Critical Point Page 14

  I studied her for a moment. She met my gaze levelly.

  “Okay,” I said. “Do whatever you need to do to gear up. We head out in five.”

  I went to grab some ammo and food myself, but Rio followed me from the room. “Cas. Wait.”

  “What is it?”

  Rio drew closer, glancing around to make sure we were alone for the moment. “This is too easy.”

  My jaw clenched. I’d had the same thought, but hadn’t wanted to examine it too closely. Or to have it confirmed.

  “If you’re suggesting it’s a trap…” My eyes itched with fatigue; I blinked hard. “For that sort of thing to work, D.J. would have to have known we would be looking, that we’d get the data before he blew the clinic, that we’d get the passwords from someone like Willow Grace, that we’d manage to unlock the hidden file or whatever, that I’d be able to read it, and that one of us would know D.J. well enough to recognize his prints on the name. That’s … convoluted.”

  “You trust no one could have gotten into your friend’s systems since we obtained the data?”

  “And planted the file? Through Checker’s security?” I snorted. “I suppose it’s possible, but it’s not the side I’d bet on.”

  “And you trust your friends?”

  “Who?” I was genuinely confused for an instant. “Wait, you mean Checker or Pilar? They didn’t plant anything.”

  “In my experience, people can be … surprising,” Rio said. “There is also the reporter.”

  “What about her? You suspect something?”

  “Nothing specific, but she is an unknown.”

  My head was starting to hurt. I leaned up against the wall. “You tell me how it makes any sense with the rest of what we know about her, and I’ll bite. Do you have any evidence, or is this playing paranoia dartboard?”

  Rio angled one shoulder up in a minute shrug. “As I said, people can be surprising. We are not privy to their thoughts, or what leverage may be held against them.”

  “Okay. Then let’s not assume any givens.” I tried to be logical instead of irritated. Just because I wasn’t inclined to listen to Rio without question anymore didn’t mean he was all the way wrong. “If we say it’s a trap—is it for us, or to get us out of the way?”

  “I will protect the family, Cas.”

  “I know you will, but…” But Elisa and Checker weren’t here.

  What were my choices, though? I sure as hell wasn’t going to ignore the only lead we’d had. I desperately wished we had Checker back—he could have dug into any electronic fingerprints on the file better than Pilar or Rio. He would have been able to tell us if its sudden appearance had an innocent explanation, or if Pilar and I were about to walk right into D.J.’s hands.

  “You should contact Simon,” Rio suggested. “With the connection to the doctor, you may encounter more of her creations.”

  He didn’t just mean the dogs either.

  “I was thinking we’d put Simon in our ears going in.” I wasn’t sure it would be enough in the moment. But what would?

  “A wise move,” Rio agreed.

  Pilar came out of the bathroom. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

  “Lend me a rifle,” I said to Rio. “The Vector, if you can spare it. And anything you’ve got for explosives detection. Then let’s hoof it.”

  If this was a trap, maybe we could spring it hard enough to get taken to wherever Arthur was anyway.

  sixteen

  JUST WHAT I need, I thought, as I wedged the earpiece in before driving us off into the darkening evening in Pilar’s car. Another voice in my head.

  Valarmathi snickered.

  In the passenger seat beside me, Pilar was checking all her spare magazines were topped off. She’d had those in her trunk as well, apparently.

  “Hey,” I said to her. “We should ask Mr. Mind Reader if he knows why you were able to pull us away from things when we were attacked at the wellness center. We need every edge possible.”

  “I asked him already,” Pilar said. “He called last night to make sure I was feeling okay, you know, after. From what I could tell him, his best guess was…” She took a breath. “I’d never killed anything before. Not like that. He thinks I got a wash of, of something for a minute that fought the panic. A different emotion that was strong enough to disrupt it. I don’t think it’s something we could replicate.”

  “Huh. Too bad.” Simon was always telling me mind manipulation wasn’t an exact science. Push here, pull there, corral a thousand variables to aim for a certain reaction and only land in the neighborhood.

