The Terminals (20 page)

“She didn't say a word about any of this,” Jules complained.

Cam nodded, understanding what Jules did not. “She's a vault,” he said.

Jules's phone rang. She tapped it. “Yes?”

Cam watched her shake her head, and then her eyes filled with tears.

“I know,” Jules said. “We love you.” She turned. “Cam, she wants to talk to you.”

Cam took the headset. “What's happening in there?” he asked suddenly and loudly. Ari had to shush him.

Her voice was strangely calm. “Relax, Cam. I want to thank you.”

“For what?”

“For being a nice guy. For making me feel special.” She paused. “And I'm sorry I didn't leave you that note. Whoever did is making a wise choice.”

“Thanks, but this is an odd time. Everyone is standing here listening to me.”

“I don't care. I have to go. And you have to come. Now. Good-bye, Cam.”

“Calliope…?” He didn't understand. He wanted to talk some more. There
had
been a connection. He hadn't imagined it. Cam looked up to find the team staring at him and realized that he had no idea how long he'd been standing there holding the dead phone.

“Well, what did she say?” Donnie demanded.

“She said come now.”

They started for the door. In the other direction their hostess's phone rang. She answered, and her face paled. She rushed from the hallway, tapping the screen on her phone furiously.

“Go time!” Donnie said, and he strode toward the man at the end of the hall, fists balled in anticipation.

The team followed. The man watched Calli's friends come, unconcerned.

“Calli called us,” Ari announced as they approached.

The man admitted them to the waiting room just as a feminine cry of alarm rose from behind the dressing room door on the far side of the room.

“Something's wrong!” Ari shouted, and he started toward the door.

The four guards were lounging on couches. They leaped to their feet, one going to the door, another moving to stop Ari. But Donnie and Tegan were already among them like wolves, moving even faster than Cam remembered from training. Donnie wrapped himself around a guard's arm and yanked upward with a popping sound. The man went down immediately, his elbow bent backward, forearm flopping loose. Tegan grappled another and flipped him over a couch. They moved so fast that they disposed of their initial opponents before the others had time to turn on them.

The man from the hall stepped into the room to enter the fray, but Zara whirled and planted her heel square in his jaw with a sickening crunch. His head snapped back and rebounded from the doorframe. Cam winced. He'd felt the impact of her foot himself—it had practically caved in his chest, and she hadn't been trying to injure him.

All of it happened before Cam had a chance to move. Two men remained. One faced Donnie, who still had his foot on the guard with the broken arm. Cam shoved the man from behind. He went down, but came right back up, flicking out a telescoping rod. He swung it at Cam's head.

“Club!” Wally shouted. He grabbed a pillow to catch the blow. The silver rod flashed like a darting fish, striking foam as Cam fell backward on the couch. The pillow saved Cam, but the cudgel was deflected into Wally's own face. It smacked flesh and bone. Wally howled, but fought through the blow to grab the man's hand. He pulled it down and smashed it against the coffee table once, then again, and again. Bone splintered against wood, the rod long gone. The man lay writhing on the ground as Wally straddled his arm and began to hammer his unrecognizable hand into the table like a small red sledge, until Jules and Owen pulled him off.

The violence ended suddenly. The guards were all incapacitated. None were dead. Wally bled profusely from his nose, which sat askew on his face, obviously broken. Ari hurried to stanch the bleeding with the pillow, while Jules calmed him down. He'd taken a glancing blow that might have broken Cam's skull.

There was another shout of alarm behind the dressing room door, male this time.

“Calliope!” Cam gasped, and he leaped to the far door.

It was locked, but cheap and flimsy. Tegan's size-thirteen shoe made short work of it. It burst open, and Cam shoved his way inside.

The man kneeling on the floor had to be the bauxite politician. He was at least fifty and wore a suit. He yelled for his guards, but Cam shook his head, making it clear they wouldn't be coming.

