Right Through Me (The Obsidian Files #1) (12 page)

He’d woken to some gory messes after fugue freak-outs, but he’d gotten expert at cleaning up after himself. Mayhem drained excess toxic energy. It allowed him to masquerade as a normal member of society. When he bothered to.

He took off his glasses and peeled off his shirt, to mitigate the AVP temperature spike. He popped out his shield lenses. Naked eyes were better for digital info dumps. Worth the nervous jitters that followed. It wasn’t as if he slept, anyway.

He logged into Caroline’s Facebook page, though there wasn’t much point in it. She hadn’t posted since she disappeared eight months ago, but he still periodically prowled her feeds. Mostly posts from her nothing friends’ pathetic lives.

Checking her page was a ritual. Mark liked rituals. They soothed the screaming inside his brain.

Noah had lectured them ad nauseam about stress flashback management. Know-it-all prick. He’d busted them out of that place, so he thought he owned their asses.

Yessir nossir anything you say sir Captain Gallagher, hup hup!
Be good soldiers, now, and never use your powers against the unmods because of ethics and morals and blah blah blah di-fucking-blah! Right.

Noah’s AVP management techniques had never worked for Mark. He couldn’t stand being motionless, concentrating on the inside of his own head. Slow death by boredom. He’d been tortured enough already, at Midlands. Fuck that shit.

Rebellion day had taught him all he needed to know about AVP management. That day had been a mind-opening crash course. Killing those researchers had helped him like nothing else possibly could. Struggle. Blood. Death.
Yes.

Afterwards, in hiding with Noah’s group, he’d begun to slip out alone, hunting for what he needed to calm the constant inner screaming. And he had found it.

He’d been careful. Restrained. He’d picked only lost, wrecked people. Ones that no one would miss. He’d used his AVP to clean up the scenes. The cops never had a clue, but Noah . . . he could read a sig like no one else. Noah had been on to him.

After a few moments of staring at Caroline’s boring feed, Mark stopped and scrolled back, nerves tingling.

Caroline was tagged in a photo posted by a dark-haired, toothy woman named Gina Minafra. In the photo, the two women held up masks of dragon’s heads. The text read,
A blast from the past! Caroline’s magic, from the summer stock production of The Littlest Dragon!

Masks. Theater. The filter was getting more specific.

Mark set the machine to search for images of masks in recent theatrical productions, and dove back into the data stream. It scrolled on the screen in a blur, over fifty images per second. After a while, he saw it.

Stop.
He stopped, worked backwards until he found it again. Not a mask. A costume, of a night moth. Blue-black stretch velvet over a wire frame, ragged edges fluttering. A muscular black girl wore the wings over a black leotard. She was leaping as if she were taking flight
. T
hose wings had Caroline written all over them.

He’d seen enough of her stuff to know her tics, her obsessions. Her so-called “art” was worthless crap made of paper or cloth, wire hangers, pipe-cleaners, chicken-wire. It was full of elements that fluttered and bobbed and swung. Mismatched colors, recycled materials. Her pieces looked like they had been cobbled from repurposed garbage. They bothered him on a visceral level. He wanted to sweep them off his field of vision.

He compared Caroline’s eccentricities with the moth costume the way that a criminologist would compare fingerprints, point for point. After fifteen seconds he was convinced that Caroline had designed it.

The website was of a community youth theater group in Seattle, the Mean Streets Players, doing
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The moth was Titania, Queen of the Fairies. He scrolled around until he could find a clickable playbill
with credits. There it was. Costumes by Bounce Entertainment.

Bingo.

In Bounce’s online inventory, dozens more pieces bore Caroline’s distinctive stamp. Productions of
Beauty and the Beast
and
Thumbelina
. The Blue Feather Playhouse’s interpretation of
The Tempest
.
The Bremen Town Musicians
, again by the Mean Streets Players.

Mark studied the owner’s smiling headshot. Gareth Wickham. The name sounded kind of fake. He looked fake, too, like a soap opera heartthrob. There was a landline and a cell number. It was after business hours, so he dialed the cell phone.

