The Big Sheep (10 page)

“Who the hell are you?” asked All-Grown-Up Noogus. He turned to look up at Brian, who was now standing, his arms crossed, glaring at me. There weren't any other empty chairs. All-Grown-Up Noogus acknowledged Brian with a nod. “Hey, Brian,” he said.

“Hey, Roy,” said Brian.

“You know this guy?” asked All-Grown-Up Noogus, whose name was evidently Roy.

Down the street, Priya passed the Everything Must Go store, and one of the guards lifted the police tape to let her through. I think he might have even bowed a little. She disappeared around the corner.

“Durham's got me watching him,” said Brian. “Some kind of private investigator.”

“Blake Fowler,” I said. “I'm looking into a possible threat against Priya.”

Roy regarded me with confusion. “I didn't know anything about this. Why didn't…” Recognition dawned on his face. “Hey, you're the asshole who took Priya out the other night!” He looked seriously angry. He'd apparently been too preoccupied with TC Gemmel to notice I'd been at the party the previous night as well.

I held up my hands. “Hang on, chief,” I said. “I was just
acting
like an asshole.”

Brian shook his head. “Nah, he really is an asshole,” he said.

“You're making it easy for me, leaving that snap undone,” I said, glancing at Brian's holster. He checked it, of course. I almost felt bad for him. “Candy from a baby,” I said. His face went red. Evidently tiring of my taunts, he walked away and began chatting up a cute young actress a few chairs down.

“Does Priya know about this?” asked Roy.

“Why don't you ask her?” I said.

“I will,” said Roy. “Count on it.”

“Why aren't you with her now? Aren't you her bodyguard?”

“I try to give her some space on the set,” said Roy, relaxing a bit. “Between the Tortugas at the barricades and Flagship's security on the set, this place is pretty secure. She doesn't need me hovering over her every second. And she sure as hell doesn't need any private investigator harassing her.”

“I'm here to keep Priya safe,” I said. “Same as you.”

“I was doing okay before you showed up.”

This was tricky. I didn't want to imply that Roy couldn't be trusted, but I also didn't want to tell him too much about our ongoing investigation. Particularly since I knew so little about our ongoing investigation that I was a little embarrassed to talk about it.

“We've got information about a potential threat,” I said. “I'm afraid I can't say much more than that right now.”

“But you think it's for real?”

“We don't have a lot of solid information on the threat,” I said. “My boss, Mr. Keane, is looking into it.”

“Hold on,” said Roy. “You work for Erasmus Keane?”

“I do,” I said. “You know him?”

“By reputation,” said Roy. “He's kind of a legend. I even interviewed for a job with him a few years ago, but I got beat out by some corporate security hack.”

I smiled at him.

“Oh,” he said, suddenly embarrassed. “I didn't mean—”

“Don't worry about it,” I said. “I
was
a corporate hack. Before I sold out, though, I ran diplomatic security details all over the Arabian Peninsula. And did three tours in Saudi Arabia before that.”

“Marines?”

“Ranger. Seventy-fifth regiment.”

“Damn,” he said. “Did you get stuck in that shitstorm in Jeddah?”

“I got there after the worst of it was over, but yeah, I saw enough action to last me awhile. You're a Marine?”

“Twenty-sixth expeditionary unit. We were the last ones out of Riyadh when the provisional government took over.”

“Should have left you there a little longer.”

“Wouldn't have made any difference. We never should have gotten involved after the Wahhabi coup in the first place. There was no way those guys were going to be able to hold things together after they killed Khalid. We should have waited for things to go to hell and then found some Saudi prince to back. Somebody who could restore order and get the oil flowing.”

“The American way,” I said.

“Damn straight,” he said, with a laugh.

Brian had apparently been shot down in record time, because he was no longer talking to the actress. Whatever his instructions were regarding me, he apparently hadn't been told to eavesdrop on my conversations—at least not my conversations with Priya's bodyguard. He was sauntering down the street toward the security guards at the police tape barrier, looking bored. Every once in a while he would look back just to make sure I hadn't made a run for it or something.

