The Courier (San Angeles) (22 page)

A
HALF HOUR LATER
we were driving through the outskirts of a business section. Nearby, the buildings stretched from the ground to the ceiling. Miller didn’t talk during the drive, lost in his own thoughts about what had just happened. He was the first to break the silence.

“Did you call anybody from the house?”

“No. I don’t even remember seeing a comm unit.”

“That’s twice, maybe three times, they knew where you were. Once, I can count off as a fluke, but twice? I don’t think so. There’s either someone in ACE feeding them information, or you still have a tracking device on you.” He was silent for a minute longer. “I don’t think you’re being tracked. My scanner would have picked it up in the parking garage. Nothing gets through that thing without being detected.”

I weaved through the slower, thicker traffic, never exceeding the posted speed limit. This wasn’t making sense to me either. “If there’s someone inside ACE, then why are they still coming after me? I don’t have the package anymore.”

“Good question. They could have been after me. I’ve made more than my fair share of enemies.”

“That was Quincy. It couldn’t be a coincidence,” I said.

“True. It took them a while to find us. If the mole is in a low-level position, it would take them some time for them to get the information. ACE is pretty compartmentalized.”

I caught Miller looking at me and tried to smile. His gaze moved down from my hands to my knees.

“We’ve got to find a place to clean up. We need to wash out your cuts. You’re not going to be much use looking like that.”

I gave him a dirty look.

It was his turn to smile now. “I mean with your pants all shredded and bloody. Turn right at the lights. There’s a mall just up the street. We’ll have to get rid of the car as well, if we can. The crumpled back end will be pretty noticeable.”

I turned right and saw the mall just ahead. I turned right again and into the parking lot.

Miller sat up straighter. “The trick with parking lots this big is you don’t want to end up somewhere you can get boxed in. You also don’t want to park too far from the building. If you have to make a quick exit, the last thing you want is to be running across a whole parking lot. See over there? There’s a two-level parking garage. You’ll want to park on the first level, the second is too exposed to potential snipers and limits your escape routes. There’s a spot right by the entrance. Back into it. If we need to, we can pull out really quick, and if someone tries to block us from leaving they’ll need two vehicles, one in the front and one in the back. Most people don’t
immediately think of blocking off a curbed area, so we might be able to back out over the curb and onto the street, just in case.”

I parked where he told me to and followed him into the mall. I could see him watching me in the mirrors around the elevators.

“Walk like you belong here, Kris. Stand up and look around, not at the floor.”

“I don’t belong here,” I mumbled. “I can’t afford anything in this place.”

“Maybe not, but if you want to become one of the crowd, you have to act like one of them, even more than look like them. The human mind works off of first impressions of body language.”

I looked around. Sure enough, several of the people in the mall gave us more than one look. And the look only seemed to drop down to my bloody knees on the second or third glance. Most of them wouldn’t be able to see the blood at that distance, but the tears in my pants were plainly visible.

“Where did you learn all this?” I asked. And there was something else . . . “You sound different, too.” Gone were the slang words, the imprecise pronunciations. It was as if Miller had suddenly become more educated, more upper class.

“ACE, and on the job. You use your courier status to get you in and out of places you normally wouldn’t have been allowed to go. It gives you a sense of belonging, even temporarily, that influences your body language without you knowing about it. Being a courier for ACE doesn’t give you a uniform or a sense of fitting in. It has to come from inside you. The voice is part of it. If I sound more educated, people will automatically believe that I am. If I project the right body language.”

I followed Miller’s lead and began to look around. We were bombarded with advertisements for clothes and electronics. Everywhere you looked you were hit with a new deal, a better price. Spaced
evenly between the ads were cameras, watching people’s reactions to what they were seeing and adjusting if specific ads weren’t working. When I first saw the cameras, I quickly looked down at the floor again. Miller nudged my shoulder and grabbed my hand, squeezing it. I could feel his strength pass into me, and began to walk with more confidence.

He strode into a small specialty shop, full of jeans and t-shirts and jackets. The place was way out of my league.

Fifteen minutes later we left with a bag filled with new clothes. I stepped into the public washrooms and changed in a stall, placing my old clothes into the emptied bag. When I walked out, I forced myself to walk a bit taller and to look around. Trying to believe I fit in. The clothes helped. The stiff material in the new jeans rubbed my knees, and I could feel the soft scabs peel away. I didn’t dare look down to check if blood was seeping through.

My new attitude must have worked. When I walked toward Miller he gave me one of his heart-melting smiles, and we moved back to the parking lot. No one gave us a second glance.

