Critical Point Read online

  But the point was, even for normal people, the explosion of the stairs hadn’t been meant to kill us.

  And the unconnected bomb that was now cradled carefully under my arm had definitely not been meant to kill us.

  Also, now that I thought about it—I wasn’t great at taking note of my environment, not like Arthur was, but nothing pointed to him having been beaten in the bell tower. There’d been no blood on the floor. No sign in the dust that a human being had been thrashing under the timbers. None of the strong scents I associated with human suffering.

  The conclusion was inescapable. Arthur had been placed in the bell tower for us to find; the building had been rigged sloppily so he would appear hard to get to; and whoever had placed him there had wanted us to succeed in rescuing him without knowing it was all a setup.

  Which left two possibilities. The first one was that D.J. had begun feeling remorse—maybe he hadn’t known he’d been working against an old friend, and the revelation had spurred him to release Arthur in a fit of magnanimity toward his prior connections. The second possibility was that D.J. had wanted to get some number of us away from LA for reasons of his own.

  I wasn’t betting on the remorse.

  I reached Pilar’s car and placed the bomb carefully in the front seat. Then I flattened the accelerator so fast, the Yaris spit dirt and gravel behind me, and floored it back toward LA, pushing the car’s tachometer into the red zone. I realized too late that I’d left my only phone with Pilar and had no way to warn Rio anything might be going down.

  But I had a good first guess of who D.J.’s target might be. If he no longer cared about killing Arthur because he had someone else in mind, if he’d then used Arthur to lure Pilar and me and possibly Rio if he was lucky out of Los Angeles, if he’d been the one to attack Simon somehow—the one person among us it made sense for him to be targeting was the one he’d known the longest.

  The person who used to be his friend.

  The people you love can always hurt you more than anyone else, a sad voice said in my head.

  nineteen

  I REMEMBERED which station Checker had been taken to. Forty minutes later, my single-minded fury brought me swinging in to a hard stop in front of it.

  A quick hiccup of relief as I registered it as intact. No flames. No half-destroyed walls or screaming, crying people. The parking lot was quiet around me, the black-and-white squad cars orderly beetles in the dark.

  Everything was calm.

  It was only then that I realized I didn’t know quite what to do.

  I still vibrated with the sense of some imminent danger. But if I wasn’t pulling Checker out of a burning building … then what?

  Did I even know he was still here? It was the middle of the night. If he’d been released, he would have gone straight to Diego’s house, where Rio was, but if not … I was foggy on police procedure. If they were still holding him without charging him—and they’d have to do anything official during daylight hours, wouldn’t they?—he’d probably still be here at the station. Unless they moved people around for other reasons.

  I punched a hand against the dash. This was exactly the time I needed someone like Checker—to find out where Checker was.

  However, I did know someone who might not have Checker’s particular skills, but was pretty damned good at acquiring information. I just needed a way to reach him.

  I got out of Pilar’s car and took a walk toward the shopping center on the corner. Not many people were about at this time of night, but the grocery store was a twenty-four-hour one, with the odd customer hustling in and out with their head down. Ten minutes later, I had pickpocketed a cell phone within hailing distance of a police station while leaving a bomb in the front seat of the Yaris I had parked in front of it.

  I’d started hurrying back with my prize when something moved in my peripheral vision.

  Without thinking, without considering, my Colt whipped out of my belt and I pulled the trigger without even registering what was behind my sights. The white fire of the gunshots rent the night, engulfing every thought.

  Glass shattered and alarms pealed in echo. My brain finally caught up with my hands after the third shot and—what the fuck had I just done—

  The large front window of the grocery store had come crashing down. Screams echoed from inside.

  I managed to pry my grip looser on the gun and wrench my finger away from the trigger, and I ran, hunched into a stumble, until I hit the relative safety of a nearby alleyway. Sirens already wailed down the street. The grocery store wouldn’t have long response times, not with a police station practically next door.

  I cradled the Colt to my chest, my hands shaking … and panic chewing around the edges of my vision.

  The same panic that had incapacitated me at the wellness center.

  Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.

  The shadow I’d seen out of the corner of my eye … I was a good enough shot that if I’d been aiming at him, he’d be dead. But I’d only managed to kill a building’s display window.

  I’d targeted a reflection.

  The man from the wellness center had been behind me.

  I twisted suddenly, frantically, trying to see along all axes at once. But if the smallest gleam of the man’s face in dim glass had caused me to lose all control—what could I do? How the hell could I hope to fight someone like that if I saw him before I had a chance to fire?

  Fight. Run. Kill.

  You make me proud, Vala, said the memory of the man in my head.

  Oh, Jesus Christ. Who was this guy?

  And he was here—I was right, Checker was in danger—

  I pushed myself away from the alley wall. It felt like it took much more effort than Newton’s Third Law dictated. Then I shoved my gun back in my belt, under my jacket, which felt like it took even more effort. But I had to circle around to get eyes on the police station. If this man had come to attack, the police wouldn’t be able to do anything against him—but then, I wasn’t sure I could either …

  My feet managed a staggered wobble around the next block until I could circle back the way I had come. Fortunately I’d managed to hang on to the phone somehow. I disabled the GPS—it would still be trackable, but with more difficulty—and tried Simon’s number first.

