The Water Knife (26 page)

“How did you know Ratan?”

“I didn’t. He was just a lead. I was trying to figure out who killed Jamie.”

“And here I am, helping you out with that.” He smiled. “You going to get me a Pulitzer for my original reporting?”

She didn’t say anything.

“How about you help me out?” he said. “Tell me how you and Ratan were actually connected.”

“I told you already—we weren’t.”

“You know, if Ratan was here, alive and all”—he glanced pointedly at Kropp—“I might believe you. Problem is, he walked his face into a bullet. And that makes me suspicious, because you knew the guy who was selling the water rights. And you knew Ratan, the guy who bought them. And that makes me think you’re in the middle somehow. Might be that you’re the one who actually has them.”

“I’m not! I don’t! Jamie had them! Not me!”

“You know, I’ve been spending the last three days running around, trying to find out where the fuck those water rights ended up. I mean, I ambush your friend Jamie and my guy Vosovich, and for what? Nothing. I get nothing out of it, because your friend Jamie’s already sold the rights, and he’s just dicking us around like we’re his second-best girl who he’s never going to marry. Which leaves me in a tight spot. At first, I think I can maybe just grab the money your boy Jamie got out of California, except when I dug the bastard’s eyes out, I lost my best chance at retina-scanning my way into his bank accounts. I mean, how the hell was I supposed to know I’d need his eyes? So now I got nothing, and I got to cover my tracks, and I just got to eat the fact that I fucked my big score.”

He grinned. “But then you know what happens? Good old Michael Ratan pops up, saying maybe he’s got something special to sell, and he wants to talk. Hmmm. Wonder what that could be? What
could a nice buttoned-down Cali like Ratan have that he’d want to sell to Vegas? Maybe it’s something he don’t feel like giving to his bosses, ’cause it’s too fucking valuable.” He laughed and shook his head. “Motherfucker’s making the same play I would have made, if I’d gotten hold of those rights. It’s kind of beautiful, really. I mean, here I am, shaking my whole network, trying to find out if anyone knows where those rights went, and old Ratan comes running right to me, saying he’s got something big, and he wants to sell it, if Vegas will guarantee him safe passage and a whole fuckton of digital currency.” He grinned. “Except Ratan’s worse than stupid when it comes to working shit like this. So”—he shrugged—“you know. I drop in early on him.” He leaned forward. “And then the motherfucker goes and gets himself dead, and I get stuck with his laptop and no passkeys.”

“And that’s what you want?” Lucy started to laugh helplessly. “But I don’t have any passwords. I don’t even know Ratan.” She couldn’t stop laughing. “If that’s what you want, you’re completely fucked, because I can’t help you.” Her laughter turned to sobs. She hated herself for it, but she couldn’t stop. “I don’t know anything,” she sobbed. “I can’t help you. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

“Damn.” The man frowned. “I kind of think you’re telling me the truth.” He sighed. “But still, I got to be sure.” He gripped her teary face in his hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll put you down quick once I’m done.” He straightened and went back to the counter. Picked up the knife.

Oh God. No. No no. Please no
.

Lucy started screaming before he was halfway back to her.

She didn’t stop for a long time.

M
aria hit water, hard as concrete. She sank, stunned, then thrashed for the surface.

One second the scarred man had been asking her if she swam, and the next moment the asshole had heaved her over the rail, to drop four stories into the pool.

She surfaced, paddling clumsily, enraged and relieved that she was still alive. She hadn’t swum for years. Not since going to visit a lake with her family during summers. They’d picnicked, and she’d paddled in the muddy waters, and then the lake had dried up, and all that had stopped.

The scarred man slammed into the water beside her. Waves swamped her. He surfaced and grabbed her, hauling her toward where the water disappeared into a mossy tunnel.

She fought him, angry and terrified. “What are you doing?”

“Saving us both. Or else getting us killed.” They were moving with a current that pushed them into the cave. He swam ahead and began fiddling with a metal grate. “Are the Calies coming?” he asked.

She knew who he meant. The guys with the suits. She peered out of the tunnel. They were running for the elevators and coming down. “Yeah.”

He pulled a pistol from his belt and handed it to her, then went back to pushing buttons on a keypad.

“Shoot anyone who sticks their head in.”

“Are you serious?”

She didn’t get an answer because now he had the grate open and pulled her through and took the gun back.

The Calies jumped down into the water and started wading toward them. The man fired once, deliberately. They all dove for cover, and
then the current was increasing, tugging them deeper into the heart of the arcology.

Their stream was joined by other streams, pulling them on. Maria struggled to keep her head above water. Behind them, she glimpsed the Calies at the grate, unable to get through. She bumped into the scarred man. He grabbed her, and for a second she thought he was going to throw her over another edge, but instead he was lifting her out of the water and onto a walkway.

“Grab on!”

Her fingers scraped, and then she had hold of the lip and dragged herself out. The man followed and flopped beside her, dripping and panting.

“Where are we?”

“Water-treatment systems.” He stood and hauled her upright. “Come on. Taiyang Security is definitely coming for us. We need to be out of here before they lock everything down.” He rushed her down a catwalk alongside the rushing river.

“How do you know where you’re going?”

“Kind of faking it, actually.”

“How’d you open that grate back there?”

He laughed, looking pleased with himself. “Biotect company that does the water treatment. Same as one we got in Vegas. They got standard passwords. Guess nobody changed it. It happens a lot.”

Maria wondered what he would’ve done if he hadn’t been able to unlock the grate, then decided the gun answered that question.

