Joe Ledger: Code Zero Part 22

The statement was a showstopper.

Bliss stared at him, totally unable to react or respond in any useful way.

Collins laughed. "G.o.d, you should see the look on your face."

"I..." Bliss said again, and once more her vocabulary failed her.

"That b.i.t.c.h'll be in the hospital for a day or two. Longer if I can arrange it."

"Um ... yes, I suppose."

He took a step closer. She could feel the heat of his breath on her face. "If the Deacon ever lets you off the leash, I know a great place for Kobe steaks. You're j.a.panese, right?"

"Chinese."

"Whatever. Steaks as thick as your wrist."

She said nothing.

He removed a business card and a pen, scribbled something onto the back of the card, and then tucked it into the pouch on her hazmat suit. The same pouch where she'd dropped her duplicate samples.

"Call me if you want to get your hands on an expensive piece of meat."

He turned and walked away. Almost sauntering. But as soon as he saw some officials, his posture instantly s.h.i.+fted from that of smug a.s.shole to man of action. It was immediate, like throwing a switch on a nuclear reactor. Very smooth, very practiced.

And, despite everything else, including the man's absolutely offensive comments, it was impressive. Appealing.

It was power.

Artemisia fished the card out of her pouch, turned it over, and saw that he'd written his cell number in a sprawling hand. The geek in her wanted to tear the card up. The professional and accomplished woman in her wanted to spit on the card before tearing it up.

However, that other part, the other self, the evolving self, smiled and tucked the card back into the pouch.

Chapter Thirty-one.

Corner of Fifth Avenue and Garfield Street Park Slope, Brooklyn Sunday, August 31, 12:22 p.m.

We were still a few doors down from the Surf Shop when my phone rang. I expected it to be Rudy. It wasn't. I held up a hand to the guys and stepped a few paces away to take the call. I smiled and punched the b.u.t.ton.

"h.e.l.lo, Junie."

"h.e.l.lo."

When Ghost heard me say her name he brightened and made a happy whuff sound.

"How's your day?" she asked.

"Oh, you know. Just another day in the D. of M. S."

"I can only imagine."

She could, too. Last year, she was there when we took down Howard Shelton and his team of superfreak killers. She'd pulled the trigger on one of them. She knew that my job did not involve shuffling papers or sneaking out of the office for a quick nine holes.

"What's cooking, darlin'?" I asked.

There was a beat before she said, "I know you can't talk about work stuff, Joe, but is everything okay? For real, I mean?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I was on the Net looking at something on YouTube and suddenly this woman's face popped up." She described the Mother Night video.

"Yeah, we saw that. It's a computer hacker," I said. "Nothing you have to worry about."

"Don't patronize me, Joe. I can hear something in your voice."

"Sorry," I said quickly, lowering my voice and stepping farther away from Top and Bunny. "I wasn't patronizing you. That video popped up all over and, sure, we're looking into it. So far, though, it looks like what it is. A smart-a.s.s hacker with more talent than common sense using the Internet to shout to the world that she's there. It's the cyberworld equivalent of spray-painting your name on a wall that everyone has to pa.s.s. Forced attention."

"You're sure that's all it is?"

"No, of course not. That's why we're looking into it."

"What about the backpack bomb thing? They're saying it's another Boston."

"I'm not on that."

"Is it connected to that video?"

"I don't know."

"Will you tell me what you find out?"

"I'll tell you what I can."

"Joe, I'm not asking you to break protocol. I'm just..."

"Just ... what?" I asked.

"It's nothing."

"No, tell me."

"Okay, you know how you joke about your 'spider sense' tingling when you think something's wrong but can't quite put your finger on it?"

"Sure. It's one of my many superpowers."

"Well ... I guess my spider sense started tingling."

"Because of that video?"

"No," she said. "I've been having weird premonitions all day, ever since I got to work."

I grunted. "How weird?"

"I don't know. Weird. Nonspecific. Just ... bad feelings."

A whole bunch of very ugly questions jumped into the front of my brain and I had to bite down to keep my foolish mouth from giving them voice. The process took too much time, I was quiet too long, and Junie caught it.

"Joe...?"

"Yeah."

"I know what you're thinking."

"Are you undressing, then?"

"I'm serious, Joe. Don't joke."

"Sorry."

"These feelings I'm having ... they're not about me. They're not about the test results."

