"Well, don't let your guard down," Cameron suggested. "A pipe bomb can still blow you to hell, analog or not."
"Maybe Merry should stay out here," Fred said, clearing his throat. "And I could, uh, keep an eye on her. Someone should watch the car anyway, right? This is a rough neighborhood so—"
"Yeah, you two hang back," Jayne said while Merry rolled her eyes. "Seriously. I don't want to give Burrett any extra targets. We'll message you when it's all clear."
"If you don't hear from us in fifteen minutes," Cameron added, checking his weapon, "or if you hear gunfire, call the precinct and get backup down here. Do not go in there alone, got it?"
Merry and Fred nodded in agreement and Jayne headed towards the graveyard, Cameron close behind her. Cameron had his weapon drawn, but Jayne kept hers holstered, her hand on the butt as they approached the door. Cameron noticed, raising an eyebrow. Jayne shook her head.
"I'm too tense," she admitted reluctantly. "I'd rather be slow on the draw than put a bullet in something I didn't mean to."
Cameron nodded in understanding as she checked the door for signs of tampering.
"Earlier, at Cosmos," he said quietly as she opened the door slightly, checking around it. "When Burrett fired at that woman—"
"Now's not the time." Jayne cut him off with a brusque reply, focused on the door.
"You could have put him down," Cameron went on. "I've seen your reaction time. You could have taken him out the second he moved, before he had her in his sights."
"Later," Jayne said, terse and annoyed, ready to enter. Cameron grabbed her shoulder instead, making her face him.
"If I'm about to go into a fire fight with you I need to know you aren't going to freeze up," he said, his eyes hard. "I'm not trying to psychoanalyze you or tell you not to do this. I just want to know what to expect from you if we find Burrett in there."
The lack of pity in his eyes stung, yet his concern was weirdly comforting to Jayne. Sympathy and understanding were unbearable. But practicality she could work with. She took a deep breath, then nodded in acknowledgement.
"I won't freeze," she said, hoping she wasn't lying.
Cameron nodded in satisfaction. Together, they slipped inside.
The graveyard had several floors, each one divided into quarters by crossed hallways with an exit at the end of each hall. That was entirely too many exits for Jayne's comfort. She'd need Cameron's entire precinct here just to cover them all. On higher levels, beyond the smog bank, the exits were left open, with no doors. It made things feel more open and let in natural light. But down here there were not just heavy doors but airlock antechambers to keep the smog out. Like a vault, they seemed to seal Jayne in with the dead.
They stood in darkness for a moment after the door shut behind them, before the lights belatedly flickered on. Jayne peered down the long white hall, ignoring the way her skin prickled and her hair stood on end. The hall was broad enough to walk easily beside Cameron without her shoulders brushing the grave markers which lined the walls to either side of them like bricks. There had been an effort to achieve the popular brass and marble look, but with a clear lack of the funds necessary to achieve it. Maybe one in twelve of the roughly two-by-four sized markers were actually made of marble, faded and cracked by time. More were cheap granite. Many were concrete with a thin faux-marble veneer which had chipped away over the years. The fixtures were nickel, or some other cheap metal with a brass patina. Those that hadn't yet become entirely unreadable would be soon. Dust lay thick over everything. The only sign of life was the long withered remains of a bouquet in a cracked plastic vase anchored to one of the markers.
"Weird," Cameron said, low under his breath, as they moved slowly down the hall, alert for anything suspicious.
"No homeless," Jayne whispered back, having noticed the same thing he had. "No junkies."
"Not even any trash," Cameron said, tracking the dusty but otherwise immaculate halls with his gun. "Something scared them off, long enough ago that someone's been through to clean."
"Maybe," Jayne murmured, eyeing the thick dust on every surface. "But Burrett's only been out a few months, and no one has cleaned in here for at least that long."
They exchanged worried glances before they proceeded. They took turns checking the doors to the family mausoleums. Most were locked and showed no signs of having been disturbed recently. In silence, they climbed the stairs to the second floor and searched it too.
