Vacant

by Alex Hughes

  With a truly horrible noise, the door shifted. I pushed again, Loyola helping, and it opened all the way. We fell into an open space of blinding light.

  CHAPTER 17

  Blinding daylight, and the sound of a kid yelling. Tommy. I saw—more with my telepathy than my eyes—I saw him kicking and screaming and trying to get away.

  “Stay still,” Sibley said, and Tommy stopped fighting.

  I cursed and pushed myself to my feet, my eyes squinting but finally adjusting.

  Three men in the alley, one with Tommy, one being Sibley with that horrible sphere in his hand, one moving toward me.

  We were in another covered cobblestone alley, this one with heavy, wooden green doors we’d just come through. Boarded-up windows stood across the way, a store long abandoned. A small aircar stood beyond in a dirty street with greenery all around, its engine already whining.

  I reached out, trying to get a grip on the mind of the guy coming toward me, but my grip slipped. Too many blocks on my mind. The guy kept coming.

  Loyola was up, gun in hand, and I heard the whoomp, whoomp of a larger-caliber gun discharge.

  Sibley’s body shook with two hits, center mass, perfect.

  But then he stood, confident, his mind with little pain. His shirt was now rigid in two circular spots, discolored, a supermaterial that had caught the bullets and absorbed them like armor. He was bruised but not seriously hurt. And he had that device in his hand.

  He yelled at Loyola, “Stop. Let us go.”

  Loyola reacted, but I couldn’t tell how; the other guy was on me.

  I threw up the arm with the crowbar, instinct only, and his fist and then his jaw connected with it; he fell back.

  I scrabbled for a hold on his mind again, letting go of the blocks recklessly.

  His fist connected with my side then, and I cursed as I lost my concentration. He grabbed the crowbar and—

  I finally got my grip on his mind. He slumped, unconscious, down to the ground, crowbar and all. I let him go.

  The sound of two gunshots, smaller caliber, crack, crack. Pain from Loyola; he was down on the ground then.

  Tommy was screaming, screaming, all over the real world and Mindspace both. His fear ran over me like a waterfall. He was reaching, reaching out to me to try to connect again, to try to get away. But he had no teleportation. He had no way of controlling the world, and no training to control the minds around him.

  And Sibley was busy now, reestablishing control. They were dragging Tommy toward the car, but he wasn’t going down easy.

  More pain from Loyola as he tried to get up. The FBI wasn’t flush enough to have supermaterials in their agents’ clothes, and neither one of us had—or had worn—a vest.

  Tommy quieted, all at once, the silence ringing. The car door opened.

  Every second we delayed here, every ounce of noise we could make would bring reinforcements. This was a busy tourist area. We had reinforcements in the area too. If I could just slow them down . . .

  I reached over to grab onto the other guy’s mind then, but I was too late.

  Sibley had met my eyes, sphere in hand, now just three feet from me.

  “Go to sleep,” he said.

  I fought the compulsion, I fought with everything in me. I had a block, a little one, but one still.

  “Go to sleep,” he said one more time, but Tommy’s life was on the line. I fought, a bear in a cage clawing, a bear with its foot caught in a trap, fighting no matter what the pain was.

  I got the second guy’s mind, the guy who had Tommy, and turned off his consciousness. He slumped, trapping Tommy in the car. Damn.

  “Go to sleep,” Sibley said one more time, and he was so close and I was so open I felt him decide shooting me would just invalidate the device, would just wake me up. And Fiske wanted to torment me. So he walked away, like I didn’t matter. The ultimate sign of disrespect.

  I remained conscious as Loyola fought to his feet, fought to run after the now-lifting aircar. I staggered to my knees, the effort horrible and painful, that bear with its paw caught in the door. I heard Tommy screaming through Mindspace, as they pulled him away toward the car.

  I staggered forward.

  Loyola ran.

  But the car was lifting off an anti-grav, and neither one of us could make it in time.

