Some Gave All (12 page)

“Deal.”

He grinned at her. “I knew you had it in you. I knew you were a real woman, not some baby girl.”

“You must not have any brothers or sisters.”

“I got so many of ’em I don’t even know all of ’em,” he assured her. “And tell me one more time what the hell this thing is?” He held up the tranquilizer gun.

“I used to volunteer at the zoo,” she said, grabbing it from him and putting it on the back seat. “That’s for wild animals.
Real
ones.”

“You’re the strangest person.”

“I’m really not,” she said earnestly. “Trust me on that.”

The problem with parking was that there were too many places to park. Except for the burned-out car, there were no other vehicles, no bushes or trees; only shadows could make them inconspicuous. Heather rolled into the deepest, darkest shadows she could find and handed J-Bag her phone.

“Could you take some pictures, please?” she asked him. “I can’t really see past you.”

“Sure, baby. Here, hold this.” He held out his gun. She took it with one hand and would have dropped it, but she gripped her other hand around it and lowered it to the seat.

“It weighs a ton,” she said. “How do you even hold it?”

“Feel my arm muscles.” He grinned and flexed.

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“You’re missing out.”

She sighed. On the way here, he had told her about himself. She’d been hoping J-Bag might turn out to be an undercover cop or a journalist doing a piece on gang life, but this was no fairy tale. He was a high-school dropout, his sister was a heroin addict, and he had killed two people. They had deserved it, he assured her.

We are each the heroes of our own stories
, she thought wistfully. What was the story of the people who had kidnapped J.T.? They had wanted someone to know what had happened to him, which was a good sign. But they hadn’t made any demands, which was a bad sign. And no one had heard back from Tess since she left the houseboat. Which was a very, very bad sign.

“I think you should smoke some weed,” J-Bag said. “You are so tense.”

“If you don’t stop with that, I’ll kick you out of my car.” She looked past him to the post-apocalyptic city block across the street. She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “It’s going to take them forever to get here. What if they’re torturing him?”

He whistled. “Okay, so
not
the little kitten. You got spunk, woman. You could be my old lady if you want.”

“That’s so sweet, J-Bag, but trust me, you don’t want me. I’m way too neurotic. And messy. I leave stuff out everywhere.”

“But I’ll bet my kitten is a tiger in the sack.”

“
Please
.” She thought about batting him, but he was taking the pictures for her with her cell phone. Her mind filled with the images of Miami Beach palm trees and a moonlit beach, contrasting them with her current situation. She’d thought things would be just peachy in New York now that she knew Vincent was not Vincent Zelansky, also known as Ass. But she still had to fight to get one moment of Cat’s attention, and three was a crowd no matter how nice and un-ass-like Vincent Keller was. Maybe if she signed on as Cat’s sidekick she’d get some quality time.

Or die
, she thought fearfully.

“Got ’em,” he said, “and get ready to roll, because a car is coming down the street.”

She reached for the keys in the ignition, but he stayed her with a gentle squeeze on her wrist.

“No, wait. It’s a low-rider, and there’s a chance they won’t see us. You go screaming out of here, they’re going to follow you.”

“Great. Just great.” She locked all the doors and rolled up all the windows. “We should probably hide.”

She slumped down behind the wheel. He hunkered down too. She held her breath and made a promise to herself to take a gun class. Cat shot guns all the time. And not just at paper targets.

J-Bag’s hand rested on her thigh. “Move it,” she said between clenched teeth.

He made a little whimpering noise. “The ladies fight over me, Heather. And here you got me all to yourself.”

“First of all, I don’t fight over guys. Secondly, we are on a life-or-death stakeout.”

“All the more reason we should seize the moment.”

“Get your hand off me or I’ll shoot you.”

He chuckled… and did as she asked.

“Don’t ever tell anyone I behaved myself,” he said. “I could never live it down.”

“Don’t worry. No one will ever know you were in this car.”

“It’s not too late for me to call my brothers and tell them to show. They’d do it for me.”

“That’s so thoughtful,” she said, “but let’s wait for my sister.”
So she completely loses her mind when she sees me.

“I could go across the street, do a recon.”

“Just stay put, J-Bag, okay?”

