Power of the Mind (Shadowy Solutions Book 2), page 20
“You’re not a detective.”
“It was a joke, Diem. Come on. Are you serious?”
“You’re not coming. This is illegal, and you could lose your job.”
“So could you.”
“Tallus.” My name came out on a growl through clenched teeth. Diem closed his eyes, chewed for a second on whatever else he was going to say, then, checking his tone, added, “We need a lookout. That’s just as important.”
I pffed and crossed my arms. “Bullshit. You’re relegating me because you don’t trust me.”
“It’s not… Tallus…” Another growl. The bear was agitated, but I didn’t give a fuck.
“It’s not fair.”
“I’m not being an asshole for the sake of it. We need a lookout.”
“Then sit your miserable ass down and be a goddamn lookout.” I tugged my tie loose, pulled it over my head, and tossed it on the dash. I unbuttoned my cuffs and rolled them, shoving them to my elbows. “I’ve got this. My case, my rules, my risk. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me, and I’m perfectly capable of doing the dirty work. Now give me your gloves.”
“You don’t—”
“Diem. Gloves. Now.”
He shed the gloves and passed them over with a snarl in his lip.
I snarled back and put them on. They were miles too big and would compromise my dexterity, but I pretended they weren’t.
“Okay.” I surveyed the street and tried to crack my knuckles to seem tougher. “Lockpicking kit? Where is it?”
“At home. The front door is alarmed. You can’t go through that way.”
“Oh.” I frowned at the building. “Back door?”
“Alarmed.”
My shoulders slumped. “How do I get in?”
“Window.”
“They aren’t alarmed?”
“Nope. Not all of them.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Because I don’t want to go to fucking jail, and I had a lot of time on my hands today, so I did some recon.”
“Oh. What about when I’m inside? Are there motion sensors?”
“Not in Hilty’s office.”
“Lobby? Waiting area?”
“Yes.”
“So I need to go in a window?”
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
“His office.”
“But… it’s on the second floor.”
“Yep.”
I stared at Diem. “How…”
“There’s a drainpipe. It held my weight, so it will hold yours no problem.”
“A drainpipe?”
“Yep.”
“I have to climb a drainpipe to reach his window, jimmy it open, and squeeze inside all without falling and maiming myself?”
“Yep. Good luck.”
I stared at the dark building across the street for a long time, then down at the new, beige, designer dress shirt I’d worn twice, the cotton trousers I’d spent over a hundred dollars on, and the only nice pair of loafers I owned. The ones with threadbare soles.
In a huff, I tore off the gloves and threw them at Diem. “Fine. You go have all the fun, and I’ll wait here and be the lookout.” The word tasted bitter and sarcastic on my tongue.
Diem hesitated, turning the gloves over in his hands a few times, but in the end, he donned them and left me alone in the Jeep. At the corner of the strip mall, Diem vanished.
I scanned the stupid street, feeling useless. All was quiet. Pape Avenue had regular evening traffic, but nothing noteworthy. No cops waited in the shadows. No pedestrians nosed around, observing us breaking the law. There wasn’t even a dog to bark at something suspicious.
I grew bored in an instant, and boredom punctuated my extreme fatigue. When I couldn’t take it anymore and fought every second to keep my eyes open, I took out my phone, figuring I’d goof around to keep myself awake.
No texts awaited. No emails. Not even a message from my mother checking in—she did that often.
Memphis was pissed about his canceled appointment with the psychic, so he’d not talked to me in over twenty-four hours. Considering we usually text-chatted several times a day, it was a big deal. I decided to break the ice for lack of anything else to do.
Tallus: You still mad?
It took almost five minutes for him to respond. Five minutes where, with heavy eyelids, I rested my head against the side window. Five minutes where I browsed my socials and randomly checked the street in both directions so when Diem returned, I could say I’d done my duty.
Five minutes fighting to stay awake.
I startled and jolted upright when my phone buzzed. Good grief. I was never going to make it at this rate. Diem needed to hurry the fuck up.