He led her along the edge of the river, then over a walkway. Below them the water pooled out, spreading and spilling down into tanks. They were in a huge cavern, redolent with the smell of fish and growing things. Mosses and algaes choked the waters. Fish flashed in the shallows. A whole huge cavern, full of water and life.

Maria stopped, stunned.

It was the aquifer. Its details were different from what she’d dreamed of, but still, it was the place. Her father had been replaced by the scarred man, and Maria was being led on catwalks instead of rowing a boat, and the stalactites overhead were now electronic monitoring devices flashing status as they dangled over the pools, extending sensors down into the waters. And yet she was sure that this was the
place she had dreamed of. It was alive and cool, and even if it was full of workers running skimmers across the surface of algae vats, it was her aquifer. She had dreamed this place, and now she was here. She hoped it was a good sign, but she didn’t have time to worry because the scarred man was already tugging her on.

He led her through, walking quickly. A worker looked up from a flashing screen, startled at the sight of them.

Maria half-expected him to shoot the worker, but instead he flashed a badge. “Phoenix PD,” he said. “There’s a security situation.” He brushed right past the guy.

“You’re a cop?” Maria asked.

“To him I am.”

They hit double doors and ended up in a dimly lit service corridor. The scarred man scowled up at the ceiling. Cameras.

“This way!” He dragged her on, down another corridor.

They hit a new set of doors, and suddenly they were outside.

Maria blinked and squinted in the glare, but the man dragged her on. Dust swirled around them, whipped by winds and traffic. Ahead, a bright yellow Tesla’s doors were popping open. “This is us.” He shoved her into the passenger seat and came around. The car locked down and came to life as he settled himself into the driver’s seat.

Clean dashboard instruments, electronic glows—and her sitting inside, feeling like a drowned cat as she dripped on the leather. A/C came up, icy on her wet skin and dress. They pulled away from the curb, and Maria was shoved deep into her seat as the car accelerated. She looked back, expecting pursuit, but no one seemed to have noticed.

“Did we lose them?” she asked.

“For now.”

Now that she was no longer running, the adrenaline was draining out of her, leaving her feeling exhausted and chilled in the A/C. She found that she was shivering. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so cold.

“Can you turn off the A/C?”

The icy gusts died, leaving them driving in silence.

“You said you have someplace you can go?” he asked.

“Yeah. There’s a guy. He’s pretty close to here. Over on the construction side. He makes
pupusas
.”

“You sure you don’t want to be farther away?”

The man sounded like he was trying to take care of her. Like he gave a damn, and it made her angry.

“Why do you care? You just threw me off a railing.”

Her head hurt, and the motion of the car made her nauseous, and now she was mad at him. This guy thought he could just drag her around however he liked. She started digging into her purse, the purse that he’d made her bring, to carry his damn ballistic jacket. She yanked the jacket out. It was practically dry, of course.
Cadillac Desert
was soaked.

“Fuck!”

“It’ll dry,” the scarred man said, glancing over.

“I was going to try to sell it. Mike said people buy this shit.”

He hesitated. “It might dry.”

All that pain, and she was left with nothing. Staring at the sopping book, she fought to hold back tears.
Everything I try turns to shit
.

“This is close enough,” she said. “Drop me here.”

He pulled over to the curb and dug into his wallet. He pulled out some yuan and handed them over. “Sorry about…” He nodded at the book.

“Whatever. It’s fine.” Maria found it hard to leave the cocooning wealth of the Tesla. “Sorry about your woman.”

“She wasn’t mine.”

“Thought she must be. Since you kept asking about her.”

He looked away, and for a moment he seemed deeply, shockingly sad. “You can’t save someone who’s trying that hard to get themselves killed.”

“Is that what she was doing?”

“She cared a lot about what she thought was right and wrong. It made her blind. She was looking for trouble.”

“A lot of people are like that,” she said. “Blind, I mean.”

“Some people are, yeah.”

“You’re not.”

“Not normally.”

He said it bitterly. Even if he didn’t admit it out loud, Maria could tell he’d cared about the dead lady.

“Why did you save me?” she asked. “You could have ditched me—way easier.”

The scarred man glanced over, frowning.

For a long moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he said, “Long time ago I was in your shoes. Down in Mexico, you know? Saw something I shouldn’t. Stood this close to a killer.” He indicated the distance between her and him in the car. “I was just a little kid then. Think I might have been eight or ten. I was outside this little bodega down in Guadalajara, and I had an ice cream—”

He paused, staring out through the windshield at the sun-blasted Phoenix boulevard, lost in memory. “This
sicario
—you know
sicario
?—assassin? This
sicario
drops a guy right in front of me. He pulls up in his truck, gets out, walks over, and
bang
—bullet in the face. Five more in the body. Another in the head to make damn sure. And me, I’m just standing there.”

The scarred man was frowning. “And then this motherfucker, he points his gun at me.” He glanced over at her, significantly. “It’s funny, ’cause I can’t remember anything about the
sicario
’s face, but I remember his hands. He had ‘Jesus’ written on his knuckles. I can’t remember anything else about that guy. But I can see his hand, and that gun pointing at me, like it was yesterday.”

The man seemed to shrug off the memory. “Anyway, you were just in the wrong place at the right time. I been there. I wouldn’t leave you there.”

He reached across and opened Maria’s door. “Lie low. Don’t do anything to show up on people’s radar. Don’t go back to where you used to live. Don’t do your old patterns. If you lie low, people will forget about you.”

Maria stared at the man, trying to figure out what he was about. Something in his story mattered to her, though.

The killer’s knuckles…

“The men,” she said. “One of them had a tattoo.”