Craving (31 page)

I opened another door. It was a bathroom, a very nice, large bathroom that seemed cut from one giant slab of dark green rock. It was bigger than my bedroom back home and while I stood in the dry rain-shower, I momentarily pondered the adage that money couldn’t buy happiness. It seemed to me that four hundred thousand dollars could buy me
some
happiness, in the form of a giant Jacuzzi tub.

“Wow, Matthew, you almost sounded . . . I dunno, inspired. Getting back your detective lust? Gonna start ending your sentences with ‘see?’”

“Ha, that was a gangster.”

“Shut up. So, it’s a big conspiracy, then? Jinx said there were more groups of Arhat than just the Sangha.” I trotted down the corridor, opening doors at random, not entirely sure what I was looking for, feeling like a hero in a story trying to locate that one magical item that would solve all my problems.

“It’s amazing what a badge can get you, but honestly, Jinx probably knows more than I do. He’s the hacker, after all.” The car door opened and with a grunt, Unger got out. “Hang on.” I heard the phone jostle and Unger turned off the speakerphone. I heard the shuffling of papers, as he juggled everything and kicked the door shut. At the slam, a car alarm blared right beside the mic.

Annoyed, I tugged the phone away from my ear. “Jesus, Unger, are you trying to make my headache worse?”

“Sorry.” I heard his trunk open as the alarm continued to drone. “I didn’t know about your parents until today either, before you bitch me out for that too. I called the Fresno County PD and had them fax me the reports, and by all accounts, there wasn’t anything wrong with their car. It
was
an accident.”

“Right, the same kind of accident that made me walk right into that fucking coffee shop! What about the drunk driver? Was he even drunk?” I growled, throwing open another door. It was dark beyond. I smoothed my hand over the wall, searching for a switch.

“According to the file, his blood alcohol level was about twice the legal limit.”

“Sure it was. Begs the question how he navigated the freeway onramp, huh?”

“With your kind of abilities, there’s no way to know how much was planning and how much was chance, but honestly, I’d be tempted to believe the kid. I’ve learned recently to never take my own knowledge too seriously.”

In the background, the alarm continued to grate on my last nerve.

“Where
are
you?” I demanded, finally touching the switch.

“Parking garage at the station. Marks always sets this damn alarm so low. Fucking kids think that having money means a new car every five fucking years.”

Bright light temporarily blinded me and I blinked. In the fluorescence, I looked around and found an almost identical copy of AMRTA’s records room, in miniature, but thousands of pictures stuck to its white walls. Names were scrawled across thick, black lines drawn to connect the portraits, and each had a list of details beneath it. On the underlit drafting tables sat all kinds of documentation, an entire storehouse of knowledge organized into neat piles.

Something pulled me inside. My ear no longer heard the screaming car alarm or Unger’s persistently logical voice. Instead, my thoughts were warped and twisted by a feeling. I knew where I was meant to go, because going anywhere else would not be right. I walked past the tables stacked with life stories, ignored all the evidence of their world,
my
world. I went straight for the photo and its place in the grid work.

A stalwart me in tomboy fashion, seated on the fulcrum of a seesaw, my arm across her petite shoulders, her face toward me in a smile of admiration, framed by those pretty blond swirls that had darkened somewhat with maturity. She wore a pink gingham summer dress and matching sandals. It had been hot that day in the park, and after that, we’d played on the Slip’N’Slide until the sun went down.

I reached out and ran my finger around her tiny face. “Hey there, munchkin.”

I could still hear her giggle, feel that pride from knowing she looked to me for instruction. Now I was there, learning from her.

My, how the tables have turned.

“Huh?” he said, and with the word, the car alarm dropped back into my mind and flipped that metaphorical table upside down, jogging a memory of something that had never really happened. My heart jerked, trying to pull itself from me and rush to his aid.

“Unger, get back in your car.”

“What?” he grumbled. “Why, you want me to pick you up?”

“No!” I shouted, the picture and room forgotten. “Just get in and lock the doors!”

His voice changed immediately. “Oh hell.”

