Color Blind (25 page)

He swirled her drink in her glass, checking its consistency, then held it out to her. “Nah. Dated one.”

“Classy,” she replied. “So what
do
you do exactly?”

“I’m a graphic designer. Companies pay me to build their websites.”

“You get to work from home?” Jenna asked.

“Yeah, most of the time. Good work if you can get it.”

Jenna sat on his couch and stirred the drink with her finger. She should be doing a lot more to fight Claudia’s release than sitting here drinking an early-morning cocktail.

“In a perfect world, someone like your mother would be in the pen for the long haul, huh?” Yancy said as he took a seat next to her.

He was so uninhibited. Most people tiptoed around all Claudia-related subjects. He had no problem spitting out whatever he thought. Part of her wanted to lash out, and yet the other part was almost relaxed by it.

“In an
ideal
world she’d be in the electric chair,” Jenna replied.

He nodded. “Well, that, too. Shame about the other bodies. Seems like it should be easier to have them tested.”

“You’d think. But the one family put up a huge fight. Religious reasons. Never mind that their dad’s killer is walking free, so long as they don’t disrupt his ascension into heaven.”

“God
is
really picky about technicalities, huh?” Yancy said.

“Then Neil Lowman can’t be used, and Logan Brady is in an urn on the mantle. Bam. Done deal.”

An unnaturally loud voice filled the room. “Hey, Yance, you gonna make it for the raid tonight?”

“Oh, crap,” Yancy said, jumping up. He moved to his computer, where he held down his tab key. “Hey, Buddy. Can’t chat right now. Trying to wine and dine a hot chick. Catch you later, ’kay?”

Yancy winked at Jenna.

“Hot chick? She have a big rack? You sonofa—”

Yancy double-clicked his mouse, and the computer fell silent. “Uh, sorry about that. I’m in the a.f.k. room now.”

“A.f.k.?”

“Ah, yeah. Nerd alert. Away from keys. No one bothers me there unless it’s a dire emergency.”

Jenna choked on her sip of Bloody Mary. “Dire emergency? What kind of emergencies can there be in the computer gaming world? Don’t tell me you’re really into all that stuff.”

Yancy sat back down, slurped some of his drink. “You’d be surprised how much losing a foot can affect your soccer game.”

“Oh, geez. I didn’t mean—”

“Just kidding, just kidding. I was a nerd before the elevator crushed my leg, don’t worry. It’s actually kinda nice being able to joke with someone about that. Most people go all sympathetic on me when I crack foot jokes. You take them in stride.”

“No pun intended?” Jenna asked.

“Pun
entirely
intended. See what I mean?”

It was true. Even Hank, who knew everything Jenna had been through, was horrible at taking Jenna’s sarcasm about her past lightly. Refreshing, talking without a barrier. “Yeah, I do see what you mean. You make one poison joke at a dinner party when you’re Claudia Ramey’s daughter, and suddenly everyone at the table looks like they’re about to puke.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t the gazpacho?”

Jenna snorted. “You’ve read too much. Korbin Dale didn’t really eat poisoned gazpacho. She put it in his morning coffee.”

“Oh, bummer! That was a good one.”

Jenna stared into the drink Yancy had made. She’d watched him put each ingredient into it, not realizing at the time she’d been monitoring it the way she had everything someone had cooked for her since she was thirteen. For the longest time she wouldn’t eat anything unless she poured it straight from a can or sealed container herself.

“It was the same for my dad, we think.”

“They took him to the hospital, right? Is that how you ended up telling the police what you knew?”

Her head spun now, and not from the drink. The knife flashed in, the bloody handprints.

Jenna followed the trail of handprints to the front door, but then they veered off to the left, up the stairs. She had to find Charley. Save him.

“Dad was in the hospital, yeah. But no, I wasn’t ready to tell a soul what I knew. I didn’t think anyone would believe me. That was when she found my journal.”

Jenna tiptoed through the hallway, opened the bathroom door. Charley lay on the tile in front of the commode, half-collapsed against the wall. Red covered his front. Jenna could hear her mother’s voice calling her. She had to decide right then.

Jenna slammed her glass toward the edge of the coffee table right before she dropped it, but Yancy caught it in one deft arm movement. He set it down, then pushed her hands away and helped her sit back.

“Whoa, there. Steady.”

“I’m sorry. I try hard not to think about it too much for that reason,” she said.

Yancy shook his head. “No, no. It’s okay. Things like that sneak up on you. Believe me, I know.”

His forehead creased with worry, and his lips parted as he stared at her. He seemed to be waiting to make sure of something, but she couldn’t tell what. Then he leaned forward.

A second too late, her mind flashed the crimson that should’ve warned her this was coming. Her brain screamed no, but her head tilted back, eyes closed. God, she was so ready for this. It’d been too long. His breath came closer, the Bloody Mary still lingering there.

“Hey, Yance! I know you’re busy wooing your early-morning boo-tay call, but if you want that BH-91, get your ass on. We’re ready to go to sleep!”

Jenna’s eyes flew open, and Yancy’s weight that had been pressing in sprung away from her. For a long second, they stared at each other, frozen in the moment.

He leapt up and crossed toward the computer. “Jesus!”

The couch cushion Jenna was on sprung back to shape from where his hands had braced him on either side. She propped up on her elbows. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“No!” he said. “It’s not what you think. I need to show you something . . .”

His fingers flew over the keyboard. Some kind of map popped up on the screen, though it wasn’t of a country Jenna had ever seen before. The graphic in the corner said,
LAND OF VALOR
. Some kind of video game map.

