Vacant (4 page)

I'd worked out a system to pay back the Guild with labor over time. “I just did that mental hospital job for you.”

“That was three weeks ago. You're supposed to put in hours every week.”

“That was over a week all at once. What had to be several thousand ROCs' worth of labor, even with my Structure training out of date. Don't I get some leeway? On average, I'm still on track.”

There was silence over the line for a moment. “Adam, you have to understand that the Guild isn't as lenient with subordinate telepaths as it is with its members. I understand that you haven't dealt with us in a number of years. I've tried to work with you. But this can't go on.”

“I paid half of the debt in cash when we arranged for the medic to visit Swartz—on time, I might add. And I've been chipping at it when I have time. I have work for the police to do too. I'll get to the hours when I can, okay?”

“Let me be completely plain with you, Adam. The Guild expects their money, and while I'm personally very grateful for the work you did in November—”

“As you should be,” I interrupted. “I solved a major case
for you at considerable personal risk. Not to mention—well, other things.” I didn't want to go into too much detail in the department.

“Yes, well. You have to stay current on your debt or there will be consequences.”

“You used to be nicer to me,” I said.

“I'm sorry, Adam. This is policy from the highest levels and I will enforce it. I'll send you a list of jobs. Pick something or pay the cash. But do it soon.”

A chill ran down my spine. He was serious.

I made the minimum necessary polite words to get off the phone and then hung up. Crap, what was I going to do? Did I go home, or did I stay here? This was a crap day already, and it wasn't even ten o'clock yet.

*   *   *

I finally settled in with paperwork, stupid stuff left over from a previous case with Cherabino, transcribing her stupid half-sentence scrawl into a reasonable approximation of a real report. I squinted at the latest note, written on the side of a napkin in what had to be a crayon. The handwriting was abysmal.

The phone next to me rang, again. I put down my pen. Seriously, I didn't know who was giving out this number. The desk wasn't even technically mine.

“Hello?”

“This is Special Agent Jarrod of the FBI,” a deep man's voice replied.

“Thanks for calling me back,” I said. I'd called just last week asking about work. Jarrod had tried to recruit me a few months ago and said there might be consultant jobs available, jobs with real money. Real money sounded fantastic about now, but the timing with this morning and Cherabino was terrible. I probably couldn't leave town right now. “What can I do for you, Special Agent?”

“Our usual telepath consultant has recently been involved in a car accident,” Jarrod said.

“Not serious, I hope,” I said, what I hoped was the correct response to bad news. Did this mean . . . ?

“Unfortunately so, but it seems to be a completely normal accident and the doctors say she'll make a full recovery in time. I was calling to see if you'd still be willing to consult on a case or two. We have an urgent need a few hours south of you.” He paused. “You are aware . . . we work under the Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. We don't get the easy cases. This one's odd.”

“I understand,” I said, but I didn't.

“I'll need you to be at an address in Savannah no later than four o'clock this afternoon,” Jarrod said.

I looked at the clock. It was ten thirty now. Savannah was maybe four hours away by groundcar, and with my felony drug record a groundcar was all I could rent, even with cash in hand. Assuming I could get the cash in hand that quickly. “This is not a good time for me,” I said. Cherabino might be avoiding me right now, but that didn't mean I didn't need to be here when she surfaced from whatever she was doing.

“I'm out of alternates right now and I'm willing to pay for the inconvenience,” Jarrod said, and then named a number for payment that made my head swim. A number that would let me buy off the Guild for at least a few months, and put me back in the black in my finances otherwise.

I winced. There was no way I could turn that down, not with the Guild breathing down my neck. But I'd never worked for the FBI before, or anybody in law enforcement other than the county police department. And I knew that Cherabino would need me. It would hurt—it would really hurt—to turn that down. To keep from doing it for just one more moment, I asked, “What would I be doing, and
how long should I expect to be there? Any special considerations?”

“It's an attempted kidnapping of a ten-year-old boy,” Jarrod said flatly. “With threats and every likelihood, they'll try again. I've got every physical guard in place and more than a few equipment safeguards. But I don't have anybody that can guard him mentally, or anyone else for that matter. Like I said, I'm willing to pay extra if you can be here by four.”

I closed my eyes. A ten-year-old boy. My vision played back through my eyes, a ten-year-old boy being threatened by my old nemesis, Sibley, a man who worked for the horrible Fiske. “Is the boy blond?” I asked.

“Why do you ask?” His voice was suspicious.

“Let me ask another question. Is there any way this case has a connection to Garrett Fiske or Blair Sibley?”

A long, long pause. “There was a note on your record that you can do some kind of future-sensing thing. Have you already heard me call you?”

