Authors: Matt Betts
55
There was only another half hour or so until they’d be back in the city, but Deena felt like crap. She’d slept for a good hour and change, but it hadn’t helped her. That last little healing trick, combined with all the other action of the past few days had completely done her system in. She’d fought sleep out of fear of what trouble was going to erupt within the car if she closed her eyes. She was paranoid that they would just take her in to some prison, despite their assurances that they’d get her to Marsh’s building. Still, she’d slept and nothing happened. “I could use a coffee,” she said.
“I have no idea where we are, or where to find coffee,” Pel said. She’d taken over the driving from Garrett while he went over some files. Paper files. No one did that anymore, did they?
Garrett looked at the upcoming exit sign. “I don’t think it matters where you stop. I’m pretty sure it’s a law now that every city, town and hamlet has to have at least one coffee shop.”
“Federal mandate?” Pel asked.
“Yep,” Garrett answered. “Damn government has their hands in everything these days.”
Pel guided the car off the highway and followed the signs to the center of a small town. “There’s gotta be a gas station with a coffee maker somewhere here in Mayberry.” She circled back toward a filling station on the other side of the square. As they got closer, she let out a yell. “Hey! Is that a picture of a coffee cup on the side of that building?”
“Yep. Looks like you’re in luck, java fiend,” Garrett agreed.
“I’ll go get the coffee for you,” Pel said. “I really need to stretch my legs.”
“Let’s all get out,” Garrett said. He pointed to some picnic tables in the town square. “We’ll meet you over there.”
“Sure,” Pel started toward the convenience store.
“Grab me a soda?” Garrett called.
Pel shook her head. “How about a water for a change?”
“No. And beef jerky?”
Pel grimaced. “You’re joking. How are you still alive?”
Garrett looked around as they sat down under a shelter house. The picnic table was beat up and defaced with graffiti. Deena put her hands on the rough tabletop and sighed. She wished she’d just stayed asleep in the car. Her head felt like it was caving in.
Using a napkin he produced from his pocket, Garrett wiped off his side of the table and the bench before sitting down with a groan. “I hate being in the car this much. Hate traveling. I’d rather be in the office or at a crime scene. I feel like I’m getting nothing done.” He took a second to think. “Driving’s better than flying, I guess.”
Deena watched him as his gaze fell on everything around them, except for her. He was making small talk. She was flattered, until she realized he might just be wasting time before Pel got back by talking about inane things. “So what is the story?” she asked. “What’s the deal with you and agent ponytail?”
“What do you mean?”
Deena dug at some of the loose splinters of wood on the table. “I mean, you seem to be a long way from the city. Are you on some special mission to bring me in?”
Garrett turned and looked over at the gas station. Deena supposed he was searching for his partner to help. “Something like that. We just joined a little group called the FEI”
“Did you say F
E
I or F
B
I?”
“Yes, ‘E’. The Federal Entity Index. They… We… chase people like you, with powers that tend to cause mayhem and destruction.” Garrett thought about how badly he wanted to suggest his bosses change the name of the agency. The FEI sounded so fake. Maybe something cool like the CAGE or Operation Thunder. Anything would be preferable. It was like drinking an off-brand of soda. Mountain Fog instead of Mountain Dew.
“OK. That’s all you do?”
Garrett stood up as he saw Pel exit the store balancing three coffees and a bag of snacks. “Yes. That’s all we do.” He paused and waved to Pel, who’d already seen them anyway. He took a few steps toward her to help. “Hey. I was just filling Deena in on what we do.”
Pel handed out the coffees and dropped a few sugar packets and creamer cups on the table. “And?”
“He hasn’t gotten very far,” Deena said as she tore the ends off several sugar packets and dumped them into her cup. “You guys hunt freaks.”
“That’s the very basic job description, yes.” Pel took a drink. “But there’s more to it.”
“Is there?” Garrett asked.
“Are we going to discuss the research aspect with her, or not?” Pel took another quick sip of coffee.
Garrett didn’t want to spook the girl and convey misgivings about the way the FEI treated their suspects and prisoners. If Deena got worried, she might lash out and bolt. They needed to keep her under control. “Look. We just came on board, but the Index has been doing what they can to make people with your powers normal again. They’ve tried to remove the thing that gives you power, but they haven’t had any luck.”
