by JA Huss
“To reintroduce you to Case Reider. God, Louise, focus. If you’re too tired to keep working, just let me know and I’ll have a driver drop you off at home.”
“Oh,” I say. But I’m really thinking… Hell, yeah. I forgot about that little plan. I gather myself. Ravel all the frayed edges together and pull down on my sweater, adjusting it with my attitude. “Not that I want to get anywhere near that criminal, but what did you have in mind?”
“Just…” Randy starts, hesitant. “Keep an open mind, OK?”
“Go on.” I’m suspicious. But if this is going where I think it is… then…
“I think you should go on TV tomorrow. Do an interview with Channel Nine. Mayor Salinas and the police chief both did interviews today already. And they’ll do more tomorrow. But we could use your pretty face to let Mr. Reider know you’re back in town. He’ll see you on the TV, tell his buddies, and then they will make contact, Louise.”
Why is he calling me Louise again? All day it’s Lulu this and Lulu that. Now it’s Louise.
“Define contact,” I say, trying to keep myself focused on business.
“Maybe… a phone call? To start. And then meet him somewhere. A casual date. Then, if we get lucky, he’ll ask you to dinner. We’ll plant a wire on you and then—”
“Wire?” I ask, surprised. “I’m not a detective. Or an informant, Randy. This is not something I do. It’s like… entrapment.”
It’s not like entrapment. It is entrapment.
“We don’t have to do the wire,” Randy says, backing down. “But Lulu”—now it’s Lulu again—“I know he’d like to see you again.”
“You don’t know that.” But I’m hoping Case does want to see me again. I just don’t want it to be my job to set him up for a fall. Or twenty to life in prison.
“And it’s not entrapment. The crime has already been committed. We just want info on who did it. And it was his friend, Lulu. It is Lincoln Wade. This job has his name all over it.”
“How do you know him so well?”
“Who?” Randy blinks at me.
“Lincoln Wade,” I snap. I feel so bitchy right now. Like I haven’t had my morning coffee, but it’s dinner time. Maybe I’m just really hungry?
“I knew him once. Back when were in high school.”
“Oh. So why don’t you just go interview him? See what he says?”
“Because he’s going to lie, Lulu.”
“If I do this, I’m not wearing a wire.” I say it firmly, like this is non-negotiable.
“Fine,” Randy concedes.
“And I don’t want to be followed.”
“Unacceptable,” Randy says. “That’s standard protocol.”
“No,” I say, standing my ground. “If I’m being promoted to informant then I work this case alone. That’s what informants do. At least while they’re gathering evidence. If I find anything out, then you guys follow me and we bust them. That’s my condition or I’m not doing it. I don’t want people following me. And I don’t want him being suspicious. If his friends are as dangerous as you say, then I don’t want to risk my own safety.”
It’s a whole lot of bullshit. I just want to get some time alone with Case and not be wondering if anyone is critiquing my reactions.
Randy agrees to that, the food arrives, and once I am eagerly chowing down my chicken fried rice, I’m feeling better again. Randy isn’t even getting on my nerves as we work through dinner and make a plan for tomorrow.
The next morning Cait is there when I walk in to the sixth-floor offices, handing me some more of that delicious cinnamon coffee. “I admit,” I tell her with a smile, “I dreamed about this coffee last night.”
“Oh, you like it?” she asks. “It’s from that new coffeehouse down on C Street. City Coffee, it’s called. I’m going back to grab some to take home. I love it too. Do you want me to pick you up some?”
“Yeah,” I say, stopping to take a long sip. “I’d love to wake up to this every morning.”
“Consider it done,” Cait says, skipping off to deliver cups to other people in the office.
Randy and I spend the rest of the morning planning out every detail of the interview tonight. I’m sitting down with Marla Bast from Channel Nine at four o’clock, and it’s going to air during the six o’clock news.
Randy is back together today. Predictable dark blue thousand-dollar suit, red power tie, and perfectly coiffed hair.
