A Bone to Pick, page 18
I turned to look slowly around, a hollow gesture to disguise how I threw myself into the Pulse. With so many minds pressed around me, it was like diving in among all their heartbeats... two disturbances stood out, blurred presences but both on quick paths away from me. One up a corridor along the building’s side, the other on a branch leading to the front entrance.
Fifty-fifty odds. If that one’s him, I’ve just got one chance to catch up. I twisted around Poe to dash after him. The way was wide but too full of different streams of people moving, shifting, looking around. First I slowed to a twisting jog, then down to a walk to wade through a sprawling family and their forest of bobbing balloons.
Poe’s voice came right behind me. “Running just makes it worse—”
That same dark coat, making for the front entrance. “There! You know him, one of Tell’s men?”
Poe peered at the figure darting out the door. Of course it was too far, too brief to recognize anyone...
“Well. We can’t let him get away.” And Poe and I scrambled after him.
We reached the doorway in time to see a black car stop off down the curb and the spy step inside, and then they simply glided away.
Poe didn’t lose a step. Instead he bolted along the sidewalk, a hard dash that took us up ten yards, twenty—
And he stopped at a simple blue sedan parked right at the side of the hospital. Police perks.
I was in the car beside him before I thought of slowing down.
CHAPTER TWELVE: SHAKEN
Evening tickled at the streets and softened the light over the flow of cars. The black car ahead of us glinted like a dark stone as it passed in and out of traffic.
I tried to guess where it might be going, and why the mob spy had pulled back so far from watching us—I had to hope they wouldn’t cover this distance just to lure me away from Ian and the rest. Poe was a knot of suspicion wrapped around the wheel. He had to have his own reasons for doing this, with me.
He kept us several vehicles behind that car, and when they swung over to make a turn, he used the lead time to move over smoothly after them. I kept a mental eye on the pair of harsher, crueler emotions up ahead—after tracking that spy out of the throng in the hospital, picking him out of the few spread-out presences on the street was a relief.
“The Mob grabbed you once.” Poe gave it an unhurried, musing air even while his fingers shifted on the wheel, ready for any surprises. “You escaped, then they shot at you, and they’re still watching you.”
“That’s right.” Where was he going with this?
The traffic eased to a huddled halt for a red light. Up close where we stopped, the big van in front of us hid the black car from our view.
Poe said “I wonder, what would you do if this person wasn’t one of them after all?”
What? I didn’t answer yet, just took a moment to feel where our quarry was.
He was moving. One of the two mobsters, the more familiar presence, had left the other and moved back toward us... to join up with the driver one spot behind his car. All screened off by the van ahead of us.
I had to wait until the cars pulled forward again and out into view, before I said “There! I see him, he’s switched to that car, the green one!”
I pointed to the dark green sedan changing lanes from behind the SUV. The spy himself must be ducking down out of sight, but I caught no sharp suspicion or worry from him, just general caution. More insight I couldn’t share with Poe.
Poe eased the car after him, and followed at the next turn when it swung off on its new path. Tension tightened in the detective.
But then he spoke, in the same thoughtful tone: “What would you do if it wasn’t him? Or you were wrong now too?”
Still playing his games. “You believe it too,” I said. “Or you wouldn’t have followed him at all.”
“I’m curious, though. Could you be wrong?” His eyes flicked toward me—he was watching me, probably had been watching, all through the time he focused on the road too.
I had to go with the simple answer. “Sure, anything’s possible. I could have seen someone who wasn’t there, and it could have me so jumpy that I’m taking one glimpse in a window as a sign that he changed cars.” Or I might be if I hadn’t followed him all the way through that maneuver. “But I’ll believe that if I see it’s not him, you know? And it doesn’t change the fact that they did come after us.”
“True. But it could mean we’re leaving your friends behind to chase some wild geese. Just the way they’d want.”
I squirmed in the seat—I had been pulled into the impulse to chase that spy, and trusted my friends were safe back there. But then, Poe had to believe the same thing or he wouldn’t have left them. That made this more of his games, him giving me a reason to worry and seeing if my confidence was stronger. I ignored the bait.
We drove on, block after block, still keeping our distance. My nose picked out a faint trace in our car, a last wisp of some perfume, and I wondered if Poe had brought this car on a date or simply driven some suspect or witness around. I’d always trusted the sense of solidity I felt from Poe, but that didn’t mean I knew him.
Then Poe said “If you had to guess, where would you think they’re going?” He still played the casual tone—with a small, thickening satisfaction in him when he spoke, maybe in having me forced to listen. “Or do you think they’ll change routes again?”
“I wish I knew.” I pictured the streets ahead, but it really came down to my limited knowledge of Tell and the Mob. “They could be heading to Mrs. Weems’s neighborhood again.”
“Could be. She’s the friend of the Duval cousins... the Duvals that you warned us had chased Maya Grant around and burned buildings all over town... and then dragged you into a raid on the police archives... and then escaped from jail in some way you know nothing about.”
He didn’t look at me this time, not one glance as he laid out my whole history with them before today. I could only say “I don’t know,” and hope my voice was convincing.
