Authors: Shannon McKenna
Rudd estimated the distance between himself and the cop.
Right on the edge of his range, but he could do it. He’d waited until just before peak dose to try. One had to time these things just so.
He reached, harder, farther, stretching . . . contact. He was only a rudimentary telepath. At peak dose, he could catch random glimpses, or follow thoughts if they were strongly projected with intention, if they were emotionally charged, or if he knew the context well. Otherwise, not so much. But this guy was easy, even for him. Simple, predictable. He was hot, he was bored, his ass itched, he was frustrated at pulling this kind of duty and being passed over for better assignments. Irritated at his wife over some long-standing fight. His thoughts flowed through Roy’s mind, fuzzy and staticky, but clear enough.
. . . fucking hot . . . kill for a cold beer . . . need more smokes . . . wonder how long I’ll have to wait to get laid again this time . . . go find me a
friend with benefits, that’ll teach the snotty bitch to give it up. . . .
And so on. Rudd hung on to the contact, and began to funnel his coercive energy against the guy’s mind, like he did to punish Roy, but harder. And suddenly, full force.
The policeman doubled over, clutching his head. His thought processes disintegrated into shock, terror.
Pain.
He groped for the walkie-talkie at his belt. Rudd ramped it up before the man could say anything into it. It felt good, to unleash the full range of his abilities. Like a full-body stretch after sitting in a cramped plane seat for hours.
Rudd got out of the car. Time to get on with it. The man dropped the walkie-talkie. It tumbled down the steps. The man thudded to his knees, tipped. Rudd heard a
crack
as his head hit something.
Rudd nudged open the gate, kicked the walkie-talkie with his toe to where it was not visible from the sidewalk. He ran a practiced eye over the cop. The knock to the head plus the previous trauma Rudd had inflicted should keep him quiet. He nudged the man’s legs, bending them at the knees so that they were hidden behind the low wall that bounded the porch, and could not be seen by a casual passerby, and ducked under the yellow tape.
He’d waited for the evidence techs to finish up with some follow-up work, and was reasonably sure now that the house was empty, but who knew for how long. He’d keep this quick.
The place was a mess. Trashed by Roy and his mafiya thugs in their search for Psi-Max 48, then worked over by the forensics types. He was under no illusion that he would find Psi-Max 48 here. The drug was with Nina Christie and her brawny protector.
But he would walk through, look, think about her. People let down their guard when they were home. Weaknesses were revealed. He had an excellent instinct for weaknesses. There was a zen to it. He’d been pretty good at exploiting weaknesses even before that happy day he’d discovered psi-max.
He started with the upper floor. Several rooms were empty, in-cluding the master bedroom. Odd. The bathroom was a heap of glass from the broken shower stall. Meatheads, breaking things for the sake of breaking them. The medicine cabinet’s contents were scattered in the sink. Face cream, body lotion, Advil, as-pirin, antibiotic ointment. Dental care items. No cosmetics, no contraceptives pills or devices. No antidepressents, antianxiety drugs, opiates, or medication of any kind.
But a woman in Nina Christie’s line of work was often compensating for something. Do-gooder crusaders always were.
He was all the more convinced of this when he looked over her bedroom. It was a much smaller back bedroom, looking over an alley. A narrow, antique bed, plain white sheets, a somber quilt. A hard, matted-down futon mattress. A veritable nun’s cell.
And that closet. She’d hidden in a false-backed closet, Roy said.
He stepped over voluminous, dull-looking clothing to take a look at it. Fine work, custom made. The back panel was torn up with bullet holes. No casual hiding place, but carefully planned. This project had cost her money.
The clothing was all in flat, neutral colors that disappeared when you looked at them. Grays, beiges, taupes, the occasional daring navy blue or olive drab or charcoal. She even avoided true black and true white. Evidently they had too much pop.
He nudged at the crumpled rose petals, broken ceramic. A, seventies-era picture of a smiling, pretty woman, probably Christie’s mother. No jewelry box. What young woman’s bedroom was de-void of jewelry? So very austere. His foot crunched over a picture frame. He picked it up. A photo of two young women. A striking strawberry blonde, her arm draped around a smaller woman, whose dark, curly hair was dragged straight back from her forehead. The dark woman wore harsh, unflattering glasses and a drab brown button-down shirt.