“Yancy, I get this is a big deal to you, but seriously, I don’t understand it. I don’t know that I really
want
to understand it. I mean—”

“No, no, no! Stop and listen to me for a minute. BH-91. It’s a . . .”

His voice trailed off, and he scrolled down the screen, then clicked the map to zoom in, mumbling. “Come on.”

He clicked another button, and a new map came up. “BH is a bounty hunter quest. Ninety-one is the level you have to get to in order to play it.”

Man, she had really misjudged this guy. “So?”

Yancy spun in his chair to face her, saw her confusion. “Um, okay. Imagine a big monster in a video game, and if you kill it, you can gather a bunch of cool loot. Every big boss guy is in his own land within this big land.”

“I follow,” Jenna answered, eyes following his hand as he gestured at the screen.

“BH-91 is one I’ve been trying to . . . well, you have to have a certain number of people to go do this, and . . .”

“And you don’t want to let it pass just because I’m here. I get it,” Jenna said, trying to hold in the eye roll until he turned his back.

“No! Stop putting words in my mouth!”

The anger in his voice took her by surprise. He’d been so laid back this whole time.
What the . . .

“Okay, okay. I’m listening,” Jenna said.

“BH-91 is here,” Yancy said, clicking the zoom on his screen. “I hadn’t thought of it until now! I had no reason to . . .”

“No reason to what?”

“I know where your dude found the ferry shooter! It’s Dreamland! I know what it is. It’s right here!”

Yancy jabbed his pointer finger at the screen. “It’s BH-91!”

T
he City Walk bustled with people in bright colors, and the water shimmered in the early sun. Instruments everywhere, the smell of hamburgers lingering in the air. Boats puttered by on the lake, and yet Sebastian’s eyes kept coming back to Zane.

She smiled as they walked, occasionally introducing him to people. Sometimes they’d stop and listen to a band she noticed or take a picture of a random sight she thought pretty. From where he stood beside her, the burned side of her face wasn’t visible. Her profile looked perfect, whole.

“Oh, let’s do that!” she said, pointing.

In front of them stretched a giant piece of butcher paper the length of the stone wall in front of the café. A rainbow of handprints covered it, and the sign above read,
HANDLING IT RIGHT
.

He had yet to broach the subject he was supposed to be here for, but maybe this would be the time. “Sure.”

Zane practically skipped over to the wall and plunged her hand into a pan of purple paint. She pressed her hand to the paper, excited.

“Come on, Sebastian! You next!”

Sebastian wandered over, looked into the variety of paints available. All of them seemed too vivid for his handprint.

He felt Zane’s eyes on him as she waited to see his choice, but somehow, right now, his shoes were filled with concrete. Nothing was the right decision. Isaac had prepped him and coached him, but he’d said nothing about handprints and paint colors. This was so wrong.

“Here. Let’s pick together,” Zane said.

She grabbed his hand and dragged him forward. Her hand felt something like the newt he’d had as a teenager: wet and dry, cool and hot all at the same time.

Zane knelt in front of one of the pans, and her downward pressure on his hand caused Sebastian to follow. She grinned, her lip curling and catching at the burnt spot. At this angle, his gaze fell from her lip to her neck, which was milky and smooth. He’d not seen it before.

Ponytail. Her hair didn’t drape her face like the first time they’d met but, rather, was knotted in a ponytail.

She pulled his hand to one of the tins and pressed it into the paint. Her fingers looked so small on top of his.

“Now wall,” she instructed.

Sebastian obediently rose and stepped to a blank spot on the canvas. He smashed his hand onto the paper and pulled it away fast. The paint left a messy glob there, and he couldn’t see the individual ridges and patterns of his fingerprints the way he could in Zane’s. But still, it was there.

They both accepted the paper towels offered to them by volunteers, but even after Sebastian wiped his fingers, the paint stuck as a reminder. Purple, like Zane’s.

She bought a corn dog at a stand, and he ordered nachos. Then they ambled onto the bridge that stretched across the lake, and Zane plopped down on a bench.

“What a great day for it, huh?” Zane mused.

Now or never.

“Yeah. Glad we got it in while it’s not too hot. Weather says this week will be a scorcher.”

Zane chomped on her corn dog. Through a full mouth, she mumbled, “Tell me about it!”

She laughed and chewed, holding up one finger to signal she’d finish her thought once she’d swallowed. “I have another event this week outside, and I’m
dreading
it. It’s supposed to get up to ninety.”

Sebastian breathed out. The bridge reminded him of the ferry bridge, of looking down at all of those people. Moving targets. In games, they seemed to go down so easily, but in real life, the blood was different. Not only were these real people instead of elves and dwarves and sorcerers, but he didn’t have his clan all there to back him. That, and screams had accompanied the falling bodies.

“Oh yeah?” he asked.

“Yup. I’m kind of organizing that one, so it’ll be a little different from this,” she said.

So many thoughts whirred through his head about instructions he’d been given, things he was supposed to accomplish, but right now, there was only Zane in front of him. Weirdly enough, her burnt face in this light almost looked comfortable to him.

“You need any more volunteers?”

I
f Hank might kill Jenna for going to the theme park without him, he’d definitely be ready to shoot her on sight for bringing Yancy with her to the precinct. Either way, she didn’t have time to get the information she needed from Yancy and
then
drive over and grill Isaac Keaton. A serial murderer remained at large, and time might mean lives. Technically, the ferry shooter had been “silent” as far as they knew, but he wouldn’t stay that way forever. Keaton was too much of a planner for that. You had to look no farther than Thadius Grogan to know it. If Keaton planned for the ferry shooter to escape, they had to bank that there was a reason for it.