Destiny: The Girl in the Box #9 (7 page)

Scott’s face was blank, ashen. “You could … try letting them out?”

I wanted to snap at him, but I couldn’t. “I tried. Sort of. I don’t know. It’s not looking good.”

He took a deep breath. “Well … okay.”

“Okay?” I looked at him in disbelief. “I don’t think any of this is okay, but …”

“I mean it’s not good, obviously,” Scott said, holding up his hands in a gesture of utter surrender that told me he didn’t want to argue with me. “But, uh … you know, we have a little more time.”

“We have
some
time,” I said. “But I don’t know how much.”

“Seems like we’re pretty much at a dead end with this Charlie investigation,” he said. “What do you want to do?”

I sagged back onto the bed, felt my rump hit it and sink into the soft mattress. “I don’t know. I don’t know what else to do.” I fell back and let myself lie there, staring up at the ceiling. “But I don’t want to go home yet.” That much I was certain of. It was like home was an opposite-pole magnet to me, the very thought of getting on a plane to go back repelling me.

Scott was quiet for a moment, and then I heard him dial his cell phone, the odd, atonal notes causing me to crane my neck to look over at him. He held the phone up to his ear, and I watched him turn toward the window. The sun shone through, the sky a light azure. I wondered how long I’d slept; it’d felt like forever.

“Ariadne?” Scott’s voice jarred me out of a trance. “I need the file on that wildfire meta that killed someone out here in Vegas a few weeks ago.” He paused, and I could hear a faint voice talking on the other end of the line. “We’re waiting for something from the local PD, figured we’d poke around while we’re killing time.” He paused and looked back at me. “It’s going good. We’ll be back soon—just figured we’d …” He smiled at me, “… kill two birds with one stone.”

I stepped out of the car into the Vegas summer heat and immediately started to sweat. The hot air wrapped me up like a blanket, curling around my body and making me want to hang my tongue out like a dog. And then spray it with water. From a fire hose. On full blast. I don’t know, I think the heat was messing with my mind.

It felt like the soles of my shoes were melting off as I walked over the black asphalt pavement toward the pawnshop. Every step was a dragging misery, the smell of nearby Tropicana Avenue’s smoggy traffic making me want to wave a hand in front of my face to clear my nose. The greasy breakfast buffet we’d hit on the way to the pawnshop where the murder had occurred was lodged in the back of my throat. Should have spent the extra money and eaten at the hotel.

Scott rushed ahead to open the door for me. He already had a bead of sweat running down his temple. I envied him in that regard, though I doubt it made him feel any cooler.

The rush of the air conditioning in the pawnshop was inadequate yet still blissful after the walk from the car. Cool air ran over my body, lifting the blanket of heat that had wrapped itself around me. I adjusted my suit jacket in something that probably looked like the Picard maneuver as I surveyed the green-carpeted, wood-paneled room that held more broken dreams than a Taylor Swift song.

Guitars were everywhere up front. Wooden, acoustic, whatever. Enough musical instruments to equip a band large enough to play behind Sinatra himself were lining the shelves in front of me. I studied them with a kind of distaste. People sold them for various reasons, I’d guess, but I suspected the most frequent one involved lack of money and giving up a dream. Don’t think you’re going to be a professional guitar player anytime soon? Might as well turn that old Fender into cash, right? I wondered disdainfully how much of it ended up in a casino slot machine.

“You’re, uh … kind of scowling,” Scott whispered to me.

“So?” I softened my tone a little.

“It’s not the best image to project when we’re here to get info,” Scott said. “You’re gonna scare people.”

“I’m a nineteen year-old girl—woman—glaring at the musical instruments in a pawnshop with a sour look on her face,” I said. “Anyone watching is probably just going to think I dated a musician who was an asshole.”

“Come on,” Scott said, and now he was scowling.

We approached the glass counter that circled the room. A twenty-something guy was standing behind it, medium height, medium build. I waited for him to speak and wondered if I’d find him medium annoying. At this point, I’d take it, honestly. Better than highly annoying.

“Can I help you?” His voice came out way too cheery, way too smarmy, and way too high for his frame. I buried my disappointment in a low sigh that caused Scott to send me a searing glare.

“Scott Byerly, FBI,” he said and flipped his badge open.

