Tracers (8 page)

Cam glared at him. “Well, given my limited options, I'm gonna have to go with
quit.
I told you, I found a second job. You know I need the money.”

“And I'm telling you, go ahead and consider it your
only
job,” Lonnie snapped, before calling out for a messenger to deliver a hot run to 48th and Lex.

“Thanks a lot, Lon,” Cam said, walking away. A young guy Cam didn't know was biking up to the counter to pick up the run Lonnie had announced, but, as he reached out for the package, he lost control of his bike and wiped out right in front of Lonnie and Cam. “I can see why you'd be so anxious to get rid of me,” Cam added.

Lonnie didn't say anything, and Cam walked back out to the street. He kept going for a few blocks, wondering how much money he should let himself spend on lunch. The growling in his stomach was definitely calling out for more than two hot dogs, which was his usual budget. He headed toward Walker Street, where there was a pretty decent/cheap noodle house. An Asian man jumped in front of him as he walked—only his recently-sharpened-by-parkour reflexes kept him from running into the guy.

“Take a look, many nice things,” he said, motioning to a pair of tables. The man was incredibly short—he came only to Cam's chin, and Cam wasn't exactly tall.

He took a step back away from the little guy. “Some sales technique,” he told him. He was feeling surly after Lonnie's dismissal. “Knocking people over isn't gonna make them want to buy your crap.”

“No crap!” The man looked highly offended. “Quality merchandise. I have store—down Cortlandt Alley. You have seen, maybe? Nice place. Landlord is a bastard—raise the rent too high. Now all my nice items for sale here, under the sky.” The strange little man gestured upward, then performed a sort of bow.

Cam chuckled. In spite of himself, he felt bad for the guy. Some fat cat probably
had
raised his rent higher than he could pay. After all, the same thing had happened to his mom at least twice.

He shrugged and walked over to the guy's tables. “So what have you got?” Cam asked, more out of pity than anything else.

“Many nice things!” The man's face broke into such a wide smile that Cam realized he was going to
have
to buy something.

That was the problem with showing a shred of human decency, sometimes. It was hard to stop at just one shred.

The first table was filled with ceramic pots, mugs, candle holders, and other tchotchkes. Cam kept walking and looked at the second table, which was covered in jewelry. For some reason, one of the necklaces caught his eye. It was a silver pendant: a tiny little bird in a fancy cage, suspended on a long, thin silver chain. It reminded him right away of Nikki. That trapped look she'd had under the jungle gym, maybe. Or maybe it was the way she never seemed to feel free to say what she really wanted to say.

“How much for this?” he asked the man.

“I make you good deal. Thirty-five.”

“I can do twenty,” Cam told him, knowing the guy had aimed high. It was probably worth closer to ten, but now he was feeling charitable.

The man pretended to think it over, then nodded and began wrapping up the necklace. He dropped it into a tiny canvas bag decorated with little green leaves. Cam handed him the cash.

“Thank you so very much,” the man said, bowing again. Cam thought he saw tears in his eyes. Cam nodded and hustled away before he gave the guy any more of the money that technically belonged to Chen.

That was the thing about this city. You could be walking along, just hoping for some lunch, minding your own business, and something right there on the sidewalk could break your heart.

FOR THE REST
of the day, Cam kept the bird pendant stuffed in his pocket, and the confusion Nikki made him feel locked up in that box in his mind. He needed to get some sleep in case Miller called with a job, as he'd hinted he might. Cam told himself that if he could get clear of his debt, maybe then he could go back to trying to figure out the Nikki puzzle.

The call he'd been waiting for came at five o'clock that afternoon, and just like that, Cam was in.
Breaking
in—getting his feet wet with a little felony B and E. They'd picked him up just after three in the morning and driven him out to a remote part of Long Island. Now he and Dylan were rushing through the dark, past rows of metal cages. They were moving fast (extreme speed being the best skill on Cam's résumé), but not so fast that he didn't see the sign that hung above the cages:
SUFFOLK COUNTY FEDERAL E
VIDENCE LOCKER.

It was a safe bet the cops would have zero sense of humor about anything taken from this place. So Cam tried to block everything out of his mind except for following Dylan's lead: fast and silent. They accessed the building through a maintenance shaft in the roof.

He wondered briefly how Miller had even known this place was
here.
From the outside, the building looked like an old, abandoned manufacturing plant: peeling gray paint and dirty, broken windows, some boarded up, some just crisscrossed with duct tape. The inside was a vast warehouse crammed with row after row of huge metal shelves. Dylan dropped down from the rafters next to a shelf marked with the number 921, and Cam followed, landing in a crouch, as much like a silent cat as he could manage. He envied people like Miller and Nikki, who were thinner than he was, more graceful. Cam was more compact and muscular. Probably no one would ever call him catlike.

Cam forced himself to focus. Although the actual words his brain used were
stop thinking about Nikki, you moron.

Dylan tapped his shoulder, pointing to a security camera. Cam felt a stab of cold fear in his stomach, but then he realized the camera was pointed down at the floor. He didn't stop to wonder why anyone would record the floor; he just kept following Dylan down the row of shelves. Each item was tagged with its own yellow sticker.

