Color Blind (32 page)

“The ultimate irony,” Isaac said. “They’ll be fighting for this guy’s freedom, and you’ll send them on their way. Instant fame.”

No one so much as looked at Sebastian while he laid the hose.

As he applied strips of duct tape over the hose to hold it in place, he couldn’t help but think that in the coming days, people would wonder why he’d done this. They’d try to guess, try to make themselves feel like if they’d known, they could’ve understood. Helped. Stopped it. Or worse, they’d paint the act like it was senseless and nothing they
could
understand. So much easier to make him a monster than find out who he really was, probably.

When Sebastian and Isaac first started talking on Land of Valor, Sebastian hadn’t been amazed someone knew him. On the video game, he was a god. Isaac had given him a way to be great in real life. Isaac knew what Sebastian needed, and he’d shown him how to achieve it.

Isaac showed him it was better to be a monster with a name than a good guy without one.

Zane knows your name.

“Can I give you a hand?”

Sebastian jumped at the voice. He looked up to see an older guy with a handlebar mustache kneeling on the other side of the hose. Guy ripped a few strips of duct tape off the roll, tacked the ends on his pant leg. Then he started taping with Sebastian.

The sweat dripped down Sebastian’s forehead and onto his neck. He had to get rid of the guy before they came to the capped end.

“Nothing like prepping electrical at this hour, huh? Guess it’s a job.”

“Yeah,” Sebastian grunted.

“You get to go home after this, or are you on crew tomorrow?” the man asked.

Friendly conversation never had been Sebastian’s forte.

“Home.” Shit. He should’ve said crew. Mistake.

“Ah. Good for you. I’m stuck here ’til seven. The wife won’t even be awake when I get back,” he said. He chuckled. “Guess you young guys don’t have that problem, eh?”

Zane’s mottled face entered Sebastian’s mind, the feel of her clammy hands on his chest. Her smooth, scarred lips had been detestable, and yet he’d wanted more of them. Crazy.

What would a normal guy say to that? Sebastian forced out a laugh. “You know how it is.”

It was the sort of thing he heard men say all the time, but he never knew what it was supposed to mean. How could someone possibly know how something was for somebody else unless they’d lived their life?

They taped the cord in silence, and Sebastian floundered for a diversion. Having the man see the end of the hose would ruin everything.

As it turned out, the geezer gave him an out, almost like he knew and took sympathy on Sebastian. “You need any hookups or anything at the end?”

Question of the century.
“Oh, nah. This one’s for a private group’s equipment. Just supposed to have it laid out and ready for them to plug in when they get here.”

The lie came so easily, it was almost like he’d known he’d need it.

“Ah, okey dokey, then. Might want to toss a tarp over the end just in case. No rain in the forecast, but if the weather turns bad, tarp’ll give the crew a chance to cover up the rest. If the outside of the line gets wet, that’s not such a big deal, but if that adapter head gets drenched, you’ve got problems.”

“Good call,” Sebastian replied. He hadn’t thought of rain.

Probably a lot he hadn’t thought of.

The guy got up, moved on to the next random project. Too bad the geezer wouldn’t be here tomorrow. The guilt that he’d helped with setting up this disaster would probably make him wish he were.

If Sebastian somehow made it so Zane wasn’t here, she would probably wish she’d stopped him, too. Maybe her being here
was
kinder to her, after all.

He could call her, pretend he was someone else. Lure her away. No. That was no good. This event meant too much to her. She wouldn’t leave.

The thought pissed him off, made his face burn. Someone had taken her face from her, someone like the guy she was fighting to keep alive tomorrow. She was sick, too.

Sebastian tossed the tarp over the capped end of the hose, taped it down on all sides. The last thing he needed was someone trying to inspect that end. When he was done, he walked the same way he’d come in, no one bothering to stop him to talk. They wouldn’t, after all. He was a nobody here, too.

No deciding about Zane tonight. He’d sleep on it. Maybe when he called her to meet up tomorrow, the answer would hit him just like the lie to the old man.

If no ideas miraculously developed, at the very least he wouldn’t have to be around to see what happened to her.

J
enna and Hank stood in the Krupkes’ hallway to talk. Turned out, Hank appeared somewhat grateful for Yancy’s presence, since Yancy could sit there with the heap of sobbing Zane while they strategized.

The stoners in the other room seemed oblivious to their chatter other than the dad, who occasionally stalked back and forth to glimpse what they were doing. He always had some “reason,” like watering his aloe plant, but Jenna could tell.

“We station men to monitor the crowd for him,
all
plainclothes. Snipers posted, as many vantage points as we can,” Jenna said. Hank knew all this, but talking it out helped her feel in control of her thoughts.

“What about windows? He could take kill shots,” Hank pointed out.

“Not likely. Sebastian wasn’t the marksman of the group. We know that from the ferry shooting. Isaac will have him take out a chunk of the rally in a way that feels less personal to Sebastian. Sebastian will have doubts, and Isaac foresaw that. He’s foreseen a lot.”

“You’re thinking bomb?”

“Bomb, maybe preset sniper rifle, but then again, I doubt the rifle. If it was an option, they’d have used it at the ferry shooting. Isaac might’ve gotten a kick out of being able to get Sebastian out of the park without detection, but he’d have known Sebastian wouldn’t have the stomach to kill as many when separated from him.”

“True. So we need to check every car, bus, van in the area. All the equipment trucks coming in,” Hank replied.