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes. On the first count. And very likely on the second.”

Crap. Crap. Crap. “Give me an hour. I need approval and a chance to get my stuff together. Even assuming I get both, making your deadline will be hard. Also, you should know. I'm not a Minder. That's not my specialty, and what training I've had is years old. You want somebody to protect your crowd, you really need a specialist. The Guild has somebody for a lot less who can show up in ninety minutes.” I'd try to show up anyway, help out somehow. If this was the kid—if this was the vision—I would never, never forgive myself if I didn't try. “I will absolutely help you in whatever way I can, but you may need to spend your money on the professional here.” I'd do this one for free if I had to. I didn't get a vision without it being critically important, and this was a kid.

He made a frustrated sound. “I can't do that. The new appropriations rules say I can't hire anybody who works for the Guild for federal work. We've got a judge here with a very sensitive case going on now, and the Irish Telepath Guild won't be able to send someone for over two days. I've got nos from everybody else on the list, and this is not an optional assignment. You're not attached. I'll take sloppy over nothing, if you can be here now.”

I sighed. If this was what I'd seen, this was going to get bad, and quickly. “How long should I pack for?”

“Pack for a week or more in multiple layers. Show up in a suit, and get galoshes. You'll need them if we end up in the marshes. Also, bring whatever supplies you need to do your magic, get approval, do whatever the hell you need to do, but get on the road. I can't be vulnerable like this.”

“Understood,” I said, but my nerves were itchy. Attempted kidnapping? Something that wouldn't stay attempted for long, if my vision was any indication. “A judge—?” I started.

He cut me off. “We'll go over the details when you get here. Let me give you the address. Call me back if—and only if—you can't make it by four. And call quickly.”

We took care of the details, and then he hung up the phone.

I stood there, staring at the phone. Had I just agreed to scramble halfway across the state on no notice to work for the FBI on one of my weakest mental skills? Was there any chance in hell Branen would approve it? (Probably, my brain chimed in. He wasn't happy with me right now anyway, and being elsewhere might be helpful.)

Worse, was I really going to leave Cherabino right now? In the middle of whatever the hell was going down?

Yeah, I guess I was. If I wanted to look myself in the mirror ever again, I couldn't see what I'd seen and do nothing. I'd had that vision over and over again. With a boy, dying, dead if I didn't do something. I'd thought the ten-year-old
kid was possibly Jacob, Cherabino's nephew, but nothing had happened and the vision kept coming. I didn't know this was it. But if there was any chance in hell I could save a kid's life, I needed to get on the road.

I set the phone down on its cradle and walked upstairs.

“Where's Cherabino?” I
asked Michael. He was the junior detective currently working with her, a nice guy. I didn't know what to do with nice.

He looked up. “You don't know? She dropped by earlier, then left. She looked upset. Said she wouldn't be available for a few hours. I don't think she's in the building.”

How in hell had she left without me noticing? She must have gone out the courtyard door just to avoid me. I made a frustrated sound.

“Can I use the phone?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Be my guest.”

I picked up the phone in the cubicle and dialed her home number, but it just rang and rang. Finally I hung up. Either she wasn't at home or she wasn't taking calls, and it wasn't like I could burn a couple of hours getting there by bus, damn it. She shouldn't do this to me with all of this going on. But I couldn't wait either, not if there was a chance.

“Everything okay?” Michael asked.

“It looks like I'm out of town for at least a week on a consulting job,” I said. “I need to get it approved with Branen, but that's where I'm going. If you see Isabella, tell her I'll call her at home tonight, okay?”

“Sure,” Michael said.

I left, frustrated, and went down to Branen's office. The
door was open. I took my life in my hands and knocked on the doorframe.

“What in the hell are you doing here right now?” Branen barked. “I thought I made it clear I didn't want to see you in the station for a few days.” A stack of paperwork was in front of him and he was scowling.

“I've gotten a call from the FBI for consulting work for the next week,” I said. “Last time we discussed this you said I should take it.”

“Good,” Branen barked. “I don't want to see you anywhere close to here for the hearing, you understand me?”

“I do,” I said.

His eyes narrowed as he made a decision. “You're a bad influence on Cherabino. Now that you're in my department, I don't want you here during the hearing.” He was angry at me, irrationally angry, blaming me for what had happened even though it made no sense. “I'll throw you out if I have to. If I throw you out you won't be coming back for work, regardless of your close rate.”

“I understood that,” I said. I didn't know what he was talking about with the close rate, and he seemed to think it was important. Also, he was far more angry with me than was typical for him. He was close to Cherabino, I knew, and this whole situation had to be hard for him.

