Phantom Instinct (9780698157132)

by Gardiner, Meg

  It drove straight toward Piper. She was caught between it and the charging dog.

  Oscar, still on the phone with 911, said, “You gotta get people to the high school like right now, Jesus, man, it’s going down, hurry.”

  Harper said, “Piper, God.”

  Piper pulled herself to a stop, looking frantically for a way out. The door of the beige sedan opened. A figure wearing a hoodie over a baseball cap jumped out and grabbed her. Piper kicked and fought, but he held her tight and flung her into the car. The dog raced at the vehicle and leaped in after her. The hooded man jumped in the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and took off, burning twin lines of rubber into the asphalt. He roared out of the parking lot, headed for the back streets and wooded neighborhoods beyond the high school.

  On Harper’s phone, the call from Piper went dead.

  “Oh, my God,” Harper said.

  Oscar lowered his phone. “No. Oh man. Oh no.” A dispatcher’s voice tinned from his phone. “Sir? Sir?”

  Aiden threw open the back door and hurried, limping hard, to see the screen. “Yes. North Hills High. Main entrance, the west side parking lot . . .”

  “Too late,” Harper said. “They got her.”

  Aiden put a hand beneath Harper’s elbow. “I’ll get LAPD. You saw it. We’ll get them on it.”

  But Harper shook her head. “How? Look. There’s no sign of it.”

  She pointed at the screen. Piper was gone. The car was gone. Nothing had been left to tell the tale.

  Aiden made another call. He spoke rapid-fire to somebody in the LAPD.

  Harper stared at the computer screen. “Oscar, can we trace that video feed?”

  He frowned and waggled his hand. “Maybe, maybe not.”

  Into his phone, Aiden said, “Do it.” He hung up. “LAPD is sending a unit to the scene.”

  She grabbed his arm in thanks. To Oscar she said, “Can we trace the IP connection? A phone number?”

  Same face, same gesture. “Live feed, no recording.”

  The video feed was abruptly cut. The screen went black.

  Her phone rang. Despite herself, she jumped. Hand trembling, she answered the call.

  33

  Harper put her phone to her ear. The oaks rattled under a gust of wind. Aiden stood close, his face flat, eyes keen.

  The sound of Travis Maddox breathing through the phone raised the hairs on her arms. She didn’t wait for him to speak.

  “I know how this works. I know how to fuck you up. Let Piper go right now and I won’t come after you.”

  Aiden and Oscar stared at her.

  “You’re darling,” Travis said. “You’re a diamond in the pig shit that is the world. But you don’t know where I am. Now shut up and hear what you’re going to do.”

  His voice had no joy in it, no hint of mercy. Just the same dry certainty he’d always spoken with, the ego and desire for command. She kept her knees locked. Aiden’s hand steadied her. She held tight to her voice.

  “Talk, Travis.”

  “And forget about tracing this call. The number will be dead as soon as I hang up. You know this drill, but let me state it in case you are busy pissing your pants. You will not contact Piper’s parents. You will not contact the police. You will not phone them, Sam I Am.”

  Acid rose up her throat. He was enjoying himself. “Get to it.”

  “Turn yourself over to us, or little sis will die.”

  She heard a whine in her head, the sound of a heated wire, getting louder, filling her ears.

  Her knees were readying to give way. “You can’t think I’m going to do that.”

  “You want Piper to live? You want to see her breathing, with four working limbs, without her face burned away?”

  “Stop it.”

  “I have nothing to do with it. But Eddie, you know . . . he likes to zero things out. And even if he’s in a mellow mood, Eagle is almost impossible to control when he gets the scent of prey.” His voice turned lively. “Eagle being his dog.”

  Yes, asshole, I know. “What do you want from me?”

  “Nothing. I just want you to understand what you’ve wrought.”

  “Really?”

  “God, you still have that sarcastic edge to your voice. It’s like a bone saw, grinding against my shins.” He paused, seemingly waiting for her to jump in again. She forced herself to stay quiet. “This will unfold in my time, not yours. What do I want? Oscar, for starters. The rest is easy. Your full confession.”

  “I did my time, Travis.”

  “Fuck you did. You know what the pressure of a dog’s jaw is, on a human jugular? Even if he doesn’t rip her throat out, he hasn’t been vaccinated for rabies. Forget the disfigurement. All that has to happen is for her to stay hidden for the incubation period. There’s no cure once symptoms manifest, you know. And even if it turns out the puppy doesn’t have rabies, God knows what kind of staph infection he might transmit through his filthy mouth.”

  “I’ll confess anything you want, Travis. Just tell me where to exchange her. But you’re not getting Oscar.”

  “Sure I am. Instructions will follow. Keep the phone line open,” he said. “Ticktock.”

  34

  Harper stood with the phone hanging from her hand, her eyes shut. The wind rattled through the trees. Aiden put a hand on her back. She flinched. She wanted to jump like a vampire straight through the oaks, hit the sky and scream on through the atmosphere, past air and blue and people to the dense empty black beyond, where light would hit her in a vacuum, silently, and none of this would matter.

