by Hondo Jinx
That fucking Mack girl.
This wasn’t the first time she had caused trouble. In fact, if Central had listened to Jamaal, none of this would’ve happened, because the Mack girl would still be locked up. And not in Fuggle County Correctional, either. He had suggested that they ship her ass straight to Gatlinburg and let the Chop Shop boys do their thing.
But Central had ignored his recommendation.
Jamaal didn’t know what the Mack girl had gotten into here today, and he didn’t much care. Okay, he was curious. Of course he was curious; it was his nature.
But the details of Nina Mack’s ill-fated exploits could wait. At least until he’d had time to unravel more important things—like, you know, the biggest fucking psionic event to rock the Latticework since… shit… since the Culling last century.
As usual, the mere thought of the Culling turned his stomach. And as usual, he deflected further thoughts. If he started reminiscing about the role he’d been forced to play that dark night, it would only serve to ruin his appetite, his day, and his chances at solving the big mystery unfolding on the Latticework.
Trouble was, the Mack girl’s bullshit, whatever it was, had left five fuggles dead on Jamaal’s watch.
And the Order did not approve of dead fuggles. Let alone when psionic force had clearly played a part in those deaths.
Jamaal felt no pity for the dead men. The world was a better place without them. Besides, these asshats had died while running errands for the psi mafia, so they weren’t exactly the innocent, ignorant fuggles the Order went to such extremes to shield from psionic harm.
Honestly, the situation had already worked itself out. There was no good reason to even report this to Central.
Or are you just justifying that notion because you want to buy more time to chase whatever the hell rocked the Latticework?
Perhaps. Perhaps.
But any Seeker in his shoes would do the same thing if they had even half a brain.
Meanwhile, the ambulance was finally pulling out, and Krupski was whistling a maddeningly cheerful tune, like a parrot who’d spent too much time in an elevator, memorizing muzak.
Jamaal pitched his perception out into the world again. There was still a chance to wrap up this case quickly and properly if he could only…
But no.
Somehow, the Mack girl had dropped completely off the radar. She wasn’t dead; he’d know if she was dead. She had just gone dark. And that was strange. Beyond strange. Confounding.
Part of him, fueled by the inherent curiosity that came with being one of the top Seekers on the planet, latched onto the question of the Mack girl, and for an instant, he was tempted to pour everything into finding her.
Finding her and dealing with her.
But that would be foolishness, the sort of foolishness that kept Seekers from rising in the ranks or delayed their transfers to warmer climes or gotten them shit-canned when they had only eight and a half months until retirement.
Retirement.
A sweet, sweet psalm.
Jamaal couldn’t let the Mack girl’s disappearance serve as a further distraction, keeping him from the work he really needed to focus on.
The mysterious event had hit the Latticework hard enough that even Australian Seekers must be scratching their heads and trying to sort it out.
Once he figured out what had rocked the Latticework, he would turn his attention back to this pain-in-the-ass interruption. He would track down the Mack girl and grill her hard. And then, if he had his way, they would ship her ass straight to the Chop Shop.
Unfortunately, he doubted that would happen. The Order had gotten softer and softer on unruly psi mages over recent years.
Recent years? he thought. You mean recent decades. You’re getting so old, you’re remembering years as months.
“Come the fuck on,” Krupski said, and slapped the steering wheel. The firetruck had jackknifed across both lanes, immobilizing the ambulance that still blocked their exit. Krupski glanced at Jamaal. “What are you brooding about over there, partner?”
“Pater Janusian,” Jamaal said truthfully. The Order has softened since Janusian’s takeover in the wake of the Culling.
“Heavy subject,” Krupski said. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s peachy keen,” Jamaal said. On top of everything else, his hunger was kicking in now. At his age, he didn’t eat very much, but when he was hungry, he was hungry, and using as much juice as he’d just released made him ravenous. He needed to eat before he even thought of trying to demystify the event. “I’m just thinking we wouldn’t be sitting here with our thumbs up our asses if Janusian wasn’t so soft.”