Wickham picked up promptly. “This is Gareth Wickham.” A crisp, professional male voice. Young, artsy, gay.

Mark instantly manufactured his own young, artsy gay persona. “Hi! My name is Rob Vasquez, from the Vermilion Players in New York City? I’m producing a dance piece? And I saw images of masks that your designers at Bounce created for
Beauty and the Beast
and
The Bremen Town Musicians
. It’s just beautiful work!”

“Glad you liked it,” Gareth said. “What can I do for you, Mr. Vasquez?”

“Please, call me Rob. I was wondering if you could hook me up with that designer. I loved Titania’s moth wings. Our director is looking for that ethereal quality. Those wings were built by the same designer who did the
Bremen Town
and the
Beauty and the Beast
masks, right?”

“Ah . . . uh . . .” The guy stammered. “I, um . . . well, we all worked on those.”

Mark smiled thinly. What a moron. “But who designed the basic concept? The style is sooo distinctive!”

“Actually, those costumes were a ragbag collection of stuff we had in stock,” Gareth’s voice gained strength as he figured out his response on the fly. “Mean Streets has a shoestring budget, and they couldn’t afford custom designed—”

“Could you put me in touch with the designer? I’d love to talk to him. Or her.”

Gareth hesitated a beat too long. “I don’t appreciate people poaching my staff.”

“Oh, no!” Mark injected mortified distress into his voice. “I’m sorry if I gave that impression! I certainly didn’t mean to—”

“Leave your name and number—no, better yet, go to the website form, and do it via email. Tell us what you want and when you need it. We’ll send you a quote.”

“But—”

The line went dead. That
prick.
No one spoke to Mark Olund like that.

He turned back to the computer screen, and dove deep into the data banks again, until he had gleaned Gareth Wickham’s home address. He was going to get a surprise visit sometime tonight, from a fast-assembled team of serious thugs.

Nighty-night, motherfucker.

Chapter 9

Noah wanted to take her arm as they walked, but didn’t dare touch her. As wound up as he was, he’d end up bending her over the hood of someone’s car.

The contact lenses and shield specs should have blocked enough of the light to zero out his AVP under normal conditions, but proximity to this woman did not constitute normal conditions. His AVP was revved. Data scrolled in a constant stream down both sides of his inner field of vision. He processed it all, crunching numbers, taking measurements, running probabilities. None particularly relevant to the situation.

Some random part of his mind decided to identify all the cars on this garage level and cross reference them. With one swift glance, he identified thirty-eight of his three-hundred-plus employees who had no life and were still at work at nine PM.

Lust was threatening to fry his circuits, but at least it wasn’t killing rage.

He just might be able to navigate this erotic encounter without running them into a wall.

Her sig was so damn beautiful. He forced himself to look down so he wouldn’t gape at the lights painting the walls. Dreamy pastels were splashed over the rough concrete walls of the garage, transforming them into something magical. If he didn’t screw this up for himself, he was going to be inside that with his own body, bathed in colors as he touched and kissed and fucked her.

And when she came . . .

“Would you stop that, please?”

He glanced up. “Stop what?”

“Thinking about me. Just go with it
, OK?
Don’t think too hard or we’ll derail.”

He laughed. “I’m not supposed to think about you now? Conditions keep getting stricter. You’re heavy into control.”

“Most men would be happy for a no-strings hook-up,” she said. “Why do you want to grill me first?”

Noah shrugged. “Knowledge is power. I like power. The more data you have, the more on top of things you can be.”

“Is that your favorite position? On top?”

He glanced at her, curious. “One of them, yeah. You still OK with this?”

“Of course.”

The tension in her voice made him slow to a stop to take another look at her sig. Her own unique patterns were not in his lexicon yet, but after less than an hour with her, he already had enough for a quick assessment.

She was turned on, but intimidated. Worried about what she’d gotten herself into, but not worried enough to chicken out.

Having a little sister had forced him to understand the risks a woman took when she chose to go off into the night with a man she barely knew. She was already defenseless and threatened.

He’d make the risk she was taking pay off ten times over.