  * * *

  Jarrod and the local police arrived on the scene ten minutes later. I got Loyola to the EMTs, gave a quick report, and made sure the police had a clear direction. Then I found a map and started walking, trying to make out which direction they’d gone.

  It was useless, and an hour later, the police confirmed that Sibley and Tommy were gone. The guy I’d taken out didn’t know where they were going, or was a good enough liar he could fool even me.

  I had failed. A dark heaviness sat on my chest as I rode back to the house. I had failed utterly.

  Jarrod chewed me out, briefly, like he was too tired and defeated to bother to do it properly.

  I stayed, while Loyola, arm in a sling, talked to the Savannah PD and the rest of the feds about setting up a search area.

  I stayed, and took my orders and did what they told me. I deserved nothing less. And I tortured myself, wanting Satin and not having it.

  * * *

  My head was pounding with every beat of my heart, but I kept walking. There was an old theater on my left, two doors down, a place that had been renovated so many times you could hardly see the original windowsills beneath the paint. This part of town was old, almost deserted, and the occasional graffiti gang sign stood on signs and walls there above a dozen layers of paint before the locals could paint it again. An empty paper sack skittered along the street in the wind.

  I walked up to the theater, feeling three conscious minds inside, and knocked. With any luck, they’d have my drug, I thought. But then made myself focus on the mission, on getting Tommy back.

  For the fiftieth time that afternoon, I waited for someone to come to the door. Also for the fiftieth time, I could tell you within seconds that it wasn’t any of the people we were looking for.

  When the door was opened, though, I got a surprise. The guy had a gun.

  “We’re in the middle of something,” he said flatly. “Theater doesn’t open till seven. I’d suggest you come back.” He waited, giving me a critical look. He was a lanky twentysomething light-skinned black man who moved with the slightly hunched quickness I associated with basketball. He was wearing a bandanna with a basketball team logo, also, which hopefully was about the team and not about a local gang.

  Okay. Well, better that I knock on this door than the other searchers. At least I didn’t smell like police. I lifted the two pictures I was carrying. “I’m trying to find a missing kid. You have a second?”

  “No,” he said, hand on the door. He paused then, looking past me.

  I felt a mind coming up behind me then, and I turned. It was Quentin, Tommy’s father, in casual clothes and a hat.

  “Basie!” he said to the man cheerfully. “How goes it?”

  “Quentin.” The man with the gun relaxed a little. “Theater’s not open till seven today, but you’re welcome to wait. We’re finishing up the funding drive.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked Quentin, guilt hitting me all over again. I was tired, my head hurt, but I’d been pushing through on the slight chance that doing something—anything—the searchers told me to do might help find Tommy. I had to keep moving, or it would all hit me at once.

  “You know this guy?” Basie asked.

  “A nice man indeed, and generous to a fault.” He glanced at me. “He has graciously agreed to help me in my search for my son, currently missing. I trust you will help as well?”

  “Who took him?” Basie asked, wary.

  Quentin sighed deeply. “His mother tangled with the wrong set of peo
ple. I am here to discover who was involved and what they most want in order to get my son back.”

  Basie’s eyes shadowed then, and I felt sadness. “That’s rough.” He put the gun in his back waistband and opened the door. “As you know, with the funding drive going you have to stay in the front room. I’ll ask the guys if they know who is involved.”

  I got a strong picture of guns and other military-grade things being prepared for sale, their “funding drive” to keep the theater solvent.

  “We try to keep our nose clean from some of the more extreme situations, but inevitably people talk to thespians. Probably somebody will know.”

  “Ah yes,” Quentin said. “Nothing like a deeply moving play to make one’s tongue wish to wag about one’s exploits.”

  “You know it is,” Basie said.

  Wait. Military equipment. Was he in contact with whoever had stolen the equipment for the boy’s original attack? If so, he might be very useful indeed.

  “Thank you for your generosity,” Quentin said.

