Relentless (2 page)

Collin admired this man a minute more, unable to remove his eyes from the reflection, barely even remembering to breathe. He never noticed the slender, short brunette standing behind his shoulder, also taking in his reflection, until she whistled in appreciation.

‘‘Well,
some
body got the deluxe package.’’

He turned at last to face the intruder. She was in her mid-to-late twenties. Wearing a no-muss T-shirt and jeans. She went without makeup, a rarity for L.A., and there was no jewelry either.

And she wore no shoes.

For a second he wondered if she might be homeless. Yet her clothes were too clean. She was pretty and casual, her long brown locks falling off her shoulders in untamed curls, but her expression was a flashing neon billboard that declared her to be sharp and confident. She nodded at the glass window, and he turned once more to peer at his image.

Despite—or perhaps because of—the jumble of thoughts pouring through his mind, a guttural ‘‘Huh?’’ was all he could get out.

My voice is different.

Deeper.

Why is this girl barefoot?

‘‘Oh, I know,’’ she went on. ‘‘You have no idea what’s going on. Blah-blah-raving-hysteria-blah. I’m just saying . . . You took a shortcut to the top of the food chain, handsome.’’

‘‘What?’’

She placed her hands on his neck, straightening the collar of his brown leather jacket and then examining his reflection once more. ‘‘This is the part where I’m probably supposed to say something about . . . ‘stepping through the looking glass.’ Isn’t it? I don’t know, maybe that’s wrong—I never dug sci-fi. But I
do
love that jacket,’’ she said, nodding at his coat.

‘‘This . . . isn’t science fiction,’’ he choked, surprised to find he’d been holding his breath since she started talking.

‘‘You’re not wrong,’’ she replied with a cocked eyebrow and a smirk. ‘‘Things are about to get
real
complicated and I have an elsewhere to be, so let me cut to the heavy exposition. Put your listening cap on, sport, ’cause I’m about to give you a cheat sheet.

‘‘You’ve just been dropkicked into the middle of something
so big
you’d never buy it if I tried to explain it now. So here’s the big reveal. Are you listening? ’Cause this is the one thing you absolutely
gotta
know: you’re being watched, right now, this very minute. Several
groups
of people are keeping tabs on your every snap, crackle, and pop.
Everything you do
from this moment on will blip their radars. So be careful. Though you don’t have to fear them
all
.’’

‘‘Watching me? How? Why?’’ he stammered, trying and failing to keep up with the barefoot girl’s barrage of information. His heart thudded madly in his chest, his breaths coming in sudden heaves.

She ignored him and continued. ‘‘One group is out to help you. They’re not the worry. The other group’ll kill you the first chance they get. Don’t give ’em one.’’

‘‘
Kill
me?’’ he asked, his eyes darting about aimlessly, searching for people watching him . . .

All he saw were bored pedestrians going about their business.

His stomach lurched, and he swallowed bile.

The girl nodded. She’d been toying with him at first, but suddenly she turned somber. ‘‘Don’t bother looking. This particular less-than-philanthropic group has hired one of the best to do their dirty work, and he knows how to stay hidden. His name is Konrad. I’m sure he’s watching you with his own two peepers as we speak.’’

‘‘But . . . but . . . shouldn’t I just go to—’’

‘‘The cops?’’ she finished for him, eyebrows raised. ‘‘
That
conversation would go well. ‘Say, Officer, did you ever see
Invasion of the Body
Snatchers
?’ ’’

He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

She knows
.

‘‘But what
is
all this? What’s going on?’’ he nearly yelled after collecting himself. ‘‘Why is this happening to me? I’m no one!
Why me?
’’

She was silent for a moment, studying him. Finally she spoke, looking deep into his eyes. ‘‘It has to be you.’’

‘‘But
why
?’’

‘‘Because you’re a player now.’’

‘‘A player?’’ he faltered. ‘‘We’re playing? Playing what?’’

She was shorter than Collin, yet somehow she managed to look down on him like a lost toddler in a department store. ‘‘Don’t follow Collin—the old you.’’

Wait, his name wasn’t Collin anymore? He was Collin Boyd. He knew that as certain as he knew he was standing here.

Which, given how nuts he seemed to have gone, wasn’t all that reassuring.

