The Girl in Acid Park (12 page)

Only the biggest and rustiest whirligigs remained. It was toward those the group led us. Damp, knee-high grass swished around my legs, and I found myself absurdly worried about snakes and spiders, though at this time of the year, I was more likely to accidentally step on a mouse.

I concentrated on stepping exactly where Willy stepped, and this kept me occupied until we arrived at our destination. I remembered the whirligig from my daytime jaunt--it was the big, sideways X with the carousel in the middle and the cutout of a yellow tractor on the top. Here, in the dark, with barely a suggestion of moonlight giving it edges, it looked more like something from the space-camp of nightmares.

Willy took my arm, holding me back and gesturing the boys forward. Both Jamie and Hiroki looked at me. One of the men pushed Jamie's shoulder. He braced his feet and refused to budge.

"Go on," Willy said. "Do what I tell you, and maybe she won't end up in one of them holes too."

Hiroki's jaw worked, and I saw him glance around, muscles tense. For just a moment, I thought he would run.

But then something click near my ear, and cold metal pressed to the skin behind it.

"Y'all know what happens when someone gets shot in the head point-blank?" Willy asked.

My knees went to water, and a flood of darkness threatened my field of vision. Willy jerked at my arm, forcing me to catch my balance. A cracked whimper escaped me. Webs of lightning panic arced out from the cold press of the gun against my skull.

"Get that thing away from her." Hiroki's voice was still raspy with asthma, but the bulldog-protectiveness was back.

I opened my eyes, but the scene before me was warped, as if I was looking at it from several inches in front of my face.

Willy moved behind me, and Hiroki let his captor lead him away. Jamie was so pale, he almost looked like a ghost. They trudged compliantly along to an enormous hole and, moments later, disappeared into it with a splash.

The light breeze ruffled my sleeves. The smaller pinwheels on the whirligig's arms spun, but the propeller-like ones at the ends of each spoke didn't budge. I thought of April, but there was no drop in barometric pressure, no ghost.

Finally, Willy drew the gun away from my ear.

I heard a metallic snick behind me, and then something sharp between my wrists. A jerk, and the zip-tie popped open, my wrists coming apart. Pain flashed through my shoulders and I gritted my teeth.

"Alright, girly," Willy said. "Get rid of it."

Breath fluttered in my throat. "Rid of what?" I whispered. One of the guys--his boss, I think--said something to him in Spanish, which he responded to.

"The ghost," Willy said. "Call her out."

I shook my head, glancing over briefly at the hole where Hiroki and Jamie were trapped. "I can't... I don't know how to-"

Willy gestured to a short man, who dumped Hiroki's messenger bag at my feet. The orange drill tumbled out. The skin on my back crawled toward my shoulders. What might they do with that drill if I didn't comply? What if the girl didn't show back up?

"We don't even know if that's g-going to work..." Willy lunged, and suddenly his face was right up next to mine, and I could smell him. I could smell the dead stench lingering on his clothes, the acrid cigarette smell burning my nostrils.

"You fucking make it work!" he roared. I jumped, trying to shrink back, but ran into Alvaro's shoulder. My ears rang. "That night you found the body--I saw her, standing next to the fucking road like she was waiting." He stepped forward again, grabbing my face in one hand and squeezing it till my cheeks crushed in against my teeth. I swallowed a yelp. "Gustavo said he saw something. We should'a listened, made it four bodies instead of one."

He let me go, stepping back. He had an ungainly walk--part swagger, part drunken lack of coordination. In the dim light, his bony face caught all sorts of shadows. I felt like I'd been punched. The realization that this man not only had Spectral Sight, but had hidden it from the police for so long, coursing through my brain.

He turned, feet crunching the breeze-ruffled grass, and said something I didn't understand.

He dragged me over to the side of the hole. Below, Hiroki and Jamie stood back-to-back, up to their knees in mud. Hiroki faced me, his eyes wide and angry.

Then Willy grabbed his gun from where he'd tucked it in his waistband. I watched, everything slow-motion, as he straightened his arm and aimed the barrel at Hiroki's head.

"Call her out, or this one dies."

"I swear, I can't call her out!" My voice raked my throat. "That's not what I do--I can only help them move on!"