“Soft?” Krupski laughed. “I wouldn’t cross the man. Hell, I wouldn’t even cross him for all the money you must have squirreled away in the bank.”
“Janusian isn’t soft on us,” Jamaal said, “but he’s soft on offenders. Back when I joined the force, if a psi mage fucked up, they paid for it.”
“Oh boy. Here we go. And you used to walk to school through the snow every day, right? Uphill both ways?”
“Laugh away, son. I might be old, but I know what the fuck I’m talking about, and Central is too tolerant of psionic incontinence. Which makes our job much harder. You can only manipulate the truth so many times before even fuggles start detecting incongruencies. Janusian needs to crack down on rogue psi mages like the Mack girl, or he’s going to jeopardize the entire community.”
“Who’s the Mack girl?” Krupski asked.
Oh hell, Jamaal thought. He really was getting old. He hadn’t told Krupski about Nina Mack when they’d received the call. Why had he slipped up and mentioned her now? “Nothing,” he said quickly, and released more of his precious juice. “She’s nobody. In fact, I never mentioned her name.”
Krupski blinked a couple times.
Jamaal realized during that brief interlude that he had blundered down a path he hadn’t fully considered taking. So be it. He wouldn’t report Mack. Not now. If he did, Central would tie him up chasing her instead of hunting down whatever was lighting up the Latticework.
And his curiosity was killing him.
He’d track down the Mack girl soon enough. And this time, he’d take care of her himself.
“Heh,” Krupski said, returning to the conversation they’d been having before Jamaal had foolishly mentioned Mack. “You be sure and tell Pater Janusian that next time the big guy comes through for an inspection.”
“Not going to happen,” Jamaal said. “If Janusian even suspected that I was questioning his stances, he’d transfer me from Key West to Cleveland. Which is why…” He turned, laying a hand on his partner’s shoulder. “We never had this conversation. We’ve been talking about lunch. You’re in the mood for…”
Jamaal paused, deciding what he wanted.
“You’re in the mood for tacos,” Jamaal continued. “You want to go to Garbo’s Grill.” Then, grinning, he remembered and added, “And you’re going to insist on picking up the tab.”
He broke contact, and Krupski craned his neck, checking the rearview. “They finally cleared the drive. Hey, Grandpa, what do you say we hit Garbo’s Grill? My treat.”
“You sure?” Jamaal said.
“Hell yeah, I’m sure,” Krupski said cheerily. “And don’t give me shit about it. Wowzers, I’m hungry!”
They pulled onto the street and headed toward Caroline Street.
Jamaal reached out with his mind, checking the Latticework for any developments on the big disturbance. There was nothing new, but the entire network vibrated with activity. Seekers around the world had clearly registered the event and were now busy trying to root out the truth.
Which wouldn’t have mattered to him so much if it weren’t for one small detail that he feared they might also have detected, one teensy weensy factoid that might very well fuck up Jamaal’s final months on the force.
Whatever had happened had happened here. Somewhere in the Florida Keys. Maybe even rig
ht here, in Key West.
Did the Seekers of the world suspect as much?
Stilling his mind and focusing on that question, Jamaal grafted his consciousness onto the Latticework for several seconds before retracting back into his own skull.
Yes, there were stirrings of such suspicions budding out along the Latticework.
Damn.
He bled blue like any worthwhile cop. He gave a shit. He really did. But he’d paid his dues. It had taken thirty-five years of hard work to earn a transfer to Key West. How cruelly ironic it would be if a powerful shitstorm slammed into his territory when he was only eight and a half months away from cutting permanent orders to Fort Living Room.
A second later, his intuition burst into mocking laughter.
Powerful? His gut implied. Batten down the hatches, you old geezer. A Category 5 shitstorm is coming your way.
12
Brawley sat on the U-shaped sofa in his RV, examining the firearms. Nina lay beside him, fighting sleep. She’d been struggling to stay awake ever since they reached the RV and lifted the moped inside.
