Vicarious (23 page)

“Delivery for the tech support department,” Jesse says.

One of the security guards directs us to the suite on the second floor. We step onto the escalator, each carrying a stack of three disposable catering pans in insulated bags. A trickle of employees heading down the opposite escalator turns around to look at us. I can hardly blame them. I haven't eaten all day and my mouth is watering from the scents of salsa and seasoned meat.

Normally I would look away—the less eye contact you make with other people, the more invisible you are. With invisibility comes safety. Today I make a point to focus on each person I see, capturing their faces on my recording.

The main door to the suite is standing open and the secretary has her eyes trained on her computer screen. We glide in with our pans, and at first I think we might be able to just walk right past her.

But then she looks up. It's Natalie. She's wearing a wig, but it's definitely her. Recognition flashes in her eyes too, but she doesn't say anything. I follow her gaze and see a video camera mounted in the far corner of the reception area. It's trained directly on her desk.

“Free corporate lunch.” Jesse balances the pans on one arm while he pretends to look at a voucher. “For Darren Ritter.”

Natalie plays along. If I had known she worked here, we wouldn't have had to go through the fishbowl of business cards. She must be how Gideon got the key to the Phantasm building. She clicks at her computer. “He's actually working remotely today,” she says. “But I'm sure the rest of the staff will appreciate the food. I'll show you back to the break room.”

She starts down the main corridor, but then the phone rings. “One second.” Sighing, she hurries back to the desk. Snatching the phone from its receiver she says, “IT and development. How may I direct your call?” She starts talking to someone in a different department.

“We'll find it,” Jesse says. He strolls back, past the rows of cubicles, right toward the server room. He ducks through the door.

A couple of guys in khaki pants and T-shirts are at the stacks of equipment. They look up in confusion. “What are you doing back here?” one of them asks.

Jesse gestures at the pans. “Sorry. Thought this was the lunch room.”

“Nope. Go back to the end of the cubicles and it's the first door on the left.”

“It's the door marked
Staff Lounge,
” the other guy adds, shaking his head.

“Subtle,” I say as we head back down the row of cubicles.

Jesse shrugs. “You never know what you might find out when you burst in on people unexpectedly.”

We find the staff lounge and take our sweet time setting up the containers of food on one of the round lunch tables, rolling back the foil, arranging the sauces in front of each tray. Slowly, curious employees trickle back.

“What's this?” A middle-aged woman in a gray pantsuit looks over the pans with an expression of disdain.

“Free lunch from Miguelito's. Somebody won it for putting their card in the fishbowl,” I tell her.

A man wearing a checked shirt with a striped tie wanders back, followed by a girl with thick glasses who seems to be his assistant. She starts rummaging around in a cabinet and returns with a stack of Styrofoam plates.

“The secretary almost turned us away,” Jesse says. “It's like she's an extra security guard or something. You guys working on some top-secret stuff?”

No one answers. No one's expression even wavers. If they heard about the break-in, they're not talking. I loiter behind the pans, labeling each of them on a napkin.

Jesse tries again to engage the employees in conversation. “Any of you know Darren Ritter? He won this lunch, but I guess he's out of the office today. Too bad.”

“Darren. Right,” the woman in the pantsuit says. “He works from home sometimes.”

Slowly the word spreads around the office and more employees arrive. Everyone grabs plates and starts loading up on chips and burritos. We loiter around for a few more minutes, pretending to answer questions about the food so we can eavesdrop on conversations and record more employee faces, but there's only so much to explain about the food we provided. I start wondering why we went through the trouble to get into the Phantasm suite for ten minutes. Did I really think someone was going to talk about the recent security breach in front of a couple of restaurant workers? Shaking my head in disgust, I gather up the cloth catering bags and tuck them under my arm. Jesse and I both head back to the lobby. I pause for a minute to watch the fish swimming lazily in their aquarium, twenty or so Asian men staring down at me from the framed photo on the wall.

