The Spider Thief (34 page)

The old black car signaled a turn, one of its taillights lighting up in three segments, from the center to the outside,
blink-blink-blink, blink-blink-blink
.

Mitch kept waiting for the cop to turn on his lights, pull the car over. But it just sat there as the car turned the corner and disappeared into the rain. Then the cop drove off straight.

Just once, Mitch thought, they could’ve done something good.

Bryce’s big face drifted down into Mitch’s vision, all red and blotchy, breathing hard. “Mitch?” His voice sounded burbly, like it was coming from underwater. “Mitch? Hey! Wake up!” He shook Mitch’s shoulder.

Then Mitch came out of it all at once, like he’d broken the surface of a swimming pool. All the sound came rushing back to him. He got up on his hands and knees, fighting down the greasy feeling in his stomach. The living room spun around him.

Bryce plopped down on the couch, wheezing. “What’d she do to you?”

“Don’t know. Must’ve been a stun gun. Something like that.”

“It blew up the TV.”

“What?” Mitch turned around. The screen of the old tube-type TV was just gone. It was hollowed out, like a jagged little cave. Pieces of gray-green glass sparkled across the carpet.

A little pair of black metal goggles lay on the floor nearby. He picked them up. They felt heavy for their size, the frame made out of metal. Thick lenses. “Looks like she dropped these.”

“Too bad she didn’t drop her laser gun.” Bryce’s wheezing got worse, turned into a high-pitched squeak in his chest. “Could put that on eBay.”

“Hey. You okay?”

Bryce nodded. He fished an inhaler out of his pocket, put it to his mouth and squeezed. Nothing happened. He frowned at it, shook it and tried again. Nothing. “Shoot.” Bryce leaned forward on his knees, fighting to breathe.

“Hey, Bryce? Buddy? You okay?”

Bryce nodded, lifted one arm like it was an effort. Pointed upstairs.

“You need a new inhaler?”

Bryce nodded again. The squeaks in his chest came short and quick. His face started to turn purple.

Mitch got to his feet, ignoring the rubbery feeling in his legs. “You stay put. Calm down. Just breathe. Okay? Through your nose.”

Mitch stumbled up the stairs into the bathroom. Under the sink, he found disposable razors, hair gel, Q-tips. No inhalers.

He ran down the stairs. Bryce had his eyes closed, slumped over on the sofa, taking little high-pitched breaths.

“Bryce?” Mitch grabbed his face, patted one stubble-scratchy cheek. “Hey, buddy, where you keep that stuff?”

Bryce didn’t open his eyes.

Mitch swore and ran back upstairs, into the spare bedroom Bryce had filled up with his computers and his fourteen million comic book toys all standing on shelves. Mitch dug through the desk, throwing CDs and computer manuals on the floor, knocking down toy aliens and soldiers, dumping over stacks of books.

He stood in the middle of the room, looking around and around. He knew he wasn’t going to find it.

He charged back down the stairs, starting to feel that edge of panic, that closed-in feeling he got when the cops were closing in and he had nowhere to go.

He ran around to the garage, got the door rumbling open, squeezed himself into that goddamn silver Toyota Camry he’d bought for Jocelyn. He backed the car out too fast, scraped the mirror on the edge of the doorway.

He drove over the lawn, right up the front walk, keeping two wheels on the concrete so he didn’t get stuck in the wet grass. Left the passenger door open to the rain and sprinted inside.

Bryce was still breathing, barely. He was too heavy to pick up. Mitch got him beneath the armpits, heaved him off the couch. Dragged him, limp and heavy, outside to the Toyota.

It took him three tries to get Bryce into the car, banging his brother’s head on the door frame the last time. He got Bryce’s legs in, had to roll down the window and pull Bryce’s arm through it just to shut the door.

Then he got in and gunned the engine. Slewed around backward, remembered too late that the goddamn car was front-wheel drive, slid the wrong way on the grass and clipped the neighbor’s old pickup at the curb.

He straightened the car out and floored it, drove over the sidewalk, scraping the underside on the curb. He hit the street and kept going.

He got two blocks before he figured out how to turn the windshield wipers on, got them slamming back and forth in the pouring rain.

