Black And Blue (Quentin Black Mystery #5) (13 page)

How the hell was that possible?

No seer he’d ever encountered could block him so well.

The man stopped at the mouth of the next aisle over. Turning his head while he rested his palm on the nearest crate wall, he looked straight at Black in the back of that car. Eerie red eyes shone from the shadows, reflecting the light from the whiter warehouse lights.

Black stared back at him.

Then, impulsively, he rolled down the window.

“Hey, brother!” he said. “You! Come here! I want to talk to you.”

The man smiled. He did it without showing any teeth.

Narrow-lipped, his face gaunt below those dead-looking, blood-red irises, something about that smile sent a curl of unease down Black’s back.
 

It wasn’t the eyes.

Weird-colored eyes didn’t faze him. Most seers had strangely-colored eyes from a human perspective, and Black had seen red ones before, both here and back on Old Earth.

Anyway, seeing those eyes answered one question.
 

Whoever this was, they were definitely employing seers.

This one carried a black canvas duffle over one shoulder, as well. The fingers gripping the strap were white as bone, corpse-like. So was his face, which Black still couldn’t make out well in the shadows. He saw blood-red lips lifted in that eerie smile, a ghost-white chin, a wispy black beard and long hair that fell to his shoulders. That was it.

“Hey!” Black’s voice came out in a growl that time. “LAPD! Come the fuck over here! Now!”

Still smiling, the man saluted him with two fingers.

Then he melted into the shadowed opening between the crates.

Breathing harder, Black watched him go, disbelief still crashing through his light. Eyes like that––unless they were contacts, the guy
had
to be a seer. Yet, something was wrong with that, too. He didn’t look seer. He didn’t feel seer. Black reached out with his mind again, looking for the guy again. He didn’t try to be subtle that time, or disguise his light in any way.

Again, he felt nothing.

Not so much as a whisper of the guy met his light––the same guy who’d just been standing
right fucking there
, and who passed close enough by the unmarked police car that he could have shot Black at point-blank range.

Miri would hate this. She would hate this so fucking much.

Looking back towards the cluster of SWAT officers and detectives, he saw them still talking together in that same spot by the armored truck, about a hundred yards away. From their expressions, they were totally oblivious to what had just occurred. They obviously hadn’t heard Black call out to the guy, or noticed any of the five men Black just watched disappear into the maze of crates.

Scowling, Black reached out his mind to read Mozar.

Again, he hit a solid wall.

No––not a wall. That was Old Earth terminology. This wasn’t a wall.

It was a complete absence of living light.

Now that he was studying it purposefully, it was nothing like when a seer deliberately blocked another seer’s sight. In those cases, something always came through. A flavor of the person blocking him––either around him, or around the target he was trying to read. He’d hit light mazes before, in the more sophisticated constructs and shields. Those didn’t block so much as misdirect and confuse. Usually those were even more difficult to get around than straight shields.

He always felt
something
though... maybe nothing with relevant, concrete information attached to whatever he was trying to scan, but he felt
something.

This wasn’t like any of those things.

Instead, he got absolutely nothing.

A void, where people should be. Like the crowd of uniformed officers standing there was nothing more than a mirage.

He tried a few more times, breathing harder.

Looking down at the tablet, he considered calling Miri, trying to get her to look at what was going on, but he didn’t want to panic her. It sure as hell would panic
him
if he got a similar call from her. Moreover, she was too far away to help, so he’d be panicking her for nothing.

He considered calling Kiko, having her call the team at the hotel. They were just as far away as Miri, though, and humans would be useless against seers. Well... mostly useless. Not
entirely
useless, but guns wouldn’t be the problem down here, or even training, although more of both on their side would definitely help.

Staring down at the tablet, he briefly considered calling Nick.

All of that went through his mind in a split-second of slow-motion thought. Then it hit him––he didn’t have time for any of that.

Whatever this was, it was happening now.

Looking down the nearby aisles between storage crates, he couldn’t see anyone now. He still couldn’t feel anything either, but somehow, it struck him as even more silent now than it had a few moments before.

It was like this whole area of the Port held its breath in the dark.

Snapping the door latch, he stepped out of the car.
 

Straightening to his full height, he looked around at the still-oblivious group of SWAT officers and homicide detectives, and made up his mind.

“Mozar!” Unlike with the red-eyed seer, he shouted, figuring it didn’t matter now. “Mozar! Come here! Now! And tell your guy to get his team behind cover...”

Hawking turned his head first. He frowned.

“Get back in the car, Black.” He spoke loudly too. Motioning sharply towards the vehicle, he walked towards him with rapid strides.
“Now.
Right the fuck now. You can’t be out here...”

