Plastic Smile (Russell's Attic Book 4)

by Huang, SL

  “No one else.”

  “That be the case, then—I don’t think we got no right not to do it, just ’cause we scared of what might happen. But I want us to think this through every step, right? Nothing hasty. Anybody sees anything concerning, we call it off.”

  “Yeah, of course,” I said, hardly daring to believe it.

  “And I want you to explain it to me in more detail. Want to see their studies and the like.”

  “Sure.”

  “After that, if it seem like this gonna do what you say, I want to help.”

  Holy shit. Excellent.

  “Don’t know I’d be much help right now, of course…”

  “Oh, bullshit,” I said. “I don’t need you for a gun hand; I’ve got that covered. You’re useful for the things I’m bad at.” Namely, any investigative or undercover work. “Hey. Um. In the spirit of cooperation, there’s…there’s something else you should know.” I drove faster. “I haven’t told Checker yet.”

  “What happened?” Somehow, Arthur was always capable of that open, nonjudgmental tone that made you want to confide in him. Which was ridiculous, because he was one of the most morally self-righteous people I knew.

  I swallowed and told him about Simon.

  Chapter 8

  Arthur was more worried than I was.

  “We need to find out more about this guy,” he said, as I helped him up the walk and into a ground-floor apartment. “Stat.”

  “I’m not too concerned. He seemed harmless.” I ran the algorithm for the flat’s key location with barely a second thought and stabilized Arthur for a minute to pry the key out from beneath a slat of the building’s warped siding. “Annoying, and creepy, but a wet noodle.”

  “Russell.” Arthur gusted out a sigh and put his hand back on my shoulder to limp inside. “Think it through.”

  I shut the door behind us. What…? Oh.

  Oh.

  “You’re saying he might’ve made me think he was harmless,” I said.

  “Even if he done what he said and ain’t reading you—if he made us not notice him without trying, he can probably do some kind of, I dunno. A positive impression.”

  Or at least a reasonably unsuspicious one. I was a suspicious person by nature, but when it came to someone who could manipulate minds…Arthur was right. If I took Simon’s “not an exact science” comment on good faith, every gut feeling I had about him was probably manufactured.

  I sank down on the threadbare futon that was the studio’s only furniture. “I hate psychics.”

  “Least it sounds like he ain’t aggressing,” Arthur said, stretching out the leg on his injured side to sink down next to me. “Unless he just ain’t as strong as Dawna. Or unless he got some larger plan.”

  “Aren’t you pleasant.”

  “We gotta find him again.”

  That was the last thing I wanted to do. “He’ll probably find me. I got the sense he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.” And who knew, the impression he wasn’t going to give up may even have been a bleed-through thought he’d accidentally projected, which meant I was definitely right. “But even if I see him again, it’s not exactly going to do us much good. He’s not going to tell me anything he doesn’t want to.”

  “Hmm. Like to look into him, and not to his face. You get a last name?”

  “I’m not sure ‘Simon’ is even his real first name,” I said.

  “What about how he found you?”

  “Well, he knows me. Apparently.”

  Arthur scoffed. “Russell, you switch phones every few weeks and don’t even keep a driver’s license. Knowing you ain’t the same as finding you.”

  That was a good point.

  “What are your points of contact with the grid?”

  “I have a permanent voicemail box for clients, and an email address. But nothing came through there unless he erased my memory of it.”

  “What about clients? Regular haunts?”

  “Any of my regular clients know how to reach me, but I’ve only been feeling like someone’s watching the past few days,” I said. “And the only people I see on the regular are you and…”

  I studied the floor.

  “Could be one of us, to be fair,” Arthur said. “It’s not like loyalty means a damn thing when it comes to these guys. But you said he keeps calling you by your full name, and seemed surprised at you being different from he remembered. If he talked to one of us, asked twenty questions, he’d already have the lowdown.” Arthur snapped his fingers. “I got it. The cemetery. Checker gave me your note story, asked me to call and run forensics—”

  So they were actually going to go through with that. I felt faintly embarrassed. “My prints are the only ones you’re going to find.”

