They Tell Me I'm The Bad Guy (17 page)

I chain-smoked another cigarette. The cat looked at me, sniffed the air in my direction and disappeared into the woods.

"Well, fuck you, too, cat," I said in a slow huff of smoke.

Near the tree line, looking way the fuck out of place from the
cemetery
of dead plants the rest of Rosemary's shit hole backyard was, stood a clean shed on a fresh-poured foundation. A brand new chain and lock hung around the door handles. I took a walk over and checked it out through the little window.

"Bullshit," I muttered, almost letting my cigarette fall out of my mouth.

I melted the chain and stepped inside. A high-polished red, white and blue motorcycle decked out with a waving American flag on the gas tank was parked in the middle of the shed. The thing was a monster of a chopper. On the back wall behind it was a workbench stacked with tools and new bottles of engine fluids, all of them still sealed. An empty pegboard had been propped against the workbench until it could be mounted. Three rolling red tool cabinets faced different directions against another wall, wrapped in plastic and unopened.

And I had an ugly fucking feeli
ng that I recognized that bike.

I slammed the shed doors, threw my cig into the woods at that goddamn tomcat, took another look in the sky for helicopters
and headed back into the house.

As soon as I walked through the hole, Rosemary started her shit up. "Don, have a seat. We can figure all this out together."

"Shut it. Not right now."

"You're detaining a federal officer against her will."

I stopped in the kitchen long enough to say, "You're already gonna charge me with that and a bunch of other shit I didn't do, so a few more minutes ain't gonna make any difference."

She had a blue and white laptop in the living room on the coffee table. I Google'd up 'American Flag Chopper' and found what I was looking for righ
t at the top of the first page.

The custom bike was Agent Red's. I'd seen the damn episode of the TV show where they built it. He was parking his bike in Rosemary's shed; fucking poetry if I had ever heard it. I wondered how much time the judge would add for keying the gas tank. I kept that option open and headed back into Rosie's wet, thawing bedroom.

I pried open the closet doors that were blocked by piles of clothes. Hanging beside the few things Rosemary had actually gotten on to hangers were men's clothes: a pair of jeans, a couple of button-up shirts, a beat-up Florida State Seminoles jersey, two pairs of fatigues, and the same kind of green fucking flight suit Agent Red wore. And next to that was what had to be his jacket: a worn-out brown leather piece of shit with a big American flag on the back and the Marine Corps logo
sewn onto the right shoulder.

Yeah. He was definitely banging her. It was a miracle she could still walk.

I walked back into the kitchen wearing Red's leather jacket and tossed her badge on the floor in front of her. "Here you go. You probably want that right now."

I pulled a chair from the breakfast table in the corner up to about six feet from her and left my gun on the table in reach next to a white notepad full of gibberish writing. "So what's it like to fuck an American hero, Rosie? This is Red's jacket, right? That's his bike parked outside. You've got his stuff in your closet. I guess that means you two set us up in that bunker. You and him, working together, you lying your ass off to get us to do what you needed us to do for the bust, him waiting to come in and kick the shit out of us once we'd grabbed the evidence."

"Don," she said slowly, "Let me go. I'll answer your questions the best I can, I swear. You don't need me like this. I'd be able to help you a lot more if you untied me and let me make some calls."

"Uh huh. You gonna charge me with tying you up and breaking in here?"

"I'm just an agent, I can't control what any prosecu--"

I cut her off. "Yeah, then no, we're not gonna be doing that right now. And you are an agent and didn't identify yourself as one to me last night. You fucked up, Officer. A good lawyer'll get me off."

Rosemary nodded. "Yeah, you're right. I didn't identify myself. You got me there. But you know I'm one now, so everything you do from here on out is a Felony. Red and I did not set you up in North Dakota. Tracey came to me with that job, and Red happened to be flying by. I didn't know--"

"I'm gonna stop you right there because my bullshit tolerance is way low right now. Where is this fucking computer thing with the security camera footage of your house? There should be like a server or something that
gets it all together to send."

She exhaled heavily. "It's not here, obviously. It's off-site in a relay station in NSA headquarters."

I took a slow drag on my cigarette. "What'd I say about my bullshit tolerance?"

Rosemary shrugged her shoulders as much as the tape would let her. "Fine. Don't believe me. They're right there over at Fort Meade, practically around the corner. You could walk there they're so close."

"If you say so. What sends them the camera feed? Matter of fact, where are all these goddamn cameras 'cause
I sure as shit don't see any."

"They're hidden. They're these little fiber optic wires that can record everything."

"And send it to the NSA how? Magic? Is there magic here?"

"The cameras fe
ed wirelessly into my laptop."

Like I said; sometimes it was productive to be a dick. I overheated her computer so the hardware inside would fry.

"All right, I'll worry about that later," I to
ld her. "Three o'clock, right?"

Rosemary's dark eyes stared straight at me. "Really? You're really going to act like you didn't destroy my laptop just now? That's destruction of Federal property. You're really racking up the record here."

I shrugged and didn't say anything. My defense team's expert witness would tell a jury that Rosemary leaving her computer on all the time could have caused it to overheat. There would be a lot more reasonable doubt on that than video evidence of me atta
cking Rosemary while she slept.

"What about all that ice last night?" I asked her. "The fuck was all that?"