But no, of course Collin wouldn’t be his name anymore.

New body, new name
.

His thoughts were coming too fast now, his eyes still looking into surrounding windows, buildings, cars, pedestrians walking by . . .

‘‘
Listen
to me,’’ she said, grabbing him by the shoulders and forcing him to focus. ‘‘
Don’t go near
who you used to be. Get out of town and
just keep going
. Don’t slow down. Don’t stop. Your life is in danger if you do. Every minute you stay in one place brings Konrad that much closer to you. So you should
go
. Right now.’’

Still he’d didn’t move. Just stood there, eyes wide with fear and brow knitted in deep confusion. A small part of him bristled at being given orders by a stranger. None of this made sense and leaving was out of the question until it did.

The barefoot girl let out a deep breath with just a hint of annoyance. When she opened her mouth, she spoke slower, as if enunciating to someone hard of hearing. ‘‘I know this is confusing; it will get easier for you. It
will
. But you don’t have time to be stubborn right now. And you’re
so
not ready to know yet, anyway. Just
go
.
Now!
’’

She stood there watching him, unblinking, unmoving, waiting for him to move. He thought he detected a trace of concern, or perhaps urgency, on her face. Mostly she appeared put out by his refusal to start running.

He glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the office where he worked, and in the distance the old him, the other man—Collin Boyd— was nowhere, probably already inside. The new him had no idea whether or not to trust this strange woman, but there was an urgency in her voice that was hard to ignore. Still, his frustration was palpable as he glanced back at her.

‘‘I’m not ready to know?’’ he asked. ‘‘Know
what
?’’

‘‘What’s to come,’’ she said without hesitation.

He bored his eyes into hers, but she never blinked. He found it extremely annoying.

She frowned. ‘‘Well, I gotta jet. Keep standing here if you want, but don’t come crying to me when you’re dead.’’

With that, she turned and flitted off into the busy throng. The rain had stopped just in time for her exit, which he also found annoying.

He started to call after her, but she was long gone. He didn’t know what to say anyway.

He didn’t even know her name.

With something she said still tugging at his mind, he reached inside his coat pocket in a mechanical, mindless way and pulled out a fine leather wallet he’d never seen before. Opened it.

Inside was a wad of crisp, clean hundred-dollar bills.

There was also a driver’s license bearing the name GRANT M. BORROWS. It was the first time he’d seen or heard the name. Whoever this Grant Borrows was, apparently that’s who he was now.

The gravity of the situation struck him all at once, and the world began spinning wildly beneath his feet. It was spiraling out of control, and his stomach churned once more.

He caught the eye of a woman who passed him by, entering the clothing store behind him, and as their eyes met, she . . .
smiled
at him.

That was new.

Another brushed his shoulder exiting the store and actually apologized with a sheepish, overly friendly ‘‘I’m so sorry!’’

Grant began to hyperventilate. No one
ever
looked him in the eye. He’d spent most of his life cultivating the ability
not
to be noticed. Now it felt like everyone was looking him up and down.

Admiring
what they saw.

An old Volkswagen van passed by the sidewalk where he stood, and it backfired loudly like a gunshot, snapping him back to the moment. Somewhere out there—where he would never see—a man named Kon-rad was watching him. Possibly moving closer. Meaning to kill him.

Perhaps he had a gun with Grant in its sights right now.

Grant Borrows ran.

2

Dr. Daniel Cossick had just arrived at his second-floor lab and placed his key into the lock when the door burst open from the inside and a breathless, red-faced brunette stood before him. He sighed. His assistant Lisa always arrived early, and she had a tendency to get excited over little things, so this was nothing new.

‘‘Doctor Cossick! I just registered a spike of
three-point-seven
,’’ she said, eyes wide with excitement.

Every other thought in Daniel’s mind vanished into black. He forgot his keys, forgot his briefcase, forgot everything but the three words he’d just heard.
Three-point-seven
.

Three-point-seven!

He dropped everything and ran after her down the dilapidated hall. Lisa flew into the ‘‘lab’’—a makeshift facility they’d built themselves in an abandoned building in the Warehouse District—with Daniel following and made for the middle of a modest white room overflowing with odd machinery. The atmosphere was alive with mechanical whirrs and beeps, pungent odors, and the occasional fizz of air or fire. Few visitors could stomach being in the room because the odors were so strong and the sounds so constant, but Daniel and Lisa had grown accustomed to it. They both practically lived here, conducting their search.