“Hang on,” he said, gripping Bryce’s big hand. “Hang on, buddy.”

He lay on the horn and tried to remember the fastest way to the hospital.

Geneva knew, way back before she decided to do this, that they might kill her if they found out. She just never thought she would screw up this badly.

She kept the radio off on the highway, nothing around her but the sound of wet pavement beneath Brutus’s tires. Squeaking windshield wipers. The steady growl of the engine.

She coasted down the exit ramp. At the bottom, she turned back under the highway and bumped over the railroad tracks. When she finally got to a stoplight, she let everything out at once, shouting obscenities at no one, grabbing the horn ring and letting the noise blast out over the warehouses and rail yards, into the gray sky.

Then she sat back in the seat, breathing deep. Trying to stay cool. Stay focused.

She patted the dashboard. “Sorry, Brutus.”

She stared at the red traffic light, thinking. Trying to figure out how she could have gone so wrong. What was this guy’s game? It had hit him hard when she said Jocelyn’s name. Didn’t he know that the Archangel had killed her? Why was he lying to her? What did he have to gain?

Or was he only repeating the lies he’d been told?

He claimed he’d been in prison all these years. But if that was true, the Conspiracy would have gotten to him by now. They would have killed him. Unless he was one of them.

None of it made any sense.

The light turned green and she hit the gas. Brutus rumbled through the intersection. She glanced down at the fuel gauge and her heart sank.

She’d used almost a quarter tank on this trip, and Michael would want to know why. He’d ask her where she’d been.

Oh, nowhere, Michael. Just trying to find out just how deep your lies go. Trying to find out if you’ve been using me all these years to do your dirty work. Doing what you always taught me: research the target.

Only this time, Michael, the target is you.

She shook her head. She had to concentrate on the here and now. She had to cover her tracks.

She wasn’t supposed to fill up at the same gas station twice. Michael had always been strict about that. They had cameras inside, when you went to pay. They could track you that way.

She’d told him, “Why don’t we just use debit cards, pay at the pump? There’s places you can get debit cards for cash, they can’t trace you.”

He’d just put his arms around her shoulders and squeezed, the way he did when he thought she was being naïve. “Genie,” he’d said. “Just trust me, and we’ll all get out of this alive.”

But the only gas station between here and home was a Conoco she’d been at a few days before.

She watched the red-and-white sign grow closer. Thought about turning around, getting back on the highway to find another place. Thought about red-bearded Raph always cleaning his guns, the way he watched her that made her skin crawl. He’d wanted to kill her for a long time now. If Michael found out she’d betrayed him, he might stop protecting her. And the first opportunity Raph got, he’d make her disappear.

She was almost past the Conoco. She could turn back, hope to find another gas station.

Screw it. She turned the wheel and pulled up to a pump.

There wasn’t anyone else there. Just a guy in the garage putting tires on a gold Saturn, impact wrench rattling.

She was careful not to put too much gas into Brutus, just enough to make it look like she’d only gone to the store like she’d said.

She went in to pay and the guy came in from the shop, trying hard to look cool in his Buddy Holly glasses and sideburns. The name Ruben was stitched on his shirt. He wiped his dirty hands on a red shop towel and nodded his chin at Brutus. “Nice Cougar you got there.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” She dug money out of her pockets, uncrumpled a couple of bills.

“1967?”

“It’s a sixty-eight.”

He nodded. “Cool.”

“Yeah. Um, Ruben, you want to take my money, or what?”

She paid him for the gas and bought a Gatorade. She was halfway back to the car when she heard his voice from the doorway.

“So where’d you get it painted, anyway? That’s funky.”

The sun had broken through the clouds while she was inside, and it sparkled on the stealth nanofabric that Michael had used to cover every inch of Brutus’s body. From here, it just looked like black paint with some kind of oily shimmer.

Without breaking stride, Geneva looked back over her shoulder. There was an old car parked behind the building, long peeling turquoise fins and new tires. “That your car back there?”

“The Studebaker?” Ruben shoved his hands into his pockets. “Yeah. Bought it a couple months ago.”

“Is it fast?”