Before she realized what he was doing, he clicked his door, opened it, and crawled out. Using the door as a shield, he duckwalked toward the back of the car. She sat up and stared into the rearview mirror but didn’t see him. Seconds ticked by. Her stomach filled with fluttering things. What if all this niceness had been an act? And he was going to sneak around the other side of the car—her side—kill her, and take the car?

What was I thinking?

But no, she trusted him. Still trusted him. Of course, she had trusted Walker, too. And look where that had gotten her.

We don’t know about that yet
, she reminded herself.
Walker is To Be Continued.

Her chest hurt; she had been holding her breath. She exhaled, and just as she ran out of air, her phone pinged. “Find My Friends” showed a new location for J.T.

She messaged the information to Cat, and then she phoned her. Cat answered on the car’s speaker. “I see it. I’m getting close to Vincent. I am seeing you on
my
app, Heather. Get out of there
now
. And who are you with? Does he…
know
?”

“No.”

“Then take him home and wait to hear from me.”

“Cat, J.T. is my friend too.”

“Do it.”

The door behind her opened and J-Bag popped into the car. Heather said, “Okay, Cat, you’re the cop,” and glanced into the rearview mirror to see what effect those words had on J-Bag. It was too dark to see him.

“Someone’s on my other line. It’s probably Vincent,” Cat said. “Go home.”

Heather started up the engine; keeping her headlights off, she slowly hung a U. She said to J-Bag, “My friend’s on the move and my sister’s closer to him. So I’m retreating.”

“Yeah, now that I’m in love with you I’m all for that. I can’t have my woman getting messed up.”

“You’re freaking me out. You’re not going all stalkery, are you?”

He cocked his head. “You have not had good experiences with men.”

“You can say that again,” she blurted. And then she shook her head. “We are not having this conversation now. Lives are on the line.”

“Cuz the heart’s already been broken.”

“Where do you want me to drop you off?” she asked doggedly.

“At your place, sweet thing,” he said. “Of course. But I don’t want you to go back to where we met. That’s a bad place. Probably best you take me to a subway station.”

“Is it even running?” she asked. Actually, weirdly, it wasn’t all that late.

“Doesn’t matter.” He patted her shoulder. “This has been an interesting evening.”

“Can I sell you back the gun?” she asked him. “I can’t bring an unregistered weapon home. Cat would kill me.”

“You should be packing like
Grand Theft Auto
, your sister’s a cop,” he said. “They even got tanks now, I hear. But yeah, I’ll buy it back. For ten dollars.”

“
What?
I gave you seven times that!”

“Yeah, and now it’s used. And plus, I didn’t make any money tonight, driving around with you. I have to account for myself with my brothers. All I’m coming home with so far is sixty bucks. You’re lucky I’m buying it back.”

She sputtered. “This is robbery.”

He grinned at her. “If you think this is robbery, you’ve never been properly robbed. C’mon, look at it from my point of view. I’ll get my ass kicked, I come home with nothing.”

“All right. Give me directions.”

“Give me your phone. I’ll key them in.”

“Suddenly I’m feeling a little more protective of my stuff,” she informed him.

“You do okay.”

That was some sort of a compliment, so she said, “Thanks.”

* * *

Vincent melted out of the shadows as Catherine glided to the curb. He got in and Cat moved off quickly. She told him about the new location and he asked the same questions she had asked herself: Who had sent the address? Was it real? Or were they being sent on a fool’s errand?

“Any word from Tess?” Vincent asked, and Cat shook her head. “Did Heather remember anything else? Anything they might have said that would give us more information?”

“No. She had someone with her. I think it was a guy and I have no idea why she didn’t drop him off before she started looking for J.T. She knows that we have to keep the existence of beasts a secret. I’m going to have to have a talk with her.”

“Give her the benefit of the doubt,” Vincent said. “Heather’s grown up. She had to have a good reason.”

“You’re right. It’s hard for me to see her as anything but a flighty teenager. It was very brave of her to light out after him like that.”

They drove in silence, both tense and worried. Before Vincent had rejoined society, J.T. had worried for their safety, but he’d never actually been harmed.

“All I can think is that they’re trying to lure you,” Cat said. “Otherwise there would be demands by now.”