  People like Simon and Dawna could land in that neighborhood enough times in a row to hone down a thought to within a few neurons—metaphorically—but Teplova’s hard-coding surgeries didn’t seem nearly so precise. It might be worth trying to brainstorm how to disrupt their magic in some other way, if this lasted beyond tonight.

  For tonight, we were stuck with Simon. I dialed and conferenced in Pilar. The phone rang a good four times before he picked up.

  “What the hell took so long?” I said.

  “What?” Simon sounded distracted. “Oh—I’m just…”

  I waited for him to finish the thought, but he didn’t.

  “Hey,” I said sharply.

  “Sorry! What is it?”

  “Hang on, Cas,” Pilar said. “Is he okay? Simon, are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Yes. I’m a bit—uh. Knackered, to tell you the truth.”

  He seemed a lot further gone than that. Shit.

  “Well, get un-knackered,” I said. “We need you. Pilar and I are both staying on this call. We’re chasing down a lead on Arthur. If we run into any of Teplova’s creations, we need you to talk us down. Got it?”

  “In the moment?” Simon said.

  “Yes, in the moment,” I said. “Why, is that a problem for you?” Pilar winced at my tone.

  “The continuous pushing against this … it’s difficult. I’m becoming more impressed with this, Cas. It may be crude, but it’s … wearing.” I was about to ask him what the hell he was talking about when his tone changed. “Oh. Oh. You forgot again.”

  “Forgot what?” I said.

  “Oscar. The man who tried to blow up your office.”

  “That was D.J.,” I said. I turned down a winding back road that would shortcut some of the worst city congestion.

  “Maybe D.J. is the mastermind, but the person who set you up is named Oscar. He arranged an appointment with you and then tried to keep you there. You knocked him down and then locked him up and asked me to come see if I could discover anything of substance from him.”

  Despite the exhaustion threading his words, Simon’s speech was annoyingly patient.

  And I did remember now.

  Shit.

  “The Australian,” I said, to prove it. His voice was easier to latch on to than his face. What Rio and I had discussed came back to me: the ways the doctor had left her legacy on so many varied people’s bodies. Or the ways she’d been forced to.

  How did Oscar fit into the puzzle? Why had he been made—as some sort of covert operations test, an invisible man?

  “He’s Teplova’s too.” I filled Simon and Pilar in, now that I could remember him. “He has to be. Plastic surgery. He must have had his face changed to make him forgettable, or, I don’t know, unimportant-looking.”

  “Holy smokes,” Pilar murmured.

  “Can you see it?” I asked Simon. “Can you tell what she did?”

  “Plastic surgery … yes, it’s possible. In fact, that would make a lot of sense. I’m used to people blasting their emotions at me all the time, but his face … it doesn’t. I don’t think it’s that I couldn’t read him if I tried, but it’s more obscured. A bit, anyway.”

  “Maybe I should get plastic surgery,” I said. “Defense against psychics.”

  “I don’t think it would help, not if I really … you know. Wanted to.”

  “Well, have you gotten anything more out of him?” I said.
“I mean non-psychically; don’t get your knickers in a bunch. Has he told you anything else?”

  “He has a single-minded loyalty, but I’m not sure if he remembers why anymore. Still, he’s repeated it to himself so many times that it’s hard for him to see past it.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve offered to help him. If he’d let me, I think he could become more lucid.”

  The telepathic brand of psychiatric care. Even though I was benefitting from it, I wasn’t sure I’d recommend it. At least not from Simon.

  “Does he understand what you’re offering?” Pilar asked quietly.

  “I don’t—I’m not sure,” he answered.

  “More importantly, if he let you in, would you then be able to find out what he knows about D.J.?” I put in.

  The phone went silent. I’d gotten stuck in a jam behind a traffic light and inched the car forward impatiently, waiting. Simon finally said, “I think that would have to be his decision, Cas.”

  I didn’t know if he meant, he wouldn’t know unless Oscar shared, or he wouldn’t tell me unless Oscar okayed it. But I was too tired to argue with him about a hypothetical.

  “I need to remember this guy exists,” I said instead. I jerked a thumb at Pilar. “You’ve never seen him. Do you have trouble?”