“Whoa,” Medium-to-Annoying-Guy said. His name tag helpfully read Samuel, but he was destined to always be Medium-to-Annoying-Guy to me. Wait. Who goes by Samuel instead of Sam? I dropped the Medium from his title. “What … uh … can I help you with?”

“The robbery,” I said, cutting to the chase before Annoying Samuel got too far on my already frayed nerves. “Were you here that day?”

“Yeah,” Samuel said with a quick nod. He was heavily freckled and his hair was stubble only. “It was … it was pretty frightening.”

“Can you tell us what happened?” Scott asked.

“Um, well, it went pretty fast,” Samuel said, licking his lips. I wondered how nervous he was, on a scale of one to ten. I would have conservatively estimated he was a twenty-eight.

“What do you remember?” I asked. I’d like to say I did it soothingly, but he flinched as I spoke, so I probably sailed wide of the mark on that one.

“Umm, not much.”

“Do you remember the perp’s face?” Scott leaned on the counter, and by the way he asked, I could tell he was playing good cop. His voice was gentle, friendly, like he was your buddy about to take you out for a beer after work.

“Not really,” Samuel said, and he shifted his eyes nervously toward me. He wasn’t lying, I didn’t think. Poor guy was probably traumatized. I sighed loudly, and he looked like he wanted to take a step back from the counter.

I held out my hand for him to shake. “Thanks for your cooperation.”

Scott gave me a puzzled, sidelong look, probably wondering why I was ready to give up the interrogation so soon. I didn’t dignify his look by returning it, just kept staring straight ahead at Samuel and tried to make myself smile without looking like I was going to lean over the counter and drink his blood. It wasn’t easy.

“Uh, okay.” Samuel took my hand, giving it a gentle shake. “Anything I can do to help.” He started to pull away, but I held firm. “Umm.”

“Just a second.” I leaned forward, keeping his hand trapped in mine. If Charlie had been here, she would have cooed at him, done something seductive to keep his attention off the fact that I had his hand in an iron grip.

I’m not Charlie.

“I … uh …” Samuel looked like he wanted to sputter and started to tug his hand away from me again. It had been about seven seconds, and things were far beyond awkward. “I … I need my hand back.”

“I said wait.” My voice was steel, and the command caused Samuel to freeze. His eyes went wide, his freckled face fell, and for a moment I thought he’d die of sheer terror right then.

A second later, the pain started at a low burn, and I could tell by the look on his face that it took everything he had not to start screaming.

It was a funny feeling, touching someone’s soul the way I could. It always started with the burning; my flesh pressed against theirs in a nearly intimate way. I stared into Annoying Samuel’s eyes, and saw green irises peeking back at me between eyelids tightened in fear.

I didn’t care if he screamed, not now. I could feel his mind, there for the taking, and I leapt right in. I’d rifled through a few heads in my time, using my soul-draining powers to go through memories the way a clerk could pull files out of a filing cabinet.

This one was easy to find. Everyone’s head was a little different, at least the ones I’d been in. Samuel’s was organized to the point of being annoying, like he had preplanned so he could live up to my expectations of him.

I shouldn’t complain; it actually made my job easier. As I slid into his memory, the world around me faded. Whenever I stole a memory, I could view it as though it were taking place around me, while my surroundings slowed and disappeared. The pawnshop around me became a dull wash of blue tones, like the world had been filtered through a navy crystal.

The door opened behind me as I heard a ding-dong electronic tone that I hadn’t even noticed as I had entered the pawnshop. I stood in front of the counter and turned to see Samuel behind me, working on a clipboard on top of the glass countertop. The place was nearly empty.

Samuel looked up as the patron entered. The face was blurred, and I had to concentrate on it. I pushed through the blurring like brushing aside snow on a windshield. It took me a minute but it faded and I could see a face. I had looked through a lot of memories, but I couldn’t recall ever seeing anything like the blurring effect before.

“Can I help you?” Samuel asked. He was leaning on the counter with both elbows, and his tone was polite but harried. Clearly in the middle of something important. Or something self-important, more likely. Like keeping a flawless inventory.

I looked at the guy entering. Once I got past the blur, I could tell—barely—through the blue tinge of the world that he was darker of skin, Latino maybe. His face looked slightly pinched, like he was walking with a pebble in his shoe. Or a boulder.