Natalie stands up when she sees us. “Let me walk you out.” We walk down the corridor. There's another photo of corporate executives right inside the door to the suite. More disapproving dark eyes.

“What are you doing here?” Natalie hisses.

“What are
you
doing here?” I ask.

“I'm temping. Gideon told me to get a job here. He needed a key to the building and the door codes for a ViSE.”

And here I thought Jesse had cracked the code to the suite on his own. I guess that was another part of our recording that was pure theater.

“Is that all?” Jesse asks. “Because if so, you can probably quit.”

“I'm also supposed to be gathering intel,” she murmurs, glancing around furtively. “Eavesdropping on executive gossip. Recording as much as possible. Phantasm is pushing to buy Gideon's tech. Gideon wants to know what they plan to do with it.”

I nod. “We did the ViSE. He had us grab some financial information from the server. I wonder why he didn't just have you do the whole thing.”

“Those programmer guys sometimes work until eight p.m. and I'm not a break-in-after-hours kind of girl. Besides, computer stuff is not my area of expertise. I can barely work my phone.” Natalie shudders. “I can't believe that was you two. The execs have been questioning people about it all morning.”

“You can't tell Gideon you saw us here, all right? I'm trying to figure out exactly what happened to my sister and I thought maybe it had to do with the break-in.” I look desperately at her.

“I won't say anything, but you owe me one.” Natalie grins. “Nah. It's not like delivering free Mexican food is a crime anyway.” Her face goes serious. “I'm so sorry about Rose.”

The phone rings again. Our heads swivel toward the secretary's desk in unison.

“I have to go.” Natalie turns away.

I reach out and grab her arm. “Wait. Have you found out anything?” When she looks confused, I add, “Executive gossip? Intel?”

“Not really. I've only been here two weeks.” Her eyes flick to the framed photo. “I've only seen one of those guys.”

This picture is more casual than the one behind the fish tank. It looks like it was snapped at a corporate picnic. Several older men are posing behind a blue-and-white banner with Hangul—Korean letters—on it.
Usu Annual Festival,
it reads. I scan the rows of stern-faced men, each trying to look more serious than the next for the camera.

That's when I see him. He's in the back corner, almost completely obscured by a man in the second row. I suck in a sharp breath. Slowly, I lean in closer to the photograph, expecting it to change, expecting to realize my eyes were playing tricks on me. But the man in question doesn't morph into someone else. And though I can't see his whole face, I recognize him. I know I do.

It's the one-eyed man from my dreams.

 

CHAPTER 25

“What
did you see?” Jesse asks as soon as we're back out in the hallway.

“I'm not sure.” I step gingerly onto the escalator, one arm holding on to the railing while my other hand calls up the photo gallery on my phone. I stopped long enough to take a picture so I could study the man without having to vise. I enlarge the image I snapped. It's definitely him. He's got his body turned slightly away from the camera so only half of his face is showing, but I would know him anywhere.

I just never expected him to be real.

The giant lobby seems to stretch out into infinity. I don't want to say anything until we're back outside, or better yet in the catering truck where no one else will hear. I feel Jesse's eyes on me every step until we push through the glass doors and escape out into the frigid air.

Where I immediately start to doubt myself again.

I check my phone. The picture hasn't changed. “I know one of the guys in that photo.”

“Know him?” Jesse unlocks the doors and hops into the driver's seat. “How?”

I slide in beside him and toss the cloth bags in the back. “I'm not sure. Korea, maybe. Or L.A. This is going to sound crazy, but I see him in my dreams sometimes.”

“Like when you're sleeping?” Jesse backs the truck out of the parking space and heads for the street.

“Yes. I don't know what Gideon might have told you, but I don't have
daydreams,
all right?”

“I just meant—”

“I know what you meant.” He meant hallucinations. “That time in my life is over. I'm not crazy anymore.”

“Let's forget I said anything.” Jesse buckles his seat belt and slips on a pair of sunglasses. “So you dream about some guy and he shows up on the wall of the company where we broke in. How exactly is that possible?”

