by Rysa Walker
The only thing I can do is get the hell out of there.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Silver Spring, Maryland
April 24, 2020, 8:48 a.m.
By the time the train pulls into the station, my panic has subsided. Despite my desire to run, that wasn’t an option with an iPad and an envelope full of documents stashed in the lining of my jacket. So I settled for walking and then collapsing onto the seat of a Metro train headed for the suburbs. Red Line. Home turf.
I’m hit by a wave of nostalgia as I exit the train at Glenmont, coupled with an awareness of how very much has changed in the six months since I last entered this station. Molly was inside my head back then, not Cregg. Deo and I were still living at Bartholomew House. I’d never met Aaron, or Taylor, or Daniel.
I’d never seen a dead body except in my dreams. Now I’ve seen around a dozen. The fact that around a dozen is the best descriptor I have for the number of bodies I’ve seen tells me how much I’ve changed. I seem to have lost count, and that really feels like something a person should be able to pin a specific number on.
And after this morning, I’ve now seen the partial remains of at least a dozen more. I should have counted. Again, it feels wrong—disrespectful and dehumanizing—not to know the number of fingers in that box.
But I’m not the only one who has changed. The people around me in the subway are also subtly different from the crowd back then. Six months ago, the vast majority of people pushing their way into the train for their morning commute would have largely ignored everyone else as they read, listened to music, or talked on their phones. Today, they still don’t interact, but their eyes dart from one person to the next. Alert. Suspicious.
Is that man one of them?
Why is she looking at me like that? Can she hear what I’m thinking?
A year ago, most of these people would have said that psychic abilities were the stuff of fiction. They would have laughed at the notion that anyone might be reading their thoughts. Might be feeding them thoughts. The possibility that one of their fellow commuters might be able, with a single touch, to flick out the lights inside the train—or worse, cause it to burst into flames—would have seemed ludicrous.
I spot a few other changes scattered about the station. There have always been public service messages alternating with the paid ads, but there are a lot more of the See Something, Say Something variety than before.
The Sanctuary for Psychics ad is also new. In the center of the white sign is a purple drawing of an adult with arms spread wide to encircle dozens of children. The figures are rounded blobs, similar to those old toys called Weebles, and the purple is clearly meant to evoke Senator Cregg’s Unify America party. A 1-800 number and web address are at the bottom, along with the words You Don’t Have to Bear This Alone.
Deo once noted that the motto is a terrible choice, given the bear masks worn by the groups perpetrating the various terrorist acts, or at least claiming credit for them. And some Metro customer apparently agrees. A picture of the WOCAN flag, with the grizzly bear at the center, has been taped under the words Bear This Alone.
Oh . . . and the hats. That’s definitely something new. Taylor’s fashion statement from last fall seems to have caught on. It’s a bit warm for hats today, but maybe a third of the people are wearing them. And if you look closely, almost all of them have a literal silver lining. There’s no evidence tinfoil deters Delphi powers, but I’m sure that claim is being made on the conspiracy sites, which have spread like a virus over the past few months. And, hey, tinfoil is cheap. Why take chances?
I emerge from the escalator to the sound of traffic on Georgia Avenue. Carver’s Deli is a half hour’s walk from the station, a walk I can make on autopilot. I need food and, more importantly, caffeine. Every penny I had was in my backpack, and Joe still has my last paycheck. It’s only for a few days’ work, but it will keep me fed, hydrated, and alert until I meet up with the others. When I called back in October to tell Joe I had to quit without notice, he promised to hold the check until the next time I was in town. He usually goes to the bank around lunchtime, and since the morning rush is over, hopefully he’ll have enough money in the register to cash the check for me. And if not, I know he’ll give me a bagel and a cup of coffee.
I’m not entirely happy with this plan, but it’s the only one I have. I switched trains three times, and I’ve kept a close watch since I left the station. If anyone is following me, they’re damn good. My plan is to slip in, collect the money, and go. Five minutes, tops. Joe will probably want to catch up, but I’ll have to cut it short. Tell him I’m in a rush and promise to get back with him later.
