The Reckoning (Unbounded Series #4) (13 page)

Maybe.

“No ability can work around me when I don’t want it to,” Jeane said, but she had hesitated an instant too long, and that told me all I needed to know. Jeane wasn’t sure.

“After this is over,” I told Jeane in a voice I hoped Stella couldn’t hear, “we’ll go after Delia.” It was my only choice, really, but before I put myself in Jeane’s hands, I wanted to be sure I was strong enough to block her ability or at least its effect on me. Of course if I practiced blocking Jeane right now I would also be allowing the snake to feed, which was a bit of a problem.

“Uh, Erin,” Stella called, “you’re not going to believe this.”

Jeane and I turned together. We were standing so close that our arms brushed, and I stepped away. “What is it?”

“Remember that guard from Austin? Walker-something? Well, guess who’s here? The stuff you gave him in the coffee is definitely registering on my system.”

I blinked. “He would have had to leave Texas right after his shift.”

“Must have already bought a ticket,” Stella agreed. “Unless he’s secretly wealthy and has his own jet. I didn’t even scan for him on purpose. It’s an automatic thing I have set up.”

“He could be Emporium,” Jeane said.

I felt a grudging admiration for the woman that she even had an inkling as to what we were talking about. Apparently, she’d managed to get at least a basic briefing from someone—probably Cort.

“It does seem unlikely that he’d show up here unless he was involved with the Emporium or this whole mess,” I agreed. “Where is he?”

Stella stood with her phone in hand. “A couple of miles. The range isn’t very far.” With a glance at Jeane, she added, “I’d better go see what he’s up to.”

“I’ll do it.” I started for the door, excited for something to do. “Guess you’re with me, Jeane.”

“You sure?” Stella looked at me doubtfully.

She meant if I could babysit Jeane and find Walker at the same time. “We’ll be fine,” I said. Jeane wasn’t a match for me in combat, even without my ability, and the tracking chip in her arm would help me recapture her if she ran. Besides, I might die of boredom if I stayed in the room a minute longer.

“I’ll send the link so you can track him on your phone.” Again Stella glanced at Jeane, and I knew the link to her would be there as well.

“We’ll call you when we find him.” I checked to see that I had my phone, the local currency Stella had given me at the airport, and as many weapons as I could carry in my jeans and blouse. The weather was about ten degrees hotter here than in San Diego, and that made wearing my long jacket and my boots a bit conspicuous, even at eight thirty at night. Fortunately, I didn’t need them for weapon concealment.

All the cell phones in our group were satellite phones, which meant that if there was no cell tower nearby, they would automatically connect to any available satellite, so we had service virtually anywhere in the world. The phones opened only with a code and a fingerprint, and any variation or tampering would fry the memory instantly. Even so, we were careful. You could never be too cautious where the Emporium was concerned.

The dark streets were busy with cars in this section of town, and several handfuls of pedestrians also walked to their destinations under the streetlights. With a few notable exceptions, the style of clothing didn’t appear too different from that of San Diego; most people sported jeans and T-shirts, though a few seemed dressed up for a Saturday evening out. The people themselves didn’t look all that different either, although there were more dark heads and olive complexions, but much of the architecture of the surrounding buildings was notably foreign to me. There were signs in English as well as Spanish, which only seemed right because most of San Diego did the same these days. There wasn’t much vegetation besides the occasional flurry of palm trees, though I’d seen jungles from the plane. In all, the place was rather disappointing on my foreign radar.

Jeane stretched. “What a beautiful night.” She had traded her red blouse and gray pants for a fancy, glittering white top and a pair of breezy patterned culottes that showed the bottom third of her legs. Strappy matching sandals assured me that everyone would be looking at her and not at me, which was the way I liked it on an op. “Is he close?”

“Not really. And I don’t see any taxis. Are your sandals going to hold up?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Stella gave them to me.”

“Then they’ll be fine.” I really didn’t care if they were. I quickened my pace. “So you were a movie star.”