  I followed them into a tattered main lobby area, complete with old-style ticket booths from the early days of movies, the glass so old it was starting to run, waves settling into it as the glass fell slowly, over decades. The carpet was newer, but still tattered, the few seats in the area threadbare. Mindspace was quiet here, not disturbed much over the last few days.

  Two large double doors led past the ticket booths to the theater itself; a smaller door, to the right, had two minds on the other side of it; I got a general impression of counting merchandise there, doubtlessly the guns.

  “Do you work with the Hard Knocks gun shop?” I asked Basie.

  He tensed, hand drifting toward the gun. “Quentin, your companion is asking uncomfortable questions.” He was thinking that I knew too much. And the cops had just been to the gun shop. “You’ll have to leave if he keeps it up.”

  “My apologies, Basie, truly. Adam here has the great and terrible fault of being curious,” Quentin said quickly. Then looked at me. “Feels he must know everything, whether it is or is not his business. Please ignore his little peccadilloes and fetch your associates. I fear that our time is running out.”

  Basie looked at us both. Then, finally, at Quentin. “You’re in a hard spot, and you’ve been good to the theater. I’ll overlook it this once.” Then he turned, hand going away from the gun, and went into that side room. He was careful not to open the door wide enough for us to see inside.

  “What are you doing?” Quentin hissed at me.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. “I’m on the search grid. They couldn’t find the flyer and they think maybe it grounded in this direction. Door to door.” The movement, the questions thus far were keeping me from panicking too badly, but seeing him made it worse, made it itchy, made it all real.

  I’d lost his son, and he should hate me. I should hate me. My heart sped up again.

  “No way in hell am I sitting on the sidelines while my son is in danger,” Quentin said, and I realized the suave face he put on for the world had just disappeared. “This is the right place to go to get answers. I should be asking you what you’re doing here messing up my tactics.”

  “I was just—” I went quiet as the door opened again, and two more guys came out, a black guy in his teens who kept looking around like he expected trouble, and an older white guy in glasses. I’d been under the impression that Savannah crime split along racial lines, so unless I was misinformed, the mix here was unusual and therefore interesting.

  “Thank you all, sincerely, for the gracious gift of your time during the critical fund-raising season for the theater,” Quentin said, and his charm and the apparent sincerity was back in all its glory. He was even extending a low-level emotion into Mindspace, more charm and likeability. I didn’t know if he was doing it on purpose or simply by accident, but I could see the guys relax. “As I was telling your associate, my only son has been taken. I need to know who, and what they are looking for, to best start a negotiation that will satisfy everyone. I know that the three of you talk to everyone, sooner or later. Have you heard any useful information of any kind on this topic?”

  “Getting kids involved is trouble,” the older guy said.

  “Who you looking for?” the younger guy asked.

  I held up the two photos. “Here’s Tommy, the boy we’re looking for. And this here is the guy we last saw him with. Anything you can tell us about who he works for and with would be very helpful.”

  “You cops? You working with the ATF?” the younger guy asked suspiciously.

  “No,” I said, with as much sincerity as I could put in my voice. “I have a few friends, but I have friends with everybody. Today we’re just wanting to get Tommy back. I’m not interested in anything else.”

  Quentin frowned at me, then turned to the others. “Truly, fine gentlemen, we are only here for my son. I beg you to help me. I’ve done many favors for this theater, and I’d like to call them due at this time, for your generosity.”

  “Give me that picture,” the older guy said.

  I handed them both over.

  He looked at them for a long time, then handed them back. To Quentin he said, “Your ex is in a world of trouble. That’s the big boss’s man. The Python.”

  The other two criminals stared.

  “Anything you can tell us?” I asked, stomach sinking.