"Any news?" Merry asked over the radio.
"Nothing yet," Jayne whispered back. "Stay alert."
"I expected at least a trap by now," Cameron said, uneasy, as they made their way to the third floor. The motion activated lights flickered on and Jayne flinched, ready for the worst. Instead, she saw just another empty hall. The graves here were slightly newer than the ones on the first floor, but not by much.
She tapped Cameron's shoulder and pointed out a clean streak down the hall, like the dust had been swept away by the hem of a coat that covered any footprints. Silently, they followed it to a mausoleum door. It was slightly open. Her heart hammering, Jayne waved Cameron back, then nudged it with the toe of her boot, pushing it further open.
The room was about four, maybe five feet across. The walls were lined with grave markers, many of them still blank, left open for family members that would likely never fill them. A backlit fake stained glass window was set into the far wall. A six armed female deity of some variety smiled down benignly on a folding table desk and a sleeping bag spread on the floor. An old burner laptop sat open, abandoned on the table. Paper notes, maps and diagrams were sorted beside it, or taped to the grave markers. On the computer screen a simple message blinked in neon lettering, accompanied by the Cosmos donut logo again. Except the rocket-riding lady now had a skull.
‘YOUR MOVE, JAYNE.’
Jayne bit her tongue to keep from swearing as her spirits sank. Cameron kicked the sleeping bag over to check for traps, then the back of the door and the computer. Jayne let him, but she already knew he was wasting his time. This wasn't a trap. Burrett was just taunting her.
They gave Fred and Merry the all clear and Cameron continued to sweep the rest of the building. Merry began searching through the laptop on the long shot that it might contain something useful. Jayne gathered up the paper notes.
"You don't think he might come back here?" Fred asked, eyeing an empty donut box suspiciously.
"No, he wouldn't have led us here if he was planning to come back," Jayne said, snatching a schematic for some kind of pressure activated laser off the wall.
"But then, why lead us here?" Fred asked, baffled, stepping out of the way awkwardly as Jayne collected notes. "Is he just crazy or what?"
"Even the mentally ill don't do things for no reason," Cameron answered as he returned from searching the building. He lingered in the door frame, the small room already too full with Jayne, Merry and Fred in it. "Even completely delusional people have an internal logic to their actions."
"In this case," Merry chimed in, "the reason was probably to show us that we're not going to catch him by just tracking him down to his hideout. He's got more than one. Which, honestly, we should have expected. He is a trained agent after all. He's probably got bolt holes like this all over the city."
"So, he's just… making fun of us?" Fred gathered. "We put all that effort into trying to find his base and he's like, 'take it, I've got spares?' I don't get it. Does he want us to catch him or not?"
"He wants us to chase him," Jayne said quietly, looking through the papers, which included structural design documents for some of the city's largest buildings. "He wants me to chase him. This is what Gavin told me. He said we’ll find Burrett when Burrett is ready for us. I don't know why. Maybe it's an ego thing. Gavin seemed to think that Burrett needs to know someone is appreciating his work. Or a thrill, like it's not as exciting if someone isn't trying to stop him. He lives for a close call. Or maybe he just needs me to pull off whatever he's planning, and he's pul
ling me around by the nose to make sure I'm where he needs me to be. I’m as much a part of his plan as anything else."
"Could just be revenge," Cameron added. "You killed Chamberlain after Burrett probably spent years thinking about how he was going to get revenge on the guy. Not to mention breaking him out of the black site just to haul him around on a chemical leash while you hunted the man who betrayed him. For a psychopath like him, that's more than enough reason to hate you."
"Sounds crazy to me," Fred said, shaking his head. Jayne just frowned and tore more notes off the walls, stuffing them into the empty donut box to bring home.
"Either way," Cameron said. "You guys need to clear out, fast. I found a body in a mausoleum on the next floor."
Everyone froze for a moment, imagining the worst.
“Wow, Cameron. Way to bury the lead.”
