Vacant (28 page)

“People who get too clever must be dealt with,” Fiske said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “Forcing the judge to destroy her own career seemed ever so much more fun than doing it myself, as I said. Not to mention I get to see the local news commenting on her perfidy as we speak. She is ruined, and I get to watch. And it leaves us here, with this little game between us. You made the mistake of getting attached to the boy. I do so love it when opponents make mistakes. Without you, I likely would have returned him today.”

“So he's still in danger, and it's my fault.” I closed my eyes. “You want me to destroy myself the way that the judge did. That's why you sent me the vial.”

“Very good, Mr. Ward. And thus far you seem to have passed up my little temptation. Good for you, and I mean that. I have every confidence that it won't last, however. Once an addict, always an addict, is that not what your
precious Twelve Steps program says? How delightful you've given me a second hold over you now. Tommy is such a delightful little boy, is he not?”

I felt like he'd stabbed me with a serrated knife in the heart, and was twisting it, twisting it. “What do you want?” I asked, barely with it enough to do anything but react. But I had one chance to get through this. “What will it take to get Tommy out of there alive?”

“Ah,” he said, the sound of a shark admiring a particularly lovely prey trapped against the reef. “I see it's time to enter the choice portion of our little discussion.”

I reached out without thinking about it, to Tommy, just to try to connect one more time. After all the failures, however, somehow this time it worked.

I was suddenly in two places at once, in a moldy barn full of hay, and on the sidewalk, a phone receiver pressed to my ear. My internal eyes struggled to see both at once.

“The lady or the tiger,” I heard Fiske say, as if far away. “Shall we see what you will choose?”

I looked around at the barn, as if with a sense of inevitability. Thin, winter-clear sunlight pooled around me in watercolor streaks, the imprecision coming from the odd connection with Tommy.

With a thought, I was outside the kid, looking at him, while at the side Sibley stood near a phone, waiting.

“Are you listening, Mr. Ward?” Fiske asked.

“Yes, yes, I'm listening,” I said. I didn't know what I'd missed, and my heart lurched. I was going to lose track of this. I was going to lose Tommy, or Cherabino, or myself, or all three.

“What do you choose?”

“You have to give me more information about the choice,” I said, hoping I didn't give away how lost I felt,
torn between two realities. Fiske would take full advantage, I knew.

“I know you are stalling. I can reinstate your partner in her job with minor consequences. All it takes is a phone call to our dear mayor, and from him to the commissioner. In exchange, Sibley will visit you some dark night and strangle you to death. You won't know when. You will have at least a few weeks to anticipate the blow.”

“Sibley will have to go back to jail,” I said, grasping at straws.

“Perhaps. Perhaps. I do have other enforcers, Mr. Ward. So what will it be? You give up your own life in exchange for your partner's career? As you watch the ticking time clock on your life run out? Sibley has said your fear was particularly strong when he strangled you. This time he won't stop. He'll take his time, and perhaps he will take a recording to amuse me.”

I thought about agreeing, as horrible as that was. I seriously, truly thought about it. But Sibley . . . I couldn't sign up for that, one of my worst fears, when I didn't know when it was coming. And Cherabino would kill me herself if she ever found out I'd gotten her job back from Fiske. She'd spent years on a task force to take him out, not to play nice.

But how to say it? This was the time at which Swartz would probably say I should pray. So I threw up an intention to whatever Higher Power that was listening, and hoped it might help.

My heart was beating in my chest like a drum.

“Time is ticking, Mr. Ward.”

“What will it take to free Tommy?” I spat out, voice thin and breathless. I couldn't believe I was saying no. I couldn't believe I was letting him destroy everything Cherabino loved. But I couldn't just agree, not knowing what it
would mean for that kid who'd trusted me to keep him safe. “How does that choice affect the kid?”

Fiske laughed then, and I didn't like the sound. “Very good, Mr. Ward. You cannot have both.”

I forced myself to breathe, and thought of Tommy. I had to, or I would fall apart. I would do anything for Cherabino, anything. I would crawl over glass for her . . . but that vision, that vision that had haunted me for months. I couldn't turn my back on that kid either. Then, like a switch, my mind connected with Tommy's again, and I was back in that barn, with the old, moldy hay. I could feel his fear, his fast-beating heart as he stared at Sibley.

Adam?
he said, shock in his mind.
Is that you?

I'm here, Tommy. I'm here. I'm so sorry we haven't found you yet.

