Psycho Within Us (The Psycho Series Book 2) (70 page)

Shannon wiped a tear from her face.  “Remember you?”

“There’s this bigass star, the biggest one ever found, called VY Canis Majoris.  It’s a red hypergiant, and it’s 1,975,000,000 kilometers in diameter.  It burns bright an’ hot an’ against the oncoming cold.  It’s fucking defiant.  I’ll bet the universe, if it has a consciousness, never forgets
that
fuckin’ star!  Ha-
ha
!”  He took another toke.  “Yeah, your sister believed in that—deep down, she had that kind of fire, like Canis Majoris, and look what
she
accomplished.  There are at least five lost children that are alive and free now because o’ her—
I
couldn’t give less of a shit about that fact, those aren’t the results I’m lookin’ for, but it’s the kind o’ thing
she’s
into, so there you have it.”  He took another toke and shrugged.  It seemed Shannon couldn’t look at him anymore, because she averted her gaze and continued weeping.  “Dry it up,” he said.  “Tears never got anybody anything ever.”

“
I can’t help it!
” she screamed.  “
Kaley’s gone and it’s all my fault!  It’s because of me that she
—”

“That she what?  T
hat she got pulled through a fucking membrane into another reality?”  He chuckled.  “Yeah, because
you
have control over something like that.  Listen to me, little girl, the universe is full of anomalies.  You an’ your sister are just another fucking one o’ those anomalies, like…like…like that gigantic black hole that’s too big to exist within the realm of physics, or that weird hum that the people in Taos, New Mexico, are always hearin’.  It’s just you an’ your sister form, I dunno, some kinda confluence.  A
convergence
.”

“But th-those Others…they came here b-because of me…”

“They came because your subconscious made a phone call; it reached out and touched someone who had similar interests and it did so without your permission.  None of us can stop that.  Inside all of us…there are these layers.  Like the matryoshka dolls.  Open one doll up, another little person’s inside.  That’s the way it is.  So quit yer bitchin’ and put it behind ya.”

“I sh-should’ve helped her,” she stuttered.  “I should’ve found a way t-t-to help—”

“You sh-sh-sh-should’ve helped her?” Spencer mocked, grinning ear to ear.  “You couldn’t change your own underwear, much less change your sister’s fate.  Let me tell ya somethin’ I learned a long time ago.  Don’t ever try to change the world.  Just stop it from changing
you
,” he said, and took another toke.  “I’m a fuckin’ thief and a killer, and I got
no
qualms about that.  I can’t change what I am no more than you can change what you are.  Not your sister, not him on the ground there, not them people back in that building, not the Prisoner, not
nobody
.  Ya savvy, little girl?  You are what you are.  Learn what that is, deal with it, an’ move on.”

“I-I-I can’t…I don’t know what to do next.  Wh-where do I go?”

“That’s up to you.  Me?”  He snorted, and pulled out the keycard he’d lifted from his whip-handed enemy.  On the side, it read
PROPERTY OF GRAND VIDGOF HOTEL
.  Beside that was a room number: 533. “I’ve got some projects.  Too many to count, to be honest.  But here, if ya wanna make yourself useful, do this for me.”  He had found a pen and paper in the Acura’s glove compartment, and scribbled down a message, which he handed to Shannon.  “Give that to him when he wakes up.”  He pointed to Leon.  “Motherfucker’s gonna be confused as hell when he wakes up in Russia.  Might even make the news.  ‘UFOs Abduct Nigger, Drop His Ass in Bumfuck, Russia.  Story at eleven.’  You an’ him both might be famous come tomorrow, an’ ya kind of have me to thank for that.  Not a problem, you’re welcome.”  He turned and walked away.

Shannon called after him. 
“Where are you going?”

“Bangladesh,” he called back.

“What’s in Bangladesh?”

“Work.”

