Spitting Image (10 page)

She also had a compact automatic pistol in her right hand.

“Ah, Chip,” she said. “Thank God it’s you. You got one of them.”

I nodded. I didn’t know Chip’s mannerisms, when he wasn’t being me, anyway, so I figured the less I said, the better.

“Where’s Ellis?”

“Not sure,” I said.

She began to look toward the door, then did a double take and stared at me. Her mouth opened to shout and she started to bring up her right hand when, with an economic blur of motion, John grabbed her wrists, kicked her legs from under her and threw her onto a couch.

He twisted the gun from her hand. I had already trained my captured rifle at her and put a finger to my lips. She froze.

“Is there anyone else in the house?” I asked, my voice low.

She shook her head.

“See?” said John, displaying the pistol he’d taken from her. “A Walther. A proper coyote weapon.”

I shrugged.

“I guess she’s just embraced her spirit animal,” he said, smiling coldly at her.

The woman was silent. She looked frightened, but kept her composure. I knew my enemies were good actors, and she had probably had a lot of practice keeping cool and talking her way out of a bad situation.

John stood off to one side, the pistol aimed at the woman. I let the muzzle of my rifle wander over her body. Paused when it pointed at a knee.

“What exactly is it that you people wanted from me?” I asked, conversationally. Not angrily. Just as though I was idly wondering.

I hoped she’d talk. I really didn’t want to hurt her. Oh, she had earned it. She was probably as guilty as the men I’d killed in the woods. But there’s a difference between shooting an armed man and deliberately putting a bullet in the kneecap of an unarmed prisoner. I like to think that the lines we won’t cross are what keep us human.

I don’t like causing pain, but she didn’t need to know that. I let the anger I felt at what they had done to Sarah show on my face. Maybe I could scare this woman into talking. Maybe she was the kind of person who could shatter a kneecap to get what she wanted, and believing others would do the same wouldn’t be a stretch.

“Just the gifts of your bloodline,” she replied. “We never intended to hurt you.”

“Your boy took a shot at me in the woods just now.”

She shrugged. “You heal fast. He might have figured he needed to disable you. And things have...escalated.”

“So, once I objected to your kidnapping my girlfriend, the Rubicon was crossed?”

Her face fell. I saw something familiar in the expression when the comment caught her off guard. Something I’d seen in a different face. Recently. On the ambulance.

“Samantha?” I asked.

She nodded, gave a little shrug.

“I had to get close enough to observe you.”

That explained why she was such a bad EMT, but so comfortable in crisis.

“If it makes you feel any better, I was going to try to seduce you as an EMT, never bring your girlfriend into it, but it was obvious you weren’t going to cheat on her. It speaks well of you.”

“Thanks, I guess. So you kidnapped her and took her place? Thoughtful of you.”

“We never harmed her. She was kept safe. In a few days, we’d have had her memory erased, let her go, and nobody would have been the wiser.”

“Whose idea was this? How’d you find out about me?”

She shook her head. “That’s family business”

I let my eyes shift to the rifle then back to her.

“That’s not enough,” she said. “My punishment for selling out the family would be worse than a bullet.”

She did look scared, but not terrified. And I wasn’t going to beat her up or start breaking fingers. I didn’t know if I could even fake that intent with enough sincerity. I did know I couldn’t shoot her, sitting on the couch like she was. If things had been different, and she’d pointed that pistol at me, I could have, but not while she was unarmed, talking pleasantly.

She probably knew that. She’d studied me, talked to me in intimate moments. And in her line of work, she was probably good at reading people.

That was inconvenient. I won’t say it was too bad, because most days I’m proud of my scruples about breaking fingers or executing captives, but right now it did make my job tougher.

“I understand you felt threatened,” she said. “Especially after what happened last year with Doors. I understand why you reacted with force. Why you felt you had to. But our original intention wasn’t violent. Deceptive, perhaps, but we never intended you or your friends any harm.”

She put on an earnest, reasonable expression. “There’s no reason we can’t make an accommodation. There’s no blood shed on your side, and we have to judge your actions as reasonable, so we’d accept our losses. Much better for all of us. You’re a dangerous man. More so that we expected. I’d like to live, and I’m sure you’d like to be able to trust that your friends are really your friends. Perhaps we could even do business.”

She took a moment to smile, let her eyes go dreamy and her voice husky, “Admit it. It wasn’t all bad.”

I know she was trying for seductive, but I thought of what that had done to the first real relationship I had had in a dozen lifetimes, and for one wild moment I felt the mad urge to pull the trigger.

“I have to ask,” she said. “How did you know? What gave us away?”

“It wasn’t all that good,” I replied.

Her face fell. For a second the mask slipped. But underneath, it wasn’t the rage of a woman scorned, it looked like genuine surprise. I’m sure she wasn’t used to being dismissed like that.

“Here’s the deal,” I said. “For now, I’ll agree to live and let live. But if anything happens to Sarah Deyermond, anything at all, I won’t be so forgiving. I got to you this time. I can do it again. Next time it won’t be to talk.”