“Listen to me, goddamn it! Something’s wrong!” Meeting only blank stares, Black scowled. “This isn’t what you thought it was! They have serious fucking numbers out here. I’m betting Sterling’s not even the real target...”

“What are you talking about?” Mozar still sounded more irritated than anything. “Get back in the car, Mr. Black. We’ll be with you shortly...”

“Listen to me...
Andrew.
Whatever this fucking thing really is, it’s about to go down...”

The lead SWAT guy turned, staring at Black.

For the first time, Black saw his eyes.

They were dark red.

Jesus. How the fuck hadn’t the rest of them noticed that? He could see it from twenty yards away. Were they blind?

The SWAT guy was already raising his rifle.

But not at Black.

“HAWKING!” Black reached for a gun he didn’t wear. “GET DOWN! YOUR SIX! GET DOWN!”

Hawking turned, following Black’s eyes and words.

Given how fast he turned, maybe he even followed some instinctual cue from all his years in the military––the same one that caused Black to revert to that lingo.
 

Either way, he wasn’t fast enough. The SWAT leader shot Hawking in the chest the second he whirled to face him.

Without a breath between shots, he shot him again in the head.

Hawking crumpled to his knees on the asphalt. Then he fell sideways and didn’t move.

Instinctively, Black dropped like a stone. He pressed his back against the car door in a crouch before his conscious mind even caught up with what just happened.

He hadn’t even made it all the way down when all hell broke loose.

Seven

CONDITION BLACK

A WOMAN SCREAMED. It was blood-curdling, holding enough emotion that Black winced, closing his eyes. Because of the block, he couldn’t feel her pain through his light, but something in that scream stabbed at him anyway.

“EVAN!” The same voice, heartbreakingly full. “Evan! Let go of me, goddamn it! Let go of me! EVAN!”

“Grab her! Pull her back!”

The woman screamed again. Her voice shattered the silence a few more times, calling Hawking’s name.

Then shots exploded all around him.

Not just over by the voices and the SWAT team. They also came from overhead.
 

Black ducked down further, pressing his back into the car door.

Bullets slammed into the car’s side. Even from where he crouched, his seer-keen nose picked up the smell of cordite filling the air as more automatic rifles went off, including in a third location off to his left and across from where Hawking had been shot.

He heard a commotion by Hawking’s body, more yells from roughly where Mozar and the SWAT team had been standing. He couldn’t make out any of the words now that the echo of rifles and small arms filled the air, ricocheting off the metal walls.

He fought to feel what was happening, but he was still sight-blind. Frustrated, he slid around the metal frame of the car door, trying to keep some portion of the car between himself and the bullets. They seemed to be coming from everywhere at once now.

“BLACK!” Mozar yelled. “BLACK! ARE YOU THERE?”

“I’m here!”

“Stay where you are!”

Letting out a humorless laugh, Black shook his head.

Gaos.
Like he was about to go for a fucking stroll.

Then again, staying put wasn’t an option, either.

It would be seconds before the guys in workmen’s uniforms came running back at the sound of gunfire. They’d bring whatever was in those rolling bins back with them.

For all he knew, they were packing RPGs.

Crab-walking forward in a low crouch below the door’s window, he ignored ricocheting bullets and opened the driver’s side door, leaving the one behind him open as well. Immediately, more bullets peppered the outside of the car.
 

This time, they went after the driver’s door, focusing on the front.
 

Black slid to the side, but when he saw the bullets being stopped by the outer shell, he moved back behind it. The car door made a better shield than he’d feared. He wondered if the damned thing was bullet resistant.

When the volley died down, he peered over the edge, saw a muzzle flash from above and ducked back down. The bullet slammed into the door, about a foot below where his eyes had been. He was already back behind cover, but he still got his answer.

Whoever it was, they weren’t trying to kill him.

They wanted him to stay out of the car.

Black decided following their advice probably wasn’t in his best interest.

He slid carefully into the front seat. Staying below the dashboard, he looked for the keys, his mind turning over reasons they might want him alive and liking none of them. Luckily, Rodrigo left the keys on the drink holder between the seats. Jamming the longest one into the ignition, he started the engine, gunning it even as more bullets sprayed the car.

That time, they went after the hood.

They’d shot Hawking, an LAPD homicide detective, stone cold dead like it was nothing. Why the fuck weren’t they shooting at him?

Again, his mind had answers to that question, but he liked none of them.

Throwing the car in gear, he peered over the dashboard just long enough to get a snapshot view of the landscape. Normally, he would use his seer sight for that too, but this time he had to rely on his eyes.