Phantom Instinct (9780698157132) (32 page)

T
he dog padded from the shadows. Its eyes glinted in the moonlight. Its leash scritched on the concrete behind it.

A buzzing rose in Harper's head. Her mouth felt full of cotton.

She got to one knee in front of Piper. “Hold still.”

The dog walked with predatory deliberation, its steps full of restrained energy, its head low. Its teeth seemed to take up the horizon.

She needed something long and heavy and blunt. A two-by-four. An RPG launcher.

Piper slowly got to her feet.

“Shh,” Harper whispered. “Don't move. Don't run.”

Piper put a hand on Harper's arm. “No. It's okay.”

Harper turned to her in confusion. Piper was staring at the dog. In the moonlight, the girl was as pale as a crushed lily. But her grip on Harper's arm actually was a grip. She took a step.

“Hey, boy,” she murmured. “Hey, dog.”

She spoke soothingly. The dog stood, ears flat, eyes on her.

Piper inched closer. “It's okay, boy. I'm your friend. You're a good boy, aren't you?”

The dog's ears pricked up. Piper crept forward and slowly picked up its leash.

“Sit,” she said.

The dog sat.

Harper gaped. The dog sat, breathing fast. The leash hung loose from Piper's hand. She had seemingly mesmerized the dog. It stretched its neck, sniffing at the blood on her shirt, but stayed sitting. Still, unless she could control it, she might as well have pulled the pin on a grenade.

Harper murmured, “I'll find something we can tie the leash to.”

Something heavy, that it couldn't drag while chasing them. It looked strong enough to pull a tractor.

“Don't bother,” Piper said.

“Careful. It's not a normal dog.” It was a chain saw with four legs and a tail.

“I've got him.”

Piper softly whistled. The dog rose off its haunches. She twisted the leash around her good hand to remove the slack. Harper's skin prickled again. Her nerves were vibrating at some quantum frequency, invisibly quick.

“Hold still,” Piper said. “He'll attack you. I can feel it through the leash. He's nothing but a bullet, and I'm holding the trigger.” She tugged again on the leash. “Eagle, heel.”

She raised her chin, a signal. A motor ground into action along the wall of the factory. Somebody had thrown a switch that activated a rolling door.

A chasm seemed to open. The rolling door slid wide, giving a view into a half-illuminated assembly room at the east end of the factory building. Through the door, out of the shadows, came Travis Maddox.

He swaggered across the concrete paddock, backlit by the factory lights. Harper tensed to run. The dog strained against the leash.

Piper said, “Unh-uh.”

Travis raised a finger and wagged it at Harper. A lament rose toward her lips.

It was the first time she had seen him in ten years. The decade had worked a transformation on him.

He may have grown a couple of inches. He may have been wearing motorcycle boots. His heels clicked on the cement. He looked lean and cut, with shoulders broadened by prison weight lifting, and all the baby fat burned away. In the light angling from the factory door, his eyes were deep-set and lined. His corporate haircut looked like a bad joke. He was wearing the same black tactical gear as his dead Spartan Security goons.

Piper handed him the leash. “You were right. Harper and Garrison and Sorenstam—they killed your men. No warning, no chance to surrender. They just took them out, like it was their privilege.” She sounded semi-stunned.

“Piper,” Harper said, her voice half-racked and breaking. “Why?”

Standing beside Travis, Piper no longer looked wounded and weak. She no longer looked injured at all. In her right hand, she held Harper's Swiss Army knife. She had swiped it from Harper's back pocket, probably while she was slung over Harper's shoulder in the fireman's carry.

“Nobody cut you,” Harper said. “The kidnapping wasn't a kidnapping.”

Travis petted the dog's cement-block head. “You're slow, but you got there.”

Her strength drained from her fingertips. She was backed into the last space on the chessboard. She knew it was half a minute from checkmate.

So make them take you down.

Don't give it to them.
Aiden was coming. The local sheriffs were coming. If she had half a minute, she would use it. Every second was a chance for rescue. She stood, her fists slowly drawing tight.
Fight.

“Good one, Travis. Kudos. You punked me good,” she said.

Piper handed the dog's leash to Travis and walked up to Harper. Her face was dirty, but even in the moonlight, she looked flushed. She eyed Harper for a long second, then inhaled and spit in her face.

Travis laughed.

Hot spit dribbled down Harper's cheek. She wiped it off. Her vision had seemingly gone out of true. Piper looked like the same girl who'd been clinging to her all night, but something else was animating her. Something inside, snakelike and venomous.

Travis walked over, stopping directly behind Piper. He was giving her room, maybe to throw a punch, but Harper could sense him pulling the invisible strings.

Harper stared at the girl. “You have permission to speak?”