Memphis: Yes, I’m mad. You’re cramping my style, and you know I don’t like anyone telling me what to do. Bitch, she’s a psychic, not a serial killer.
Tallus: We don’t know that. I’m looking out for you.
Memphis: Bullshit. You’re looking out for YOU. You think I’m an idiot?
Tallus: One more day. Please.
If we didn’t find anything worthwhile this evening, I’d pull the plug and admit defeat on this nonsense case.
Memphis: Tell me one thing, and if you lie, I’ll know. How long have you been boning your stalker?
I stared at the question. Did I admit Diem and I had been fucking around for months? Did I admit that I wanted to date the guy? After what Diem had revealed the previous night, I wasn’t sure it would happen. Besides, Memphis wouldn’t understand.
Tallus: So what if I was?
No response.
I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
My eyelids drooped, and still, my best friend remained petulantly silent.
Sometime later, the distant sound of a car door slamming jolted me upright. Fuck. I’d fallen asleep. I glanced at my phone and saw Memphis had finally texted back, but before I could read the message, movement caught my eye.
Someone was parked outside the doctor’s building.
Someone—a familiar woman—got out of an older model Caprice and headed to the front door of Hilty’s office building, purse slung over a shoulder as she marched like someone on a mission.
“Fuck.” I fumbled, almost dropped my phone, and located Diem’s number, hitting Call since I had no time to type a warning.
He answered with a typical grunt.
“Get out!” I hissed as the woman shuffled through her keys while standing at the main door. “It’s the receptionist. Soap Opera Sally or whatever the fuck her name was. She’s here. She’s on her way inside.”
Diem made a strangled noise in his throat and barked, “Fucking stall her,” before hanging up.
I hopped from the Jeep and ran before figuring out what to say. This would all be over if she recognized me. My sluggish brain struggled to switch over to acting mode, but I found a fake Scottish accent, the only suitable disguise I could muster in less than ten seconds. “Ma’am… Ma’am. Excuse me, Ma’am.” I waved, frantic for her to notice.
Hilty’s receptionist whipped around, eyes wide and haunted as I dodged traffic on Pape Avenue and crossed the street. The woman hugged her purse to her chest, and I didn’t miss how she fixed her keys between her fingers so she could use them as a weapon. Perfect. Who was I but a strange man approaching her in an empty parking lot at night. Great. I risked a knife to the kidneys at this rate.
Sticking to the shadows to keep my face hidden, I held my hands aloft, placating her so she would see someone harmless. Scrambling for something to say, drawing on all my high school and college improv classes, I pointed at her rusted-out vehicle.
“I’m so sorry to bother you, I just… When you pulled into the lot, I noticed that you had… a shimmy in your back tire. Maybe it’s a flat or something. There was definitely a wobble.” I chuckled to break the tension. “I don’t speak cars. It didn’t look good.”
The woman glanced behind me at the parking lot with a worried expression, but her shoulders came away from her ears, so she was buying it. So far, she didn’t seem to recognize me.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I was across the street.” I pointed at the Jeep. “Waiting for my girlfriend to finish her shift at the restaurant. It looked concerning. The tire.”
The woman relaxed another few degrees as a frown formed. “Figures. It’s my kid’s car. He never takes care of it. I didn’t notice a shimmy while driving. Are you sure?”
“As sure as I can be. I mean, it’s dark, so maybe I’m wrong.” I kept my distance, ensuring she stayed calm while also keeping an eye out for any signs of Diem. “Just being a Good Samaritan. Maybe you should have it checked out.”
“I will. Thank you.”
“No problem.” I gave her my award-winning smile, then thumbed over my shoulder. “Did you want me to have a peek? If it’s flat, I have an air pump. It could at least get you as far as the next shop.”
I had no such thing, but I doubted she would take me up on it. Any smart woman would know better.
She hesitated, smiled, and shook her head. “It’s all right. I don’t live far, but thank you.”
