Splinter (The Machinists Book 2) (10 page)

“No,” Nolan said heatedly. “You baited him. Taunted him. Rubbed his nose in it. And where did it get us? We’re no closer to solving this case now than we were an hour ago.”

“He didn’t know anything,” Maddox said. “He said so himself.”

“We’ll never know what he knows,” Nolan said. “You never gave him an opportunity to talk.”

Maddox shook his head and started down the hallway. The door buzzed in front of him, and he passed into the control room, Nolan on his heels. Two guards sat in the center of a circular desk, monitors and controls around them.

“You don’t have to like the man,” Nolan said, “but you do have to respect him.”

Maddox turned on him, pulling close, his face inches from Nolan’s. “The man’s blood-alcohol level was
three times
the legal limit the day he killed that girl’s father.” He spat the words with such intensity that Nolan recoiled. “Until the day he’s paid his debts and walks through these doors as a free man, I don’t have to respect shit. No amount of remorse can
ever
undo the damage he’s done.”

Nolan scowled, but before he could answer, the door behind Maddox buzzed. He turned from the younger agent, opened it, and walked into another long white hallway.

“If you believe that,” Nolan said, “then why are you in the bureau? Our entire institution is based around the idea that men can change, that they can learn from their mistakes and become better people. If they can’t, then what’s the point of their incarceration?”

“It’s not about that—it’s about protecting everyone else. What happens when Kaplan gets out and can’t resist temptation? What happens when his
addiction
kills one of
your
loved ones?”

“Who’s to say he will?”

“Who’s to say he won’t?”

“You can’t keep someone locked up because of what they
might
do.”

“Of course you can. Every person in here is locked away because we consider them a danger to society.”

They walked through the door into the main lobby. The two uniformed officers sitting behind the enclosed, half-moon desk nodded to them as they passed.

“That’s different,” Nolan said, stepping outside.

“How?” Maddox squinted in the sun. Puddles of rainwater still dotted the parking lot, but the pavement was drying out, returning to a muted gray that matched the color of the prison.

“It sidesteps the notion of intent. Kaplan wasn’t looking to hurt someone that night, and responsibility aside, it was an accident. The real dangers to society—the murderers and rapists—intended to do what they did.”

“Then you believe him when he says he’s going to stay sober?”

“I believe that he believes he’s going to stay sober. That’s enough for me.”

“It’s not for me.”

Nolan sniffed. “You’re a tough man to please, Agent Maddox. Remind me never to get on your bad side.”

Maddox had to smirk at that. He knew he could be a hard ass—it was perhaps a byproduct of growing up in a family of career military men—and his black-or-white view of the world had been at the center of his marital problems. But within the bureau, he’d found more people like him, more who shared his worldview. Men like Agent Nolan, the young and idealistic, were rare and didn’t usually last long. They were too soft and were better off as social workers or counselors.

“Do you know what I hate most in this world?” Maddox opened the door to their new Impala and climbed in, breathing in the new-car smell. “Failure. If everyone just did what they were supposed to do, the world would be a much better place.”

“I suppose you want to be the one who decides what everyone else is supposed to do,” Nolan said sarcastically, sliding into the passenger seat.

“You like to talk, don’t you, Agent Nolan?”

“It’s one of my few character flaws.”

Maddox bit back a smile. “You know, somehow, despite your liberal, pretentious, self-righteous bullshit, I think I’m beginning to like you.”

“I think, somewhere, a criminal just pissed himself.”

“Let’s hope it was Allyn Kaplan.”

Chapter 11

T
he door was closed. Allyn raised a hand to knock then hesitated.
Is he sleeping or working?
Liam had worked in the quiet solitude of the manor’s library, maybe he was trying to recreate an inkling of privacy—the room was, after all, Jaxon’s. Allyn couldn’t blame Liam; with almost two dozen people living in the small cabin, privacy was a thing of the past. Finding the time to think, let alone work, was difficult.

