I shake my head. Hacking into my chest is a thousand times more horrible than a little database exploration, but I keep that thought to myself. “We’re looking for someone—”
“Ford’s filled me in about the kidnappers, actually,” Jax says, undoing the blood pressure cuff and sliding it off my arm. “Sounds like trouble.”
“Probably, yeah,” I say, staring at the dirty floor. Does this mean she won’t help me?
“Don’t look so glum, Anthem. Of course I’ll help. You’re my greatest achievement—how could I say no to you?” Jax grins, then heads toward a wall of file cabinets.
“What is she doing?” I ask Ford. Jax’s monkey has begun to screech in his cage, beating his paws against his white tuft of chest hair, baring his sharp little teeth.
“Shut your piehole, Mildred,” Ford calls to the monkey, shrugging at my question.
“Mildred?” I snort. “That beast is called Mildred?”
“Named her after my aunt,” Jax calls, slamming a file drawer shut and opening two more. The back of her lab coat says BEDLAM GENERAL on it, and I wonder again what she must have done to end up here, with tape on her glasses, leaky pipes, terrible heat, and a rabid monkey. “A real nut job. My aunt, not the monkey, ha-ha.” Her nervous laughter echoes in the big room. The monkey howls.
“She’s a little paranoid about being traced,” Ford whispers. “Gotta be ten different computers and a thousand wires in those drawers.”
Soon the three of us are crowded around Jax’s laptop, looking at yellow letters on a black screen, full descriptions of perps, in many cases with photographs, either taken by surveillance cameras or mug shots, in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Jax has hacked into the police database, for what I’m guessing is not the first time this week.
“Okay, let’s narrow it to Syndicate,” Jax mutters. “Of course, that’s nearly everyone these days. . . .”
Indeed: 4,263 results. I sit back on the rolling stool Jax gave me. “This isn’t going to help us,” I say to Ford.
“Female, Jax. Narrow the search by gender,” Ford suggests.
“Aha.” Jax’s silver curls bob up and down as she bounces on her chair. “Only three hundred fourteen!”
“Can you search by age? She’s in her early twenties,” I say. “And blond.”
Almost instantly, a blurry picture captured by a surveillance camera appears, the date from a year and a half ago in one corner, someone who could be Rosie with shorter, spikier blond hair. A half-smile visible in the blurred pixels that make up her deceptively sweet mouth. Standing next to a taller figure, brunette, face obscured because of the angle of his head. I get chills when I notice what’s in the corner of the frame. On the linoleum floor, a kid, lying facedown, hands over his head. My heart breaks when I see he’s young enough to have mittens clipped to his jacket. They dangle from his cuffs, shielding his face. A milk carton is on its side next to him in a puddle of milk.
And there she is, smiling.
ROSE THORNE: FEMALE, BLOND, 5'4", 120 lbs., tattoo on right shoulder
ALIASES: KATRINA KINICKIE
SHADRA BLACK
GWENDOLYN GOODWIN
CHARGES: Assault, petty theft, grand larceny, grand theft, conspiracy, drug trafficking, accessory to murder. APPREHENDED SPEEDING FROM CRIME SCENE (TEDDY’S ONE STOP SHOPPING, Loc. SOUTHEAST EXURBIA) IN YELLOW LANDPUSHER, LIC. SHOO4512
ARRESTS: 1
CONVICTIONS: 0
PLEA BARGAIN: Plaintiff currently active in the field as Police Informant #5611.
I point to the last section of the screen and elbow Ford. “Does this mean she’s working with the police?”
Ford shrugs. “Guess so. Wonder how they’d feel to know their informant killed someone.”
I shudder involuntarily, then turn back to the screen. If I deliver an informant to the police, would they just let her go?
ACCOMPLICES AND ASSOCIATES:
Smith Macoumb—WANTED: grand theft, conspiracy, assault
Karl Small—WANTED: assault w/ deadly weapon, drug trafficking
Emmett Cask—WANTED: conspiracy, larceny, assault w/deadly weapon
Maximillian and Augustus Luz—WANTED: assault, drug trafficking, conspiracy
Jessa Scorpio—WANTED: prostitution, human trafficking, conspiracy, assault
We all fall silent as we read. The only sound in the room is the monkey scraping a metal spoon along the bars of its cage.
