Vacant (15 page)

The ADA had an objection that had the judge pull both lawyers up to the stand then.

I felt Loyola's mind enter the courtroom and come toward me. He sat down next to me, the wooden benches creaking. He had a small canvas bag, slightly open, that he set on the floor.

I nodded at him; he nodded at me.

“Hi,” Tommy said.

“Hi,” Loyola returned. “What are you doing in here?”

“I wanted to see what's going on,” Tommy said.

Loyola thought about that and then let it go.

“What's going on?” I asked him quietly.

He pulled his bag to the bench next to himself. “I have news,” he said.

After a glance at the action in the front of the courtroom, then back at Tommy, I nodded. Something I needed to know, I assumed, or he wouldn't be interrupting.

Loyola handed me a paper, one labeled P
HONE
T
RANSCRIPT
, a wiretap number, and then a date and time under the letterhead of the ATF, the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Federal Department, the group that Jarrod had said he was coordinating with.

The transcript had someone calling a “special” number at a gun shop and ordering a set of very specific guns three days ago. It was a woman's voice, they said. And the ATF official had written in on the margins that the guns they were ordering were at least five decades old, with restricted parts, and the codes they were using weren't actually
matches to the gun names, though they sounded right. The gun shop hadn't asked for a name or explained the paperwork process to buy a gun, something that legally would take longer than three days. Instead they'd promised to have the order by the end of the week, asked about a silencer, and then quoted an obscene amount of money. “The junior rate,” they'd said. “Partial.” And then they'd set up a meeting place about half an hour outside the city. They'd had to get directions twice.

At the end of the page, a scrawling set of handwriting guessed
Hit? Work for hire of some kind. Flagged too late to tail.

The timing was right for it to be the attack on Tommy. And judging from the military gear and the sloppiness of the attack, a gun shop was a good bet for where they found their customers.

“We'll need you to talk to the gun store owner tonight,” Loyola said to me, very quietly.

I nodded, significantly, a promise. Loyola took the papers back and folded them into his bag.

*   *   *

Jarrod stopped by a small diner to get food, bringing back messy sacks of Reubens and fries. We ate in the car. Tommy was tired but was talking about the trial in a way I thought was probably healthy, considering. He ate more fries than sandwich, but I wasn't his mother and at least it was food. I was tired too, my head hurting from a long, long day trying to monitor far too many minds moving in far too many directions.

“Ready to visit the gun shop?” Jarrod asked me.

I swallowed my bite of the Reuben after chewing a moment. “It's seven o'clock,” I said. “Don't we need to get the kid home?”

“I'm not a kindergartener,” Tommy said. And he was thinking his mom hadn't been in a good mood today in court. He wasn't looking forward to going home.

“It'll be a short trip. He can stay in the car. We've got his comic books,” Jarrod said flatly. “If you're serious about helping with the investigation, I need you to talk to this gun store owner. Thus far the ATF has gotten nothing out of him and I need information.”

I paused, trying to get a feel for whether Tommy was really okay with this. Whether I was really okay with this. A streetlight cast small squares of light onto the inside of the car. It was the only light around, the shadows deep.

“We're leaving now,” Jarrod said, and motioned for Loyola to pull the car out. I took a last bite of the sandwich and packed up the wrappers, mine and Tommy's, in the bag. I cleaned my hands on a napkin and watched the buildings and lights of the city flow past.

You okay?
I asked Tommy.

I'm okay,
he said back awkwardly. It was one of the first times he'd sent a thought to me directly mind-to-mind, without me prompting him. He was coming a long way in a short time, I thought. I was still surprised the Guild hadn't recruited him already. He was new, though, and couldn't hide his exhaustion and overall fear from me.

We moved down a street without streetlights then, and it got dark in the car for a moment.

If you'll follow us and stand around quietly, I'll give you another telepathy lesson tonight,
I told Tommy mind-
to-mind.

He lit up like a lightbulb, happiness and excitement spilling all over everything. I wished I shared his excitement.

Why did I feel like I was lying to him? I intended to do the lesson and everything. I really did. Maybe Cherabino
would have known what was wrong, but I didn't. I'd have to figure all of this out totally on my own.

We drove through several streets in Savannah until we ended up at a long concrete box with bars on the window, which looked rougher than the one (and only) gun shop and range Cherabino had taken me to a few months ago. One lone streetlight sputtered overhead, a half-dead bioluminescent bush in a median in the cracked parking lot looking like it hadn't had any water in years.