  “Point is, you don’t remember leaving that message. It’s a connection to a different time. Now, say someone was calling in, checking up, playing a grieving relative or something. You break that stone last year, then next time he calls, the cemetery tells him something happened. Maybe that means something to him, that you went to find it, so he comes running back to LA and tries to figure a way of locating you.”

  “But you were just pointing out that there’s still no way he could’ve tracked me down just from—”

  “You don’t remember, huh. You stole my car.”

  I blinked. Oh. Right. I had. Clearly I needed to be more paranoid about switching cars.

  “Maybe this guy gets on the scent of what you drove when you broke in there, either from their security or somewhere nearby,” Arthur went on. “He stakes out my office, he finds you.”

  It hung together. Barely.

  “Other ways it could’ve gone down, too,” Arthur added. “Could be Checker tipped his hand looking into you, and this guy tracked him back. But I wouldn’t put money on that one.”

  This was starting to hurt my head.

  “I’m gonna look into the cemetery,” Arthur said. “See who paid for your little tomb, find out any other info I can.”

  “Track down Pourdry first,” I said. “He’s the more dangerous one.”

  “Russell, you don’t know that.”

  Fucking psychics. “All right, then we put Checker on Pourdry, you on Simon, and I get Pilar.”

  “What are you gonna do?” Arthur asked.

  “Me? I’m going to break into an old Arkacite warehouse and steal a bunch of top-secret prototypes.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Arkacite Technologies might have died a fiery death as a company after the events of a couple years ago had bankrupted them—events I’d been rather heavily involved in, unfortunately for me—but the detritus of their empire was still everywhere. Large chunks of their technology had been bought out by other corporate behemoths, all of their old brands now carrying a subtitle marking them with whoever the new overlord was, from their operating systems to their smartphones.

  Some of the tech that had dead-ended had been bought up wholesale with everything else, but some had been wallowing in limbo, particularly the research sensitive enough to be mired in legalities with the government or military. Pilar had located the old Signet Device materials locked up in a well-secured warehouse that nobody wanted to pay for anymore.

  “You need Checker for this,” Pilar protested when I called and commandeered her help. “I can’t cut feeds and sensors for you. I mean, he’s been teaching me some things, but this is way, way, way, way beyond me.”

  “I’ve been breaking into places long before I knew Checker,” I said. How long? a voice asked. “I don’t need him.”

  “But remember how ridiculous Arkacite’s security was at their headquarters? There’s no way you’ll be able to use my ID that way again, and—”

  “This won’t be anywhere near that level of security,” I said. “It’s a defunct storage space getting passed around between people who don’t want it in their budget. I just need some information. Floor plans, specifics, how things get tripped. You can get me that much, right?”

  �
��Um,” she said. “I guess I’ll try.”

  A day later, she met me at the door of Checker’s house with a three-inch binder neatly organized into colored tabs.

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  She wrinkled her nose. “I haven’t had much to do, what with the office closed and all.”

  “All quiet on this front?” I asked. Pilar had been crashing on Checker’s couch just in case Pourdry connected her to Arthur. Checker’s connection to the company was slightly more obfuscated than hers, meaning only a handful of people actually knew they worked together.

  “All quiet,” Pilar confirmed.

  “I brought you a shotgun,” I said. “It’s in the car.”

  “I almost, um. I almost brought Arthur’s from the office, but you know Checker. He wouldn’t like having that in the house.”

  “He can deal,” I said. “You’ll need more than a handgun if Pourdry’s goons come around. You’ve got your CZ?”

  Pilar’s color heightened and she patted her sweater behind her hip self-consciously. “Yes.”

  “Good.” I hefted the binder. “Now give me the short version of this monstrosity.”