Her hair is a lot shorter and more of a golden blond than her current platinum, but the bright red lips, the wide cheekbones, even the way she stands—straight and rigid, commanding much more space than her five-foot-four frame would suggest—are the same. And the name, Rose Thorne, cannot be a coincidence. I flash on the yellow SUV parked outside Dimitri’s on the Water.
“It’s her,” I whisper. “The car and the name match. I’m sure of it.”
“This tells us nothing, though,” Ford says glumly. “I thought we’d get an address. . . .”
“Well, you’ve got a good clue right here. All you need to do now,” Jax says, “is find the car. How hard could it be?”
“Says the person who hasn’t been outside in three years,” Ford snorts.
But my heart flutters with adrenaline, picturing Rosie and her goons—her accomplices and associates—driving around the city in that gas-guzzling tank of a car, looking for people to rob, kidnap, exploit, and harm. How many more robberies and murders and senseless acts of violence would vanish from the world if only she and her crew were stopped?
I grab Jax’s mouse and zoom in on Rosie’s face. That smile. The expression of someone who gets away with everything, who thinks it’s just so easy to destroy people and walk away.
I need to wipe that smile off her face.
“I’ll think of something,” I say to nobody in particular. I stand up abruptly and start to pace, racking my brain for the best way to find and track the car.
This isn’t just about Gavin anymore. It’s about everyone. All the people in this city who are trying to get by, trying to live their lives. Who don’t deserve to go out and buy milk and come home with an unshakable case of Bedhead and a lifetime of flinching and cowering and fear.
I grab a notepad from Jax’s desk—it says Vivirax: Because We All Deserve Inner Peace across the top—and write down the names:
Smith Macoumb
Karl Small
Emmett Cask
Maximillian Luz
Augustus Luz
Jessa Scorpio
Rose Thorne
Then I write down the plate and model of the yellow LandPusher.
CHAPTER 29
The next night is one of the few lately where my parents beat me home. In the dining room, a Bach cantata tinkles out of the built-in speakers, and my parents are seated at the table eating Cornish game hens. An electrical storm has erupted outside the glass walls, and flashes of lightning crackle in the purple night.
“We started,” Helene says with a smile when I walk in, a forkful of pale meat paused in midair. “We were famished. It was back-to-back meetings all day, and we have drinks at the police commissioner’s later tonight. Hope you don’t mind, darling.”
“Of course not,” I say. “It’s nice to see you guys.”
“There she is, the prima!” Harris booms. “It’s good to lay eyes on you so healthy and strong, kitten. We’re like ships in the night lately.”
I take my seat at the long rosewood table, where a candelabra with six lit candles casts a pretty glow.
“I know. With ballet and everything, I’ve just been so busy, and you guys are so swamped with the stadium . . .” I trail off aimlessly as Lily comes in with a plate of Cornish game hen for me, too, a huge cone of wild rice alongside it. She’s noticed my new eating habits and has adjusted accordingly by piling on the starches, but the sight of the miniature chicken—legs tied up with cooking string and rosemary sticking out of the cavity where its guts once were—makes me a bit queasy. “Thanks, Lily.”
“My pleasure,” Lily says, shooting me a smile before she darts back into the kitchen to clean up for the night and head home.
“All caught up on your schoolwork?” Harris asks, plucking the leg bones from the tiny chicken carcass on his plate and sucking the meat off them. I look away, my stomach dropping at the sight.
“Yeah, just one research paper in Propaganda and Politics to go,” I say, forcing myself to dig in to the rice. “After that, I’m fully caught up.”
“And how are things with Will?” my mother chirps, taking a sip of chardonnay.
“Why does that matter?” I ask quietly. A millisecond later, I regret it. Why can’t I just say Super! Fantastic! and leave it at that?