  “Harper,” he said.

  She opened her eyes. “They have Piper.”

  Oscar said, “And? What do they want?”

  She looked at him. He shook his head, slowly at first. Backed up a step.

  “No.” He raised his hands. “You can’t. I won’t.”

  “Of course not,” she said.

  He continued to back away, his gaze flitting between her and Aiden. “You can’t turn me over to him. To them.”

  “Oscar, it’s okay.” She held out her hands, and knew she was almost gesturing as though patting out a fire. “Nobody’s turning you over to them.”

  “Shit shit shit—oh, God, I should never have taken that job. They were playing me behind my back and I should have known.”

  “They were playing all of us,” Harper said. “Now we figure out what to do.”

  She had to keep him from bolting again. If she could get him invested in a solution, he would get distracted and forget about running. That was the thing about Oscar: The project was everything. Creative problem solving, a win at the end—the goal was all. A number. Cash in his pocket. Like a video game with a real outcome, which generally meant pride and some good dope. A hackathon. But now, for the first time in years, it was becoming real for him.

  “Oscar, I drove you up here to keep you away from Zero. Do you hear me? I will not turn you over to him.”

  He pointed at Aiden. “How about him?”

  Aiden shook his head. “Not gonna happen.”

  Aiden looked serious, but she imagined that all his cop training had prepared him to look serious with people he was trying to calm down before he got close enough to Tase them and cuff them.

  Oscar nodded. “Okay. I believe you.”

  Aiden turned to Harper. “The LAPD unit is en route. And I left multiple messages for Erika. They’ll put out BOLOs on that beige sedan. But if Zero is the one who snatched her, presume he parked a switch car nearby and that he’s already abandoned the vehicle you saw on the video.”

  Her stomach and hopes began to drop. And they were already low. “They’ll check for the spot where Travis was filming, too? It had to be across from the high school parking lot. Somebody must have seen him.”

  “They’ll check.”

 
“We’ve got to get to the scene, gotta do something to help them. . . .”

  He took hold of her shoulders. “You are not going to the scene or anywhere near it. You are not going anyplace close to Zero and Travis Maddox.”

  “I have to. This is on me.”

  “Bullshit. You’re not doing anything that will give Zero and Maddox a chance to get hold of you. Or that will give the cops a whiff of suspicion about you.”

  “I already had you call it in,” she said. “That has to be two strikes against this already.”

  He frowned, but only for a second. “Brutal.”

  “Sorry.”

  “But true.”

  “Aiden.” She put a hand on top of his. “It doesn’t matter anymore what people think of us. Piper’s been taken. We have to do everything we can.”

  His hands were hot on her shoulders. She could feel his pulse beat through his palms. She wanted to wrap her arms around him. The air felt chilly.

  “Please. Help me,” she said.

  “I am.”

  “I’ve been myopic. From the time I saw the shadow at the memorial service, I should have warned Piper more forcefully. I should have insisted that the Westermans protect her.”

  “But you told her to be careful. You told her parents that you were worried.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  He put an arm around her shoulder. “Hey.” She thought he was trying to comfort her. He said, “You need to suck it up. You care about Piper—I know it, and they know it. And this is all about getting you in their sights.”

  “Why don’t they want me to contact her parents? I would expect them to demand a ransom. The Westermans have money, plenty of it. That is, if . . .”

  “Money is their backup plan. It’s Plan B,” Aiden said.

  Her nausea returned, cold and stinking.

  Oscar cleared his throat. “Where does that leave me?”

  She and Aiden both looked at him. She said, “We might need your skills. You up for that?”

  “This girl,” he said. “She’s a friend?”

  “She’s the little sister of the guy who died at Xenon.”

  His face fell. “Your . . . your boyfriend.”

  She nodded. And she felt a thin line of hope. “His name was Drew. And Zero never mentioned him to you, did he?”

  Oscar shook his head. Harper realized: There was no possibility Drew had been involved in providing the shooters access to the club. She had let her own suspicious nature take over. God. She had blamed him, nearly led Sorenstam to him, and tried to get the detective to look at him, without having said it herself. She felt ashamed.

  “We need to get to L.A. Let’s go,” she said.

  She was running to the house when Aiden’s phone rang.

  “Erika. Yeah,” he said.

  The warmth and relief in his voice when he said Sorenstam’s name sent an ice pick through Harper’s heart.

  Sorenstam was in a departmental unmarked car, heaving it through freeway traffic toward downtown L.A. On the radio, she had Detective Perez from the station. On her phone, she had Aiden.

  “I’m on my way to the high school,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Aiden said.

  “Don’t, yet. This thing is weird, Garrison. And it’s unspooling fast. I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t want to think that you’re sending me on a snipe hunt.”

  “Appreciate it. Truly.”

  Her stomach burned. She told herself it was because she was entering an arena where everything was uncertain, where she didn’t know if she was risking her time on a fool’s errand, or heading for a trap. She tried to convince herself it wasn’t because of her feelings for the man on the other end of the line.

  “Aiden, if this turns out to be nothing, or it smells bad when I get there . . .”

  “Understood.”

