by Fiona Quinn
Striker let me have a minute. I looked out at the bay with stormy eyes. I was angry, and I wasn’t sure why I was angry. But there it was. When I looked back at Striker, the vitriol still hardened my gaze.
“Let it go, Chica. This is who he is. And he didn’t know anything about you. Not the kidnapping. Not the plane wreck. Not Omega.”
“Because no one told him. Not even you.”
“Exactly.” Striker gave me his commander face: hard lines, hard eyes, intelligent and unwavering. He had to have a reason. A good one. And if I asked, he’d just say “Classified, Chica.” Some parts of this job sucked.
“Okay, I’ll let it go.” I tapped my fingers irritably and pursed my lips until I could tuck my Spyder-thoughts into the back of my mind. Spyder was my mentor, my surrogate dad. I selfishly wanted him by my side helping me to figure out my mess, not off combatting a distant coup. “Let’s go back to the idea of Sylanos,” I managed after a few minutes of turmoil.
Striker sat quietly.
“If Sylanos were already dead when I was kidnapped, it would be hard to explain Maria’s success. Sure, she wanted her husband out of jail. But could she have pulled off such a complicated scenario on her own?” I needed more wake-up time or fewer painkillers before I plunged into puzzling mode. I pushed my hair from my face, and ran my tongue over fuzzy teeth. Yuck. “That doesn’t feel right to me, though. Maybe she was under someone else’s orders. Second in line?”
Striker shook his head. “I wouldn’t think so. Sylanos’s death and your kidnapping came too close together. If new leadership moved up, it would take some time to reorganize. And I can’t imagine that Julio held such a high priority. He’d been in jail for months before Maria came after you. That was the only ransom demand - Julio out of jail and back with her. You were just the vehicle she was using to get there.”
“And Julio was sentenced last September.” I rubbed my index finger back and forth across my lower lip.
“Then Maria moved into your neighborhood in January, four months later.” Striker added.
“But didn’t kidnap me until February. . .yeah, this doesn’t make much sense. Now that Maria’s in custody, it’s going to be good to get some answers.”
“FBI’s working on that.” Striker stood up and went to adjust the blinds to keep the sun from hitting me in the eye.
I followed him with my gaze. “Thank you. Hey, can I read the transcripts from the Maria and Julio interrogations?”
“They aren’t talking to anyone – nothing to transcribe,” Striker said. “I bet they’ll want to lay out their story for the DA first before he talks to Hector. And if not, then Hector might lead us to another player.” Striker paused. “Hector’s in custody, by the way,” he said. “That’s one item on my list of good news to tell you this morning.”
“A whole list, huh?”
He sat back down on my bed. “You’re alive. Safe. In my house, out of harm’s reach. All the rest is just icing.”
I looked at Striker long and hard. Any residual anger I had in my system had simmered off, and I was left with incredulity. He was right – as usual. Did I really care how I got to the bay house? Or should I focus on the fact that I was so darned freaking lucky to be back with my team? I laced my fingers possessively with Striker’s, and rested my other hand on his thigh. He was solid. Whole. Healthy. Here. These thoughts would probably take a while to integrate. I had to keep reminding myself
“Axel’s scheduled an interrogation in a little while. Maybe Hector can give us a better direction to take,” Striker said
“What did they charge him with?” I asked.
“Kidnapping and murder one. They don’t think they can make the murder stick without a body. They’re hoping to use the added charge to get him to cooperate.”
“You said Axel’s doing the interrogation?”
Striker looked at the wall clock. “In an hour and a half. He’ll be wearing a communicator. We have two cameras in the room – one that will be a close up on Hector’s face, and one that will monitor his body movements. You’ll see them split-screen on the computer, and you can tell Axel anything you want worked into the questioning.”
I must have looked dubious because Striker quickly added, “Axel’s good at this. Did you know he’s Dr. Axel White? He has a PhD in criminal psychology.”
Hmm, the things you learn along the way.
“Another thing,” Striker said. “I have a message for you from Command.”