I reached over and read off the top of his mind. Every detective I'd worked with had had a jump in his or her case close rate, some as high as an extra forty percent. He disliked me, even more today, but under their current budget and work crisis he needed the close rates. But he'd been a lot happier when Paulsen was handling my headaches. She actually liked me, and could get me to do things without screwing up his department.

I'd let the thoughts about me go, but I had to stick up for Cherabino, on principle. “She really didn't do anything but
defend herself. Do an investigation. She never touched that pole. Her fingerprints won't be there.”

“I just got off the phone with Fulton County, and the pole was wiped clean.”

“Well, there you go.”

“Take the job with the feds. When you get back, come and see me. You won't be working with Cherabino again, but I'll give you other work if you stay out of the way. I can't stop you dating her, but I can stop the influence on the work.” He was angry again, very angry, and concerned about his career and the future of the department with this case in the news.

“I'm not a bad influence,” I protested out of habit.

His face settled. “That's what my son's friends say. And yet he comes home drunk anytime I'm not there to stop it. Go take your job with the FBI.”

He turned his back to me, a dismissal.

I turned and left, at double time. I knew his anger and his assumptions were irrational, but they still hurt.

*   *   *

It had been years since I'd driven more than a few miles at a time, and longer than that since I'd driven with no one else in the car with me. An odd, echoey feeling, as my mind got wisps of Mindspace emotions cast out by other drivers onto the space above the road.

The section of I-16 I drove through could have passed for hell. Endless road and sky and trees in one long stretch, so that no matter how long you drove it seemed you never got anywhere. Eternal motion without progress, surrounded by land without a single defining landmark, so that the mind grew bored and numb, left with nothing to think about but its failures. Its failures and that vision, the one with the boy who was being strangled. A boy that perhaps I could save.

I probably shouldn't have left without saying good-bye to Cherabino. I was worried about her already, terribly worried, and if Branen didn't want me at the department and I couldn't testify, well, there had to be something I could do.

It was lonely in this stretch of road, lonely with guilt and hard choices on every side.

But—that vision—if I could save a child's life, if there was any chance, I had to try. And I was committed now, committed and driving all too fast to make the deadline.

The future was changeable. It had to be. I had to believe it, and I had to believe Cherabino would be okay.

*   *   *

As I drove into town, the air smelled . . . different through the cracked car window. Saltier, flatter almost. Plus mold and sand, and something else I couldn't identify. Pollution, maybe. Savannah had to have nearly as much of it left over in the air as Atlanta did. More, if you counted the oceans. Enough to make you sick if you weren't careful, though this time of year it wasn't nearly as toxic as it would have been in summer.

The sky was wider, somehow, in this area of the country, the sun brighter, the land flatter, and the sidewalks actually had people walking on them. Parks were everywhere. It was beautiful to look at, but the ambient feeling in Mindspace was quiet, a heavy quiet full of sadness and generations of unchanging days.

I began to pass under huge oak trees, several stories high with branches reaching like arms of some monster overhead, long streamers of moss hanging like hair beneath their branches. The closer I got to the address, the more of them there were, on either side of the road in front of houses and dominating parks. Their upper branches were twisted, post-Tech-Wars damage perhaps, but the trees themselves looked
okay. The occasional bioengineered bush dotted the parks as well, blooming out of season in blue flowers. Only on this side of town, though; the parks earlier hadn't had any of those winter flowers.

The stoplights hung low here, and as I waited at one of them, I noticed an ancient, tall orange metal post with a circular thing on top. It said B
US
S
TOP
on the circle, its paint cracking away but still legible.

Isabella would like this place, I thought, and the thought hurt.

I turned onto Washington Avenue, the huge oaks now stretching over the street on both sides to make a sort of tunnel of branches and dripping moss. It was beautiful, the sunlight mottling the divided street and the cars parked on the sides. Maybe it was just as well that I'd only brought a groundcar; with all these trees everywhere, I hadn't seen a skylane for antigravity flying cars since the interstate. Everyone grounded to come into the city, taking it by wheels and steps as their ancestors had done.

The houses here were old, really old, much deeper than they were wide, and no two looked alike. I drove slowly, looking at addresses. I was on the wrong side of the street, and the numbers started moving in the wrong direction past another park on the left. I moved into the left lane at the next stoplight and did a careful U-turn, uncertain if it was allowed.

I found the place and pulled into a small side street across from a park so beautiful I could hardly believe it was real, one small pay phone sitting at its corner, next to a statue. I parked the car and looked up.

The house was charming, with solid redbrick and two levels of blue-shingled roof. There was a wraparound porch and tall windows with small panes at their tops, windows designed for a world without air-conditioning, a world now
centuries past. While some of the wood had been replaced in places and thick coats of paint sat all around it on all sides, those high-up small panes remained, ready to open and create a cross breeze in a hot house.

