“Do you think the Jays will target them all?”
“It’s too soon to know that, but it’s something we are considering.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s all for now. I’ll contact you when the next job comes.”
“Sounds good.”
“And Quinn?”
“Yes?”
“Go see the therapist. That’s why we retain them. I need you in top condition.”
“I’ll think about it.”
After they hung up, Quinn sat on her bed. She had no intention of visiting the Protectorate’s therapist, whom she’d learned long ago was some dorky Midtowner who couldn’t relate to the tribulations of the job, much less her and her background. Besides, she didn’t need a therapist; she needed for people to quit rooting around in her limbic system, drumming up bad memories.
Putting that aside, Quinn reflected on the Hatch job and realized they’d made progress. Progress was good.
Now it was time to tackle another problem.
Chapter 12
It wasn’t working.
Over the years, Quinn had become adept at hacking into various secure systems and getting the information she needed. But the El Diablo Police Department didn’t mess around when it came to cybersecurity. She couldn’t break in.
Her phone pinged.
Quinn glanced at it, only to find a breaking news headline glaring at her.
“Two dead after another shooting in White Sands, the fourth in a year.”
Quinn grabbed her phone and called Jones.
“Yeah,” he said, sounding tired.
“Hey. You guys okay? With the shooting and all?”
A big sigh. “Yeah. But Jeffrey’s hiding in our bedroom and he won’t come out.”
“You want to postpone? I’m having a hell of a time trying to get the information I need, so no big hurry.”
“It’s alright. They got the shooter in custody, and I could use an excuse to get outta here for a while. Be there in thirty.”
Quinn got back to work. But by the time Jones arrived, she was no closer to breaching EDPD’s systems.
Jones wore jeans and a button-down, and he sported a scarf to hide his neck tattoos. He’d grown hair on his shaven head. If it weren’t for the fact that he moved like a Downtown thug, he looked just like a Midtowner. He didn’t dress that way to fit in with her Midtown neighbors—he couldn’t care less what they thought of him—but did so to avoid looking memorable. The last thing they needed was for people to remember his face or associate it with hers. Normally they only met Downtown, but today’s task required privacy.
He looked distracted, even annoyed, as he walked in. Quinn began to wonder if he resented helping her with her stalker situation. He had enough problems of his own without adding hers to his plate. Quinn got him a root beer before he could ask.
“Nice joint,” he said flatly.
He was trying to be polite, but she knew he disapproved of the entire notion of living in Midtown. Yet, she could tell by how long he looked around, how he seemed to calm a little in the nice space with a decent view, that he too could appreciate the upgrade in living situation. But it would violate his thug code to admit that to anyone, because no self-respecting thug would ever admit to wanting to leave his neighborhood, even if it was in his best interests.
Jones took a seat while Quinn toiled some more. Finally, she let out a whoop. She was in. She located what she was looking for, and copied the necessary documents to an external drive.
“That everything?” Jones said. “The report, too?”
Quinn nodded. “We need to know what Noah and the other jacker cops saw that night at the Lindens’ place. They obviously didn’t report everything to the news. Something about that night doesn’t add up.”
“Assumin’ the report has everything in it…”
Quinn shrugged. “It’s an internal document…”
“Cops bend the rules when they need to. Your boy is proof of that.”
She gave him a look. “He’s not my boy.”
“Coulda fooled me,” he muttered.
Annoyance began to prickle at her. “Don’t start. It’s not my fault that…” She didn’t want to say it.
“That of all the guys in this city you coulda banged, you picked a jacker cop?” Jones said.
“I told you I didn’t know he was a cop,” Quinn snapped. “And why are you on my ass all of a sudden? We’ve pretty much ruled him out as the one sending me the threats.”
“He’s still showin’ up here, kidnappin’ you… probably waitin’ for the right time to come after us and threaten our livelihoods.” Jones set down his root beer with a loud crack.