"You'll figure it out," Willy said. "Or do you think we're joking? Maybe we should just kill one to prove we ain't."

"If you shoot either of them, I'm not going to help you." The voice was mine, but I didn't remember deciding to speak. Willy narrowed his eyes at me, then jerked his chin toward the bag at my feet.

I squatted, rooting through it with a throbbing throat, and pulled up the drill.

"It isn't big enough," Jamie said. His voice was almost too firm, as if he were struggling to keep it level by putting it on lockdown. Then he spun out an explanation involving words like "amplification" and "intensity" and "constructive interference".

Willy looked at me, waved his gun at Jamie as if to say, "do you get what this guy is saying?" I was forced to lift my hands, drill and all, into a shrug.

"SO IT NEEDS TO BE LOUDER," Hiroki translated.

Willy and I made sounds of comprehension. He took my arm and I watched, grim and scared, as the gang members pushed the whirligig into motion.

"When she shows, you're gonna come with me."

"If you can see her, why do you need me?" I asked.

"You got no reason to be talking right now," he said. "Not unless you're gonna tell me how you knew she'd be here." He said it in an almost jealous way, like he was upset someone else had figured out about the girl in Acid Park.

Several disparate pieces of information clicked into place all at once. The blood on the whirligig, the article, the brick through my window, everything.

"Joseph?" I said. Willy turned to me, his eyes wide. I nodded, letting out a little laugh of disbelief. "Joseph Vance--April's boyfriend. God, no wonder her dad left you this place."

"Shut up," he said, his lips tight, barely moving. The whirligig creaked as it turned on its post, and one big propeller hissed into motion, catching the wind.

"He's gone now. So when your friends needed a remote place to kill that informant, you offered this one," I said. "You knew no one lived in the house anymore, and you knew there would be a lot of construction. But you needed to leave a warning for other informants, so you used the farmhouse. No wonder you didn't want me and Hiroki working on the case--no one else would have been able to talk to April. Or maybe you were afraid I'd help her move-"

"No!" His hand flashed out. I saw only a slight gleam of the gun before he slammed it across my head.

Guns are a lot heavier than they look. That was the only thought floating through my mind as I looked up at the cloud-muted sky. My ears were ringing, and I had fallen on Hiroki's orange drill, though, fortunately, the bit wasn't facing me. I lay stunned on my side for a moment, until Hiroki and Jamie's voices came to me through the haze of pain.

They couldn't struggle right now. Not for me. Not for this--they'd get themselves shot. I rolled onto my knees, but before I could even get up, a fist closed in my hair and wrenched my head back.

Willy glared down at me, shoved the gun under my chin. "Y'all ain't worth the trouble," he said, and pulled back the hammer.

I'm not sure what came over me then. I don't consider myself to be abnormally brave, or cool under pressure. I'm not super strong or fast or skillful. But I had a heavy-ass drill in my hand and a pair of boys I wanted, more than anything, to protect.

I swung the drill into Willy's arms, slamming them hard to one side. The gun cracked, recoiling in his hand, but the bullet zipped over my shoulder. I heard a clang behind me as it hit a whirligig. There wasn't time to look around, to find Jamie and Hiroki and see if they were okay. Before Willy could get ahold of himself, I lurched to my feet and swung the drill again. This time he leapt away and momentum carried me staggering past him. I whirled, prepared to stab or swing with my impromptu weapon, only to find myself staring at the single black eye of a pistol. I wasn't going to be fast enough to dodge it this time.

If Hiroki survived, he'd better come talk to me. That was my last thought before the gun fired.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Pieces of April

The crack rang in my ears, and when it faded, there was the sound of a fan, of change rattling in cans, and the creaking of a schoolyard swing. Flashes of light streaked across my eyelids, and my arms had already started to go cold.

I exhaled, and felt my breath rise into my face. Wait, I was breathing? That shouldn't be a thing. I'd just been shot in the face!

I opened my eyes, and there was Willy, his face turned up, arms outspread for balance. And there, above us, his gun was suspended in thin air, still trailing the last bit of smoke. I could still hear the whirligigs, still sense the phantom headlights flashing just outside my vision.

