Reflex (49 page)

With his free hand, Davy picked up a large rock the size of a small cabbage and held it close to the ground, before Simons's face. "Let's just break it open, and see."

Millie said, "Won't exactly help his broken bones."

Davy laughed. "And your point would be?"

"I suppose one could consider that a benefit," she said, hoping she was playing along with an act.

Simons pulled his cast in to his side, trying to hide it with his torso.

Davy dropped the rock, took his knee off of Simons's back, and rolled him face up. "Don't move," he said, pressing the gun to Simons's forehead. "See what other toys he has." Davy smiled, but the expression was neither kind nor reassuring.

Millie swept the wand over the front of Simons's limbs, then up over his torso. It screeched at his belt buckle and at some change in his pockets, which she added to the pile. She swept higher. At his left shoulder it screeched again.

Davy's face stilled. He ripped the shirt open, popping buttons. The nasty smile dropped from his face.

"Oh," said Millie.

Simons was tan under his shirt but it only highlighted the two scars, the larger one below the collarbone, the other above, on the neck. Old scars, years old.

Davy took the gun away from Simons's head and yelled at the sky. "Where does this stop?"

Simons flinched.

Davy looked down at Simons. "I thought your reach was... enormous, but it wasn't
your
reach, was it?"

"Another implant zombie," said Millie. "Then who heads your organization?"

Simons rolled away from them and they let him. He sat up and scooted away, coming to a stop against a large boulder in the shade of a mesquite bush four yards away. He sneered at them.

Millie eyed him warily. "What do you think is in his cast? Could it be a weapon?"

Davy shook his head. "A tracer perhaps, or some sort of bug. Almost certainly electronic."

"How long do you think we have until they come for him?"

Davy looked at Simons. Simons pointedly covered his mouth and yawned.

"We have forever." Davy picked up the rock again. "We can jump away from here before they come and when they do, we'll have removed whatever is in his cast." He turned toward Millie and winked at her. He turned back to face Simons.

"This might sting a little."

"You can't touch me," Simons smiled. He raised the cast, like he was cradling it, up and across his chest, but there was an awkwardness as he pushed it even higher.

Getting it up to the
—"Davy! Don't let—"

It was as if Simons been shot from behind, the way his upper chest exploded. The cast diverted much of the blood but the spray reached several feet and Millie felt warm droplets strike the back of her hand.

The heart beat on, blood fountaining in pulses, once, twice, three times, and then mere seepage unaided by the contractions of the heart. Simons's eyes went from wide-opened and surprised to half-closed and distant and, finally, absent.

Millie thought for a moment that it had been the cast that had exploded, but while the fiberglass was covered in blood, it was intact, still covering his wrist, lying across the sand, the projecting fingers slightly curled.

She swallowed convulsively.

"So, that's what they put in the cast," Davy said. He swayed slightly on his feet and his eyes were glazed.

Millie took a quick step to his side and grabbed his arm. "Steady."

He bent over and took several deep breaths. When he stood again, his color was better.

"What was it?" she asked.

"Something to make his implant detonate. A magnet, maybe, or something more sophisticated. I guess he believed me, about the rock. He didn't want me to remove the cast."

Millie spoke more to herself than Davy. "He did it to himself. To keep us from interrogating him about his masters."

Davy licked his lips. "Masters? More than one? God, I hope not. I had this picture of
him
sitting at the center of the web, pulling on the strings. What if he's on the periphery?"

Millie shook her head. "Layer upon layer. Circles within circles. We may never know. From the way you described him—from what I saw of him—he wasn't the sort to relinquish control. Maybe that's why he did it.
His
choice to the last."

"I didn't try to save him. If I'd jumped him to a trauma center—"

Millie stroked Davy's back. "Padgett was on the operating table when his went off and they couldn't save him. And—" She looked away from Simons. "I wouldn't have killed him. I know you wouldn't, either. But he can't hurt anybody else now and prosecuting him has just become moot."

Davy finally nodded.

"What are we going to do with his body?"

Davy looked at his watch. "It's only been fifteen minutes since he 'left' his townhouse. Let's put him back."

She frowned at him. "You're sending a message."

"I hope so."

"And the text is?"

"Leave us alone. Pursuing us is not worth the price." He gestured at Simons. "He was very highly placed. They lost far more than two houses and several agents. Hopefully, they lost influence."

Millie was doubtful. "Maybe. Or perhaps they've already got someone primed to step in."

Davy nodded slowly. "Maybe."

They took a cab from BWI. It was to a high school just outside the District on the Baltimore side. It wasn't their high school, but both kids were participating in the swim meet. They found the kids' mother in a shadowy, empty section of the upper bleachers.

Davy offered his hand. "Hello, Mrs. Cox. My name is Davy Rice. This is my wife, Millie."

Cindy Cox stared at him, wide-eyed. "I never thought I'd meet you. I know about you, but I'm not supposed to. Brian was pretty good about not bringing his work home, but—" She shook his hand belatedly.

"Did you know I was there when Brian died?"

She blinked and the color drained out of her face. "You couldn't have been! You wouldn't have let him die! Not with what
you
can do."

Davy's mouth went flat and tight and Millie saw his eyes tear. "I—I wish that were so."

Millie said, "Davy was drugged, Mrs. Cox. Brian died trying to keep him from being kidnapped. He failed. Until last week, Davy's been a prisoner—a subject of experiments."

Cindy looked at him. "I'm sorry. It's just that you were one of my 'if only's.' If only he'd been sick that day. If only he'd stayed home that night. If only I'd insisted when early retirement was an option. If only Davy had been with him, to take him to safety."

"The NSA didn't tell you?"

"They only said he'd been killed in the line of duty. Greater love hath no man and all that."

