Shadow Unit 15 (4 page)

"Cheeseburgers and two pies."

"You know how it feels to go where everybody knows your name?" Hafs says. "Well, here I am. And I need you to tell me if I'm going crazy over this."

"I— Sure," Arthur says. "Why me?"

"You're a comics nerd, and this is totally your-power-is-your-undoing stuff," Hafidha answers. She stands up, tablet disappearing into an eggplant-colored satchel. "Also, lunch with handsome scenery? Bonus."

Arthur backs up and lets the parade file past him to the hall. "Were we just objectified?"

"Damn straight we were," Brady says.

"Report me to HR?"

"Eh...Naaah," Arthur-as-Bugs-Bunny says, and Hafidha giggles as she pushes the elevator button.

Todd catches Arthur's eye and winks.

"Somebody ought to make a Gettysburger, you know that?"

Todd feels the chuckle, swallows it. Deadpans, "Hafs.
Scandal
?"

"Twitter exploded every Thursday night," Hafs says, making the lace hem of her skirt bloom with a turn in the elevator. "Damn if I didn't get sucked in, too. I'm
still
mad about James Novak."

"Okay, so this research. How long have you been doing it?"

Arthur sticks his hand out to hold the elevator doors open. "Research?"

"Just started this morning. Anyway. My parents were in this weekend. Gone on Tuesday after we had my birthday lunch. They were here to go to a meeting over at Arkham."

Sol knows Hafidha's parents were in town, but Hafidha usually keeps a wall between her and the survivors's meetings. The elevator doors open and admit a pair of agents, and they all shift to let them in, conversation halted until Sol asks, "Where to?"

"You said burgers? Ollie's," Arthur volunteers.

Hafidha purses her mouth sideways. "The Styrofoam plates get me down."

"Elephant and Castle," Brady says.

Hafidha considers as the doors open onto the lobby, then nods. "I can live with it. Don't think they have pie, though."

"There will be cake," Sol says. "Chocolate cake."

They settle into a flying wedge, Hafs breaking the floes of traffic. "We had a nice weekend, but yeah, my parents witnessed a car accident."

"Oh, that's not good," Arthur says. What kind?"

"Single car. They were driving with the top down and he passed them at top speed screaming no, no, no, and then he went right off the road and plowed into a stone wall. Freaky, right?"

"Freaky," Brady agrees. "Our-kind-of-thing freaky, though?"

"Your spidey senses tingled," Todd says.

"Yes. Erik died because of a freak accident," Hafidha says, and Sol watches Brady suppress the urge to look directly at her or react in any way. "The car's airbags spontaneously deployed, knocking the driver unconscious, and the car hit Erik at a crosswalk."

"That's also terrible. Hafidha, I am so sorry," Arthur says.

"Me, too, Arthur," Hafidha says. "Thanks. But enough sharing and caring for a minute."

They plow straight through crowds on the street, past signs advertising specials for lunch.

"Okay, where was I?" Hafidha says. "Right. Car accidents and connections. I wondered what actually killed the guy, and my spidey senses did indeed tingle. I've been looking into hospital records about car crashes with fatalities all morning—"

"Just to make sure?" Arthur asks.

"Because I can't not think of purple elephants. Now that I'm thinking about it I can't stop," Hafidha says. "And I don't know why but I thought if I could find this one victim...I don't know. I've got nothing but a hunch, and ... all the other stuff. That makes me worry that I'm seeing the monster that isn't there."

"I'm glad you told me," Brady says.

Arthur Tan nods. "And me."

"Vulnerability still sucks, though," Hafidha mutters. "I keep thinking I've seen it all, why should this scare me?"

Todd puts a hand on her elbow. Her failure to flinch puts a twinge of warmth in him. "You've never seen everything," he says.

She kicks him lightly on the shin.

*

Hafidha orders double pub pretzels before they even sit down. Brady waits while she, Todd, and Tan choose their seats. He takes the one remaining, on Hafidha's right so their eating hands don't cross up elbows. He remembers when they used to stick Reyes and Hafs on the same side of the table, so the lefties could coordinate. The more things change, the more they keep on changing.

The waitress looks at them oddly when they each ask for a starter dish
and
menus.