I felt him think, and then a rush of words I didn't catch. The Link was light, and I was strained already.

I was back in my own mind listening to Fiske say, “If you go silent again, I will shoot your partner in the head.”

“I'm getting tired of threats,” I said, tired, stupid in my tiredness and fear, well past any sense of self-preservation. “Let's assume for a moment that I'm doing the best I can to manage a very tired mind. And that I believe you absolutely in what you're promising. What is the second choice?” I asked him. “What is the deal for Tommy's life?”

He paused for a long moment. “I ought to kill you for talking back to me.”

“But you'd rather not. You'd rather not kill me, or you would have done so already. Isn't it more fun to torture me with possibilities, to hold things over my head? Where would the fun be if I just rolled over and gave you what you wanted?”

Another long pause.

“I'm right, aren't I? The torture part is working, and it's
working well for you so far. Why not just tell me how the rest of the game goes?”

He made a thoughtful sound, and I tried to reach out to Tommy again, not as deep, just enough so he'd know I was there and help was on the way.

Fiske said then, “You're right. If I wanted you dead, you would be dead already. The rest of the game is simple. I know you have a connection to the boy, psychically. You were Minding him, after all. I'd suggest you connect to him again.”

“It will take me a second,” I lied.

“Take your time.” A tinge of sarcasm in that voice, a tinge of frustration, but still that quality, that confidence that made me think I still had him, or he had me. Either way, he wasn't hanging up the phone.

And I did—I strengthened that connection with Tommy.

I'll stay with you as long as I can,
I said.

“Are you in place, Mr. Ward?”

“I'm here,” I said. “Tommy is scared.”

“Wonderful. He's not a fool, unlike his mother.”

Tommy asked,
What do I need to do?

“Wh-wh-what was the choice?” I asked Fiske, finding myself very weak in that moment, knowing I was out of time.

“You are a very perceptive man, Mr. Ward. Since you came into my home and destroyed a person in my employ, I too will come into your world and destroy something that you love. You have a choice—this boy here or your loyalty.”

“What?”

“It truly doesn't matter to me. You, as I, share this idea of keeping your word, so far as it goes. You promise to do an unspecified favor for me, in the next two months. There will be a watch counting down this time, a watch with a tracking device I can read. If at any time you take off this
watch, I will know it and our deal will be over. You will not like what happens if our deal is over.”

“What favor?” I asked.

“Ah, ah, ah. Nothing so easy on your end. I will have you do something you very much do not want to do. It won't be against your partner, or your sponsor, but against someone else—anyone else. You will do whatever I tell you to do, promptly, because I asked.”

“Why?”

“Because it amuses me to take from you the one thing you value more than your partner values her job—your integrity, Mr. Ward. You've had it a handful of years now and you value it highly. You have thirty seconds to make your decision.”

“You have to give me more time. Please, Fiske, you have to give me more time.” I moved closer to Tommy, staying there, trying to offer whatever comfort I could. The air was cold, the sunlight thin, and I smelled the old moldy hay and horse droppings like they were right there next to me.

Tommy's mind held on to mine, shivering.
How do I get away?
he asked me, small and scared.

Sibley was leaning against the post now and glanced at the phone. Clearly he was waiting for Fiske to call.

“You have to give me more time,” I repeated, my own voice small.

“I have to do nothing I don't want to do.” Fiske's tone was smug, amused, everything that made me want to destroy him.

How do I get away?
Tommy asked me, and he struggled on the chair.

Be still,
I heard Sibley's voice sound, and that overwhelming force of that device I couldn't see came over Tommy. He was still.

I didn't see a way out. I didn't see a way out at all.

“If you do not promise to do what I say, Sibley will kill him,” Fiske said, still in that obscenely happy voice. “He will kill him and you will watch. You deserve this, after all. You deserve to be put in your place after you made this personal.”

I couldn't bear to leave Tommy here, or to watch him die. Cherabino wouldn't have a job tomorrow, maybe, but he'd said nothing about killing her if I played fair. I took a breath and said, as vulnerable as I was, “Kill me instead.” My voice shook. “I can't watch this. He's just a boy. Kill me instead. Leave them both and kill me instead.” I closed my eyes. “You get everything you want that way. You know that I signed up for it. You know that I destroyed myself. You even get to watch.”

“No, you don't get to be self-sacrificing today,” Fiske said to me over the phone, the receiver a heavy weight in my ear as I watched Sibley through the boy's eyes. “I will make you suffer through the results of your actions. I will make you make a choice. Which is it, the boy or our deal?”