Always searching.

In the center of the room was the lab’s largest piece of equipment, a massive mechanism that looked like half a giant metal sphere had been mounted on top of a collection of circuitry, wires, and semiconductors. It hummed quietly, almost vibrating, but nothing moved because stillness was crucial. It was approximately four feet in diameter and full of a thick, silver liquid that rose almost to the rim.

‘‘My own potion of mercury mixed with a few other potent elements,’’ Daniel would explain to potential investors, though visitors to the lab were increasingly rare. The liquid itself was inconsequential; it was there to provide mass at the correct density that would measure what they were looking for. The mercury mixture usually remained at a flat calm. Daniel had built special dampeners into the undercarriage to prevent shaking of any kind. Even an earthquake could not jar it, unless the whole building was to topple.

But it would shake if there was a
shimmer
.

And a shimmer was what they were searching for.

If Lisa was correct, a three-point-seven would be the largest event Daniel had ever witnessed. By far.

She motioned to the computer station adjacent to the device and pointed at the screen, grinning from ear to ear.

‘‘Look at that!’’ She chewed on a nail, watching his every move.

He pulled out his glasses and, hands shaking, slipped them on, his eyes never leaving the monitor. There it was. The device had recorded a three-point-seven spike roughly seven minutes ago. His heart fluttered.

‘‘Location?’’ he asked, without looking up.

‘‘Already on it,’’ she said, still smiling. ‘‘Take another ten or twenty minutes to triangulate.’’

Daniel nodded, studying the dozens of numbers that appeared on the screen. He did some math in his head and then his entire body stiffened, alarmed.

‘‘Close,’’ he said, still staring at the screen. ‘‘Less than three miles from here.’’

He stood, his eyes out of focus, his mind elsewhere. ‘‘Downtown,’’ he mumbled to no one, wiping his hands against the sweater he wore.

He seemed to snap to attention, but still didn’t look at her. ‘‘Get me that location the moment you have it.’’ He began walking away, toward the other end of the hall, to the only other room they’d retrofitted into the building: his office.

‘‘Dr. Cossick?’’ Lisa called.

He turned around distractedly. ‘‘Yes?’’

‘‘This is really it, isn’t it?’’ she asked, holding her breath. She was beaming, excited beyond words.

He forced a modest smile for her benefit, but then turned and continued walking.

‘‘I hope not.’’

Home turned out to be a different neighborhood than Grant had ever known. Instead of his utilitarian apartment, his cab ride steered him into the canyons of downtown amid the shadows of skyscrapers. The Wagner Building was a new high-rise on Wilshire, a few blocks from the famous old Library Tower and L.A.’s Central Library itself where he’d visited once or twice as a child. The key Grant found in his jacket pocket alongside the wallet unlocked the elevator up to the penthouse floor and then slid smoothly into the apartment’s front-door lock.

Before opening the door, a twinge of apprehension tingled in his mind, returning his thoughts to the strange barefoot girl he’d met on the street and her warning to get out of town. Which he had completely ignored. Grant
had
hailed a cab, but as soon as he saw the address on the wallet, all thoughts of fleeing were abandoned. He couldn’t resist finding out more about this person he’d somehow become.

And a small part of him did it just to spite the girl and her stupid bare feet.

He pushed open the door to the penthouse and saw a shadowy room ahead. His hand felt around on the inside wall until he found the light switch and flipped it on.

Spread out before him was a bachelor’s paradise. Black leather furnishings. Spacious surroundings. Giant flatscreen plasma TV. A desk at the far end of the room featured a sleek, stainless steel computer. Speakers from a massive stereo system were situated throughout the room. Chic floor lamps stood at corners like sentries. Modern art adorned the clean, white walls. To the immediate left of the front door was a fully outfitted kitchen with appliances that bore the stainless-steel sheen of restaurant-quality machinery. Beyond the kitchen was a fully-furnished dining room. Somewhere down the long hall beyond the living room was probably a bedroom, a bathroom, and who knew what else.