She nodded.

“And I’m keeping your gun. My friend says it suits me better.” I turned to John. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Right behind you, Kemo Sabe.”

We made a dignified but hasty withdrawal. I took the precaution of taking her phone and car keys and cutting the land line, then paused at the doorway to scan the front yard before we headed for the woods.

We didn’t speak until we were well away, deep in the woods.

“What does ‘Kemo Sabe’ really mean, anyway?”

“In this case, it means ‘it’s your funeral, Paleface,’” he replied. “Why’d you just leave her?”

“I couldn’t just shoot her, and she wasn’t going to tell us much. I have three cell phones we can dig through and look at contacts. We’ll learn as much there as we would have with her, and I don’t have to pull out fingernails.”

“You might be too soft. She’s still a threat.”

“The whole family’s a threat. And I don’t think they’d be less of a threat if I killed her. I know that would just make me more angry if I were them.”

“You did kill two of them. You think a third body would make that big a difference?”

“Fortunes of war.” Maybe it wasn’t different to everybody, but it was different to me. “They can get to me. But they’ve always been able to get to me. Now they know I’m on guard, and they know I can get to them. They know I have friends they didn’t know about. Maybe that will make them think twice. Give them an incentive to play nice.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But I wouldn’t count on it.”

“No. But they’ll be more afraid of me today than they were yesterday.”

“Fear can make a person unpredictable.”

He was right. But there wasn’t much more to be gained here. Shooting or kidnapping the woman back at the house wouldn’t end the struggle, just escalate it. And while it might come down to all out war, that wouldn’t help anybody.

I hoped they’d see that.

If they did, then maybe I could work out a truce without anybody else needing to die. Especially anybody I liked. If not, if they think I crossed a line back there...

I did kinda kill two of them. But one had been shooting at me, and the other had an assault rifle and was holding my friend prisoner. That’s usually considered fair game. And I didn’t shoot the woman. Didn’t even hurt her. That should count for something.

It was a lot simpler when you just shot the guys wearing the wrong uniform.

“Why’d you hang onto the gun?” John asked. “You’re not gonna toss it in case she reports it stolen?”

“I have a friend at the PD. I’ll have him run it, see if it’s registered, and if so, what name it’s registered under. I’ll wipe it down because we both handled it, but maybe he can pull some prints off the magazine or the bullets. I don’t know if they bother to change their prints when they impersonate somebody. That would be good to know. For now, I’ll just have to not get caught with one more illegal gun than I had yesterday.”

“Ok, so you got a few leads to run down. But was that worth it?”

“A couple leads and a new question that changes the whole picture,” I said. “She was shocked I found out about the whole plan. They should have been able to pull this off and leave no trace. They probably could have done it without any bloodshed, except I was tipped off. So now we need to figure out why my informant did that.”

“Power struggle?”

“Be my guess.”

“So now things look even more complicated and dangerous than they did yesterday.”

“Seems like.”

“I’m happy I could risk my life to help out,” he said.

“Happy to have had you along.” I grinned.

He tried to keep his expression neutral, but I saw the shadow of a smile. “Be careful. The coyote’s sharp and cunning mind often leads to his own destruction.” He smiled broadly now. “But it makes for more entertaining stories.”

WE REGROUPED at the cabin.

“So what happened?” asked Bob.

I dumped the captured phones on the table. “We got these to dig through. And a handgun I’ll have a friend at the police department run a check on.”

“You didn’t take anybody we could chat with?”

“He had a chat on site.”

“You squeeze somebody?” asked Bob. “Find out anything?”

“Some. But I have more questions now than before.”

I gave the short version of what the woman had told me.

“And you just let her go?”

“I didn’t see any point in taking her.”

“He’s too soft hearted to kidnap her or beat her up,” said John. “But he has a mean streak.”

“What’d he do?”

“Told her she was lousy in bed,” he said, grinning.

“Well, I guess that showed her,” said Bob.

“Look,” I said, “they know I can get to them. They know I will come after them if they push me. They know I’m dangerous. But they also know I can be reasoned with. Not shooting the woman proved that. So if they’re paying attention, then I think I sent the best message I could.”

I sighed.

“If I have to shoot somebody, I’ll do it. But I’m just not willing to take this woman and stick her foot in the fire until she talks. I have some limits.”

“So how are you going to run down that info?” asked Bob. “You’ve got names and numbers, but do you know anybody who can hack that information for real info? These are probably all aliases.”

“You any good with computers?” I asked.

“Not for that kind of thing,” said Bob. “John?”

He shook his head.

“And I am just a humble foot soldier,” I said. Bob snorted. “And they know most of my friends who might know something or somebody who could help, so asking them would be too risky.”

I was silent for a minute.

“I think we need to call Sarah. If she’s somewhere secure they probably won’t be able to imitate her, and she knows more about this technology than any of us thugs.”

Bob looked at me through his remaining eye for a long minute. “I’ll call her.”

“Thanks.”

“Nothing personal, but if you do it she might agree for the wrong reason.”