“No problem.”
That was it. That was all the time I could squeak out of the moment. I hoped Diem had vacated the premises.
I went across the street, glancing back to find Hilty’s receptionist gone. Standing beside the Jeep, I scanned the night, seeking signs of Diem as worry turned my stomach upside down. If he was caught, it would be my fault for falling asleep and not warning him sooner.
A minute passed, then another. As fret stirred my gut, a dark form appeared at the corner of the strip mall. He moved fast, considering his size, but instead of coming directly for me, Diem aimed for the streetlights half a block down and crossed there. I didn’t know why, but when he got closer, I noticed his arms were loaded with a stack of files. I had no doubt they were the same ones we’d seen Hilty take from Rowena’s the previous night.
“Great,” I said when he was closer. “So not just B&E but theft too. My mother would say you’re a bad influence.”
Diem grunted and thrust the pile into my arms. “We’re not stealing the files. Put them in the Jeep.”
“Oh, I see. Was Dr. Hilty inside? Did he say we could have them?”
Diem deadpanned.
I winked to take the sting out of my words, and my eyes caught on a dark smear on Diem’s forearm. “Whoa. Is that blood? Are you bleeding? Did you cut yourself?”
Diem scowled at the injury, muttered something like “It’s fine,” and tugged the beanie off his head. He scrubbed his shorn scalp and seemed indecisive. The man looked like he’d come out of a sauna. The bit of hair he had was soaked, and beads of sweat trickled down his temples. His hands shook.
“Give me a minute.” He unearthed a crumpled pack of cigarettes from the back pocket of his jeans. Removing one, he tossed the rest of the pack on top of the stack of files and growled, “Do not give these back to me under any circumstance.”
He marched away, rounding the corner of the shawarma restaurant as he lit up.
I pocketed the cigarettes—I didn’t have a death wish, so if the guy wanted them back, he would get them—and got in the passenger side of the Jeep while I waited for the brooding man to return.
Across the street, Hilty’s receptionist rushed from the building carrying a box and a full garbage bag. She glanced warily along the street in both directions as though worried the stranger who’d approached her earlier might be stalking somewhere nearby. Satisfied, she aimed for a nearby dumpster and tossed the bag and box inside.
Rushing to the car, she popped the truck, grabbed two more garbage bags, scanned the street again, and flew back to the dumpster to dispose of them.
As she returned to the car at a much slower pace, she must have remembered I’d mentioned being parked across the street.
She froze, her gaze landing on Diem’s Jeep. Even from a distance, I could tell the woman was ready to run for her life. Like paralyzed prey, she didn’t move, squinting into the dark as though trying to tell if I was watching.
I offered a friendly wave, but the windows were tinted, so I didn’t think she noticed. With one last scan of the street, she hustled to the outdated car, quickly inspected the back passenger tire, kicked it a few times for good measure, and got in.
She was gone before Diem got back.
We didn’t return to the office right away. Once Diem was calmer and the air conditioning had cooled us both, we went through the files in the vacant parking lot across from Hilty’s office.
“I have to put them back tonight,” Diem said when I suggested we take them with us and go through them at our leisure. “I’d have looked at them while I was inside, but then you called.”
“What are they?” I scrutinized the contents of the first folder.
“Client files. At least, that’s what I gleaned. I didn’t get a chance to thoroughly look at them.”
“There are a lot more than I thought.” At a guess, there were at least a dozen.
Diem grunted.
His forearm was coated in a layer of drying blood. It continuously drew my attention under the dim interior light of the Jeep, but when I suggested he let me take a look, he told me no—rather, he snapped that he was fine. I let it go. I needed to choose my battles.
We were both exhausted, running on little or no sleep. After the previous night’s drama, I couldn’t blame Diem for being on edge. Despite his clear inability to cope with all that had transpired, he’d still agreed to do more investigating.
The task ahead was daunting.