  “People end up dead when they cross him,” Basie said. I realized he was legitimately afraid. “And that’s just for starters. The gun shop? Well, maybe we work with their phone number. I’m not saying we do. But the rumor is, the hotline arranged a contract on the wrong person, somebody the big boss wanted to take care of himself. Everyone involved is dead. This is why the theater is so careful what we get involved with, you understand. We don’t want trouble. We don’t hurt anybody. We just provide supplies in exchange for the money we need to keep the theater running.”

  “Admirable, of course. How best should I negotiate with these gentlemen, in your opinion?” Quentin asked. “How do I set up contact?”

  “You don’t, man,” the younger one said simply. “You do what he says. If he’s sending the Python to enforce, he don’t want to hear from any of us. It’s too late to talk to the Booker.”

  “Who’s the Booker?” I said.

  Basie looked uncomfortable then. “We’ve mentioned too much already. Look, as we said, we don’t get involved in this kind of thing. You leave now and we’ll forget this happened, okay? You never heard anything from us.” He was afraid for his life against this big boss, against the guy I thought was Fiske.

  Quentin turned, but I didn’t.

  I held up a hand. “One more question and I leave.”

  “You ask too many questions,” Basie said.

  “It’s just a little one.”

  We need to go, Quentin told me pointedly, mind-to-mind.

  Basie crossed his arms.

  “The contract they took they weren’t supposed to? Was it from Pappadakis?” I asked.

  “The rich guy who’s on trial?” Basie asked, surprised. “No. Some woman, actually.”

  “Could she have worked with Pappadakis?” I asked.

  “That’s two questions,” Quentin objected.

  Basie shrugged. “Word on the street is that she’s an independent. The man’s been keeping his nose clean. At least this week. The big boss is watching.”

  Huh. That was not at all the information I’d been expecting to get. “Thank you, gentleman,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  And I let Quentin pull me out of the building and into the street.

  * * *

  Quentin was not happy, and didn’t bother to hide it in Mindspace. “What a royal waste of our time. They didn’t have any information we didn’t already have.”

  “How do you know what information we already h
ave?” I asked. But I was disappointed too.

  “You should know by now I can read people. Supervisory Special Agent Jarrod was all too willing to calm down the grieving father,” he said. “Unfortunately for him.”

  “Why aren’t you falling apart?”

  “If I sit down and think about it, I will. But if there’s anything—anything—I can do to help in the meantime, I will. It’s far more helpful to move forward in situations like this than to sit in a corner and grieve.”

  I understood that. My own guilt was sitting like an anvil suspended over my head, and I knew if I let it fall, I’d be in trouble. “Aren’t you pissed at me?” I said, unable to help myself.

  A flash of hurt and fear hit him then. “I saw the school bus arrive. I don’t think you or I would have been able to stop them at that point. And you went after them. I saw you. We’ll get him back. I have to believe that.”

  “If I just knew where they went . . . ,” I said, my stomach filling up with nerves and my own fear. I couldn’t feel Tommy anymore, in the back of my head, and that was the worst of all.

  Quentin paused in his walk. “You’re going to find him, right?”

  “I’ll do everything in my power,” I said.

  “Okay. See that you do.”

  CHAPTER 18

  There was a federal safe house downtown, but I didn’t know where it was with any certainty, so Quentin dropped me off not far from the judge’s house. I walked my way in, hands in pockets, my fingers running over the hard weight of the judge’s house key over and over, over and over, trying not to think about what had happened, and not succeeding.

  I felt . . . lost, empty, vacant. A failure. I wanted my drug. I’d broken my own set of ethics, and it hadn’t even worked to get Tommy back. I’d hurt people, and abandoned Cherabino, and all of it hadn’t even staved off the vision. I’d failed, a hundred ways. It was like an emptiness I couldn’t fill.

  Swartz said when you failed, you got back up and made it right. The only way I could think of to make it right, barring the door-to-door search that probably was going nowhere, was to use the telepathy. Even though I was exhausted beyond bearing, my hands shaking from need and guilt and everything else, I thought maybe that was the only thing to do. Or, at least, the only one that didn’t make me fall off the wagon.