That had been a bitch and a half. Her cute little scooter weighed three hundred pounds if it weighed an ounce.
But they couldn’t afford to leave the thing out in the open for all the world to see. With a pile of corpses laying in Nina’s driveway, Brawley had to assume that the cops were looking for her. And if they had talked to anyone who knew Nina, they were hunting her highly recognizable moped, too.
The strange thing about that, however, was what they were saying on TV. The 32” wall mount across from them was tuned to a local station, where special reports kept interrupting regular programming with breaking news updates that all seemed to say the same thing.
Authorities on the scene. Five dead. Two of the victims identified as having gang ties in Boca Raton.
Stuff Brawley would’ve expected.
Some of the other things they kept repeating, however, were a little surprising.
Authorities suspected a drug deal gone bad. None of the neighborhood’s residents had been harmed or were being considered suspects.
Why would they say that? Was it the truth as far as the cops were concerned? Or was this some sort of trap to lull Nina into a false sense of security?
Brawley ejected the Smith & Wesson’s magazine and racked the slide, clearing the chamber. Setting the pistol on the dinette table, he thumbed rounds out of the magazine, counting them up on the table before him. Seven. Eight, counting the hollow-point at his feet.
“Holy shit,” Nina said drowsily. “I can’t believe that actually happened.”
The shootout had rattled her cage pretty hard.
Brawley, on the other hand, felt strangely calm. He’d always figured if he ended up killing somebody, it would weigh on him. Not so much. Not at all, in fact. They had tried to kill his woman, and he had responded logically, decisively, and without mercy.
Now those assholes were dead. End of story. No sense feeling bad about it.
Not that Nina was expressing remorse. She was just worried about the ramifications. And that made sense, even if he didn’t share her anxieties.
Part of that was this psionic bullshit that had overtaken him. He felt strong. Strong and sharp and ready to roll. Dominant as fuck, if he was honest about it.
But part of his calm was just Brawley being Brawley. You spend your life climbing onto the world’s rankest bulls, ignoring broken bones and torn ligaments, you didn’t startle easy.
At the same time, he knew this was a real problem. So while he wasn’t worried, he was serious.
“Well, you’d better believe it, darlin,” he said, “because it did happen. We can’t afford to pretend it didn’t.”
He picked up the last cartridge, wiped it clean, and fed it back into the magazine. Then he replaced the magazine, set the Smith & Wesson on the cushion beside him, and turned his attention to the machine pistol.
The Mac-10 was a stubby little thing, ten or eleven inches of stamped metal fitted with a folding stock and a box mag that held thirty rounds of .45 ammunition. Firing full auto with a short barrel like that, he’d be lucky to hit the broadside of a barn at fifty yards. It sure wouldn’t be much good for hunting antelope out on the floodplains, where Brawley bagged animals all the way out to nine hundred yards.
What the machine pistol was good for, as he had proven in Nina’s driveway, was rapidly blowing holes through assholes at close range. So even though getting caught with a weapon like this meant a felony charge, Brawley decided to hold onto the thing until their present troubles had concluded. He had a feeling he wasn’t done killing assholes, at close range or otherwise.
Why didn’t these stupid sons of bitches have a suppressor on this thing? It would’ve cut down on the racket, increased the barrel length, and doubled as a foregrip, stabilizing the weapon, especially on full auto. The barrel was already threaded, so the mod wouldn’t even require a gunsmith.
Must be Nina’s would-be hitman hadn’t planned on firing the thing. Not really. Not even if firing the thing had been the sole purpose of the job and the machine pistol itself. Some part of the man’s mind must have still been play-acting, valuing the menace of a mean-looking subcompact over the utility of a quieter, more deadly tool.
Hell, if the man had been serious, he would’ve carried a Mossberg instead of a machine gun.
What an idiot.
