WE WALKED THROUGH the trees without talking.
Only the whisper of branches made any sound, along with the occasional call of an owl or a much more high-pitched sonic ping of a bat. I also heard sounds that I assumed had to be feral cats scuffling and looking for food... or possibly raccoons, which I knew lived in pockets all through the more wooded areas of the city.
I barely tracked those things as we walked.
I found I was on high alert already, even though I could only see the barest glow of lights around the Legion of Honor in the distance.
I was wearing the bullet proof vest Black had given me in his office, the same one he’d stuffed in a canvas bag before we got in the helicopter.
We’d retrieved everything out of the trunk of that hatchback car with blacked out windows we’d left parked on a side lot of the VA hospital complex. The lot where Black’s employees left the car had few streetlights at night, I learned. It was also lined with trees, and stood close to the beginnings of the path that would lead us into the back end of the park around the Legion of Honor. In addition to the equipment Black had given me, the bags held Black’s own guns of course, and a collection of knives that made me nervous when Black first uncovered them.
Other things in the hatchback included ammunition magazines and that third, much heavier black canvas bag, the one I didn’t ask too many questions about back at his office. Given its obvious weight and larger size, I suspected it contained larger capacity magazines and possibly larger weapons.
It turned out I was more or less right about both.
Flashbacks hit me inexplicably every few minutes now, mainly to the hills of Afghanistan despite the vastly different terrain. I suspected the big guns had something to do with it.
More and more, this felt like a military operation, not a private investigator’s snooping.
For the same reason, my nerves ratcheted higher with each step we took.
At least I wasn’t carrying one of those heavier weapons myself.
Black, on the other hand, wore some kind of high-tech short rifle on a strap under his long coat––something I confess I wasn’t familiar with at all, and might have been custom-made. In addition to the modified rifle, he wore at least three handguns I’d seen him slot into holsters, as well as a long knife stuck in an upside-down sheath from which an ivory handle curved outwards at the small of his back.
I suspected he had more than what I saw.
I didn’t ask, but my eyes were pretty wide by the time he finished gearing up.
I also checked my own two handguns about four times while watching him do it, once again conscious I might have to use my weapons on him, depending on how tonight went.
I kept that thought in the much quieter parts of my mind, however.
Black and I hadn’t talked much when I got back to the restaurant, or while we geared up in that dark corner of parking lot under a broken streetlamp.
He’d looked me over in the restaurant when I slid back into the leather booth across from him, after leaving Ian. I’d seen his gold eyes narrow, even as his mouth twisted in a harder grimace.
“You smell like him,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “He pissed all over you, didn’t he? I’m not sure if I should be flattered or annoyed.”
He said it like he was trying to sound amused, but I didn’t see much real amusement on him. Truthfully, he’d sounded more angry than annoyed.
“Ian doesn’t have to piss on me,” I said, giving him a warning look as I picked up my glass of wine.
Black’s frown deepened, but he didn’t answer.
The rest of the time we mostly just sat there, eating and drinking.
Our conversation remained minimal through most of the meal, although he did answer a few questions I had about the action-packed evening he had planned.
Black finally seemed to make up his mind to ignore me altogether towards the end of the main course, pulling out his large-screened phone and using it for what looked like research. Watching him, I doubted he was getting most of his information from public sources.
I decided to ignore him as well.
We’d finished our food entirely by then and he’d ordered us both cappuccinos.
I turned on my phone, intending to scan articles on the wedding killer to see if there had been any new developments. Of course, I’d managed to forget over that span of however-many minutes that my phone had been switched off for hours.
It lit up like a Christmas tree the second I turned it on.
Six voice messages from Ian, which he’d already more or less warned me about. A dozen more texts, most of those ending in question marks, also from Ian.
He wasn’t the big winner of the evening though.
I had another twenty or so texts from Nick, each employing caps-lock more liberally than the one before. The progression was pretty easy to follow.
1:19 PM - Letting Black go. Lawyers here. Sorry about before.
And then:
1:42 PM - Hello? Did you leave your phone off again?
And then:
2:04 PM - Don’t be pissed, Miri. Call me. I need to talk to you.
And then:
2:22 PM - Outside Black’s. Downtown. CALL ME.
I scrolled through a few more like that.
And then:
3:04 PM - SICK? ARE YOU F-ING KIDDING ME? Even gomey didn’t believe that horseshit. Call me.
I scrolled through a few more.
4:25 PM - SENT ANGEL BY YOUR HOUSE. NO ONE HOME. CALL ME. I MEAN IT.
I scrolled through a few more threats, seemingly one every half-hour, then saw:
8:10 PM - I’M PUTTING OUT A FUCKING APB AND CALLING IAN IF YOU DON’T ANSWER ME IN THE NEXT HOUR. NOT KIDDING.
Letting out a growling sigh of frustration, I ignored Black’s questioning look as I tried to decide if I should answer. Nick would know from his phone settings that I’d finally seen his messages, assuming he was still watching.
Which he would be. Of course.
Taking a breath, I decided I didn’t have much choice.