Roy, meanwhile, was deep in thought. “So that's why Priya sneaked out the other night,” he said at last. “Got it in her head to hire Erasmus Keane. Guess I should have paid more attention to what she was saying. It's hard to know how seriously to take her. But if Keane thinks there's something to it…”

“Did she mention some kind of threat to you?” I asked.

“Not in so many words.” After a moment he leaned over and said quietly, “Between you and me, Priya hasn't been herself lately. She's been acting … strange.”

“Strange how?” I asked.

“On edge,” he said. “Even more than usual. And spacey, like she's not all there. She forgets things. Like yesterday she asked if I wanted to try the new pizza place on Figueroa. I thought she was joking, because we had just eaten there three days ago, and she hated it. Said it was the worst pizza she'd ever had. So I laughed, but she was serious. She didn't remember going there. She was so certain, I told her I must have remembered wrong, and we went there again. And she hated it again. Ordered the Hawaiian, just like last time. Said it was the worst pizza she'd ever had—again.”

“And she never remembered she'd been there before?”

“Not that I could tell. I didn't push her, because she's already so anxious. Paranoid, even. She keeps saying things like ‘You won't let anything happen to me, will you, Roy?' And I tell her, you know, that's my job. I'll do my best. And then she doesn't say anything. Sometimes she just cries.”

“You tell her you'll do your best? Not exactly reassuring.”

“I don't lie to Priya,” Roy said. “Never. She's surrounded all day by people who tell her what she wants to hear, or what they think will get her to do what they want her to do. That isn't my job. My job is to protect her. And that means being straight with her. If she can't trust me when it counts, then I've failed.”

“And does she trust you?”

He shrugged, and for a moment a pained expression showed on his face. “Obviously not completely, since she felt she had to sneak out to hire Keane. All I can do is be honest with her. It's tough, though, when she starts talking all paranoid. How do you talk someone out of paranoia? The more I try to reassure her that there's no vast conspiracy out to get her, the more I sound like part of the conspiracy. And to be honest, I don't know that there
isn't
a conspiracy. I haven't seen any evidence of one, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.”

“Is that what she tells you? That there's a vast conspiracy out to get her?”

“Not in so many words. But she's on edge all the time. She doesn't trust anybody. Freaks out when she sees one of her own commercials on TV. Says that people on the street are watching her. Well, what am I going to say to that? She's Priya Mistry, for Pete's sake. Of
course
people on the street are watching her. So tell me, Mr. Fowler,
is
there a conspiracy?”

“If there is,” I started, “Erasmus Keane is the man—”

I saw the blast a split second before I felt it: a hailstorm of broken glass propelled by a fireball, the promise that
EVERYTHING MUST GO
splintering into a million pieces. I instinctively shut my eyes and raised my hands before my face, and a hundredth of a second later the shock wave hit, knocking me to the ground. A rush of hot air and debris followed, and I lay there for a moment, waiting for a chunk of concrete to crack my skull open or a shard of glass to sever my jugular. It didn't happen.

I opened my eyes and looked around. My ears were ringing, and the air was thick with dust and debris. I pulled my shirt up over my nose so I could breathe. Roy, who was already getting to his feet, was doing the same. Glancing around, I took in the scene: chairs and folding tables lying scattered across the street, a dozen or so people sitting or lying, stunned, in the street. I didn't observe any serious injuries, though; we'd been too far away from the blast for it to do much damage. There were some skinned knees and elbows, but everyone was conscious and I didn't see any obvious broken limbs or profuse bleeding. Fortunately, we'd all been sitting down, so we hadn't had far to fall to the pavement. The air was too thick with dust and debris for me to be able to see to the corner, but I wasn't optimistic about the chances of the security guards manning the barrier to the set. Hopefully they had at least died quickly.

Roy tugged on my shirt and pointed through the haze at a pile of rubble about halfway between us and the store. I realized after a moment that it was Brian, lying facedown in the street, covered with dust and glass shards. He wasn't moving.