Calliope was sprawled on the floor before him like a sacrificial offering. Cam's heart sank. The woman who'd given such life to a crowd of thousands lay still now, her eyes open but empty, the knife that ended her song nearby on the floor. Her crimson dress was puddled in the corner, and a pool of equally red blood widened slowly on the floor beneath her nude body, so pale by contrast that she might have been carved from a single piece of alabaster.

“You killed her!” Donnie barked.

The man was panicked. “No!” he said. “She asked to see my knife. She stabbed herself!”

Donnie and Cam started for the man at the same time. But there was a commotion in the hall behind them. Their hostess had returned with stadium security.

Ari grabbed them both by the shoulder. “No! It's over,” he said, casting a sorrowful glance at the unreal scene. “Pilot says to go.”

“What's happening?” Jules wailed in the doorway.

“Time to go!” Ari insisted.

And then they were pushing past stadium security hurrying in the opposite direction.

“In there!” Ari shouted to the bewildered officers on his way out. “He stabbed her!”

Jules was sobbing. Zara kept looking back over her shoulder, as though she burned to go back and wipe the floor with the bauxite man. But it was too late. They'd been too slow.

And it's my fault
, Cam thought. Calliope had said “now,” and he'd hesitated. He had stood debating her affection like a needy pubescent boy instead of saving her life like a man. Not focused. Not strong enough. Not fast enough. A failed knight cringing behind a foam shield wielded by a lunatic who was a more worthy male protector than he.

 

CAM'S PLAYLIST

22. HAMSTER WHEEL
  

by The Fluffy Bunnies

23. REVELATION

by Breathe

24. GROWTH SPURT

by The Lucky Ones

“I try to reach the top, but it just won't stop.”

They were in the parking lot, the commotion of the match and the sinister events beneath the stadium behind them. The team was focusing on the task at hand—exiting, escaping. Purpose kept the insanity at bay. Ari trotted to a stop at the large empty parking stall.

“What the hell?” he barked.

The bus was gone.

Their phones rang. Pilot spoke. “Vehicle change. Three cars. Keys under the visors. Directions on the GPS. Get out of there. The police are coming.”

They found the cars quickly, two BMW sedans and a black Dodge Charger. But Pilot was wrong. The police weren't coming—they were already there. Two patrol cars burst into the parking lot, sirens blaring. One proceeded to the stadium. The other slowed and turned their way.

Ari ducked. “Shit! Don't show them which cars you're taking. I'll draw them off.” With that, he threw himself in the driver's seat of the Charger. Jules followed, and though he waved her off, she got in anyway. The rest of them waited to climb into the BMWs as Ari tore out of the lot past the oncoming patrol car.

The police car accelerated after him. Moments later, Cam was in a BMW with Wally and Zara. Wally climbed into the driver's seat.

“You're
not
driving,” Cam said, horrified at the prospect of riding in a car with Wally at the wheel. When Wally started to protest, Cam pointed at his ruined nose. “You're injured.”

Zara pushed Wally aside and secured the keys. “I got this,” she said.

“The GPS should take us on the same route as Ari,” Cam pointed out. “No need to catch up. Just keep it calm, inconspicuous.”

He didn't feel calm or inconspicuous, but it seemed like the right thing to say. They drove through town unnoticed, following the speed limit and the GPS on the dashboard. Zara drove efficiently and with razor-sharp reflexes, snapping in and out of her lane to avoid the less-than-careful local drivers.

At the edge of town they went north, followed the highway for a time, and then turned onto a secondary road. It was only a mile before they came upon the police car. It was parked on the side of the road just beyond two horrendous potholes, its lights still flashing. The other BMW was tucked in behind it. Owen waved them down, and they pulled over and hopped out. The officer sat in the back of his own car behind the safety cage with a deep frown. Owen quickly explained that Tegan had stuffed him inside after they'd confronted and overpowered him.

“Where's Ari?”

Owen took a deep breath. He pointed off the road at a reddish dirt field. “Over there.”