  “No—at least, I don’t think so. But so much has been happening that I might have—I mean, I haven’t been thinking about him being there, so maybe I forgot? Wait, I’m not sure now.”

  “Your new job is to find out,” I said. “Keep reminding me of him. Simon will double-check that you’re doing it, and we’ll give Rio a heads up too. I’m guessing he’s immune.” I supposed I could’ve had Simon call to keep checking in with me, but that would mean I’d have to talk to him more. And considering the way he sounded, maybe it wasn’t the best idea to make him keep dividing his focus.

  “I promise I will call if he tells me anything you can use,” Simon said. “And I’ll make sure I keep remembering him. I will.”

  “And how about now?” I said. “Are you going to be up for backing us?”

  “Yes. I—yes. Yes.”

  The number of affirmatives was not inspiring me with confidence.

  “Can you leave yourself a note and take a break?” Pilar asked.

  “That might work,” said Simon. “I could try something, ah, like that.”

  Some shuffling and muffled speech sounded from the other end of the phone, and then Simon’s voice came back. “I’m going to hang up and record a video memo to myself, and a note to watch it. Then I’m going to lock myself in the bathroom. How far out are you?”

  I’d mentally mapped the fastest way through the clogged streets, but we were fighting rush hour. “Fifty minutes, give or take seven.”

  “Good. I’ll, uh, I’ll take a little time to rest, then. Will you call me just before?”

  I said I would, and we hung up.

  My eyes were on the road, but I caught Pilar’s quick glance at me and then at the floor. “What?” I snapped.

  “I just—I know he’s a telepath and all, and it’s hard to trust him, but he is just trying to help,” she said. “And he’s been good about keeping his word not to read us, right? And to help you?”

  “Yeah, well, considering how many of my problems were his fault in the first place, I’m not going to give him much credit,” I growled. “I don’t buy into his whole ‘I erased your entire personality to save your life’ justification, and if you’ve jumped on that bandwagon, well then, fuck you too.”

  Pilar was silent for a moment. Then she said, very quietly, “That was him?”

  I hadn’t realized she didn’t know. I’d sort of assumed everyone in my life knew. Checker and Arthur had been there, and if nothing else, I would’ve assumed they’d told her.

  But they hadn’t. Apparently.

  “I knew you’d lost your memory,” Pilar said. “And that Simon was—helping you—but he was the one who…?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I hadn’t meant to revisit this. “He does say he did it because I was dying. Or she was dying. Whoever I used to be. But she didn’t want him to, and he did it anyway.” I shifted gears harder than I should have as I took us around a corner. “Dawna knocked his work apart, and now he has to see me to keep patching it up, so I don’t go crazy and die again. That’s it.”

  “My God, how have you not—” She cut herself off, but I had the distinct feeling the end of that sentence was going to be, “killed him,” which was … uncharacteristically violent of Pilar. “I didn’t know,” she said instead. “I’m so sorry.”

  But she didn’t sound pitying. She sounded angry, and not just passingly angry, but an intense, deep kind of fury I’d only seen in her once before.

  “I’m over it,” I said, not strictly truthfully. “We need him. I need him. And he’s been behaving. Water, bridges. Don’t shoot him, please.”

  “I won’t.” The promise was immediate but grim, like she gave it while contemplating all the ways she could make Simon’s life hell without shooting him.

  Touching of her, but also annoying. “Follow my lead,” I said. “No shooting, no maiming, no conspiring with Checker to make him miserable. Don’t dig it all up again.”

  “All right. I’ll do—if you want me to. I can be civil.”

  She could, too. She was always civil to Rio, despite putting a hand on her weapon every time she saw him. And I knew she hadn’t forgiven him.

  * * *

  THE MISSION was a little ways outside the urban sprawl. Between the lack of city lights and the hour, the darkness had begun pressing in on us as the road wound through dry hills.

  “What’s the plan?” asked Pilar, as we drew nearer.

  “I take point, you watch our six,” I answered. “If there are more ‘dogs,’ or any humans like them, Simon will just have to start talking as fast as possible.”