9:02 PM - Chill the fuck out! Didn’t have my phone. Went out for drinks with Lacey when my headache got better. Ian’s back. We’ll talk tomorrow.
I didn’t have to wait long for an answer.
9:03 PM - BULLSHIT. WHERE ARE YOU, MIRI? I NEED TO TALK TO YOU. NOW.
Grumbling under my breath again, I typed in a note.
That time I did the caps-lock thing too.
9:03 PM - WELL YOU CAN’T. IAN’S BACK. TOMORROW NICK. I MEAN IT.
I didn’t wait for him to answer.
Turning off my phone, I flipped it over and pried the casing off the back with my fingers, remembering how Ian had traced me here using my SIM card. Once I had the casing off, I removed the SIM card itself. After pulling my wallet out of my purse, I stuck it in a pouch near the credit card slots.
I pulled out one of the other SIM cards I had in there then and checked the number.
I’d gotten in the habit of switching out SIM cards where it made sense, using my office phone and a forwarding service as my main number for business cards and the rest.
Truthfully, I picked up the habit watching Ian, who had four or five on him at any given time, given his job, along with some kind of high-tech security app that allowed him to change his actual IMEI number, which identified the phone itself, independently of the phone number, I mean. He probably thought I didn’t notice how often he switched those out, but he didn’t deny it when I remarked on it, either.
For me it was simply one more byproduct of working closely with the police and having a fiancé with an obscenely high security clearance.
Also, yeah, my work put me in contact with some dangerous people.
Given that, I switched out SIMs every few months usually. I only gave the direct line to close friends, and then only when they asked––usually they just used the forwarding service like everyone else, since most claimed it was a pain in the ass to reprogram my number as often as
I changed it. I also had a second SIM card I used for work when I had a client I thought might be dangerous. I’d gotten in the habit of giving that number to Nick, too.
I carried a third one as well, that no one knew about but me. I used that one only for emergencies. I contemplated using it now.
“Don’t bother,” Black said. “If they’re tracking you, they already know where you are. Unless you have the same program as your boyfriend.”
I glanced up and found Black’s eyes on me, more specifically on my hands.
“Okay with a different bar?” I asked, lifting an eyebrow.
Black didn’t bother to nod.
While I popped the battery out of my phone with my fingers, he just lifted a hand to our waiter, signaling for the check.
About thirty or so minutes later we were in a different bar on Clement Street. We’d taken a cab most of the way there, after walking down the hill towards Ocean Beach.
The second bar was darker, dingier and more of a hole in the wall, with blacklight posters on the walls and Asian pop music playing out of the retro-styled jukebox. Most of the patrons were Chinese hipster kids who probably worked at tech companies in the valley. The majority of them looked barely twenty-five to me, but somehow, they seemed even younger.
They ignored us, which suited me fine.
At the same time, we blended in weirdly, since most of them wore dark colors and had their eyes locked on their phones just like Black did.
I ended up doing the same.
I popped the battery back in my phone, knowing it was unlikely to ping off cell towers without the SIM card, and that I should be able to use the bar’s wifi for basic surfing. Once we’d settled at a table near the back exit, I finally got a chance to scan for articles on the wedding murders myself, looking to see if there had been any new developments.
There hadn’t been really.
I winced when I saw an image of Black being led into the police station in handcuffs, thinking immediately of Ian watching the nightly news. Black’s head and face had been blurred though, so all you could see were the rings on his fingers under the cuffs and the black clothes and his arms and hands covered in blood. Reporters mentioned that the police let him go a little more than twenty-four hours later.
Nothing I saw, either in photo or video, showed Black’s face.
They hadn’t even mentioned his name.
Black must have damned good lawyers to keep that stuff out of the news, without even the obligatory “alleged” and “person of interest” words attached... much less off the dozens of voyeuristic and conspiracy sites that obsessed on the wedding murders online. Most of those sites had a pet conspiracy about the identity of the killer (or in some cases, killers), as well as a creative diversity in motives, connections to the victims and so on.
At the end of an hour of reading through posts, I still didn’t feel like I’d learned much. Eventually I’d sighed, popped the battery out of the back of my phone, and wandered to the bar to order a caffeinated soda.
We left the bar right around ten-thirty.
Truthfully, the idea of us doing anything that night apart from getting arrested––or, best case, freezing our asses off waiting for someone who never bothered to show––seemed like an insane long-shot to me now.
Assuming Black wasn’t the killer himself, of course.
Following his graceful and nearly-silent steps down a sand-and-dirt trail between pine and redwood trees heading north, I found myself thinking again how dangerous this was, even apart from the sheer improbability of our catching the killer.
Why the hell would I believe Black about any of this?
Even if I believed he didn’t intend to kill me––which for some utterly irrational reason I still did––why would I believe his crazy theory about other-dimensional astrology systems and their connection to alien wedding rituals and anti-human terrorist plots?
While all of it sounded equally implausible in Black’s penthouse that afternoon, strangely, it hadn’t sounded as dangerous.
