Double Cross [2] (20 page)

“Shit!” I whisper. “Sorry.” Quickly I straighten him so he somewhat looks like he’s sitting and leaning against the closed door, though his head is lolled to the side, and his butt has sunk awkwardly between the tire and the curb. His descrambler turns out to be in his coat pocket—a chunky silver chain bracelet just like mine. He’s starting to rouse. Quickly I pull off his glasses, too, unlock my car, stuff them both under the backseat, then lock it back up.

Heels click up the walk.

I crouch next to him and brush the black hair from his face, heart racing. “Hey, buddy.”

A voice behind me: “Everything okay? Do you need an ambulance?”

I look up at a tall woman in a long purple coat. “He’s a fainter and a bit of a drunk, but it’s okay. I’m a nurse.”

“Fuck you,” Simon mumbles. “She’s not a nurse. She never will be a nurse.”

I smile up at her. “Back to his old ornery self.”

“She’s an agony nurse,” Simon says.

“Thanks,” I say to her.

The woman laughs nervously and clicks away, slightly faster than the clicks of her coming.

“Where’re my glasses?”

“I’m sorry, but your glasses have been detained. I won’t be a sleepwalker under Ez’s control. I have more than enough problems without that.”

“Fuck it. I’ll go in without them.” I watch him come a little bit more to his senses. He jerks his hand to his pocket and realizes the descrambler’s gone.

I back away. I’ll stun him again if I have to.

His expression darkens. “I’ll get another pair. And I’ll get another descrambler.”

“Not tonight you won’t,” I say.

He stands uncertainly, one hand on the hood of the car. “Just like Packard. You’re just out for yourself.”

“Look who’s talking,” I say. “Don’t you dare reverse my work with Ez.”

“Good little Justine always wanted to be a nurse,” he says in a mocking voice. “Now she’s an
eeevil
nurse. Now she’s an agony nurse. Attacking her victims.”

I feel a little ill. “We’re helping people.”

“You’re contorting so wildly to pretend you’re on the
good
side, you’re like a fucking sideshow act. Reality check, sister. We’re the bad guys. We work for a power-hungry megalomaniac. Otto’s a megalo
maniac
.”

I smile hotly. “A megalomaniac would’ve killed people like Ez by now instead of going through what he’s going through.”

“People like Ez? You mean people who’ve been imprisoned indefinitely without trial? Who look very very innocent? To both of us?”

I’m taken aback by his seriousness. It’s new. He turns and storms back toward the club.

I shove the stun gun back into my bag, get into my car, and sit, feeling like hell. What if she is innocent? I reposition dashboard Gumby, making his little green arms go over his face. His happy hopeful face just seems fake. “What am I going to do?” I ask him.

I’ve never needed to see Otto so badly. He’s the person who makes it all make sense, my anchor when I’m adrift in doubt. He wouldn’t have sealed her in there if she was innocent. I click on my phone, and my heart skips a beat when I see that there’s a text from him.

I turn on the engine and the heat and settle in to read it.

at mayoral conference, recharging and revitalizing. need solitude w all that has happened. will talk when I return.

I read it again and again.
w all that has happened
, he wrote. Meaning all that’s happened with us? Or is he talking about the Dorks? Why a text and not a voice mail? That can’t be a positive sign. I write back:
Otto, I am so sorry. I miss you. Can we talk? When will you return? xxoo

As soon as I hit send I think of different, better things to write, but it’s too late. And it would be too flaky to send another message now. I feel panicky, like things are growing distant: the sun, the moon, my dreams.

Have other people heard from him? I call Jimmy, his chauffeur. He’s in Atlanta; Otto’s given him a vacation. He knows nothing.

I’ll call the people at Otto’s office tomorrow, but they’ll probably only give me the information they provide the public. To them, I’m a consultant Otto uses now and then. This is one of the things I hate about being in a secret relationship with him. I try Sophia. Still voice mail. Did she go with him?

I call Covian. Voice mail. I leave a message for him to call me; he probably has his phone off. But surely Covian saw Otto this morning. Otto was determined to bring him home from the hospital and see him properly settled in.

