Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two

by JC Andrijeski

  Ms. Culare nodded to me perceptibly. Her dark brown eyes had gone back to that stunning view out her sixty story window, a view that encompassed many of the wealthier neighborhoods of greater Seattle.

  For another flicker in the sunlight under that uncharacteristically blue Seattle sky, I saw the anger rise back to her perfectly made-up face.

  Seeing the look that stood there, plain as day, it occurred to me that maybe she hadn’t always had this much money and power.

  In that same set of seconds, I felt like me and Ms. Culare were in perfect understanding of one another.

  I spent the next few hours or so going through the basics of the agency.

  Ms. Constance Culare set me up in a small room adjacent to the desk of her assistant, who proceeded to bring me boxes of employee records, boxes of client records, coffee, fruit juice, cucumber water for Jake, shoot schedules, events calendars, lists and records of international business partners....and whatever else I asked for.

  Well, once I’d signed a confidentiality form about fifteen pages long while her very sleek-looking, African-American lawyer stood over my shoulder and explained particulars.

  Even the lawyer looked like a model.

  Once I’d gotten my head around the basics, I started setting up interviews.

  I figured I could do a lot of those in the next few days, after I put Irene to work on her usual thing with the employees, clients and business contractors of the Culare Agency itself.

  By the usual thing, I meant criminal history in the United States and elsewhere, bank records, family history, business ties, friends and acquaintances outside their work with the Culare Agency itself, any legal or other complaints filed against them, lawsuits, proximity to other cases of missing girls, employment references and history...and anything else that might give a solid ping in this kind of missing persons search.

  I knew it was unlikely we’d get a big, fat, Eastern European mafia ping in all that, unless these guys were idiots or amateurs, but I also knew Irene would prioritize the list based on their access to the girls in question, schedule overlaps and any kind of criminal background, so at least we’d end up with a shorter list.

  That left me with looking into the girls themselves.

  Getting Jake out of there was like prying a leech off an overfed cow’s leg.

  While I went through files and forwarded information to Irene on the laptop that the Culare Agency lent me, Jake spent those hours getting petted by every model who walked in the front door, checked out by every client for a possible campaign or a date, complimented for his face structure, his eyes and his physique, and handed cards by mostly gay male photographers who offered to help him create a preliminary portfolio for free.

  I didn’t even have to look at Jake to know he’d be insufferable by the time we got out of there.

  Mostly, I was just glad they let me hide in that back room with the door closed to him and his grifting antics.

  Jake did lend me his phone, though.

  The fact that I had to ask served in part to remind me that I really needed to get one of my own, sooner rather than later. Now that I had some cash at hand, I found myself tempted to spend some of it, if only to get set up with some of the basics of everyday life. I still felt like I’d fallen out of the sky only half-formed, after my return trip to Seattle with Nik.

  I still only really remembered the basic necessities for this kind of life when they came up, like now. Like needing a phone. Preferably one with decent GPS.

  I also found myself toying with the idea of getting a new place. Of my own, that is.

  I knew I couldn’t spend Ms. Culare’s money for that, not until I knew whether I could pay it back, but the idea lingered, anyway.

  Sleeping on Irene’s lumpy, pull-out mattress was getting old.

  I knew there were other reasons for wanting my own space, too...or my own space with Nik, more to the point. Reasons I didn’t really want to think about, at least not right then.

  Jake and I finally got out of there––after I pried Jake off a particularly stunning transexual photographer who stared at Jake like it was his birthday––at around six o’clock.

  By then, I was pretty burnt-out from staring at computer screens and reading through bad handwriting in employee files. I was ready for dinner and a good long stint outdoors, and away from florescent lights.

  Jake let me lead him out of there, surprisingly enough.

  And yeah, I deliberately ignored the light that sprang to the transexual’s eyes when he...or she, I couldn’t quite decide...saw the two of us together.

  By then, I’d totally forgotten who I’d seen when we first walked into that building.

