Plastic Smile (Russell's Attic Book 4) (13 page)

We’d get the brain entrainment up and running, and then, if Simon was still dogging my heels, I’d leave town and give him the runaround for a while. He could chase me until he got tired of it. Or until the strange images he made rise in my head drove me insane, one of the two.

We stood on the roof of a silo, farmland quilting the land around us to the horizon, and Simon laughed. “We’re here; we’re alive; we’re free!”

I’m not, I thought, but I didn’t tell him. Time enough for that later.

Arthur hung up the phone.

“It’s not Simon who’s making me tell you to stop,” I said, hoping that was the whole truth.

“You can’t know that, Russell.”

“It’s not.” I sighed. “It’s Rio.”

Arthur stared at me. I was pretty sure he’d momentarily stopped breathing.

“I know you have a hard-on for Rio,” I said. “Quit it. He’s telling me we should stop, and I trust him, and you and Checker fucking
promised
you wouldn’t keep going if I told you no.”

“We did, but—”

“But?”

“Russell! You got another psychic after you. You saw what the last one did. This ain’t a matter of preference anymore. You ain’t the only one in danger!”

“Wait, you two digging into my past is a matter of
preference?”

He glared at me. “Ain’t what I mean, and you know it.”

“We already know this Simon guy’s a wuss. Objectively, Arthur; we know it
objectively.
He could’ve gotten whatever he wanted from all of us without anybody knowing, and he didn’t, because he’s a wimp. Rio’s a lot more dangerous than he is.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe this Simon fellow just ain’t got enough telepathic-type skill to do what you say. But he could still—”

“Skill? He can erase himself from security cameras!”

“And maybe that’s Telepathy 101. You don’t know what’s easy for him and what ain’t.”

He had a point. I didn’t like it when that happened. “Rio said stop, so we stop,” I said. “You really want to get you and Checker on his bad side? This is
Rio
we’re talking about.”

I hoped he wouldn’t press the issue. I didn’t want to tell him Rio had explicitly threatened them. Arthur was the martyr type; it would probably make him even more stubborn.

“Look into this instead,” I said, pulling out a sheaf of printouts. “Checker got me that list of Pourdry’s businesses and connections. If we shut him down, you and Pilar won’t have to be looking over your shoulders anymore. And you guys can be manual labor for me on all the hardware stuff I’m about to need, too. There’s a ton of shit to do without making extra work for ourselves.”

“This conversation ain’t over,” Arthur said.

“But you’ll stop looking into him for now?”

He hesitated.

“Arthur. This is important to me, and it’s important to Rio. You do not want to piss
either
of us off.”

“You got stuff you ain’t telling me, don’t you?”

My lungs clenched. “Yeah.”

He made a face and reached out a hand. “Give me the Pourdry stuff.”

Feeling victorious, I handed it over. It was kind of nice that Arthur’s and my relationship had progressed to where he’d go with my word, even if it took a little convincing. It was unexpectedly pleasant to see evidence he trusted me.

I should have known Arthur would consider any respect or trust he might’ve ever had for me to be utterly compromised when it came to a psychic being involved. And I should have remembered he was a very good actor.

Chapter 12

The next
two weeks were a thankfully Simon-free flurry of activity. Arthur and I went out almost every day trying to track down Pourdry’s operation, but it was so well-hidden by layers of legitimate-looking fronts that we kept hitting dead ends. From what we could determine, Pourdry never even showed his face personally anywhere, but instead was a master string-puller from behind the scenes—we couldn’t find a single person who’d admit to having met him.

In between times, the little army of Arthur, Checker, Pilar, and I got a crash course in cell phone hacking. Checker was right: it was shockingly, terrifyingly easy. I’d calculated I needed at least two hundred and eighty-three of the fake cell tower signals to saturate LA effectively, and Checker had acquired our little hotspot boxes from various online companies through anonymized accounts and then had them overnighted to us. Each was about the size and shape of a wireless router, and even the power question turned out to have an easy solution—the boxes were low-draw enough that it had taken Checker about five minutes to sketch out a way to rig them to a solar panel and a rechargeable battery.

