by Holley Trent
“How’d he know about Patrick?”
Dana lifted her small shoulders in a shrug as they paused at the Suburban’s rear gate. Her cheek twitched. For Dana, that was practically crying. “Sarah, I can’t be in two places at once.”
“I understand. What do you want me to do?”
“Find Felipe. Try not to spook him. Just root him out and get him under cover until we can make sense of this.”
“Did the twin have any idea as to where Felipe might be?”
Dana nodded. “Yes, but you should talk to him in person, see if you understand him better than I did. I’ll need you to head out as soon as we get to Patrick’s. You can take his truck.”
“I was hoping to get some sleep tonight.”
Dana finally cracked a grin. “You and me both. Not that I ever sleep during the full moon. One of these days, that dirty cat of mine is going to get himself clawed up too bad to fix.”
“He’s smarter than that.”
Her grin waned. “I hope so. Let’s hope the acrobat is smarter than that, too.”
CHAPTER TWO
Felipe Castillo hid in plain sight…more or less.
With his back pressed against the warehouse’s brick wall, and his black hood pulled low over his brow, he probably seemed to disappear into the shadows. A funny thought, because if he really wanted to disappear, he could.
Few people knew about his rare gift. His brother Fabian knew, obviously, because he shared it. Then there were the other freaks at the circus whom all had their own secrets to keep. And last, there was the man who had made a fortune by exploiting their gifts for almost thirty years. Felipe and Fabian called him el negrero: the slave driver.
And really, that’s all he was. Even as kids, there had been no better word to explain their relationship to the man. He’d never been much of a father figure.
From the time Felipe and Fabian were four, turning five, their days were counted in blood, sweat, and tears. They had thought training for the circus was fun at first. The circus had been their playground—a wonderland of ropes, nets, trampolines, and trapezes. Under tutelage of an acrobat too old and too broken to perform any longer, the brothers learned to leap and flip.
They learned to fly.
But the ringmaster, Jacques, was an impatient man and a greedy one. Their net had been taken away too fast.
Their stunts had been transitioned from charming tricks to death-defying feats far too soon.
Back then, they had been two little boys who risked their lives twice each day—three times on Sundays—to draw gasps from their sold-out audiences.
Those spectators had hardly been able to believe their eyes for the stunts. Cynicism had taught them all to question what they saw, but the tricks weren’t illusions.
They were exploitation.
Felipe and Fabian had seen many of their peers in the travelling freak show become paralyzed, or worse, from falls. But, Felipe and Fabian had more than skill.
They had their own sort of magic.
At least, that’s what Fabian called it. Felipe wasn’t so sure of that. If they had magic, wouldn’t they have some luck? They’d always seemed short on that.
A couple walking on the sidewalk with arms linked passed in front of Felipe. He eased back into the bricks a bit more, half solid, half air, and watched the young lovers until they disappeared around the corner.
He envied their freedom. He’d run away, but he was still trapped.
From where he stood, he could see the backside of the circus’s main tent and the caravan vehicles that served to transport the troupe and all its gear.
Fabian was in one of those campers, probably pacing.
Fretting.
Felipe knew Fabian wouldn’t be forced to perform without his brother; they were a package deal. But Fabian thoughts likely wouldn’t be on missing a performance. Like Felipe, he was talented, but aloof about his top billing. He wouldn’t give two shits about disappointing scores of fans. Like Felipe, he’d be concerned with survival.
That was the only reason they kept performing. They wanted to live.
Jacques wouldn’t allow the duo to shirk the spotlight for long. His threats were never idle.
Somewhere nearby, a church bell pealed and the sound echoed through the valley.
Felipe counted the dongs–one, two, three, and all the way to seven—and then fixed his gaze again on the camper he’d shared with his brother.
Maybe he won’t remember.
Planning meant nothing if it wasn’t accompanied by practice. He and Fabian had plans for every contingency, but perhaps Fabian didn’t remember this one.
Felipe snatched up his backpack from the ground and backed toward the alleyway. He couldn’t return to the troupe, but he didn’t want to leave until his brother understood.
This wasn’t abandonment. It was survival.
He had the fingers of one hand curled into the gaps of the chain-link fence and the toe of his boot wedged into a gap, leveraged for climbing, when he took one last look back at the circus back lot.
“Ah, la luz.”
Moving away from the fence, he concentrated on the flashes, cataloging frequency and length.
Two flashes of light at the kitchenette window.
A long pause.
Three flashes.
Two-pause-three.
After all those years, Fabian had remembered the code: run.
Felipe swallowed and waited for the repeat.
Two-pause-three.
Not a fluke.
Not a mistake.
“Cuidarse, hermano.”
Felipe pulled his backpack strap up to his right shoulder and started toward the railroad tracks.
He may not have known exactly where he was, but he knew that tracks connected towns. He could be more discreet following them instead of walking the roadsides, but even that was risky. Jacques would find him if he stuck to beaten paths, so Felipe would have to diverge from the tracks as soon as he could.
More lights.
