Until It's You, page 18
While she sorted herself out, he needed to do something useful with himself. So far, the Recalls had been almost totally useless. Or at the very least, everything he'd missed the first time he'd continued to miss. He didn't have Kristina's expertise in organizing all the data he collected, so that was out. All that was left for that morning was to pore over the data Tom had collected on the pharm Kristina had been poisoned with, all the while not even being sure about who had poisoned her.
Tom woke up soon after Landon had gotten dressed. He was free of side effects from the darts he'd been hit with and similarly eager to get out of the apartment. After a brief conversation with Kevin using Landon's comm, it was decided that Tom would stay in the safe house with him. From there he could get a feel for the lay of the land in the police department and maybe get back to work.
Twenty minutes later, Landon was driving Tom to the safe house in his new Audi. Had to admit, it wasn't a bad car. Suspension was a little loose, and the brakes seemed a touch on the worn side, but a decent car.
He put the car in auto-drive, allowing him to think. As he watched the car navigate them to Kevin's safe house, his thoughts drifted to Kristina.
She obsessed him dangerously. Their night on the couch had been a culmination he wanted more than was comfortable. More than was possible, given the circumstances. He had dragged her into this and then fallen for her. By doing that, he had put them both in greater danger. Maybe she was right to try and blow him off. Get some distance between them. The two of them were a distraction to each other when neither of them could afford it.
He had to put it aside and get this damn thing over with.
But still, it pissed him off. She still hadn't even returned his text. Was she really okay?
He shook his head. Don't make things worse. If he was pissed off, then he was pissed off.
That was something he understood. He could work with pissed off.
Kevin had said there was no progress on Roy. He didn’t want to take too many more chances on physical encouragement because the police would have him eventually and you didn’t want to leave evidence of violence in cases like this. Which meant if they were going to get anything, they needed to try something else.
Something radical. There was one way he was sure he would talk, but he didn't want to go there. The Phobos project wasn’t something he wanted to have to use.
For one, synthing it would be a real pain. It would take him the rest of the day, at least. But that wasn't the real problem.
That pharm could not be used in live settings without more testing. It dehumanized too much, made people into little more than very complicated mechanical things. More than anything, it was a slope that would allow someone to control people utterly. Worse than slavery. Total control, and maybe even worse.
And yet, just this once, it could help them so much.
He arrived at the address Kevin had given him and re-engaged manual drive, finding a place to park just down the street from the safe house. It was another quiet neighborhood, but more rundown than the one Landon had chosen. Several houses on the block were boarded up, and those that were left were in varying degrees of disrepair. Crooked gutters, dirty windows, worn-down roofs. He didn't know much about the area, but from what he remembered there wasn't too much violent crime. It was just half-forgotten. Another good safe house location.
Tom looked over at him in a daze as they sat in the car, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.
"Is this it?" he asked. He was still wearing the ridiculous white canvas hat and large sunglasses. Landon had decided not to argue with him about his disguise.
"This is the address your brother gave me," Landon said. "So it ought to be."
They got out of the car and walked back toward the house in question. A small, wood-siding bungalow on a street full of bungalows and ranch houses. It was painted off-white, with dark blue gutters and windows. Better kept up than most of the houses on the block, if not exactly new looking.
A perfect place to blend in when you needed to.
The text came from Kevin. Back door open. Lock it on the way in.
Landon looked around, saw nobody looking suspicious, and walked around to the back of the house. Tom followed. They stepped through some weeds that had grown along the side of the house until they came to a concrete patio area and a screen door at the back.
He tried the screen door and found it swung open easily. The same for the door to inside. Tom followed close, seemingly spooked.
"You sure this is it?" Tom asked.
"Yes, I'm sure."
The hall they stepped into had a white laminate floor and yellow walls. It was clean, but had that strange feeling of a home that wasn't occupied very often. There were stairs to the basement directly opposite the back door, a closet to his right and what appeared to be a hall to the living room on his left.
He turned to Tom. "I'm going to go check out the basement. I imagine he's down there."
"You sure?" Tom asked, grimacing. He looked side to side. "I mean, he's dangerous, right?"
Landon shrugged, his heart pounding. This was it. "I'm sure Kevin has him tied up," he said, keeping his voice calm. "You can stay up here if you want. Your brother has to be around."
"I think I'll look for him," Tom said. He hurried away.
Landon turned back to the stairs and descended without a word. Anticipation he could feel in his fingers built with every step.
He turned the corner at the bottom and found Kevin.
He was, of course, still wearing the clothes he'd been wearing the previous night. Tactical. Landon knew it as his uniform. Seeing him in it reminded him of the way Kevin would wear fatigues. That would, of course, be perfect.
Kevin wore a heavy scowl as he took a couple of steps toward Landon. It looked like he was itching for a fight. “Looks like you have all this all figured out," he said. "Don’t you?”
Landon stood up straight, adrenaline still surging. He was a couple inches taller than Kevin, though definitely lighter.
“Where is he?” he asked.