The chest rig Brawley had hauled off the dead man featured six pouches, three on three, the back row filled with box mags for the machine pistol, the front row stuffed with magazines full of 10mm ammo, which was useless to him now.
He pulled the 10mm magazines and set them aside. Then he swapped the machine pistol’s empty box mag for a full one.
He wished he had a shotgun and one of his hunting rifles, the .308 or even his old model 94 .32 special lever-action Winchester, a cowboy rifle if ever there was one. But they were all back on the ranch. He hadn’t come here to hunt.
What he did have was his carry piece, a well-worn, lightweight XDS .45 that fit his big hands perfectly, along with its equally well-worn leather holster, which now sat comfortably inside his waistband, the feel of it against his body as familiar as the caress of a lover.
Again, he was tempted to ditch the 9mm, but he only had the chest rig rounds and a single box of ammo for his XDS, so he figured he might as well hold onto the Smith & Wesson at least until they got out of town.
“What do we do now?” Nina asked.
“I reckon we should hold off on seeing your brother and dad and hole up until Sage gets off work.”
“Guess we’d better wear disguises.”
“Something like that. I can put on a hat,” he said, thinking, but not my cowboy hat, not until I ride again.
“I’d change my clothes, but they’re all back at my apartment.”
“We’ll get you clothes. And a hat. Not too many drop-dead gorgeous women walking around with purple hair. Then we’ll see Sage’s super Seeker and get the hell out of town.”
“Okay,” Nina said, and Brawley knew she was fighting hard against sleep. Then she roused and stared up at him, her mismatched eyes full of emotion. “I was so worried about you back there, babe.”
“Don’t you worry about me,” he said, and gave her a kiss. “I’m hard to kill. Go on and get some sleep now.”
He didn’t have to tell her twice. Five seconds later, Nina was out.
She had been amazed by the power that she had generated, smashing the SUV, but the expenditure had staggered her, leaving her too weak to keep fighting. That’s why she’d staggered through the fence gate rather than staying to help him.
Apparently, once psi mages burned the gas in their tank, the only way to refuel was rest.
Did the same rules apply to Brawley if he was a so-called power mage?
He had no idea. It was one of many questions he had for his girls.
What a crazy twenty-four hours. Shit, not even. More like eighteen or twenty hours.
Whatever the case, in less than a day, he’d banged two beautiful women, fallen in love with both of them, killed five assholes, and oh yeah, discovered that he had some kind of magical power.
Not magical, he corrected himself. Psionic.
Sage had explained that while magical power came from external sources, psionic power came from within.
Whatever.
If it looked like magic and smelled like magic…
Speaking of psionics, he needed to practice. And that sounded good, appealing to both his train-till-you-bleed-and-then-train-some-more nature and the overwhelming curiosity he’d felt since making it with Sage.
He pushed the machine pistol across the table, pulled off his boots, and got comfortable on the couch.
Nina was snoring softly.
Man, was she a good-looking woman. And cool. And super fucking powerful.
He was sorry that her life had gotten turned upside down, but he wouldn’t change that, not if changing it meant him never meeting her in the first place.
He loved Nina and didn’t give a tin shit whether that made sense or not.
He closed his eyes and tried to locate the power in his mind.
A second later, there it was, glowing brightly within the darkened cave he’d visited earlier. The strand was glowing much more brightly now than it had at breakfast.
All right. Now to draw the power.
Honestly, he had no idea what to do. But that wasn’t going to stop him. The best way to learn something was usually to jump on and take a ride.
He could feel the power’s heat and motion. It was hotter and stronger than before. As he concentrated, something shifted, and he once again had a sense of his will as an entity unto itself, a force within the cavernous non-space of his mind.
He focused on the invisible flame, and something interesting happened.
He could see the strands. Not with his eyes, of course, but with some kind of mental eye that had not previously been available to him.
Had opening his Seeker strand made that inner eye available to him?
Perhaps. He reckoned probably so.
The strands wavered, a distant blur of faint illumination in the shadowy reaches of his mind.