But somehow, he’s sexy again. God, I don’t know why I’m so hot and cold with this guy, He’s never been mean to me. In fact, all day today, he’s been nothing but sweet. He even bought me lunch at the new pub across from City Hall. And we didn’t even eat at our desks.
“Are you nervous?” Randy asks. The TV people are here, micing me up and doing my hair and makeup.
“A little,” I admit. But not about the interview. I’m nervous because I know Case is going to know I’m back in town tonight. He might even try to call me. Maybe I should stay late tonight? Just in case he calls the office?
“Lulu?” Randy asks. “Did you hear me?”
“No, what? Sorry. I was thinking about the interview. I’m so nervous.”
“Just be yourself,” he says in a low voice. I know that’s so the TV people don’t catch anything unusual in our conversation. “You’ll do great.”
CHAPTER NINE - CASE
I tab accept on my ringing phone and say, “Yeah.”
“Are you watching the news?” It’s Thomas.
I’m not. I’m sitting in my house, holding the knife in my hand, wondering if it’s a sign things are getting worse because I want to cut myself right now, and I’m hours early.
So far, the naked trips to the roof have only happened in the middle of the night. But all day long I’ve had a building urge to cut. Deep, deep cuts. Let the heat out. I’m fucking burning up. Maybe I do need vents in my hands like Lincoln has? Maybe that would fix all my problems?
“No,” I tell Thomas. “I’m eating dinner.”
“Well, turn it on. Channel Nine. Quick.”
I reach over for the remote on the end table and flick it on. I press nine on the keypad, and then a reporter’s face is on screen. “We’ve heard rumors of a note, Miss Lightly. Can you confirm that whomever stole seventy-five million dollars from the Cathedral City banks yesterday morning left a note?”
Her face is suddenly on my wall. A face I have not seen since that last time we danced at the ball.
“I’m afraid I haven’t seen the note, Ms. Bast.”
“But there is one?”
“I’m sorry,” Lulu says. “I can’t confirm or deny that. I just have no information about it.”
“What can you tell us?”
“Do you see her?” Thomas asks, still on the other side of the phone.
“I see her,” I whisper. “Did you know she was back?”
“No,” Thomas deadpans. “And I’m kinda pissed off about that. I had an arrangement with her father. And before you get all pissed off, I did it for your own good. And hers. It’s dangerous for her to be here, Case. You have to know this.”
“I do,” I say, still softly.
“She needs to go.”
I sigh. “So get rid of her.” I can’t stop Thomas. Whatever he’s gonna do, he’s gonna do. That’s just how he is.
“We can’t. She’s a fucking assistant district attorney and apparently, she’s on this new bank robbery case.”
“So what should we do about it?”
“I think you should meet up with her. Bump in to her somewhere. Casually, you know. Nothing formal. Feel out the situation. See where she’s heading. They’re trying to pin this on us, Case. I hope you know that. And this is clearly a ploy to drag you into something.”
“Yup,” I say. He’s probably right.
“Don’t fall for it,” Thomas cautions.
“I’m not an idiot,” I snap. “Besides, I’m totally over her.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I am. I’m happy t
o get rid of her. I know you’re the reason she left town, but you never told her to just cut contact with me, did you?”
“Nope. Never did.”
“And she couldn’t pick up the phone?”
“Right, brother. That’s the right attitude. We’re very close, man. So fucking close to putting all this shit in motion. Don’t let a girl take that win away from you.”
“I know that too. And believe me, that goal is still the only thing that matters. I want it just as bad as you.” I’m not sure that’s really true. Thomas is possessed with what we’re doing to this city. But I’m definitely committed. “I’ll take care of it.”
“How? No,” he amends. “Don’t tell me. Better if I don’t know.” I’m just about to hang up when he says, “Have you thought about the nanites?”