“But then they burned the Mob’s flower shop just when you needed to escape—except, you said it could be someone else in the fireproof suits, but still using the same MO.”
“I told you what I saw. Fire suits, so there were no faces behind them.” Again I took refuge in the facts.
“That has me concerned.”
“What does that mean?” This time he’d made me answer, when I should have stayed quiet.
Just then the car ahead twisted into the left lane. Poe moved us easily in one car behind them, and when they took a left turn, we were all set to follow. I felt our target’s growing unease and tried to judge if that was sudden enough to mean they’d spotted us, or if something else had changed.
Poe’s own suspicions snarled inside him, but on the surface he was simply talking.
“Concerned. You spent days warning us about the Duvals. Now the Mob’s attacked you and your ‘clients,’ but you still spent most of today avoiding any police help.”
He paused, but this time I kept quiet. If he wanted to get a reaction out of me, he’d have to do more than that.
“When I see someone won’t let us protect them,” he went on, “it could mean they’ve been scared and they’re lying low. But you stayed with Ian Hodge and his group all that time. Then you brought Helena Travers herself into this. And then there’s simply the fact that the Mob look too interested in you, even considering your link with the Duvals.”
I don’t have a link to the Duvals, I wanted to say—but I saw the trap, that if I denied that he’d make me justify the Mob’s interest in Ian instead. Or worse, he’d start in on the Duvals and Maya.
Now, finally, Poe looked directly at me. “Your work at Travers can’t hide how you also offer some decidedly sketchy protection services. And now you’re targeted by the Mob and the Duvals, and you still think you can make your own rules. After all that, I’m going to need a reason not to cut all of you loose.”
Then he fell silent, just driving us on after the green shape ahead and letting the warning press in around me. Was I supposed to believe he’d turn the car around after coming so far, or that this chase was a dead end? The evening sun dipped lower and lower to the horizon.
The cars drew nearer the city edge, on quieter side roads. And I realized where they might be taking us—I could feel little spidery legs of fear creeping over my skin, told myself I had to be imagining that, at least so far. We still had to be half a mile from Little Street.
“Here’s something else that doesn’t fit,” Poe said. “These streets, they aren’t so far from the neighborhood where you ‘rescued’ Ms. Travers from her kidnapper.”
“Be careful.” The words sounded weak in my ears.
“You be careful. The explanation of that kidnapping and how you unraveled it never fit. Ms. Travers did say that the kidnapper wouldn’t return. So what did you do?”
I didn’t answer. Poe must have been watching us since we reappeared at the hospital, waiting for his moment to ask the rest of his questions.
And his chance came just as we’re driving toward a Mob base, with the Scarecrow down at its edge too.
“What did you do, eliminate the kidnapper and think we’d never find out about it? Or maybe... that gave you so much chance to impress your boss, I’m wondering if there ever was a kidnapper.”
I stared at him. He thought I faked that grab, to fool Helena?
No—he was still trying to shock me into answering, that was all. But...
“Just slow down,” I had to say.
“Oh? I’m just getting started.”
“No, slow down. We’re coming up on a Mob meeting place, and there are just a few back roads to it. They’ll spot us.” I felt my fingers twitch, as the tingle gathered in my nerves.
“A place you never mentioned. You gave us a fairly detailed report of the last few hours, in spite of its gaps. So why would this be the thing you never mentioned at all?”
I could only sit quiet, feeling the fear grow as that car led us deeper into the dusty back roads.
Other cars around us were almost a memory. Poe had to fall back to the point where the green car was lost in the turns ahead, and he kept one eye on his phone’s maps trying to blindly guess where our quarry might go. I tracked their emotions past the slowly-thickening fear and the near-emptiness of the houses. Those buildings around us looked just as ramshackle and close to abandoned as I remembered, but now the shadows around them were growing.
“That’s got to be the spot.” Poe looked up from his phone and pulled us over, into a cracked driveway and around behind the empty house, out of sight of the road.
Another man might have locked me in or sprung something worse on me. And yet Poe let me climb out, and we worked our way down the block using the trees and fences and porches and growing shadows to screen us from the road ahead. I moved beside him, knowing there was nobody until the end of the block but feeling the pressure slowly tighten around my sense. Poe walked stiffly, more tense and more touched by the fear the farther we went. It’s only to the edge, Tell never took us through to Little Street itself...
Then we came in view of what I sensed at the end of the block: the people there milling around where the dark car had stopped at the wooded entrance, and also a second paler car that it must have joined.
We crouched down behind a low-sprawling, overgrown tree, and Poe brought up his phone.
Fear swelled up ahead—kickstarted out of a dull dread as one shadowy figure ahead was shoved forward by others.
“See that shove?” I whispered. “That’s a prisoner there.”
To the Pulse, his fear swelled like a siren—in this place, that felt as closed-in as a closet and reflected that howl back on me, louder than any of the evening bird calls and rustling winds in my actual ears.
I’d seen them use this place for interrogation, but last time the Bones had been too short of power to use for more than snatches of what it did. Now that prisoner’s need called out and drew me to step around the tree.