  Pilar sat me down and proceeded to talk me through two hours of details I didn’t really need. Checker came in from the Hole right after the eleventh time I told her to move on.

  “Hey,” he said. “How’s it going?”

  “Great!” Pilar chirped, at the same time I said, “Kill me now.”

  Checker laughed. “Cas, you could do with not flying by the seat of your pants for once.”

  I ignored the jibe. “What have you found on Pourdry?”

  “He’s got a hell of an enterprise. I’m unearthing it, slowly. Following the money and all that.”

  “And what about the cops? What’ve they got on the shootout?”

  “Arthur’s down as a witness, and they’re after you as one, too, but nobody has a good description of you or any good forensics—you’re welcome, by the way; you left your fingerprints on some of the shell casings.”

  “That’s what I’ve got you for.”

  “I’ll add it to your tab. You could stand to be a little more careful, you know. I’m not a magician.”

  “You’re admitting electronic fallibility? You?”

  “Excuse me while I go find something to throw at you.” He headed off into the kitchen. “You guys want some food?”

  “No,” I said, at the same time Pilar called, “Yes, please!”

  I imagined slowly banging my head against the multi-tabbed binder. “Most of this is an easy job. There’s no infrared and they don’t keep the lights on inside, so the only place I can’t avoid the security cameras is going over the fence. It’s too bad they log that, or it would just be a matter of knocking out the guard watching the monitors.”

  Checker poked his head out of the kitchen. “You need something looped?”

  “It’s a Rachnid system,” Pilar said. “It’s wireless, but an intranet.”

  “Oh, that’s no problem. You carry a dongle close enough, I can piggyback onto the signal and edit whatever we want.”

  “Can you also get her the keypad codes?” Pilar asked. “That’s the only piece I couldn’t—”

  “I can just bust it open,” I said. “Unless there’s something we haven’t gotten to yet in your magnum opus here, their security isn’t good enough to sense the damage.”

  “Isn’t it better if they don’t know you’ve broken in, though?” Pilar asked. “I mean, that’s why I looked up all their inventory procedures and whatnot. Don’t you want to hide what you’re taking? ’Cause then nobody will be looking for it, or looking for the effects.”

  Checker had ducked back into the kitchen, but he hollered out, “Cas Russell, put the explosives away. Keypad codes are not a problem.”

  I thought for a minute. “What’s the range of your dongle?”

  “Fifteen feet, give or take a few,” he called back.

  I flipped to the blue tab marked “floor plans” and mentally drew out the radius intersecting the security grid. “No, total stealth is a no-go anyway. I have to take care of the security guard or I’ll cross multiple cameras before Checker’s signal is in range to knock them out.” Checker could edit the footage after the fact, but not a person’s memory.

  Human memory is infinitely malleable, someone whispered. Like painting over a canvas…

  “Why not just distract the guard?” Pilar asked. “Then your heist goes undetected and nobody has to suffer a head injury. Win-win!”

  “I liked you better when you were afraid to talk back to me,” I grumped. “That wouldn’t work anyway. Mathematically, I can’t be in two places at once. I can’t reliably draw the guard’s attention somewhere else at the same time I’m going over the fence. Unless I use an explosive or something to do it, and then we’re still talking about leaving behind evidence, so there’s no advantage.”

  “What about asking Arthur to do it?”

  I considered. He had offered to help. And though force might be easier, more efficient, and my overall preferred way of doing things, Pilar had a point about stealth helping the cause. Much as I hated to admit it.

  Checker came back out to the living room balancing a tray of sandwiches. “Don’t you dare ask Arthur to do field work injured, Cas Russell. Don’t you dare.”

  “It’s not like his condition would impede him on this,” I said. “He can limp in and out just fine.”

  “And if something goes wrong? Wait till he heals. I’m putting my foot down.”