Travis spread his arms. A grand gesture, as if he were giving Piper permission to fly.

“I yield the stage,” he said.

Piper stared at Harper. “You get it now?”

“No.”

Say it isn't true,
Harper thought. But she knew that betrayal was the way of the world. It was the way she had been raised. It was every lost weekend with her mom. It was being left in a wrecked car on the highway downhill from this godforsaken compound, alone and facing the law for a crime her own mother had committed. It was caring for this girl, and seeing hatred spin in her eyes.

“Tell me this is a joke,” Harper said.

For the length of a breath, Piper stayed quiet. Then a fault line seemed to slip inside her.

“A joke? How could I make a joke? Drew is dead. How could I ever find anything funny again?”

Harper stood and listened.
I know.

Piper glared at her, searching every facet of Harper's face. “That's it? Silence? You have nothing to say?”

Harper didn't move.

Piper stepped closer. “You don't, do you? Drew is dead, and you made it happen. It's your fault. And you have not one word to say.”

She didn't. Speaking would get her nowhere. Her face heated and her heart thundered.

“You thought you got away with it,” Piper said. “You still do, don't you? Look at you. You're just taking it. You're not even reacting. You're the one who's responsible for my brother being dead and it doesn't even matter to you?”

Harper raised her hands, helpless. It seemed only to enrage Piper all the more. In the background, the dog stirred.

“I know all about you,
Susannah
. Travis told me. All this time, you've been playing innocent. The goody two-shoes, Navy veteran, Miss A-student. What bullshit.” She leaned toward Harper's face. “You're a thief and a whore.”

“Not a whore, honey. Never.”

Piper seemed to get knocked back at that. Her mouth parted.

“I loved Drew,” Harper said.

Piper swung an open palm at Harper's face. Harper blocked it. Piper pulled back to swing again before she remembered that her other hand held a knife. She raised it, rigidly, at Harper's neck.

“I will. I will do it,” Piper said.

Harper held still. “And I love you, Piper.”

For the smallest moment, Piper seemed to process that, and Harper had hope.

Then Piper seemed to ingest it, and the words hit her nervous system, and she didn't relax, or soften. She crouched and gripped the knife tighter, and Harper realized she was going to lunge.

Harper raised her hands defensively, but as Piper drew back the knife, Travis stepped forward and grabbed the girl's arm.

“No,” he said.

Piper bared her teeth. “Why not?”

“Because I run the schedule.”

Piper was leaning forward in Travis's grip, like the dog straining at its leash. He took the weapon from her hand. She backed off. Then pointed at Harper. “Eye for an eye,” she said. “You for my brother.”

Harper felt a weird shift in the air behind her. A heavy presence drew near, silent and abrasive. Eddie Azerov stepped into view.

“Hello, Zannah. Let's go.”

H
e smelled the same. Fifteen years on, Eddie Azerov smelled the same as he had when they were fourteen, same as he had the night he told Harper she worked for him or she got eaten by the wolves. He smelled like sweat and cigarettes and fear.

He moved in on her, a shadowed face behind the drooping hood of his sweatshirt. A chain clinked, the dog collar he attached to his wallet in the pocket of his sagging jeans. The guy hadn't changed his style since he was twelve. She knew he was stuck, knew he had the emotional maturity of a middle schooler, and knew that meant nothing good when it came to the next few minutes. He was a violent felon with the impulsivity and vindictiveness of a child, and the amoral wants of a sociopath.

He tilted his head, sharply, and lifted his chin as though to sniff her. “We're going now.”

“Zero, I won't ever go anyplace with you again,” she said. “Whatever we do, we do it right here.”

He was so close that his breath moved her hair. His teeth had worsened in the last decade, growing more crooked inside lips that looked gray in the moonlight.

He leaned in. His eyes had a dark sheen, almost glazed. She held his gaze, but her left leg began to twitch. He was not there, she realized. Whatever made a person a human being had turned to sand and blown away. What was left in its place was a spirit that was somehow void, antimatter, a thing that fed on light and blotted it out. It was chaos, entropy, and it was looking for fuel.

He tilted his head the opposite direction, a quick swerve and snap. And then he clacked his teeth.

“Su. San. Nah.”

The twitch in her leg worsened. She realized that Aiden was probably dead.

Travis snapped his fingers. Zero stayed up in her face for a moment longer, then stepped back.

Travis took her arm. “We're going for a walk.”

And he didn't smell of sweat and fear. He smelled of leather and aftershave and gun oil. He smelled of certainty. He marched her toward the open door of the factory building.

They walked in the rough moonlight across the dusty storage yard, Zero and Travis on either side of Harper, Piper walking ahead, half turned so she could look back.