“It was a lot of fun, but sometimes very tedious. All those people expecting something. Mostly a piece of me.” She gave a low laugh. “I think the next time I choose to be famous, I’ll try politics.”

I snorted. “What makes you think that would be any different? They wouldn’t just want a piece. They’d want it all.”

“There is that.” She shrugged, apparently not overly concerned.

I let a few seconds go by before asking. “So, what happened to the real woman? Or are all the records forged?”

“Oh, she was real enough. I stumbled across her while searching for someone who looked like me. I needed a new identity, and she just happened to match my criteria. We really did look a lot alike. As a teen, she could pass for older, and I was young for my age—I Changed right before I turned thirty.” She flashed me a glance. “Before you ask, that was three centuries ago.”

Three centuries put her closer to Ava’s age than Ritter’s, though since he was only thirty years younger, I guess it didn’t make much difference. Still, for some reason I didn’t understand, it made me feel more cautious about her.

“It helped, of course,” Jeane continued, “that she was one of those throwaway kids. No one really too interested in her. We lived together for three months while I sort of learned her life.” A dry chuckle. “I think I rubbed off on her just as much. That was when I started with the acting.”

“What happened to her?”

Our footsteps on the pavement were the only sounds for a few moments besides the muffled conversation from a group in front of us. Finally Jeane spoke. “The plan was to pay her off. Give her a nice chunk of money so she could go away somewhere and have fun. Money was nothing to me. It was the human experience I craved. Someone with a real emotional connection to the mortal world, even someone with connections as weak as hers. It wasn’t like I was going to be able to step into just anyone’s life.”

“Where is she?” I asked again because that hadn’t really been an answer.

“She was coming to see me on a set, and she was killed in a car accident.” Jeane shook her head, her face full of tragedy that I knew was contrived. “It’s sad, really.”

You had her killed,
I thought. I couldn’t really prove it, of course, but if she really had murdered the girl, she wouldn’t fit in with the Renegades in the least.

We walked in silence for several more blocks, the people thickening as we passed restaurants and bars. Many were obviously tourists enjoying the decidedly great weather. “He’s close,” I said, glancing at my phone. “Maybe in that restaurant.”

“Oh, good, I could use a drink or two . . . or six.” Jeane laughed.

With our metabolism, it’d take at least that many to get the mildest buzz. Which would be gone in minutes. I wasn’t sure it was worth all those trips to the restroom. “Do you know Spanish?”

“Of course.” A flip of her head. “But you won’t need it. Not here. They’ll speak English. I hear they have great beauty parlors here in Venezuela. I wouldn’t mind getting my hair bleached. It’s a pain having to do it several times a week. Too bad I can’t use nanites like your friend Stella.”

She seemed to know an awfully lot about us for having only awakened this morning. I wondered who’d been running off at the mouth. Cort liked to teach to an audience, but he was careful.
Probably Jace,
I thought.

“You can’t die your hair blond,” I told her. “Not yet. You haven’t been dead long enough.”

“Oh,” she said dismissively. “Like these mortals would figure anything out except that I resemble a deceased actress who would be ancient now had she lived. No, it won’t be a problem.”

It would be if she planned to stay with us. Ava had very strict rules about keeping a low profile, and any way I looked at it, Jeane didn’t approach that ideal. She’d have to go to Europe. It was the only answer. But maybe she’d been close to death for so long that her brain hadn’t regenerated completely enough to understand the stakes.

I held the restaurant door for her and motioned her inside. The place had a bar along the right wall, and on the left side, tables crowded together in a narrow, dimly-lit space. I wasn’t claustrophobic, but it was stuffy enough that eating here wouldn’t be my first choice. No wonder so many of the women had shed outer shirts and wore only tanks with thin straps, their skin glistening with moisture.