My face screwed into a grimace, like I was waiting for something painful to happen.
“They said to stop lollygagging and get better. There’s a six-month backlog sitting on your desk.” Striker stopped to offer up a half-smile. “I know it’s not the most sensitive of messages – I can’t say that Command is overly sentimental. I think it’s the best they could do to express their concern. They’ve had your back the whole time. This operation’s extremely expensive, and there’s no client. It’s all coming out of the corporate pocket.” Striker stopped and tilted his head. “That is to say, Lynx, they value your talent, and care about you.”
“Not to mention they don’t like having a silver-backed ape thumping his chest outside of their gate.” I instantly regretted that that thought had bubbled up and popped out of my mouth.
“Omega’s only recent,” Striker’s tone was mildly chastising.
“That did sound ungrateful. I’m sorry.”
Striker nodded. “You’re all right. Did anyone tell you about Missy’s fire?”
“Yeah, and thank you for everything you did. And please thank Command. That seems out of character.”
“They have a soft spot for you.” Striker rubbed his finger over my wrist. “You do that to people – get under their skin.”
“Like chiggers?”
“Yup, you’re pretty irritating.”
Eleven
“Testing,” I spoke towards my computer.
“Got you, Lynx. You ready for this?” Axel’s voice rumbled back at me. He shifted something, and his image came into better view.
“We’ll see.” No, not ready.
A door opened, and a guard ushered in a man of medium height and slight build. He wore his orange jumpsuit with the arms rolled up to show gang tattoos. Long, black, greasy hair fell across his face and pooled on his shoulders. He slouched onto the gray metal chair, one leg extended, feet ensconced in white socks and plastic shower shoes. He tried to look cool, but I could see the tension in his shoulders. His chest rose and fell with the cadence of an anxiety rush. Handcuffed wrists brought the man’s hands up to his face, pushing his hair back behind his ears. Hector.
The last time I saw this man was in a gas station’s putrid bathroom somewhere along I95. He had leered at me with greedy eyes as I vulnerably sat there trying to pee. Then he thrust a bag over my head, took me to the airstrip, and dumped me like a dirty-laundry bag onto the plane that eventually flew me to Honduras. And prison.
I hated him for that. But more, I hated the memory of Hector that I tasted every day, like bile slicking the back of my tongue. It was the memory of Hector’s eyes behind a black ski mask, laughing as he tortured Gater with the Taser. I spent long, imprisoned hours thinking about how satisfying it would be to watch Hector’s central nervous system light on fire from my Taser attack. To hear his guttural agony.
Axel was calm. His voice sounded reasonable. Pragmatic. He laid out all of the evidence against Hector: Tammy’s testimony, the DNA found in the van, surveillance tapes from gas stations heading towards Florida, the statement from Hector’s ex-girlfriend. It seemed conclusive. Hector looked sideways at Axel with a half-smile. Hector knew something that made him feel safe.
“Hector, you’re going to prison for a long time. I want to make a deal with you. I need details. Names. In exchange, I’ll get them to drop the murder one charge.”
“Nah.” Hector smirked and shifted around. He pushed his hips forward on the chair and spread his knees wide, letting his hands dangle there on
the excess crotch fabric of his jumpsuit as he leaned back.
Arrogance comes from knowing you have power. Spyder told me about an assignment that had to do with a diplomat’s teenaged boys. They knew they were above the law – any law. And they knew their host country would make any wrongdoing disappear in order to preserve the diplomatic friendship between our two governments, even if it was really only a veneer of friendliness. These boys would go out and rape the local girls, scoff at the newspaper accounts, and make scrapbooks of the articles. The contempt that Spyder had described on those boys’ faces was what I saw now in every move Hector made. Axel wasn’t going to make any headway until he found the power source and pulled the plug.
Axel nodded his chin at Hector’s tattoo. “I see you’re marked. El Primo. New York City. How’d you get down to DC? You’re off your turf.”
“I’m out of that life, man.”
“That may be, but here in DC, the prisons are run by Hellhound. They know you’re the enemy, Hector.”