Cam scanned the numbers on the first shelf, moving fast, then spotted the number they were looking for: 6453. A small box sealed with yellow tape. Cam thrust the box inside his backpack, then shrugged his shoulders back into the straps. Just then a small beam of light passed over their heads: a guard's flashlight. They melted into the darkness inside the cage, behind the first row of shelves, barely breathing. Cam felt another stab of cold fear. He closed his eyes and for a few moments it was like he'd traveled outside his body. He was in the past; his bare feet cold on the concrete floor of his cell back in Otisville. He heard one of the guard's belligerent voices bark his name.

Cam's mind snapped back to the present. He could not go back there. He had to stay focused. The flashlight's beam became more distinct as it came closer, the sound of footsteps accompanying the light. They heard the crackle of the guard's radio, then the man grunted, “All clear.” In a few moments, the light was gone, and the footsteps faded into the distance.

They surged forward, headed back the way they had come, but another crackle of the radio and a brighter beam of light sent them flat onto the concrete floor.

“Base to walker, you check the East Hall?”

Cam felt his pulse jump at the sound of the voice over the radio, echoing loud in the quiet warehouse.

“Roger. All clear.”

“I got movement down there,” the voice on the radio shot back. “I'm headed your way.”

Dylan motioned to Cam, and they both began the silent crawl away from the guards' voices. They kept moving, shimmied up a support beam, then swung back up into the rafters. Cam allowed himself one quick look down. The clueless guards were shining their flashlights everywhere
except
above their heads.

Cam followed Dylan out of the hatch in the roof they'd used to enter the building, gasping as he let himself really exhale for the first time in what felt like hours. Dylan turned to smile at him. “Good job.”

Cam nodded, smiling back, not letting himself think of anything beyond Dylan's words. They
were
out. He had done a good job. They were walking across the roof, Cam's breath returning to normal, but then he saw Dylan tense ahead of him. That's when the three men in masks came out of the darkness. They were on the other side of the roof, moving fast. Cam saw that at least one of them was holding a gun. His throat closed, and his heart sped up again. But again he closed his eyes and forced himself to stay in control. A strange feeling of detached calm came over him.

He'd always been able to do this—step a little outside himself, and just solve the problem.

He and Dylan both started running—by unspoken agreement, heading in two different directions. Cam scrambled for the edge, vaulting over to the next building like his life depended on it. Which maybe it did.

Two guys pursued Dylan—leaving one following Cam. But one was more than enough. The guy was fast. And he had a gun. Cam cleared his mind of everything except the path ahead. He crossed the neighboring building in seconds, vaulting onto the next one; then he spotted the fire escape and used his traction to hurtle himself down onto a balcony. He tried the double doors; he was shocked when one opened, but didn't stop to bask in the good luck—just kept sprinting, full out, through an abandoned food court, between the tables and chairs, coming up short before a sudden drop to the next level. He almost tripped on a folding plastic warning sign:
WET FLOOR
.
Thanks a lot,
he thought. But then he was hit with a sudden inspiration—he threw the plastic sign under his feet like a skateboard and rode it down the escalator.

The vibrations of the flat plastic on the ridged metal traveled through his bones; even his teeth rattled. But Cam still grinned on the way down. If he was about to be caught and sent to jail—or worse—at least he was going out with a stunt fit for a freaking cartoon superhero.

As the sign hit the floor, Cam jumped off, his legs hitting the ground hard, like a pair of stilts striking the concrete. He was barely able to stay on his feet. He heard the masked guy's heels pounding away behind him, so Cam picked up speed, sprinting across the empty store. He vaulted over a turnstile and flew out a pair of glass doors onto the street. It was starting to hurt to breathe—he felt spikes of pain attack his lungs—but he didn't slow down.

The sound of running was still behind him. He could not shake this guy.

He didn't know who the masked guy was—he couldn't be a cop. But whoever he was, once he caught Cam, he'd have the package. And Cam's short-lived career with Miller would be over.

His first foray back into the criminal world was already going down the drain. He should have known better. His mother's face appeared in his mind's eye, and—not surprisingly—she was frowning. All she'd wanted for him was something
else.
She'd wanted him to
not
become his dad.

Inside his head, he whispered,
I'm sorry
, to his mother. Then he looked around the street for a possible escape route. There'd be plenty of time for apologizing to ghosts if he ended up becoming one himself.

But then: headlights. A van was headed his way. Cam leapt and managed to perch precariously on the back bumper of the van, holding on tight as it pulled away from whoever the man in the mask was.

The cold air washed over him like a baptism. He'd started a new life as a successful criminal—he hoped. He felt the relief start to flow through him.

Cam stayed on the van until he'd put a couple of miles between him and the scene of crime. He jumped down and crouched low, out of sight. Cam checked his pack to make sure the box had made it through the chase without falling out or getting crushed. He made his way to the pickup spot, which thanks to the ride he'd hitched was just a few blocks away. Then he checked his watch, trying to will time to move faster toward the rendezvous Miller had set. Now that he'd gotten away, he just wanted this first job to be over. He wondered if Dylan had managed to shake his two pursuers.

