Phantom Instinct (9780698157132) (37 page)

I
n the end, it took two hours before the Kern County Sheriff's deputies uncuffed Harper's hands and declared her a witness, maybe a victim, instead of a threat.

The night was a blitz of headlights and crane spotlights. Beneath them, detectives and the coroner and forensics teams were examining the abandoned factory. Above the sterile glow, the Milky Way spilled its trail of blazing stars.

Zero was dead. Aiden's shot had blown him off the catwalk. The sheriffs weren't saying what had killed him, the shot or the fall, but it didn't matter. He was gone.

He was there.

Everything they'd had to fight to prove was there in the factory and could no longer disappear. It was justice, rough and ugly and a vindication that she hoped Aiden could see. But she knew: Everything he'd been battling for the last year had, tonight, turned to ashes and grief. Because the deputies had found not only Zero's body, and those of the Spartan Security goons, but that of Erika Sorenstam.

Aiden was across the dirt outside the perimeter fence in front of the factory, leaning against the hood of a patrol car. They'd removed his cuffs, too. He had a bottle of water in his hand but wasn't drinking. He was looking at the mountains, in the direction where they'd started out on foot with Erika. The place where their lives diverged.

Erika was the reason he was alive to mourn. She was the reason Harper could ache for him. If Erika hadn't stood and fought in the tunnel, they would all have been captured and executed. Harper pressed her fingers to the corners of her eyes.

A minute later, Oscar came up to her. He had a bandage wrapped around his head, gauze over the gash in his scalp.

“You look drained,” Harper said.

He was slumped, hand to his head. His hair hung limply over his eyes. He looked about eleven. He was practiced at affecting that look: the hangdog kid, wide-eyed, scrappy, and oblivious. It was all a front, but tonight it was endearing.

“There's no reason they'll hold you,” she said. “I told them you were a friend of mine who was along for the ride.”

“That's lame,” he said.

“You mean, give you an hour, you'd create a legend and a digital trail that showed you were somebody else who's never been anywhere near any of the dirty fingerprints on this shit show?”

“You may say you're so long removed from the life that you're a clean skin, but you're still Zannah to me.” A sly shine broke through the facade. Then, just as quickly, it was gone.

“You gonna be okay?” he said.

“I always am.”

“What a bullshitter you are.”

He turned her forearm to examine the bandage the paramedics had wrapped around it. She would need stitches and a tetanus shot, but she hadn't sliced any arteries or nerves.

He stretched his arms and hugged her. When he pulled away, he walked off, looking at the ground. She thought he might simply slip into the night. Quickly, she checked her pockets. Good. She had her wallet. The keys to the MINI were where she'd stuffed them after he handed them back earlier. She watched him amble away.

To her surprise, he stopped by a sheriff's cruiser where Zero's dog, Eagle, was penned behind the wire mesh. He leaned his palms on the window and whistled. The dog came to the glass and sniffed. It looked lost and harmless. When she turned away, Oscar was talking to a deputy, pointing at the dog, making entreating gestures. She shook her head. He'd take the thing home and rehabilitate it if given half a chance.

Aiden was talking in exhausted tones to another detective. After a minute, the woman nodded, shook his hand, and walked toward Harper.

“We'll need to talk to you again, Ms. Flynn, but for now, you're free to go.”

Harper nodded. “And Detective Garrison?”

“Him, too. We don't know who exactly SWATted us, but—”

“I do. I heard him do it,” Harper said.

“As I said, we'll talk to you again.”

Aiden looked up and walked over.

“Travis is gone,” he said.

“He probably had an escape plan prepared. For if things didn't turn out the way he planned.”

The detective glanced back and forth between them. “You two certainly saw to that.”

“We're a helluva team,” Aiden said.

A pep talk had never sounded so dispirited. She tried not to wince. But he looked at her with something akin to relief.

“Piper Westerman, the girl who went with him,” Harper said.