Hafidha demolishes a pretzel and shares the basket around before resuming. "So, tax records—"

"Because you're hacking the IRS, must be Friday," Arthur says, and Hafidha snakes one hand out to steal one of his regular potato skins.

"Tax records show," Hafidha continues, "that Matthew Sheehy was a reporter who sorta kinda got laid off from the
Loudoun Times-Mirror,
but was still making money from them and a few other papers by writing puff pieces, usually about local businesses in the county and personalities. On speculation. Times are tough for everybody."

"The death was ruled an accident," Brady says. Gently.

Todd breaks off a bite of pretzel, dips it in grainy mustard, and stuffs it into his open mouth. He's obviously much too busy chewing to say a damned word, and Brady is grateful.

She swallows and says, "Yes. It was. Single car. Lost control. But the post-mortem examination says cardiac arrest."

That wasn't a congruent cause of death for a car accident, was it?
Daphne would know.
Brady shoves the thought down. "Okay, I'm waiting for it."

"No heart disease, clean tox screen, no embolism, and he was twenty-six years old." Hafidha has a bite of stuffed Yorkshire pudding and looks at Brady.

"Died of fright, is what you're guessing. On one death."

"Well, I can assume he was afraid, from what my folks saw on their way back up from Idlewood."

"We can't follow it up officially," Arthur says.

"And it doesn't fit Erik's accident, if cardiac arrest was the cause of the accident," Brady says.

"One sparrow doesn't make a summer. It doesn't fit with Erik's accident, but it's still weird and I'm looking for more. That's why I'm hacking hospitals."

"Any more unusual cardiac arrests?" Brady offers a coconut shrimp, and Hafidha accepts.

"Nope."

Sol Todd tears off another section of pretzel. "Well, they could be usual-appearing cardiac arrests, natural deaths..."

"People go to the emergency room for anxiety attacks," Arthur says.

"You're buying in?" Hafs asks.

"I'm being helpful," Arthur replies. "Though technically you don't have a warrant for any of this and there's no official notice or anything like that and shouldn't be doing it at all."

"Which is exactly why I'm not doing anything. Doing what? Okay, so admissions for emergency rooms that wound up being anxiety attacks. Should look for Xanax, Klonopin, my little buddy Ativan ... Oh." Hafidha blinks at the air. "There are hundreds. This could take a while. I should probably add it to the file."

"That isn't on the FBI servers."

Hafs gives Brady a look. "Of course it isn't. It's on the server at home."

"Have you looked into insurance claims and lawsuits?" Sol asks, and Hafidha shakes her head. "Freak mechanical failures would lead to lawsuits by the survivors. A lot of the stuff is on paper, though. You mind sharing what you've got with me?"

"That's an offer I can't refuse," Hafidha says. "I can send you the files, too, no problem."

"I'm not much help with research," Brady says. "But I can give opinions."

"Thanks, Danny. But more work later or else we'll need three pies. You gonna eat the rest of those, New Kid?"

*

Hafidha follows Todd into Esther's office, because it's never a bad idea to let Solomon Todd take point. Falkner quirks up an eyebrow, but she's smiling her welcome.

"There is no way I can even pay you consulting fees, Sol. What are you doing here?"

"Hafidha had an idea. I'm helping her check it out," Sol says.

"There's cupcakes," Hafidha says.

"They're parve," Brady says.

"And I didn't eat meat for lunch, because I saw those cupcakes," Esther says. "How about we have our meeting over a few?"

"Arthur, will you get plates and forks? I'll make a fresh pot of coffee, since Chaz is..." Hafidha stares at the air. "Not going to be here for another fifteen minutes at least. Seems he figured out the hot zone for their UNSUB."

"Tell him to tell them to let him eat before he falls down," Esther says.

"He had a Clif Bar. But he knows there is cake. He says that gallon of milk in the fridge is to go with."

"Then let's put this off. Say ten minutes?"

"Ten's good," Hafidha nods, bringing her focus back into the room. "I'll go take care of that coffee."

"So, you can text us with your brain?" Arthur asks, following Hafidha into the kitchen.

"You kidding? I have to remember to play with the screen half the time."