I heard his feet scuffle, the key ring jingle, and then I heard the crashing sound. Hand to the wall, I shouted his name over and over, but no one answered.

This is my fault.

And then I opened my eyes. Jinx was sitting in front of me in the captain’s chair, looking at me as if I had just done something
very
strange. Frantically, I fished in my pocket for my phone and pushed at the shiny screen, for some reason unable to focus my eyes on the amazingly difficult operations of the
convenient
device. Braced and tapping my foot impatiently, I heard myself demanding that the phone be answered, and when Sam finally greeted me, I had never been so happy to hear another voice in all my life.

“Lilith?”

“Sam, something’s going to happen to Unger! It’s them!”

He was silent.

“Please do something!”

“Where?”

“Garage at the police station!”

“I’m on my way.”

He hung up without saying good-bye, and for that I was eternally grateful.

The boy tilted his head in awe and pulled out his headphones. “You just went . . . still.”

I hid my face in my hands and knew what would happen next. The fun of having a unique ability had worn off and Arthur’s admonishment sank into place.

“Are you okay?”

“No,” I mumbled. His fingertips brushed my shoulder and I lost my resolve. Tears fell into my hands and for a few minutes I allowed myself to crumble under the stress I had created by seeking the truth.

“What did you see?” he asked me quietly.

With a sniff and a tremor, I sat up and dried my face on the back of my sleeve. “The room upstairs, with all the photos, what is it?”

He sat back and heaved a sigh. “It’s . . . all the information we’ve dug up.” His fingers got tangled in his spikes for a moment as he debated how to say it. “We’ve been collecting it for the last year or so, piecing it all together.”

“To take to the cops?”

“Oh yeah, cuz they’d believe it.”

“Then why?”

He pursed his lips and stared at my wrist. “Call it staying organized.”

I knew he wasn’t telling me everything, but what could I do to make him? Not a damn thing.

“Where did you get our picture?”

Jinx turned back to the computers, plugged something in, and began moving files around. He was avoiding looking at me, busying himself. “I don’t know. Art had it.”

“He knew, didn’t he? He knew what Moksha was planning to do before my sister came here, didn’t he?”

He froze and swallowed hard. “I don’t know, Lily. I swear.”

I looked up at him skeptically and was about to say something rude, which I was sure he already knew, when the phone rang. The caller ID said it was Sam’s phone and I answered it instantly, putting it on loudspeaker.

“Yes?”

“He’s not here,” Sam rasped. “His car is gone, but his phone and his briefcase are on the ground.”

“But it’s the police garage!” I shouted. “How can they let people just wander in and kidnap detectives?”

Sam chuckled darkly, sounding like a rock polisher over the speaker. “I guess they thought it was safe.”

“Isn’t there any security?”

“Cameras.”

Jinx plopped into the captain chair and began typing furiously. Windows opened and closed, but the words on the screen were gibberish to me.

“Hang on.” I hit mute. “What?”

“If they’re up to date at all, then they’ll have digital cameras uploading video footage to a server. If I can access it, then we might see something.”

While he did battle with the police department’s electronic databases, I went back to Sam.

“Does Arthur know?”

“Yes.”

“About me,” I pushed, “being gone?”

Sam cleared his perpetually congested throat. “He always knows.”

“How?”

“I guess everything means something to him,” he offered. “He’s always putting pieces together.”

The response chilled me.

“I’ll meet you at the shop,” I said and hung up.

“No luck.” Jinx sighed in defeat. “You’d think they’d update as fast as the criminals, but I guess not. It’s all old school.” He stood up and turned to me. “You want me to take you back?”

I nodded dispassionately. It was time to face the music, time to ask Arthur outright to answer all my questions, time to be “of myself.”

We rode back, my mind in a considerably different place than it had been on the previous trip. When it had just been my fate to consider, I was fine with giving Moksha and his cronies the finger, but now that Unger was an unwitting victim, I wasn’t sure I had any choice.