Once we were back at the car, Miller got behind the wheel. “Now we need to dump this thing,” he said.

I sat carefully, pulling my pant legs up to lessen the pressure on my knees. I didn’t see any blood yet.

“I have my bike on Level 2,” I said.

“Nah, they’ll still be watching it. I have a car in the garage we went into last night. We should be okay going back there. It’s about an hour away from here. Why don’t you grab a nap? You look exhausted.”

I was. It was as though the morning had never existed. The shower, the breakfast, the bed, all vanished in the blink of an eye. But I sure as heck didn’t want to sleep now, didn’t want the loss of control that went with it. “I’ll wait.”

“Suit yourself. Once we have the car we’ll zip down to Level 3 and check into a motel.”

“Won’t ACE wonder what’s happening?”

“Maybe.”

By the tone of his voice I figured it would be best if I dropped it.

My eyes closed and I drifted into sleep without knowing.

*   *   *

I was sitting in my bedroom, afraid to come out, and almost as afraid to stay in. My Auntie had left for work an hour ago. I tried to leave before she did, but she wouldn’t let me, saying I had too much housework to do.

Now I was alone in the house with
him
again. I slipped on my runners and grabbed a coat from the closet. If he had fallen asleep, or was watching a vid, I might be able to sneak out the front. I opened my bedroom door a crack and looked into the living room. The vid screen was on, throwing its flickering light onto the walls. I could see his hand hanging off the side of the easy chair, a bottle dangling loosely from his grip.

I crept across the floor, holding my breath and avoiding all the creaky parts. I made it all the way to the front door.

“Where the hell ’r you going?” His words came out slurred.

I turned to look at him, my breath coming back in a whoosh. He was still in his chair, leaning over the arm and looking at me. Sweat covered his upper lip, or spilled booze.

“I said where the hell ’r you going? C’m here.”

I grabbed for the doorknob and twisted, yanking the door open. It slammed to a sudden stop, leaving only a few centimeters of space. My heart thudded in my chest. The chain. He’d clipped the chain. I slammed the door shut and fumbled with the chain. It jammed and I twisted and pulled until it came loose and I slid the chain out. I twisted the knob again and jerked the door open. It ripped out of my grasp and crashed shut.

His hand was just above my head, holding the door closed. His breath reeked of booze.

“I don’ think so.”

He squinted at me, trying to look through the alcohol-induced haze. I tried to push my back through the door into the hallway.

“You haven’t tol’ your aunt, ’ave you? I tol’ you I’d kill you if you did.”

I shook my head and whimpered. Tears filled my eyes and my world became dark.

“Good. Now come ’ere.”

He grabbed my arm and twisted, dragging me back to his easy chair. I was too scared to resist.

“I got you a present,” he said.

Sitting beside the chair was a small, pink striped bag. He reached his meaty hand into it and pulled out what looked like a small shirt. It was made of see-through red lace. He thrust it in my face.

“Put it on.”

When I didn’t reach for it, he grabbed my hand and jammed the negligee into it.

“I said put it on.”

He let go, and my hand dropped to my side, the negligee dangling from my loose fingertips. I turned toward my bedroom.

“No! Here. Put it on ’ere, in fron’ of me.”

I hesitated. His hand swung out, hitting me across the face. I fell to the floor, giant sobs escaped from my throat. I lay there, quivering.

“Stop yer whining, an’ put it on.”

I pushed myself into a sitting position and groped at my shoelaces. I finally got them undone and rose to my feet.

By the time I managed to slip on the sheer red material, he had his pants down to his ankles, lying in his chair and taking another gulp from his bottle.

“Now git to work.”

Minutes later, I lay huddled on the floor, too scared to even cry. The skin on my face felt tight and swollen. I thought his first swing had broken my nose. The rest landed on my back and chest. I could feel the bruises already forming. He flopped back into his chair.

“Bitch don’t even know how to help a man get it up.” He took another drink from the bottle, emptying it. “Get me ’nother one, bitch. Take that thing off and get dressed, you look like a slut.”

I struggled to my feet and got him the bottle before even trying to get dressed. As he opened it, I grabbed my clothes and ran back to my room.

*   *   *

The sound of the road changing woke me up. We were underground, in another parking garage. I pushed the memories back where they belonged, back into the careful box I had built for them over the years. They made me realize that even though what was happening was different, the feelings were almost the same. I had become the victim again.

