Basilisk

crumbling place except for us. “I suppose I should be offended by that, on my behalf and on humanity’s behalf as well, but, Michael. . . .” He put the car in park and smiled at me. It was full of gloat and triumph. “This deficient human has certainly put you in your place, now haven’t I?” He opened the driver door, but paused to gift me with a last few words before exiting. “Your place in the grand scheme of things is slave, chimera. An obedient, servile slave and I’ll make damn sure you never forget that again.”

He slammed the door behind him. I didn’t bother to think about being a slave again, because I’d die before that happened. I did think about what he meant by bringing my friend up. What friend? Saul?

I heard the thump of the trunk, muffled sounds of outrage, and then the other door to the backseat was flung open. I saw pale skin, a flash of long legs under a short purple, blue, and green filmy skirt, lavender sandals that had ties that crisscrossed up the calf to tie in a neat bow just under the knees, and toenails painted pink—cotton candy pink.

The same as the girl’s hair.

“Ariel?”

“Yes, your Easter egg–colored girlfriend from New York.” Raynor tore away the duct tape that served as a gag, taking strands of pink hair stuck in the adhesive. “She was so worried about you that she showed up in Cascade Falls looking for someone who matched your description with the rather boring name of Bernie. Instead, she found one of my men. Mercenaries. You kill one, I simply hire another. I didn’t think you’d go back to the Falls, but you never know. And while I didn’t catch you, I did catch another little fish in my net, or rather one of my men did. She’s quite a loud fish too but a perfect way of keeping you in line, along with the chains.”

Her wary and suspicious blue eyes focused on the finger he wagged in her face. “Now then, scream again, little fish, and I’ll hurt you. And trust me when I say that I’ll enjoy it. Might even make a hobby of it. So let’s use our inside voices, shall we?” He closed the door, the overhead light going dark again. Back behind the wheel, he hit the childproof locks and we were on the road again. “And do keep in mind, Michael, while I can’t do much to hurt you in the more permanent sense without losing a large profit, to her I can do anything I want. My imagination in that area is vast and impressive.”

I didn’t face Ariel, not yet. I had a question first, the same question for both of them, but I asked Raynor first. “How did you find me?”

“Oh, I have a tracker too. I found the house in Laramie the same as you, but as I flew, while suctioning out my new tracheotomy—quite pleasant, thank you—I beat you. I saw the discarded chips inside the house and I knew you wouldn’t be far behind. I waited out of sight and shot your ‘borrowed’ SUV with a magnetic tracking disc. Hands-on operation, that’s what I’m about. And I don’t care for my mercenaries to know too much about what I’m doing. Then I followed you and waited for a chance at you alone, without your rather shady companions. Lucky me, I stumbled across one fairly quickly.”

Again, thanks to me. Now I looked at Ariel. Despite the dark and with the help of the occasional passing headlights, I could see that her usually smooth pink bob was a tangled mess. The faint glitter of light purple eye shadow and mascara was smeared. Her standard pink lip gloss was gone, the same pink as her short fingernails that decorated the hands that sat in her lap. The hands didn’t have much choice. Her wrists were restrained with the same plastic ties the police used. She looked lost, confused, and vulnerable . . . right up until the moment she lifted her bound wrists and smacked me hard across the jaw with them. “Liar!” Then she leaned back far enough to plant one purple sandal in my left ribs. “You are such a filthy liar, Bernie! Or is it Parker? That’s what they were calling you in that tiny little town. And this maniac is calling you Michael. So which is it?”

Strands of hair had fallen in her eyes and she blew them out of the way to gauge that perfect aim one more time. The sandal slammed me again. “When we get out of this, when I kick your brainiac ass, I want to know exactly what name to call you, and it damn sure won’t be Dr. Theoretical.”

She was petite and slender, but she could kick like a mule. With four inches’ reach thanks to the chains, there wasn’t much I could do about it either. She kicked me one more time before giving up to glare at me. I seized the moment of silence to ask her what I’d asked Raynor. “How did you find me?” Or rather, how had she found out where I had been before going on the run again?

