Harmonic (9 page)

She stays frozen in place, her hands in her lap. “I think I'll go home,” she says. “I'm wiped out.”

She yawns, the kind of exaggerated, jaw-cracking gesture you know is faked. But instead of calling her on it, I nod. “See you tomorrow?”

“Of course,” she says.

Another lie, and I let this one pass, as well.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I
can't sleep.

Every time I try, I see Sal lying on the concrete, the gash in his throat nearly severing his head from his body. The blood is dark, glossy red-black under the halogen lights and his eyes meet mine in sightless accusation.

I read the reports again, looking for the proof Laurel wants. Sal's name comes up twice—once in the report about Monty's team, once on her request for his records. There's nothing about his name change, though. Nothing about the cart. Nothing, most importantly, about the frequency we used to visit with Monty.

Whoever went looking for Sal heard my conversation with Del.

I creep up to the attic. There's a faint light coming in through the high octagonal window, and I can see her sleeping figure under the piles of quilts and blankets. It's freezing up here, same as it's broiling in summer—a price Del's willing to pay for her privacy.

Before I can take two steps inside, she says, “You suck at sneaking around.”

“I'm beginning to think so,” I mutter. “This floor is like ice.”

“Wear slippers,” she says.

I dash across the room. “Scoot over.”

With a sigh, she lifts up the covers and I burrow in with a sigh of relief.

“You must have pissed off Laurel.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You're here, not at her place. You're not sleeping, and I know how much you like your eight hours. You didn't invite her in to dinner.”

“I did
invite her. She chose not to join us.”

“See? You pissed her off.”

“Smartass.”

“Fix it,” she orders.

“I can't.”

“You can. Apologize. I guarantee whatever you two fought over, you're wrong.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

Del says wearily, “I met her, you know. Last year, during a research project.”

“You did?” I wonder why Laurel never mentioned it. But why would she? It's not like I ever introduced her to my family, or made her feel welcome in my world. Del may have a point about my wrongness.

“She's smart,” Del continues. “Really, really smart—she could have been a Cleaver if she'd wanted. Instead, she chose to be an archivist, which is about as far from Walking as you can get. And yet she's spent the past few days tearing around the multiverse with you. She's trying to see the world the way you do, and be a part of it. If there's a problem, it's not her. It's you. So fix it.”

I debate stealing all the blankets, but don't. Part of knowing how to fix things is triage—dealing with the biggest emergency first—and right now, Laurel and Del's safety comes before their feelings.

“I'm trying,” I say. “Did you tell anyone about my phone call?”

“Who would I tell?”

“Mom, Dad, Eliot, Amelia . . .” I pause. “Okay, Eliot and Amelia.”

“Nope. Eliot had training today and Amelia was too worn out to talk. Why?”

“Somebody beat us to the park.”

She doesn't respond. She doesn't ask how I know. She doesn't suggest it might be a coincidence, because the only person who is more skeptical of coincidence than I am is Del, whose life was engineered to look like coincidence, and then like fate, and then it fell apart.

She doesn't even ask what happened, because she knows it's bad, and she's full up on bad news.

“Phones are easy to tap,” she finally says. “Someone was listening in.”

“Who?”

“Consort phone,” she points out.

All Walkers use phones modified by the Consort. They're outfitted with sensors and apps to help us work more efficiently. “That doesn't mean—”

“They wouldn't even have to hack it. They have access built in. Eliot put an encryption patch on ours eons ago, but yours would be vulnerable.”

When we'd spoken, I read the frequency back to Del.

I'm cold again, despite the layers of blankets. “Don't go out tomorrow,” I say. “Not even to see Amelia.”

A beat, and then she nods. The Free Walkers know Amelia's significance, but the Consort doesn't. If they're watching us, even a visit to walk the dog would put Simon's mom in danger.

“You weren't asleep,” I say.

“I don't like the dreams.”

I understand.

•    •    •

When morning comes, my head feels gritty and slow. I make coffee and try not to think about Sal, but even after three cups, I'm not as sharp as I should be.

No texts, no voice mails. Laurel is freezing me out. In the elevator, I'm tempted to hit the button for the Archives, but pull back at the last minute. I haven't found the words to fix us yet.

Garnett has beaten me to the office again. He's whistling to himself and playing solitaire on his computer. “Hey, partner. Ready to go out and catch some bad guys?”