Quinn stared at him. “If you don’t want to be part of this, you don’t have to.”
“It ain’t that.”
“Then what the hell is wrong with you tonight?” Suddenly, it hit her. “It’s the shooting, isn’t it? You made it sound like no big deal, but it rattled you.”
“It didn’t rattle me,” he growled. “Just drop it, alright?”
Quinn took a deep breath to control her temper. She wanted to press it, but something told her that beneath Jones’s snarling lay a deeper worry.
“Jones,” Quinn said, softening her tone. “Whatever’s bothering you, you can tell me. You’ll feel better if you get it off your chest. You’ve seen me have a total meltdown and I’ve seen you half dead. We should be past fronting, and there’s nobody who wouldn’t be a little freaked out by a rash of shootings in their own neighborhood. So spit it out.”
Jones slumped in his chair. “It ain’t me, alright? It’s Jeffrey.”
“What about Jeffrey?”
“He’s… havin’ issues. It ain’t just the shooting, either. We got these new neighbors and they get wasted and fight a lot. It upsets him and he’s been difficult as fuck lately.”
“Is there something I can do to help?”
Jones fiddled with his root beer. “No. We gotta move. But Jeffrey hates change, and truth is I don’t wanna deal with it. He doesn’t get that change means he won’t have all that shit that upsets him anymore because we’ll be livin’ in a nicer hood. He can’t think that way…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do. If it were up to me, we’d stay in our place. It’s good enough for me.”
“I know it is,” Quinn said. “What about moving to Sunnyside, like we talked about before? It’s safer, it’s still Downtown, and they have that place—Solera, I think?—that offers education and activities for adults with mental disabilities…”
“I’ve tried. They ain’t takin’ new clients. And I don’t wanna move and put us all through that if we can’t get him services.”
“Do they have a waiting list?”
“Dunno.”
“Well, find out. You have to bug these people. And maybe you should move, and wait until they take new clients again. They have to eventually.”
“Maybe. But I got the feelin’ they prefer a different kinda client, if you know what I mean.”
Quinn nodded. She did know. When given a choice, sometimes organizations, even those with a mission to help, preferred higher-class clientele to Downtownies. It was as if they feared those from the poorer neighborhoods would bring all their problems and poverty with them, like an airborne disease.
“It would still be good for you guys to get out of White Sands, Jones. A quieter, safer neighborhood would benefit Jeffrey. And I’m more than happy to help you look for a place, and help you with moving.”
“You can’t be helpin’ us. You got more problems than I do and you gotta keep a low profile.”
“That’s what wigs are for.” She grinned at her own joke, but Jones didn’t smile back. “Look. I’ll tell you something my dad told me after my place got burglarized, after I found out Noah was a cop and the Borelli job went to shit. He said people stay stuck in bad situations because they hate change. I didn’t get it at first, because I wanted change. I wanted to make Tier One and get out
of Downtown and change all kinds of things. But I was resisting change by clinging to what felt familiar, by trying to get my old partner back and not giving you a chance.” She paused. “This move of yours, if it happens, is a huge change for you and your family. You’d be leaving behind what you’ve always known, even if it’s not that great. You just have to take it one step at a time.”
She waited for Jones to brush off her mini personal growth seminar, but he didn’t. He just sat there, contemplating. Finally, he spoke.
“You ever get…” He shook his head. “Never mind.”
“Ever get what?” When he hesitated again, she said, “Scared? Sometimes. Pissed off? On a regular basis—”
“Lonely,” he interrupted, turning to her again. “You ever get lonely?”
Quinn looked down for a moment. “Every day.”
Jones blinked a couple of times. “At least you fit in a hookup or two. I can’t even do that, not with my situation at home.”
“And look how that turned out for me,” Quinn said with a wry smile. “And the ones before him…” She shrugged. “It’s satisfying at the time, but afterward you wind up feeling even lonelier.”