“It will be. Once I get the engine done. Gonna drop in a Chevy 327, best engine Detroit ever made. No offense, now, to your Cougar.”

She had to smile at that. She gave him a thumbs-up.

The guy looked like he was going to ask her something else, so she got back into Brutus, gunned him to life, and laid down a couple strips of rubber without really meaning to.

She saw Ruben in the rearview mirror, walking out into the street to watch her drive away, his glasses dark on his face.

By the time she got back to the hideout, she was so worked up about trying to stay calm, her stomach was clenched in a knot. She tried to breathe easy, in and out, be cool.

Home, at least for the moment, was a boarded-up concrete building with six numbered garage bays. Geneva pulled around to the back and waited a minute with the engine running until the door rolled up. Gabe in his tidy black turtleneck appeared, pushing up the door with a two-by-four. In the shadows of the garage, she could see a crouched black shape. That would be Raph, with his AK-47, making sure she wasn’t being followed.

She thought about turning on her headlights, putting the bright beams on him, just to show him. But she didn’t. Just pulled in, the sound of the motor echoing back at her off the concrete walls.

She turned off the ignition and got out, almost forgetting to get the bags out of the trunk. Behind her, Gabe rattled the garage door shut and screeched the lock closed.

She carried the plastic bags into the kitchen, a big long room where they’d rigged a microwave and a fridge. She put the bags down on the table where Michael was working on his laptop. The screen showed a picture of a big warehouse with an empty flatbed truck out front, and what looked like a schematic of a security system superimposed over the building.

Michael looked startled when she walked in. Not much, just a little twitch that likely no one else would have noticed. But she knew him. Knew when he was trying to hide something. He clicked a button and the picture vanished.

“What’s that?” she said.

Michael didn’t answer. He laced his fingers together behind his head, leaned back in his chair and studied her. His cheekbones stood out in the light of the laptop’s screen, making him look even thinner than he was. He kept his black hair slicked back these days, wore tight black T-shirts that showed off his chest, as if he was trying to prove something.

His gaze made her nervous. It was like he knew everything she was thinking.

Geneva started emptying the bags. “Whatever. I got the wires and the power supplies. They were all out of regular duct tape. I don’t know how we used ours up.” She dug out a plastic-wrapped roll of black tape. “But check this out. Black duct tape. How cool is that?”

“Leave it. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“’We’ meaning you and Gabe and Raph. And not me.” She threw the roll of tape down on the table. “You know, I’m getting sick of all this sitting around, you and Gabe acting like you know something I don’t, Raph sitting out there in the dark about ready to go postal.”

Michael pursed his lips. “Genie, love, do you think you could perhaps be a bit more difficult?”

She finished unpacking the bags, slamming down packs of batteries, putty, spools of cable.

“You do know that Gabe and Raph are like family. This mission has been their life ever since we came here. Now that we’re getting down to the wire, it’s a bit hard for them to share.”

She gave him a cautious look, hoping he’d mistake the fear in her eyes for something like hurt.

He smiled. “Sooner or later, we’re going to catch the creature. Believe me. It’s going to happen. We’re very, very close. And when it does, we’ll be able to do things the way that others before us should have. And when this part of the mission is over, it will be hard for them to move on, even knowing we’ve all done such a good thing together.”

Geneva kept watching him. “We are going to kill it. Right?”

“Beg pardon?”

“You said
catch
the creature. You mean
kill
it.”

“Yeah. Catch it. Kill it. When we’re ready.”

“I’m ready right now.”

“Absolutely. That’s what I love about you. But there are certain things we need to learn from it first.” He folded his arms and studied her. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you don’t believe me.”

“No.” She tried to look honest. “I believe you.”

“Then I can count on you, when the time comes. You don’t have any doubts.”

“No.”

“Good. I’d hate to think you’d want to murder me in my sleep.” He closed the screen of his laptop. “At any rate, we’re all stretched a bit thin. Give Gabe and Raph a little room to breathe. They don’t have anything against you personally. You’d think by now they would, but no.”

Geneva came around the table, sat on it close to Michael, looked down into his eyes. “Raph is a creep.”