Felipe stopped walking. This code was less familiar.
One-pause-four.
One-pause-four.
“Mierda.” He raked a hand through his loose hair and let out a nervous scoff. Now he remembered. They’d devised that code after one of the fortunetellers in the troupe told them that fourteen was a balanced number. It indicated success and, at times, cooperation.
He’d called for help.
But who the hell could help? Who could Fabian confide in? And what would he possibly say to them?
Fabian had always been the more cautious of the two of them, and on the rare occasion he’d found himself in trouble with Jacques, it had always been Felipe taking his blows. He’d always told his minutes-younger brother that it was his perk of being his identical twin. He’d take care of him…when he could.
Help? No one could give him the kind of help he needed, and even if they were so inclined to stick their necks out, they’d probably want to lock him away in a padded room and assign some team of scientists to study him.
At the sound of the approaching train, he sped his pace.
Fourteen meant success, though, and he was going to look for it. He’d do what he could to set things right. Fabian would have to take care of himself until Felipe set things right.
He phased to invisible as the beast rolled near, and then eased onto the locomotive’s small back ledge, grateful for the train’s slow speed as it chugged through the small town.
He retook his physical form and crouched low into the shadows cast by the train, watching the lights from the circus and town shrink smaller and smaller.
If the conductor opened the door, Felipe could phase back in an instant, but holding on was so much easier when he had use of his hands.
Just like when he was on the trapeze, only this time, if he leapt, Fabian wouldn’t be stretching out his arms to grasp him.
___
Sarah pressed her phone between her shoulder and ear, leaned against the
tent support, and rolled the eight-dollar circus program she’d purchased into a tight tube. Business expense. She’d hate spending the money, but at least she could write it off.
She tapped the cylinder against her thigh and waited for Dana to answer her phone. Normally, she snatched it up on the first ring.
“Yeah?” answered a baritone voice.
Not Dana. Patrick.
Sarah turned her back to the crowd filling into the bleachers nearby and whispered, “Hey, where’s Dana?”
“She left me her phone in case you called. She and the rest of the Shrews went out to set up surveillance before the gathering tonight.”
“Right. Shit. Totally forgot.”
He laughed. “It was your idea, love.”
Sarah had suggested the Shrews install security cameras in the perimeter around the Were-cats’ gathering clearing. It would just be one more weapon in their arsenal, and the system would allow them to monitor the situation a bit more passively. The Shrew watching the video monitor could do that from anywhere, using a laptop or even a tablet computer in a pinch. She could inform the others if trouble was near and give them a little extra time to mobilize.
“Who’s going to be watching the feed? Astrid or Maria?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I just worry about those two in the field, is all. They’re not like Dana, Tam, and me. Before they became Shrews, they would have been the kind of women who wouldn’t be doing security, but whom would need it.”
“Try not to worry.”
“Easier said than done. You know, I wouldn’t have to worry at all if it weren’t for you, O’Dwyer.”
She could practically hear his cringe.
The Cats hadn’t needed the services of the Shrews until very recently—the same time Patrick got turned into a Cat. When he sought to confront the two young men that had infected him, those men ran, and in the process crossed into Were-bear territory. Being there meant the Cat-Bear truce was off, and there were no safe places. An attack could happen at any time and in any place.
The Cats were a pretty unstructured group overall. They were reactive, not proactive.
They’d be Bear-chow without the Shrews’ help.
They hadn’t technically hired the Shrews, but Dana was dating Patrick. Dana thought her bleeding-heart lover had a screw or two loose for wanting to ensure the safety of the very same group that had upended his organized life. Because she loved him, and preferred that he not become Bear-chow, she decided to head to the mountains with him each month for his full-moon shift.
The rest of the Shrews joined in just for the fun of it.
“Did you meet up with Mr. Castillo?” Patrick asked.
“Not yet. I’m in the tent right now. The show is about to start. Not why I’m calling.
Boss lady made a new rule as of last night. I’m supposed to check in frequently when I’m working alone. I can’t text or send an email. She has to hear my voice or she won’t believe it’s me.”
“Because you lost your phone?”
“She tells you everything, huh?”
“Everything that matters.”
That new fear of momma-bird Dana had activated sometime during the undercover assignment Sarah had just emerged from. Sarah had been in deep, and managed to lose her phone at the strip club she’d been infiltrating. A bartender had found it and handed it over to the boss one night after closing. Sarah had already known the boss had suspicions about. He’d asked her all kinds of probing, irrelevant questions about her past, saying she was too smart to be a strip club waitress.
She’d held her tongue at the time. She knew better than anyone that sometimes folks took whatever jobs they could get. Not everyone had the luxury of pickiness, and she actually had a great deal of respect for women who had that kind of survival mentality. To be underpaid and regularly demeaned, and still show up every night because bills needed to be paid and children fed?
That was courageous.
No. Not just that. It was survival. Those waitresses had to be smart to do that.
She’d decided, though, to not do the Shrew thing and play crusader just yet. She’d chosen instead to temper her vocabulary. If he wanted dumb, she’d give him that.