  I strode through the main, downstairs lobby of the Grim Reaper without looking at anyone, moving probably the fastest I’ve ever moved in that high of spiked heels.

  I pushed open the glass doors with a relieved exhale the second I hit the outside air. I’ve never liked office buildings, whether I worked in them or not. I hated the feeling of being a rat in a maze, and the recycled air always made me conscious of inhaling other people’s skin, rat fecal matter and whatever else. I was definitely an outside type of person, anyway...not a sit at a desk and wear restrictive clothing type.

  Given my own personality make up, I didn’t know how people could stand to live that way.

  Then again, I’m sure a lot of them thought the same about me.

  I was still standing there, realizing again what a stunning day it was, for Seattle at least, with only a cool breeze blowing between buildings under that blue sky punctuated by giant, cumulous clouds, when someone totally pissed on my happy place.

  Grabbing my arm, they jerked me around sideways.

  I found myself staring up at a pair of baby blues I unfortunately remembered only too well.

  It’s amazing how those eyes could be more or less the same color as Gantry’s, and be like Gantry’s in no other conceivable respect.

  He looked as crazy this time as I remembered him from before.

  Oh, he hid it pretty well, especially in broad daylight, like now.

  But I had his number now, so the guise looked pretty thin to me as I studied his face. He didn’t mind showing me the real guy, either, I could tell. He was proud of the real guy. He thought the real guy––meaning the murderous sociopath that liked hurting people––was the bee’s knees. He only hid who he was because he’d learned that it helped him get what he wanted.

  But with me, now, he wanted me to see who he really was.

  He wanted me to be afraid.

  But he also wanted to play guy-with-all-the-power. He wanted me to feel like no one would believe me, if I tried to tell them just how psycho he really was.

  So he stared down at me with a half-smile, totally composed, despite the iron-man grip he had on my arm. I could feel his fingers bruising my bare flesh already.

  I glanced around, as casually as I could, but Jake hadn’t even made it out of the building yet.

  Still pretty calm, I considered different approaches.

  No way he was getting out of here with me. He likely knew that, too, so this was obviously meant to scare me. If he planned to tote me out of here, he would have waited until I got a lot closer to the curb. He would have had a car waiting, and likely chloroform and a handkerchief or something equally serial-killer-y.

  I stared up at him, refusing to give him the scared whiney thing he was going for.

  “What do you want?” I said. “Other than felony assault charges?”

  He smiled. Releasing my arm, he stepped back, using that same hand to comb his fingers through his eighty dollar haircut. The haircut made him look like a Ken Doll amped up on steroids, I noticed.

  “Just wanted to say hello,” he said, nodding to a guy who walked past, another young stockbroker I-spend-most-of-my-paycheck-on-blow type. “...It’s been awhile. I’ve been looking for you,” he added, keeping his voice light and friendly.

  “I’m sure you have,” I mu
rmured, glancing again at those glass doors for Jake.

  I was tempted to ask him how his shoulder was doing, meaning the one that Nik nearly yanked out of its socket. I didn’t, though. I figured it probably wasn’t a great idea to taunt full-fledged psychopaths.

  “It was just a job, man,” I told him. “Nothing personal. Let it go.”

  “A job?” His smile widened.

  I was a little unnerved by the look I saw there, truthfully.

  “...That’s an interesting line of work,” he added. Pausing for another beat, he let his smile brighten. “I didn’t know ‘man-hating-dyke’ was a profession these days.”

  “Pays the bills,” I told him, still watching him warily, both in terms of his face and the peripherals.

  He might not be able to nab me in broad daylight, not in front of the Grim Reaper office building with so many people going in and out, but I knew better than to take my eyes off a poisonous snake that I’d stepped on, no matter what clothing they wore.

  “What do you want?” I asked again.

  Just then, Jake came out of the building.

  He had a big grin on his face, but it faltered pretty much the second he saw me. I must have had that whole squared-off posture going with Bundy Junior, because all of a sudden, Jake lost his usual cocky assurance and seemed to be at a loss as to what he should do.

