Phantom Instinct (9780698157132) (33 page)

H
arper shied when Zero approached her. He bounced on his toes and tilted his head again. He clacked his teeth once more, and Harper flinched.

Under his breath he said, “Waited for this a long time.” He stopped inches from her. “Take off your—”

“Fuck you, Eddie.”

His eyes flashed in the harsh lights. He shoved her, hard, sweeping her ankle with his foot and knocking her down. She shouted, but he spun, dropped onto her legs, and tore her shoes off.

“Stop it,” she said.

Travis sauntered past. “He's not going to rape you. He doesn't want the stink.”

Zero said, “Take off your jacket.”

She felt then that she was going to lose it, that a swarm of hornets was buzzing inside her head. Travis grabbed her from behind and hauled her jacket off. She felt close to hyperventilating.

Kneeling on her, Zero pulled his hoodie over his head. He threw it at her.

“Put it on.”

The hoodie smelled like him. It was warm, and she wanted to fling it away.

He put his hand around her throat and leaned close. “Put it on.”

When she pulled it over her head, Travis yanked the hood up and as far forward as it would go, nearly obscuring her face. Zero stood, pulled off his boots, and tossed them at her.

“Those, too.”

She stared at him. She had a terrible feeling she knew where this was going.

“Now,” he said.

She pulled the boots on. He indicated that she should lace them up. Travis pulled her to her feet.

From a pile of debris, Zero picked up a five-foot length of heavy chain. With a zip tie, he secured one end of the chain to the drain cover in the floor. With a second zip tie, he secured the other end around Harper's left ankle.

“This won't work,” she said.

Travis slowly circled in front of her. “How do you know what's going to happen next?”

“You think you're going to pull this off? Chaining me to the floor is the last thing you want. That will leave the wrong kind of evidence.”

He continued to circle her. “You always thought you were so smart. The getaway driver. Well, guess what.” He leaned close. “You can't get away this time.”

He looked up to the catwalk. “Piper.”

She leaned on the railing. “You betrayed Drew. You betrayed me. And so did your lover.”

Harper's stomach gripped. “Piper . . .”

“Be quiet.”

Travis and Zero continued to walk around her, the circles widening, widening.

Piper leaned over the rail. “He was there that night. Aiden could have saved Drew.”

Harper tugged on the chain. It didn't budge from the drain cover.

“Aiden and Erika Sorenstam—they were there, they were armed. They were the law. They should have handled the situation.”

Harper looked up. “They tried.”

“Shut
up
.” Piper rocked back and forth against the railing. “Aiden could have saved Drew, but he didn't even try.”

“That's not true, Piper.”

“Liar. Liar, liar,
liar.
They were so busy saving each other because they were screwing each other, they did
nothing
to help my brother.”

Piper gripped the railing. This was her moment. This was what she had been building up to for god knows how long.

Harper said, “There were a thousand people at the club. It was mayhem. Aiden and Erika were the only two cops there, trying to get a handle on chaos. Aiden stopped two of the gunmen, but there were so many people running around that he couldn't fire again without hitting them.”

“Bullshit. He could have fired at any time. He could have laid down a line of fire. Emptied his magazine. He didn't. He held fire to save himself.”

“Where did you get that? I know you read the investigative report. That's not what happened.”

“I saw the video,” Piper said.

Harper's head snapped up. “What video?”

“Travis showed me.”

“The video was all destroyed.”

“It was in the cloud,” Piper said. “All the data was uploaded wirelessly to the servers. Travis recovered it.”

Harper held still, but part of her had doubled over inside. “If you saw the video, you saw . . .”

Jesus.

“Piper, you saw edited video. You saw what Travis wanted you to see . . . if Travis showed you the video, you saw the shooters. You have to know who was behind this whole thing.”

“What matters is that Aiden was there. You were there. You two were in a position to stop Drew from dying. Instead, Drew had to pull you across the bar and try to get you out. Instead, Aiden was trying to keep his girlfriend from getting hurt.” She leaned back, rocking hard. “Instead, he started screwing you. As soon as it looked convenient, you forgot all about my brother and started banging the cop who survived. That's disgusting.”

“Piper,” Harper said, trying to keep her voice under control. “Travis ordered the attack.”

“Shut
up,”
Piper yelled. “Travis was at Spartan's HQ, trying to stop it. He couldn't. He knew Xenon was inadequately protected. The guards were unarmed. When the shooting started, there were only two people who could have stopped it, and they did
nothing
.”

“Listen to me, Piper. I'm not talking about what Travis told the security guards that night. I'm telling you that Zero led the attack on Xenon. He was the shooter who escaped. He started the shooting spree, Piper. He's the reason your brother died. He shot Drew.”

But she realized, even as she said it, that Piper would never believe it. She wouldn't even admit a particle of doubt into her new and fiery narrative. She might think of herself as a chaotic actor, neither black hat nor white but a force remaking the world to suit her disintegrative rage. But she was as blinded to the truth as somebody who'd stared into the sun. She was under the force of a delusion, and sinking in it.

The dog growled. Harper knew now why she had seen it at the memorial service at the park, and outside her window immediately after Piper had driven away. Zero had been shadowing Piper. Working with her. Making sure she did what she was supposed to: Keep Harper caring.

Travis said, “Save your breath, Susannah. Piper knows who you are, and how you lie, and what the consequences always are.”

Piper called down, “You're a killer, Harper. You betrayed Travis and Eddie, and because of that, Travis's dad died. The man who took you in and treated you like his own daughter after you ruined your mom's life. You set him up to die.”

Even though she should have expected it, Harper still felt the words hit her like a cascade of ice water.