I could put them on top of roofs, telephone poles, overpasses…anywhere people wouldn’t be likely to notice them. I had a lot more flexibility with placing them than I would have had with the Signet Devices themselves, because all I needed to do was get to people’s cell phones, not solve a delicate constraint satisfaction problem. After all, the app itself would be doing that part—Checker had already coded up my algorithm for deployment, and I didn’t even bother QA-testing the software. I knew the math was right.

The ease of it all would have been discouraging from a national security standpoint, if one were more worried about national security than I was.

With Arthur and me out investigating Pourdry, Checker and Pilar stayed at one of my crappy apartments and did the lion’s share of the deployment preparation, reprogramming and waterproofing the hotspot boxes and wiring them up to their new power supplies. The construction was monotonous enough for me to be glad to get out, even for our frustratingly fruitless field trips.

“How are you going to set them?” Pilar asked, on the evening she, Checker, and I sat exhausted and stared at the monstrous stacks of rigged-up boxes. Arthur had taken off on some sort of personal errand. “I mean, are you just going to climb up and superglue them on top of lampposts and stuff?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll do that part of it. Some of the places might be hard to get to.” That, and I had to follow the proper mathematics for reaching my critical population density.

Pilar giggled. “I just got an image of you swinging from a traffic light over the PCH. Okay, so once these are all set, they put your app on everyone’s phones, and done?”

“Sort of,” I said. “There’ll be a small delta. The app will download automatically whenever a smartphone comes within range, so it’ll keep downloading to more and more until we’re saturated, and from there all the affected cell phones should start coordinating with each other to put out the subliminal audio signals.”

“I’m just looking forward to everything getting back to normal,” Pilar said. “Normal but with less crime, we hope, right?”

“Yeah. And if we’re lucky, these things will start weakening all the big criminal organizations, including Pourdry’s. Once we can get to him, you won’t have to play musical apartments anymore.”

“There’s still—um,” Checker said.

“The telepath who’s stalking Cas?” Pilar piped up cheerfully.

“Oh, right, him,” Checker said, which probably should have tipped me off but didn’t. “Him and—other loose ends.”

He meant Rio. I’d reassured him multiple times that Rio had promised his safety, but he didn’t seem to entirely believe me. It irked me. “Simon hasn’t shown his face in weeks,” I said. “Maybe he finally listened to me and is leaving me alone. If so, we’re well shot of him.”

“We can’t keep living our lives like he’s around every corner,” Pilar said. “Like Cas says, maybe he just…left. I say, once you and Arthur get this Pourdry dude arrested, we go back to our lives.”

That
also
should have tipped me off, but didn’t. Pilar was a better liar than Checker was.

“Get Pourdry arrested?” I scoffed. “What has Arthur been telling you? That’s not
my
plan.”

“Checker and I will start putting together evidence on him,” Pilar continued brightly. “Right, Checker? So the police will be able to put him away instead of him wiggling out because he’s got things sorted out so well.”

I rolled my eyes.

There was a knock on the door.

I went over and opened it to reveal a tall Asian man in a long duster. There was a yell and a bang from behind me.

“It’s
fine,”
I said without turning around, then added to Rio, “I didn’t know you were in town. Hi.”

From the sound of it, Pilar and Checker had rapidly vacated the front room of the apartment and escaped into the kitchen or one of the bedrooms, but I couldn’t help a slight sting of guilt—I’d forgotten to mention to them that I didn’t mind Rio knowing where my safe houses were. I stepped out into the hallway and shut the door behind me. “What’s up?”

“Cas,” Rio said. “Where is he?”

“Where’s who?” I asked.

“Simon.”

A funny clang sounded through my head. My worlds colliding.

Rio, how is she?

As well as can be expected.

“I don’t know,” I said, through stiff lips.

“But he has contacted you.”

“Yes,” I said.

“He is now missing.”

“I—I don’t have anything to do with that.” The last time I’d seen him was at the Arkacite warehouse. Maybe security had gotten him after all.

“Your friends do. They did not include you?”

The ground shifted underneath me. His words weren’t making sense. “What? No, you’re wrong.”