“No, I have not,” I say, anger building at the mere mention of that stupid plan. I plugged that flash drive into my computer when I woke up this morning from my little trip out to the roof. But none of it makes sense to me. I really have no clue what Lincoln does up there in his cave. Most of it was code, anyway. Shit I have no hope of ever understanding. And the rest… just more big biological terms that read as gibberish to me. “But I did give you assholes an answer. And it’s still no. I don’t want that shit inside of me.”
“Well, Sheila came up with another idea. Just a little interface on the back of your neck. It’s not even sub-dermal. Just a sticker, really. With electrodes on it. On the back of your neck. It can monitor all kinds of things through your skin and maybe we can figure out…” He pauses. “Get a handle on what kind of things are happening to you. Then maybe you’ll see it’s no big deal and we can do the nanites. The interface will tell us a lot more if we combine the two—”
“You got an address for her?” I interrupt, looking at the knife in my hand. I don’t really want to think about what’s happening to me.
“Sure,” Thomas says. “I’ll text it.”
“Cool. I’ll take care of shit tomorrow.”
“Case?” Thomas asks before I can end the call.
“What?”
“You’d tell me if something was wrong, right? We’re still close enough to tell each other shit like that, right?”
I’m still staring at the knife in my hand. Is it so bad, really? That I need to cut myself for relief? People do that shit all the time.
Psycho people, the inner me replies back.
“Yeah,” I tell Thomas. “Yeah, sure. We’ve always been close.”
Thomas waits to see if I’ll say anything else. But I don’t. So he says, “Good.” Then, “Good. Whatever you need, man, I’m still here. Just remember that.”
“Got it,” I say, ending the call and throwing the phone onto the cushions next to me. It buzzes a text—Lulu’s address, I presume—but I’m already standing, pulling my shirt out from my pants and unbuttoning it.
Two minutes later I’m on the roof, naked. Knife in hand, poised above the fleshy muscle of my left arm, ready to carve.
The city whispers to me. Only this time, it sounds like the Blue Boar.
I cut deep. Let the blood flow with the light.
And the pain disappears.
She Needs to Go
CHAPTER TEN - LULU
“What am I looking at?” I came in early this morning after spending an entire night foolishly imagining all the many ways in which Case Reider would make contact with me again—one of which included a romantic party that looked suspiciously like our night at the Debutante Ball—only to find a two-inch-thick file waiting on my desk, and Randy sitting in my chair, drinking that delicious-smelling coffee and talking on the phone. “This is… what?” I ask, looking up at Randy, who kindly vacated my chair and is now hovering over me. Jesus Christ, I need… “Cait!” I yell. “Can you please bring me a coffee!”
“It’s code,” Randy says.
I want to slap him, but I take a deep breath instead. “I can see that. Randy.” I hold the scowl in. Where is my coffee? “But what does it say? This isn’t a note. When you said note I pictured cut-out ransom letters. Or boxy Capricorn-killer print. What is it?”
“Are you OK?” Randy asks, squinting his eyes at me. “Did I do something wrong? Are you mad at me?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I mumble.
“Why are you so bitchy?” he asks.
“Sorry,” Cait says, appearing with my coffee.
“Thank God,” I say, taking it from her and slurping some down real fast. I give Randy an almost apologetic look and then point to the caffeine. “I just needed my coffee.”
“Got it,” Randy says, his words clipped. “Cait,” he says, and before Cait can escape the tension, she turns and smiles. “Make sure our princess here has her coffee waiting from now on.”
“Sure thing, Randy.” She gives me a wink and a smile, then leaves, closing the door behind her.
Randy pans his hands at me and says, “Take your time, Lulu. Drink up. You let me know when you’re ready to work, OK?”
I feel stupid all of a sudden. I was kinda bitchy. It’s really not like me. “I’m sorry,” I say, meaning it. “I just had a long night and didn’t get any sleep. And Case did not try to contact me. Our plan didn’t work.”
