“Remotely deployable spike strips,” I repeated, sitting on the bank of the deep ditch and rubbing my chest. A seatbelt can save your life, but it hurts like a bitch. “Don’t tell me you didn’t use them in the Army.”
“I spent most of my time in military intelligence as a glorified gofer. I had the Mensa-level IQ, but I didn’t have Stanford and Cal Tech on my curriculum vitae yet. I enlisted to pay for that, but yes, we have spike strips, just not ‘remotely deployable spike strips.’”
The thing had been flat and smooth until we drove over it and the guy in the truck triggered the spikes to open. He had planned his escape in case the explosion didn’t work. This guy was good, sneaky, and better at distractions than the former con man I was.
“It’s the Army. The food could double as concrete for housing developments. The remote ones are news to me.” Hector had ripped free a strip of his sleeve and was wiping a trickle of blood from Meleah’s forehead. It wasn’t from the wreck; her seatbelt example saved us all. No, her blood was from the flying glass in the explosion. Although Meleah was better trained to take care of it herself, Hector was finally stepping up to the plate. Meleah might not need that crowbar after all.
Not that newfound love was going to do him any good. Police sirens were wailing like an F8 tornado warning, and the flashing lights were moving fast toward us. We would be off to jail and facing everyone’s dream come true: a body-cavity search and a neckless cell mate wrapped in three hundred pounds of steroid-rage-enhanced muscle.
“You had to steal a car,” I grumbled. “I hope they find Jimmy Hoffa up there when they snap on the gloves and bend you over at the station.”
“You misjudge the situation. Our project is funded by the government-the kind of government the majority of the country knows nothing about-the ones who do know are living in a bunker with tinfoil hats.”
He’d made a call before wiping at the blood on Meleah’s copper-brown skin. Maybe he was calling in the X-Files guys to back us up, vouch for us. I crossed my fingers. I could take care of myself, but I’d rather not have to bruise my foot or both fists doing it. I’d spent my teenage years kicking ass to survive. I didn’t miss it. Sometimes it was necessary, but I’d take cheese pizza with my dog over inflicting blood and broken bones. Maybe I’d gotten lazy when I hit the big three-O, or I’d simply had enough violence in my life.
“Fine. You get us out of this, and I’ll tell you what women really think about men. Not Cosmo shit, either. The real deal. It’ll help your dating life”-I finished under my breath-“or ruin it completely.”
Meleah heard the last part. The woman had the ears of a bat. “Shhh,” she said with annoyance. “It would give him a stroke. Men aren’t meant to know. You’re not meant to know.”
“And don’t you think I wish I didn’t? It’s a burden no guy should have to bear or live up to.” A state police car braked beside us. It hadn’t come to a complete halt before one cop had jumped out, screaming with gun pointed. “Ah, shit.”
Hector started to stand up and reason with him. Mensa, my ass. The one person you don’t ever try to reason with is a state cop on an adrenaline high. He spends most of his day giving tickets and reading gun magazines. When something exciting comes along-like a Denny’s explosion and people fleeing the scene in a carjacked Lexus-he or she is going to make the most of it. Not obeying commands while trying to talk your way out of it-especially while stepping toward the cop-that’s only going to get you pepper-sprayed, Tasered, or shot.
I snagged Hector’s arm and pulled him down beside me.
“Monkey see, monkey do.” I grunted at him. I rolled on my stomach in the dirt and laced my fingers at the small of my back. Meleah was doing the same. Luckily, Hector’s gun had flown out the window, ripped from his hand, when the car started to roll, or Hector would already be pepper-sprayed, Tasered, and shot.
Hector landed in the dirt and copied my position. “It’ll be all right. I made the call. They’ll pull us out.”
I was roughly handcuffed. “I hope so. Since it was self-defense, my juvenile files aren’t sealed. All I need is some DA trying to get reelected changing his mind, deciding I was a fourteen-year-old Bundy at the start to my life of crime. I’ve been to jail before, Hector.” Only for a day, only before it was all sorted out and I had a cell to myself, but a day even in a podunk country jail makes an impression on a kid. I dreamed of iron bars for weeks afterward. What my life would’ve been like if they hadn’t believed me and the evidence. “I didn’t much like it.”