  Still no answer.

  A horrible foreboding closed its jaws around me.

  I could see the police station by then. It wasn’t quiet anymore, uniforms shouting to one another as a pair took off toward the shopping center. I stayed enough in the shadows not to draw attention, anxiety clawing its way out of my skin, and dialed with fingers that didn’t want to obey me.

  Pick up, pick up, pick up—

  “Hello,” Rio answered blandly.

  I hadn’t realized how much I needed to hear his unruffled greeting. Everyone at Diego’s house was safe, at least. I tried to breathe through the residual fear the way Simon had told us.

  “It’s Cas,” I managed after a beat too long. “Is everything okay there?”

  “There is no sign of any new danger. What did you learn from your mission?”

  My mission to the mission. I struggled to cut through the static in my brain. “We found Arthur … Pilar is getting him to the hospital.”

  “I am aware. She called Mr. Rosales with an update.”

  Of course she had. Because Pilar was not me, and remembered to tell his family he had been found, and was alive.

  “Rio, I—”

  “Cas, it strikes me that allowing your friend Mr. Tresting’s rescue was not the aim of this exercise.”

  “I know. I just saw the—the man, one of Teplova’s—”

  “Where are you?” he asked immediately.

  “You need to stay with Arthur’s family,” I snapped back. “Don’t even think about leaving them. Rio, I’m at the police station. The one where Checker was—can you tell me if he’s still here? D.J. was a friend of his, if he sent…”

  I couldn’t finish the thought.

  “
A moment,” Rio said.

  The thirty seconds it took him to look up the information felt like an eternity. My hand that wasn’t holding the phone clenched and unclenched.

  “He is still being held in the same precinct,” Rio confirmed. “Cas, if this man is there to attack your friend—”

  “I’ll destroy him.”

  “Cas, it appears you are still feeling the effects of having glimpsed him. Your frame of mind may not be best suited to a rescue.”

  “Only because Simon won’t answer his goddamn phone.”

  “He may have a situation of his own. Cas, there was an incident reported at the building where you left Simon and Oscar. The police were dispatched. I have as yet not been able to reach Simon.”

  Oh. Oh, no. “What kind of incident?”

  “Reports vary thus far, but they believe it to have been an explosive device.”

  Of course it fucking was.

  Maybe this wasn’t just about Checker, then. Maybe D.J. had also wanted to rescue—fuck, Rio had just said—Oscar, right. Fuck, I had to remember him.

  But only Simon had been with Oscar. For that, the rest of us wouldn’t have needed to be spread thin and lured away.

  “I do not yet have intelligence on whether Simon or Oscar was a casualty of the explosion, or whether it even occurred in the apartment in which you left them,” Rio continued. “But if not, it seems an unlikely coincidence. The police are on scene now.”

  “I can’t leave here,” I said.

  But even if I camped out watching all night … whatever role the monstrous, altered man played, he hadn’t been D.J.’s go-to assassination method. Nightmares of ticking timers danced in my mind’s eye.

  I could watch every second from now on and never see a deadly blast coming. Not if it had been planted while I was conveniently out of the way.

  “Rio, how can I tell if something explosive has been left here at the station, before I drove in? The sensors don’t pick up everything.”

  “It is impossible to be certain, but I usually find a combination of technology, close observation, and prior knowledge can suffice to warn me of explosives.”

  I only had the first one. I could trade places with Rio—he might have a better chance against one of Teplova’s villains too—but that left the station unprotected for far too long while I drove to Diego’s house and then Rio drove back. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to leave Diego and the kids without a guardian.

  “I could break him out,” I said. “If it’s a choice between getting him in deep shit with the law and getting him blown to tiny bits—”

  “Might I suggest that it would be better for your friend’s situation if the police move him to an unexpected location instead?”

  That would at least give us a clean slate on the explosives danger. “But why would they…”

  I got it even as Rio spoke. “I am capable of calling in a credible bomb threat. It may take some little time, but it will be taken seriously.”

  My eyes strayed to Pilar’s Yaris, still parked in front of the station. “I may be able to speed that up,” I said. “Make it more credible. So to speak.”

  twenty

  THERE’S A certain finesse in setting a bomb you don’t actually want to go off and hurt anyone. While trying not to be seen. At a police station.

  Fortunately, it was the middle of the night, and I was very good at not being seen. Unfortunately, my hands still wanted to shake at odd moments from my encounter with the man who had panic for a face. And I couldn’t help twitching to look over my shoulders constantly, twisting around and up above me and behind me to scan the dark.

  Not to mention the station was a lot more awake than it had been before my little dustup with a building down the street. Dammit.

  After a few harried minutes ducking around patrols and casing the station, I found a large electrical junction box in the back of the building. Big enough for me to tear apart and pack the device in behind a rat’s nest of wires. The theoretical yield of the explosives wasn’t high—enough to have immolated a lone person, presumably to fake that Arthur had been in danger—but not much more. And since I didn’t only want the bomb squad to cordon off an area but to evacuate the whole station with all due haste, I needed to make it seem like it could be bigger, or had a good likelihood of causing a fire.