“We just want to make sure you get treated as fairly and humanely as possible,” Pel said.
“Humanely as possible? I don’t understand. I’m going to jail, right?” Deena looked up at Garrett.
Not even close, Garrett thought. “You’ll be a prisoner, sure. But we’d like to find a way to make your incarceration more productive. Let us lay out what we’re thinking. If you agree, we’ll talk to our superiors and fight for the plan.”
“Did you talk about the bugs and the dead guys yet?”
Garrett cringed at his partner blurting out the two main things Garrett wanted to keep quiet, or at least ease into with Deena. “No. No. We haven’t gotten to that yet.”
Pel took a sip and looked over at their prisoner. “Here’s the thing. We have it on good authority that your powers don’t come from any sort of magic. They come from something else. Possibly weird insects.”
“Is she serious?” Deena asked.
Garrett felt himself blushing at the stupidity of what they were trying to convey to the young woman. “Well, that’s kind of a working theory, we can’t really prove it. And they’re probably not insects. It could be…” Garrett wasn’t surprised when Deena turned and vomited.
56
Deena at 19, the first time around
The lights outside the Piedmont Hotel were dazzling. They’d been arrayed in a number of colors—pink, yellow and white—to attract as much attention as possible for the charity event that night. They were honoring community leaders or raising money for the less fortunate in some other country or something, Deena wasn’t too clear. But it was beautiful. From the lobby of the hotel across the street, she stared at the spotlights as they scanned the skies and drew more of the city’s elite and wealthy to the event.
“One more time,” Morgan said from behind her.
“We’ve been over it,” Deena sighed.
“That’s all part of the process. It helps you get prepared. Keeps the surprises from popping up. You have to talk it through in your head every time when you’re alone, so let’s talk it through out loud once again.”
“Come on, Deena. Just do it so you don’t screw something up,” Harper’s voice came across their earpieces. She was on the roof of the smaller building next door, keeping an eye out for the target.
Morgan keyed his mic. “You’re here as a spotter. So shut up and do your job. You’re not to speak until you see them approach. That’s it. No other chatter. You’ll get your turn soon enough. We need quiet so we can concentrate.”
Deena wanted to stick her tongue out at her sister and laugh. It would be a natural reaction for the sisters if it weren’t for the situation they were in. There was no way to explain, even to herself, why she felt so confident in her ability to stroll into an event uninvited, track down a woman she didn’t know and kill her in the midst of hundreds of other people. Nothing in her mind made her question the possibility of a successful outcome. Not now, anyway. In the wee hours of the previous morning, as she sat awake in her bed and began to nod off, the surge that she felt every morning left her and she was suddenly aware of everything she’d done and what she was to do the next day. Her chest hurt and she began to cry. She was puzzled why she never thought that way before, how she could kill Mike and never bat an eye. She’d listened to her sister cry herself to sleep night after night over that, and out of fear for what was happening at Marsh’s organization, but nothing in her own mind would allow her to feel remorse until that night.
When she woke in the morning, she lay with her eyes open and thought about those feelings but then her morning routine kicked in. There was a pulse in her mind and her thoughts were obscured. It was like shining a light in someone’s eyes in the dark, the overload was too much and she stopped trying to think about it.
Another limousine arrived in the line and pulled up to the curb to wait its turn.
“Start,” Morgan said.
Deena sighed. “Fine. The target is Lianne Hauk. Former councilwoman and potential Mayoral candidate. She is five foot, six inches tall and has shoulder-length brown hair. According to the papers, she’ll be wearing a red sequined dress with spaghetti straps designed by Ester Lamont especially for the event.”
“Good. She has blue eyes,” Morgan said.
“I know that.” Why the hell did she need to know the woman had blue eyes, when she had several good pictures of the woman and would now know her on sight?
“Then say that.”
“She has blue eyes.”
Morgan nodded. “Good. Details, girl. Details. Go on.”
They’d done this exact thing a dozen times the night before. With maps and graphs and charts and weather forecasts and wind speeds and other shit that Deena saw as completely irrelevant to putting an end to a woman’s life with a steak knife in the ladies’ room.
“I’ll be in constant contact with you if anything goes wrong, but if we lose communication for some reason, you need to be able to fend for yourself.”
“I know.”
“So let’s have it,” Morgan said.
I’d like to let you have it.
