Indelible Ink (4 page)

6

Stanley Yuko watched as four men led Harper Riordan off the elevator. He’d known it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. Harper’s latest disaster with the bus was certain to draw unwanted attention from law enforcement, and in turn, from Marsh.

Stanley pressed the intercom button. “Harper is here.”

“Harper is here? You make it sound like I had an appointment or something,” Harper said. The girl sneered down at Stanley in his chair and he felt himself shrink back. He looked away and stared at the tape dispenser on his desk, not wanting to meet Harper’s eyes. He straightened the pens and the staple remover on his already immaculate desk. Stanley waited until his boss’s voice came from the speaker. “Send them in.”

Stanley nodded to the men. “Go ahead.” He tried to sound cordial as he pressed the buzzer to unlock the door to Marsh’s office. He pulled his finger off the button as they went in. Once the door shut, he pulled out his cell phone and hit the speed dial.

“Hello?”

“It’s Stanley. They have her. They have Harper Riordan,” Stanley said. His heart was beating hard enough that he could feel it as he talked. He stood up and walked over to the elevators, hoping not to be heard. It was dumb to have dialed the phone in the first place, he could be easily overheard. He just hoped that everyone was too busy in Marsh’s office to notice.

“Slow down. What do you mean? She works there. What do you mean they have her?”

“She screwed up a job last night. And Marsh was upset after a call with her sister. I think they’re going to kill Harper,” Stanley said. “Oh, they’re going to kill her.” Stanley hated how dramatic he sounded, but he couldn’t help himself. He needed the federal agents to do something quickly.

“Kill her? When?”

“Now,” Stanley said. If he pressed his ear against the door, maybe he could hear what was happening in Marsh’s office. That simply wouldn’t look good if someone caught him. Still, he stared at the door. “They might be going to kill her now. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone. “Agent Rivers? What should I
do?”

The silence lasted a few more seconds. “Just stay put. If you feel like
your
life is in danger, leave as soon as you can. I’ll see what I can do on this end.” He hung up.

“What? What should I do?” Stanley said as loud as he could without getting too loud. He knew there was no one there anymore, but he couldn’t believe he’d been hung up on. After another moment with the phone to his ear, he quietly slipped it back in his pocket. He’d never felt like his life was in danger at the office. Not in all the years he’d worked for Marsh directly. He took a breath and analyzed the situation. It wouldn’t make sense to kill Harper in the office. Too much of a chance to be caught, to leave evidence to connect Marsh with her death. He was far smarter than that.

The elevator bell rang and the man from tech support stepped out when the doors opened. Stanley hated having to call the tech people in. They always sent James, the weird guy that smelled strongly of body spray and took far too long to get around to fixing problems. The tech liked to make small talk and chat about things that Stanley had no interest in. Sports. Video games. Beyonce and Kanye West.

“Hey. What’s the problem today?” James set an extremely large drink with a straw sticking out of it on Stanley’s desk. Stanley watched beads of sweat immediately begin dripping down the side of cup.

“I can’t connect to the server,” Stanley said.

“Can you get to the internet?” James sounded bored already.

“Yes. I can get everywhere but the server.”

James took a long drink of his soda and looked over Stanley’s shoulder at the monitor. It didn’t seem like he was in a hurry to get started.

“Have you played the new Grand Theft game?”

“No. I really don’t have time for games,” Stanley said. He went into his shell and began ignoring James and waiting for the problem to be solved. He took an antiseptic wipe from his desk and wiped down his office phone, his stapler and each of his pens. He finished by scrubbing the arms of his chair and then throwing the wipe in the trash bin. The whole while, he ignored James.

He thought about Harper and convinced himself she was safe for the moment. Just the moment, though. But how long would that last?

7

Deena felt sick. Really sick. Her hands were trembling and she was sweating just a little. Her stomach was doing noisy flip-flops and she had a hard time standing still. The water in the sink felt cool on her face, but it did nothing to calm her nerves.

The doorknob rattled and she yelled louder than she meant to; “Occupied!”

Deena cursed the lady on the other side of the door under her breath. She flipped open her backpack and found enough cash there to buy one more tall frozen mocha mint coffee before they had to go and catch the train. She’d had four coffees in the last three hours and they were playing havoc with her already messed up body, but one more wouldn’t kill her. Deena didn’t know where the coffee jitters stopped and the effects of her powers began. They were wrestling with her psyche and her brain, making every thought painful and forcing her to question each decision. Was she a twenty-something or a teen? It was hard to separate the two. She stuffed the rest of her things—notebook, makeup, brush, extra socks and gum she’d bought at the airport—back into the bag and unlocked the door.