“What if I choose Cherabino?” I asked, out of nowhere, not even sure where that question came from.

“Ah, a moral dilemma. How sweet.”

“Please, I need to think,” I said. He was putting me in an impossible decision, worse than the Guild had done just a few months ago, worse than when they'd threatened me with death—

And that was it. My way out.

“You have no more time, Mr. Ward.”

I knew what I needed to do. I knew! But I needed time, and the only way to get it was to play along, to eat my pride. “I beg you, Fiske,” I said in the smallest, most pathetic voice I could. It burned to do this, but if it would save Tommy, I'd do it. “I beg you. Please don't make me do this. The choice . . . I need more time. Please give me more time. Please. Please.”

“Ah, how the mighty have fallen. I do so love to hear a grown man beg.” His voice was smug, self-satisfied. “You have twenty minutes, Mr. Ward. I am very serious. On the first second of the twenty-first minute, if I have not heard a satisfactory decision from you at this number, Sibley will strangle your adorable little charge to death. But of course, do take your time.”

I heard a
dial tone and I hung up the phone. Knees weak, I sat down—on the stone path of the park. In the distance, I could hear the sound of a fountain running, birds chirping. The old stately oaks waving overhead in the breeze.

My hands shook. I wanted to throw up, to run, to fall off the face of the planet and get away from here. Anywhere but here.

But I had twenty minutes, and I'd better make them count.

I grabbed for the phone receiver.

“Stone?” I said the instant he picked up. “If you've ever in your life wanted to be a hero, now's your chance. I have a ten-year-old boy who is going to die in”—I looked at my watch—“eighteen minutes if we don't do something fast.”

Three heartbeats went by. Then Stone said, “What do you need?”

I took a breath of deep relief. “Okay. I need you and a teleporter who can carry at least two additional people at least a hundred miles here as quickly as you humanly can. I'm in Savannah, so that's at least two Jumps.”

“Why me?” he asked.

“You saved my bacon once already against this guy. It's the strangler we faced last year. Bring guns,” I said. “And be prepared to deal with coercion.”

Another few heartbeats and he said, “You're lucky I have your number on a priority flag. I'll be there in less than ten minutes.”

I closed my eyes. “Faster if you can do it.”

“Already moving. We'll talk about procedure later.” And he hung up the phone.

*   *   *

I found a small bench maybe ten feet away from the pay phone and sat, watching the seemingly peaceful park around me. Every second felt like one less second on a ticking time bomb. I pulled out the paper from the puzzle box and put it in my pocket. In my slacks pocket was another piece of paper, this one folded several times.

I pulled it out. That's right—Quentin had given me his number. I stood back up and dialed the number. I couldn't just sit there.

But the phone rang and rang, and no one picked up. I left an awkward message with no return number asking him to be on alert and close by to the phone, and sat back down.

The next seven minutes were the longest of my life.

Finally—finally—I felt Stone connect to the tag in my brain, and a
wrench
as he or someone else used it to triangulate for a Jump.

The world turned upside down, and then the air
popped
out in a small explosion. Standing in front of me were two people, Edgar Stone and a smaller blond woman who looked very much like him. I could feel her effort; she sat on the ground without shame. Stone pulled out a thermos and handed it to her. A milk shake, his mind supplied. Highest-calorie thing one could drink quickly. And she did, gulping it down through the attached straw as quickly as possible.

Teleportation took a hell of a lot of energy, and to make
the four-hour groundcar drive to Savannah in less than ten minutes—at least two to three Jumps—was impressive by itself, much less with another human in tow. If Kara had done that, she'd have lost pounds of body fat and days of function. I'd seen it happen. Adding calories to the mix just seemed wise.

“Thank you for coming,” I said.

Stone straightened. “You'd better not be exaggerating. This is my twin sister, Margaret. She can tow me anywhere, but you're going to be another issue.”

Margaret waved a hand at me from the ground.

“That's how you've been disappearing all over the place!” I said. “She Jumped you out. That's kind of impossible, you know.”

“We know,” Margaret said from the floor, taking a break from the milk shake.

“How long left?” Stone asked. “What's the timeline?” He knocked on my brain. If he was really going to do more for me, he needed to know the truth.

“We have eight minutes before the call,” I said, and dropped all my shields. He took the information off the surface of my mind but didn't push deeper.

“How the hell did you get in this situation in the first place?” he asked me.