“Unless something went wrong,” Vincent murmured. He didn’t finish the thought: unless they had killed J.T., either by accident or design.

“We’ll get them, Vincent,” she promised. “And we’ll kick their butts.”

Unless we’re too afraid to
, he thought.

J
.T.’s head was pounding. Whoever had chloroformed him had clocked him with a blunt instrument as well. Probably a gun, because these guys had a lot of them.

He wasn’t up on his advanced weaponry but he knew submachine guns when he saw them. Also black matte handguns that were so enormous they looked fake. There were maybe six men, and they were dressed in olive fatigues and combat boots. They wore black hoods and bandanas covered the lower half of their faces, which gave him hope of survival. If they planned to kill him, they wouldn’t care if he knew what they looked like.

They told him that they were the FFNY. The FFNY was a paramilitary operation “assisting” someone with a “mission,” and he wasn’t sure it was precisely the mission they had written Maurice Riley about. He didn’t think they seemed very concerned about Mr. Riley’s safety. They didn’t seem concerned about anyone’s safety. They wanted J.T.’s help capturing the beast, not destroying it. They wanted to use it for their own ends. What ends those were, he didn’t know. They hadn’t yet shared their manifesto or whatever with him. But weren’t all manifestos pretty much the same? Your side is wrong, our side is right. Join us or die.

His hands were cuffed behind his back and ropes around his chest and ankles kept him tied to a chair in the middle of a large warehouse half-filled with long wooden shipping crates. There were three men standing on the crates, legs spread wide for balance, Uzis around their necks. Parked in a row were two panel vans, one white, one black, and a quartet of nondescript sedans. J.T. tried to memorize license plates but his vision was blurry and the bare light bulb hanging directly over his head made it difficult to see much.

They offered him water, which he accepted. Those action movies where the brave heroes display their machismo by refusing all food and drink from the enemy? Very bad training films. You had to do anything you could—within your moral compass, of course—to last long enough to thwart the enemy. You couldn’t do that if you were dehydrated and starving. Vincent had taught him that.

“One more time,” said the man who identified himself as Private X—the ringleader of the FFNY. “What have Vincent Keller and the NYPD discovered about the creature?”

J.T. noted his use of the word “creature.” Everyone connected with the experiment—including Cat’s father, Agent Bob Reynolds—referred to Muirfield’s creations as “beasts.” These guys didn’t. Did that mean that they were on the outside looking in—not members of the original conspiracy? On the other hand, if they knew about Lafferty—and potentially Vincent—
and
they knew that Karl Tiptree had invented a “serum,” then they had some knowledge. Again, the point was not to die a hero—it was live to see another day—and J.T. tried to calculate how much he had to divulge while keeping them as ignorant as possible.

“This new murder seemed different,” he said. “The police suspect the first six murders were committed by a human. That would mean that last night’s murder would be the creature’s first murder in New York City. That they know of, anyway.”

The masked men looked at each other. This was news to them. Whether welcome news or not, J.T. had no idea.

“Why do they think that?” Private X asked as he strode up to J.T. The light from the bulb gleamed on his Uzi. He was wearing black leather half-gloves. He seriously creeped J.T. out.

“I’m not sure. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Vincent about it and—”

Lightning fast, Private X punched J.T. in the jaw. J.T.’s head whipped back and his glasses went flying. Now he would
never
be able to memorize those license plate numbers.

“Don’t lie to me. Even if you haven’t talked to Keller, you’ve talked to the cops. We have your phone.”

J.T. hesitated. Private X threw back his arm and J.T. flinched. His interrogator snickered.

“Civilians,” he said derisively. “Always weak and in the way.”

“I thought you cared about people,” J.T. said. There was something dribbling down his chin. It was either blood or drool… or pulverized bicuspids. “That you were doing all this to stop the bloodshed.”

Now a couple of the other men snickered. J.T. didn’t like all the snickering. It put him in mind of schoolyard bullies, which he’d had plenty of experience in dealing with while growing up. Bullies took real pleasure in inflicting pain. Yes, maybe they did it to compensate for deep-seated feelings of inferiority or
whatever
; the point was that pain was their thing.