The sign above the concrete front said H
ARD
K
NOCKS
in harsh lettering, with a single painted gunshot hole, with a ragged edge.

Mendez and Jarrod went ahead, to introduce themselves to the gun shop owner; I collected myself, finally getting out once I was sure there were no minds around likely to be an issue for Tommy. The surroundings felt . . . too empty actually. Much too empty, though I couldn't put my finger on any particular reason why.

My feet weren't used to dress shoes, and so the blisters of the day rubbed as I walked across the parking lot, low-level distracting pain. I'd had to learn to ignore much worse as part of my Guild training, so it wasn't a deal breaker. I'd have to peel off the socks and treat the things so they didn't get infected later. But the pain was a useful focuser, a useful distraction to keep me thinking about everything in my life that could go wrong.

I felt Tommy's impatience a step behind me. And a sudden burst of emotion from Jarrod in Mindspace ahead, tamped down all too suddenly. I walked in the front door, which they'd already opened, and saw why.

Lying on the floor was someone I presumed was the gun shop owner, shot in the chest at least twice, the blooming blood on his shirt already drying into that funny brown-red, limbs already stiffening in rigor mortis.

“I take it you did not expect a crime scene in here?” I asked Jarrod, blocking Tommy's view of the scene with my body. Just in time, felt like.

“Hey, I want to see,” he said.

“No, you don't,” I said.

Jarrod sighed, and walked over to the wall, where a phone hung.

Once I got
Loyola to watch Tommy in the car, just a few feet away from the gun shop, I convinced Jarrod to let me read the scene.

I dived into Mindspace, stupidly, completely blind, and without an anchor. Cherabino should have been there, should have provided the real-world anchor for me, should have held out that mental hand to keep me grounded and finding my way back. I missed her again suddenly. I missed her being here.

But I was too embarrassed, too self-conscious to ask my new boss—or worse, Loyola—for help in all of this. I'd manage. I'd manage if it killed me. And it might. Mindspace wasn't the safest place in the world.

Swartz would disapprove of foolish risks if asked. He'd also understand the need to feel strong, or at least I hoped he would. We'd doubtlessly be talking about it at length at our next morning coffee meeting.

I took deep breaths, forcing myself to focus. Scattered thoughts were dangerous enough in the real world; in Mindspace, you ran the risk of losing your way or losing yourself, worse still without an anchor. I could do this. I must.

The world grayed out, disappearing into the not-quite sight of a world without light, like the depths of the ocean, or the world of a bat, all reflected waves and heard realities.
I sank deeper, until I saw the rapidly filling in hole where a mind used to be. The death, sitting in the middle of the room above the body. He'd been killed here, but then again I think we'd known that.

I approached the area where I thought the killer should have been standing, the angle of the gun having shot from this end of the space. There—there. I knew that mind.

Sibley.

A frisson of fear overcame me, but I pushed it back. All too easy to get lost in your own fears in Mindspace; Mindspace was receptive, after all, and all too often would help you along the way, would echo your own fears until the feedback loop shut you down. If you let it. If you were powerful enough, and sadly I was just that powerful.

I breathed, deeply, in and out, letting the real world of my body and my lungs intrude here until I calmed.

A small spot here. Near the satisfied mind brimming over with the gunshots, with the violent control. With the win. But there—there—was that small spot. An aberration. A fuzzy blob where, like the water around a rock in a stream, Mindspace had moved around something here.

Sibley had his gadget, the thing that had controlled me the last time I'd seen him. He had it now, and all my worries would be for nothing if he brought it and I couldn't counter its influence. I'd stayed up late several nights trying to figure it out, trying to come up with a counter. I was out of time.

I surfaced, fear trailing after me like smoke in air.

Last time we met, he'd almost killed me. And worse, that thing—that sphere he held, taken from the research of a Guild girl who'd thrown her lot in with Fiske—had made him able to control me. He'd tell me to jump and I jumped, literally, unable to keep my mind, my body from obeying. It was crude, suggestibility only, nothing specific, but if I
couldn't counter it, he could come right up to me on the street and tell me to give him Tommy, and maybe I would.

I'd have to figure out a way to stop this thing in its tracks, and soon.