Anyhow, he didn’t get much from trawling her phone. The only number programmed into it was the Shrews’ answering service, and they had been instructed to answer calls with a very vague greeting. He’d tried having another female employee call and put a message through, disguising her voice to mimic Sarah’s, but Dana hadn’t fallen for it. If Sarah had called, she would have only said, “I need someone to turn the lights off at my place.” That was their standard code for “I’ll be out another day.”
Sarah’s boss at the strip club had offered her phone back a couple of days later…for a fee. Sarah had refused to pay it, and thus missed four call attempts from Dana. The agency that had contracted the Shrews and had provided Sarah with her cover was ready to act, but couldn’t get in touch with her.
Dana had freaked, thinking perhaps the guy had dragged Sarah into his back room and subjugated her like all the rest. That’s what Sarah had been there to find out—if the guy was trafficking sex workers from Central America.
The answer was yes.
“When do you think you’ll get in contact with your guy?” Patrick asked, drawing Sarah out of her reverie.
She blew some air through her lips, and turned to scan the temporary arena where a spotlight shone down onto an open podium. Calliope music piped through the speakers, and the crowd clapped and whistled their encouragement. It seemed the show would start soon. She glanced down at her watch to confirm it.
“I couldn’t get in until this evening,” she said. “Matinee was sold out. I did, though, talk to a couple of the setup guys outside. Couldn’t get much information out of them other than to get them to confirm that the Castillos aren’t performing. They didn’t know much about them, or if they did, they didn’t want to share what they knew with me. I bought a program, though. Learned that the Castillos are identical.”
And if those little black-and-white photos hadn’t been heavily altered, they were also very attractive. Probably didn’t matter much up on their trapezes. No one could see their faces.
“Fabian is around here somewhere, according to a clown I bumped into. She was so bummed they’re not performing tonight. When I asked why they weren’t, she gave me this exaggerated shrug.”
“Did you try to compel her to speak?”
One of Sarah’s more unusual abilities was to perform what the Shrews’ doctor called “psychic compulsion.” Sarah could influence some people and make them talk. It was a gift she tried not to exploit, and often forgot that she even had.
“No. Once again, I forgot that I could. As soon as the show starts, though, I’m going to slip out and see if I can find Fabian. He’s got to be on this lot somewhere.”
“Well, in Dana’s absence, I’ll tell you what she would tell you. Watch your back, and don’t be stupid.”
Yep. That was exactly what Dana would say.
Sarah chuckled. “Will do.”
She disconnected the call right as the ringmaster, a silver-haired man wearing a pearl gray suit—the kind that had a coat with tails—and a top hat, leapt onto the center ring’s podium.
A microphone descended on a long black cord from the overhead grid.
He grabbed it handily from the air with a practiced ease, and tucked it under one arm.
Looking expectantly toward the crowd, he started to clap. Slowly at first, to draw the crowd into his rhythm, then he gradually increased the tempo.
Faster, faster, until the tent filled with a deafening din comprised of frantic clapping, stomping feet, and shouted hoots.
All eyes were on Jacques.
All except for Sarah’s, anyway. She was watching the doors.
When the lights in the stands went dark, Sarah waited for her vision to adjust to the pitch-blackness of the aisle, and then crept outside the te
nt.
“Damn.” In the deserted back lot, she paused at the exit, bent over, and pulled a cleansing breath into her lungs. The stars dancing in her vision told her to take another one.
She kept breathing in slow, deep breaths, until her vision cleared and head stopped swimming.
The temperature inside the tent had risen slowly as more and more spectators filled in that she hadn’t noticed how hot it was. She’d been too focused on her task to pay attention to what was going on inside her, and she couldn’t let that happen again.
The SHREW Study might have been years in the past, but her body was still trying to compensate for all the changes. It sometimes didn’t seem to know that destroying her wasn’t in its own best interest.
She dragged her sleeve across her sweaty forehead and ran her tongue over dry lips.
Straightening up, she scanned for witnesses. Seeing none, she walked like she knew where the fuck she was going. Unlike Astrid, she didn’t have photographic memory or the ability to visualize maps in her head. Sarah tended to be the kind of lady who just kept moving until she stumbled into what she needed.
“There we go.”
She spotted a low, concrete building with a door bearing the universal sign for “ladies, pee here.”
Inside the restroom, she set her oversized purse on the edge of one of the sinks and extracted dark sunglasses, a paper surgical mask, a granny cardigan, and a knit hat. The hat, she put on and tucked her loose hair into. The shapeless sweater, which she buttoned from collar to bottom, would not only hide the Glock she needed to tuck into her waistband, but change her overall ensemble. She was going from inconspicuously modern to flat-out dull.
The mask made her looked like an immunocompromised local on the hunt for a cheap thrill. She knew plenty about that. She’d had to wear them during her long recovery period, and had become more or less oblivious to the stares she received while sporting them. She’d rather people remember her mask than the shape of her lips or the angles of her cheekbones.