  I raised my voice to address him.

  “It’s okay, Jake,” I said. “No need to call anyone. Bundy and I were just having a chat. Isn’t that right, buddy? He’s got this mistaken impression I’m someone else...someone he actually knows.”

  Bundy’s smile widened again.

  I really didn’t like the sheen of pleasure I kept seeing flicker across his eyes. He was liking this whole stand-off thing with me way too much.

  I had a feeling the clothes I wore right then weren’t exactly helping.

  Just then, someone else stepped between me and him.

  I looked up at broad shoulders above a lean frame, seeing the black hair before I saw his face. Before I could take so much as a breath, Nik had ahold of Bundy by the throat and pushed him up against the nearest lamppost. Pinning him there, Nik slid him upwards on the metal as if his spine had greased wheels.

  I heard a choking sound and looked down.

  That’s when I saw the expensive loafers dangling a few inches off the sidewalk.

  “Nik!” I snapped. “Put him down!”

  The morph didn’t so much as glance at me.

  He didn’t seem to notice Jake, either. Instead, Nik looked from one of Bundy’s eyes to the other, ignoring the stream of vitriol coming out of the guy’s mouth, either because he didn’t understand it or because he just flat-out didn’t care.

  “Do you remember me?” Nik asked Bundy, when the guy took a breath.

  If it had been anyone else, I might have felt sorry for the guy.

  As it was, I felt a kind of panic sink into my stomach when I saw people pausing, staring at us as if unsure what they were seeing exactly, or maybe because their minds were searching for some kind of alternate explanation. When Bundy only spewed more threats and profanities, Nik shook him lightly, still holding him by the neck.

  Bundy choked, turning a darker shade of red.

  “Hey!” one of the suit-wearing types said, approaching us with an angry concern on his face. He was an older guy, and had a kind face. “What are you doing? Put that man down at once!”

  “It’s okay,” I assured him. “They’re old friends. Right, Ted?”

  The blue-eyed Bundy stared at me, then between Nik and the older guy in the business suit, who already had his cell phone in his hand, likely prepared to dial 911.

  I watched Bundy think as he stared between us. I saw him nod a few seconds later, no mean feat, given that Nik held him off the ground by the neck.

  “Yeah,” he gasped. “...Old friends.”

  The older man with the kind face frowned, clearly not convinced.

  When none of us moved or spoke, he seemed to give up, giving us each a last look before he finished climbing the stairs leading up to the black-glass building.

  Nik turned back to Bundy.

  “Do you remember me?” he said, softer.

  “Yes,” Bundy said, gripping Nik’s fingers, trying to give himself more room to breathe. “Motherfucker. Kill you the next time I see you...”

  Nik shook him again, still not hard, but enough that the other guy’s expensive shoes knocked together.

  “No,” Nik said. “You won’t. You won’t see me again. You won’t see Dakota again, either. If you come near her, for any reason, I will hurt you. More than last time.”

  “You put me in the fucking hospital last time,” the guy gasped. “Dyke-loving freak...”

  Nik frowned, but his eyes didn’t stop examining the other’s face.

  After another pause, Nik looked at me, without releasing Bundy.

  “There is something wrong with him,” he informed me. “With his mind.”

  “Yeah, Nik. No shit. Now put him down, okay?” I couldn’t help staring around at passersby, smiling at them like this whole thing was as normal as can be. “Nik. You can’t afford to be this conspicuous,” I hissed. “Put him down. I mean it.”

  That time, Nik seemed to think about my words.

  He lowered Bundy back down to his feet and released him, but didn’t move away.

  “This is not a fight you can win,” Nik told him. “You must see that.”

  “Yeah, fucker. We’ll see,” Bundy said, rubbing his neck. “We’ll just fucking see.”