Could he be the mole? He's too young to have worked with Sal, but so is the girl in the hoodie. He's been so intent on finding the Free Walkers, and it's hard to fake that kind of zeal. And it seems impossible that Lattimer would have brought him in if he wasn't trustworthy.

Then again, Lattimer brought me in, too.

“Why bother?” I say, my frustration spilling over. “We're wasting time. None of these trails lead anywhere.”

His eyes turn flinty. “You want to sit around all day and read reports? You think that's going to stop them?”

“We were supposed to find a cell, remember? Arrest a Free Walker and find out who was giving the orders. Instead, even when we get close”—a vision of Sal, bleeding on the pavement, springs up in my mind—“we're too late. We need to stop chasing them and focus on getting ahead, or they're going to win.”

“Suit yourself,” he says coolly, as if I've offended him. But I don't have time to soothe hurt feelings. If the Free Walkers have progressed to killing people—
it's only going to escalate,
hoodie girl warned me—it's only a matter of time before they start going after Walkers.

Despite my determination, the fight with Laurel keeps creeping into my thoughts. “I'm going to the Archives,” I say eventually.

“Thought you wanted to chase after Free Walkers, not your girlfriend. Unless you think she is one.”

“Laurel isn't a Free Walker.” It's the one fact I'm certain of.

“If you say so.”

“I do.” I trust Laurel, but his suggestion makes me realize how easily the Consort could misinterpret our actions—accessing sensitive data, lying to Garnett about our trip to the cleaving, holding back information about Sal. If I can't locate a real Free Walker, suspicion could fall on both of us, especially with Garnett keeping such a close eye.

“What's up with you? Rough night?” he asks.

“You could say that.”

“Lover's quarrel?”

None of your business.
“We're fine. But . . . I do need to check a map in the archives. Really.”

“Go on,” he says, as if I need his permission. “Take your time.”

I slip out, and he resumes his whistling, a trilling song like a child's music box.

But Laurel's not in the Archives. Green approaches me with a frown. “She's not here yet, dear.”

“What time was she scheduled to come in?”

“An hour ago. I assumed she wasn't feeling well.”

Laurel's not the type to sulk at home. If she wanted to punish me, she'd be here on time, dressed to the nines, showing me exactly how much she doesn't miss me and exactly what I'm missing. Maybe she's too rattled by Sal's death to come in.

“Can I help you find something?”

“Laurel was pulling a few records for me yesterday,” I say, and point to the haphazard pile on her desk. “Is it okay if I look them over?”

“Of course,” Green says. “Call if you need me—or if you hear from her.”

The files don't tell me anything new, except that Laurel is a lot messier than I am. By the time I'm done, she still hasn't shown up. But straightening her desk has allowed me to organize my thoughts, and it's pretty obvious that I'm in over my head. If the mole killed Sal to cover his tracks, it means we're getting closer. It's time for me to come clean with Garnett. To tell Lattimer that the Free Walkers are using early drafts of the Repertoire to target Echoes. We should be able to narrow down a suspect, and then my job will be done.

I take the most recent analysis of Sal's Echo and read it as I head back upstairs. I'm tempted to leave Laurel a note, but don't. Triage, I remind myself. Fix the worst damage first, and the Free Walkers are definitely the bigger threat.

There's music in the elevator, which is new, until I realize that it's coming from me. I'm humming the same song Garnett was whistling earlier. I don't know it, but it sounds vaguely familiar, like a television jingle or a nursery rhyme.

Sometimes a tune sounds familiar only because it's trite—the chords and progressions follow the same pattern as so many other pieces, you can't help but predict what comes next.

But the crawling sensation along my nape is back. I try to remember where I heard it before, imagining the fingering I'd use on the piano, on the viola. Was it a song I learned during an early lesson? The answer hovers at the edge of my mind, as if I only need to listen harder.

The office is empty when I return. While I wait for Garnett, I continue studying the report on Sal's world. Nobody's Walked there for more than a year; there's been no need. Sal either chose it because it was stable, or he's been tuning it to keep the Consort from noticing.

And it hits me. Garnett was whistling the carousel song.

Except . . . the carousel was shut down when Laurel and I saw it.

The last time I heard that song was when I hummed it to Del. During the same call when she gave me the frequency of Sal's Echo.