“Oh, please. I’m every bit the genius you think you are and then some.” The tiny mermaid tattoo beside her eye seemed to flick its tail at me in displeasure. “You can bounce your Internet signal around the world a hundred times, but I can still trace it back to the source. It did take me six months. You were awfully thorough, but I have a brother who hacked the Pentagon when he was eleven.” She gave me a last disgusted glance, then used her fingers to awkwardly try to smooth out her hair. “I’ve known you didn’t live in Texas forever, but you seemed like such a good guy that I thought you might have your reasons to lie. And when you disappeared after a few weird e-mails and mentioned a family emergency, I started to worry.” She shifted shoulders under a sparkling top—I’d call it light green, but she’d probably call it sea foam. “So . . . I went for a surprise visit. Because I worried. Because I’m a good person.”

“And, my, I’ll bet you were surprised, weren’t you, darlin’?”

She lifted her foot to kick the back of Raynor’s seat, but then thought better of it and paid him no attention instead. “I flew into Portland using up all my frequent flier miles, rented a car, and when I got to Cascade Falls, I found out there was no Bernie. I shouldn’t have been surprised, since you lied about where you lived.” She was back to glaring at me. “But some coffeehouse bimbo recognized your picture.” She blushed as pink as her nail polish. “One that I happened to have with me. No big deal. I have one of my pet rat too.” Her expression said I was about ten rungs below rat, and not a pet one either. “The bimbo said your name was Parker and you’re soooo sweet and such a doll and couldn’t be cuter and you worked at the coffeehouse.”

The glare was white-hot now. It could’ve cut metal like an acetylene torch. “You’re watching movies with me every week while flirting with some brainless wonder serving up caffeine, lying about your name, lying about getting your PhD. Lying about everything. But I try . . . try to give you the benefit of the doubt. Fake name, fake job when you are smart enough to have two PhDs by now; you love the escape of movies because maybe that’s the only escape you have. You could be in the Witness Protection Program. I liked you so much, I was willing to turn off my own brain cells and go along with that ridiculous excuse.”

This time she did kick the back of Raynor’s seat. “Until this asshole has some goon grab me, toss me into the trunk of his car, put me on a private plane, fly me out here, and throw me into another car trunk. That is not Witness Protection. Homeland Security, Gitmo, or plain criminals, that I can see, but not Witness Protection.”

“You’re right about that, but kick the back of my seat again, girly, and I’ll but a bullet in that pretty little foot of yours,” Raynor warned.

The threat didn’t intimidate her—I wasn’t sure anything would—but she used common sense and tucked her feet under her in an impossibly flexible move. “And now this dick says your name is Michael.” The fury faded from her eyes and transmuted into speculation. “Well?”

“Well what?” I asked cautiously.

“What’s the truth? What’s your name? Who are you? What’s going on? That ‘well.’ ”

She was every bit the Ariel I’d come to know over the past years . . . and more. That should’ve made me happy. Taking into account the situation, I was anything but. “Oh. You’re done. I wasn’t sure,” I said. “I thought you might go on for a couple more hours.”

“Do you want me to kick you for hours, because that I can do. I take yoga. My stamina is profound. Absolutely goddamn profound, got it?”

I got it. “My name’s Michael, but I go by Misha, and I was in hiding. That’s kind of obvious.” I shook my chains to demonstrate. “That was why I lied to you.”

“And?” she asked when I stopped.

“And that’s all I can tell you.”

“That’s all? What do you mean that’s all? After you used me? Because that was what it was, wasn’t it? You were using me for. . . .”

The next words out of her mouth were going to be “genetic research,” and that was the last thing I wanted Raynor to hear and be thinking about. It would muddle things and have him ordering someone to make a run at Stefan to get my case with the delivery system of tranquilizer guns. That was not going to happen. I couldn’t kick her, in turn, to keep her quiet, not with my shackles.

I went with the next best thing, cutting her off with a brusque, “Fine. Okay. I used you for computer sex. I typed with one hand and jacked off with the other. When I wasn’t screwing Sara from the coffeehouse and was