All this said and done, the three of them headed for the bar, Jones basically in tow behind the other two men, still a bit drunk but looking forward to the prospect of more free liquor, as well as a better variety.
Seeing them leave, Cindy Moore suddenly felt very alone, her former bravado fading as she realized her earlier churlish behavior would do her little good if she never left the room.
Decker sensed the change and wanted to use it but only to make her listen. He began explaining the finer points of her position. And despite her new vulnerability, it wasn’t sitting well with her.
“How dare you! You kidnap me and my friend, try to make us part of this cover up you are trying to create and now you want to threaten my brother? What the—”
Decker cut her off calmly. “Threaten is such an ugly word. All I said was that he could face up to fifteen years. Then, I told you I could help. Now, what in the world is wrong with that?”
As he spoke, he did his best
what did I do
look, complete with puppy dog eyes and raised eyebrows.
Moore was not buying it for a second, but she knew that her brother’s fate was not set as of yet, so it was possible that this man could make good on his threat. Or his promise of helping. Contingent, of course, on her silence. If so, if this guy was this determined to keep her and Frank quiet, there was more going on than she knew. And oddly, that, more than anything else, frightened her.
“So, if I keep my mouth shut, you use your influence to get my brother a lighter sentence or off even. Sounds like blackmail to me! I wonder if the papers would—”
Decker cut her off with a scoff. “If that’s your attitude, I can give you the number of a couple of guys I know at the
Tribune
and you can go now. Of course,” he lowered his voice to a tone that reeked of menace as he went on slowly, “your brother’s fate will be up to the jury then. And given his record, I can almost assure you that fate will not be a good one.”
Decker could feel the ice shoot from the woman’s eyes, but he maintained his composure. Outwardly at least. After a moment though, she seemed to relax somewhat. At least enough that her gaze didn’t look as though she was wishing for the strength to tear his head off with her bare hands.
“You are a real son of a bitch, you know that?”
Grateful the ploy had worked, Decker smiled as he said in a cheerful tone, “I can accept that. You should accept that, at least for the moment, I’m a son of a bitch on your side.”
“Yes,” she added with an air of dejection, “thank heavens for small favors. They seem to be the only
fucking
ones I can get.”
* * * *
While Decker handled Cindy Moore, Terry took care of what he needed to insure Charlie and this new Chrliti would be able to talk.
It was simple actually. Like any electrical current, Charlie and his counterpart both could travel along a wire. Charlie’s powers in that area were far below standard, thanks to his association with Terry, but given the sudden return of some of that prowess thanks to his recent interaction with Mir, Charlie felt any connection would suffice for him to, at least, contact the Chrliti that was occupying Frank Jones. All Terry had to do was sit at the bar with his feet on the metal rail at the bottom and voila. With that, Charlie could talk to this creature with no problem. In theory at least.
The reality could be a lot different.
* * * *
Decker, having made his calls to those in power to have Cindy Moore’s brother released, her having demanded that as the payment for her silence, now considered his next move. None of them had considered what Frank Jones might want in return for his cooperation but, at the moment, that was a matter of concern for the future. His primary concern, at the moment, was what was Terry Bridger going to find out from Jones and would it do them any good?
* * * *
Terry, meanwhile, made his final check with Charlie. “
How does this feel to you?
”
“Feels good. I can transmit along the rail, and the Chrliti occupying him can hear me, I’m sure.”
Terry let the relief slide into his voice. He was still unsure about this, but in any case, he trusted Charlie.
“Okay, so how long do you think you’ll need?”
Charlie considered that for a moment, finally saying,
“I cannot be sure. Through this though, it could take several times as long. Or several hundred times as long.”
Normally, it would take only seconds for them to talk to each other to the point of being sure.
Terry didn’t like it. It was thin enough to get this guy in here. Decker could decide that there was no need if Terry couldn’t lead it into something productive.
“As soon as he sits down, Charlie, get to digging in. I don’t know how long I can keep this thing going. If Decker doesn’t think it’s necessary, he can shut the whole thing down with a word, so work fast.”
Terry felt more than heard Charlie’s acknowledgment. He hated the idea of pushing into someone’s mind, but the truth was that, at this point, he would have made the trip himself if he had to. The pictures of the crime scene and the autopsies had stirred him enough to make this more than just a job anymore. And the matter of Traci was another thing. From what Mir had given him through Charlie, this guy Pops was her best friend when she really needed one. And given the way Terry was beginning to feel about her, he felt a debt of gratitude was in order for that even though he would never meet the man.
So, he led Jones into the bar and ordered a scotch. Seeing Jones blanch slightly, he quipped cheerfully, “And what would you like, my friend?”
Jones smiled a big, toothy grin and dropped onto a stool. He hadn’t realized how good it would feel to get out of that room, and a gin and tonic, he decided, would be just the celebration he needed. Laying his coat on the stool next to him and propping his feet up on the rail, he signaled the same to the bartender who smiled and started mixing his drink, while Charlie began to course through the rail to get the attention of his counterpart inside the man’s skull.
Roan stopped just inside of the door and stood quietly in the shadows. He wanted to be closer but decided to let Terry have his way. Besides, he was sure that if Jones felt hemmed in, any advantage this place would give was gone just like that.
He didn’t envy Bridger this. Truth was when he first got the assignment of babysitting the pair until Decker showed up, he hadn’t wanted anything to do with it either, so he was glad to turn the job over to someone else.
So, he settled in to see if this new guy could find out whatever else this guy had seen and how he could use it to stop this crap. If it came up, he was there to do whatever he could to help him. He just hoped this guy knew what he was talking about.
Frank Jones was a good man. He’d done his bit for charity and community service on a regular basis, donating time and money freely. He attended church regularly, or at least, when his job allowed. And his life, so far, had been, for the most part, uneventful. He had never been one to shirk his civic duties.