The girl huffed, and then she screamed the only thing that mattered to her.  “
What about my sister?!  Back inside the building you said you’d save her!
”

“If she’s alive, I’
ll find her.” 
I still owe her a death
.

“Can you do it?  Can you really find her?”

To himself, Spencer smiled and muttered, “What’s my name?”

18

Rideau checked her watch: 1:46
AM
. 
He’s not coming
.

It was a mix between a letdown and a relief.  Part of her wanted to finish this tonight, and even fant
asized about how it would go—she had gone through more than a dozen scenarios, certain that she had missed one and lunging at other possibilities even as she kept her eyes on the hotel’s entrance.  But another part of her knew she couldn’t face someone like Yuri Shcherbakov, not the man that had done to Dubois what he had, not a trained assassin who had killed women and obviously had no reservations about killing Interpol agents.

Her phone buzzed.  She answered, “Yes?”

“You never went to bed, did you?”

Rideau sighed.  “No, Mitchell, I didn’t.”

“This whole thing got you thinking that much?”

“Yeah, I guess I am fretting.  Patricia always tells me that, and I
hate to admit she’s right.”

“Well, maybe you don’t have to fret anymore.”

“Why not?” she said, hopefully.

Mitchell paused, spoke to someone briefly on the other end, and told them thank you before he came back to Rideau.  “Because there have been some, ah, interesting updates.  A major fiasco right there in Chelyabinsk.  It’s been happening all around you—the docks, Zakhar’s lodge, and now Tsarskiy Penthouses.  Get this, it was a penthouse apartment building known to have mob ties.  Virtually everyone on the
staff were members of the Zverev family, with some rap sheets as long as my leg.  Back in ’09 we had a few cases involving money laundering through Kliak Enterprises, the company that owns Tsarskiy Penthouses, but FSB never let us in close enough to examine the books.”

“Okay, what about it?”

Mitchell snorted.  “It’s burning to the ground as we speak.  The whole building, and so far everybody in it.  No survivors, except some poor soul that crawled out missing his lower body, or something like that.  He died before he got to the hospital.”

Rideau leaned against the lounge’s doorframe.  Most of the lobby had emptied out, or else the people staying in from the storm had all gone to sleep on the couches and floor.  “What’s going on tonight, Mitchell?”

“I don’t know, but we think it’s big.  And listen to this: we got a lead on the local police chatter, and it’s all very preliminary, but it sounds like a cab driver is being interview right now by Chelyabinsk Police, and he says he dropped someone off at the penthouses almost an hour ago, a man the police say fits Yuri Shcherbakov’s description.”

“Shcherbakov?”

Mitchell said, “Now, we don’t know yet if he was
in
the building when it blew up, but Rideau…
somebody’s
taking out the garbage tonight.”

Rideau finally pushed away from the door, exiting the lounge.  She walked across the hotel lobby, germinating on everything she had been told tonight.  “Mitchell, I want you to talk
to Yvone and Luc.  Have them draw up a DCS report of everything you’ve chronicled tonight, then e-mail it to me.  I’ll add what I know of the FSB’s non-comply system, and then I’ll forward the whole thing to both the Director and the Deputy Director.  I want authorization to deploy more Interpol agents here to Chelyabinsk as soon as the storm clears.  Tell Metveyev.  I want him to be on the same flight.  We’re going to put pressure on locals and FSB for search warrants to all known Zverev-related Mafia outlets in the city.  We’re going public with non-comply, let the other international parties decide what they think about it.  I want FSB and local police feeling the pressure to send in OMON units, to execute dynamic entry into those known Mafia outlets if necessary.”  OMON was Russia’s version of SWAT.  “We can take out the garbage, too.”

“You got it.  But what’s the plan once they get there?”