  Arranging his red, silk tie, now the same color as his face, Bundy glared around at all three of us. Then, without another word, he turned, taking the stairs two at a time before he disappeared back through the high doors into the black glass building.

  “Well, that was fun,” I muttered, hands on my hips as I stared after him.

  When I looked back at the other two, Jake was looking at Nik like he wanted to rip his clothes off, right then and there.

  I gave Nik a slightly less appreciative look.

  “Nik,” I said, my hands still on my hips. “You’re going to end up naked on a stainless steel table somewhere. Either in a garage with that psycho you just assaulted, or one paid for with taxpayer dollars. Do you get that? Is that sinking in at all, that we’re trying to keep a low profile for you? For me, too, for that matter?”

  Nik only looked at me, not answering.

  I could see and feel shimmers of his own anger there, however.

  I certainly didn’t see any kind of remorse on his face.

  Then again, I probably needed to spell this stuff out for him a lot more clearly, in a way that would make sense to him, given the life he’d just left behind in that other world. Nik knew all about incarceration. He knew what it meant to have his freedom stripped away, and his rights revoked. He just wasn’t getting that it could happen to him here, too, and almost as easily as it had in that other place, especially if anyone here found out what he really was.

  “I do get that,” Nik said, his voice taut.

  “Then what the hell are you doing?” I said.

  “What are you doing, Dakota?” Nik said, his voice sharper. His irises slid magically to a near black. “You know his mind isn’t right. You know he is targeting you. But he sees you here, and you tell Gantry not to let me come? Why?”

  Realizing what he meant, I shielded my eyes from the sun, squinting up at him.

  As I studied his expression, it dawned on me that Nik saw this whole scene as my fault.

  He thought I put myself in danger by not doing as he asked and bringing him along as back-up, probably. He was definitely pissed I hadn’t let him act as my bodyguard overtly, the minute I knew Bundy worked in the building.

  I could feel now, probably through the lock, that Nik thought things never would have escalated to that extent if he’d been with me the whole time.

  Sighing a bit, I realized he might be right.

  At
the same time, I knew I had to put an end to this overprotective bullshit right now.

  This was my job. If Nik was going to be a part of my life, he needed to get used to that. Which meant he and I needed to set up some ground rules, in addition to whatever he worked out with Gantry. I wasn’t going to be ordered around by him down here, no matter who he was to me. I wouldn’t tolerate it, whatever his intentions, and Nik needed to figure that out fast.

  Or he and I were going to have a serious problem.

  I also realized again that I needed to have a good long talk with him about the realities of law enforcement here on the ground. He needed to fully understand his situation here on Earth. Either that, or I needed to have Gantry explain it to him. Or possibly Irene.

  No way was I letting Jake get anywhere near that one, but someone had to explain the facts of life to Nik before he got all of us thrown in a federal prison, or some kind of Homeland Security / FEMA quarantine site.

  I was still thinking about all of that, when Jake touched Nik’s arm.

  “Thank you,” he said, sounding sincere. “I appreciate what you did. You should listen to my sister, though...she’s right.”

  I gave my brother a wary look, sure he was playing another of his stupid games.

  I saw real gratitude in Jake’s eyes, though, as he looked at Nik. I also saw a faint glimmer of that same worry that was making my blood pressure rise.

  Still, that Bundy guy must have really freaked Jake out, for him to be acting like that. Jake continued to watch Nik’s face after the morph nodded, acknowledging his thanks with an openly wary look before Nik turned his stare back on me.

  For a moment, Nik didn’t say anything, only looked at me.

  Then his eyes drifted down, once more taking in my body in that form-fitting dress. I felt something off him, even as he nodded, right before he moved closer to where I stood.

  “I understand, Dakota,” he said.

  “Do you?” I said, skeptical. “Do you really, Nik? Because I’m beginning to think we need to keep you inside until you get the rules better here.”

  “No.” Nik shook his head. “And I would rather if you and I talked...not Gantry. Or Irene. I understand better when you explain these things, because of the lock.”