And I will get back with him later. I miss Joe.
The smell of freshly baked bagels hits my nose as I approach the door. I close my eyes for a moment and imagine myself back to this time last year. Walking through the door, slipping into my Try Carver’s Cravers! apron, and joking around with Joe for a few hours while we prepare for the lunch crowd.
The place is fairly empty, which is the norm at nine a.m. on a weekday. Most of Joe’s weekday-morning business is over by now, as people grab coffee and something portable to wolf down on their way to work. On weekends, customers linger, read the news, or just relax over their food. But during the workweek, it’s strictly in and out.
Joe looks up when the bell over the door rings. He doesn’t recognize me until I’m at the counter. When he realizes it’s me, his face doesn’t break into the smile of welcome I expected. In fact, it sort of tightens. Even though I left him shorthanded when I quit, he was sympathetic when we spoke on the phone. I thought he’d be happy to see me, and my smile fades at his uneasy expression.
“Hey, Joe.”
“Anna.” He casts a nervous glance around the small dining area and the one occupied table near the door. A woman is reading something on her phone while her toddler sits in his stroller, watching the cars roll by as he happily gnaws on a half bagel.
The sight of the kid eating stirs up a sympathetic growl from my very empty stomach. Joe must hear it, because he sighs and shakes his head, a tiny hint of a smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “Come on back to the office,” he says, then yells into the kitchen. “Andre! Watch the front.”
“But . . . you said to sauté the onions.”
“Leave them. Go wipe down the condiment stand. I’ll only be a minute.”
Andre, who looks about Deo’s age, wipes his hands on a nearby towel. Joe and I go back to his “office”—a small desk in an alcove behind the walk-in fridge, next to a waist-high filing cabinet. His computer is even older than the one Deo and I share. Joe still does a lot of his bookkeeping the old-fashioned way. I’d almost convinced him to upgrade and let me computerize everything when I had to quit.
“He’s half useless,” Joe mutters once Andre is out of earshot. “Third kid I’ve hired since you left. But hold on, let me find that check.” He rifles through a file in the top drawer. “You did something different with your hair. Nearly didn’t recognize you.”
“It’s been a . . . strange couple of months.”
“Yeah. So I’ve heard. Ah, there it is.” He pulls out the check and then turns back to me, looking me directly in the eye for the first time. There’s a bit of challenge in that look, along with something very close to anger. “You do know the cops came ’round looking for you, right? You and Deo both. Also some federal investigator. Asked a whole lot of questions I didn’t have answers to. I told them I couldn’t picture you working with no terrorists, and no way in hell either of you would hurt any kids. So you want to tell me what you’ve gotten yourself mixed up in, girl? Are you really one of those . . .”
He pauses and I brace myself. He’s about to say freaks, or maybe mutants.
But Joe doesn’t say the words. He simply leaves the sentence unfinished and holds out the check.
I want to shove it into my pocket and just go, get out of here, before he says something else that shreds the pleasant memories I have of working with him.
Before he says something that makes me cry, because until this moment I would have said Joe was a great guy. One of the best.
But I can’t leave. The check has my name on it, and there’s no way I’ll be able to cash it with the fake ID in my pocket.
“Could you . . . cash it?” I don’t want to look at him, worried I’ll see fear or disgust in his expression. So I keep my eyes pinned on the floor that I mopped so many . . . times.
The white tile floor. The one that’s almost identical to the floor in Lab 1 at The Warren. The familiar feeling I had during the vision comes rushing back. Costello. Blood on a white tile floor.
“Never mind,” I tell Joe, not even bothering to take the check. I rush back to the kitchen, even though I know anything I do now is pointless. But there are plenty of places with white tile floors, right? I just have to get out of here and find another one for Costello to bleed all over.
Except . . . when I look through the order window toward the dining room, I see two men getting out of a gray car parked in front of the little Indian market across the street.
The mom and baby are still at the front table.