“We’re going to drop some information to local and international media.  We need everyone to know what’s happening before FSB covers it up again.  Ruffa Docks, Ogorodnikov’s cabin in the woods, Tsarskiy Penthouses, the works.  Whatever happened tonight may help us expose this thing.  It could—” Rideau had been moving towards the front door, deciding it was time to leave.  On the way out the rotating glass door, though, she spotted a man coming in.  There was something familiar about his…

Rideau immediately looked away, and tried to keep a level head while speaking.  “—uh, it could expedite the investigation, and force them to cooperate.”

“Make the best out of a bad situation, eh?”

“Yes.”  The man walked straight by her.  His eyes touched on her; chronicled her and disregarded her in the same instant.  “Mitchell, I have to go.”

“All right.  I should have that DCS ready in half an hour.  I’ll e-mail it to you as soon as it’s done.”

“Yes, of course.  Goodbye.”  Rideau hung up.  She stood now in the cold, and turned slowly to look at the rotating door behind her.  Rideau saw the man in the heavy jacket walking straight across the lobby.  She stepped back inside,
followed him, and kept a distance of about thirty feet as he made his way to the elevators.

Rideau
stepped to the elevators, as well.  And, as she approached, she watched him dart his eyes all around.  The man tapped a button for the elevator, but kept one side of his face to her the whole time.  Because of this, Rideau couldn’t see if she had imagined the scar on the other side of his face.  Rideau looked at her phone, pretended to send a text message, but surreptitiously took a picture of him.  She waited for him to get on the elevator, and for the doors to shut, before she called her own elevator.

Her phone was special-issue from Interpol
.  It camewith biometric software, and could access certain facets of their ECHELON system, including fingerprint and facial-recognition archives.  The screen was still showing a variety of possible IDs as she stepped onto the elevator, and hit the button for the fifth floor.  Dozens of profile shots were considered, so Rideau finally just selected the one she was most suspicious of and had the computer run a check on all eighty possible faceprints.  The result came back just before the elevator reached its destination
:
43 out of 80 nodal point
s
, it read.

Not enough to be considered ironclad, but then she had only gotten a partial shot of the man’s face.  He’d had stubble going on to a beard, but that shouldn’t have influenced the reckoning too much, since it was cheekbone height, nose width, and other such underlying structural factors
that facial-recognition software took into consideration.

When the doors parted, Rideau stepped out slowly.  She was in a long, narrow hallway, brilliantly lit, and with a cleaning cart sitting nearby unattended.  She walked slowly by it, then looked at the room numbers. 
504, 505, 506
…

She came to a junction, looked left and right, but did not see her target.  Rideau’s hand had gone to
her coat pocket, to the Makarov that Dominika had granted her.  She moved past 510, 511, 512, and 513.  She turned down another hall, passing 522, 523, and 524.  Still no sign of her target, nor anyone else for that matter. 
But it was him
. 
I know it
.  Or did she?  Forty-three nodal points out of eighty was not definite.

Rideau passed 529, then 530, then 531.  At 532, she slowed.  She stared the door marked 533.  Dominika’s note had been clear on this. 
Unless I read her handwriting wrong?
  But Rideau didn’t think so.

She had run through so many scenarios in her mind over the last few hours, but now that it came to it, she was utterly frozen in indecision.  She approached the door, raised her left hand to knock, but then her mind and body balked.  Rideau thought about the gun in her hand.  Then, she checked up and down the hall.  Her target was nowhere to be seen.

All at once, the door swung open.  Rideau gasped, and momentarily forgot about the gun in her hand as a pistol was leveled at her head.

“Don’t you move a muscle, little missy,”
Spencer Pelletier said.  It was him.  She knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt now.  The face was even paler than it appeared in other photos, and the scar and the scruff gave him a different and somewhat more deranged look, but it was him.  “An’ don’t make a sound.  Now, get on in here.  C’mon.  Move.”

“Please,” she said calmly.  “I have a wife.”

Pelletier raised an eyebrow.  “A lezzie, huh?  That’s hot.  Come on into my parlor.  It’s the prettiest little parlor you ever did spy.”