• • •
Fortunately, Hector’s government muscle came through after we were fingerprinted but before we made it to the mug shots. Ten minutes later, men in dark suits and sunglasses came in, flashed badges, and ushered the three of us to a black car out front. We left mystified and furious cops in our wake, which almost made the whole day worthwhile. Before I’d found the carnival and lived on the streets picking pockets, I’d had to bust my ass to outrun a cop or three. They couldn’t just let a kid make a living.
“Don’t say a word until we get back,” Hector said at my ear in a whisper so low, lips barely moving, that the Men in Black didn’t notice. It looked like, same as always, the right hand didn’t know what the left was doing-even in secret government organizations. I had a feeling that when all was said and done and this entire project was finally written up, the amazing All Seeing Eye, psychic Jackson Lee, was not going to be featured anywhere.
Thank God.
On the other hand, there were bound to be many uses the government could find for a psychic, enough uses to last until I was old and gray, then dust in the ground. If that happened, I would’ve been better off staying in jail.
Once we were back at the base, we were dropped off without a word. Meleah headed back to the infirmary, Hector and I to the main science building. Thackery was waiting for us. He appeared unhappy and, well, thwarted, rather like a zoo veterinarian who’d just lost his shoulder-length rubber glove, speculum, and favorite watch inside a pregnant elephant.
“What now?” he demanded. “First your psychic’s room is napalmed, and then the car he was riding in was apparently blown up. Are you sure he’s a psychic and not a sadomasochistic pyromaniac instead?”
That’s why he was feeling frustrated. He was disappointed that I hadn’t been in the car when it had exploded. “I’m psychic enough to know you did double the dissections of the other students in your anatomy class because you just loved picking out cats at the pound and cutting them up. And no matter what you told the teacher, it damn sure had nothing to do with extra credit.”
He stared at me, the color leeching out of his eyes to match the chunk of ice that masqueraded as his brain. He was a Bundy, a Dahmer, a Gacy who hadn’t crossed the line to killing people-letting it happen, yes, but not doing it with his own hands. But someone knowing what he was, exactly what he was, down to his last sociopathic cell-it could push him over that edge. At least when it came to me. But I was tired of tiptoeing around this shit. In the week and a half since I’d been there, nothing had been done. Not one damn thing. Charlie hadn’t been saved. A spy hadn’t been caught. The only thing that had been accomplished was that I got to take a tour of several very nasty places and “see” many even nastier murders take place. If I had to take a tour, I’d have chosen a goddamn cruise, not this. The sooner we could wrap this up, the sooner people would stop dying, and the sooner I could go home.
If that took pushing, I was read to push my guts out.
I knew Hector agreed, because he followed right along. “We know there’s an industrial spy here. We know they killed Charlie. And Dr. Thackery…” He leaned forward until he was nose-to-nose with the smaller man and bared his teeth in what would pass as a smile if he were a crocodile. “We know you knew about the spy and didn’t tell a goddamn soul. That makes you responsible for my brother’s death in my eyes, if not the law’s. So I’d advise you get behind the team on this one while I decide just what I’m going to do about that.” He moved in even closer, causing Thackery to take a step back. “About you and Charlie. Start thinking hard about who the spy could be. Start now. I’ll be back soon to see what you’ve come up with. Jackson, come with me. I need to go to the armory to get another gun.”
Thackery didn’t move as we passed him. He had to be calculating whether the gun was for him. At least, I hoped he was, the prick. Hector was striding down the hall at an angry and fast speed, but running at the Y seemed to have helped, and I kept pace easily enough.
“You know you made a lifelong enemy there,” he said.
I shrugged philosophically. “An enemy is just a friend you were smart enough to stab in the back first before he got you. Besides, you were on his list before me. In fact, I imagine everyone he has ever met is on the Thackery shit list. We’re nothing special.”
“Special enough to be at the top.” He stopped. “The armory’s around the corner. This isn’t a military operation, Jackson. We have military support around if we need it, and we damn sure have needed it, but bottom line: Thackery and I are in charge here.” And whoever had sent the black car was in charge of them. “That means I can check out as many handguns as I can carry. We’re in trouble, me, you-so this time, let me get you a damn gun. I understand because of your stepfather why you don’t want one, and you might not have to use it. I’ll do my best to make sure you don’t have to use it. But we need to be armed if worse comes to worse.”