“Get out!” I yell through the window. The woman looks up from her phone, clearly about to protest, so I add, “Gas leak!”
That gets her moving. She spins the kid’s stroller around so quickly it knocks over the chair she was in. Ramming one shoulder against the door like a linebacker, she hits the sidewalk running, just as Abbott and Costello catch a break in the traffic and start across the street.
“Get Andre and go out the back,” I yell to Joe as I head for the revolving door that separates the kitchen from the dining room. If I can reach the front in time to turn the lock, it will buy them a few minutes to get out of here.
But Joe grabs my arm. “Why did you tell that customer there’s a—”
I glance back to the window. They’re almost across the road now. No time to lock the door.
“Joe, those men are armed. But they won’t hurt me.” I wrench my arm out of his grasp. “You and Andre need to get out.”
Andre comes over, a rag in one hand and the metal cream pitcher in the other. “So . . . is there really a gas leak or what?”
The bell above the door rings. Damn it. Now I’m going to have to rely on my acting skills.
“I told you I had personal business to take care of,” I say, moving purposefully toward the two men entering the door. “I’m not paying you to follow me around. Why aren’t you dealing with the Pfeifer matter?”
Costello looks uncertain. Abbott, on the other hand, smirks. “You had an appointment at the bank almost an hour ago. Alex says you never showed up. Never even called.”
“I called. He didn’t answer.”
There’s a pause and they exchange a look.
“Oh, wow.” Costello makes a pained face. “Seriously wrong answer, Anna.”
He pulls a handgun from inside his jacket and points it toward me. Abbott quickly follows suit.
As soon as Andre sees the guns, the pitcher he’s holding tumbles from his hand. It clangs against the floor, sending an off-white plume of half-and-half sailing into the air.
I don’t know if it’s the sound or the metallic glint of the pitcher as it moves in Abbott’s peripheral vision, but he spins toward Andre without hesitation and fires. The bullet hits the boy in the shoulder. He cries out, and that’s what finally gets Joe moving. Joe was a medic in Vietnam, so maybe it’s the training from fifty years ago that kicks in. He catches Andre before the kid hits the ground and drags him back through the swinging door.
Both guns are again pointed at me. I know they won’t shoot. Even though they realize Cregg is no longer in the driver’s seat, there’s no way they’ll risk serious harm to his precious vessel. Not if they want to get paid. But they’re clearly willing to hurt Joe or Andre. In fact, they may feel they have to eliminate the two of them as witnesses. My secondhand tae kwon do skills, inherited from Jaden, probably aren’t going to cut it.
I take two quick steps backward through the swinging doors and give a hard kick in the other direction. The left door hits one of them, maybe both. There’s a loud oof, followed by the sound of someone staggering backward.
Behind me, I hear a creak from the door that leads to the alley. It’s not a loud sound, and I doubt I’d even know it was a door opening if I hadn’t opened it so many times to take out the trash. Joe must have gotten the boy outside. I send up a silent prayer that Abbott and Costello don’t think to circle around to the back.
That prayer is answered instantly, although not necessarily in the way I hoped, since I now have opponents on two fronts. Costello comes through the swinging door as expected, while Abbott, by far the more athletic of the two, begins climbing through the service window.
The cutting board where Andre was slicing onions is only a few feet away from the service window. As tempting as it is to go after the knife, I can’t risk moving closer to Abbott.
One of those odd bits of déjà vu runs through my mind when I take my next breath. There’s a hint of smoke in the air from the now-burning onions, and I remember the red mark on Abbott’s face as he crossed Second Street in my vision. I can’t reach the knife, but I can reach the stove.
Yanking my jacket sleeve down to protect my palm, I grab the handle of the pan and swing it in a wide sideways arc, spraying the contents in front of me. Halfway through the swing, I release the handle and the skillet goes flying.
Even though the bottom layer is burned, most of the onions are still moist. Abbott catches about half of them on his neck and face. They stick to him like scalding plaster. He falls backward into the galley between the counter and the order window as he screams, trying frantically to scrape the molten mess from his neck and hair.