Three minds stood around that porch, one in plain sight above the stairs, one just behind the window to the far right, and one out of sight on the other side of the house. Other minds were farther on in the house, more faint. None seemed to have the order I associated with a trained telepath. There were always surprises—fire-starting, microkinesis, and other rare Abilities didn't show up the same in Mindspace as telepathy and so frequently got overlooked. Even so, I was confident I was the biggest fish mentally for half a mile in any direction, the outside of my mental range for normal thoughts.

All of that was good if I was really going to try Minding again. There were plenty of people here for the physical bodyguarding, and assuming open minds and some cooperation I'd be able to coordinate with them if a mental attack came up. But the rest . . . I'd had my training, and made good marks, but that had been years ago.

The guy in plain sight on the porch had a suit jacket on as well as an unbuttoned trench coat. If you looked carefully, there was a slit in the trench coat and a bulky spot beneath it, probably a gun, the slit there to make it easier to draw under duress. That and his mental signature made me think ex-military, ex–Special Forces, maybe. He was focused, bored, and twitchy all at the same time, with the kind of twitchy that made me think he was an adrenaline junkie and hadn't seen action for too long.

As I approached the front steps, I kept my gloved hands where he could see them, away from my coat. Don't startle the twitchy guy. It was a long-term survival motto of mine.

“I'm Adam Ward, the consultant that Special Agent Jarrod
called in,” I said before he could challenge me. “I'd like to talk to him if he's around, before I go in.”

“Telepath?” the man asked. He was tall, I saw, as I reached the bottom of the steps, tall with a faint, diffuse scar like an old shrapnel wound down the side of his face. “You're Ruth's replacement?”

I climbed the stairs, slowly, so he could see me.
That's right,
I said, directly into his mind, loud enough and with enough texture he'd know it was me.

“No need to shout.” He was thinking he liked Ruth a hell of a lot better. Also, that I was an ass for just stomping in and that Jarrod had better know was he was doing. “Give me a minute and I'll get Jarrod for you,” he said, no self-consciousness about the negative thoughts at all.

“Okay,” I said.

He gestured to the guy behind the window I couldn't see clearly from this angle, and a woman came out of the door, watching me as he went in. She scanned the surroundings, and I noticed a bulge in her jacket as well, right where a gun would be. She was short with some mass to her, mass I got the impression she used for weight lifting or fighting; there was a strength to her mind, to her presence you didn't get from someone who sat at a desk. Her shoes were athletic shoes, her clothes were office wear, and her scowl was all business. She thought in Spanish; or at least the language portion of her thoughts right now was Spanish, which I didn't really speak. Then she switched over in her brain to proto-English structure. I watched, interested; very few people were truly bilingual at that level, and it was interesting every time.

“Mendez,” she said finally, identifying herself.

“Adam Ward.”

She nodded, looked back out behind me. “The attempt
was this morning. We got here about noon—her usual security detail is down to one man, and we've got the rest to cover for the next week. We've got some help from the sheriff's office, which in this county handles court security, but they're concentrating on the courthouse. It's a high-profile case.”

“What case?” I asked.

She stared at me in disbelief. “The Pappadakis case. It's been all over the news.”

“Wait. She's trying the Pappadakis case?” I asked. That was in the Atlanta papers. George Pappadakis, manufacturing tycoon with ties to restricted technology in Canada and Greece, had supposedly beaten his mistress to death. “Didn't a witness recently disappear?” I asked her.

“The only one who saw him there with the woman, yes. She was a licensed prostitute and had expressed concern for her safety several times according to the local PD. They're trying to determine whether she left town on her own or someone did something. Jarrod has us helping when we can.”

“I thought this was an attempted kidnapping case,” I said.

She made a frustrated sound. “It is. The judge's son was attacked this morning. We assume it's related to the high-profile Pappadakis case she's trying, considering his reputation and the death threats she's been receiving, but we don't know this for certain. Investigation is definitely still in process.”

I wondered what the connection was to Fiske. Maybe he and Pappadakis were buddies, maybe there had been another trial against one of his henchmen, or maybe Jarrod had just said what he thought would get me here.

“Are you even paying attention?” Mendez asked. She was kinda touchy, but honestly, after Cherabino that was just making me feel at home.

“Yes, mostly.”

“You need to talk to Jarrod for any other briefing,” she said. “It's not my job, but honestly, it's all over the news.”

“Thanks,” I said, a little awkwardly. “If I understand, I'm here to Mind, to mental bodyguard. I may need to get familiar with your mind so I can rule you out. Coordinate if anything happens.”