Hector raised the left side of his lip in a smirk and blew out derisively.
“You won’t last here. I can get you moved to New York. At least you’ll have your homeboys at your back,” Axel said.
“I abdicated. I’m just as marked there as here.”
Axel was impassive. He had offered Hector two bones, and Hector hadn’t sniffed at either one. Bones. The word tickled the tip of my tongue. I could feel a thought trying to form. T-Bone. T-Bone’s dead. That was my thought. A psychic “knowing”. No idea what it meant. Words with import came to me like that. This one wanted to push its way out of my mouth.
“T-Bone’s dead,” I said into my microphone.
Axel stopped. Maybe he thought I’d have more information for him. I had nada.
“Hector, tell me about T-Bone,” Axel started nonchalantly.
Hector went still. He slid his left foot behind the leg of his chair and rubbed his palms down his thigh. Bingo. Vulnerability. He’s trying to hide something. I saw the moves register with Axel.
“What about T-Bone?” Hector asked.
Axel looked at Hector without a word.
Hector shifted again, pulling at his pants leg. “T-Bone don’t mean nothing to me, man. I was only in his cell one night when they brought me in. After I talked to Mr. DA yesterday, I got me moved to a new cell all by myself. Luxury suite. Ain’t seen T-Bone since.”
“You and T-Bone hit it off, though. You had a nice long talk, didn’t you?”
Hector held eye contact with Axel. Neither moved. It was one of those mano-a-mano moments to see who would be the first to blink. I watched Axel’s face. The scar tracing from his brow to his jaw reminded me of a pirate: willing to take risks, ruthless, a life of hardship that made him steely and unrelenting. Hector read this too; I could see the flicker of doubt in his eyes. Axel won.
“T-Bone don’t matter none. He in for assault. He a gangbanger. No one believe nothing he’d say. He want to tell? Go ahead. He just trying to trade me in for a free walk, man.” Hector rested his eyes on his knees.
“You told T-Bone your story.”
Hector looked up at Axel and back down at the floor with a scornful huff.
“And now T-Bone is dead,” Axel said.
Hector all but threw his body out of his chair. He moved back in the tiny interrogation room, away from Axel, to stand in the corner. He was cornered.
“What you mean, T-Bone dead?”
Axel said nothing.
“He was alive this morning when I got moved.”
Axel gave a slight nod. Hector stalked back to his chair, sat down, and leaned forward, tightly wound, focused. “T-Bone dead?”
“This is bigger than you could ever imagine,” Axel’s voice was quiet. Eerily free of emotion. “You are smaller than you could ever imagine. You, Hector, are a bug under someone’s shoe, and you are about to get squashed. I want to know why.”
“I don’t know why. It shouldn’t-a been nothing. Maria had a drive job for me. I borrowed Loquisha’s van to make the run. Maria paid me and that be that. Now I’m charged with kidnap and murder one.”
“You were just driving a van. You needed some cash. You didn’t mean anyone any harm,” Axel said.
“Damn straight, man.” Hector took the bait.
“Things didn’t go exactly as planned. Maria lied to you. This is all her fault. She should do the time, not you. I want that for you. I want Maria to do the time, and I want you to go on with your life.”
Hector nodded. Yeah, let Maria take the wrap.
“When did you realize things weren’t going right?” Axel set the hook and was now watching Hector thrash around, wearing himself out. Then Axel could reel him in.
“We got to the house and waited for the girl to be alone. I saw her out the window. She were a little bitty thing. She ain’t no hassle. We had to keep her fresh, though. No guns. No knives. Maria give me a Taser to use in case she fight us. Maria said the girl couldn’t have no bruises on her for the video tape.”
“Did Maria tell you where you were going?”
“Yeah, the drive was for Florida.”
Axel’s hands rested on the metal table. “So you waited. How did you get to Lexi?”
“Maria’s niece, Tammy, be calling over to the girl to get her to come help with the neighbor’s baby. The boyfriend was the one that came out, though.”