Allyn knocked softly. No response. He knocked a little harder. Still no answer, though he thought he heard an annoyed sigh from inside the room. He scowled. It was already midafternoon, and he wanted to know if Liam had made any progress in recovering the files. He considered opening the door slightly, just to see if he was sleeping, but thought that might skirt too closely to invading the privacy he obviously longed for.

Before Allyn could try, the door swung open, and Liam glared at him.

“What?” Liam asked sharply.

Allyn took a step back. “I just wanted to see how things were coming along.”

“You’re the third person to ask me that in the last ten minutes,” Liam said. “The transfer is in progress. That’s all I know. I don’t know how far along it is, and I don’t know how much longer. Okay?”

“Okay…” Allyn said. “I wasn’t trying to rush you. I just hadn’t heard anything.”

“I’ll let you know when I have something.”

“All right,” Allyn said as Liam closed the door. He started down the hallway then stopped. The exchange had left him unnerved. Liam had been just as excited about the computer’s prospects as Allyn had. It was their first solid clue, and it was something Liam could take the lead in.
What’s changed? Why is he so agitated?

The library,
Allyn realized.

Jaxon had led them back to the manor, and
Liam had been forced to confront everything he was trying to avoid. People had a way of taking things out on those closest to them, and as Liam’s friend, Allyn knew suffering the blows was his responsibility. He would let Liam vent so he could heal.

Allyn turned and knocked again. The door swung open immediately.

If Liam could have wielded fire, Allyn might have been worried. Liam’s dark eyes were ablaze, irate.
“What?”
Liam snapped.

“I just want to help.”

“I don’t want your help,” Liam said. “Please leave me alone. I’ll find you when I have something.”

“I don’t have anything else to do.”

“Then go enjoy it,” Liam said. “Most people would call that a vacation.”

“Most people don’t have to spend their vacations in a four-bedroom cabin with twenty other people.” Allyn leaned against the doorframe. “Or have to share a single bathroom with all of them.”

Liam’s mouth tightened.
Was that the beginnings of a smile?

“It could be worse, I guess,” Allyn said.

“How?”

“We could all be in prison cells.”

Liam turned back into the room, the tiny smile retreating from his face. Though Allyn didn’t have much to do, Liam’s list of responsibilities was growing by the day. He wasn’t used to it. If he and Jaxon weren’t careful, they would bury Liam under the new weight, and the lively, sarcastic teenager that they’d all grown to love would be replaced by this tortured, angry substitute.

“Let me help.”

“There’s really nothing to do,” Liam said, gesturing toward the computer. “Once I got it set up, it just kind of does its thing.”

The two computers sat side by side on a makeshift workbench Liam had constructed under the window. Pieces of the broken computer were stacked neatly on the sill, and a cable connected the hard drive to Liam’s computer. Allyn didn’t see a status bar or any other sign that the transfer was in progress.

“How will you know when it’s done if it doesn’t have a status bar?”

“Files will stop appearing in the folder I created.”

“It’s that easy?”

“It’s that easy.”

“What about the stuff that’s already in there? Can we look at that?”

Liam shrugged and looked away.

You sly little punk
. “You already did, didn’t you?”

Liam bit back a mischievous grin.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I just peeked around a little bit,” Liam said, blushing. “And I didn’t find much. The transfer doesn’t go in order. Instead of getting one folder and then the next, we get fragments of this one, and fragments of that one. It’s like looking at a painting through a straw. Until the transfer is complete, we only get to see part of the picture.”

“Can I see?”

“You’re not going to leave me alone, are you?”

“Not now.”

“Fine.” Liam might still be annoyed, but the heat in his voice had disappeared. “But close the door behind you.”

Allyn stepped inside and closed the door behind him. The sparsely decorated room was roughly the same size as the others, and since it had always been the spare one, it held none of the childhood belongings that furnished Allyn’s and Kendyl’s. Liam had closed the blinds, but cold air still blew into the room through the drafty window. Even the bulb above was bare. The fixture had fallen a long time ago and had never been replaced.

Liam sat at the workbench, watching as random files continued to pop up on his desktop. Allyn stood beside him.

“What do you want to see first?” Liam asked.