  “Harper Flynn can’t be ordering us around. If she’s after something, I will not put up with it. Got that?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “I’ll call you when I know something.” She ended the call and pressed TRANSMIT on the radio. “Perez?”

  His voice fuzzed through. “Talked to the Ventura Sheriff’s Office. When they arrived at the Lemon Tree Mall in Camarillo, no sign of Flynn or the man she supposedly found. No word from her.”

  “Okay,” Sorenstam said. “If Flynn calls the station again, keep her on the line. Try to get her location. We need to bring her in.”

  “On what grounds?” Perez said.

  “Material witness.” Professional pain in the ass. Possible devil. She hit the windshield flasher lights and pulled into the fast lane.

  Thirty miles from Los Angeles, Aiden signaled and pulled the pickup off the freeway at a gas station. Harper followed.

  She parked near the pickup and looked at Oscar severely. “If you so much as breathe on the window, much less open the door and get out, I’m going to telepathically contact Zero’s dog and tell it to hunt you down.”

  He frowned. “Sheesh. Chill.” Then he shrank back against the door frame. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  She yanked the keys from the ignition and got out. The afternoon heat pressed down. The hills were dry, the golden grass little more than kindling, the huddled oaks almost gray. Aiden stood at the pump, holding the nozzle, watching the numbers spin.

  “Any more news from Sorenstam?” she said.

  “Not yet.”

  “She should be at the high school by now.”

  “She’ll call.” He eyed her. “What?”

  I know about the two of you, she wanted to say. I know that you may have loved her. I know she’s still angry at you, maybe because she resents what was taken away from the two of you. I know that when you talk to her on the phone, once you get past the thorns, your voice mellows, and you speak in the shorthand of cops and friends and people who know each other far better than you and I do. I know I’m on the outside.

  “It’s nothing,” she said.

  He squinted at her. “We’re headed into God knows what. Don’t hold back. There’s no time.”

  She listened to the traffic slice past on the freeway.

  “You worried I’ll have another episode?” he said.

  “No.”

  “You should be. Some of my wiring’s been ripped out. Medication can stop the sparks from jumping the gap only so much of the time.”

  “I understand.”

  “This thing, Fregoli—the meds help focus my vision, but they can’t restore my neurology to what it was before the injury. Face blindness is just the strangest symptom. I’ve blacked out before. And I can guarantee that what happened last night will happen again.”

  His face was stark. His gaze didn’t flinch. He had decided to be open with her. He looked like he was asking something in return.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay what? You going to tell me what’s got your teeth nearly chattering?”

  “Okay, you son of a bitch. You want to know the truth? What happened last night scared me half to death. It made me pull back. I saw somebody I was having dinner with—holding hands with—somebody I’d just made love to give a complete stranger an unmitigated beatdown, and it scared the hell out of me.”

  He didn’t look away. “I know.”

  She waited for him to say something else.

  He glanced at the pump. “Do what you want. But if you want to be with me, you have to take me as is.”

  “All right, then.”

  “All right.”

  He kept looking at her. “My turn.”

  She jammed her hands in her back pockets. She had a feeling what was coming.

  He said, “Tell me the rest. Tell me everything and stop holding back. I may not see things right all the time, but I know when something looks wrong. And I
can hear it. I can see it in your posture, in your eyes. You may have grown up lying and stealing and sneaking past people’s defenses, but I spent years learning how to spot people like you, and years before that carrying a military rifle and figuring out my plan to kill everybody I met that day.”

  She deliberately avoided swallowing, but inwardly she flinched. His voice was calm, his face intense. The wind flattened his hair against his forehead.

  “There’s more,” she said.

  “The rest of the story.”

  “Yes.”

  After all this time, it lodged in her chest. The fallout: debris scattered across the desert, across many lives.

  “Travis and Zero are out for revenge. Everything I told you about the armed robbery—it’s the rock-solid truth. We all went away. All did time,” she said. “But that wasn’t the only consequence of that day.”

  His eyes scanned her. Maybe he seemed to think: No surprise.

  “The robbery was my ticket out,” she said. “But I’d been trying to find a way out for a long time. I knew that things were heading down the drain to the sewer, and that I had to find a way to stop what was happening to me. And I was angry and desperate and seventeen. So I talked to Oscar. He taught me some of the things he was doing for the Maddox family.”

  “He initiated you into his hackerish ways?”

  She glanced at the MINI. Oscar was fiddling with the stereo.

  “He was literally a kid with toys. And he showed me how he’d set up Maddox’s computer security. It was drumskin tight. But Rowdy never even praised his work. And that’s what Oscar wanted—somebody who would let him be a kid under the Christmas tree, even if it was in a half-built crime mansion in the scrub desert outside China Lake.”

  “And you soaked it all in.”

  She nodded. “I listened. And I thought about it. And later, after Oscar explained something to me—”

  “Or you asked him questions . . .”

  “Of course. Afterward, I wrote everything down, in a little Moleskin notebook I hid behind the molding along the floorboard in the closet. I cut a hole in the sheetrock and put the baseboard back over it,” she said.