This time, I didn’t think running away was going to help. The memories didn’t want to stay in their locked box anymore, forced out by feelings of hopelessness and loss of control I hadn’t felt in a long time.

“You didn’t look like you slept well,” Miller said.

I stared out the side window at the cars parked in their spots. “I didn’t.”

“When we get the car, we’ll need a place to hole up for a while. There’s a cheap motel near the Kadokawa offices. I don’t think they’ll look for us there.”

Without turning my head, I said, “Okay.”

The view from Jeremy’s office wasn’t as good as the one from the boardroom, but that was mainly by choice. The wall of vid screens could have displayed anything he liked, from the Earth from orbit to windswept plains full of bison. That, however, was too extravagant at the best of times. Today, it was so completely out of the question that he would have happily shot anyone who dared to bring it up. Only data and maps, filtered and precise, flowed across his screens.

There was a soft knock on his door before it opened.

Abby had just arrived in his office.

He looked at her as though she was a streak of rust on an otherwise pristine fighter craft. The fact that she had shown up here, completely unannounced, did not bode well for the state of her mission.

“What are you doing here?” The sound that came out was almost more of a snarl.

“I came to report on the status of my mission.”

“You left Earth just to tell me something I already know? What kind of fool are you?” The words were snapped and precise.

Most people would have started to make excuses. At the very least, they would have tried to get out of the office as fast as they could. Abby moved deeper into the viper’s den, to a low couch against the wall opposite the vid screens, and sat down, crossing her legs as if nothing that happened was unexpected.

“Yes,” she said.

Jeremy moved behind his desk and sat down, turning off the data flow to the screens. When dealing with Abby, it was best to lose all outside distractions.

“Our reports indicate you failed. What more can you tell me?”

“Probably not too much more. The girl met with Nigel Wood, an assistant director of ACE.”

“I know who Nigel Wood is. I assigned you his case.”

Abby continued unfazed. “Wood opened the package and read the documents inside. As far as I could see, he did not scan the data chip. All items were returned to the envelope before the girl joined him.”

“At least he’s dead.”

“Yes. He was my primary target at the time. I tried to get the girl, but . . .”

“This girl has got to be one of the luckiest I’ve ever seen,” he said.

“Luck has nothing to do with it.”

Jeremy knew when he’d made a mistake, and this was one of them.

“The girl was fated to live through my attempts to kill her. She may be fated to live through them all, I don’t know. If you could supply me with her birth date and time, as well as the location of the happy event, I will be able to plot her charts and discover her weak points. Armed with that information, my next attempt will most likely be successful.”

As far as Jeremy was concerned, it was all bullshit. People made themselves. Some of it based on being in the right place at the right time—luck—or by the people they associated with. Either way, the alignment of the planets and the stars had nothing to do with it. He wasn’t about to say that out loud, though something must have shown in his face.

“You still do not believe,” Abby said softly. “I’ve worked for you for over ten years, and you still attribute my success to luck?”

“No, to skill.”

“My skills arise from knowing how the person I’m assigned to thinks. How they will react in any given situation. Nothing can delve as deep into a person as the stars. Nothing else can give me the level of information I need to understand my assignment.”

Jeremy sighed. He knew this could go on forever. He looked
Abby in the eye; it was time to get back to the business at hand. “What I believe is your success rate. Which has been tarnished by this last . . . twist of fate?”

“Am I to believe I’m still on the case then?”

“Yes, you are. You will not, however, be working alone.”

At those words, Abby stood up and strode over to his desk. “I always work alone.” Her voice was still cool.

“This situation has gotten out of control. I need to know it will not extend past the end of the day. Quincy . . .”

Abby winced at the sound of his name.

“
Quincy
has also failed. Together, perhaps you can succeed. Your job will be the elimination of the girl. With the package open, who knows what information she now has? Quincy’s job will be to retrieve the package and return it to me personally. Do you think you can handle that?”

“I’d prefer not to.”

“Your preference doesn’t matter.”

Abby let out a soft sigh and smiled. “I can do it.”

“Good. The trace on the girl has been blocked, so we don’t know where they are. After her escape from Quincy at the ACE safe house, they were sighted briefly at a mall on 4th Street West, Level 4, Los Angeles. We should know their location as soon as her . . . protector . . . calls in.”

“And the information I require?”

Jeremy flipped through a stack of paper on his desk and pulled a data chip out of a file folder. He tossed it to her. “It’s all in here.”

He watched Abby turn and walk out of his office, closing the door softly behind her. She was becoming a touch too arrogant. He would have to look into taking her down a notch or two.