She shook her head. “No.”

“You got Drew killed. You're a double dose of death.” Piper rattled the railing. “And then you went off and slept with the guy who did nothing to help him. You pissed on Drew's body. You reveled in it. Well, now you're both going to get back what you did to him.”

Piper looked at Travis. “Do it.”

He took out a phone and began punching numbers. Zero appeared again at Harper's side. She heard a ripping sound. A second later, he tore a length of duct tape with his teeth, stuck it over her mouth, and wound it around her head as a gag.

High above, Piper leaned back, raised her head high, and screamed.

The sound ricocheted off the metal walls of the room, a slicing shriek, loud enough to hurt Harper's ears. Piper drew breath and screamed again. Then she spun and ran along the catwalk toward the door that led to the main factory floor.

“Help me,” Piper screamed. “Help.”

Her feet pounded on the metal catwalk. The noise was surely audible for long distances. Harper wondered what the purpose was. Then she didn't.

“Help me—
Aiden
.”

Zero shoved Harper to the floor and grabbed her right arm and stepped on it, holding her down. From the waistband of his jeans, he took a gun and tried to place it in her hand. It was a chrome-plated pistol. She balled her fist. He ground his heel into her forearm, then knelt and put his knee there instead.

“Fight me and your arm gets broke,” he said.

She fought. She snarled and squirmed and head-butted him. He turned his black shiny eyes to her. He looked five hundred years old, not thirty.

“'Kay.”

He grabbed her by the throat and squeezed. She clawed at his arm with her free hand, but he was too strong. She kicked at him but felt her vision constricting. Someplace overhead, Piper was screaming. Travis stood near the door, calmly watching Zero strangle her. She couldn't get air. The view seemed gray, and darker.

Then she was back. On the floor, dizzy, gulping air. Zero still knelt on her right arm. The ripping sound of tape grew clearer. She raised her left hand halfheartedly, woozy, aiming to punch Zero in the head, and couldn't move her fingers. Her hand was taped into a useless ball, and the ball was taped inside the sleeve of Zero's hoodie, and the sleeve was taped through the pocket of the sweatshirt.

Zero continued binding her right hand, as though he were a rodeo cowboy roping a calf.

He stood up. She saw, in her gradually brightening vision, that the pistol was taped securely to her hand. Her finger wasn't on the trigger, but she knew already that the gun was unloaded.

Zero backed away, waving to her, almost childishly, little finger waves, and whispered, “Bye-bye.”

Above on the catwalk, Piper's footsteps continued to pound. The girl was still screaming, and her sloppy words came gradually out of the static in Harper's head.

“Aiden, where are you?” Piper shouted. “Help me.”

Harper's eyesight came back, throbbing yellow as she fought for breath. Her throat felt raw. The ice-water sensation had abated when she blacked out, but it was back now, fiercer, stinging.

Travis's voice turned from muffled noise to clearish words. His tone of voice was off. It was breathy and girlish.

“My emergency—yes, it's . . . omigod, send help. I mean—the sheriffs. I need the police.”

Harper tried to stand up. Dizzy, she felt herself tipping. She leaned over again, on both knees, and instinctively put her right hand on the concrete to steady herself. The pistol, which entombed her hand, kept her from bracing herself. The barrel scraped along the floor.

“My name is Harper Flynn,” Travis said. “Yes, please, oh, God, hurry. He's locked the doors. I can't get out.”

She lowered her elbow to the floor and let her head hang until oxygen returned to her brain. Her ears cleared. Her world stopped pulsing yellow.

“The old Powerdyne plant off of Highway 14,” Travis said. “Omigod, please hurry.”

Harper looked up. Travis stood with the phone to his ear, staring at her. His face was nearly glowing with triumph. It looked like waves of heat were pouring off him, as though he were about to combust.

She knew what he was doing. He was spoofing a call to the authorities.

“I'm so scared,” he said. “I'm in a back hallway and there's no way out.”

Travis had not just drawn her and Aiden out here to kill them. He had arranged for Aiden to take the blame.

“Everything you've got, please, hurry. He's a maniac, and he's armed.”

Travis was talking to 911. And he wasn't just claiming to be Harper. He was undoubtedly using voice-altering software so that, to the dispatcher, it sounded like a woman's voice. There was no voiceprint of Harper's own voice anywhere to compare it to. Though it was illegal, arranging it didn't take a hall pass at the NSA. It just took access to software that altered the phone number displayed as the caller, to misidentify who was on the line. And if things went as Travis planned, there never would be a way to disprove that Harper was calling, because she would be dead.

“Everything you've got,” Travis said, desperately. “Everything.”

Travis was the security expert. He knew how spoofing worked. He knew how phone freaks and chaotic actors liked to mess with systems. He knew exactly what to do. This was a SWAT.

Travis was preparing the coup de grâce. He was doing to Harper what she had done to him as a teenager: calling the cops.

“You have to understand,” Travis said. “Aiden has gone nuts. He killed Detective Sorenstam.”

The floor was cold, the concrete rough and scalloped. Harper slowly raised her head and got one knee up and leaned on it until she was steady.

“Killed her—he shot her. Oh, God.” Travis let his voice unravel. The bastard was terrifically convincing.

“No, no . . . if I move from here, he'll find me. He's insane. Detective Sorenstam tried to warn me, and I didn't listen. And when Sorenstam got here and tried to pull me out, Aiden
turned on her.”
His voice was scoured by tears and terror. “He gunned her down. He kept saying he loved her, that if she wouldn't come back to him, she wasn't going anywhere.”

Harper balanced and stood up.