"Yeah, if I could do that I'd probably do it without thinking," Arthur says. "And Hafidha? There's nothing wrong with following a hunch."

Hafidha looks over her shoulder at Arthur, the rest of her swiveling around to face him. "You
have
bought in."

"I think it's worth a look. Because you think it's worth a look," Arthur says. "And I'm not worried, because you aren't trying to keep it a secret. You keep secrets when your power is your undoing."

Arthur walks out with a stack of side plates. Hafida stares after him.

"Knew I wanted you along for a reason, New Kid."

*

"So I'm guessing that this is about what we talked about at lunch," Brady says, as they all assemble in the meeting room, "and not a case."

Falkner says, "Correct. We're still punching the clock, but the sequester is still squeezing the money. So if any of you have a reason to take a personal day, to make appointments or just to stay home or because you want a three-day weekend for a change, wrestle over what days you want to take."

"I'll take tomorrow," Hafidha says, lifting her fork in the air. "I will of course be reachable but I can stay home and play a video game with ironic content."

"You're not talking about
Outlast,
" Arthur says and Hafidha nods.

"You betcha. I'm going to use it to monitor some tweaks I've made to my bugzapper."

"
Outlast
is ironic because?" Brady asks.

"You play an investigative reporter looking into shady business at a recently reopened insane asylum. Cue monsters everywhere, and now you have to escape."

"Seriously."

"Yep."

"Eat your cupcake."

Hafidha cackles and gets another.

"Did you save any for me?" Chaz slides into his seat. A pair of cupcakes and a tall glass of milk already wait there, and he peels down the paper on one while looking around.

"So it seems you're not going to need to take a personal day, Platypus," Hafidha says.

"Yeah, no. There are two possible hot zones. I think I know which one is the right one but Celentano wants two teams, so I'm headed to Austin. It's really short notice," Chaz says apologetically.

"You don't need to watch over me, I'm okay. I'll check in with you every few hours, and I can have company over—"

"Will you make me a pie?" Sol asks.

"I will make you two pies," Hafidha promises.

"But what will you eat?"

"Smart-ass."

Leesburg, VA

Costco looks about the same everywhere. You walk into a warehouse with the right card, and weave your way through the merchandise that tempts you while you search for what you actually need. You used to duck into the vast cavern only to buy cleaning supplies and whatever would keep for months, consider the nicely discounted electronics, and make a promise to come back later when you had a little more money. Now you're glad you got the membership, because you're here to buy food. Nobody bats an eye at shopping carts full of food. You just have to lie and say "three" when someone asks how many kids you have. It's easy to just nod, smile, and get out.

Ashley's return eases your heart. It's hard to mourn her when she's the angel on your shoulder, ready to whisper in your ear. You wonder if it's real. You can't help it. But she's there, and she's not the only thing that is. The power surges in your hands, so strong you think hard about touching anything lest it arc from you. You can raise it with a thought, with an emotion. You have to be careful.

Work has cut down everyone's hours by one day a week. It's so no one has to be cut off, but you're barely making it now. You make the minimum payments on your credit cards and try not to think of how much peanut butter you could buy for that, or how much pasta, or toilet paper, for that matter. Another cut you can't afford won't help.

But you've never felt the need to eat so urgently in your life. You're no stranger to six-egg-white omelets and protein shakes from the days when you lifted heavy. You worry about that, about how much it costs mostly, but you worry about why you're so hungry and you think you know.

It's the power. The books got it right—expending magical energy is expending energy. So you buy pasta, oats, whole wheat berries, beans and lentils, coarse ground cornmeal in bulk, whey powder, eggs, chicken breasts, pork chops, rice. You buy cream sauces and gallons of apple juice, five pound bags of apples, two-pound blocks of cheese, and you hope it's going to be enough. You buy a stack of two-pound frozen pasta dishes intended for a family of four, and one of your cases of salad greens falls off your cart while you wait in line.

When you straighten up, there's a man standing in front of you. He's got a gallon jug of dishwashing soap and a gallon of milk, one in each hand.

You wonder who goes to Costco to buy two things. "Excuse me, but I'm in line and there's two people behind me."

"I'm just getting a couple of things, it's no problem," he says, and turns his back.

You can't believe it. "Excuse me—"