That plainer one was clearly Nina Christie. No jewelry, no makeup, no contraceptives. Ergo, no lovers. A custom-made closet to hide in. Hmmm. A deep fault line, just waiting for him to exploit.
His eyes fixed on the other woman. A friend with pride of place on a woman’s bedroom dresser, right next to dear old Mom, was another fault line. Love was the best one. It had worked on Helga, after all.
But time pressed. He laid the picture down and swiftly toured the rest of the house. Not much to glean. She hung few pictures, had simple, utilitarian furniture. A china cabinet in the dining room was flung down, its porcelain contents smashed to dust. A mirror over the table had been smashed, cracks radiating out from the splintered hole.
The kitchen was his last stop. He made his way to the refrig-erator, and gazed at what was clipped with magnets to the door.
Yet another photo of the smiling strawberry blonde, but this time she was seated with a tall, grinning dark-haired man who had his arm around her shoulder. Each held a squirming toddler on their laps.
A card was stuck up with a magnet. It was made of handmade paper, liberally scattered with pressed wildflowers. On closer inspection, the flowers proved to be yellow mountain lilies, small and delicate, their dried petals wispy yellow threads, like saffron.
Inside was printed:
You are cordially invited to the wedding of
Lily Evelyn Parr and Bruno Ranieri,
to be held in the Portland Rose Garden
on September 8, at 2:00 PM.
Reception to follow, at the Braxton Inn.
Please RSVP.
His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. The display indicated that it was Anabel. He hit “talk.” “Yes?” He kept his voice cold.
He was displeased with Anabel. She’d been coming up blank in every task he set to her.
“I heard from Dmitri,” she said. “About Joseph Kirk. In Portland. His men paid Kirk a visit this morning. Questioned him.”
“And?”
“Kirk didn’t know anything. He really thought Helga was dead, in the fire. No clue. Dmitri’s boys questioned him very thoroughly.”
“We need to have you read him, too,” Rudd said briskly.
“Make arrangements to go to Portland immediately. We have to move fast—”
“He’s dead,” Anabel broke in.
Rudd’s manicured fingernails dug into his palm. “He is
what?
”
“Um, they didn’t actually mean to kill him,” she explained.
“They did some cutting, see. And he went into shock. His heart stopped.”
“So we’ll never know,” he said grimly.
“Boss, you remember what Kirk was like,” Anabel coaxed. “I think it’s true. I think he really didn’t know. Kirk wasn’t the heroic type. He wouldn’t hold back. Not if they were cutting him.”
“And now we’ll never know for sure,” he repeated coldly.
He could not be bothered with Anabel any longer. He hung up, looked back at the announcement. A note was scribbled on it.
You’re maid of honor, you know, so wrap your
mind around it and don’t even try to fight. I
promise, the dress won’t gag you. I ask only
one wedding present of you. Get contacts before
you come, and let me do your makeup. XXOO
love you, girl. Lily.
Aw. Lily. Hence, the lily-speckled notecards. Sweet little detail, that. Rudd appreciated those subtle feminine touches.
Fault lines.
Rudd took the invitation and tucked it into his pocket. He walked out, ducking back under the yellow tape over the door. Glanced at the man sprawled on the porch.
Rudd made contact, though there was very little to make contact with. The man’s mind was barely there, fading fast. He hung on by the thinnest of threads. Rudd inhaled, concentrated . . .
pushed.
The thread snapped, like a cobweb. The man drifted away.
Rudd sauntered back to his car, his good mood restored.
The goddamned bus went so slow. Aaro needed an accelerator to press, but he was stuck in the back of a lumbering bus, going fifty an hour, with only the .45, the snubby, and the Micro Glock still on his body, plus his knives. The rest of the hardware, plus his laptop, had been left behind in the fracas. He missed it all.
Sharply.
If he were behind the wheel, it would be impossible to keep from speeding, though. And the last thing he needed was to get pulled over. Depending on how the shitstorm back in Brooklyn was interpreted by the cops, who knew? He was probaby a wanted man at this point.
It made him want to laugh. After investing all this energy in being unwanted. Now three entirely different entities were out for his ass: his own family, Nina’s psycho freak team, and the law.
