Indelible Ink (6 page)

14

In the cab, Avi spoke in low tones. “Why did you run away from me at the airport? If you were having so much trouble, you should have told me,” Avi said. He reached out and she moved away from him as best she could.

“Avi, I don’t know what…”

“And why are you suddenly acting all Amish?”

“Amish? That’s a good one. Were you expecting me to jump you? Were you hoping that the little teenager would grab you hard and stick her tongue down your throat? That what you were looking for?” They’d had a pretty tumultuous relationship, punctuated by periods of deciding it was a bad idea for people in their line of work to be together in any sort of emotional entanglement. The times in between were not really much of a relationship. They had to keep things hidden from everyone in the organization, her sister included. It boiled down to brief periods of intense sex. “Pedophile much?” The cab driver looked at them in his rearview mirror, but Deena couldn’t be sure he heard her. She frowned at him and he turned away.

“What the hell? What do want from me? You leave on a job, we’re all handsy and fucktacular, you come back like a Catholic schoolgirl on a fieldtrip and announce you’re joining a convent.” Avi looked understandably confused. “And you expect me to shift gears without missing a beat? Fuck you.”

“Oh, poor you. Poor Avi. You’re not getting laid today. That’s much worse than what’s going on with me. Take a good look at me. I lost ten years of my life here. My mind constantly fights with itself as to whether I’m going to have a coherent thought, or if I’m going to repeat lyrics from boy band songs over and over for an hour,” Deena said. It was frustrating to explain such a profound change to someone who didn’t seem to want to know.

“You already look older than when we met up in the airport. You’ll snap back. You always do.”

“Maybe my body will, maybe even my mind, but I’ve never questioned my life this way. It can’t go on the way things were. And you have to admit it’s a horrible time to become addlebrained, no matter what I decide to do.”

Avi took a deep breath and Deena was sure he still didn’t believe her. “Just get some rest when we get on the train. We’ll decide what you want to be when you grow up later.” He turned and looked out at the city.

“
Jesus. Stop saying that. I don’t understand it, and I keep hoping it will get sorted out by the time we hit Los Angeles, but I don’t think it’s going to.” Deena looked at the little spot on her right arm. It looked innocent enough; small, lighter than normal. She knew it could turn on a dime if it were any other day. “I feel like I have the ability to make choices for the first time here. It’s always felt like I had to do what this inner voice has told me to for so long, for as long as I remember.” Deena didn’t look at him. She couldn’t come right out and say there was no way for them to be together again. She faked looking at traffic, but knew he could see through her. “All I’m asking is that we take our time getting back to the city. Give me time to heal. Maybe I can get myself figured out so I handle this change.”

“I understand changes, I get it. But that doesn’t mean you stop being the person you were.” Avi sounded bored with the conversation already.

“In this case it does, I know it does. I can’t feel the same things the same way.”

“You said it yourself, you aren’t completely back to normal yet, you’re still healing and you will be for some time. Remember that job in Omaha? It took you most of a week to recover from that.”

“Avi. I had a migraine. This seems like a little more than a bad headache.”

“So maybe by the time we get back, you’ll see things more clearly and you’ll know what’s what.” Avi fell silent for a few miles.

She wondered what ideas were forming in his head, how he was going to move forward with the new information. His loyalty to Marsh went back further than his affiliation with Deena. “What’s going to happen when we get to L.A.?” Deena asked. “Are you going to let me do this? Or are you siding with Marsh to try to get me to stay?”

“We’ll be at the train station in a few minutes. What say we pass that time in silence or play that game? I Spy?” Avi folded his arms and fidgeted in his seat. “I spy something that begins with the letter ‘D’,” he said.

Deena looked around at the quiet streets. “Is it a dumbass? A douchebag, maybe?”

The driver chuckled a little. Deena leaned back in her seat and took Avi’s first suggestion—passing the rest of the short ride in silence. The area of town was quickly fading from busy office buildings to smaller shops and storage units. She’d grown used to the same type of scenery for the past several years. She hadn’t been back to the country much since she left home. She missed it really: the trees, the open air. It was a part of her that she’d shoved down deep since she left.

15

Deena at 15 the first time around

“It moved,” Deena said.

Harper threw her dirty jeans in the basket and chuckled. “Didn’t.”

Deena pulled her sleeve up to reveal the tiny blemish. “Look. It was closer to my elbow last night. Swear.”

Harper barely glanced. “Same place it’s always been.”

Deena sighed. She’d been sure of it this time. The blemish had jumped from place to place a number of times, but always ended up back where it started when she went to show someone. “It is now, but yesterday…”

“Yesterday, whatever.” Harper looked around their bedroom and spotted more rumpled clothes and stuffed them in with the rest.

“Come on,” Deena said. Her sister was always dismissing Deena. It wasn’t just this little pimple or mole, or whatever the hell it was, she never listened to anything Deena had to say. They were separated by just a few years, but they never seemed to see eye to eye on anything.