Jones grunted at that. “So that’s it? A life without, until we got enough saved to survive on low-paying work? Assuming we don’t die or wind up in the clink…”
Quinn nodded. She’d had the same thoughts, many times. But she’d always pushed them aside, knowing there was no real solution to them. A lot of people in their business avoided relationships, or lied to their partners. Quinn wouldn’t lie, and she knew Jones well enough to know he wouldn’t either.
“At least you got options at the Protectorate, with most of the agents bein’ guys and all,” Jones went on. “There’re only a few women, and none of them want a thug like me.” He eyed her. “So why ain’t you choosin’ from that pool?”
She shrugged. “They aren’t for me.”
“Ain’t no one good enough for Quinn, huh?”
“It’s not that. I just… I don’t feel it.”
“Feel somethin’ with the cop?”
Quinn’s face began to heat up.
Jones raised his eyebrows. “For real? You weren’t just nailin’ a Midtowner for fun?”
“At first, but it took an unexpected turn.”
“Jesus. That’s why he’s hassling you.”
Quinn shook her head. “I can handle him. We’ve got bigger problems.” She pulled up EDPD’s images of the two Black Jays, bloodied and dead on the Lindens’ white rug. “Do you think it’s a coincidence the news only reported that two ‘suspect individuals’ were dead, but didn’t identify who they were, mention their tattoos, or even mention the Black Jays?”
She then scrolled through the internal report until she found what she was looking for. “See, right here. It says they couldn’t identify the men, that prints and DNA yielded no matches in their system or the national registry, and that the guys didn’t have any IDs on them. There’s a mention of the bird tattoos, but that’s it. Even the cops don’t know who they are or know anything about the Jays.”
Jones nodded. “Which means we gotta hunt these guys down the old-fashioned way. And I know just the guy.”
Chapter 13
Quinn stepped into her heels and straightened her shift dress. It was a nice dress, but it lacked the elegance of her red one, her former favorite, sullied by a dumpster filled with garbage and ruined forever. But her current black one served its purpose by making her look like a Midtown professional woman. Along with a long black wig and heels, those who hunted her wouldn’t recognize her.
Neither did Jones, until she smiled at him.
“Ain’t as nice as the red one.”
“Don’t remind me.”
They got on the train and made their way to the outskirts of town, where concrete metropolis suddenly transformed into desert. Quinn could hardly stand to look at it. It was lush once—by desert standards, anyway—with tall green cacti, ocotillo, shrubs, and wildflowers that came alive when even a small amount of rain came. Now it was all gone, faded to crumbled tan dust and blown away by the dry desert winds.
They walked under the highway bridge and beyond concrete buildings, until they reached their destination. Quinn hadn’t visited the underground in some time, and it was still little more than a giant abandoned warehouse that had seen better days.
They walked past a network of makeshift rooms and “offices” with corrugated walls and floors that were half concrete and half dirt, one after the other with no end in sight. Quinn took in the familiar menage of cannabis, coffee, and trash talk that permeated the place. The entrances to each space were often manned by surly-looking men and women in comfortable desert-colored clothing… in case they needed to make a quick escape if the cops showed.
But the cops rarely came out here anymore, unless something big was going on. If anything, many had relationships with some of the underground players in order to sweep for suspects or potential CIs. Quinn knew because she’d seen them here herself. Even in plainclothes, she could always tell. But the cops kept a low profile, as an arrest or display of power meant never getting a lick of useful information in the future.
Finally, they arrived at one particular nook, its door a column of hanging beads. On the other side of the beads stood a table loaded with multiple computers running off a giant power cell that was so poorly constructed that Quinn questioned its safety. At the table sat a skinny guy with dark hair down to his waist and a face covered in tattoos.
Jones gave him a nod. “Pablo. Long time.”
The guy took one look at Quinn and scowled. “Who you bringin’ here, man?”
“The girl I told you about. You said you needed to see her.”
Quinn took off her sunglasses, and the guy studied her face. “I seen you here before.”