Wow. Like there was even enough room around his throat for all those squeezing hands.
How the hell had that douche-bag Dmitri gotten mixed up in this mess? His long-lost, un-missed cousin. He’d almost shot the guy, until their eyes met . . . and Aaro’s flash of hesitation had killed Wilder.
Wilder’s death was on him.
“Would you stop that?” Nina murmured, from beside him.
He glared at her. “Stop what?”
“Flogging yourself like that. You didn’t kill Wilder. So don’t take the blame onto yourself. You have a very bad habit of doing that.”
“Get the fuck out of my head, Nina,” he warned.
She turned innocent eyes up in his direction. “I wasn’t snooping,” she said. “I was just trying to concentrate on all the details of Helga’s transcript. But your mental histrionics were making it really hard.”
“Histrionics? Look, if you’re going to start policing the random shit that runs through my head—”
“I won’t. Don’t flatter yourself. I’ve got my own thoughts to think, and my own guilt. That guy saved my life. But I just don’t feel like witnessing the self-flagellation right now. It’s distracting, and it’s too damn loud. We’re getting our asses kicked hard enough. No need to kick your own ass, too.”
“Let’s make a rule,” he said grimly. “Don’t scold me for my thoughts. It’s bad enough getting scolded for the things I actually say.”
“Let’s not set rules. I’m doing the best I can, so deal with it.”
Nina still had the harsh black glasses on, having managed to hang on to the purse slung across her shoulder, even through the attack. But with the bouncy hair, the glasses looked different.
Funky and daring, rather than harsh and dowdy. Her lips were still stained hot pink from lipstick that had worn off long ago, and her mascara had run into smudgy pools of shadow. She still glim-mered with the glitter spray. So pretty, he just wanted to drag her onto his lap and feel her up.
And he was a dirty dog for even thinking about it right now.
She gazed at him, expressionless. Probably seeing every erotic image in his head, in detail. Damn, it was hard to get used to, this telepathy thing. It changed the rules of the game completely.
“You’re awfully calm,” he said, disgruntled.
Her lips twitched. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Just jealous,” he said. No point in being anything else but honest with a chick who could read his mind. “Because I’m so not.”
“I see that,” she said. “I don’t know how deep this calm goes.
Probably just shock. I’m too hammered to react appropriately.”
“Why is it you can read my mind now when you couldn’t before?”
“You dropped your shield,” she said simply.
“I
what?
” That didn’t sound like something he’d do. Ever.
“It’s true. Yesterday you were like the door of a bank vault,”
she said. “And today, it’s open.”
“I don’t feel like I’m doing anything different,” he said.
She shrugged. “Maybe you trust me more.”
Well, hell. Since she had given him the mental construct, he used it. Pictured those big vault doors swinging shut, with a huge clang.
Nina winced. “Ouch. That was so not necessary, Aaro!”
“Just experimenting. Got to get the hang of it, right?”
“I’ve figured out how to shield, too,” she said. “It’s sort of like my invisibility trick, but reversed. Shiny side out. Like a trick with mirrors.”
He shook his head. “The technical subtleties of your psychic abilities are too much for me to process right now.”
“Then I won’t burden you with them,” she said crisply.
To his relief, the phone buzzed. Miles. Good. He clicked it.
“Hey.”
“Where are you?” Miles asked.
He peered out at the freeway signs. “Almost to Cooper’s Landing.”
“Good. Stay on the bus all the way to Lannis Lake. When you get there, a taxi will be waiting. He’ll take you to a house on the lake. It’s eighty-five Lakeside Road. About three miles from the town. Right on the water.”
“Is anyone there?”
“No, empty. The house key is in a cinderblock near the wood-pile.”
“Is the owner going to come in on us unexpectedly?”
“They’re friends of my dad,” Miles said. “It’s their vacation home. They retired and went to do a couple of years in the Peace Corps. They’re in Central America somewhere, vaccinating or-phans. They’re never going to know, and if they do, I’ll take the responsibility.”
“OK. Does this guy have firearms? A hunting rifle, or something?”
“Don’t push your luck. He’s a retired math teacher. Likes or-ganic gardening. His wife does cross-stitch. They go to Quaker meeting.”