My heart sped up, and I surfaced out of Mindspace only just, only barely escaping my own fear.

*   *   *

I told Jarrod what I'd found, holding back the machine but telling him about Sibley. Jarrod made a thoughtful face. A face, and some floating diffuse thoughts, and nothing else. “I need to make some more phone calls,” he said. “We need to be able to track this guy's movements.”

“Do you think you really can?” I asked.

“I don't know. The ATF's guy tracked him back to a meeting with three local toughs he's apparently hired. They've got something in the works, but right now we're a step behind.”

“Oh,” I said. I didn't know what to add, or how to add it. I didn't know if I could even talk about the device without starting a major incident with the Guild or worse.

But I knew what I was going to do. I knew what I had to do, to stop the vision from happening and have some chance to get back to Cherabino in time. I knew what I had to do to survive this.

My priority was Tommy and his safety, so Loyola and I were sent from the crime scene back to the house along with Sridarin, who worked for the sheriff and whom I hadn't spent much time with, since he was guarding the judge.

After we checked in with all the major players and his mom said hello, Tommy asked me about the lesson.

“In a little while,” I said.

“You said tonight. My bedtime's in an hour,” he said.

“I know. I'll hurry,” I said. “I have to work.”

He made a nasty face then and slunk down to his room, thinking I was just like all the other stupid grown-ups.

It hurt, not only the reflected emotional thing from him, but it hurt me to be put in a category with all the adults in his life who had failed him. I wasn't that guy. I didn't want to be that guy. But if I had a snowball's chance in hell of keeping the vision from happening, there were certain things I had to do.

I dialed the number to the Guild's public relations office by heart. Kara's number. Kara was my ex-fiancée, currently married to someone else. She was one of the few people in the world in a position to get me what I needed—if she would. She also owed me from a few months ago.

She picked up. “Hello?”

“You work too many hours,” I said, “and this is coming from someone who works with workaholics.”

Kara made that clicking sound with her teeth I found so annoying. “No one asked you to criticize me. If you're calling about the debt, I swear there's nothing I can do. The Guild is changing its credit policies to increase cash reserves. That's applying to everyone—including the rank and file. If anything, you're getting a better deal than most.”

I paused. Wait. This wasn't just a specific attack against me? “What in the world does the Guild need a ton of cash for?” I asked, a chill going down my spine. Probably another Guild First warmonger position; I'd run into their radical ideas a few months ago when I worked for the Guild to pay off a large portion of my debt working a murder case. At Kara's request.

She sighed. “You know I can't comment on that.”

It bothered the crap out of me. Whatever was going on could not bode well for the normals, or probably for me. The Guild amassing cash reserves—on top of all the other
Guild First crap—wasn't good for anyone. But I had a hell of a lot on my plate already without adding that to the mix.

“Was there anything else, Adam?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I was calling out of the goodness of my heart to let you know about a potential problem the Guild should be dealing with.”

“What's going on?”

I looked around the darkened house. No one was here immediately to overhear, and I was pretty sure they weren't recording outgoing conversations, not with the conversation we'd had the other day, and not with the judge so resentful of their presence anyway. But still . . . “I'm not on a secure line.”

“Okay . . .” She trailed off. “You asking me to Jump somewhere?” She sounded tired. Teleportation across distance took up a lot of energy, and she hadn't been a courier in years, I knew. Plus, it was late.

“Not necessarily,” I said. “You remember when we were talking about boxes back in August?” That was the code we'd used to talk about some Guild technology that was missing from their storage, technology too illegal and politically dangerous to be discussed directly. Sibley's device was a different technology from a different batch, but I was hoping she would understand the code anyway.

A pause while she thought about it. “The boxes that were missing from the vault?”

“Exactly,” I said. “And then there was the very tiny box that you showed me in that holding cell, with Stone there, remember?”

“Um, the one that they made after telling me they wouldn't? The one the family got very upset over?”

“Upset” was an understatement; there had nearly been a Guild war over the device she'd shown me then, that device
and the lack of communication on the highest levels of the Guild Council. Not that I rated Council access now.

“That's the one,” I said. “I think I told you about a similar box that Sibley had?”

“Who's Sibley?” she asked.

“Remember when I almost got strangled to death?”

“No.”

“Anyway, he works for Fiske, who I know you know about. The box . . . well, it's one of those trick puzzle boxes. You press a button and it . . . well, it ‘marnififes.'”

