Subject Seven (13 page)

“You feel like preaching at me some more, Robbie? Is that it? You feel like telling me how it is again?” Robbie tried to free his arm. He thrashed and whimpered and wagged his arm frantically, and all the while the hand clenched harder.

Something wet popped inside Robbie's wrist and the man screamed, a raw, desperate noise that sounded like music.

“Oh God! Please, let me go! Let me go!” Robbie's voice shook and his skin grew deathly pale.

The satisfaction died away, replaced by a deeper anger. Weak! The man was weak. The thought disgusted him. “Why don't you tell me how the world works again, Robbie! Tell me how I keep getting it wrong!”

“Leave him alone! You leave my daddy alone!” The girl might as well have been a stranger, not only to Joe but also to the brute he felt everything through. Her face was familiar, yes, but there was no emotional connection. She was just a pretty girl with a screechy voice. He'd never, ever seen her with the expression she had on her face. She was angry, scared. She had auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail and she was dressed in running pants and a T-shirt that probably belonged to her dad. Her face was as pretty as ever, but now her eyes were wide, her mouth trembled on the edge of tears and her soft voice was loud. She wanted to protect her own. That was admirable, but unfortunately she was trying to protect a loser.

Admiration could go to hell. He couldn't believe the feelings he had for her—No. Joe shook his head. Those weren't his feelings, or even the brute's; they belonged to the hidden side of the monster. Bleed over was bad here, worse than he'd ever experienced with his Other. This one's Other had actually had a crush on her once. He shook the thought away. “Shut your stupid face! You don't know anything! He doesn't deserve your love! He's a drunk and a loser!”

Robbie screamed but tried to man up. He swung with his free arm and threw his weight into it. The blow landed well enough to snap his head to the side and to clack his teeth together.

The world went red and Joe tried to stay calm in the sudden storm of anger.

Everything around him was the color of blood, and from deep in his chest he heard a roaring noise. Robbie had started to get a little smile on his face, like maybe he was feeling good about the shot he delivered, but that changed when the growl grew louder.

He didn't merely growl, he roared, his voice shaking the windows, sending the people in the room into a terror.

His hand slapped across Robbie's mouth and mashed his lips into his teeth and broke his nose. Rob barely even managed to grunt his pain out before he grabbed him in both hands and charged. Robbie weighed in at close to two hundred pounds, but lifting him was easy and so was charging across the living room, knocking his daughter on her butt as he moved past her.

The brute hefted the screaming man over his head and ran harder, straining as he aimed his burden at the sliding glass doors that led to the balcony and the best view in town.

He roared again as he threw Revrund Robbie through the air. The doors were tempered glass. They were designed to withstand a solid impact without shattering. That didn't stop Rob from flying through them in a shower of broken shards or the chorus of screams from mother and daughter alike.

Rob screamed as he cleared the porch and sailed through the air toward the distant river. Gravity got to him before he could reach the Hudson. The trees and shrubs caught him on his way down. They were not gentle.

He watched the man fall and felt a grin spread across his face. The two women ran past him, forgetting him as they looked toward where the woods below had swallowed Robbie.

Joe pulled his mind from the other one. A few moments later he saw the dark shape of the brute as he left the building. Joe stood perfectly still and merely watched. Not time yet to introduce himself but soon, very soon. He had to get everyone where he wanted them—now that he knew he could.

“MRS. RAMIREZ? HI, THIS is Tina Carlotti. I used to live next door to you. I—I was hoping maybe you'd remember me and my mom.” Tina licked her lips nervously. She'd called almost everyone she could think of, but mostly what she'd gotten for her trouble was answering machines, busy signals or no answer at all. She couldn't leave a message. She didn't want anyone calling her back. She didn't have any close friends and money was tight and what if they called the wrong people and reported where she could be found? Maybe she hadn't done anything. Maybe Tony Parmiatto was just fine and she could go home, but any way she looked at it, she had crazy loads of money in her possession, and that sort of cash had to belong to someone. It sure as hell wasn't hers, but she was holding on to it.

She'd almost completely run out of phone numbers that she could remember and the lady who'd finally answered was one of the few where she would have felt safe leaving a phone message.

Lucille Ramirez was close to sixty years old, and there had been a time when the woman had watched her while her mom worked. Back before her mom fell for the wrong guy and got hooked on smack.

“Oh my!” The woman's voice shook. It almost always shook. Her voice was like a mouse, small and shaky and maybe a little scared of everything. “Oh, Tina, sweetie, I was so sorry to hear about your momma.”

“My mom?” Her stomach tried to shrink down to nothing and Tina licked her lips again. “That's why I'm calling. I haven't been able to get her on the phone. I—do you know where she is?”

“Tina, honey. Oh, sweetheart, I heard it on the news. Your mother's dead, honey. They pulled her body out of the river three days ago. They just now identified her.”

“I—what?” She had to have heard that wrong. That was all. There was a mistake.

“Honey, the police, they've been trying to find you. They wanted to let you know, and now they've been worried that something happened to you too. But your mother, she's dead, baby. I'm so sorry.”

The phone fell out of her fingers. Suddenly it weighed too much to hold. She watched it bounce across the cheap carpeted floor and flop to the side.

“Mama?” Her voice was tiny, so much smaller than Mrs. Ramirez's that she could have been a flea in comparison to the woman's mouse. “My mama's dead?”

She fell back on the bed, the nice old lady who used to watch her completely forgotten.

Somewhere out there, Tony and his friends were maybe looking for their money. Tony and his mob friends. How much damage would they do for two million dollars? They'd killed for a lot less. She knew that, even when she tried to pretend that part didn't matter. They'd killed people and tortured people and sometimes they'd gone after the loved ones of people that did them wrong because for them it was more important to have what they wanted than it was to be good people.