“Empty the cash register,” the guy said as he walked over to the counter. He wasn’t shuffling exactly, but he was at a hurried pace that didn’t quite match with his facial expression. Was he limping? The memory was so fuzzy. Bizarre.

“Excuse me?” Samuel’s tone was still polite, like he hadn’t heard what the guy said.

The guy took two more quick strides to the counter and had Samuel by the throat before the clerk could even flinch away. “I’m sorry,” the guy said, and he was truly apologetic. “I need the money in your cash register. Now.” There was an urgency there, driven by some deep emotion. I suspected fear.

The door dinged behind him, and the new guy turned. Another stranger was standing in the doorway, this one a little broader of shoulder. Big guy, probably over six feet tall. He wore dark sunglasses and a trench coat, which I thought was beyond weird for Vegas in the dead of summer. There was another shadowed figure just a pace behind him, a woman by the looks of her. She was shorter, stocky, and that was all I could see of her. She was hidden in a cloud of blur so deep that even when I focused on her, she still looked like she was standing behind smoky glass.

“Get out of here,” the robber told them. Now his fear was obvious, even to Samuel, who he still held by the neck. I looked around the shop and marveled at how a normally crisp memory was completely degraded to the point where I was having trouble making out anything. I stared at Samuel, wondering if he perhaps had glasses that he’d forgotten to wear. A quick check of his outside mind showed that no, in fact, his other memories were clear as HD video. No blue, no blur.

Trenchcoat did not answer. I stared at him and saw the blurring fade enough to make out his face. It was a broad face, a flat one, like he’d been hit in the nose with a frying pan every day of his life. He took another step into the shop and paused. He wore a smile, and from the look of it I got more than a hint of malevolence. He had some serious ill intentions for the robber, and things started to click into place for me.

“Get out!” The robber shouted, voice cracking with the strain.

“Antonio Morales,” Trenchcoat said, his dark eyes and face made even more sinister by that damned blurring effect, “this is the end.” I wanted to reach out and slap the bastard for saying anything as ominous and cheesy as he had, but I wasn’t exactly corporeal in this memory.

Morales was shaking, his hand still wrapped around Samuel’s neck. He carried the look of a doomed man on his face, fighting to keep the horror submerged and failing. I could empathize.

“Just leave me alone,” Morales said, nearly pleading. “Just go.”

Trenchcoat took another step in, then another. I could tell by the look on his face that he was savoring it. This bastard loved the fear he was causing. He lived for this. It was all right there on his face—he was going to hurt Antonio, was going to kill him. And he’d enjoy every minute of it.

I could see the cascade of emotions on Antonio Morales’s face, and then they just stopped. His mouth turned to a thin line, his grip on Samuel’s neck slackened and he let the clerk go. Samuel fell back as Morales’s hand went to his waist, and I barely saw him pull the gun before it was out and firing.

Antonio Morales filled the air with bullets. I saw one of them catch Trenchcoat perfectly in the forehead, and a puff of red spit out the back of his skull and painted the glass windows. Trenchcoat’s look was utter surprise, then he pitched forward and landed with all the grace of a felled tree. And most of the noise, too.

Samuel let out a scream that tore through the shop. Antonio kept his piece pointed at the door, and I could see that the woman, the one who had been so heavily blurred, was gone. Smart move. Even a meta could be killed by a gun, as Trenchcoat had just proven.

And he was dead. I took a moment to drop to the ground to check. His lips were hanging open, saliva streaming out. I was surprised there was no blood, like you see in movies. I mean, there was some pooling on the ground beneath him, but none dribbling out of his mouth. He was still, and his breath had already left him. He didn’t look familiar at all, but that didn’t matter.

I knew who he was. Or at least, who he was with, and that was close enough.

Antonio was shaking, standing in the same spot where he’d started the robbery. I thought for a minute he was going to collapse on the countertop and lose it right there, but he pulled himself together and shoved the gun into the front of his waistband, the hammer still cocked. I cringed when I noticed he didn’t safety it first. Bad idea, Antonio. All it’d take was the slightest pressure on the trigger next time he pulled it and suddenly Antonio would become Antonia.