As she stepped out, a woman waiting nearby rushed in.

“Grow a bladder, lady,” Deena said. She stepped to the end of the hall and peeked around the corner. Though there were four people standing in line at the counter, she all but ignored them. She also looked past the pudgy, dark-haired girl pouring milk into a mixer near the display case of muffins and bagels. Her gaze landed on the young man at the cash register. She’d been mesmerized by him from the moment she stumbled in off the street looking for someplace warm. His hair was gelled all crazy, every which way and he had a hint of stubble on his cheeks and chin. She thought he looked a little like a popular singer whose name she couldn’t quite place. He had to be eighteen, twenty, tops.

He’d upsized her regular to a large for free when he saw how flustered she was when she first walked in and that was all it took. Deena knew how fragile she was as she was rebuilding herself, her power, but she didn’t care. She nursed that first coffee as long as she could, staring out the window and checking her watch, waiting for Avi to return from his errands. She was wearing the Mariners shirt and matching sweats she’d bought at the airport. At the time, over-the-top team apparel seemed like a good idea to help her to blend in. Now, she felt like an idiot.

Kevin, she knew from his nametag, gave her an incredulous smile this time. “Back for more? You’re out of control, girl.” He wiped his hands on his earth-toned apron and prepared to tap her order into the computer. “Same thing or can I get you something a little… calmer? Less caffeinated.”

Deena giggled, caught herself laughing a little too much and forced it to stop. “Oh no. You find something that works, you gotta stick with it. Can you make this one a bit mintier? Put a little more mint in? I like the mint.” She felt giddy and out of control and tried to remember when the train was leaving.

“Sure. That’s not a problem,” Kevin said. He turned and grabbed a metal cup and started pouring ingredients.

The crunch of a blender startled Deena and she felt her arm throb reflexively. She looked down and saw the black ink creeping out from under her sleeve toward her wrist. She took a deep breath and pulled the arm of her sweatshirt down a bit lower. Once her pulse slowed, Deena scowled at the heavy girl mixing another customer’s drink.

Deena retreated to her table, spread out the maps and brochures in front of her, and eyed them. They were announcements and flyers for all the touristy things to do in the area. Deena had pulled them out of a display at the last rest stop to distract herself. They meant nothing, but she still read them over and over to keep from screaming about the things they’d done and the things to come.

She and Avi would take a taxi to the train station, get tickets and go. They could hop a train to anywhere and then start sorting out Deena’s life. That was the only plan she had for now and she clung to it tightly. She’d left a message for her sister to call her. Deena would explain the whole thing and tell her where they could meet up.

The only thing she didn’t have a lock on was Avi. For now he seemed to be going along with the plan. He agreed to put her on the train, but she wasn’t sure he’d follow through. Would he buckle to his fear of Marsh, or stay loyal to the past that he and Deena had together? It could mean the difference between making a clean getaway and being delivered back to her old life. She thought about Harper and wondered how she would feel about running away and leaving her life behind. Images of the things she’d done began to flood back to her, but she pushed them down and swallowed them like the heavily minted beverage in front of her. She stared at a trifold brochure about rafting down a nearby river. With the next sip, she got instant brain freeze. It was a nice distraction from trying not to remember what it was like to actually be fourteen years old back in the day.

8

Deena at 15 the first time around

The tree fort that Deena made in the woods near the highway wasn’t the most spectacular thing ever, but it was stable. Stable enough. She’d borrowed a few old busted up pallets from behind the Kroger, pocketed a handful of nails from the nearby hardware store and used a rock to pound them all into a decent flat surface to sit on.

She used to come to sit and watch the traffic zip by on the four-lane and wonder where they all were going in such a hurry. Life in Talmadge didn’t lend itself much to rushing for anything, so it was always a novelty. Deena couldn’t remember being anxious to do anything except get away from this place. She figured everyone was on their way to San Diego or Los Angeles or some other city on the California coast. She hadn’t even made it to those places, close as they were. She and Harper begged on a regular basis to make any one of those places a vacation destination, but no luck.