Down in the pool the starter was preparing a heat of fifty-yard freestyle. Cindy said, "Excuse me. That's Billy, our eldest, in lane five."

The starter tone echoed in the closed quarters of the indoor pool and the bodies arched through the air to slice into the water. Billy wasn't the fastest swimmer in his heat but his dive and turn were both so clean that he won anyway.

His mother cheered and waved and cried.

When she turned back to Davy, he said, "Did the NSA tell you that your husband's murderer is in the custody of the FBI?"

She took a deep breath and exhaled. "Not the NSA. But a friend in the agency did."

"Anders," said Millie.

"Yes, when he asked where you could meet me. I don't know if it helps or not. Even if they convict her, Brian will still be dead." Cindy rubbed her nose with the back of her hand.

Davy took a deep breath and said, "Brian's last words were, 'Tell Cindy she's the best thing that ever happened to me. Her and the boys.' "

Cindy Cox stared at him and the corners of her mouth hooked sharply down. Millie slid over and held her upright as the woman dissolved into tears and sobs.

When she stopped she seemed drained. Four heats had been run but the cheers echoing through the building had easily covered the sobs. She pushed herself away from Millie. "I'm all right. Zachary is in the next event. I need to watch." She held out her hand. "Thank you for giving me his message. I'm sorry I said what I said. I know you would've saved him if you could. It must've been awful, watching him die."

"It was. But I owe him, so I owe you." He handed her a card. "You need anything, place that in the Wednesday
Washington Post
Classifieds and I'll come running." He paused. "Is there something I can do for you now? Before I go?"

Cindy looked around, then said. "Just one thing. When you go, could you go
your
way? I've always wondered—"

"My way? Oh. Okay."

They jumped.

"Christ, it's freezing!"

The cabin was a sprawling two-story log house at five thousand feet in the Yukon Canadian Rockies, one hundred miles from the nearest town. It had been built by a millionaire as a fly-in hunting lodge, but the lack of safe flying weather in the area, even in the dead of summer, made him give it up. Davy purchased it and the surrounding four hundred acres for thirty thousand Canadian dollars.

Even now, in May, snow lay heaped around.

Davy said, "But there's a hot spring under the bathhouse."

"But the cabin is freezing! I'm turning blue!"

"Wait." He closed his eyes.

The gust of wind made her stagger. The front door blew shut with a bang and her ears popped. Davy
glowed
and hot air streamed out of him.

"What are you doing?" she said. She walked up to him and held her hands out, as if to a fire.

"Twinning. To Terlingua. It's a couple of thousand feet lower and a
lot
warmer so the air pressure differential gives us forced air heating. Feeling better? I'm sweating." He stopped glowing and walked over to the window. "There," he said, pointing. Water was dripping off the eaves as snow melted. "Besides, the radiators are plumbed to the hot spring. The pipes were drained when the building was mothballed."

"And no one will bother us here?"

"Who knows? I bought it under one of my old NSA fake passports as a Canadian national. The deed's registered in a closet down in the provincial courthouse in Whitehorse. I mean, the weather's so bad that you can't even
get
here most of the time unless you go
our
way. We're closer to the Arctic Ocean than we are to the lower forty-eight. And we own it, unlike the Aerie. If someone stumbles on it, we can tell them no trespassing, private property,
arrivederci."

She looked out the front window. She could see fifteen miles down the valley and caribou grazed the bottoms, where the snow was beginning to melt. She twitched her lips into a smile. "Well, use
our
way to go get some food. I'm hungry."

She built a fire while he fetched Indian takeout.

"Where?" she asked.

"One of those we've never been in, chosen randomly on St. Mark's Place in the East Village. No more 'favorite' restaurants," he sighed. "No more predictability."

Millie looked down at the floor. "No more clients. No more condo. No more classes, no more books. No more teacher's dirty looks."

Davy turned to her, his mouth a tight line, a piece of chicken tandoori forgotten on his fork. "No. I guess that follows. You aren't just a potential handle on me, now, are you? You're a target in your own right—another jumper."

"Yeah. Another. Why is that?"

"Maybe it's catching," he said.

"And maybe it's learned. For the past twelve years you've taken me all over the world, teleporting me thousands of times. Nobody else—barring you, of course—has experienced the phenomenon that much."

He nodded. "Yeah—that's pretty much what I thought. I know it's screwing up your life, but I'm
so
glad not to be the only one."

"You going to start a school for jumpers? You know, jump them a hundred times here and there, then push them off a cliff?"

He shuddered. "I don't want to think what the graduation percentage would be."

She shrugged. "They don't have to actually die—they just have to
think
they're going to. That's my guess."

"And if it works, then they become the targets, right?"

Millie stirred her chai. "You're right. For now I guess we'll keep it in the family." She smiled suddenly and Davy looked at her, eyes narrowed.

"Family."

She nodded.

"You and me."

She smiled again.
"Et cetera."

"What do you mean?"

"And so forth. And so on." She took another gulp of chai, then put it down and braced her hands on her knees. "I stopped taking birth control the day you disappeared."

His eyes widened. "I'm not sure—"

"No," she said. "I know you're not, but it's time. I know you're afraid you'll turn into your father, that you'll treat your own children like he treated you. But look, dear one, if you resisted killing and punishing the people who imprisoned and tortured you, I'm pretty sure you won't raise your hand to your own children—even when they start throwing food or tearing pages out of your precious books."

She waved her hand at the cabin. "And this is a much better place for kids than the Aerie. More room—no cliff. You must've been thinking about that a little."

He blushed. "Well—"

She took his hand. "It's
time"
She took a paper napkin and wiped the corner of his mouth, then led him out into the cold, through the snow, to the bathhouse.

"In more ways than one."

Copyright © 2004 by Steven Gould

ISBN: 0-312-86421-3