“The file with my name on it.”

Liam opened it. He was right—some of the contents were missing. Allyn couldn’t pinpoint
what
exactly, but he knew he had seen more files inside the folder at his condo.

“Can I see that?” Allyn gestured to the computer mouse.

Liam hesitated. It was like asking to borrow another man’s tools; there was just something personal about it. “Sure.”

Allyn took the mouse and cycled through a series of files: his birth certificate, birth announcement, an article about his state-winning basketball team, and a picture of his graduating class. Seeing his childhood displayed like a dissected frog in a junior high biology class was unnerving. He felt violated. Exposed.

“Someone has been following you for a long time.”

“I’m not sure about that.”

“Why?” Liam asked. “Your whole life’s in there. Every notable achievement.”

“I think they worked backward. Look at this.” Allyn pulled up another folder with only a single article inside. “Something got their attention, and they built a profile as they went along. Most of this stuff is in the public record.”

“Public record?”

“Yeah.”

“As in anyone has access to it?”

“Most of it.” Allyn sometimes forgot how little Liam knew of the outside world. He wasn’t as naïve as he’d once been, and his knowledge grew by the day, but there were still gaps. Allyn reopened his folder and clicked on another file. It was a list of graduates who had passed the bar exam, part of a quarterly review the board put out.

“Even your birth certificate?”

“Probably not that.”

“Who would?” Liam asked.

“As far as I know,” Allyn said, “only government officials or immediate family.”

“Well, I think we can rule out family,” Liam said. “What about the FBI?”

“Definitely,” Allyn said. “I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t think this was the FBI. They would have had that place surrounded. The moment we arrived, the moment we stepped out of that car, they would have taken us down.”

Liam didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t push the issue.

“What do you think would happen if all of this stuff disappeared?”

“What do you mean?” Allyn asked.

“You know,” Liam said. “If all of the stuff about someone in the public record vanished.”

“Not much. The information would still exist as hard copies. Newspapers, official records, that sort of stuff.”

“Yeah, but who actually references that sort of thing?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think it would be like the video. Remove the digital information and the rest will slowly disappear, too, or at least make finding it a lot more difficult. The world might even forget that you ever existed.”

“That’s kind of sad, though, don’t you think?”

“I guess.” Liam’s eyes grew distant.

“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Allyn asked.

“I’m not sure yet,” Liam said thoughtfully. “I just got the kernel of an idea.”

“You mind sharing?”

“Not yet.”

Allyn glanced at Liam out of the corner of his eye. Liam wasn’t usually so coy, not when it came to computers. Allyn closed the folder. He hadn’t found anything he hadn’t already seen, and the lack of privacy disturbed him. He opened another folder. This one was nearly empty, only two files inside, both newspaper articles.

“This is what I mean,” Allyn said, opening the first article. “Something like this caught their eye, and then they built a history around the person in question.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a newspaper article about a fire at a construction site,” Allyn said. “The authorities believed a disgruntled ex-employee was behind it.”

“What’s so interesting about that?”

“I’m not sure.”

“There might be other files that haven’t transferred yet,” Liam said.

“It’s possible,” Allyn said. “But I remember some of the folders were pretty bare. It’s almost as if they came across a strange story and bookmarked it so that they could look into it later.”

“What do you think they’re looking for?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out.”

Allyn closed the article and the folder. The next one bore a name he couldn’t pronounce, spelled with letters he’d never seen.
Russian maybe? Eastern European, at least.
He moved on to the next. Allyn would have laughed if he’d seen the headline in the supermarket checkout, but it was from a reputable magazine, and he’d recently been exposed to a world he’d never known existed before. The outlandish didn’t seem as ridiculous anymore.
Mother of Two Has Music Playlist in Her Head.

“Look at this.” Allyn sat up, scanning the article.

“What is it?”

“It looks like a journal article about a woman who claims to hear radio broadcasts in her head.” Allyn continued to read. “Look here.” He pointed to the screen.