Just for the heck of it, I swing by his place—a little Monopoly-type house in the Irish quarter just south of the tangle. I get out of my car and walk up to the door. All the shades are drawn, lights off. Covian’s probably
sleeping. But maybe he isn’t. And he saw Otto more recently than I did. Maybe Otto said something. Maybe Covian could give me a read on his state of mind. I raise my hand to ring, then pause.

How thoughtless can I be? Only a desperate girl makes wounded guys get out of bed to answer questions about her relationship. I lower my hand. Covian will return my voice mail.

Back in the car, I read Otto’s message again, searching for further meaning. Another thing a desperate girl does.
Need solitude.
Is he deciding whether to keep me? Of course he is. I attacked him once before, and he let that go because I was trying to save people’s lives. Or so I thought.

He has such a noble nature, holds himself to such high standards—my deception could be more than he can tolerate.

Packard’s at my place when I get there, stretched long across my couch like a lazy pasha, owning it as only he can. It’s deeply irritating—not the least because he looks so magnificently male.

“You can’t break in here like this,” I say wearily as I set my keys in the dish by the door. “You’re not welcome.” I only half mean it. I look back to find him eyeing me with a serious glint. “What?”

“I spoke with Otto.”

My stomach flips. “When?”

“This morning.”

“What did he say?”

“That you dreamed about the Goyces.” Tenderly he asks, “How are you doing?”

My vision steams, blurs; I blink back the tears, praying he doesn’t notice. I haven’t cried all day, and he has to ask how I’m doing. I cross my arms. “Fine.”

“Oh.” He stands and comes to me, enfolds me, crossed arms and all. “Oh,” he says simply. It feels good. Like home.

I pull away. “He hates me.”

“No,” he says.

“Even
you
told me to tell him. But did I?”

“You did your best.”

“No, I didn’t.” I sniff and wipe my nose. “Don’t act like you’re not a little happy.”

“Happy? To see you sad?” He rests his hands on my shoulders. “Don’t be dumb. I hate seeing you sad.”

And of course I know that, and because I know that, the hot tears start drooling down my cheeks.

“Stop, Justine. Come on.” He shakes me loosely. “Come on.” It’s supposed to be funny, the way he’s shaking me. It is a little. “Come on now.” As soon as he gets a smile out of me, he goes serious, eyeing me with grim fire. “People will always disappoint Otto. Nobody can live up to his expectations, because he sees in black-and-white, when things are really very gray.”

“I should’ve told him.”

“You were doing the best you could.”

“Was I?”

He lets me go and shoves his hands into his jeans pockets. “You always do.”

I close that line of talk with a taut wave. “He didn’t say anything else?”

“Not much. He was on his way to pick up Covian.”

“Did he say why he changed his mind about the conference?”

Packard looks confused. “The conference?”

“That mayoral conference? He’s in DC. He went to DC.”

“Otto went to that conference in the middle of the Dorks problem? And this Ez situation?”

“He wanted solitude. I got this text—”

“Otto sent a
text message
?”

“Obviously he doesn’t want to talk to me.”

Packard stares over my shoulder, seems to study my
St. George and the dragon tapestry, a cool old thing I bought with my disillusionist money last fall. I wait, noticing faint lines across Packard’s forehead.

“What?” I ask.

Packard snaps out of it with a quick shrug. “He should’ve stayed, that’s all. Look, we need to discuss that dream. You dreamed about a Goyce. I need specifics.”

“Bodies entombed in the walls. You two fighting.”

He fingers a button on his shirt, rolling his thumb around and around. “Come on. I need to know what you understood of it. Please.” The way he says it—
please
—reveals a level of desperation that surprises me.

“Fine. It started out with you and Otto—or you and Henji, both as kids, in a fight at the top of those stairs. I got that it was Riverside Elementary. Riverside Elem—”

“Elem,” he whispers. “The rest of the tiles fell off.”

“And Henji was getting at the bodies. Kind of pawing through the wall, as if the wall disintegrated under his touch. I didn’t know he could do that.”

“It’s a part of his power that he rarely uses.”

“He yanks out one of the corpses and he rips the little name patch off the shirt pocket and he’s saying,
It’s a Goyc
e
!
” I’m thinking about that patch. I’m trying to picture it. There’s something off about it, but it’s like, well, trying to remember a dream.

Packard’s words pull me back. “You said it was a Goyce from rabbit night.”

“Only because that’s what Henji called it. It’s not like the dream had a monologue of what rabbit night is.”