“The ones already
there
. We need backgrounds on personnel if we can, a sharp eye on any left bags, boxes, et cetera.”

“Jenna, this is risky. We should call the event off.”

Jenna raised her eyebrows. “You seriously want to
try
to cancel an anti–death penalty rally? You think that’s even
possible
? On a good day, you’re talking about riots and some really pissed off bureaucrats. FBI messes in a hot button issue like death penalty? We’d cause a shitstorm. Not to mention, this may be our one chance to catch the ferry shooter. We don’t know his plans. He gets away from this scene, our trail turns cold, and he plants the next bomb. We don’t know how many Keaton put him up to.”

Hank blew out a breath. “I hate it when you’re right.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“We could screen everyone who goes in,” Hank ventured.

“He’ll spook faster than Punxsutawney Phil on a bright June day.”

“This is a nightmare.”

“No. It’s a nightmare if the bomb goes off. This is a
challenge.
Figure out Keaton’s brain, and we win,” Jenna said.

If they knew more about Keaton, maybe they’d know about the modus operandi he’d choose for Sebastian. This was Keaton’s show, not Sebastian’s. Sebastian hadn’t chosen one thing about how this would go down other than committing to it.

“We
could
go back to Keaton,” Hank suggested.

Isaac’s face flashed in Jenna’s mind, his smug expression. Riddles. “No. He wouldn’t tell us anything at this point. Not even to toy with us. He knows Sebastian’s volatile, I’m sure of it.” Not to mention Thadius Grogan. At least they’d found Zane before he had.

“In that case, Zane’s our best option,” Hank said, nodding toward the girl’s room.

“Let’s hope.”

•   •   •

J
enna sat next to Zane Krupke on her bed. The girl had stopped crying, but she was now rocking herself back and forth, hugging a purple sham pillow to her chest.

“How could he do this to me?” she whimpered.

“These things aren’t easy to understand, Zane. Trust me,” Jenna said.

“I would’ve never known. All the things I’ve been through in my life, and I’d never have picked him out,” she muttered.

Jenna looked away from Zane, whose hair was wet from her own tears. This never got easier no matter who it was, but especially when it was someone who’d already been through the ringer.

“This is a hard thing to ask of you, Zane, but we need your help. We need you to help us find him tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” she echoed. “What’s tomorrow?”

“The rally, Zane. We’re trying to find Sebastian before the rally, but in case we don’t, you’re our best chance to get in touch with him before something bad happens.”

She scooted back on the bed, fumbled her way to her knees. “Tomorrow? You can’t let him come tomorrow! It’s not . . . I can’t . . . he . . .”

“I know, Zane. We know. But if we call off the rally, he could hurt other people somewhere else another time. We have to stop him while we know where he is.”

“My friends—”

“We’re going to do everything we can to make this safe,” Hank said.

Oh, go on. Reassure her when we have no reason to think this will be safe. Promise her the same way you promised me you’d keep an eye on Claudia.

“Zane, we can’t tell you this plan is perfect. But we don’t have another one. We could prepare for years, and we might not know what’s coming. The truth is, this is the one chance we have to catch him. We need you, Zane,” Jenna said.

Zane sank back to her rear end, her breaths rattling in and out of the mouth destroyed by another freak just like Sebastian. The girl shook her head from side to side, and her black locks drifted over her shoulders.

“If I have to,” she whispered.

Reluctant but accepting. Man, did Jenna know the feeling.

“You said this is an event you’ve worked on a lot, right?” Jenna asked.

The girl nodded. “Yeah. I organized at least half the volunteers.”

“Do you have lists of their names?” Sebastian’s name wouldn’t be on one yet, so it couldn’t be a
complete
list. But it was a start.

“Yes, I do. I’ll give you all my notes about the rally. Hang on.”

Zane got up and moved to the desk. Her forehead wrinkled as she shuffled a few papers, picked up a book or two. “It’s gone.”

Trepidation crept up Jenna’s back. “What’s gone?”

Zane shifted a few more books, this time more frantic. “My binder. The rally binder. It’s not here.”

Oh, no.

“Is anything else missing?” Yancy asked, standing as though he knew the room well enough to help look.

Zane glanced around, leafed through a stack of books she’d dropped into her closet. “I don’t think so.”

“Did you talk to
anyone
else about Sebastian Waters, Zane? Anyone at all?”

The sinking in Jenna’s stomach was deepening even before the answer, because somehow she knew what had happened. The room glowed red in her eyes, a red very clearly associated with this case. No way this could turn out well.

“No. I just got home a little while ago. I haven’t seen anyone since Sebastian actually,” Zane said. She blushed.

“Anything odd about home when you got here? Even the tiniest detail? Think hard,” Hank said.

Zane closed her eyes like she was taking mental inventory. She shook her head twice, then stopped. Her eyes fluttered open.

“My door wasn’t closed.”

“Is it usually?” Jenna asked.

Now Zane nodded her head hard. “Always. I don’t like the . . . well, I don’t like Dad to see what I do in here.”

Or you don’t like the smell of pot.

Either way, they had bigger problems than Daddy’s marijuana problem right now. The dread encircling Jenna’s stomach tightened, squeezed. They needed to talk to Daddy now, stoned or not stoned. The red glowed brighter. It was the color that one man involved with this case had appeared as all along.

It would seem Thadius Grogan might’ve found Zane first after all.