  My working efficiency ratio had dropped precipitously from my usual, with every useful output trawling through molasses. I tried to loosen the junction box wires carefully and make sure not to disrupt the station’s power flow anywhere, but my fingers were still twitchy enough that I was fairly sure I didn’t even succeed. Hopefully I hadn’t done much more than make the lights flicker. I kept an eye on the back door of the station just in case, while I twisted everything together and made sure the triggering mechanism would be hard to tease out.

  The actual device I kept as hidden as possible. The K-9 dogs would be able to smell it once Rio tipped the station off, and I wanted the disarming process to take as long as humanly possible.

  I finished and pressed my palms against my jacket. They were sweating. Jesus. I hadn’t made any mistakes, had I? If this bomb actually went off and killed a cop …

  I followed the logic train of what I had done one more time. No. I was sure. I wasn’t going to hurt anybody.

  With this one device for verification, Rio could probably imply there were a lot more threats on the premises. I closed the junction box, called Rio to give him the details, and then dropped back into Pilar’s Yaris to pull away while he did the threatening part. I kept eyes on all my mirrors, but glimpsed no whispers of a frightening shadow.

  I was starting to doubt having seen him again in the first place. But no, the way my whole body was still shuddering, not to mention every thought jumping like it was on a hot griddle—that was proof enough.

  I looped in the opposite direction from the grocery store I’d shot up and parked in a bank lot a block down, where I still had a good view of the station. If I’d been in a better state of mind, it would have been funny how fast and brilliantly everything lit up a few minutes later. As if we had whacked a hornet’s nest that had been quietly minding its own business, the activity multiplied until the whole street in front buzzed with flashing lights and people in uniform. In short order, prisoners began filing out between watchful officers.

  Yes. It was working.

  Checker was easy to spot in his chair—I hadn’t thought of it till I saw him, but I was relieved they’d let him move under his own power, though his progress was stilted enough that I could tell he was probably cuffed to the frame. He sat between two uniforms in the parking lot for a long damn time, many minutes after all the other prisoners had been carted away, until I wanted to scream, because my bomb wasn’t going to go off but if D.J. had left anything, it would take everyone out sooner before later …

  Finally a lift van pulled up and swallowed Checker and his escorts. Cursing the ADA under my breath while almost blacking out with relief, I followed them.

  * * *

  MY FIRM intention was to stay glued to the new precinct until Checker was released. It couldn’t be too long, could it? Now that Arthur was safe, as soon as we got some daylight, the wheels of justice could grind right on in our favor.

  This station was bigger, and I suspected it was handling the bomb threat investigation at its neighbor as well as taking in its prisoners, because the place was hopping. Uniforms teemed in and out long after the evacuation would’ve been settled, bright floodlights turning the surrounding plaza to near daylight. This place was also on a much more open corner, giving me almost no cover to lurk in from the Yaris. I had to keep swapping locations to avoid the officers crawling all over the plaza spotting me as a possible threat.

  On the plus side, I didn’t think there was any way D.J. would brave all that to set a new bomb. We’d saved Checker from one danger, at least.

  But every time I had to duck around and change watch positions, the fear spiked in me again. I didn�
��t catch any indication of the man who had caused it, but it didn’t seem to be dribbling off with the hours either. By the fifth time I moved the car, my paranoia made the world seesaw enough that I scraped Pilar’s right side mirror off on an alley wall—with a good helping of paint—before I got control of myself.

  I breathed through gritted teeth and considered calling Rio or Pilar again, just to have an anchor to reality in my ear.

  I’d swapped out phones by stealing another one and had been keeping up with them most of the night. Arthur had made it to the hospital and was in surgery—my throat closed when Pilar said those words, even though, of course he was in surgery; how could he not be? She hadn’t had any other news.

  Meanwhile, according to Rio, Elisa had arrived back in town to help Checker and had been chewing the midnight phone lines to get him released as soon as Pilar had called them with the news we’d found Arthur. Once our bomb threat went through, she’d climbed the walls at Diego’s place until it was plausible she might have found out about her client-slash-foster-brother being moved without hearing it from the people who’d set the bomb, and then she’d whisked off saying something about protecting his disability rights in transport situations.

  The person I really needed to talk to was Simon. But nobody had heard from him, and his phone was still ringing out to voicemail. Rio related to me that the police report from the building I’d left him in had noted no known casualties, and the cause was still categorized as unknown, but the crime scene was definitely listed as what had been my apartment.

  “Cas, there could be important information to be gleaned from the scene,” Rio said to me over the phone, making me regret calling again. “I feel I should also remind you that you depend on Simon for your continued mental well-being.”

  I hated being reminded of that.

  “The likelihood of someone successfully attacking your friend through such heightened police security is much lower,” Rio continued. “The best calculation is to proceed with this investigation. There is little more you can do by waiting.”