He turned this way and that, apparently looking for the manifestation of the spirit so clearly upon us. Behind him, the whirligig was still going, but there were other flashes of metal in the sky--more guns, all floating high above the gang members' heads.

I spotted Hiroki clambering out onto the tall grass, likely lifted up by Jamie. There was no time to confirm it. Not if we wanted to use our momentary advantage.

I took one step forward and rammed my knee as hard as I could between Willy's legs. It wasn't the best aim ever, but he bent double with a pitiful whine.

"That's for my boyfriends," I huffed. Then I drew back my drill and swung the heavy battery-end into the side of his head. He sprawled out next to me. "And that's for trying to shoot me in the face."

I snatched his pocket knife and Jamie's keys. There were still five more gang members to worry about.

I looked up just in time to see the whirligig, now moving unpowered by man or wind, slam into a gang member and send him crashing, face first, into the tall grass.

Okay, four.

Without guns, and with two of their number already down, the gang members looked less than excited. The boss stood facing off with Hiroki, who had his back up against a very muddy Jamie's, apparently less bothered by the physical contact than the imminent threat of death.

I glanced back at Willy, then up at the gun over his head.

"Hey," I whispered, holding out my hand. "Help a girl out?"

The gun descended slowly, settling into my outstretched palm. I curled my fingers around it, glad my hands were too cold to sweat, and turned back to the gang members. I might not have been able to say anything to them, but I walked straight toward them, gun at the end of my reach, universal for, "get the fuck away from my friends or I will end you, and I probably have really bad aim, so it's going to take a few tries."

At last, someone decided to listen to me.

The remaining gang members ran, scattering toward the woods, the road. I stood there for a long time, shaking from the adrenaline, from the terror, from the cold. I barely even noticed when the guns all drifted down from the sky like featherlight stars; I was still staring at the drive, staring after the headlights now rumbling at top speed toward the road. Only when they disappeared completely behind the cover of trees did I let my arms drop.

I couldn't see anything for a moment, couldn't quite breathe. My pulse rushed hard in my ears, blackness pressing into my mind from every side.

Hands were on my hands, gently uncurling my fingers from the gun. "G?" Hiroki's voice was next to me. "G, come on, I need your help."

I opened my eyes, saw Hiroki standing there, alive and apparently uninjured, and all my breath left my lungs. I looked around for Jamie.

"Where's...?"

"Over there," Hiroki pointed behind him. Jamie bent over a fallen gang member, tying him up. There was blood on his cheek, and more on his arm and my stomach did a frightened little flip. Still, he couldn't be hurt too badly if he was walking around.

"Get the truck," I said. I turned back to Hiroki and pointed to the spot where Willy still lay, prone and unconscious and still gripping his crotch. "I dropped the keys back over there. We should call the police and get the hell out of here in case they come back with more guns."

"Yeah, but there's something we ought to do first." Hiroki looked around, and his eyes seemed to fall on something I couldn't see. "She says she's gotten weaker since the whirligigs were moved. She wanted to help you, because she saw you here with Jamie and it reminded her of... well, she saw you. And she knew you could help her move on."

I nodded, and the dizziness came back. "Yeah," I said. "Yeah, of course. But we should wait until the police get here. She can help provide evidence for the murder--that's what they were afraid of. Willy over there has Spectral Sight, and he knew she'd seen what they did, and if they got that police officer from Durham down here, or you, she could rat him out."

Hiroki chewed at the inside of his lip, though he rocked on his heels like he always did when he was uncertain. "They've got the body, though. And now they've got him. And that guy," he nodded back toward our prisoners. "Is it really necessary to talk to her?"

Jamie walked toward us, one of his shoes flopping awkwardly with no laces. I took advantage of this momentary distraction to consider my answer to Hiroki. The cut on his arm had opened up the sleeve of his black turtleneck, and the skin underneath gleamed with blood. I opened my mouth to ask if he wanted me to help him bandage it up, but he didn't give me a chance.

His hands found my head and pulled me in against his chest. For a second, I had no idea how to react. It had been several weeks since I'd hugged someone, and I've never really been hugged like that. By a guy. With the chest. And the nearly dying.