Maybe he’d come on too strong. But it seemed so right at the time. He’d made sure she was into it every step of the way, and he’d never gotten such an incredible payoff. The lights had blasted the room like a spinning mirror ball when she came.

He pushed that overstimulating thought away before it could mess him up. He was going to need his self-control. Rigorous, constant, always-on-top control.

He’d never let the AVP out of its cage during sex before. Tonight, he wasn’t going to have a choice. But for the first time, his AVP might actually be useful for something he totally cared about. Her pleasure. Making her come.

Not that he ever had much trouble with that. But with her, it was different.

He needed it as urgently as he needed his own.

He helped her into his Porsche, got in himself and sat for a moment, keys in hand. She sank into her seat, looking nervous.

“What are you waiting for?” she demanded.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “But you don’t look OK. What’s wrong?”

“Start the car.”

He did, letting the engine rev for a moment so she had time to change her mind.

She shot him a nervous glance. “I just hope you’re not disappointed, that I’m not, you know, a crazy femme fatale. The sexy costume is just a costume.”

Disappointed, his ass. He almost laughed, but she would not appreciate being made fun of in her current mood. “Not at all. I’m flex. And anything but disappointed.”

“Good. Go for it, then. Sweep me away. Be masterful. I know you can. You don’t have to convince me of anything.”

The car sped up. He had to make a conscious effort to ease off the gas.

“I’m glad you think so,” he said. “But don’t try to snow me. You don’t have any intention of letting go. Not for one instant.”

She was silent for a long moment. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“You say, be masterful and sweep me away, but don’t ask my name, and no questions or conversation are allowed, and afterwards, never call me again. That’s not letting go.” He glanced over at her. “I’m just trying to figure you out.”

“Don’t overthink this.” Her voice vibrated with tension. “If the conditions bother you, you can let me out. This corner is just fine.”

Right. As if he would
let her walk away.
“I could use more data.”

“Tough shit,” she said. “Forget it. Or else stop the car.”

He ignored that. They drove on in silence for many minutes while he pondered his next move.

“Tell me just one little thing,” he said.

“What part of ‘no questions’ did you not understand?”

“Your name,” he said. “Just that. I’ll need it, tonight.”

She sighed, wearily. “Courtney.”

He couldn’t keep from laughing. “Please. Don’t insult my intelligence.”

She looked at him, startled. “Why? What’s wrong with Courtney?”

“Nothing specific. It’s just that it’s not your name,” he said. “People grow into their names, or their names grow onto them. Courtney hangs all wrong on you.”

He let the tension build, as the glow in her sig between her throat and heart got hotter. Shades of blue and violet, getting so bright they were almost white.

Truth, rising up at his summons. She couldn’t keep it inside. She had to let it spill out, or she’d explode. She had to give it up to him. He held his breath.

“Caro,” she whispered.

Yes.
He was silently delighted. As if he’d made her come with words alone.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said. “Call me Noah.” He reached out and took her hand. Her fingers were slender and cool, vibrating in his grasp. “Caro,” he
said softly. “I like it.”

It was happening again. He waited as they drove along the road that circled the lake. That blue-violet glow brightening as a fresh truth welled up, until it had to emerge.

“It’s what my mother called me when I was little,” she said.

They were home. He pushed a dashboard remote that opened up a large gate, and drove down the winding driveway. His house finally appeared, the high foundation built into rocks and the land, the terrace on stilts embedded in the lake. He parked, catching her thoughtful look around without commenting on it as they got out. The car chirped in farewell as he touched his key fob. He led her up the walkway.

“When did your mother stop calling you that?” he asked.

Many moments passed before she responded. “I was nine when she died.”

“I’m sorry.”

She nodded in acknowledgement. He hooked her arm, and drew her onward. “There are security cameras at the front door, and the back patio,” he said. “Couple more around each side.”

“Thanks. I appreciate you telling me.”

He unlocked the door, disarmed the security system that Sisko had programmed for him, and gestured her into the towering foyer.

His fingers flashed over the wall keypad. “Recoding the indoor vidcams,” he told her. “OK. They’re all off. You can relax.”