My morning coffee threatens to come back up.

With shaking hands, I move to the cabinet. Coincidence, I tell myself. The multiverse is infinite. Coincidence is unavoidable. It's not proof.

The cabinet's locked, of course. I should have asked why only Garnett had a key, but I never thought twice about it. He's Enforcement. He's supposed to have weapons. Leave the finding to me and the capturing to Garnett.

The Free Walkers are supposed to stand trial. The rule of law; the thing that sets us apart from and above the Free Walkers. We're better than them—we have laws for the good of the Walkers, for the good of the Key World, for the good of the multiverse.

Walkers are too honorable to slit the throat of an old man and leave him to bleed out on the concrete.

I pick the lock easily, turn the handle, and open the door. Everything's in perfect order. I liked that about Garnett when we met. I took it as a sign we would get along. The weapons are laid out in a strict grid, a place for everything and everything in its place. . . .

Except for the empty spot where the biggest knife should be.

That's when I throw up.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I
call Laurel, but she doesn't pick up. The call, in fact, goes straight to voice mail. I'm about to launch into a warning when I remember Garnett could be listening in.

“Hey, it's me,” I say, trying to sound apologetic instead of panicked. “I'm sorry about last night. I've been thinking, and you're right. Can I make it up to you? Dinner somewhere with amazing desserts? Call me back and name the place.”

By the time I hang up, I'm in the car and heading to her apartment.

Another locked door. Six months ago, I had a key. Now I'm reduced to lock picks and the galling notion that I should be grateful to Monty.

The air is still. Empty-still, the kind of utter quiet that bounces back as you walk through the house. There's no quiver of pivots or the sense of a breath being held, no expectant hush. There's nobody here.

Nobody alive, at least—and I hate myself for thinking it. Laurel's phone is on the floor, screen shattered. Through the shards, I can see the missed-call message. He must have taken her, then come into work—just to toy with me.

I need to be logical. I need to be as focused on this job as I was on cleaving. I need to be the best in a way I've never been before: not just the best Walker, but the best girlfriend. I need to be the one who knows Laurel best, because I don't know Garnett. I don't even know if he's a Free Walker or a psychopath. Or both.

The only way to track them is to track
her
.

Other than the smashed phone, there are no signs of a struggle. I can see the living room from where I stand—nothing's out of order. Does that mean she went with him willingly? I can imagine it: Garnett coming in, saying I need Laurel's help, saying the Free Walkers have targeted me or are coming after her. But she wouldn't have left her phone. She must have figured out he was lying, and things went south.

I search the apartment, breath coming too fast. I'm terrified of what I might find, struggling to hold off the memories. If I think about the time we've spent together, I'll lose sight of what I need to do at the moment I need to see most clearly.

There's nothing in the living room. In the bedroom, the covers are a mess, but that's not unusual. And in the second bedroom, which she's converted to a walk-in closet, her clothes are in their regular state of disarray. I'm looking for the inconsistencies. A change in the status quo.

Like the bathroom door, where the doorframe is splintered and the lock is torn free of the wall. It's the
only
room with a lock, and I can envision what happened with perfect clarity. Garnett came in, but something he said or did tipped her off. A mistake, a pause, a hunch.

She locked herself in to buy time—to do what?

I push the door open and step inside. The window is too small for escape. She must have known she couldn't get out, especially when he started battering down the door. She had a couple of minutes, at most. Enough time to leave a message. Enough time to
hide
a message.

The room is surprisingly neat, considering how much fun she has with makeup. Never met a lipstick she wouldn't try, she once said. But there's only the one, fallen into the sink, a blue-green color she swore neve
r to wear again.

I roll the tube between my fingers and try to hear what she's telling me. See what she saw.

I open drawers and the medicine cabinet, where the rest of her lipsticks have been crammed. I pull back the curtain around the claw-foot tub, look in the trash can for a note. But there's nothing, and panic claws its way up my throat.

Her robe is lying on the floor, a pool of peach silk. Without thinking, I pick it up, running my fingers over the watercolor blossoms, inhaling the scent of sunshine and Laurel. Crying won't help, only action. I straighten and force back the tears. I close the ruined door to hang up the robe—habit more than anything.

Del was right. Laurel's not just smart. She's brilliant.

Scrawled on the back of the door in blue-green lipstick is a single word.

Mermaid.