A gun.
Boyd, the lazy, rattlesnake-mean, abusive shit. Until I was fourteen, I had one mental picture of him, only the one: him sitting in the filthy, beat-up recliner and drinking beer until he was drooling drunk.
From fourteen on, that picture would be replaced by him lying in the small, cramped hall of the house. He filled it, actually, from wall to wall, the fat slob and his beer gut. Not that beer was what came out of it when I hit him with the first shotgun blast. Instead, handfuls of fat that looked like masses of yellow grapes. Loops of intestine like you’d see out of fresh roadkill, only bigger and more. It hadn’t stopped him, though. He’d kept staggering toward me until I’d pumped the shotgun a second time and put another load in his head. He’d been close enough to me then that they had to bury him without a face. There was no covering up that crater with a dab of mortician putty.
And the smell. I’d never forgotten the smell of cordite, blood, and leaking guts.
The bedroom where he kept the shotgun didn’t have a window. I had to climb over his body to get to the phone to call the police. I tried not to step in… him. But he was everywhere. Covering the entire floor and some of the walls. There was no way around it. I left a sneaker trail of blood and other things as I ran to the kitchen and the phone. Footprints of what used to be Boyd. Sometimes now, sixteen years later, when I put on my shoes, I checked the soles for Boyd-
“Jackson? Did you hear me?”
“No guns,” I answered, resolute.
“Damn it, it could save your life.” He ran a frustrated hand over his short hair, still neat and in place despite the explosion and the wreck. Not like Charlie’s hair. That boy could have walked out of a barber, and in two seconds people would think he’d been in a windstorm.
“It could,” I admitted.
“Then take one.”
“No guns,” I repeated, and for a moment, I thought he was going to smash his fist into the wall as he rolled up his fingers tightly.
“Taking one could save your life. Not taking one could cost you your life. That bastard out there could kill you. You could die, you asshole.”
Die because Hector had pulled me into this and now was dealing with the consequences, guilt being the biggest one right now.
“I could.” I shoved my hands into my pockets. “Yeah, I could die, and I will before I touch a gun again. Sorry, Allgood. That’s just the way it is. Next time you go after a psychic, you should check out their phobias first. Get me a baseball bat, and I’ll beat the son of a bitch’s head flat enough that you could serve it up as a pancake. But no guns.”
Hector swung his balled-up fist, but not at the wall. He swung it at me. I slithered to one side, did a leg sweep, and dumped him on his ass. I meant it. I’d been taught to take care of myself. Cane Lake for dangerous teens, a little Krav Maga at the Jewish Community Center for dangerous adults. Hector had to know some Krav Maga moves himself from Army training, but at the moment, he was feeling too pissed, too guilty, and too out of control to see them coming from a psychic he assumed sat on his butt all day telling people where Great-aunt Edna Mae’s lost will was.
“A sock stuffed with your mess hall’s mashed potatoes?” I suggested helpfully. “One hit with that, and I guarantee brain damage.”
He lay flat, unmoving, and closed his eyes. I let him gather the edges of his control and glue them back together in silence. Hector had had a difficult couple of months. His brother died, a brother he’d loved; I still felt from reading his keys how much Charlie had loved his younger brother. The hero worship he’d seen in Hector’s eyes when they were kids and the respect and affection when they were adults. Then had come the massacres, forcing Hector-who Charlie had known down to his bones was one of the most honest and honorable men around-to resort to something as dirty as blackmail. Now that blackmail was looking more and more likely to get its victim, me, killed. And Hector would hold himself as responsible as if he’d flipped the switch on the detonator with his own hand.
All in all, I figured Hector deserved some stress relief. If that meant letting him throw a punch, what the hell? I’d let him. It didn’t mean I’d take it, but he could swing all he wanted.
Finally, he opened his eyes and shifted them to where I leaned against the fungus-colored wall, arms folded, getting some rest of my own. It was barely past noon, and it had already been a long day. “Sorry,” he said, the traditional Hector Allgood calm back in his voice.