I got to my feet and followed Roy to Brian. The fire was still raging inside the store, and I had to use my hands to shield my face from the heat as we got close. We turned Brian over carefully, checking for any lacerations or signs of broken bones. We didn't find any.

“Is he breathing?” I yelled over the buzzing in my ears.

Roy felt Brian's neck for a pulse and put his ear to his nose. “Yeah,” he said with a nod. “Probably just took a knock on the head when he fell. Let's get him out of here.”

Easier said than done. Brian was a big guy, and while Roy probably could have moved him in a fireman's carry, we didn't want to aggravate any internal injuries by lifting him. That meant dragging him. But while I didn't particularly like Brian, I didn't necessarily think he deserved to be sliced to ribbons by being dragged across a street littered with glass shards. Roy ended up grabbing him under his arms, clasping his hands in front of Brian's chest, while I held his ankles. We moved fifty feet or so back the way we had come and sat him down up against the wall of a building across the street.

“Brian,” I said, slapping his cheek lightly. He didn't move. “Brian!” I said, louder this time. I slapped him a little harder. This time he stirred. His eyes fluttered open. It took him a moment to focus on me. “What … happened?” he murmured.

I held his gun before his eyes. “Candy from a baby,” I said.

He tried to grab the gun, but I pulled it away. He groaned.

The actress he had been chatting up and a couple of the others had come over. “Is he okay?” the actress asked.

“He'll be fine,” I said. “Get him some water and an ice pack. Keep him conscious. And don't let him have this.” I handed her the gun. “It's real, and it's loaded,” I told her, to prevent any misunderstandings. She held the gun in both hands, staring wide-eyed like I'd just handed her a live cobra.

I got up and saw that Roy was gone. He was running into the dust cloud. I followed.

 

NINE

I saw her boots first, protruding from a pile of concrete, stucco, and twisted rebar. My heart sank. If that was Priya Mistry under all that, there was no way she was still alive. By the time I got there, Roy was already tearing away chunks of concrete with his bare hands. I moved in to help, but Roy was three hundred pounds of frantic energy and adrenaline, tossing hundred-pound slabs of concrete like they were pieces of Styrofoam. It was like watching Lou Ferrigno breaking through a wall on that old
Incredible Hulk
show from the 1970s. I had to keep reminding myself that those were real cinder blocks he was hurling. I decided it was best for everyone if I observed from a safe distance. The fire in the store had settled to a steady blaze, but it was still throwing off a hell of a lot of heat. I stood on the other side of Roy, waiting for him to finish or collapse from exhaustion. A camera drone buzzed nearby, and I wonder if it had caught anything of interest. I had a feeling that if it did, I'd never be allowed to see the footage. For a moment I considered attempting to shoot the thing down, but that was no good either: those things were programmed not to allow unauthorized access to their onboard memory.

Eventually Roy stopped digging. He sank to his knees and held a bloody hand over his mouth. I couldn't read the expression on his face.

I approached, looking into the depression in the pile Roy had dug. She was dead, there was no doubt about that: black hair smudged with blood obscured her face. I moved the hair away and then pulled off my jacket. I wiped her face with my jacket, trying to clear enough blood and dirt away to get a good look at her face. It almost had to be Priya, but it was hard to tell.

I became aware of sirens, and a man and a woman in paramedics' uniforms pushed us aside. Well, they pushed
me
aside. They sort of shoved impotently at Roy, and eventually he got the idea and stepped away from the body. He was panting and dripping with sweat.

More emergency personnel were moving in, and the Tortugas were escorting the uninjured away from the scene. Roy and I made our way through the rubble back to where the other actors were waiting. We were covered in dust, and Roy's hands were bleeding. He looked like he was on the verge of breaking down.

Taki Soma, who played Priya's mother on
DiZzy Girl
, ran up to us. “Is it true?” she asked. “Stacia Acardi was killed?”

“Who?” I asked.

“Priya's stunt double,” Roy murmured. “They were doing an action scene today. She'd have been wearing the same clothes as Priya.”