Phantom Instinct (9780698157132) (15 page)

H
arper eased off the clutch and sludged forward in Westwood's morning traffic, inching toward campus on Wilshire Boulevard. Her eyes were red from lack of sleep. Her hair fell out of a sloppy updo with a big clip. Her jeans, she saw, had a coffee stain. She hadn't called Aiden.

The morning news droned from the radio. She turned it off when the announcer said, “Police are investigating mysterious burns to a man's face and arms, which may have been caused by a road flare.” Then, unsettled, she turned it back on. Road flare. Magnesium flare? But the report was over. She parked and schlepped her book bag onto her shoulder. As she hiked toward the Linguistics Department, she phoned Erika Sorenstam.

“Ms. Flynn.”

Sorenstam didn't even simulate enthusiasm. Harper said, “I was calling to see if you've learned anything from my swipe card.”

“I'm on it.”

Harper walked through busy bicycle traffic and clots of young people half-asleep and intent on getting to class. The sky was robin's-egg blue.

“Ms. Flynn? Is there something else I can help you with?”

I'm afraid I've been a fool. I'm afraid I've blown any chance I had to get through this unscathed.

“No. Thank you, Detective.”

She hung up, thinking:
exercise in futility
. She picked up her pace toward a cluster of redbrick buildings. They sincerely attempted to project gravitas, something never quite possible on a sunny Los Angeles campus surrounded by freeways and beaches and Hollywood. She hurried around a corner, started up a flight of steps, and saw the girl leaning against the balustrade.

Harper slowed. “Piper?”

Piper smiled and looked abashed. “I didn't know where else to find you.”

“What's going on?”

“You in a hurry?”

Harper tried not to look at her watch. The plaza was emptying out, the last few students hurrying to class. She had maybe four minutes. Her professor would be unforgiving. Her professor, the one she hoped to ask for letters of recommendation.

“I have time. What's up, kiddo?”

Piper straightened. “I acted like a douche yesterday. I'm sorry.”

“Oh, sweetie. Thanks,” Harper said. “What else? You're all tied in knots.”

“Nothing. School. Drew.”

The last word came out half whispered. Harper slid her arm around Piper's shoulder.

“He laughed at me two hours before he headed to Xenon. Then,
it.
Gone. No going back, no trying again, no breathing or thinking, no nothing. And he never expected it, I never imagined it, and why did he go to Xenon that night?”

She clenched her fists and pressed them against her mouth. Harper held on to her. The plaza had emptied.

Piper inhaled, shoulders shuddering. “Sorry. I know you don't have any answers.”

“Except to keep living. Breathe in, breathe out. Get up every morning.”

“One day at a time.”

“I don't want to sound saccharine.”

“No, it's sweet.” She sighed. “Overly sweet, with sparkles on it. But sweet.”

She reached into her backpack and took out a small folded piece of black paper.

Harper said, “Origami?”

It was a horse, angular and striking. Piper set it in Harper's upturned palm.

“For you.”

“Thank you. It's lovely,” Harper said.

“Figure you deserve something for putting up with an annoying teenager.”

“I'm here, hon. Whenever you need me.”

“And I'm not skipping school. I don't have first-period class on Thursdays.” She grinned. “I could tell it was killing you. I bet you never missed school in your life. You were the teacher's pet.”

“I'll let you picture me that way.”

“Somebody killed my brother.”

Harper held on to her. “Some asshole absolutely did.”

“Are you getting anywhere with the sheriffs?”

“I've been . . . diligently calling Detective Sorenstam.”

“Pestering, you mean.”

Harper squeezed Piper's shoulder. If the girl still had a sense of sarcasm, she wasn't too far gone. “Relentlessly.”

“You think she's a good detective?” Piper said.

“As far as I can tell.”

“Hope so. My parents said that at Xenon, Sorenstam was probably concerned about the other sheriff instead of the people who were injured. That guy, Garrison.”

“He was her partner.”

“Yeah. ‘Partner.'” She made air quotes.

Harper felt a dump of adrenaline. “Sorenstam and Aiden Garrison?”

“Yeah, lovers. What's the matter?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. I just hadn't heard that.”

“Is something wrong with it?” Piper said.

“No. They're adults.” She picked up her backpack. “No, nothing's wrong.”

“Then how come you're acting like a scared bird? You're all ruffled.”

She hucked her backpack onto one shoulder. “Everything about this ruffles me. And if Sorenstam and Garrison were . . .”

Son of a bitch.

“If they were a couple . . . then, nothing. They're professionals.”

Piper's gaze was acute. The girl was going to see through her like light through a waterfall.

“Mom and Dad said they should have been evacuating innocent bystanders but instead maybe they were just covering each other's backs.”

Why hadn't Aiden said anything?

Piper kept talking, but Harper barely heard her. All at once, she understood the tension between Aiden and Sorenstam.

“Right?” Piper squinted against the sunshine. “You don't think Sorenstam would try to make Garrison look bad, or promise to do something for him and then half-ass it because she's getting back at him? You know, because they broke up?”

It had never occurred to Harper. Now it did. “Absolutely not.”

Yeah. Because nobody in Harper's life had
ever tried to get back at someone over a personal issue, ever.
She felt light-headed.