“Just making conversation.” A flash of emotion—irritation, anger, hurt?—lights up her eyes for a second, and I watch her compose her face back to its neutral mask.
“Your mother is being supportive, is all.” Harris shoots me the Look. The one that says Don’t upset your mother, you know how she is. “We just happen to think Will is a wonderful young man.”
A wonderful young sociopath, I think. Looking from my mother to my father, I’m suddenly furious. All they care about is what my relationship with Will means for them. A Fleet-Hansen union would lead to the most advantageous business arrangement since aspiring mayor Manny Marks married Belinda Bullett, then the daughter of the chief of police, Branford Bullett Jr.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” I say icily, “but I wouldn’t count on Will and me being together forever.”
“Darling, we just want what’s best for you,” Helene murmurs, her voice careful. “Nobody is talking about forever.” She places her manicured hands flat on the rosewood dining table, on either side of her place mat, and stares down at her half-eaten little hen.
“Fine,” I say tightly. A bolt of lightning slices through the sky like a knife, and for a half-second we all turn a sickly shade of blue-white. “Sorry.”
My father picks up the evening edition of the Daily Dilemma from the chair next to where he sits and starts reading.
“Stop me,” Harris says through a mouthful of chicken. “I keep reading it over and over. Take it, Leenie.”
My mother folds the paper and puts it next to her plate.
CONCERNS OVER FLEET STADIUM PLANS ROCK THE WATERFRONT. I can read the headline upside down.
Helene rolls her eyes. “Oh dear. More protests?”
I grab the paper and open it up to see a picture of a few hundred people with picket signs that say SCHOOLS NOT STADIUMS and RECOVER DON’T RAZE.
“South Siders.” He settles back against his chair and tosses a brocade cloth napkin over the bones on his plate. “Never happy with what they’re given, these people.”
“What exactly have they been given?” I ask, immediately regretting it.
I lock eyes with my father, and something silently passes between us. A challenge.
“Well, Anthem, a new stadium, for one. And jobs.” His nostrils flare white.
I nod, staring down at the dining room table, the polished rosewood shiny enough to reflect the red blur of my hair. Then I grab the paper and read the article. “It says here that they don’t want their houses razed to make room for it.”
“Trust, me, kitten. They’ll be a lot better off in the low-income apartment complexes we’re building,” my father snorts. “All new appliances, no mildew, no graffiti. The best security. Protection from the criminal element. All that, and their beloved KillBall at the stadium! They should be thanking me.”
“Looks like they’re not in a thankful mood,” I murmur, looking more closely at the photo in the paper. Hundreds of people standing with banners waved, arms linked in protest, blocking a line of cranes with wrecking balls dangling from them. On one side of the picture, toward the back, a cluster of five older people are making this funny hand gesture, their fingers crossed and pressed to their chests, level with their hearts.
“What are these people doing with their hands?” I ask, jabbing my finger toward the old people.
“Oh, nothing. That’s from before your time.” My mother sighs. “Back when the Hope made everyone on the South Side go insane.”
The Hope. I think back to Ford in the studio the other night. They used to say he could fly. I think of Gavin on our first date, insinuating that the Hope was killed in some sort of planned conspiracy.
“But what does it mean?” I scrutinize the photo. The people with their crossed fingers over their hearts look right at the camera, their expressions calm.
“I suppose it was meant to evoke a victory sign combined with crossing one’s fingers for luck,” my mother says. “For a while, it was everywhere. That sign, and this chant they were always doing.”
“‘We will rise,’” Harris says softly, looking up at both of us, his mouth curled into a sad half-smile. Just then there’s a crack of thunder. “Regina painted it on her wall, remember, Leenie?”
I open my mouth, then shut it. Regina? The perfect blonde in the family photos was a populist? Why would she have cared in the least about the Hope and his movement? I blink. Suddenly I see those exact words inked on the bartender’s wrist from the other night.
My mother’s gray eyes flash as she pushes her chair away from the table and throws her napkin down on her plate. “Of course I remember.”
She gets up and retreats into her bedroom, and just like that, the air in the cupid-ceilinged dining room has gone sour.