The remaining onions rain down in the kitchen, along with droplets of oil from the pan. I catch a few bits on my arm, and one giant glob hits Costello in the stomach a split second before the hot skillet connects with his shoulder. He falls, landing hard on his right arm. The pistol he was holding careens across the floor until the grip lodges behind the wheel of the bagel rack.
Costello recovers quickly, though—much more quickly than Abbott, judging from the whimpering noises in the other room—and we both dive for the gun at the same instant. He’s closer, but I’m less injured and about a hundred pounds lighter.
I get to the gun first, but only by a fraction of a second. No sooner has my hand closed around the grip than Costello’s hand—hot, damp, and slimy from the onions—smacks down on mine.
Let him have the gun, Anna. They won’t hurt you if I’m in control.
The words in my head are accompanied by a faint buzzing noise. My walls are still up. I’ve been building them so long that I can do the basic level without even thinking, the same way you don’t have to think to add two plus two. I can almost—but not quite—maintain a basic wall against ordinary hitchers in my sleep.
But Cregg isn’t an ordinary hitcher. He’s punched a hole somewhere, a hole big enough that his suggestion—his very strong suggestion—gets through.
I quickly reinforce the barrier, but for just an instant, my hand relaxes. It’s enough to tilt the balance in Costello’s favor. He pulls the gun toward him, and I’m about to lose my hold, but then his hand slips.
When I yank the gun away, I realize why. The handle is now slick with residue from the onions. I’m pretty sure that’s the only reason I’m now pointing the gun at his head instead of him pointing it at mine.
Pushing with my elbows, I scoot backward on my stomach, away from Costello. I barely make it six inches, however, before my feet hit the bagel rack.
The mewling from the galley has quieted now. Abbott’s voice, still shaky, says, “Give him the gun, Anna.”
Even without looking, I know Abbott’s pistol is aimed at me. Knowing he can’t shoot me, that he doesn’t shoot me or else I wouldn’t be in DC a few hours from now, doesn’t make that any less unnerving.
I roll s
lightly so I can watch Abbott at the same time. He’s almost behind me, though, and I can’t retreat any farther with the bagel rack—and for that matter, the wall—blocking my path. There’s no way for me to see both of them fully from this angle, so I have to settle for shifting my eyes back and forth between the two.
“Give me the gun.” Costello, who is still lying on the ground, holds out his hand, palm up. “Give it over and we won’t go after your friends who ran through the back. No need for them to get hurt.”
“Why should I believe that? You already shot one of them.”
That faint creak comes from the back of the deli again. I wish I had Maria’s ability to send a thought, so I could tell Joe to stay out. To focus on getting Andre to safety, because I know I walk out of here unharmed. All I can do, however, is hope I’m the only one who recognized that sound and that Joe has the good sense to stay out.
“Pretty sure I just winged the boy,” Abbott says. “And the old guy will have called the cops. You can’t afford to get caught any more than we can. So give us the gun. You won’t be able to hold Cregg off forever.”
Cregg’s faint murmur of agreement is barely audible behind my walls, but the fact that I can hear him at all means Abbott is right. I won’t be able to hold him off forever.
That fear must show on my face, because Abbott nods. “Yeah, you know I’m telling the truth. When you sleep, it’s really easy for him to take over. He told us he could’ve slit your boyfriend’s throat in his sleep and you wouldn’t have been able to stop him.”
The words are clearly meant to catch me off guard, and they do. Is that why I moved to a separate bedroom? Did I know subconsciously that Aaron was at risk and acted to protect him?
I’m so caught up in this thought that I nearly miss the blur of movement from Costello. He now has the skillet in his hand, and it’s coming straight at me.
A shot rings out, and then the tiles shake as the pan smashes down, inches from my head.
For a second, I’m certain I pulled the trigger. I should have pulled the trigger. That would have been the smart thing to do when someone is trying to crack your head with a still-smoking skillet.