Those crafty bastards.
They had waited until the moment I found out about my parents, until I knew the full scope of their malice, before they acted. That told me several things: they were vicious and uncompromising
and
they had someone working for them who had the similar abilities to mine. Knowing that, should I just walk into AMRTA with my hands in the air? Was there any other option?

Jinx parked in the lot and ran inside ahead of me; I was in no hurry to confront Arthur and my rental car was a tantalizing sortie. I could run, right then, turn my back and walk away, but it did not escape me that Unger had been the one in my latest vision asking if that was such a good idea. I stared at the immaculate blue paint and chrome of my car and wondered what they were doing to Matthew, if there was torture involved, if they had another Ursula lying around handy when they had to interrogate someone. Would they kill him?

I turned to the doorway and found Arthur standing there, his handsome face unusually worried. He said nothing, just took the full weight of my angry askance.

“You should have told me everything,” I whispered unevenly.

He bowed his head.  “I was being careful for very good reasons, Lilith.”

“What good reason would that be; me liking you enough to sit in the same room as you and eat your spoon-fed bullshit?”

His eyes fell. “No.”

“How long before Eva did a nosedive onto a street corner did you know she would be one of Moksha’s experiments?” I spat.

He looked at me, not in surprise, but in sorrow. His voice was quiet, when usually, he said everything in a tone that denied all skepticism. “I tried to save her.”

“Why should you be the only one?” I shouted. “Why couldn’t you find me and tell me? Why did it have to get this far?”

He was silent, looking at the ground between us as if he wanted to walk toward me, but knew that at that moment, I would just push him away. He was right. At that moment, I was keenly aware that whatever attraction made me seek him out in search of comfort, was probably just a product of his craving to be well-liked or something equally selfish.

“I’m not their cure,” I said shakily, “or yours.”

He took my accusation without a word.

“They took Matthew because they knew him. They saw him with me twice, at the AMRTA building, at the club. They’ll think we work together. If I don’t show up, they’ll kill him.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

Arthur lifted his folded hands as if to begin an argument.

“Don’t,” I said with a wave. “I’m going. I’ve already decided.”

He looked at me, but did not seem upset or worried for my safety. Instead the corners of his mouth were turned upward subtly and his skin was smoothed in complete resignation.

“Take this with you,” he replied and with a toss, had lobbed a tiny object on a lanyard to me. “It contains all of Eva’s work, translated and deciphered. I believe you will need it.”

It was a flash drive the size of a piece of chalk, coated in a rubbery protective layer. It had to be something Jinx had contributed. I put the lanyard around my neck and took a deep breath.

“You’re not going to stop me.”

“No.” He shook his head. “You are very stubborn, and the decision was yours to make.”

“Where . . .” The keys were jingling as my fingers shook. “Where will they take me?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Will they…” I swallowed. “Kill me?”

He shrugged, almost casually.

I wanted to be hurt or outraged, but I couldn’t. I knew what he was telling me. He wanted me to walk across the river, know what I was doing and accept the consequences. He wanted me to see my own fate and desire to change it. He wanted me to suffer until I could face death and not be afraid.

Accept the
dharma.

I blinked. Was it another lesson taught without teaching, or was it part of the plan all along? I couldn’t say anymore. He had never asked me to
believe
in him, only to have faith. Faith was the belief in absence of fact, and every fact had pointed me away from him, though I still wanted to stay by his side. It was that desire that hurt the most.

I took another deep, steadying breath and walked to my car.

“Lilith,” he called after me. When I turned back, he was smiling. “Do you remember the invisible road to nowhere?”

I think I nodded because my voice wouldn’t function.

“It doesn’t really exist,” he said, then turned his back and walked into the building.

I stared after him, hearing her voice again from that phone call so long ago.
“It doesn’t exist, Lily, I know.”

I looked at the USB drive resting in my hand and wondered what I was going to do. There I was again, walking in without a plan, uncertain what to expect, but as bad as that seemed, it had worked once. In a world where the future seemed predetermined and monsters possessed the uncanny ability to know my fears, what point was there in having a plan anyway?