"I didn’t think it was too important because it’s no one we know." Cameron informed them.
Jayne, Merry and Fred looked at Cameron like he had antlers growing out of his head.
"Sorry. I think that’s my cop callousness coming through. But the body, it's practically a mummy it's been in there so long. Judging by the uniform, I'm guessing it was probably the caretaker. But I have to call it in, and if you guys don't take this stuff and get going it's all going to end up in an evidence locker."
"Say no more," Merry replied, shutting down the computer.
They were packed up and on their way out within a few minutes, leaving nothing but footprints in the dust behind them.
CHAPTER FIFTY
ISA Offices, Malicarsh Building, L45, Theron Techcropolis, Amaros
Jayne sat on the office floor, Burrett's notes and plans spread out around her.
"You sure you don't want me to just scan those?" Merry asked from her desk, sipping a soda as she watched Jayne. "I could organize them into one big whiteboard with a search function—"
"You can scan them later," Jayne said with a dismissive wave, not looking up. "I need to see them all at once like this first."
"In the middle of the office?" Fred asked, stepping carefully around the furniture she'd shoved out of the way in order to sit down on the settee, which was against the back wall next to Merry's desk now. He was carrying a box of takeout and Merry leaned over to snatch a taco.
"This is my workspace," Jayne said, her tone distracted as she rearranged a couple of diagrams. "It helps me focus."
"And the, uh...?" Fred gestured at her appearance, lost for words.
Jayne had taken a quick shower to get the smog off as soon as they arrived, and had emerged in a sports bra and sweatpants, her wet hair messily tied up in a towel. She'd started moving furniture and dumped the box of evidence on the floor with no more explanation than that and sat down in the middle of it.
"Comfortable," she grunted, picking up two nearly identical schematics and squinting at them for a moment before setting them on opposite sides of the pile.
"My college roommate used to do this before big tests," Cameron said. He was sitting on the coffee table, his chin in his hand, a slightly dopey smile on his face as he watched Jayne work. "It always worked for him."
"Throw me a burrito," Jayne said, raising a hand.
"Magic word?"
"I will suplex you off the edge of this level."
"Close enough."
Fred tossed a burrito in Jayne's direction and she snatched it out of the air without looking and tore the wrapper open with her teeth. Cameron's wistful smile widened.
"So what's the plan?" Merry asked, setting aside her soda. "How do we find Burrett again?"
"You're actually interested in finding him now?" Jayne asked, glancing up from the pile of notes.
Merry sighed.
"Yeah, I am. I saw all those plans and blueprints. He had structural plans for the base of Takahashi Tower. That's the tallest building in the city. If he bombs the foundation supports..." She trailed off with a shudder. "Before he was just your pet obsession. Now he's a danger to everyone."
"He was always a danger to everyone," Jayne said, shuffling papers with sharp, aggressive movements. "I was just the only one who cared."
"If you hadn't gone after him he might have just gone into hiding," Merry pointed out. "You called him out, threatened to put him back in jail."
"Do you really think I'm the only person hunting him?" Jayne said, scowling. "We broke him out of a government black site. Every government agency on the planet, and any criminal organization big enough to know he exists, has people searching for him."
"And they're all working equally hard to make sure none of the other players get him first," Merry pointed out. "Which makes them pretty much useless, even before you factor in that he's trained in specifically how to avoid that kind of pursuit. He was in the clear until you came after him."
"Guys," Cameron interjected. "What matters is that we're all on the same page about stopping him now. Let's focus on that."
"...He isn't planning to blow up Takahashi anyway," Jayne said after a moment. "It's not his style."
"How do you figure?" Fred asked.
"He doesn't like collateral damage," Jayne said, sorting a stack of notes on the tensile strength of various metals. "Look at the donut shop. He didn't miss that woman and her kid by accident. And he warned the cashier before everything started. He even tried to give Ray a chance to walk away. It's consistent with his behavior before he was incarcerated too. He doesn't kill unless something is in his way."