We agreed to divide the pile and snap pictures of the pages inside each folder so we could read them the following day when we were more alert and our brains were sharper.
A few things stood out when we started picking through the individual files. One, they were all photocopies, not originals. Two, all of them had a sticky note attached to the front with a personality summary written in cursive pen. And three, of the twenty-some-odd files, close to half were marked with a Sharpie, bold letters spelling a single word:
DECEASED.
19
Diem
Tallus found the first one. I found the following three. Then they kept appearing, and I knew we had a problem. We separated the files marked DECEASED into their own pile and counted them.
“Diem, there are eleven of them. What the ever-loving fuck?”
“I don’t know.”
I could barely rub two brain cells together at that point, and no matter what path I took to explain the mess, I encountered a dead end. What had we found? What did it mean? After our visit with the dear old doctor, why had Hilty stormed his ex-wife’s house and confiscated these files? Who were these people? And why were over half of them marked with the word DECEASED?
My skin itched and buzzed for a cigarette, but I tamped it down and did my best to ignore the craving. Why had I given my smokes to Tallus?
“D?”
“I said I don’t know.” There was more bite to my tone than I intended, and I told myself to calm the fuck down.
“Amber and Allan both have files.”
My brow creased. “I know.”
“Do you think the rest of these people are like them? Do you think… they killed themselves?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hilty and Rowena are working together, aren’t they?”
“I… don’t know.”
“He lied to us. He said he hadn’t talked to her, but he had. This is proof. They’re back to their old games. The trial we found from the eighties was real. The judge dismissed it. Holy fuck, D. It was really real. I was right. They found a way to—”
“Tallus, shut up. I’m trying to think.” I bit the inside of my cheek, cursing my sharp tone. I clenched my fists. My body was a furnace, and the air conditioning in the Jeep was barely penetrating. A fire burned in my core. One built from self-loathing, self-hatred, regret, anger, longing, and guilt.
And it wouldn’t go out.
My mind had been in a twisted knot all day, and I’d not slept a wink in almost forty hours.
What the hell were we looking at?
When Tallus came to me about Madame Rowena, I had almost laughed him out of the office. Because it was ridiculous. Impossible. But… what the fuck had we stumbled upon?
I wasn’t laughing anymore.
“I have to put these back.” I grabbed the ones Tallus had gathered in his lap and added them to my pile.
“What? Stop. We can’t put them back. This is proof.”
“Proof of what?”
“They’re killing people with mind control.”
“There’s no such fucking thing as—”
“Okay, okay, I concede. Not mind control, but something to that effect. I don’t care what you call it. People are dead, Diem. A lot of people, and Hilty and Rowena are covering it up. You can’t ignore this.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face and did all I could to talk myself off a ledge. When I spoke, I did so slowly. “We don’t know anything. It looks suspicious, but it could be explainable.”
“Explainable? We should report it.”
“We’re not reporting it. We have nothing to report.”
Tallus huffed. “You still don’t believe me?”
“It’s not that… I…” My nostrils flared. “We have to… Tallus, I’m fucking tired. I can’t think right now. I need to put these files back before Hilty discovers they’re gone. We took pictures of everything. We can look at it tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? We can’t wait on this.”
“We can. We are.”
“But what if—”
“No.”
“Diem—”
I was fast losing control, unable to repress the frustration any longer. As I ground my teeth, a low, rumbly growl sounded in my chest.
Tallus scoffed and cocked his head to the side. “Oh, hell no. Don’t you growl at me. If you want to be frustrated, be frustrated.” He tossed my crumpled pack of cigarettes across the console. “Smoke a fucking cigarette if you have to, but we are part… nonpartners, and you do not get to make all the decisions on your own. I have a voice too, and I don’t want to wait. It’s…” He fished his phone from a pocket. “It’s not quite eleven. One hour, Guns. We work until midnight. Let’s go back to your office and at least look some of these people up. Find out how they died… or if they’re dead. Then, we get some sleep.”