“Her boyfriend?” This obviously confused Axel. And me. Striker had been out of town.
“Yeah, big ass mother fucker. Soldier boy.”
Ah, Gater. Yeah, I guess since he was living with me at the time, Maria probably assumed. . .
“He had a gun out.” Hector pantomimed as much as his handcuffs would allow. “He knew something was up. And all I had was the damned Taser. Then the girl come running out the house, talking on her cellphone. Boyfriend was hiding behind the car out front, watching our house. When he saw her coming, he jumped up and ran out front, all macho shit. When he come through the door, I shot the Taser. I was afraid to let up off the trigger. Damn straight he’d be all over me.”
“The girl came in behind him,” Axel said.
“She screaming to stop hurting Gater. He looked like a gator there on the floor flopping around. Maria had a knife on the baby. The girl said she would go with us no problem, and Tammy put her in shackles and cuffs.” Hector looked down at his shoes.
After a long minute Axel said, “Go on.”
“I picked up the gun the alligator dude dropped. I wanted to shoot him and Tammy. Leave no witnesses. Maria wouldn’t let me, though. She said that would bring the police, and we wouldn’t get away clean. We shackled them up. Gagged them.”
“Then you drove away.”
Hector glanced briefly up at Axel, then cast his gaze toward the blank wall. “We heard sirens, so we got out of there.”
“Down 95 to Florida.”
“I put the girl in the back of a little plane, drove Maria to some apartment building, and left her off.”
“In Nelson, Florida.”
“Yeah.” Hector worked his jaw back and forth. “That was it, man. See, I didn’t kill nobodies. I didn’t do no harm.”
“Has anyone contacted you since then?” Still that easy monotone. Soothing. Hypnotic. Yup, Dr. Axel was very good at this.
“Not until I got arrested.”
“And you only told this story to T-Bone.”
“I shouldn’t have, but when they brought me in, I was drunk and doped and feeling sorry for myself, and I guess it spilled out.” Hector hung his head, hiding behind his curtain of stringy black hair.
“You gave details to the DA?” Axel asked.
Hector ran his hands down his thighs. “No.”
“He knew everything already?”
“Naw, man.” He shook his head again. “We didn’t talk about it none.”
“He said something else to you.” Axel drew a circle on the table with his index finger, then gave a tap. “Something that made you feel safe.”
“Did he explain how?” Axel asked.
“No.” Hector leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees his hands linked together. He looked like he was in prayer. . .or pleading. “What happened to T-Bone?”
“He didn’t keep his head down.”
Twelve
Striker closed the computer and took it away from my bed. “T-Bone?”
“It just came to me.” I ripped the top off two packets of Splenda and poured them into my tea mug sitting on the hospital table in front of me. I wondered, now that my traction unit was off, when they were going to let me sit all the way up. Hot tea from a straw was a weird experience.
“He’s not someone you met along the way. ‘T-Bone’s dead’ just came to you. A psychic ‘knowing.’”
“Yes.”
Striker looked at my mug. When I followed his gaze, I saw that I had poured the Splenda on to the table, three inches to the left of the mug and had put the paper packets into my tea.
“I think my perception is a little off,” I stated the obvious.
“No guns for you until you’ve gotten your vision straightened out. That’s an order.”
I gave him a mock salute. I didn’t actually think I had the strength to lift a gun. And if I did, the recoil might just take my arm off. “Can Axel try to find out if T-Bone really is dead? Maybe Hector spilled a few more details when he was inebriated and T-Bone would be willing to share.”
“I’m sure Axel’s already on it.” There was a light tap on my door. Striker stood. “You have visitors.”
He opened my door and the Iniquus medics came in. These men had been with me both at the safe house, and again at Headquarters when I was recovering from my Veil walking episodes.
“Hey, Lynx.” Andy’s drooping eyes had a cartoonish quality to them. He was a light man with oversized feet and hands that grew out of the cuffs of his starched white uniform. He moved over to the monitors and looked at the readouts. “This looks good. You’re settling in.”