But now, the idea that we could just pop down here to check out Black’s theory in the middle of the night without police back-up struck me as deeply delusional, and not only because Black was armed like he expected to be breaking into a maximum security penitentiary.
We were reaching the edge of the wooded park.
I could see a brighter glow of orange-tinted streetlights in the distance, even though we faced the back-end of the building, which remained in shadow. We’d just crossed a small wooden foot bridge when the path sloped up to the last line of trees. Beyond that was a landscaped lawn that wrapped around the structure up to the fountain and courtyard.
We were about to enter the park-like grounds when Black motioned for me to follow him to the left instead, taking me through a path-less cluster of trees around the west side of the building. Within a few minutes I saw the stone patio and tables outside the lower floor restaurant. Black used military hand-gestures to let me know we were entering the building there.
It hit me again that we were really breaking in. I found myself gripping the handle of the gun poking out by the left side of my ribs, but I didn’t draw it.
I liked having him in front of me at least.
Well, assuming he wasn’t working with anyone else.
Glancing behind me, I opened my mind, listening for the thoughts of other people.
People besides me and Black, that is.
When I did, Black came to a dead stop. He looked back at me sharply, his irises picking up a faint light from... somewhere... some light behind me, maybe from something on the grounds of the military-owned land, or maybe the moon.
Before I could think about why he was looking at me like that, he took a long step in my direction. Catching hold of my arms in his fingers, he lowered his head, speaking softly in my ear once he was near enough.
“We’re tracking one like me,” he said. “And you.”
“Yeah?” I said, just as quiet.
“Yeah? Don’t do that,” he said, lower still. “Don’t try to read me. Don’t look for them with your mind. They might feel it... or hear it.”
Moving my head away from his, I could only stare up at him in the dark.
His expression didn’t move.
“I don’t want them to know what you are,” he added, harder.
The silence between us deepened.
“You hearing me, doc?” he whispered. “You can’t control that, I want you to head back. To the car. Now.”
Weirdly, his words caused me to relax.
Which, if he’d been a psychopath, might have been their purpose.
I shoved that fleeting thought out of my mind.
“Got it,” was all I said.
Like him, I avoided words with hard sibilant, or “s” sounds.
“Okay?” he said.
I nodded, my hand still on the gun. “I got it. Go.”
He nodded, then turned, walking with those oddly silent steps of his through the trees. We didn’t emerge out onto the lawn itself until the last possible minute, after we’d walked the tree-lined road with the golf course on our left and the museum on our right, bringing us directly across from that outdoor patio with its closed umbrellas over round tables.
I followed him out onto the lawn, conscious that I was holding my breath as we approached the patio. We walked between those stone tables and dark, folded umbrellas. I could see the streetlights to our left, at the front of the building. I could even see part of the view past the building itself, although the trees of the Presidio made most of that dark apart from shimmering reflections of the moon on occasional glimpses of water.
Within seconds, I found myself with Black against the white wall of the building. We stood just to the right of the glass doors leading into the restaurant’s main dining area. I was about to ask Black how he planned to get us past the alarms and security cameras when he touched the headset he wore and spoke in a murmur.
“Dark,” I heard him murmur
.
I happened to be looking at the control box to the alarm over a doorway inside the restaurant. Being pitch black in there, it was the only light I could see beyond a faint illumination beyond the arch of that same door.
I watched the indicator light turn from red to green.
A bare second later, Black turned to me. “Ready?”
I nodded, my heart hammering in my chest. I was never someone who froze in combat situations. Still, I wasn’t one of those weirdos who got off on them either.
“Liar,” Black murmured next to me.
I wasn’t sure which thing he meant, so I only frowned.
Giving me a faint smile, he inserted a metal cylinder into the locking mechanism under the metal handle of the door. I held my breath as he turned it easily to the right, hitting a faint resistance before there was an audible click.
A master key of some kind.
Withdrawing and pocketing the cylinder, Black pushed open the sliding glass door.
Then we were inside, walking between tables in the dark.
Both of us had guns in our hands now.
I was more conscious of the possibility of friendly fire than unfriendly at that point––meaning I didn’t want to accidentally shoot some poor security guard who came down here looking for a snack.
I knew they must have actual living guards in a place like this.
When I’d brought that up to Black over dinner, he’d seemed unconcerned.
“Cameras will go down when my team pulls the plug on the alarms,” he’d told me, leaning over his plate of half-eaten steak to show me some flickering of program code sent to him by his people. “They’re working on getting us video feed streaming to the monitors. It’ll have to be a loop, so there’s some chance it’ll be picked up by their software... although my team is aiming for a loop of twenty minutes, so we likely have that, minimum, to get inside, unless they pick up on the signal tampering. Or notice the moon.”
“The moon?” I’d paused with a forkful of grilled salmon halfway to my mouth. “What does that mean?”
“There’s a moon tonight,” he said, equally dismissive as he tapped the glass window with the backs of his fingers. “Twenty minutes is long enough for it to move. They’ll take the sample loop as close as they can, but depending on cloud cover and the moon’s position...”
Black In White Page 14