“Nobody’s blundering in.” Poe held up his phone. “Requesting backup—”
And how long will that take? At least Poe’s curiosity had gotten us this far.
I glared through the twilight and watched them head into the trees, the prisoner and the four around him. Poe crouched in place, the same knot of concern and tightly-held alertness I kept feeling from him.
The figures had barely stepped from sight, when I felt terror flare again.
“They’ll be beating him, you know,” I said. “Breaking him down, to get whatever it is they want out of him.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Of course I know! It’s what they did to us here.” So Poe got some of his answers after all; my teeth clenched.
But he only said “We wait.”
Sensible. Safe. I glared at the trees, bearing witness to the terror behind them and trying to picture four men and their guns clustered around one man.
That fear spiked higher, and stayed high, a silent shriek through the dimness. It might as well be where I let Ray die, but now it’s petty thugs squatting at the edge of the Scarecrow’s power and I’m still letting them...
I crouched low and started forward. In the woods at sunset, I should be able to creep in with the Pulse to track them.
“No you don’t.” Poe grabbed me, twisted me back to the tree.
I gave him one look. “Do not get it my way. Not here.”
Not where everyone was already wide open to the kind of fear I had in my touch... the trees looked thick enough to hide in, if I could move without being heard clear down to Little Street—
Cold metal clicked around my wrist.
“What are you—” I grabbed at Poe, but he dodged back, and the handcuff caught me up short. Its other end was locked around a gnarled branch of the tree.
“You’re not getting yourself killed,” he said.
I yanked at the cuffs, but the narrow metal bit into my flesh, and the branch on the other end felt thick enough to be rooted in the center of the earth. And Poe only watched me—the bastard had no idea what I could do, but he’d lucked into one move that kept my best attack physically out of reach.
And he still only looked at me, not at the woods where those soundless screams were still ringing.
I wrenched at the branch. “You know what they’re doing to him now?”
“No,” he sighed. “And you’re only assuming the worst.”
“What if I was sure? What if I’d seen the worst an inventive, vicious human being can do to someone and never leave a mark?” And I reached the Pulse out to tug for a thread of warm, eager sympathy in him.
“You don’t know that,” he said. “And you can’t go in there alone.”
“I can’t not go in. I can’t risk what they’ll do. And you think you can just sit here and let it happen?” No, that came out too shrill, and twisting up Poe’s head could only work if he believed he felt the emotion himself.
I pleaded and I twisted, with the terror in those woods trying to drown the Pulse out. Nothing shook Poe’s decision—and the coil of stubbornness in him made me choke down any pleas about what only I could hear. He only watched me, watched the wood, and monitored his phone.
Then the victim’s fear fell back. It dropped to a level of exhausted, battered worry, and the people in the woods began moving toward us.
I stared, prayed I wasn’t imagining it. But they all emerged from the wood, the one fear-soaked prisoner and the four human monsters that felt so little about what they’d done.
They shoved him down in the road and climbed into their cars. And Poe and I had to crouch down in the tree’s shadow and let them drive away.
The man in the dirt dragged himself up to his hands and knees. His dark clothes looked familiar—was that the uniform that Lawrence Neal’s father wore? Why would they want him... unless it’s to find out how his son woke up?
The handcuff clicked open, loud in the stillness the cars left behind. The moment after Poe released me he ran out to the victim’s side, and I scrambled after him. The victim looked up at us.
“Are you alright?” Poe said.
“Fine, I’m fine.” The man’s voice was so weak we could hear the lie buckling it. “You’re... a cop. And you, one of the ones that—”
He wrenched his gaze away from me as the fear spiked in him again. I stepped back—I reminded him of what they’d done?
Poe said “Mr. Neal, did they hurt you? Tell you to do something?”
“No!” His hoarse voice could barely get the word out. “Nobody was there, I was just taking a walk in the wood.”
Poe shook his head. “Mr. Neal, we saw that’s not the truth. We can protect you, and keep them from touching your son—”
“Leave him out of this! Leave us alone... it was a walk in the wood...”
My fingers clenched in a fist.
It was fear they’d crushed him with, and the Pulse could pull some of that right out of him and let him get his bearings, let him give some answers and have some peace too...
No. I forced my fingers to loosen. Sheer fuming frustration didn’t give me the right—and he felt like he’d reached his own hollowed-out state where the worst was already all around him. Taking that acceptance away might hurt him more when it all came flooding back.
Poe’s “backup” did arrive, first one and then another police car pulling up on the road with no sirens. Poe managed to reassure Mr. Neal enough to put him in one of them for a ride home.
Then Poe told me “Better get you back to the hospital.” And I swallowed my rage and followed him to the car. Even riding with him was better than walking back, from here.
As soon as we were moving, Poe began speaking again. “So, the Mob went so far as to grab him, all out of what must be an interest in his son. Or his son’s recovery.”
I didn’t bother to answer. I just held up my arm, where the handcuff had torn at my skin.
“Yes I cuffed you,” Poe said. “You were so certain you needed to throw your life away.”