Cam gasped and started into the field.

“Wait!” Owen called after him. But Cam saw the problem, and he didn't wait.

The Charger lay on its side. It looked unremarkable, entirely unlike car wrecks from the movies. No smoke. No ominously spinning tire. It was as though a giant child had simply left his toy car on its side when he'd been called to dinner. Donnie and Tegan stood atop the Charger, wrenching on the bent passenger door. Metal squealed, and then gave, and the door came loose. The two of them hauled it open. They leaned in and dragged Jules out. She was in hysterics, babbling about Ari.

“Shut up!” Donnie barked as he and Tegan lowered her to the ground. “She can walk. Get her out of here.”

“No! I'm staying. Ari!”

Owen stood by the police car, casting anxious glances at the officer in the backseat. “Hurry up!” he yelled into the field. “He's sure to have called for backup or an ambulance.”

Zara and Wally arrived at the Charger to help. They took charge of Jules and led her back to the BMW. Cam stayed, trying to see Ari through the cracked windshield.

“He's tangled,” Donnie said. “Let's just turn this thing over.”

Donnie hopped down, and, with Tegan, began pushing on the car to turn it upright.
Two guys shouldn't be able to flip a car
, Cam thought. But when they set their feet in the dirt and shoved together, the Charger immediately tilted, and then went over with the tortured squealing sound as the ruined passenger door swung on its broken hinges, and a heavy thump as the tires hit the ground.

“Hurry. Get him out!”

Donnie was inside. “Come on, teammate,” he was saying. “Hang in there.”

In spite of Donnie's encouragement, Ari died. It was clear to Cam as soon as they brought him out. Too wilted. Too broken. He'd seen death several times now, and he found that he recognized it immediately. It was not so much the injuries as an absence of energy. The Ari he'd known radiated life. The body they held was a shell. Empty. Inert. Cam didn't need to be told. They laid it at his feet, and the head lolled to one side. Donnie listened at his chest, and then felt for a pulse. Finally, he looked up at Cam.

“Hey man,” he said, “I'm sorry. I know you liked him.”

That was all. Tegan threw Ari's body unceremoniously over his shoulder and ran for the cars.

*   *   *

Pilot had them back at the beach in under four hours. Jules was still dazed, either from the horrific events or the sedative Pilot had given her. Cam tried to walk her to her condo, but she shooed him away.

“I need to think,” she mumbled.

Ward warned her that thinking too much after a mission wasn't a good idea. “Just relax for now. Wind down. We'll debrief in forty minutes,” he said.

Cam was left to trudge down to his own condo alone. He'd made peace with their losses during the four-hour trip, but the small place still felt empty without Ari. His roommate's dirty clothes were still piled in the basket beside his footlocker. His notebook still sat on the desk. Cam turned it over, and then picked it up. There would be notes in it, he thought.
Smart-guy notes. Strategy and survival notes.
Maybe he could learn something that would keep him alive for a few more missions. Cam eased it open. There was indeed writing, and lots of it, the sort that poured out when the hand couldn't keep up with the brain. Cam flipped through. Months' worth of hurried-looking script filled page after page. It was a narrative, not just notes.
A diary
, Cam realized. He flipped through it until he reached a page where Jules's name caught his eye, and then he read too much before he could stop himself.

They'd done it. Sex. In the condo before Cam had arrived. Cam wondered what it must be like on TS-9. Three lines later, Ari answered him with a single word. “Unbelievable.” Jules was passionate and emotional, the diary said. Cam believed it. He could immediately picture her demonstrative face showcasing each emotion as it came and went—her big smile so open and welcoming, her oversized eyes so wide with delight, her gasping breaths so deep and abrupt that her eyelids would suddenly mash together tight. She was a bundle of exaggerated feelings.
Enhanced feelings.
Ari's physical description of her was also complimentary, almost poetic, like a mortal worshipping a goddess.