“I'll explain later,” I said. “You know I'm telling the truth. That's what matters. You have a gun?”

“Yes,” Stone said. He sent some kind of mental communication to Margaret.

“Well, then. Let's save the boy. Give me forty seconds,” Margaret said, setting the now-empty cup on the ground. She breathed in, deep calming ritual breaths. “You have a location?”

“It's a very fragile partial mind-link,” I said. “But he's
in a wide-open area, so anything in the vicinity should be safe.”

Margaret shook her head. “That's going to be tricky. Your timeline is ridiculous.”

“We have to try,” I said. “I have to try.” And if I failed, I'd call Fiske back and agree, and deal with the consequences later.

“Okay,” Margaret said, and stood. “I'm pretty mind-deaf, so Edgar's going to need to do the heavy lifting on the Link. If you can get me to the location mentally, I can Jump there. We've done this in drills plenty of times. Oh, and be aware. This many Jumps this quickly, I'm probably out of it when we arrive. If I'm sleeping, let me sleep, okay?”

I nodded and held out hands. Stone grabbed one, Margaret the other, and they held each other's remaining hand, a triangle made of people. I'd do anything—anything—to save Tommy if I could, so I dropped every shield I had.

Stone walked into my mind, focused, and I showed him the Link. A lighter, more feminine presence drifted behind him, caught up in his mental wake. Margaret. A sense of intense focus from her, and exhaustion, and pressure—a sense of bottled pressure, waiting for me.

Now was the time when it would all either work or not work. I tried to connect with Tommy. I tried. . . . And failed.

One more breath. Try again. Two heartbeats, and then it worked, along that fragile thin cord that connected us. We were there. A fuzzy image of that barn and Tommy, looking at Sibley with a thin cord in his hands. We were there.

I latched onto Tommy's mind, that foyer we'd built so carefully, and threw my whole mental weight into the connection.

Stone grabbed onto that Link, bringing his sister with him, and the pressure burst. The world stopped.

I turned inside out like an Escher painting, folding in space until nothing connected, until it was all impossible. Until it all hurt, wrenching horrible pain. The connection in the back of my head fell apart, and I thought for one terrible moment we would be lost in the between.

Then the universe righted itself, and I felt hard-packed dirt under my shoes. Margaret fell back to the floor, shaking, her hands falling out of mine. I felt her mind go under, into unconsciousness. Stone brought out his gun. And I looked up.

We stood in an old stable, rotting hay and dust smells incredibly strong. I sneezed. Sunlight beams came down like in the vision, and old horse stalls lined both walls to the right and left. A huge barn door, currently closed, stood twenty feet ahead.

Tommy was bound to a chair about five feet in front of me, and Sibley farther on, near a large post on which was hung horse tack of some kind. A low table held a phone on its cradle, its cord trailing away, and a small sphere. Crap. He had the device.

“Adam!” Tommy yelled.

“Hang in there,” I said.

Sibley darted back, to the table, and Stone was already moving forward, gun pulled up. I had seconds to make a decision.

And I made it.

I took three steps to the right, away from Margaret's unconscious body, so I wouldn't trip on her. “A1, B5, B7 through 9, A13x, and C4 closed,” I muttered to myself as I squinted, looking internally, deep. Repeated the chant, made the adjustments one by one, fast. “HL7 spun up . . .”
I pushed that part of my mind as tension, as tight and up as possible. Then, foolishly, threw a mental blanket over Processor 4, with all my strength.

The world went dark. Not the darkness of the inside of a cave, but the darkness of a man who has never known light. I literally could not think, no matter how much I tried, of what things might look like. I was blind, totally blind, inside my skull.

But I could still hear. Two gunshots in quick succession, then a crash.

Sibley's voice, ahead and to the right. “Put the gun down.”

A clatter and a misfire, bullet screaming too close to my ear. But it hadn't hit me. I felt oddly calm, focused, like time was moving far more slowly than it ought.

“Sit down,” Sibley said, but his words didn't have that weight of command, not to me. I could do this.

I could still feel an echo of Mindspace, though it felt empty, cold, far away. There was Tommy, afraid, on the left. A shadow that must be Sibley ahead and to the right. I moved forward, one step, two. Careful not to step on Margaret. Then faster, once I was sure I was past her.

Another shadow—Stone?—struggling but unable to move.

The phone starting ringing, a loud piercing ring.