"And that would be you," Cameron said, nudging a document Jayne had missed towards her.
"Yeah. And I don’t know what I’m in the way of," Jayne agreed, "but whatever it is will be targeted. Surgical precision, that's his thing."
"Half this shit looks like the world's nastiest game of Mousetrap," Fred commented, tilting his head as he looked at some of the mechanical schematics. "That or props for a shitty horror movie."
Jayne hummed thoughtfully and turned her head to look at it the same way.
"Did you find out what the deal with that body was?" she asked, pulling one of the diagrams towards her.
"Still waiting on an official ID," Cameron replied. "But all signs point to it being the caretaker. ME says he was killed at least a year ago."
"But that was before Burrett escaped," Fred pointed out.
"I noticed that too," Merry said. "On the laptop Burrett left there was banking information, he's been collecting that caretaker's checks and using his ID to get around. It looked like he'd started using it around May last year, but that doesn't make any sense..."
"Unless it wasn't Burrett's hideout," Jayne explained, pulling an older document towards her. "At least, not at first."
"You think he led us to someone else's hideout?" Merry asked.
"No, I just think he stole his hideout from someone else," Jayne replied. "And I doubt he was just stumbling around looking for good places to hide right after he escaped. If the person it used to belong to had still been around, their body would be rotting next to the caretaker. He knew about this place before he went in, and knew it would be empty after."
"It was Chamberlain's," Cameron said, putting it together.
"They were partners," Jayne said quietly, looking at the neat, spidery handwriting on the old document, a sharp contrast to Burrett's clear, blocky print. "They probably shared a network of places like this."
"Well, that's one clue we can use," Cameron said. "If we know where any of Chamberlain's other old safe houses are we can put them under a watch."
"We should keep watching the donut shops too," Fred said. "And not just because I love donuts. He clearly has a thing about sweets. His other hideouts are probably in walking distance."
"That's actually a decent point, Fred," Merry said, sounding slightly surprised.
"He has a hub somewhere," Jayne added. "He'll bounce between bolt holes like the one we found, never spending too long in any one place. But somewhere he has a primary hideout that he does the bulk of his work out of. I
'd bet my academy cert on it, if I had one."
"If we find enough of his satellite safe houses," Merry said, leaning back in her chair and sipping on her soda thoughtfully. "We might be able to triangulate the location of the hub. Or at least pin down the general area."
"If they're all about the same distance from the hub, maybe," Jayne agreed. "But I wouldn't rely on it. The donuts either, frankly. He's going to be sneakier about getting his sweets from now on. And we just don't have the numbers to patrol that many locations."
"I'll talk to some of the beat cops that patrol in the right areas," Cameron offered. "See if they'd be willing to keep an eye out and report back."
"You sure?" Jayne said, frowning. "After what happened last time?"
Cameron looked away, shoulders tense, and released a held breath.
"Ray was always impulsive," he said quietly. "I knew he was the type to rush in and try to be the hero. I shouldn't have put him on this. I thought his enthusiasm would mean faster results. I thought I could keep him from doing anything stupid. That much is on me. But in the end he made his own decisions. I can either admit that I wasn't in control, that there was nothing I could have done, or I can blame myself in order to pretend that I had some kind of control over what happened. I'd rather not delude myself."
"What about your job?" Jayne asked. "That promotion you've been hoping for?"
Cameron shook his head with a short, bitter laugh.
"Pretty sure that promotion is out of the picture," he said, smiling at her. "Let me worry about my job. Just focus on getting Burrett back behind bars."
"That reminds me," Merry chimed in. "We need to talk about the plan for if we do actually catch Burrett alive. What are we going to do with him?"
"I figured we'd hand him over to the police," Fred said, gesturing to Cameron, but Cameron shook his head.
"We’re in an interesting spot. It’s easy to forget because Theron is such a huge city, but our jurisdiction is only so powerful. We’d lose him to any competing governmental agencies, on Amaros and beyond.”
Expelled (Interplanetary Spy for Hire Book 1) Page 54