“Have you ever had the annoying experience of having a song stuck in your head for more than a day? More than two? Imagine being unable to ever get it out,” Liam said, reading the article aloud. “Charlotte Vegen, a thirty-five-year-old mother of two suffers from such intense audio hallucinations that she fears she’s losing her mind. Vegen has what her psychiatrist refers to as ‘musical ear syndrome’
—
a neurological disorder that causes her to hear the same handful of songs repeat in her head in a constant loop. But although the mixture of childhood favorites sound as if they are real, they’re actually being produced by her brain.”

“This is what I find interesting,” Allyn said, scrolling down to the next paragraph. “She developed the condition after taking anti-depressant medication.”

“It looks like they have a medical diagnosis for it,” Liam said. “Auditory hallucinations.”

“That’s just the official way of saying ‘you’re hearing things,’” Allyn said.

“
What are you suggesting?”

“I don’t know how it works with normal magi,” Allyn said. “But for someone like me, whose ability was blocked, something has to force it out of them. When Kendyl died inside Lukas’s compound, I
snapped
. I knew what I had to do, and I did it almost instinctively. What if whatever caused her to take the medication in the first place made her snap?”

“What are you suggesting?” Liam asked. “You think she’s a magi? A machinist?”

Allyn grimaced. “Actually, no. She probably is suffering from some sort of illness. It says here that one in ten thousand people over the age of sixty-five suffer from auditory hallucinations, and that’s obviously not in line with the number of magi in the world.”

“I’m not following you, Allyn. You say she might be a magi, and then you say she’s not.”

“It’s not about what I think. It’s what the person who made these files thinks.” Allyn opened another folder. “Another folder. Another mystery.” He opened the next then the one after that. “Here’s another. And another. And think about the stories in my folder. A manor burned to the ground hours after a host of officers stormed the house and found it largely unoccupied. Dozens of bodies with no positive IDs litter the grounds. The suspects vanished into thin air. It’s more than mysterious. It’s damn near paranormal. This person is searching for magi, Liam.”

“Searching for magi.” Liam said the words as if he were trying them on. “If that were true, why?”

“Because they’re a magi, too.”

Liam took in a sharp breath. “You think they’re like you! Someone who developed abilities outside the Families.”

Allyn nodded. “Except I didn’t develop my ability
outside
the Families. I’d seen Jaxon and Graeme in action, and even though I had a hard time believing it at first, I knew wielding was possible. I knew what your father was telling me was the truth. Imagine, Liam, this person developing abilities alone. No answers, no guidance. Imagine how terrifying that would be. What would be the first thing you’d do?”

“Find others like me.”

“Exactly,” Allyn said. “Fortunately for them, the Internet is the great equalizer. Whatever the ailment, whatever you’re suffering from, you can find someone else who’s suffering from the same thing.”

“Except this,” Liam said.

“Except this.” Allyn scrolled through the folders, up and down, up and down. It was a habit he’d developed while working behind the desk. He wasn’t searching for anything; the movement on the screen just helped him think. “So they searched them out, finding other people who might be living with similar abilities in secret, but the magi are too well hidden, so all they stumbled across were fragments or rumors.”

“Until they found you.” Liam stood and started to pace behind Allyn. “Do you think they’re local to our area?”

Allyn raised an eyebrow. “Maybe. Probably. How else would they get their computer into my old condo?”

“Good point,” Liam said. “But I meant, do they live here, or did they come here specifically to find you?”

“Why?” Allyn asked. “What’s the difference?”

“If they’re here specifically to find you,” Liam said, “they won’t leave until they do.”

The hair on Allyn’s arms and neck stood on end, sending a chill down his spine. He’d spent so much time arguing that the person behind the video wasn’t the police that he hadn’t spent enough time thinking about who it really was. Even though the police and the FBI hadn’t been waiting for them at the condo, someone else could have been. Jaxon had been worried about bringing the computer back to the cabin, afraid that someone could track it.
But what if someone simply followed us?

“We need to tell Jaxon,” Allyn said. “We could have led them straight to us.”

“What if we try and contact them?” Liam asked, ignoring the subject.