Harper tossed the laundry basket on the bed and pulled open the drawer of their dresser. “Fine. Come here.”

“Huh?” Deena was afraid of what her sister was up to. The sudden interest felt like a trap.

Harper grabbed Deena’s arm roughly and found the spot with her finger. “This is it, right?”

Deena nodded.

Harper popped the cap on a permanent black marker and drew a wide circle around the dark thing on Deena’s arm. “There.” She tossed the marker onto the top of the dresser. “Now we’ll see if it moves. Now we’ll know for sure and you can shut the fuck up about it. Sound good?” Harper went back to gathering clothes for the laundry.

Deena stepped back. Her big sister rarely cussed. “Geez. Take it easy. Don’t let Mom hear you talk like that.”

“Whatever.” Harper grabbed the laundry and walked out the door.

Deena looked at the mark on her arm. The circle drawn there had the blemish nearly dead center in the middle. Her sister was ever the perfectionist. At first it seemed a little stupid, but she realized it might be the only way to convince Harper what was going on.

She licked her finger and scrubbed at the black circle. “Crap, that looks really stupid.”

In study hall the next day, Deena caught herself staring at it. There was nothing else of interest to do, really, other than homework. She gauged how close it was to the edge of the circle her sister had drawn. It certainly seemed to have moved closer to the edge, or maybe the round spot itself had just gotten bigger. With a little spit on her fingers, Deena rubbed at the marker, trying to get it off.

At the front of the study hall, three students came in late and handed the monitor a note. One of the tardy students was Mike Fischer, the boy Harper had been dating for a few weeks. He was kind of a dick and Deena didn’t really care for him. He played soccer, told rude jokes and didn’t seem to care that his grades were in free fall. There were rumors that he was cheating on Harper, but no one could really prove it. Deena grumbled to herself about Mike being late yet again to study hall and went back to trying to remove the mark from her arm.

She was surprised to see that the little dark point on her arm no longer seemed to be circular. As she’d been watching Mike, the dot had flattened itself out and appeared to be more of a curved line. In fact, from her vantage point, it almost looked like a frown. She nearly jumped up from her desk to run and show her sister. Deena wanted to do it immediately, before the blotch had time to change again. As soon as she stood, the study hall monitor gave Deena a dirty look. Deena had pressed her luck with the monitor before and there was no way the frowny face spot on Deena’s arm would be a viable excuse to get out of the room. Study hall was her last period of the day and she could easily catch her sister at home afterward.

Deena sat back down and stared at the spot some more. It still showed as a frown. For the rest of the study hall, she looked at nothing but the curved black line on her arm. She wondered if she could change it even further. Deena had sworn it had moved around, but she’d never seen it as anything but round. Yet here it was: a curved line, a frown, like the circle had detached and moved to the new shape.

After school she ran home to show her sister. By the time she got there, the line had once again become a circle.

16

Stanley walked with the men to the empty suite two floors up from their own. It was originally owned by an insurance company that suddenly went out of business after the owner was killed in a tragic car accident. Stanley stopped being surprised by tragic accidents that occurred around his line of work. It was tough figuring out whose heart attacks were natural and whose were brought on by nefarious means. No death ever seemed perfectly innocent to him anymore. Natural deaths felt like a thing of the past.

One of the men, Frank, pushed Harper to make her move faster. “Let’s get this over with.” He waved to the room filled with office furniture covered in plastic. “We’re going to hang out here and wait. Nothing stupid, please. Mr. Marsh asked us not to make a mess, but made it clear that he didn’t give a shit if you lived long enough to see your sister.”

Stanley was still having trouble looking Harper in the eyes. Each look could be the last time he saw Harper alive and maybe, by diverting his eyes, he’d keep the girl from dying. There was no way they would kill her if Stanley didn’t get a last glimpse. Statistically, that held no water, he realized. “I’ve checked to make sure the bathroom in the suite is stocked with the necessities, so you should be comfortable in that respect. There’s a break room with some cups and a water cooler. If anyone gets… you know…thirsty or anything.” There really wasn’t much to say, but Stanley felt an obligation to play host and make sure everyone was comfortable. It was an odd thought to have at the potential scene of a murder.

“Oh, thanks. The fact that I can pee freely really does put me at ease,” Harper said.

“Shut up,” Frank said. “Is there any food? No telling how long we’ll be here.”

Stanley turned to the door. “I’ll bring up what I can from downstairs.” He got closer to Harper. “Are you sure there isn’t anything I can get you?”

“A gun,” Harper said.

Frank chuckled. “Not like you’d be able to hit anything with it.”