Deena thought. “Harper will signal when the limo approaches, and I’ll walk out to the curb and cross the street. Careful to use the crosswalk, with the traffic signal, so as not to attract attention to myself.” That was one of Morgan’s big things—he needed Deena to blend in. To become a part of the scenery and look like everyone one else.
“Then, enter through the front door, just like the rest of them.” That was the part of the plan that Deena and even Harper had questioned. It was one thing to blend in and act like everyone else, but there were cameras and guards at the front door that would take Deena’s picture and remember her from the moment she walked in. They’d know her, or at least have a picture of her if questions were asked later. She wondered if it was part of a plan to get something on her, to have something to hold over her head if they needed a scapegoat later. Morgan said to stick to the plan without a bunch of questions. He was the expert.
“Once I get inside, I…” She stopped as another limo approached and parked behind the others. “I then make my way…” something about the car that had pulled up caught her attention. As the rear door opened, Lianne Hauk stepped out onto the sidewalk, her head and shoulders visible over the top of the car.
“She’s here.”
Morgan turned. “What?”
“Right there.” She pointed to the car.
“Fuck, that’s her all right.” He touched his mic. “Harper, what the hell? Where are you?”
“That’s not the car we talked about.” Deena heard her sister’s voice over the earpiece.
“That’s exactly the fucking car we talked about.”
Deena moved toward the lobby doors. “I’m going.”
“Stay casual,” Morgan said.
Sure. Be casual about killing someone. Not a problem. She keyed her mic before she opened the door. “Harper? You’re a dumbass.”
She walked through the door, pulled her earpiece out and tossed the entire thing, microphone and all into the trash can at the curb. She looked both ways as she ran out into the middle of the street and then cut between two parked limos. She knew Morgan was watching and was sure he was pulling his hair out over what she was doing. She put one hand behind her back and gave him the finger, hoping he could see it through his spotting scope.
The red carpet was roped off and she found herself stepping into a crowd of gawkers and media that were watching the arrival of sports figures, actors and politicos to support whatever the cause of the day was. She carefully worked her way into the heart of the crowd, pushing and wiggling past the amassed idiots with their autograph books and cell phone cameras at the ready.
She didn’t manage to make it up to the ropes, but got a good view from behind two excited girls wearing
Twilight
t-shirts who couldn’t stop moving. It was like they were high on caffeine or something, they were so wired that they couldn’t stop vibrating.
Deena spotted Lianne Hauk still standing near her limo. She’d been met by a half-dozen men in black suits with visible wires coming from their ears. They were the security that Morgan had babbled on about during the planning sessions. Most likely off-duty cops from the Los Angeles police force, though they could be private security. Not that there weren’t plenty of the city’s finest; uniformed policemen lined the sidewalks and were posted at intervals along the red carpet. The security men surrounded Hauk as they waited their turn on the carpet.
“Are you guys here to get the councilwoman’s autograph too?” Deena asked, leaning over the girls’ shoulders. They scrunched up their noses and then turned away, vibrating slightly less. Deena couldn’t recall ever having a weird crush like that on a movie star or musician. Harper had John Mayer posters on her wall and crushed on him big time in middle school. She had posters, downloads and concert DVDs and anything else Mom let her get her hands on. Deena never understood it.
The procession surrounding Hauk started moving closer to the carpet and Deena began to wonder whether there was a way to take her out before she even made it inside. Morgan’s stupid, elaborate plan was out the window, so she was trying to formulate a new one on the fly. The change in plan had nothing to do with Harper’s little flub. Truth was, Deena had no designs on doing what Morgan said in the first place.
She looked at the pens that the girls were holding for their autographs and wondered if she could turn them into a weapon somehow and stab the woman to death. She dismissed it as a dumb idea, as she would have to get really close and then she’d have to try to escape through the wild crowds of people and law enforcement on either side of the carpet. It pissed her off that Morgan didn’t just shoot her. That was his thing—he shot people from a distance and he was good at it. Apparently this was “the only way she’d learn,” according to Morgan.
With only a small purse at her side, Deena moved in closer, pushing through the people in the crowd. The girls resisted, the men let her move freely. It was most likely because the men were confused by her cleavage and the women were reluctant to give up their spots so close to the red carpet. When their celebrity crushes showed up, the girls wanted to be able to paw them freely.