Quinn nodded.
“Whatcha need?” Pablo said to Jones.
Jones held up a wad of cash, then pulled out his phone and produced an image, one Quinn had filched from the EDPD. It was the face of one of the two dead Jays, the one Jones had fought that night, the enhanced and bruise-free mock-up created by the EDPD’s facial reconstruction software. “You know this guy? Big guy—my size—knows how to fight?”
“Yeah. I know him.”
“Who is he?”
Pablo hesitated. “I can’t be rattin’ people out, man—”
“He’s dead. And he tried to kill me for no fucken good reason.”
That seemed to be enough. Pablo lowered his voice. “Name’s Carlson. Don’t know much, but he was into somethin’ big. I can always tell these things.”
“What else? First name, address, who he associates with?”
Pablo shook his head. Then, after a moment: “Talked like a Midtowner. Mesquite, maybe Commons, if I were a bettin’ man.”
“So an ED native.”
The guy nodded. “No doubt in my mind. Oh, and his old man was a big player for years, till he got rung up for murder.”
Jones pulled up another enhanced image, the Jay Quinn had fought. “What about this one? Smaller guy, but fights like the devil.”
Pablo examined the image for a moment, then narrowed his eyes. “Yeah. I seen him too, but only once, maybe twice.” He turned to Quinn. “See, I don’t forget a face. You know what I mean?”
“What do you know about him?” Jones pressed.
“Polite guy. Green. Like he ain’t used to it, you know? Not a player.”
“Know his name?”
Pablo shook his head. “Like I said, not a player. Came lookin’ for a fryer. That’s all I know.”
A fryer. The Jay had bought an energy weapon. Probably the very one she’d given to Jones.
Jones handed Pablo the roll of cash. “Thanks, brother. And remember… we only here to buy some tech.”
Pablo nodded.
Quinn exited through the beads with Jones right behind her, and they began zigzagging their way through the labyrinth of cubbies toward the exit. Sudde
nly, everything seemed to quiet and heads turned toward something she couldn’t see. Quinn stopped and peered through an opening between offices to see what the problem was, praying it wasn’t the cops on one of their rare raids. There were no men in uniform, though. Instead, someone even worse stood there.
Noah. In jeans, a black tee, and a Demon’s hat. Even with sunglasses on, she knew without a doubt it was him.
Quinn backed away from the opening, only to crash into Jones. She stumbled and he caught her.
“What?” Jones whispered.
“Noah!”
Jones, needing to see for himself, peered through the opening. “Fuck. He’s headed this way.” He motioned to her to follow him, and they headed back the way they came, Quinn doing her best to keep up with Jones in her heels. When they reached Pablo’s office, they scurried inside.
“Got another job for ya, buddy,” Jones said to Pablo as Quinn tried to stop the beads from swaying back and forth.
Pablo, his eyes narrowed, listened as Jones gave instructions to go keep an eye on Noah and let them know when he left. Just as Pablo disappeared through the beads, he appeared again, walking backward as someone followed him inside. Noah.
Quinn, feeling like a trapped animal, grasped her weapons in her pockets, but praying hard she wouldn’t need them. Asshole or not, she couldn’t stand the idea of busting Noah’s jaw or even hobbling him. Noah took off his sunglasses, putting them on his hat. His brown eyes went right to Quinn, a half-smile on his face.
“You can take your hands out of your pockets, Quinn,” he said. “I’m here on business. Just like you.” He glanced at Jones. The two men eyed each other, recognition in their eyes. “Good to see you’re still alive, man,” Noah said to Jones, his tone cocky. “You looked a little grim last time we met.”
Jones said nothing, and maintained his steely stare.
Noah turned to Pablo and stuck out his hand. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Noah.”
“Pablo,” the guy mumbled. He reluctantly shook Noah’s hand, probably deciding it was better to do so than risk the unknowns of offending him.
Mind Thief Page 7