That said, he had never expected to be in the middle of anything like this. He was unprepared for it, and as a result, he was almost in shock. His life was never supposed to go like this, and he had no idea how to deal with it.
Still, this guy was a lot different from the one that had been holding him ever since he and Cindy had been dropped off at the hotel. He seemed friendly almost, as well as a lot more courteous. And the simple fact that he got them to let him out of that room was a major plus in his opinion. The gin wasn’t bad either.
He had no doubt that it was a ploy of some kind to get more information out of him, but the joke was on him. He didn’t know anything he hadn’t told them, so all he was doing was adding to his buzz.
Not that he minded. Like he said, the gin was good and the bar was at least inhabited. And this guy wasn’t asking a lot of questions, allowing him to concentrate on the drink. With a little luck, he decided, he could get enough down to make the whole night a blur, and when he did, he might be able to forget the look on the face of that cabbie.
In Billings, Traci slept fitfully. Her trailer seemed to be hotter than usual, and she couldn’t seem to get the thermostat right. She seemed to be feverish, but her temperature was normal when she went to bed. She had spent the night thinking about this new wrinkle in her life.
In the last two days, her world had been rearranged to the point of being unrecognizable. This guy, Terry, was a weird one. One date and he thinks he’s Captain Save-A-Ho. Did he really think he could change her with one screw?
The real problem for her was that he had. And asking her to take care of his car while he took care of whatever business it was he had in Chicago was scary. She could take the Beamer to a chop shop and be in Vegas in a few hours. He gave her the car to care for, so there was no way to say she stole it. And if someone stole it from her, there was no way he could prove...
She had stopped there. She knew that whatever else she was, she wasn’t a thief. Least of all to someone that had given her this kind of trust. There were questions she wanted to ask, but he hadn’t called her.
What the hell was his game? He blows into town, leaves me his car like he’s known me for his whole life and then leaves me to wonder what the hell he’s...doing. And how he’s doing.”
All of a sudden, she realized that she was worried about him. She wasn’t really sure what he did, but she knew it involved danger of some sort. It was possible that she would end up with his car after all, although the thought of getting it that way scared her even worse.
All of this had been on her mind when she had finally lain down to get some rest. Only rest wasn’t what she got. Her dreams were never good, but tonight, they were horrors. She was standing on street corners in places she didn’t know with men leering at her from a darkness she couldn’t penetrate, naked but for a bikini and shoes. She could see herself in the dream, wearing a look of terror as she cowered against a wall. The men came out by the dozens but none of them touched her, opting instead to glare at her with red-rimmed eyes and panting like dogs. She could feel her heart race for real even though she knew it was a dream. Her legs trembled as she felt her stomach heave from the smell of cheap liquor, even though it was all in her mind. It wasn’t the first time she had had this particular nightmare, but it was the most vividly she had ever experienced it.
She could even feel her skin crawl as she could see the men reaching for her in her dream, grasping, slavering, promising her a night to remember for all the wrong reasons.
Her breath came faster now. Shorter and faster as terror sought to override the knowledge that this was all a dream. That it couldn’t hurt her. Even as the rough hands seized her, pulled toward the darkness she had so quickly learned to fear and began
caressing
her, if that could be truly considered the right word. In her mind, she was screaming at the top of her lungs, kicking and scratching as those hands dragged her through a doorway she could feel rather than see. On the other side, more men waited, naked and licking their lips in anticipation of what they had planned for her, each one thinking fondly of his favorite perversion.
As the men drew closer, she felt fingers slide under the waistband of her bikini bottoms while others tore the top away with a tearing sound that was its own torment. She tried to remind her front brain that it was just a dream, but still, she swore she could feel hot, rancid breath on one nipple while a rough set of teeth latched onto the other hard enough to draw a gasp and then a scream as the pressure increased, threatening to draw blood.
As the dream continued, she shouted in her sleep, calling out for help in both worlds. She lashed in both as well, her hand striking the nightstand, causing her to scream in real life as reality snatched her out of the world she had concocted and deposited her, through a curtain of pain, back in this one.
She let her breathing slow as she stared wild-eyed around the room, half expecting the men from her dreams to rear up from the shadows in the room and finish ravaging her. Watching the shadows for any sign of movement, she let herself calm down in stages, easing herself back into a normal frame of mind.
As she did, Mir, now alerted by her screams, tricked her body into releasing dopamine, the hormone slowing her heart rate and breathing to normal in a few seconds. He had no idea of why she was so terrified, but he could guess. She had had several episodes like his over the last few years, but this one had seemed different somehow. More extreme, more...terrifying. He could feel her fear as if it was his own. And it was enough to convince him that whatever this Terry was going to do, he had better do it fast. Many more nights of this and he could not guarantee she would even be there when he got back.
Frank Jones was not a drinker normally and, as such,
should
have been drunk as a skunk. While he had a good buzz on, he knew the strain of the last few hours was holding him up. He knew it had to be. He also knew that he had to be a little bit worse than he had thought, because usually, he could at least detect what someone wanted when they talked to him, but this guy was beyond him.
Terry had only asked him what he wanted to drink. From that point on, he had either told him about his time in the army or asked off-the-wall questions that made no sense, then sat quietly waited while Jones thought of an answer. He got the feeling that what the answer was meant even less than the question. And when he was done with that, he made sure that he had a fresh drink in his hand. He didn’t even seem to be getting mad that nothing he did seemed to feed him had any real effect.
The truth was that Terry knew he wasn’t being affected by all the alcohol he was taking in, because Charlie amped his adrenalin level to the point that the alcohol had little to no effect on him. He didn’t need him drunk, but if Jones thought it was his own fault that he wasn’t getting drunk, he might be less concerned with what he was saying.