“Oh no. Oh, Mama. Mommy. No . . . ” Her lips kept moving, but there were no words. There were only tears. Tears, and that feeling like her whole universe was falling apart.

CODY WAS IN A new office with a different doctor. Dr. Amelia Powell was in her early thirties if he had to guess, with strawberry blonde hair that she kept pulled back in a severe bun. The idea, according to what his parents had told him, was to get to the root of his problems. According to the last doctor, Dr. Keene, Cody was seeking attention. Not really sick, just a whiny brat, in layman's terms.

The thought made Cody want to kick the man in his family jewels. He wasn't looking for attention. He hadn't run away from home and he didn't disappear as a cry for help. No one wanted to understand that part.

The session had been going on for around ten minutes, and so far Cody liked the new headshrinker. At least she was fun to look at.

“Why do you think you're here, Cody?” Dr. Powell looked at him and smiled. He smiled back. It was hard not to when she had a body that belonged in one of the porn sites he liked to surf when the folks were out. There weren't a lot of girls looking at him on the average day. Mostly they just pretended he didn't exist.

“Um. Because somebody decided I'm crazy.”

“No. You're here because your parents wanted you to talk to somebody who can help you understand why you ran away from home.”

And there it was again.

“I didn't run away from home.” Cute or not, she was already working fast toward pissing him off.

“Well, then why don't you tell me what happened?” She smiled. He didn't smile back this time.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. In the long run, you're just another doctor working for my folks.

“I don't remember what happened. I was at the ball game and then I was in a jail cell. Why is this so hard for people to understand?” He tried to keep the edge out of his voice, but it wasn't easy.

“Well, then why don't we try to get to the bottom of that problem, okay?”

Before he could respond, the phone on her desk beeped shrilly and the secretary's voice came through the speaker. “I'm sorry to interrupt, Dr. Powell, but there's a phone call for Cody. The man said it's an emergency.”

Dr. Powell stared at him for a moment and then pointed toward the phone. “It's for you. Go ahead if you want.”

He nodded his head and walked over to the phone. His head buzzed with each step and he had a moment of weird double vision. Not double vision exactly, more like he was seeing the world in an unfamiliar way—but then it was gone.

“Hello?” Cody listened, expecting to hear his mother's or his father's voice. What he got instead was a complete stranger talking in his ear.

“Hi, Cody.” The voice was deep but pleasant. “We haven't met, but we really should.”

“Dude, I'm in the middle of a meeting right now.”

“Yeah, with the hot shrink. I know.” Cody looked around the room, pausing for that look at the cleavage he was trying not to stare at. He frowned at the doctor, but she wasn't actually looking at him so he didn't think she was setting him up with some crazy little test. There was one window, but all that was outside that window was blue skies. He doubted anyone was out there and looking in from a helicopter.

“Excuse me?”

“Hot shrink. I know where you are. She's hot. Maybe you can come back and see her soon, but between now and then, you need to get to Boston, Massachusetts.”

“What?” His voice was shrill enough to get the doctor's attention and she looked his way with a puzzled expression.

“Listen to me, Cody. You need to get to Boston. There are answers for you there.”

“Yeah? I'll get right on it.” He made sure the sarcasm in his voice was obvious.

“I would if I were you. When you get there, you can finally find out why you woke up in a jail cell.”

“Who is this?”

“Call me Joe Bronx. I'm your new best friend.”

“I don't need a new best friend,” he answered.

“Oh, but you do. Trust me, the cute doctor isn't on your side. By the time this call is done, she's going to decide to tell your parents all about it and they'll probably have a fit.”

“Seriously, who are you?”

“Joe Bronx. We discussed that. Get to Boston.”

“It's a big place. Where?”

“Find a pen and paper. Write down the number I give you.”

The good news about office desks is that there's almost always a pen and paper. He wrote down the number.

“What if I don't?”

“You'll get there. Whether you want to or not. I'm just trying to give you a chance to run your own life for a change.”

“What do you mean?”

“Who decided you need to see the hot shrink? You? Or your parents?” The voice was calm, rational, not picking at all.

“My parents.”

“There's your answer. Decide for yourself. When you get to Boston, call the number. We'll meet, and I'll explain everything.” The conversation was severed. Cody looked at the phone for a few seconds and finally set it carefully back into its cradle.

“Who was that?” Dr. Powell had stood up and moved behind him. He could smell her perfume, soft and sweet and inviting. He could practically feel the heat from her body. Hell, he could turn fast enough and probably their bodies would be close to the same height and he could kiss that mouth before she had a chance to react.

Yeah. Right. Never gonna happen
.

Instead of fighting it, he decided to tell the doctor the truth. He turned to face her, but slowly. Sure enough, they were close to the same height and she was just almost close enough to steal a kiss from. “A guy named Joe Bronx, who said if I go to Boston, he'll tell me why I was arrested.”

“Really?” She looked at him, and he stared at her eyes. They were green but shot with hazel and what looked like gold. He could have stared into her eyes for hours. “What do you think about that?”

“I think someone's having fun with me. I don't like it.”

“How did he know to call you here?”

“He said he could see me. He knew where I was.”

She looked at him for a while and slowly nodded, smiled. The look made his knees weak. It also made his brain want to panic. Joe Bronx was right. She'd be reporting to his folks very soon. She wasn't to be trusted.

He'd have to trust Joe. There had to be an answer that didn't involve him being crazy, and Joe was offering at least a chance of that.