  “And if it’s rigged with bombs and stuff?” Pilar said. “We might not be able to see that, will we?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s a risk. Are you sure you want to go in?”

  She touched her holster. “Yes.”

  I thought back to the other times D.J. and I had crossed paths, what his setups had been like. “Watch where you put your feet,” I said. “This guy is in the cool-but-lazy school of thought—”

  “Like Checker,” Pilar said absently.

  “What?”

  “Oh, I just mean, I mean Checker’s sort of like that, isn’t he?” Pilar said. “Never mind.”

  Checker had never struck me as lazy, but then, the only things I’d ever seen him doing were things he was already obsessed with. I thought of him climbing the walls in police interrogation again. He’d be miserable.

  Shit.

  “You were saying?” Pilar prompted. “Watch where I put my feet?”

  “Yeah,” I said, wrenching my thoughts back onto the rails. The headlights cut through the darkness ahead of us, the barest hints of scenery flashing by on the periphery. “D.J. likes elegance, and he likes showing off. If I’m remembering right, he’s the type who might even show off at the expense of efficiency, which is good for us—it gives us an extra margin of possibility to spot anything he has set. Try to step only on ground unlikely to have a pressure sensor, like asphalt and cement, if possible. And keep your eye out. If you see anything, freeze where you are until I can look at it.”

  “Okay,” Pilar said. “Am I looking for anything specific? Would it be like in the movies, um, wires and sticks of dynamite and blinking lights?”

  “Probably not the blinking lights,” I said.

  Except D.J. might. Of all the people in the world, he might.

  I sighed. “Maybe, but probably not. And dynamite is less stable than plastic explosives, but this might have been set up as a short-term snare anyway. Plus, you saw the binary at Teplova’s—I’d say it’s safe to assume that was him, and he very well might have something else we’ve never seen before. Use your imagination, and tell me right away if you see anything.”


  “Got it.” In the dimness of the car, I saw her press the palms of her hands against her thighs.

  But if she was up for this, I wasn’t going to turn her down.

  I’d gotten some gear from Rio, including the KRISS Vector with a night-vision scope for the rail, a wand he said was good for registering explosive material about eighty-five percent of the time, and an independent GPS unit we were following to the mission address. Half a mile out, I pulled the e-brake and hairpinned the Yaris in a smooth one-eighty to point the other way, then took us off the shoulder onto dry grass before turning off the engine.

  Pilar had slapped a hand against the dash when I started the maneuver. “I’m invoicing you for any damage to my car,” she said.

  “Invoice Arthur. It’s his ass we’re trying to rescue.”

  “Good plan,” she answered, with only a little edge to the gallows humor.

  I called Simon back as we got out, bracing myself for having him in my ear again. The phone rang. And rang.

  Voicemail.

  I tried again.

  Voicemail.

  Pilar’s eyes were huge in the dark, reflecting the minimal starlight. “He’s not picking up?”

  Instead of answering her, I tried again.

  Nothing.

  Shit.

  I called Rio. Within one ring, his voice came on. “Hello.”

  “Rio, have you heard from Simon?”

  “I have not.”

  “We spoke to him when we left. Now he’s not answering.”

  Rio paused. I figured he was flipping through the same options I was. “It may be what this antagonist wants, for me to leave the family,” he said.

  “Yeah.” I rubbed my forehead. “Yeah. Stay there. Call what’s-her-face. The oldest daughter. Make sure she and Checker are okay.”

  “I shall. I can also keep trying Simon.”

  “Do that. If you reach him, tell him to call, stat.”

  “Cas,” Rio said. “Without Simon’s aid, do you think it wise to—”

  “Probably not, but do you think it’s likely you’ll talk me out of it?”

  “Cas. We do not even know the likelihood this is a good lead.”

  Even if it weren’t a trap for Pilar and me, even if it weren’t a convenient way to get us out of the city in order to hurt someone else—I determinedly didn’t think about D.J. and Checker’s prior relationship—if we didn’t investigate, we were back to where we’d been before. We could go through the rest of the real estate holdings, but the most logical place to start was the one where we already were.