Lately though, she’d been coming to the little sanctuary to stare at the black and blue blemish on her arm that had appeared, seemingly overnight. It was prominent one day when she went to wash her face before bed and it puzzled her as to whether it had been there before. It was halfway between her elbow and wrist, about as big as the head of a screw.

She licked her thumb and rubbed at it, but it didn’t come off. She’d tried it all before; scrubbed it with a washcloth and soap, rubbed it with an emery board and a pot scrubber, but no luck. It was an ugly little blemish and she was stuck with it.

“Deena? You up there?”

It was her wet-blanket sister, Harper.

“Yeah,” Deena answered and leaned over the side of her dumpster-salvaged platform, careful not to put her weight on the cracked plank that she feared might snap if she wasn’t careful.

“Dad just left for work and we have to wash the breakfast dishes and vacuum the living room before we can leave for the pool,” Harper said. “So let’s go. I’m not doing it all on my own and I want to go swimming today.”

“Ehh,” Deena said.

“Dammit Deena. Don’t screw around. Mike is going to be there at noon and I want to get there early to claim a lounge chair that he has to walk by to get to the diving board.”

“Meh.” Deena liked torturing her sister. It was becoming something of a pastime. She was an easy mark.

Harper practically growled up at Deena. “I will climb up there and drag your bratty ass down and shove the dishes down your throat if I have to.”

“Bullshit.” If Harper wanted to go so bad, she would cave in and do all of the housework herself. Deena knew that and was prepared to wait it out. She sat up and leaned her back against the tree and watched the traffic quietly. After a moment, she heard her sister stalk off, stomping her feet on the leaves and twigs as she went. The sound dissipated in the distance and Deena could feel a smirk come across her face.

She raised her arm and stared at the dot. It was just over her wrist and had swollen to the size of a penny. In the time she’d briefly interacted with her sister, it had become twice as large, and it seemed to have moved several inches. Deena was fascinated… and worried.

9

Morgan sat in the comfortable seat of Marsh’s private jet and stared at Wallace. “Marsh didn’t say anything about bringing you along. Shouldn’t you be babysitting Harper? Surely the sisters will be in contact.”

“I dropped her off with Marsh. They have a bunch of his thugs guarding her. She isn’t going anywhere.”

Morgan nodded. He’d figured Marsh would take his advice and make her the carrot that brought Deena in. He hadn’t, however, counted on being saddled with Wallace while he hunted the witch. “Well, at least that’s one of them off the street.”

“We have people at the train stations and airport already watching for Deena. If they see anything, we’ll know. We’re watching whatever public cameras we can get access to. If she shows up, we’ll have someone on it.” Wallace was drinking a can of soda through a straw. The slurping sound annoyed Morgan.

The clouds were thin outside the plane and Morgan looked out the window to watch them go by. He’d have to ditch Wallace one way or another once they got to Seattle. While he could be helpful to an extent, for the most part he’d just be a hindrance. He knew things and didn’t mind doing leg work, but Morgan worked alone. Mostly. Just him and his demons.

“Look. I’ve done tons of field stuff for Marsh. We get after Deena, catch her, drag her home, and we both come out ahead,” Wallace said. “No big deal. We do what we do, and then we go back to our jobs. I’m not here to cramp your style or get in your way. I don’t want to be stuck looking after Harper for the rest of my life. Once she and her sister are out of the way, I can move on to bigger and better things.”

“This is your captain speaking. If you look out over the left side of the plane, you’ll discover that Wallace is going to kill you.” It was Mr. Hector’s voice and it seemed to be coming from the plane’s speakers, though Wallace didn’t notice it. “Why is he here? He’s going to kill you, that’s why. First chance he gets. Why else would he be here? He shouldn’t
be
here.”

Morgan pursed his lips tighter, struggling not to answer the voice, and struggling to keep more from showing up.

“Beat him to death with a tray table and throw him out the cabin door.” The voice was scratchy through the speakers. “Problem solved.”

“Avi had a room at a hotel near the airport. Hopefully, he stayed put, but he hasn’t been in contact with anyone since he reported Deena didn’t get off the plane. Who knows what he’s up to? I just want to get on with it.”

“I hope he’s useful in some way.” Morgan tried not to panic at the words. He was looking for hidden meaning in everything.

“Get on with it? What do you think he means by that?” Mr. Hector whispered ominously from the speakers. “It means he wants to kill you, I bet.”