She rolled her eyes. "Okay. Please listen to me, all right? That was you. You iced everything up then ran away all freaked-out. Now, here's something I want you to think about. I can't read you. It's like you're not even there to my brain. I would have incapacitated you with a psychic bullet by now if I could. You would be laid out. And you can kill me in a snap, right? We both know that. So why do you need me tied up? It's freezing on this floor, and I have a bad disc in my neck that's starting to pinch a nerve. I have to have a special pillow and mattress to sleep on because I can't just be like this, it cause muscle cramps and pain in my neck if I'm in this position for too long. I understand if it makes you feel more comfortable and in control, but you don't need to do it. But you need to think, really think, about what you're doing. What's your game plan here? I work part-time as an agent, mostly, and I don't have a lot of slack there. It was a badge or a jail cell for me, that was the deal I got. I'm not thrilled about it myself. Neither me nor Red are out to get you. Please just let me up, and we'll talk about what we can do to make this easy for you."

I blew smoke from the side of my mouth. "God damn, does Red have to listen to this much shit?
Jesus
. I don't know if you're trying to make me turn the gun on myself, but just give me short fucking answers, shit. You're still sticking to the ice thing being me, fine. Whatever. Next question. Where the fuck is Tracey?"

Her jaw clenched, and the patience began to drain from her eyes. "We went over this last night. She's got a supplier for psy-blockers like our agency uses. Nobody can track her mentally. Why do you want to find her?"

"No, no, I'm asking questions right now. Will's in custody?"

"I don't know. I haven't talked to Red since before T
racey pulled me to the bunker."

"You don't know where your boyfriend is?"

Rosemary rolled onto her back and stretched her neck. "No, Don, he hasn't called me yet. He's very busy, and we're just friends. That bike's only out there because he wanted a place close to the office to put some stuff. You need to take his jacket off."

"Yeah, okay, 'cause I'm retarded enough to believe you two are just friends. Track Will and tell me where he is."

"Don, I can't find Red or your friend. All active duty agents take psy-blockers, so I never know where he," she caught herself, "Where anybody is at the office. On top of that, any Post-Human like Will that's taken into custody is immediately given blockers to keep anyone from tracking or manipulating them." She finally made eye contact with me again. "Now can you let me up, please?"

I didn't budge. I absently spun the notepad full of gibberish on the table with my finger. "Tracey is gonna try to kill Will. You guys need to get him into heavily protective custody because she'll find him. If you can promise me you can do that, I'll let you up."

"If your friend's life is in danger, we can get him into more protective custody. Just let me up; I can't do anything on the floor."

"That's not very reassuring."

"It's the best I can do," she said.

This was going fucking nowhere. Rosemary wasn't as stupid as she had played-up in North Dakota. Time to play the only bargaining chip I had. "I've seen Tracey kill a guy with a bottle cap, so, y'know, you'll have to pardon the fuck out of me if I want some action taken to keep Will alive."

"Wait." Rosemary suddenly got very interested. "You
saw her
kill somebody?"

"Yeah. That's some
shit you can't un-see, either."

She practically foamed at the mouth with that nugget. "The SCEIA hasn't found anybody that's come forward and said they've seen her something like that. They can't even find anybody that will admit without a psychic that they're one of her clients. If you cooperated with the investigation, they might be able to nail her with a murder charge."

Bingo. They needed me.

I felt her out with, "I'm not here to go to prison or get my head 'ported off. The only way I would do anything for you is if I got Witness Protection or something. You're not gonna use me and screw me ove
r; I would want to cut a deal."

"We can definitely look into that. I'm sure that wouldn't be an issue."

She wasn't dumb, but it wasn't exactly hard to play her, either. I poured it on with, "And your office would have to catch her, which they fucking h
aven't been able to up to now."

Rosemary locked her gaze on me, heaping on reassurances with her brown eyes. "With a break in the case against her like this, a witness like you, and sworn statements from me and Red, they could afford to throw more money at catching her. And we almost
did
catch her. Couple of guys busted the operation up if I remember right."

"Y'all handled that all wrong," I said. According to my count, I had some assault charges, destruction of property charges on the back door, the shed lock, and Rosie's bedroom, and a charge for illegal detainment or whatever, all of which happened under the influence. They would try to get me on the bullshit charge of destroying the computer, but I could fight that. They didn't know dick about Wilmont Avenue or Run ALC, and I could plead mind control for the whole bunker thing. If I cut a deal, I could get Tracey off the street and be out with minimal jail time. Will could turn state's evidence and cut a deal for himself, too. It was better than my original plan of something, something, pound Tracey with a Louisville Slugger.

I finished my last little bit of my cigarette and threw it in the sink. Glancing at my gun on the table, I got curious about the notepad full of nonsense, so I held it up. "What's all this shit you wrote on here?"

"Please put that down," she said firmly.

"I will. What is it?"

"It's a message."

"Looks like made-up shit."

"It's a message in Portuguese."

"You act like that answers my fucking question."

"
Oh my God
, okay. I get messages, like visions, in my head in Portuguese. I write them down, fax them to a translator and find out what they say."

". . . I swear to God, do not fuck with me."

"God, I'm not. Can you please just untie me?"

I set the pad down. I couldn't get anything else from her like this unless I was prepared to cross this over into a long-term captive-in-a-basement-chained-to-a-radiator si
tuation. I had what I needed
; the next stage would be dealing with the bigger fish at the SCEIA.
There was just
one more thing to find out. "All right," I told her. "You can make your calls."

"Thank you."

I tucked my revolver back in my jeans, grabbed a peanut butter-caked knife off the counter and knelt down behind her to
cut
through the gray tape. "Where do these messages come from?" I asked.

"God," she said. "I think they come from God. I don't want to talk about it because it's not really something I think you'll believe."