While I looked around for Walker, Jeane somehow cleared a couple of stools at the bar with nothing more than a smile. “There,” I said, slipping onto the high stool. “Near the back by that hallway. He’s the blond in the brown shirt talking to the older guy with the messy facial hair.” Both were obviously American, not so much because of their pale skin but because of their uncomfortable demeanor.

Jeane twisted to look. “Hunters,” she hissed. “The older one at least.”

“How can you tell?” I took a sip of whatever drink Jeane had requested for us, casually glancing again at the pair.

“Dumb look in his eyes, that atrocious striped shirt, bad hair. You name it.”

Now that she said it, he did look like a lot of the Hunters I’d had the misfortune to meet. Their leaders weren’t all that way, but as with the witch hunting or lynch mobs of the past, Hunter numbers swelled by targeting the poor and uneducated, breeding them on hate and fear. However, Hunters also decried gun control and increasing government regulation, and on these subjects the Renegades were in complete agreement with them.

I spied what might be the symbol of a hunter with a rifle on a baseball cap lying on the table, but it was too far away to be certain. If I were Emporium, it would be enough to kill him, but while I didn’t like Hunters, the Emporium agents he might capture in the future were enough to prevent me from acting against him. Fortunately for Walker and his companion, there were no Unbounded in the restaurant at the moment besides Jeane and me. Of course that didn’t mean there weren’t other Emporium agents.

Angling toward Jeane so I could watch the men, I took another gulp of the amber liquid, wincing as it seared a pathway down my throat. They were arguing about something, but we weren’t close enough to hear their low, urgent voices. Every now and then both glanced nervously at the tables around them. I reached out tentatively with my thoughts—more a simple letting down of my own shield as opposed to exerting my ability. At once all the thoughts around me rushed in and the life forces tripled in brightness, leaving me momentarily stunned. I shut down again, leaving only a conduit opened to the blond. He was still shielding. I could get through if I tried, but that would mean the snake would begin to feed again. For now, I’d just take those surface emotions—which told me he was upset and angry with his companion. The way his eyes kept sliding to the door definitely told me he was expecting someone else.

The young man’s eyes met mine briefly as he stood and threw a tip on the table, but I shifted slightly, putting Jeane between us. “Looks like they’re leaving,” I told her. “Get ready to follow.”

I rotated further as they walked past the bar, keeping my back to them but watching for any sudden moves. When they passed us without incident, I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. The older, hairy-faced man was shorter than the blond guard and walked with a bit of a bowlegged swagger. They looked awkward together, as if they didn’t belong. Walker was white collar and university-bred, while Hairy Face appeared as if he should be working as a day laborer in a construction job, spitting tobacco through his front teeth.

I threw some of my Venezuelan bolivares onto the bar and stood to leave. As Jeane followed, a drunkard’s hand grabbed at the sleeve of her blouse. He said something to her in Spanish, his desire wafting from him like bad cologne.

Revulsion filled Jeane’s face, and she leaned close to him, her hand disappearing under his baggy T-shirt that piled on his lap as he sat on the stool like a castoff belonging to a gorilla. “Bug off!”

His eyes widened, and he grunted with pain as she twisted whatever she had hold of. He jerked away, tumbling off his stool, squealing like a baby pig. Next to him, his companion jumped to his feet, reaching for something—probably a knife. This was getting ugly, fast. And each second Desoto’s security guard and his Hunter companion were getting farther away.

I THREW MY KNEE INTO
the drunk’s swarthy face as he recovered enough to launch himself at Jeane. His eyes rolled back as he collapsed, his eyes staring at me with dazed confusion. I whirled toward his companion, whose dark face was punctuated with an ugly sneer. “Don’t,” I warned.

He came for me anyway, the knife not quite out of his pocket, and I jabbed my fingers at his throat, hooking one of my feet behind his and yanking it forward at the same time my fingers met flesh so that he tripped backward, falling over his stool and gagging. Then I grabbed Jeane’s arm and pulled her from the bar before the man could recover and remember his knife.