“Am I?” Rio had raised his voice slightly, and before I could answer, Arthur spoke from behind him.

“She got compromised.” He limped into view from down the hallway, still using a crutch to keep his weight off his injured side. “Ain’t had no choice.”

He and Rio stared at each other. “Take me to him,” Rio said.

“What the fuck,” I said. “Take
me
to him.”

Arthur sucked his breath through his teeth. Then he did what I never would have expected. He turned to Rio and said, “You’re immune to these guys, right?”

“I am given to understand that, yes.”

“Then find out what he wants, and fix this,” Arthur said. “You seem to be on Cas’s side, Lord only knows why, but if you are,
fix this.”

“It is far more complicated than you know,” said Rio.

Arthur snorted. “I don’t care, man. Do it.”

“Take me to him,” Rio repeated.

♦ ♦ ♦

They’d locked
Simon in an empty warehouse Arthur maintained as a temporary bolt hole. Checker, Pilar, and Arthur had all been in on it.

I decided I hated all of them.

Of course, Arthur insisted on updating Checker and Pilar before we left for the warehouse, and he came back out to tell us both of them were coming, too. I was suspicious the real reason for that was Checker wanting to be near enough to know I could protect him, rather than waiting it all out in a location Rio knew about and might come back to without me.

I’d
told
him that wasn’t going to happen. I’d have to yell at him again later.

Rio had a black Hummer. I drove with him, as I was still too furious at the rest of them. Of course, I couldn’t decide whether I was furious at Rio, too.

He knows something for sure,
Checker had said.

And now he had come asking about Simon. He had
known
to come asking about Simon.

We pulled into a deserted parking strip off an alley that would fit about five cars and was well-hidden from the street. Arthur pulled in next to us with Checker and Pilar and got out to unwind the heavy, padlocked chain over the warehouse door. He hauled the door open.

The inside was cold and utilitarian, with not even a mattress, just a pallet of bedding in one corner. Simon had been sitting cross-legged on the blankets. When we came in, he scrambled to his feet, his face going slack with shock.

And then his expression clouded over, and he marched straight at Rio.

“You hung up on me,” he accused. “What did you think was going on here? You don’t ever hang up on me! Not about this!”

Well,
that
was not what I had been expecting.

Simon jabbed a hand at Arthur, the gesture encompassing Checker and Pilar, who had piled in behind him. “None of you have the slightest idea what you’re playing at! Your friend could die, and I’m the only one who can help her, and none of you will get over yourselves enough to see what’s staring you in the face!”

“Wait,” I said. “What friend?”

“
You,
Cas,” said Checker.

Right. Fuck.

Simon poked a finger right up a few inches from Rio’s eyes. “I
do not contact you
unless it’s an emergency. When I contact you, you take it seriously, no questions asked. Do you understand!”

“I’m here, am I not?” said Rio, with a small bite of humor.

“So you two know each other,” I said.

“Yes,” answered Rio.

“Unfortunately,” spat Simon.

Rio raised an eyebrow at him.

“You call this protection?” ranted Simon. “Her job? Where did she learn to do that, huh? And you halfway across the globe—”

“If that’s what you’re concerned about, she’s fine,” said Rio. I again didn’t connect what he was talking about until he continued, “Cas can take care of herself.”

“Hold the phone,” I said. “Stop talking about me like I’m not here. Somebody explain.”

“Cas does what she likes,” said Rio. “If that is what disturbs you, then you have wasted my time.”

“And why does she like it? I suppose you’re the one who called her Cas in the first place, aren’t you?”

“It’s what
I
prefer.” I raised my voice and waved my hand in between them. “What the hell are you two on about? And why do
you,”
I added to Simon, “think you have any say in the way I live my life, or what Rio calls me, or anything else?”

“Apologies, Cas,” said Rio. “I believe I traveled here in error. If you have time for a meal before I depart, your company at dinner would not go amiss.”

“Yeah,” I said. Dinner would give me a chance to pick his brain and get some questions answered. “I’ll see you then.”

“
Wait,”
said Simon.

Rio paused in the midst of turning to go.

Why would he still care what the man had to say? Why had he cared in the first place?