I did not trust myself to respond to that.

"But something is wrong," she added. "I can feel it."

Before I met Junie my tendency was to dismiss that kind of comment as too New Agey, too s.p.a.ce cadet. I have since learned that my knee-jerk dismissal of that kind of perception was a fault in me rather than a fault in others.

There are, after all, more things in heaven and earth.

So I don't laugh it off when Junie has a premonition or a "feeling." I don't wave it away like cigarette smoke.

At the same time, I don't always know what to do with those kinds of things. It's not like I can ask Bug to do a MindReader search on a feeling.

Instead, I said what I say when these things happen. "Okay."

"Okay," she said, accepting that she'd made her point and I'd got it. She knows as well as I do that there wasn't anything specific I could do other than to make sure my awareness and reaction time was at high bubble. It had become a rhythm with us. A useful one.

"Come home to me," she said.

"Always," I replied.

I knew that she was smiling, as I was smiling.

As I went to put the phone back into my pocket it vibrated. Another text message from A.

YOU ALWAYS HURT THE ONE YOU LOVE.

I glared at the screen. Was it a threat or was I being stalked by someone in a fortune cookie factory? Either way, I sent it to Bug with a rather terse note to find whoever was sending this. Foul language was involved.

I clicked off and shoved the phone into my pocket. A few yards away Top and Bunny were pretending to look at the birds in the trees. As I joined them a chill wind blew up my spine and made me s.h.i.+ver. Ghost looked up at me and whined faintly.

"You okay, boss?" asked Bunny.

"Someone walked over my grave," I said, making a joke of it.

Neither of my guys laughed. Come to think of it, it wasn't all that funny to me, either.

Chapter Thirty-two.

The C Train Near Euclid Avenue Brooklyn, New York Sunday, August 31, 12:23 p.m.

The man in the yellow raincoat looked out of place, even on the C train. It was hot in the swaying subway car, and he wore a black hoodie under the raincoat, the hood pulled all the way up. He was sweating heavily. Beads of moisture ran down his cheeks and throat and vanished inside the humid darkness beneath the slicker. The smell that seeped out from under the yellow rubber was intense.

The woman seated next to him was named Maria Diego. She was billing secretary for a firm of dentists, and next Thursday would be her fifty-seventh birthday. A thickset, quiet-mannered, plainly dressed woman with a Heather Graham novel open on her lap and Marc Anthony crooning to her through earbuds.

When Maria was sure the man in the yellow raincoat wasn't watching, she removed a bottle of perfume from her purse, put a drop on her finger, and covertly dabbed her upper lip with it. The car was crowded, there was nowhere else to sit, and she was too tired to stand. The smell from the sweating man, however, was like the stink of an open sewer.

He's probably a junkie, she thought, but that didn't bother her very much. Maria slipped one hand into her jacket pocket and closed it gently around her can of pepper spray. As long as the man sat quietly, she was content to mind her own business, read her book, and make her way home. This was the New York subway system, so body odor was nothing new. The perfume always made that easy to manage.

The man's smile, though ...

That bothered Maria.

It was not a happy smile.

For six stops Maria tried to understand the smile. After thirty-four years of riding this line she'd seen everything, every kind of person, every frequency of expression. However, she'd never before quite seen an expression like the one carved into his face. It was so intense, so constant, that it was like a mask. His mouth was set in a huge jack-o'-lantern grin that stretched his cheeks so wide it had to be painful. His teeth were yellow and dry. His eyes stared forward and slightly upward with such intensity that when he'd first sat down Maria darted looks at the ads on the other side of the car, above the heads of the commuters, to see if the man was drawn to something in particular. But no. He stared with a fixity that made her wonder if he was obsessed with some thought that hung ten inches in front of his eyes. She tried not to look at him too often, but if he ever blinked then Maria hadn't seen it.

Definitely a junkie.

The train rattled on underground. The lights flickered the way they often flicker. The train was old, the rails were old. And this was the C train.

The man kept staring at nothing Maria could see, so she turned back to her book and was soon lost in mystery and suspense.

The train made another stop and then headed into the tunnel, rattling along the rails, jostling its pa.s.sengers, causing Maria to b.u.mp sideways into the smiling, sweating man. It was nearing the end of the line at Euclid Avenue.

The lights flickered again. Off. On.