Kevin cocked a brow and crossed his arms. "Look at you, badass. Think you're going to break him in there?"
Landon stepped toward him until they were almost chest to chest. "Is there some kind of problem?"
Kevin stared hard at him and dropped his hands to his side. "I don't know, is there?"
"You tell me if there is. Nothing's wrong on my end."
Kevin's dark blue eyes went dead cold. It was an expression Landon had seen on Kristina's face, but it looked different on her brother. Harder.
It was unreadable on both of them. Were they really about to have a fight there? Landon knew he would lose to a soldier like Kevin. He worked out plenty and had trained on and off in boxing, but he was not a killing machine. This whole thing was ridiculous.
Finally, Kevin stepped to the side. “In the room at the end on the right," he said quietly. "Have fun.”
Landon pressed his lips together, refusing to relax. “I'm sure I will."
Kevin shrugged, and turned away to go up the stairs. Landon was left on his own.
He hesitated for a moment and took stock. The basement had been fully built out with what he guessed were soundproof materials. It seemed the entire square footage consisted of a narrow hallway that led to several rooms. Kevin had said Roy was at the last room on the right.
He started down the hallway. With each step, a discordant noise became louder, and the hallway felt darker, ever narrower. An awareness of the feeling crystalized in his mind in dimly, coupled with a vague panic.
Longer steps to cover the distance faster.
But the hall got longer.
With every step, the light from the stairs retreated further away. With every step the noise between his ears at the base of his skull vibrated across him and suddenly the dark his breath short and panic.
He's poisoning me, Landon thought. Why the hell would he poison me? Kristina didn't warn—
Her face swam in his vision now. Her natural dirty blonde hair, catlike dark blue eyes like a cold lake at sunset. Athletic body. Where was she now, while he was here, and where was—
His comm in his pocket. It was moving. Vibrating in his pocket. An alert. Someone was trying to reach him.
Landon took the device into his hand. It was there and yet his hand could barely feel. Stared at it. Answered it. A voice came.
“Landon?”
He knew that voice. “Kristina?”
“Landon, are you there?”
“Kristina.”
“You sound strange.”
"Kristina thank god you called it's your brother."
"What?"
"Kevin. I think he's poisoning me with something." He wracked his brain hard. His knees were sore and he realized he had fallen to them at some point. "The safe house basement."
A pause.
"Kristina?"
"Oh my god," she cried loudly. He jerked the comm a few inches from his ear. "He's so twisted!"
Landon licked his lips. His mouth was so dry. "You have to get help."
Somewhere a light. Landon blinked and realized his face was wet. The lights were off or he had lost his vision.
"I don't need help for this," she said.
Her voice sounded so crisp and yet everything else fuzzed out like an idea left half-developed to rot.
"Okay."
“God damn it, just stay put. Or get out if you can. If you can turn around, try and do that and just keep going. I’m calling Kevin on my way over there.”
"Are you sure it's safe?"
"For me, yeah. Better watch out for him."
***
Kristina ended her call with Landon and looked up at the skyscrapers surrounding her as she barreled down the sidewalk toward the train. Her face had set into hard lines as she walked, so she looked for all the world like she was royally pissed off. Which she was, but not at anything anyone could see. It was just her brother Kevin being a jackass.
She turned into the train station, swiped her pass, and walked up the steps to wait for the Brown Line train. As she waited, she found Kevin’s ID in her comm and gave him a call.
He picked up with a grunt. “He call you already?” he asked by way of greeting.
She closed her eyes hard for a moment, gripped by frustration. “What the fuck, Kevin? What are you doing?”
“So he did call.”
“No, I happened to call him. But what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I don’t like him, Kris. I don’t like this whole thing.”
“So you thought you would poison him?”
“I was running some aeros on this Roy character anyway. I just neglected to tell him about it. Should be harmless.”
She rolled her eyes. "Bullshit. You put someone under that for too long and they're fried. You know that, I know that, he knows that. You meant to do this."
"So what if I did?" he shot. "He's done nothing but fuck up ever since he dragged you into his mess."
"You don't know what the hell you're talking about there." Her nostrils flared as she walked up the steps toward the train platform. "Our security at the safe house was my fault."
"There's no reason you should be in this other than the way he looks at you."
"There it is!" Kristina cried. "For god's sake, I'm thirty-one! I can handle my own man problems."
"I still get to have an opinion about it. And this guy's bullshit."
"Nobody asked for your opinion. And even if I did, it doesn't give you a right to put his life in danger!"
"I'll decide that."
She hated it when he did this. Hated it. But she'd known him long enough to realize this was a losing effort. “Where are you?” she asked. “I’m coming over there.”
A pause. “I’ll message you the address,” Kevin said. “But I’m warning you, Kris, there is something off about this guy. I don’t like him.”
“Your opinion is noted and disregarded. Send me the address. And please turn those pharms down before Landon loses his damn mind.”
Kevin ended the call first. She ripped the comm down from her ear and stared at the screen, her heart drumming hard in her chest. As good a big brother as he could be, his penchant for treating her like she was sixteen got very, very old. And even for him, pharming the hell out of Landon might be something he would laugh with friends about in coming years, but for the moment it was pretty reckless. A lot of people couldn't handle something like that.