• • •

Dawn was creeping in as Cam heard the tires crunch slowly toward his hiding place, nearly half an hour later. He checked his surroundings before crossing the street to meet the others. But it wasn't Miller's Escalade coming toward him—it was a white van. The back door was thrown open, and the masked figure he thought he'd shaken appeared behind him, and shoved him inside.

At first, Cam was too shocked to struggle—he'd been so sure he'd shaken the guy.

The van had come to a stop. Now he lay on his back on the floor, as Mask and three of his also-masked friends crowded around him, holding him down. Mask still had his gun, which was now pointed at Cam.

Cam struggled to get free, but it soon became clear that struggling was pointless.

Confusion was racing through him, but it was hard to think straight with a gun in his face.

“Hey,” he protested, trying to move away from the gun.

“Shut up!” Mask barked.

“Don't,” Cam heard himself say.

One of the others pulled the pack from his back, almost yanking his right arm from its socket in the process. Cam ground his teeth, not wanting to give them the satisfaction of yelping in pain. Mask ripped open the bag, pulling out the box. “Who do you work for?” he demanded, digging his weapon into the side of Cam's neck.

“No one.”

“
Who?
” Mask demanded again, moving the gun upward so that it pressed into Cam's temple.

“Get off me!”

“What's in the box?”

“Nothing,” Cam spit out. “I don't know what's in it.”

The gun pressed harder into his temple. It was starting to seriously hurt. It was weird, but the man in the mask seemed almost to be smiling. He lowered his voice and asked again, this time in a menacing hiss, “Who do you work for?”

Cam stared back at him in stony silence.

He'd thought, for a few brief, shining moments, that he was safe. Later, he'd have time to wallow in self-pity. At the moment, he was just plain pissed off.

“You tell me what's in the box or I'm gonna blow your brains out. How about that?”

Cam glared mutinously. “I. Just. Carried. The. Box.” Bastard. He didn't say that last part out loud, since he didn't actually have a death wish.

For a few seconds, the dark eyes of the man in the mask stared into his. Cam closed his eyes. This was probably it for him. Sort of a fitting end, really. At least he'd gotten to pull that great trick with the
WET FLOOR
sign before he checked out.

I'm sorry, Mom.
Those seemed like fitting last words, even if he could only say them inside his head.

Then he felt the metal of the gun lift away from his face. Someone patted him on the shoulder.

“Good work, Cam.”

The man pulled off his mask: it was Miller.

The other masks came off to reveal Dylan, Tate, and Jax, all laughing.

Cam had lost sight of the gun, which was probably a good thing because his mood had just turned murderous.

“Hey, it's all right, buddy.” Miller smiled at him. “We just had to make sure you had our backs. You're family now.” He offered Cam a hand, since he was still lying on the floor of the van. “What do you think?”

Cam sat up on his own. “I think you're a bunch of jerks.”

More laughs. Cam let out the breath he'd been holding, stared at them for a few seconds, and then for some reason he started laughing too.

He was maybe just feeling relief, but it did feel good to laugh. And also: not being dead felt good too.

• • •

The jerks, all except Miller, took him out for pancakes. Initiation with a gun to your head, followed by a hearty breakfast. Cam suggested that they should make that the group's
slogan—maybe get T-shirts made.

Jax agreed: “Yeah, good way to recruit.”

Dylan threw a napkin at Jax's head. “Just how many folks you think Miller's looking to recruit?” he asked.

“Well, maybe we should get another girl. You know, for Niks,” Jax answered.

“For me, huh? Thanks, Jaxy. You're a real gentleman.”

Cam's head shot up and his eyes met Nikki's. He started to get up to make room for her, but he was too slow; her brother had already hopped out and grabbed himself a chair. Dylan pulled it up to the end of the booth and Nikki slid in across from Cam.

“So you passed,” she observed, without really meeting Cam's eyes.

“Guess so,” he said, looking down at the remains of his breakfast. She'd left him in the rain. Or he'd left her first before she could. Whatever. He wasn't sure how happy he was to see her.

“Yeah, pay up,” Dylan demanded.

Cam glared at Nikki. “You bet against me?” His voice came out a little too high-pitched. He
was
sure how he felt about the possibility that Nikki hadn't thought he'd pass his test. In a word: pissed.

Nikki's eyes widened. “No!” Cam watched the blush spread over her cheeks.

Tate put a wad of bills in Dylan's outstretched hand and gave Cam a shrug. “Nothing personal, brother. I thought you'd probably crack. The gun and all . . .”

“I probably would've taken that bet,” Cam said, letting him off the hook. “I am sort of fond of my head,” he added.

“Me too.”

Cam's head swiveled toward Nikki. He didn't quite believe his ears. She'd said it so quietly, he couldn't even be sure he'd heard it. Dylan must not have—he was busy calling the waitress back over to take his sister's order.

“What do you want?” Dylan asked her.