“Say more. I know you can.”

I sink into the chair and close my eyes. I’ll give him this. “I understand that a Goyce is a dead body. The guy’s name in life, or the name on a patch on a shirt. In the dream, you knew more bodies were there, and maybe he was putting it together.” I study my hands, trying to reach back further. I come to it again; there’s something
about the name on the patch, like a snag in the smooth flow of my recollection.

“And?”

I look up. “I felt you again. What it was to be you. Bewildered, young. The panic as Otto began to figure it out, and you wanted to stop him and you couldn’t. God, the way you felt—so vulnerable. And the dread, like this horrible thing was being uncovered. Your need to protect him.”

He flushes and looks away. What in the world happened back there?

I don’t press him on it. “It’s horribly invasive, Packard, what Ez does. And I won’t say anything to anybody, okay?”

“I know.” There’s this long pause where we sit there, silent companions, knowing each other’s minds. It’s nice. “Thank you,” he says.

I stand. “Are you hungry?”

He looks surprised at the question.

I happen to know he’s always hungry. And I want him to stay awhile. “Come on. I made some lasagna the other day.” I head to the kitchen and he follows. “And if you’re nice, I’ll serve it on kebab skewers.”

He clutches his heart. “No!”

I pull out the pan and heat it up in the microwave. “I can’t believe I’m feeding you when you snuck in like you did.”

“I’ll stop,” he says.

“You’d better.”

He works on setting two places at the coffee table. I’m not set up to have guests, but he makes it nice—it’s all those years trapped in a restaurant. And somehow, as we’re sitting across from each other, balancing our plates on our knees, it’s more than nice. It’s perfect.

I tell him about the Shelby-Avery connection, and we marvel about it, but agree she can be trusted no matter
what. And we talk about Ez some more. I assure him that whatever Ez stirs up is safe with me.

“I think she’ll go on to different subjects now,” he says mysteriously.

“Okay. But I should tell you, Simon thinks she’s innocent.”

Packard squints. “Simon needs to back off.”

“Unlikely. Let’s just say he’d like to fully insert himself into her case. And he had a descrambler.” I load one last succulent bite onto my fork.

Packard lets out a hiss. “Right. For the Belmont Butcher.”

“I took it away. Hopefully he can concentrate on somebody low security for a while. Simon thinks if she was really running cannibal sleepwalkers, she’d be pushing us in that direction more. Wouldn’t you agree, if that’s her big thing? She’s focused on the descrambler, but not on cannibalism at all. Do you think that’s suspicious?”

“You’re still on that?” He puts down his empty plate and wipes his hands. “She’s increasing her access to our memories. She’s controlling our dreams, and soon she’ll control our actions at night. We’ll be her puppets. Disillusioning her is the only sure way to make her let us go.

“It’s in her nature to keep the link. We will be at her
mercy.
” He gives me a hard look. “Do you want to be even less free?”

This is a rhetorical question I don’t bother answering.

He says, “Sometimes you have to be a bad person to save yourself, and it takes a little chunk out of your soul, but you do it anyway.”

He’s talking from personal experience. He’s talking about what he did to me. I know this with uncanny confidence. “There has to be another way,” I say.

“There isn’t. Choose. Do you want your freedom or your morals?”

“Goddammit.” I stand and go to the window; the
snow is falling heavily now, thick flakes swirling in the streetlight beams. “I don’t want to give up more freedom,” I whisper. If I say it louder than a whisper, I might cry. I close my eyes, hoping he didn’t hear it in my voice. Everything is so complicated. Choices and dos and don’ts swirl as madly in my head as the snow outside my window. “I don’t want to, but …”

“But?” I hear him moving behind me, the rustle of fabric like he’s putting on his jacket, denim on the outside, and a white woolly lining. The sound of snaps. “Okay.” More snaps. “Fine, then,” he says. “Get zinging. You have until Monday—four days from now—or I’ll cut you off.”

“What?” I spin around. “You wouldn’t!”

He tilts his head, eyes flat. “I appreciate dinner, but it doesn’t change anything.”

I stare, incredulous, as he pulls on his black knit hat and leather gloves. “We have to unlink her from us. And we have to disillusion all the people on the list of violent highcaps. That is our task. That is what we will do.”