His message came at the same time as she arrived at the train station. She got on and sat down, then looked at the address. It was going to take a while for her to get up to the house, but she knew the place. It was a place Kevin had used before, but it had been a while.
When she got there, she wasn’t sure what she would find. She hoped Landon—and his mind—would still be in one piece.
CHAPTER 20
Slowly, clawing each step from a reserve of energy he hadn’t been sure he had, Landon made it to the light in the distance. It had been some amount of time since he had talked to Kristina. He did not know what that amount was. There was the present, and then there were things before the present, and he could not delineate more than that.
He needed to get away. His brain had been seeped into, poisoned, and his thoughts as well. Intellectually, he knew this, but the half of his brain that wasn’t the intellect felt like it was on fire, only if fire were a black sludge. Time had slowed to half or less of its normal speed.
But he made it to the stairs. Looked up. The light was brighter up there. He climbed. Hand on the railing, legs staggered but gaining strength because he was going to beat this. Step and step.
Something loomed above him. A towering shadow. The shadow was joined by another shadow, and it pointed at him. A blast of air hit him in the face and he turned away.
The lights turned on and reality snapped back into its usual space. He blinked. What had happened?
With each deep breath in, the extra spice Kevin’s aeros had thrust upon his world faded a little more. Sharpness returned.
He looked up the stairs at where the shadow had been and found Kevin.
“Good morning," he said nastily. "You look like you’ve had a day.”
Landon grit his teeth. "What the fuck?" he gasped. His lungs were still seized tight.
Kevin laughed. "Sucks, doesn't it?"
Landon's lungs began to loosen up, but the muscles of his chest still felt like they were wrapped tight around his organs like a fist. “There had better be a good reason for this, Andersen.”
“Or what? You’re going to fuck my sister? Because that ship’s sailed. Am I wrong?”
“What the fuck is the matter with you?”
“With me? What the fuck are you doing, Tatum?”
A gasping breath. “It’s none of your business."
Kevin's eyes bugged out of his head. "It is. Stay the fuck away from my sister."
"What the hell does that have to do with anything? It's not your business. At all."
Kevin scowled, the muscles in his face contracting seemingly on their own with rage.
Landon shook his head. This was going nowhere.
"Is the bastard even down there?" he asked, trying to move things on.
“He is,” Kevin said. Somehow, that seemed to relax him a bit. He straightened up to his full height. “And believe me, chump, Kristina’s well-being is my business and has been my business for a long time. I’ve saved her from some bad, bad shit and I’m going to keep doing that until I’m dead.”
Landon straightened up himself. “Well I’m not bad shit.”
Kevin shook his head. “I disagree.”
Landon pressed his lips together hard, fighting the lingering fog in his mind. “Then fuck you."
The corners of Kevin's lips quivered. Landon waited, his pulse pounding from his chest to his fists. If this came down to a fight then it did. Kevin's bully shit had gone on long enough.
An eternity seemed to pass. Landon continued to wait.
Finally, Kevin shook his head. “This isn't fucking over,” he said. He brought his comm out of his pocket and held it up. “But I’ll turn the aeros down long enough for you to talk to him. Come to me first thing you hear that isn't some version of telling you to fuck yourself.”
"No bullshit?" Landon asked.
Kevin shook his head and turned wordlessly back up the stairs. Landon watched him go until he disappeared around the corner, then turned back toward the hall.
Decision time. Did he trust that Kevin had actually turned the aeros off? His head did seem almost back to normal, now. And, whatever else happened, it was the logical thing.
He flexed his still clenched fists, let his hands go limp. He'd go. If Kevin wanted to fuck with him again, this time at least he'd be ready.
He checked his comm. The call with Kristina had been fifteen minutes ago. It felt like an eternity.
Fighting the urge to take a deep breath, he walked down the hallway again, wary for the first sign of pharms poisoning him again. But the sound of ventilation fans—a sound that had been absent before—gave him confidence that Kevin was holding up his end of the bargain.
At the last room on the right, he found Roy. The other man was tied to a chair with his arms behind his back, and he looked half asleep but mostly unhurt.
There was a brushed metal folding chair a few feet from where Roy was seated. The room was lit by an uncovered, dim bulb overhead. The bulb flickered in a way that Landon guessed Kevin had set up on purpose.
Roy looked up at Landon dimly as he took a seat in the folding chair. His eyes were bloodshot and heavy-lidded, but they followed Landon enough for Landon to know he was conscious.
“Quite a setup you have here,” Landon said. “I can see Kevin’s been treating you well.”
“What the fuck do you want?" Roy shot. The force in his voice was surprising. "I don’t know anything.”
Landon's eyes opened wide. “You don’t know anything, huh? You found the apartment.”
“I followed her for that.”
“Kristina?”
“Yeah." His eyes bugged out. "I already told you assholes about that. Followed her and the scientist from Washington Square.”