Piper looked worried. “What did you tell her?”

Harper put a hand on the girl's shoulder. “Every single bit of information I can remember. That's what the authorities ask witnesses and survivors to do.”

Piper's face paled. “Survivors. But what if Drew saw something?”

Harper felt as if she'd been scratched across the face with a farm implement.

“What if he saw something important? What if he was the key?” Piper said.

“There's no way to know that now.”

“I know. It's just . . . we're talking about my brother.” Piper scrubbed a hand across her cheek. “You're missing your class, aren't you?”

“I'll sneak in the back.”

“Thought you told me it's better not to find excuses.”

“You're not an excuse. You're a friend.”

Piper seemed to assess that and decide that Harper had passed her test. “You're the only person I can talk to about this. The only one who doesn't treat me like a kid. Sorry if I unload on you.”

“You going to be okay?”

“It's a sunny day.”

She turned to go. Harper did, too. But she turned around.

“Yeah, it is. So let's take advantage of it.”

Piper tilted her head, curious. Harper took out her car keys. “Girls' day out.”

The smoke boiled off the tires, and the view slid past the windshield. Concrete, weeds, dirt, back to the concrete, facing the sun. At the wheel, Piper squealed.

The MINI spun around and stopped, jolting Harper against the seat belt. “Gas. Go.”

Piper punched it.

“Clutch,” Harper said.

Piper let it off too sharply but better than before, and they leaped forward.

“Yes.” Piper virtually bounced with excitement. “
Yes
.”

Harper couldn't help smiling. “Again. That was better but still sloppy. Look where you are on the track.”

Piper stuck her head out the open window and howled. The wind blew her hair. Harper laughed.

“Come on. You're getting it. Let's go again,” she said.

Piper stopped at the end of the old runway, downshifting this time, braking with the engine the way Harper had shown her. She eased the MINI around and faced the centerline again.

She took a large breath and gripped the wheel. Her face was flushed, her eyes determined.

“Ready?” Harper said.

“I get this one, you'll let me drive in the hangar?”

“Get it precise and I'll buy you an ice-cream cone.”

Piper glared up the runway at the traffic cone Harper had set out, two hundred yards ahead. Harper scanned the perimeter one more time. Past the taxiway and scrubland, the perimeter fence listed slightly. Nobody seemed concerned that she'd managed to get a bright blue MINI Cooper onto the shuttered airfield at the north end of the Valley. The lock on the gate looked secure, too.

“Okay. Line it up six feet to the right of the centerline.”

Piper goosed the gas and eased the MINI over. Harper aimed her hand at the windshield like a hatchet.

“Go.”

They squealed away, not perfect but fun, and that was the point.

“Shift,” Harper said.

Piper jammed it into second, much better than a half hour earlier. They passed the orange line of cones Harper had set up as an obstacle course.

Harper eyed the tachometer. “Third.”

Piper's face was set, focused, but joyous beneath. Harper's own heart felt full. This was the girl she'd known before Drew died, the sharp kid eager to lap up new experiences.

Piper smoothly shifted into third.

“Beautiful,” Harper said. “Hold this line. Get it on the money and I'll buy you a puppy.”

“Pony.” Piper looked like she wanted to laugh but couldn't spare the distraction.

They raced toward the cone in the center of the runway. Fifty yards, forty.

“Hands,” Harper said.

Piper slid her left hand over the top of the wheel and grabbed it at three o'clock. With her right hand she gripped the parking brake.

“Remember, brake and clutch,” Harper said. The cone grew larger in the windshield. “Now.”

Piper braked. A moment later, she remembered to depress the clutch. The tires squealed. The tip of the grille drew even with the cone.

“Turn.”

One-handed, Piper raked the wheel left.

“Pull,” Harper said.

Piper yanked the hand brake. The car shrieked, and the rear end swept around.

“Off again,” Harper said, watching as Piper released the hand brake. “First. Go.”

Piper let go of the hand brake, grabbed the gearshift, hit the gas, popped the clutch, and the MINI bounded away. It was a pretty damn fine hand-brake turn.

“Yes,
yes
,” Piper shouted, laughing. She nodded at Harper. “Forget the pony. Make it a unicorn.”

Harper clapped. Piper raced along the runway, shoulders more relaxed than Harper had seen in a year.

Piper said, “You learned this . . . where?”

“The Navy.”

Piper's mouth pursed.

“Menwith Hill, England,” Harper said. “Why do you think I got a British car when I came home?”

Harmless lies wouldn't hurt, not right now, in the sunshine. Harper said, “They taught us all sorts of things.”

“One more?” Piper said.

Harper patted her on the shoulder. “Next time. I need to leave some tread on my tires.”

“Do we have to leave?” Piper said.

Harper again scanned the perimeter. “We've been lucky. They don't have an on-site guard, and their security patrol hasn't shown up.”

She could have taken Piper to a local racetrack, but they would never have let the sixteen-year-old behind the wheel, and they would have blown a lobe to see Harper teaching her stunt driving.

“Let's not press our luck,” she said.

“I get the feeling you've been doing that a long time.”

Harper's cheeks burned, but she just smiled and nodded. “Switch places. I'll teach you something else.”