My stomach flips as Harris takes a sip from his wineglass and shoots me another version of the Look. This one comes every time one of us mentions Regina. The Don’t pour salt on the wound look. I raise my eyebrows and shrug, silently reminding him that he’s the one who brought up the dead daughter, not me.
Another violent crack of thunder makes us both jump. “I’ll take that,” he mutters. He grabs the newspaper out of my hands and leaves through the room’s other entrance, avoiding my mother. Two minutes later, I hear his office door slam.
I try to imagine my dead sister painting a South Side slogan onto her wall. Was Regina less sheltered from the city than I was? Did my parents humor her when she did it, or was she punished, forced to paint over it immediately? I sit blinking in the empty room, the soft classical music not working to calm my whirling mind. Then I get up and head toward the kitchen to dump my untouched Cornish hen in the trash.
When I reach the kitchen, I’m surprised to see Serge standing at the marble countertop and peeling a tangerine, which looks tiny in his enormous hands.
We trade nervous smiles. I focus my hearing to listen for footsteps coming toward us. Nothing. Lily has gone home for the evening, and my mother is probably popping a couple of Viviraxes in her dressing room to get ready for that police fund-raiser they’re going to.
“I understand the performance is coming up.” Serge is being careful, speaking to me as if we are as we always were—cordial, affectionate, but not intimately involved in each other’s daily routine.
I nod. “Just a couple more weeks.”
“Are you prepared?”
I shrug. “Getting stronger every day.” Which is actually true, I realize. Physically at least, I’m stronger than I’ve ever been.
Serge puts a hand on top of my head and looks intently into my eyes. What he says next is so quiet it’s barely a whisper. “I’d like to help you with your search,” he says.
I shoot him a look of surprise. We had discussed what I learned from Jax’s database last night in the car, but I thought it was just to make conversation.
“You mean finding . . . those people?” I whisper back.
I stare up at him. His face is calm as he nods almost imperceptibly. I think about his past, working as security for warlords, CEOs, army generals. If anyone is resourceful and knows how to squeeze information out of the city, it’s Serge.
“Okay. Thank you.” I go to a drawer near the telephone and grab a piece of paper and a pen and write down Yellow LandPusher. License plate SHOO4512.
<
br /> Serge tucks the scrap of paper into his breast pocket. “Consider it done.”
I nod, speechless. Amazed that he’s in favor of this and that he’s willing to help. “Thank you, Serge.”
“I’ll be in touch.” Satisfied, he moves toward the staircase to the lower floor, heading for my father’s office.
And then I’m alone in the kitchen with a sink full of dishes. I turn the water in the sink as hot as I can bear it, and stand at the sink methodically sponging the plates, wondering if tonight is the night I get Rosie Thorne off the streets.
CHAPTER 30
Two hours later, my phone buzzes with a text from Serge.
4 Larkspur Lane
(be safe)
This is it. I try not to let my hands shake as I put my phone down and head to my closet. I dress slowly, in a black hooded parka and black jeans, taking care to tuck my hair up into a black beanie. I tell myself not to think too hard about what it will mean to catch up with the LandPusher.
Before I head out, I send a quick text to Ford:
Sorry, 2 tired 2 train 2nite. Gonna go 2 bed early.
I arrange some pillows convincingly in my bed and close my door, then take the service elevator—the only one with no cameras inside it—down to the parking garage and exit through a back door marked MAINTENANCE. As I’m jumping the low back fence that separates Fleet Tower from the building next door, my phone buzzes with a reply.
OK. Nite, Green.
I feel a pang of guilt. The risks I’m about to take are exactly why I don’t want to involve Ford. The first time I confronted the kidnappers, Serge was attacked. The second time, Gavin was killed. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to Ford, too. Until he can outrun bullets, I need to do this alone.
I trace the blue dot on the glowing map on my phone to a location in the southeast quadrant of the city, and then I run hard and fast over the Bridge of Forgetting.
My lungs burn, but my feet hardly touch the pavement anymore.
I’m getting faster.
The Brokenhearted Page 18