She paused. “As in . . . ?”

“Yes.” Marnifife wasn't an actual word; it was the verb form of a guy's name, Marny Fife, who at the beginning of the Guild was famous for influencing other people's thoughts and behaviors with coercive thought waves. It was against everything the Cooperist ethical system believed in, but it was still taught to schoolchildren as an example of what not to do. It was cheating, and coercive, and did not treat other minds with the respect due them as human beings. But it was effective, at least when Marny Fife did it. Kara and I and our school friends had used the term for anyone outside the ethical lines, but it still had enough of its old meaning, hopefully for her to understand.

“The box itself marnififes? And the people around it . . . ?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, exactly.”

“Oh.” The word dropped like a bomb. She understood.

“I need you to look up the plans for the one you have in custody and get me the combination that will keep it from working,” I said. “I'm not against a physical intervention to break the thing, but I really need a counter to it, or something to gum up the works. I'm in a situation . . . I can't be marnififed,” I said awkwardly. “I swear I won't share the
information any further, but you guys can't afford to have these things on the loose any more than I can.”

“Enforcement will want to get involved.”

“We're in the middle of a high-profile case all over the media,” I said. “In my opinion, sending a bunch of goons in Guild uniforms will cause more harm than good.”

“You could be right. But here's the thing. If I send you a counter, certain parties here won't be happy. It makes the box in question useless. And you know I can't stall on this kind of information forever. It will come out, and I will have to answer to my superiors.”

“I won't spread the information. You know me well enough to know that. And honestly, Kara, you've never liked this tactic anyway. It's not Cooperist. It's not Cooperist at all, and considering who has their hands on it right now, the Guild would be better off lopping off the head of this thing completely.”

“Are you suggesting we take steps against normal criminals?” she said in a very flat tone.

“No, I'm suggesting nothing of the kind. That would be a Koshna violation,” I said. It would violate the treaty that gave the Guild the right to rule itself, and considering the level of fear in the normals against the Guild right now, it might erupt into war. I'd been against this level of mind-technology ever since I found out about it; it violated the letter and the spirit of that treaty. But exposing the Guild wouldn't get me anywhere either, and I had the feeling if the Guild showed up in force I'd lose the FBI job, which I needed.

I sighed. “Hold off on the force, okay? I'm trying to play this as well as I can. I'm giving you the information and my best impression on how to resolve this to both our best interests. I will likely come face-to-face with this on my own; best-case scenario is that I take care of it quietly and
either destroy the thing or return it to you. But you have to give me the ability to do that. I promise I will coordinate with you when this all is over with my best information about where to find it if it gets away.”

She clicked her teeth again and made a little frustrated sound. “You keep putting me in impossible situations.”

“Considering the recent adventures at the Guild, I really wouldn't complain,” I said. Her request had put me in a series of ever-escalating situations that had nearly cost me my Ability and my life. It was over now, but I wasn't exactly happy over the cost. “Whether you acknowledge a debt or not, I did you a favor, a big favor that nearly cost me everything. I'd suggest you find a way to help me now.”

I felt bad as soon as the words were out of my mouth. I didn't want to be that guy, the guy who played hardball to get anything done. I didn't want to be my father, who didn't care who he had to hurt as long as he won his court case and his client succeeded. I didn't want to be that guy. But apparently right now I had to be.

Kara didn't seem to respond as well to niceness, not now, not when her agenda for the Guild and all its complicated layers won out over me and my favors every time.

She was silent.

“I'm not asking this time,” I said. “I'm telling you, get me the counter to this thing. It does neither one of us any good if it takes me out and the case goes bad in public. Worse if some idiot figures out why. That benefits the Guild not at all.”

After a moment, she said, “I don't like it when you're like this.”

It hurt me, but I said nothing. It would maybe save my life, and Tommy's life, to get this thing. So her hurt feelings didn't matter, couldn't matter, in that grand scheme.

She sighed. “I'll call you back tomorrow with a counter. Give me a number.”

I did, and hung up, feeling guilty. But I'd gotten what I'd picked up the phone to get.

*   *   *

I found Tommy in his room. Guilt still hung around me like atomized cologne, and probably would for a week yet, but I'd do what I had to do to keep that vision from happening. To keep my promises. Starting with this one.