“I don't know. Maybe he's one of the men I … knew in L.A. and I just blocked it out.”

“Did you get his name?” Jesse turns the corner and heads toward Miguelito's.

“The picture wasn't labeled.”

“Maybe Gideon would know,” Jesse says.

“Except we promised him we wouldn't snoop around.”

“So then…”

“We figure it out on our own. Once we get home, maybe we can plug the image into a search engine and come up with something.”

“Okay,” Jesse says. “It's worth a try.”

I flash him a grateful look as he pulls into the restaurant parking lot. We drop off the keys and catering supplies with Miguel and then cross the parking lot to Jesse's car. We're only halfway there when Jesse takes off running.

“Son of a bitch.” He skids to a stop next to his car and kicks at one of his hubcaps.

The driver's side window has been shattered and all four tires have been slashed.

“Damn it.” He walks a slow loop around the car like he can't quite believe it. “Someone is on a mission to get all of us.”

“This is kind of a rough neighborhood,” I say. “Maybe it's not related.” I pull my hands into the cuffs of my shirt and hug my arms across my body to stay warm.

“Let me call a tow truck.” Jesse steps away and dials his phone. I hear him explaining to the guy on the other end what happened, where we are, and that he'll be out of town so he'll need to leave the car at a tire shop for a few days. After he hangs up, he unlocks his door and fishes a pocketknife and a tin of mints out of the center console. Then he turns to me. “They're backed up. He said it's going to be a couple of hours. I'm just going to leave the keys with the hostess. We can take the train home.”

“Sure.” My eyes scan across the damage to Jesse's car, looking for anything that might be a clue. There's no way to know if it's related.

Jesse jogs inside the restaurant and returns a couple of minutes later. The two of us cross the Miguelito's parking lot and head for the nearest MetroLink station. It takes us about fifteen minutes to get there. The platform is crowded as usual, people waiting for multiple trains. Jesse and I stand behind the yellow line, both staring forward. Even underground, the cold air bites at my skin. I let my hair out of its ponytail, arranging the ends so they cover my ears.

“At least Florida will be warm,” Jesse says.

“True.” I exhale a frosty breath. “Was there anything stolen out of your car?”

“Not that I could tell.”

“Are you going to report it to the police?”

“What's the point?” he says. “They don't give a shit about this kind of vandalism.”

“Do you think it's the same people who got Rose and broke into the penthouse?”

“I don't know.” Jesse pulls his knit cap down low over his ears. “I'm getting pissed off just thinking about it.”

A couple of guys push past us in quilted NFL parkas. One of them looks like the kid who tried to sell us drugs the other night, but it was dark then and I can't be certain.

Jesse's phone rings. He pulls it out of his pocket and glances at the display before answering. “Yeah?” he says. “I'm on my way home actually.”

I wander a few feet away to give him privacy. I blow on my hands in an attempt to thaw my rapidly freezing fingers. As much as I don't want to leave town right now, it will feel nice to have the sun on my face, to swim in the Atlantic Ocean. Of course, then there is the small matter of sharks. I have never seen a shark, not even in a zoo or an aquarium, but I remember reading and rereading a book about them back at the orphanage. So beautiful. So deadly.

I hear the rumble that means a train is drawing near, but I'm not sure which way it's coming from. I glance over at Jesse. His back is to me and he's still on the phone, his other hand covering his ear to block out the noise. I lean over just far enough to look into the dark tunnel at the end of the platform. I can't see the train yet, but I see the reflection of headlights.

And then someone bumps me from behind. I feel hands on my back, pushing me forward. My ankle wrenches as I try to turn. Too late. I am falling. I claw out at the air, but there's nothing to grab. I land hard on the MetroLink tracks.

 

CHAPTER 26

Glancing
up, I see a guy dressed in black pushing his way through the throng of people on the platform.

“Winter!” Jesse nearly drops his phone when he sees me on the tracks. “What are you doing?”