Zero leaned in again from her left, and for a second, she thought he might take a bite out of her shoulder. The dog bulled along at his side, shoulders switching, head low.

“Why are you doing this, Piper?” Harper said.

Travis said, “You should know exactly what's going on.”

She knew but didn't want to believe it. “When?”

“When did Piper see the light?” he said.

Piper said, “Six months ago. I found out what you are. I found out what you did. After that, who could be real friends with you?”

Harper seemed to feel a fish hook embed itself behind her heart. She couldn't get away, could only feel its barbs tear at her. No matter which way she pulled, no matter what she said to Piper, it would make no difference. This wasn't about logic, or reason. It was about grief speaking through the language of rage. Piper didn't have ears to hear her right now. She only had pain, and was going to give voice to it through hateful words and violence. Harper walked along, Travis's hand tight around her biceps, Zero a cold absence on her left.

Piper said, “You were nothing. You had to put on somebody else's name even to feel like a person. Because you were ashamed. You knew what you'd done. But you shouldn't have changed your name to Harper. The name that fit you is Judas.”

Harper said, “Travis, you've become your dad, only worse.”

His hand tightened around her arm. “You know nothing, Flynn.”

He said it brusquely, and she knew she'd hit a nerve. His breathing turned heavy.

His jaw was tight. “You think Piper is a gofer? That she snivels around shoplifting like you did fifteen years ago? You haven't seen the new world, Zannah.”

Piper said, “She's clueless. She can only see the inside of her own head, her own wants.” She turned to her. “I'm not some thief like you, taking for myself. I'm a chaotic actor.”

Harper looked at her sideways. Piper raised her chin.

“You don't even know what I'm talking about.”

Travis adopted a tone of cavalier superiority. “A chaotic actor—”

“I know the term,” Harper said. “White hats, black hats. And you convinced Spartan Security Systems that you were one of the good guys.”

Piper said, “You're so simplistic.”

Travis said, “White hat and black hat are convenient labels.”

Piper said, “They're children's names. I'm not white or black. What I am is an adaptive persistent adversary.”

She was gaining energy now. She was drawing strength from the air and her own fury and self-righteousness.

Harper understood, at a painful gut level. Travis had lured Piper with talk and God knew what else into the fairy tale of becoming a chaotic actor—convincing her she'd be an anonymous folk hero, a rebel outlaw. He had made her into what his dad wanted Harper to be when she was a teen.

Piper was Travis's victory.

They entered the factory assembly room, and Zero hit a power button. The door rolled shut behind them. Travis turned on the lights, harsh halogens that hung from the ceiling. The concrete floor was cracked and stained iridescent colors from past decades of chemical impregnation.

Travis shoved Harper to the center of the room, to a drain at the low point of the floor. Dead center.

He pointed at her. “Don't move.”

He walked around her, slowly, finger aimed at her face. He seemed to be surveying her, as for a taxidermy display. Maybe he wanted to mount her on his wall.

Overhead, a catwalk ran around the edge of the room. There were tracks along the ceiling and chains hanging from them.

Travis continued circling her. Zero joined him, going the opposite direction, the dog at heel.

Piper stood staring at her. Then she took hold of one of the hanging chains. She leaned on it, as though preparing to climb it.

“You betrayed me. You get what you give.” Piper pulled on the chain. It was heavy, with huge links, almost as large as stirrups. “You used my brother.”

“Never.”

“Who were you? Some bartender he met one night. You saw his wallet, and you wormed your way into his life. Hooked up with him in the hopes he'd give you stuff. Same way you wormed your way into Travis's family.”

“That's not what happened. Not with Travis, not with Drew.”

Piper turned lazily toward Travis. Her expression was halfway between disgust and a smirk. “Just like you predicted. Almost down to the word.”

“Piper, I loved your brother,” Harper said.

“You knew he was rich. That's what you loved. You found out he came from money, and you were going to get it. God, you sicken me.”

Harper stood on the drain, knowing that at the very least she was going to get a hot dose of Piper's bile. She couldn't win here. Defend herself, and Piper had been prepared by Travis with a twisted bingo card of hateful responses. Stay silent, and Piper would assume she was conceding or worse.

Travis walked to the wall and flipped a switch. Overhead, a motor activated. It began drawing up the chain Piper was holding. After a second, she jammed her foot in one of the links and held on. It lifted her off the floor.

“What goes around comes around, Harper.”

The chain cranked up, clinking harshly. Piper drew near the catwalk overhead. Nimbly, she grabbed the rail and hopped over. Travis shut down the motor.

From the rickety walkway, Piper nodded at the room below, grandly, as if she were about to make an Eva Perón balcony speech. Her expression twisted into something bleak and eager. Momentarily, she smiled.

Travis nodded at Zero. “Chain Flynn up.”