“Well… come on, Lulu. He’s probably being directed by those thug friends of his. Give it more than one night before you give up. And before you ask me again, let me show you the message we found in the code.”
He leans over my shoulder, so close to me I can smell his cologne. It’s not strong, not at all. But he’s very close.
“Hackers sometimes place messages inside their code. See this?” He points to a jumble of words and characters in the middle of the print out. “That’s it.”
“It doesn’t say anything.”
“It’s code, Lulu.” He says that like I’m a slow-learning five-year-old. “Which means you have to decipher it. And we did. The Feds had it since it came in yesterday and they sent it back with an analysis.” He lifts the printout up and yup, sure enough there is a detailed analysis from the Feds.
If I had just waited five seconds, I’m sure Randy would’ve told me about that little detail. But instead I flew off the handle and blamed coffee. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Randy says. “I’m sure all this is kind of overwhelming to you. Back in town after all these years. Then this big case, not to mention your ex-boyfriend might be involved. I get it. Just relax.”
I almost wish that little pep talk came with a sleazy offer of a shoulder massage and some inappropriate sexual innuendo, because at least then I could pretend he’s partly to blame for my behavior.
But it doesn’t. He’s being sincere.
“Look,” he says, pulling the analysis out for me to read. “They think this hacker is calling himself Bike Boy. And he’s talking to a guy named Red Robber.”
“These are… handles? Or something? Nicknames?”
“Yeah,” Randy says. “Online aliases. Red Robber seems to be the guy who actually carried it out, but it’s not clear yet. We think Bike Boy is Lincoln Wade.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why do you think that?”
“We went through Detective Masters’ emails and she refers to him that way when they are… flirting.”
“Bike Boy,” I say out loud. “Sounds kinda stupid. Who’s Red Robber?”
“We don’t know. If we didn’t already know that Bike Boy was Wade, then we’d have assumed he was the Red Robber. Because from what they could gather from this message, it appears this hack was all coming from Red Robber’s instructions.”
“Hmm,” I say, taking another sip of coffee. I’m feeling better. Maybe it’s really the missing caffeine that made me irritable this morning? “What else does it say?”
“That’s about all we got from that bit of code. But the Feds are combing through the whole thing and they’ll let us know if they find anything else.”
“So what do we do with this?” I ask, flicking the page in my hand.
“Well,” Randy says, walking around to the front of my desk to take a seat in one of the chairs. “Not much. We need more info. Hopefully we can get that from your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend. He was never my boyfriend. He took me to the ball, that’s all. And then I left town a few days later and never saw him again.”
“Well, maybe…” Randy says, looking intently at me. “Maybe you could… try to get him interested in picking up where you left off?”
“Date him? You want me to date him? What if he’s a real criminal? I’m not dating a criminal. It goes against everything I believe in.”
“Which is why I trust you to keep it all straight. Not get caught up in him again, Lulu. We just need an in, you know?”
“He’s not going to trust me.” I laugh. “I work for you!”
“But…”
“But what?”
“Maybe you… get fired?”
“What?”
“Just listen a minute, Lulu. I know this isn’t in your job description but we’re in a tight spot, OK? He’s going to make contact, we know this. And what if you two go out to just… catch up on old times, then you get fired for inappropriate behavior?” I’m about to open my mouth to protest, but he continues. “Fake fired, Lulu. Not for real. Just a ploy to lure him into trusting you again. We have a feeling that this is just the beginning of their plan for Cathedral City. We think that Brooks guy—Thomas Brooks—we think he’s about to do something nefarious. You know he bought Blue Corp after that explosion and the whole corruption thing went down last winter.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Well, we have new evidence that he—and his friends, including your Case—were the whole reason Blue Corp blew up.”
“What evidence? I haven’t heard this.”
“It’s super-secret at the moment. We’re holding that very close as we build a case. But it’s all in the file.” Randy points to the folder in front of me. “On that flash drive. We have footage of that night, Lulu. Someone was recording from a high-rise while the whole thing went down.”