Footsteps moving toward me now. It took the human brain minutes to run out of oxygen, and at least twenty seconds to run out of blood even if your throat was cut, your vessels laid open. He'd be coming for me; I could hear the footsteps. I turned up the collar of my coat, buttoned the button to protect my throat.

The phone kept ringing.

“Sit down,” Sibley repeated, closer to me specifically.

“No,” I said. “No,” with all the force of all the months I'd been afraid of him.
“No!”

“Watch out!” Tommy yelled. “He's coming for you!”

My left hand went up and over the front of my throat, firm, to protect the blood vessels. My right arm down, ready. Then I moved
toward
Sibley, everything in me ready for the push, the risk, the roll of the die that would save me or damn me, no questions asked.

He hit me like a ton of bricks, hard across the face. I went to my knees, stars blooming in my head despite the blindness. I let him, bracing for another hit.

Instead he had a cord up and over my entire neck with punishing speed. The cord made it partially under the coat, starting cutting with that specially serrated edge. It got the back of my hand—bad. Very bad. A bright line of pain there, and a feeling of damage. I let it go.

With all of my focus, all of my will, I forced my right arm up to grab his wrist, slipped, got the grab. He let me, squeezing down on the cord. More pain. More blood, and a feeling of incredible pressure on my neck as the cord pulled tight around the coat, around my neck, around my hand. I had to . . . I had to . . .

My hand hit his skin, and I opened all of the blocks I could in one rush, relaxing my mind. His thoughts moved in—and, between the space of one and the next, I had found the back of his mind, the right spot.

I pressed it.

He collapsed, the cord pulling tight with a snap that almost pushed me over. But he'd fallen, to the ground, asleep. I was still standing. Still alive somehow.

The phone stopped ringing.

Now that the blocks were gone, the emotion rushed in too. I stood there, and shook. And shook. My hand was bleeding. The back of my neck was bleeding. I felt the neck with my right hand all the way around, shallow cuts, it felt like. The coat collar was sliced, but it had protected me
somewhat. The cuts in the back were deeper, but not much. I rotated my head, and it worked, but it hurt. Crap.

And my left hand . . . I couldn't move some of the fingers. It hurt, bad. I carefully felt along its back. There was a deep cut on the back of the hand, leaking blood. I could feel the bone. I shuddered.

“Are you okay?” Tommy asked.

“No,” I said, voice still shaking a bit.

I had survived. That had been the most foolish thing I'd done in my life, but I had survived.

I pulled off my coat, shaking. It wrenched my hand and I almost screamed. I hissed in breath through my teeth. Finally it was off, and I asked the dark room, “Stone, you there?”

“Yes. Can't move,” he said from maybe three feet to the left of me.

“It'll wear off in a few minutes,” I said, in pain. Maybe I could find the device and use it to cancel whatever it was, but I didn't know what it would do to him to cancel it early, and I knew it would wear off in time. Plus, I was busy.

I unbuttoned my dress shirt with my right hand, bracing the shirt with the heel of my left. Crap, that hurt. One button, two, more.

“Is Margaret okay?” I asked.

“Is Margaret the woman on the floor?” Tommy asked me. “I'm okay too, by the way.”

I closed my unseeing eyes in relief. Opened them, which was worse since I couldn't see. “I'm glad, Tommy, really I am. Is she breathing?”

“She feels okay to me,” Stone said. “Just exhausted. We got enough calories in her, I think, to let her recover on her own in an hour.”

I struggled with the next button and the next. Finally finished, and pulled the shirt off my right arm carefully.
Pulled the left sleeve over that hand, slowly, slowly, and used the main body of the shirt to wrap the hand, hard. The neck was shallower, I thought, since I'd shielded most of the serious area. Mostly bruises, maybe, and shallow cuts. The hand needed the bandage more. I wrapped it tight, cursing at the pain.

The warm blood dripped from my neck down my chest, one drop, two.

“How bad am I hurt?” I asked Stone.

“You're vertical and you're talking, so that's good.” His voice was from a higher elevation now. Oh, good, he'd gotten to his feet. I felt . . . distant again. Blood loss or just a brush with death?

“Um . . . ,” Stone said, from right next to me.

I started, moving back a step. Then took a step. “Sorry. I can't see.”

“Why can't you see?” Tommy asked, still from the same spot. That's right—he'd been tied up.

“Minor mind Structure mishap,” I said to Stone. “You have to pay for immunity somehow, apparently. I'm going to need somebody to unkink my brain when this is over.”