scissors. Something sharp. Please.”

The woman behind her said, “Otherwise, the kidnappers won't get the ransom.”

Nonplussed, the clerk found a box cutter and sliced open the plastic casing around the phone. He seemed decidedly less merry. He handed Harper the credit card slip, and she scribbled her name.

“Thanks.” She ripped open the packaging and yanked the phone out, scattering plastic and cardboard and coupons and a mini instruction manual across the kiosk, as if stripping a patient in the ER to reach an injury.

“You really like that phone,” the woman said.

Clutching it, Harper jogged for the exit. Four minutes left.

The phone had an activation code, but she couldn't read it as she ran. She paused at the door and entered it. The phone acknowledged the code and fired up. Her heart was beating like a piston. Glancing outside, she gasped. Somebody was at the pay phone.

Three minutes. Her new phone lit up and pinged and buzzed and beeped and welcomed her to its fantastic world of voice and data communications. The man at the pay phone continued talking, perhaps clinging to his direct line to 1971. Harper fumbled with the new cell to find the thing she needed most: its phone number.

She found it. Ninety seconds. Pushing through the doors, she ran into a cooling night and street noise. The man at the pay phone was leaning against the privacy hood, speaking with a smile on his lips. She walked up and stood close by him, politely but firmly invading his space.

“I need the phone. Right now,” she said.

He glanced at her and lowered his voice. He wore a blazer and khakis and sounded like he was calling a girlfriend, not completing a drug deal. He gave Harper a disapproving look and turned his back. She walked around to face him.

“Some people are going to call this phone and if you're still on that call in sixty seconds, they'll tear this street up.”

“This is a private conversation. Get out of here.”

“Probably with a bulldozer. I'm not kidding.”

Thirty seconds. The guy still hadn't hung up.

From up the street came a piercing, two-fingered whistle. The man at the phone looked up. Aiden was walking toward them, hands at his sides like a gunslinger.

Harper grabbed the receiver from the man's hand and said into it, “He'll call you back.”

She hung up. The man glowered at her, bristling.

The phone instantly rang. He reached for it.

“Bad idea,” she said.

Aiden continued to come on. The man threw up his hands and backed away. The phone rang insistently.

Harper grabbed it. “I'm here.”

“Not good enough,” Travis said.