“Watch it, bitch,” a blonde spectator in a sparkly t-shirt shoved Deena backward. “Get back there with the rest of the skanks.”
She had been in high school the last time Deena heard
anyone
called a skank, let alone herself. She looked at the girl with the bad dye job and tacky shirt and saw an opportunity. She sized up another girl on the other side of them and figured that girl was just as rabid a fangirl. Same sort of shirt, same look of breathless anticipation. Same fan, just darker hair.
“Skank? You bitch, take your hands off of me.” Deena grabbed the blonde and swung her into the dark haired fan, knocking them both to the ground. When the brunette started getting up, Deena blamed the blonde. “Jesus, watch what you’re doing.”
The brunette shoved the blonde off of her. “Yeah, dammit.”
The blonde shoved back and the two quickly squared off in a way that suggested they weren’t used to fighting. Deena decided to help things along by punching the blonde in the stomach and pushing her back toward the brunette before backing away. People began to crowd around, reaching out to pull the girls apart. There were shouts to break it up from security manning the ropes. A few of the officers crossed into the crowd to see what the commotion was.
Deena extricated herself and moved to the head of the line. There were still officers there, but they were distracted by the fight, which had somehow grown rather than diminished with the presence of law enforcement. She looked down the red carpet to see the councilwoman approaching, shaking hands and wearing a big unnatural smile as she went. Two men in suits walked on either side of her with white ear buds prominently sticking out of their ears.
As Hauk got closer, Deena put on a fake smile of her own and stuck her hand out. The councilwoman made eye contact and put her hand in Deena’s. What started as a quick, surface greeting went a little longer as Deena leaned in. “I’m so happy with everything you’re doing since you took over your position.” Deena yelled to be heard, but not quite loud enough. As Hauk leaned in to hear her, Deena let a long sliver of Shadow Energy slip from her finger into the councilwoman’s side. It went in and withdrew so quickly, that no one around them could have seen it. Judging by the look on the councilwoman’s face, she had no idea what had happened either. There was just the vague impression that she knew something was wrong. She actually kept walking for a few more steps and Deena waited until security had passed her before slowly moving back into the crowd.
When there were shouts that Hauk needed a doctor, people moved forward like a tide, leaving Deena beached on the sidewalk. She walked slowly and calmly to a nearby building and began following her preplanned escape route that she’d gone over and over with Morgan. She left the building, moved up a filthy alley and ascended the stairway of a parking garage on the next block. She would climb to the third level, meet her sister and Morgan in an old brown Ford Bronco and they would take a zig-zag route across town to a safe house where they would wait for the all clear signal from another of Marsh’s associates.
Halfway up the stairs, Deena was interrupted by a voice from higher up. “What the hell was that?” As she got up a few more stairs, she saw Morgan and Harper standing in the concrete stairwell, in front of the ‘L2’ sign. “I had that thing planned to the letter for you. How did you end up with that mess?”
Deena opened her mouth to answer, but Morgan continued. “You were in a high profile area. Do you have any idea how many photographers were there to take pictures of celebrities and politicians? Do you know how many of them accidentally got your face in their shots? Holy Christ.”
“I got it done.” Deena was indignant now. She was there to learn from Morgan, sure, but she had an internal compass that seemed to guide her forward as she worked. It wasn’t an elegant hit by any means, but she got it done. Marsh would surely be happy with that part of it at least.
“When you start working with a handler, they need to know they can trust you to do the work. They have to know you aren’t going to fuck them over because you think you can do better than the plan they come up with,” Morgan said.
Deena was still defiant, but waved her arms to placate the man. “I’ll do better when we’re in the field. I just panicked that’s all.”
“
We’re
in the field? That’s a joke. No chance will we ever work together again,” Morgan started up the stairs and Harper followed closely, leaving Deena on the landing by herself. “I have no idea what’s going on in that head of yours. It’s like you can’t control your impulses. It’s not just this time, it’s every time. When we met in the woods? Tell me you were thinking and not just reacting and doing whatever you wanted.”
There was a flash in Deena’s mind at that moment that suggested maybe he was right. Her head ached as she tried to remember what led her to deviate from Morgan’s plan. But it was like being in a car accident: Every time she got near a coherent reason, a sudden force tugged her back, like a seat belt keeping her from going through a windshield. “Fuck you, Morgan. Job’s done.” She forgot what she was thinking about and the ache in her head went away.