“Yeah,” I said, looking at the horizon. “She might.”

I walked out onto the porch to stare at the stars while he made the call. One thing you forget living in the city is just how many stars there are. How bright and deep and impressive the night sky is, out here, away from the lights. The vast, humbling sweep of the galaxy helps put my own problems in perspective. Given the extent of it all, the fact that I was standing on a pale blue dot capable of sustaining life, teeming with life, and that I’d seen and experienced so much of it was a miracle.

I’d spent a lot of nights like this. Alone, staring at the stars.

Not for a while, though.

All the same, I still wanted to hold Sarah again, and know small, insignificant Earthly pleasures once more.

Bob walked out onto the porch. Stared at the stars with me for a while.

“She’ll take a look at the phones. Tell you what she can figure out.”

I nodded. “Good,” I added when I realized he wasn’t actually looking at me.

“She said to call her and she’ll let you know where you can meet to hand them over.”

I was surprised. “She wants me to go meet her? Not you?”

“That’s what she says.”

“Thanks,” I said. I pulled out my phone.

“I’ll head in,” he said. “Leave you to talk.” He stopped and faced me. Giving me a cold look from his one eye. “I like you. I really do hope things work out between you two. But be careful. Don’t give me a reason to stop liking you.”

He walked back inside before I could reply. Not that there was much to say to that.

I dialed Sarah’s number.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hi,” I answered. “It’s me. Bob said you wanted me to call.”

“I did,” she replied. Her voice had a strained, brittle quality to it. “How are you holding up?’

“Surviving.” I took a deep breath. “You?”

“As well as can be expected. Which is awful.”

“I’m sorry.”

There was a pause in which I could see her shrug in my mind’s eye. I did hear a sniffle.

It’s odd how you learn to read somebody’s pauses. I knew that she had started to say “it’s not your fault” then realized that wasn’t really true, then bogged down as she tried to work out what exactly she wanted to say. I waited. No good could come of rushing her or making defenses she’d already heard. Knowing when to be silent is hard.

It’s taken me a few centuries, but I mostly have it down.

Eventually she spoke. “I know you are. I know you’re trying to fix it.”

“I am. But I think I need your help.”

“Bob said something about that.”

“We traced these people to a house. Managed to grab a few phones. I know, theoretically, that there’s plenty of info in the contacts and messages and so on, but no idea how to get at that. Bob isn’t much more tech savvy than I am. I didn’t want to let more people in on this, and I don’t know who else I can trust, so I was hoping you could take a look.”

“I’d be happy to.”

“Just let me know where to bring them.”

“How about–wait, do you have them turned on?”

“Maybe? Why?”

“Turn them off,” she said. “There’s a ‘find my phone’ app that can track them. It’s for if you leave your phone somewhere. If they can log on to a computer, they can get a GPS position on the missing phone. The app usually won’t work if the phone is powered down.”

Shit. It really is just bad form not to keep up on the new tech. Especially when that tech can track you down.

“So if they’re off, they can’t be traced?”

“It’s less likely,” she replied. “It’s not impossible. Most people will just have the simple app, in case they leave the phone in a restaurant or on the bus. There are better ones that can track the phone even when it’s off, but those are for more hard core techies.”

I thought about that. It was the kind of things that Caruthers and company would find useful. But the phones were too valuable a potential source of information when I had next to nothing. 

“OK, I’ll make sure they’re off. We’ll abandon this place and move out in case they already traced them. You still want to help?”

“I do. I won’t be safe until this is finished anyway. The sooner we get this behind us the better. Then we can get on with our lives.”

I winced. I wished she’d said “life.”

Enough of that. I shook myself. “Where do you want to meet?”

“You remember our first lunch date?”

“Like it was yesterday.”

“Let’s meet there tomorrow night. At about eight.”

Smart. If I was an impostor, chances are I wouldn’t know where she was talking about.

“Looking forward to it,” I said. “Take care of yourself.”

“You too,” she replied. “See you soon,” she added after a long pause.

I cut the connection. Stared at the phone for a while. Then I walked back into the cabin.

“Hey guys,” I said. “You may want to get ready to move out.”

“Why?” asked Bob.

“You ever hear of a ‘find my phone’ app?”

“A what?”

“It’s a program to track your phone if you lose it. If our friends have that enabled, they could have a GPS fix on us right here. So it may be a good time to be someplace else.”

“Or turn this place into a trap,” said John. “See if they do show up and grab ‘em.”

“Well, I have to go meet Sarah,” I said. “I’ll call you afterwards, see where you are and if we need to meet up. If I do, ask me something only I would know.”

“Like what a coyote should carry?” asked John.

“Sure,” I replied. “Just don’t shoot me if I come back, but be ready to shoot me until you know I’m really me.”

“At least this thing isn’t complicated,” said Bob. “Say hi to Sarah for me. And don’t forget what I said.”

“No chance,” I said. Not that I was afraid of Bob, per se. It’s just that he was a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than I was, and there was no good outcome if I did have to fight him.