“Yeah, that was pretty sorry. There are five-year-old girls at the Jewish Center who would’ve broken your elbow and your knee, and then crushed your larynx with that kind of swing.” Dark eyebrows knit ominously, and I let him off the hook. “Fine. You’re forgiven. You were only trying to break my nose out of concern for my life. I get it. It’s a little fucked up, but I get it.” I held out a gloved hand.
He hesitated, then took it, and I helped heave him to his feet. “Why don’t you go? Leave? I told you the blackmail’s off. Someone’s trying to kill you. There’s no reason for you to stay and risk your life.”
“Would Charlie leave?” I asked. I wasn’t actually curious. I already knew the answer.
“No, but-” He clamped his mouth shut before the rest of the sentence could escape.
“But I’m not Charlie. I’m a selfish, money-hungry, antisocial asshole who doesn’t give a damn about anything or anyone but myself? Is that what you were going to say?” I wasn’t angry. It was mostly true… or it had been true.
“It was,” he admitted. “But that’s wrong. That’s not you. It takes a lot of digging to get to the real Jackson, but you’re not selfish, and you do give a damn. In this situation, more than you should. Still, you did get one thing right.” His lips quirked. “You are an asshole.”
“Born and bred.” I grinned as we began to walk on toward the armory.
“So,” he said after a pause, “are you going to tell me or not?”
“Tell you what?”
“You said if I managed to get us out of jail, you’d tell me what women really think about men. I’ve been thinking I might be able to use the help.” He didn’t squirm like a thirteen-year-old kid with a crush, at least not on the outside. But on the inside? I knew he did. Meleah had him hooked but good.
“Right. I did say that.” I shook my head dubiously. “Are you sure you want to know? I mean really, one-hundred-percent positive?”
This time, the punch connected, but it was a light one and aimed at my shoulder. I took the sting as a yes.
“All right. Your funeral. Women are smart, and they know men are dogs, which we are. But they also think that there are a few special exceptions out there who put love before sex straight out of the gate. They think when they meet one of these great guys, he’ll be so fascinated by their mind and personality, their hopes and interests, that it’ll be months before he even thinks of looking at their ass. They believe this guy will love them from the beginning-before sex ever enters the picture.”
“No.”
“Oh, and to this Prince Charming, cellulite is invisible.” I slapped him on the back.
“ No. You’re lying. They have to know that’s only movies, TV shows, books-fantasy wish fulfillment. That’s ludicrous. You’re kidding me, Jackson, aren’t you?”
I could smell the desperation in the air. Like several of my clients, he was getting a truth he didn’t want.
I slapped him again, this time with more sympathy. “Welcome to my world. We’re an alien species compared with women, and they know it. But they want to believe you’re the good alien among all the other horny ones ravaging the world. Luckily, Meleah is one of the rare women who can handle the truth. So when she catches you checking out her ass in whatever hot dress she wears on your first date, she’ll just laugh, roll up the menu, and smack you on the muzzle with it. She’ll accept your doggy nature, you lucky bastard. And don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about with Meleah. You know. She knows. Even Charlie knew and was about to send her flowers and sign your name to them right before he…” I stopped.
“Before he ran out of time,” Hector finished quietly.
Shit. Now I was the one who was sorry. I didn’t think I ever said I was sorry to anyone except Abby, who would pinch my ribs ferociously if I didn’t. Since the day of the pink shoe, I thought the universe and everyone in it owed me and owed me big. No one deserved a sorry from me. Instead, I gave Hector the best I could: an excuse. “I’m usually smoother as the All Seeing Eye. Maybe if I put the black back on.”
He halted by the armory and knocked on the wire mesh. As the metal rattled, he answered the unsaid sorry instead of my defense. “Don’t be. It’s something about Charlie I didn’t know, a piece of him I didn’t have. That’s a gift.” He cleared his throat, and his eyes lightened. “And you didn’t even charge me for it. Charlie was right. You make a good friend.”
I snorted. “I haven’t come close to totaling the bill for this entire fuckup yet. Just you wait.” Then the mesh slid up, and I could see an entire wall covered with guns. I immediately stepped back but almost as immediately spotted something I liked.
Liked a lot.