  “If Arthur’s safety is your worry, getting our hands on this technology might help a ton against Pourdry and anyone else we’ve pissed off,” I said. “We need to get the entrainment going as soon as possible. Does one of you two feel like going in? I didn’t think so. If you don’t want me to ask Arthur, then we’re back to the quick and dirty route inside. You can tell me something else to steal so they won’t notice the Signet Device stuff missing.”

  “They’ll still notice,” Pilar said. “If you look in the green section on inventory—” She cut herself off at the glower on my face. “Never mind. But anyway. Could I help? What would you need me to do?”

  “What?” Checker said. “No!”

  Pilar’s eyebrows drew together so fiercely Checker rocked back in his chair.

  “I just mean, you don’t have the experience!” he squawked. “You’re talking about stealing a highly secretive piece of technology—if Cas gets caught, you get arrested. This isn’t a game!”

  “Thanks,” said Pilar. “I know that.”

  I leaned back on the couch, putting my feet up on Checker’s coffee table and enjoying the spectacle.

  “Unlike the rest of us, you have a clean record, and Arthur and I would both like you to keep it,” Checker said. “We’re not asking you to do this.”

  “You’re right,” Pilar said. “You’re not asking; I’m volunteering.”

  “Wait,” I cut in. “Checker, you and Arthur have criminal records? Since when?”

  “Since none of your business, that’s when,” Checker shot back. He turned back to Pilar. “I don’t want to have to play the boss card, but when Arthur and I hired you, it was not to get you in trouble as an accessory to burglary! You’re not getting involved.”

  “This isn’t part of my job,” Pilar said. “It’s for Cas, not for you. So you can’t pull rank.”

  “Do you want to do it instead?” I asked Checker.

  “I can’t if you want me editing and looping the security footage in real time! And besides, I’m not good enough at that sort of thing anyway, and I’m smart enough to know it. Wait for Arthur!”

  “I’m a girl,” Pilar said. “The guard won’t see me as a threat. I’ll say I had car trouble or something and just chat with him. Or her.”

  “Hey, she can carry the dongle,” I said. “That way I won’t ever appear on the monitors at all. Totally safe. No chance of anyone catching on.”

  “There’s always a chance! Newto
n save me—Pilar, why on earth are you humoring Cas on this? Arthur will be better in a few weeks; there’s no need!”

  Pilar hunched her shoulders. “A lot can happen in a few weeks. People can get hurt in a few weeks. If this is going to work the way Cas thinks it will…”

  One of my cousins joined a gang a couple months ago, Pilar had said.

  “This won’t be a panacea,” I suddenly felt the need to warn her. “It’ll help. It won’t wipe out every problem.”

  “So maybe it’ll help enough for a good family to balance things out,” Pilar said, not looking at either of us. She stood up. “I’m going to make some tea. Cas, I’m in if you want me.”

  “I want you,” I said.

  She nodded and went into the kitchen.

  “Don’t do this,” Checker pleaded in a low murmur once Pilar was out of the room. “Don’t. She doesn’t know what she’s getting into.”

  “Yes, she does,” I said. “She’s worked for you guys for a year and a half now. She knows. Stop patronizing her.”

  He flushed. “I’m not. It’s an issue of experience—”

  I scooped up half a deli meat sandwich and took a bite. “Yeah, about that,” I said with my mouth full. “What illegal activities did you and Arthur ensnarl yourselves in? Other than with me. I need to mock him for it.”

  “I did some dumb shit as a teenager, that’s all. As for Arthur, it’s seriously not your business. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Oh, and my past is your business?” I said.

  “I am dead begging you here—don’t bring this up to him,” Checker said, staring at his hands. “It’s done, it was years ago, and you’ll only hurt him. Just don’t.”

  “Fine. But I get Pilar tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Why wait? What, do you have a hot date or something? Or were you just hoping to talk her out of it?”

  He covered his eyes with one hand, not answering for a moment. “I’m not trying to patronize her.”

  “You’re not trying to.”