Safe House

Crystal Beth put her head down and took another experimental lick. I was dead.

“Did I do something?” she asked, tilting her head to look up my body toward my face as I lay on my back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Seeing the cellular phone in my mind, willing the goddamned thing to ring.

“No,” I told her, wondering for the hundredth time if the batteries were still good, if I shouldn’t have gotten a backup clone to the same number from the Mole, if I shouldn’t have told Herk the last time to . . .

“Did I not do something?” Crystal Beth wanted to know, still not moving.

“It’s not you,” I said. “It’s me.”

“You’re worried about—?”

“Yeah,” I cut her off, thinking what an inadequate word “worried” was for what I was feeling.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Why not, honey?”

“Because it’s not yours, Crystal Beth. Not anymore.”

“What do you mean?” she asked in a challenging voice, propping herself up on one elbow. “I’ve been in this since—”

“Whatever happens now, it’s not going to be you. Or any of your stuff. Pryce isn’t going to rat you out. You or Vyra or your network. Nothing.”

“But you got yourself into this for—”

“For my brother. For my family. Not for you.”

“But you love—”

“Them.”

“And you love me too,” she said aggressively, her hands on my shoulders, hauling herself up so her nose was right on my forehead. “Me too. Don’t you?”

“Crystal Beth . . .”

“It’s not what you say, it’s what you do, remember?” she whispered against me. “Why can’t you be honest with me?”

“Like you are with me?” I asked, pushing her away so I could sit up. And watch the cellular, sitting there across the room plugged into the portable charging unit, smirking its silence at me.

“What. Do. You. Mean?” she asked, each word a bullet in a cocked revolver.

“You’re so honest,” I said sarcastically. “Such a good hippie, you are. All peace and love and truth, right?”

“I would have told you about Vyra if she hadn’t—”

“And about Rollo’s?” I said quietly.

She got off the bed and walked to the black window, her body glowing in the faint light. She bowed her head, clasped her hands in front of her. Like a child being punished, made to stand in the corner.

I watched her thick, rounded body. That gravity-defying butt. Belle jammed across my mind. Not as a word, or even an image. Just a . . . flitting . . . gone. I felt the flashback coming and put it down. Away from me now. But not gone, I knew. Never gone. That big girl. Going out to die . . .

I . . . stopped. Focused on Crystal Beth’s pigtails standing out stark against her shoulderblades. But it was like watching a hologram—the image shifted, and now it was Herk’s face against her back, framed by the pigtails, trusting.

Crystal Beth turned, breaking the spell, and came back to the bed.

“Do you want me on my knees?” she asked.

“I told you, it’s not you. I can’t—”

“Not for that,” she interrupted, her voice hushed and delicate. “To apologize. I wronged you. I had good reasons, once. But they . . . I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I want to tell you. Do you want to listen?”

“Yeah.”

She went to her knees, looking up at me sitting on the bed. “I didn’t tell you about Rollo’s because it wouldn’t be right to endanger the others. I had people to protect. We’re all part of the same . . . I don’t know how to explain it to you. The network, that’s one thing. There’s a lot of us in it. But there’s something smaller. Closer. Family. Like yours. Mimi and T.B. And Rusty.”

“Rusty?”

“The big guy, the one who’s always drawing.”

“Oh yeah, him.”

“There’s others too. Cash—you didn’t see him, he wasn’t in that night—he does the . . . marketing for us. Gets the word out so people know where to find us, make the connections. We even have a radio station . . . well, not really a station, but we’ve got people on the air—Bad Boy and Autopsy—they broadcast out of Salt Lake. There’s a code we use. On the Internet too. Mimi’s sister Synefra set it up. . . . Look, we’re . . . one. I wasn’t trying to trick you. Or . . . maybe I was, I don’t know. I’m not good at it. Vyra said you were . . . someone who could help us.”

“Vyra’s in your family?”

“No. The others don’t . . . I love Vyra. She’s really a sweet, wonderful girl. You don’t know her.”

“That’s what Herk said too.”

“He’s right. Sex doesn’t mean you know someone. But once you . . . did what you did—for us, I mean—I could have told you. I should have told you. I apologize for that. I don’t want secrets from you.”

“What difference does it make now?”

“Families can . . . merge,” she said softly. “Families can come together. No matter what you say, no matter what you said, anyway . . . you have a purpose. You have a purpose now.”

“So?”

“My mother and father were from different tribes. But they . . . merged. They were . . . partners. I want to be your partner.”

“Come here,” I said, holding out my hand to her.

When she came to me, I told her what it would cost to be my partner.

When Pryce walked in the front door of Mama’s restaurant, he instinctively held his hands away from his body. Whatever he was, he had a pro’s nose—he knew he was one wrong move away from an unmarked grave.

He walked the gauntlet, past Mama’s register, past Clarence and Michelle sitting in one of the front booths, past Max the Silent wearing a waiter’s apron, past the Prof, although he couldn’t have seen the little man unless he looked under one of the tables. If he had, he would have seen the double-barreled sawed-off that was the Prof’s trademark back in his cowboy days.

They had his face now. Had his walk, his webbed fingers, the skull beneath his skin. Had him all, every piece of him. And soon they’d have his voice. They could pick him out of a crowd even with the best plastic surgeons in the world doing their work.

And he knew it.

But he kept on coming, right to my booth in the back.

Mama kept her position at the register. I’d already had my soup. And she didn’t serve it to outsiders.

He sat down. The muscle under his eye jumped. I knew by now it wasn’t an anxiety tic. Probably the last plastic-surgery job had gone a little wrong, damaged some of the nerves in the area. I wondered why they’d never fixed his hands.

“I know how to do it now,” I told him, no preamble. “But now it’s time to find out who you are.”

“What does that mean?” he asked, even-toned.

“You ever wonder,” I asked him, “if it’s only terrorists who have enough balls to drive a truck loaded with explosive?”

“I don’t get your meaning.”

“I’ve got a plan. But it needs something I don’t have. Six heroes.”