Stanley walked out of the office, followed by two of the men, who rolled chairs out into the hall and sat down to guard the door. Stanley got on the elevator and pressed the button for the ground floor. He felt helpless and his fingers curled into fists, he wanted to yell and punch the walls but held back. If anyone saw him freaking out, they’d know something was wrong. He couldn’t have that. He had to remain as he’d always been, with a stony exterior. The FBI agents told him it wouldn’t be long now and they’d be able to get him out and shut down Marsh for good.

They’d been saying that for months, though.

Stanley kept the books nice and neat. All of Datura Industries’ honest businesses kept in perfect detail, while the rest of the money was hidden, kept in other coded ledgers that no one except Stanley could fully decipher. He hadn’t handed any of that over to the FBI yet. Samples. Cookies that kept the authorities interested in helping Stanley, without busting him straight away. There was no chance he was going to jail. Not if they wanted Stanley to testify against Marsh. And if a sudden “accident” were to befall Stanley, Marsh himself wouldn’t know the extent of his own empire. Money was scattered across the globe in secret accounts and other holdings. Most were there at Marsh’s behest.
Most.

Back at his desk, Stanley stirred his coffee in tight little circles with a flimsy red straw. He stared at the elevator, wanting hordes of heavily-armed federal agents to come pouring out with bulletproof vests and heavy machine guns. Flash grenades and riot helmets. Brass knuckles and broken beer bottles. Whatever. Stanley loved the magic of spreadsheets and numbers; violence wasn’t his thing. He was fine with marking down the money Marsh brought in from murder and mayhem. He didn’t have to look the victims in the face - they were numbers with commas and zeroes. They were an abstract, a placeholder, a bar graph and he generally never knew their names or faces.

He’d looked Harper in the eyes time after time before today and no amount of looking away could make him forget what was going to happen to her.

Stanley redialed Agent Rivers’ number again and it went to voicemail. He hung up without leaving a message.

17

Deena and Avi got on the train at the last second. She watched the people board with their luggage and briefcases and she tried to scan for anyone that might be pursuing them. There were men in suits, families in flip-flops and women with flowery cheap mu-mus. Well, there weren’t that many in mu-mus. She supposed each of those people could be a killer with a pistol concealed under their clothes. None of them did anything unusual. She watched Avi. He was much better at being discreet in his observations. She tilted her head, tried to use her sunglasses to hide her eyes as she scanned, but she was sure she gave herself away.

“Ma’am, please find your seat,” a man in a navy blue uniform said.

She nodded and stumbled toward the seating. She saw Avi already at the other end of the car and she moved to join him. On the way, she passed person after person and imagined each of them staring at her—some actually were—and believed they might all be working to keep her disoriented and alone. There was a man in his early thirties with headphones lodged in his ears sitting near Avi. He gave her a glance and then looked away. He might be here to kill me, Deena thought. She wasn’t sure if she was being paranoid or crazy, but she looked him over and decided she could take him out, no matter who he was. She wondered for a moment where that thought had come from. Was there a time in her recent past when that was a logical thought? Had she always been that alert, that paranoid before? Was that what made her good at what she did? And would that instinct ever come back in full force? She kind of hoped it wouldn’t.

She sat down next to Avi as the train began moving. She plopped down and locked her seat belt, pulling the strap tight and then hugged the bag from the coffee shop that held all her possessions. She’d most likely never get back to her own apartment. All of her clothes were there, all the souvenirs that she’d acquired from her travels, her wide-screen TV, stereo. It was all gone as of a few short hours ago. She would be an entirely new person with all new crap. And right now, it was all in a cheap plastic bag from a coffee shop where Kevin had made her heavenly, minty cups of awesome.

“I want to turn my phone back on,” she said.

“No.”

“What if Harper is trying to call me? Or Marsh?”

“They aren’t. He wouldn’t alter the conditions. He wants you back. And you know he doesn’t like screwing around during a job. He wants what he wants and he wants it on his terms,” Avi said. “Any calls at this point would be to mess with you and try to get you off your game.”

I’m already way off my game, thanks. No need to help me there.
Deena looked down at the mark on her arm. It wasn’t in the form of a fancy design or the familiar smiley face. It was just a dark blob, dormant on her arm, just as it had been since the airplane. There was magic in there somewhere, or there had been, but was it still swimming in her blood, ready for a fight? It wouldn’t be so bad if she were just a normal girl without the Shadow Energy flowing through her. It would suck if she were a teenager all over again, though.
That
wouldn’t be good at all. Deena threw herself back on the seat and wiggled around in an effort to get comfortable, but she couldn’t do it.

“You want to settle down a bit and not draw attention to yourself? Jesus,” Avi said. “You wanted to ride the train back, we’re riding the train back. Just stop acting like an idiot, please.” He shook his head and pulled out a crossword book he’d picked up at the train station. “I swear, it’s like traveling with Rain Man.”

“Nice, current reference there.”

Avi looked her up and down. “You’ll think it’s funny when you’re older.”

“Doubt it.”