The detective glanced at the desert. Piper was out there, presumably running with Travis. Harper felt a pang, like being kicked in the gut with steel-toed boots.

“I planted a seed,” Harper said. “Piper heard Eddie Azerov confess to killing her brother. She's smart, and she's got a fistful of rage in her heart. If she figures out that Travis isn't the savior she thinks he is, we might have an opening to get her back.”

She looked at Aiden. He nodded. She thought about Oscar's ability to perform online magic, and her contacts with spooks and cryppies from her Navy days, and how nearly impossible it was to disappear completely.

She wasn't going to let Travis go, not as long as he had Piper. “There has to be a way to find her.”

Then she looked south, toward Los Angeles. “I'll talk to her parents,” she said. It was going to be one cold sunrise.

The detective nodded again, maybe a cop-to-cop glance for Aiden, and headed off.

The night had drawn a chilly cloak around it, one that clung hard. In the wretched lights, Harper could see her breath. It faded into the air almost instantly. Everything seemed insubstantial.

Or not. Aiden was standing in front of her.

For a moment, she sought for words. Then he stepped forward and pulled her against him, wrapping her in his arms.

She rested her head against his chest. Around them, the noise and lights seemed to fade. They were left standing, last ones. In wreckage, but standing.

He bent his head to her ear. “Never should have doubted you.”

“You had every reason to doubt me.”

“You have every reason to doubt me. But somehow . . .”

“You saved my life tonight.”

“You saved mine.”

“So we're even?”

It was weak, even to her own ears. The most tentative of first steps. But for the moment, it was enough. He pulled her closer.

“Back there, inside,” he said, “what you did, what it took—you were incredibly brave. And I thought you were dead. When I thought that . . . it nearly killed me.”

She held tight to him. “I'm right here.”

“Whatever happens, this has told me to cut through all the bullshit and get real.”

He put a hand around the back of her head. He kissed her forehead and kept his lips there, hungry and grateful. “Never again. I won't leave you.” His voice was almost gone.

“I'm not going anywhere.”

“I love you. I do. You've gotta know that.”

She shut her eyes and held him, and his scratching whisper reached her ears, a promise and a plea. He repeated the words
I love you,
and he whispered her name. It was a murmur, in time with his heartbeat.

She tightened her arms around him. She opened her eyes, heard his heart, heard his promise, her name like an incantation. Her own heart stuttered, and the words she wanted to say were held in abeyance. She turned her face to his.

“Aiden, look at me. Really look.”

He did. Behind the warmth in his gaze lurked something disconcerted, like déjà vu.

“Do you know who I am?” she said.

The cold spotlights threw their shadows downhill across the sand. A crack appeared in his gaze, and the light seemed to flood in, and wake him up again. The pain returned to his face.

He took her face in both his hands. “Yes.”

His voice fell away into the night.

She knew then that she had heard him right. The name he had whispered wasn't hers. For a gleaming moment, he had lived in a parallel world, and let slip a dream.
Erika.

“I see you, Harper,” he said. “Forgive me.” Broken. “Do you see me?”

His arms were tense. He was waiting for her to jump. To run, to turn again.

“I see you,” she said, and held on.

As always, friends and colleagues provided me with invaluable assistance as I wrote this novel. For their insights, knowledge, and support, my thanks go to Tom Cooper, Michelle Bailat-Jones, Nate Shreve, Nancy Freund Fraser, Jessica Renheim, Jamie McDonald, Ben Sevier, Brian Tart, Sheila Crowley, Deborah Schneider, Mary Albanese, Adrienne Dines, Kelly Gerrard, Justine Hess, Tammye Huf, and David Wolfe. And, as ever: Paul Shreve, you make it all possible.

MEG GARDINER is the author of
The Shadow Tracer
,
Ransom River,
and four Jo Beckett thrillers
,
as well as five novels in the Evan Delaney series, including the Edgar Award–winning
China Lake
. Originally from Santa Barbara, California, she divides her time between London and Austin.

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