The Blonde

“Got a name, little sister?” Kowalski asked. This might be her. The financial link they’d been searching for.

She smiled. “Let’s see. We’ve got a Silver. And it was Kelly White, wasn’t it? So call me Ms. Black.”

“I am not going to call you Ms. Black. That’s ridiculous.”

“Lucia, then.”

Kowalski scanned his memory. Lucia, Lucia, Lucia … Was the name anywhere in those Excel files? Not that it mattered, really. They would subdue this one, make her talk. She would tell them everything they needed to know. He was rusty, but he still had some moves. He knew how to make it hurt.

“After I heard what happened,” Lucia said, “I flew to my brother’s lab. There was enough to piece together the story. As well as a tracking device.”

She showed them the little plastic box again.

“How can we help you, Lucia?” Kowalski asked.

“I wanted to meet you in Los Angeles, but you were busy. I didn’t know they’d try to send someone to kill you so quickly.”

“We’re here now. What do you want?”

“Not here. Some place quiet.”

Some place quiet was an empty banquet room down a tiled hallway that featured a giant oil painting of a bull that had been stabbed with three lances. Kowalski kicked out the door stop. With a pneumatic hiss, the door closed behind him.

Kowalski gave Vanessa a look, and they both pulled their guns on Lucia.

He had no idea if Vanessa even knew how to use a gun. But the intimidation factor had to be a bonus.

They both aimed for her head.

“I’m unarmed,” Lucia said.

“Of course you are,” Kowalski said.

Lucia quickly pressed a series of buttons her little plastic box. “Mr. Kowalski, you’re going to want to back up right about now.” Lucia moved closer to Vanessa.

“Hey,” Vanessa said. “Stop.”

Something beeped.

“Or what? You’ll shoot? You won’t shoot me. Because if you do, you’ll have no way of reversing what I’ve just done to you.”

“What did you do?” Kowalski asked.

She turned and raised her eyebrows. “Mr. Kowalski, really, back up. At least ten feet.”

And now maybe it was the concussion, or the sip of beer he’d had, or a delayed reaction the paralyzing needle prick from the gorgeous pain freak in San Diego … but Kowalski’s head really started to throb badly. Worse with every beat of his pulse. Like there was something expanding in his brain, trying to push his eyes out of their sockets from within.

“Fuck,” he said. He meant to step backward, but ended up tripping forward.

It got WORSE.

Holy fucking GOD.

Is this what they all went through, right before the Mary Kates ate their brains?

“Back, Mr. Kowalski. That’s the other direction. Quickly now.”

“What did you do to me!?” Vanessa screamed.

He was finally able to scoot backward, out of range. The pain seemed to diminish slightly. But he still wanted to throw up.

“I’ve reprogrammed your nanites. You’re now a killer for real now, Vanessa Reardon. Anyone comes within ten feet of you, you’ll trigger the Proximity in their bloodstream. You’ll make their brains explode.”

“You …”

Vanessa reached out, trying to touch Lucia’s shoulder.

“Me?” asked Lucia. “Honey, I’m immune. I shut down the nanites in my blood before I flew out here. Injected myself with a nanite that eats Proximity. I could drink your blood right now and be perfectly fine.”

Great, Kowalski thought. Like brother, like sister.

“Unfortunately for you,” she continued, “most of the continent has been infected by now. Including, I’d guess, all of the people in this hotel.”

Vanessa shuddered, dropped her Beretta. Kowalski doubted she even realized it. If it was possible for a human being to fold up inside herself and disappear, Vanessa was doing it now.

“You’re a killer, Vanessa. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Kowalski picked up his Luger and aimed it at Lucia’s chest.

Of course, there was no way he could pull the trigger.

That’s just sick,” the interrogator said, then exhaled a short burst of air. “Wow.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

“I mean, Jesus. I’m a guy who makes his living carving out people’s assholes with a knife. But even that strikes me as going too far. Even for revenge.”

The interrogator played with his knife a little more, then seemed to have a bit of a revelation.

“Oh … I get it now. She didn’t really mean to kill those seventeen people, did she? They were collateral damage.”

“You could say that.”

“Man, that is wicked cold. I have got to meet this Lucia chick.”

“You’d make a nice couple. Anyway, can I finish? I really have to take a leak, and we’re almost at the end.”

The interrogator put his little knife on the table then spread his hands. “By all means.”

Kowalski leaned forward to finish his story.

“By the time I stood up, Vanessa was gone. She ran out of the room. So did Lucia, cackling the whole way. My head was a wreck. It took a lot of effort to stand up. I made it out to the parking lot, but the car was already gone. Vanessa took it. I didn’t have much to go on. She didn’t know the roads down there. She could have gone anywhere.

“I hotwired a car and went looking anyway. My vision was shot, and it was night. But I kept driving.

“A couple of hours later I saw a body by the side of the road. It was an old woman. I pulled the car over and got out. It looked like her head had been run over with a truck tire. But I knew that wasn’t what happened. I’d seen that kind of gushing head wound before. Vanessa had been here. She’d killed that woman because she got too close.

“An hour later, I found two more bodies. It was a little shore town that didn’t even have a name. I can only imagine that Vanessa had pulled in there because it looked dark, and maybe had beach access. She probably thought she could go to the beach and be alone and try to figure this out.

“I drove into the town and got out, and there were bodies everywhere. This is probably where you found most of the victims. Must have been a party that let out…something. I don’t know. A couple of kids were gibbering in Spanish about pelirrojo, pelirrojo. Redhead.

“I ask them what happened. They told me about a crazy woman with wild hair who kept telling them to stay back, stay back. Shouting at them. Waving her arms. Trying to run away. But still, people approached, wanting to help help her. They would only make it a few steps before dropping to their knees.

“‘Ella es laplagaV the kids shouted. She is the plague.

“I kept driving but didn’t find her. It was almost morning. She could anywhere. So I went back to the hotel, hoping she’d make her way back eventually. Once she had a chance to calm down.

“And yeah, I know that was ridiculous. The last thing she’d want was to come near me.

“I hadn’t even checked into the hotel. So I waited in the lobby, drinking Diet Coke to keep myself awake.

“A couple of hours later, after the sun came up, she had me paged. I picked up the hotel’s house phone.

“She told me she was at a pay phone somewhere, not to bother looking for her. She told me she was tired of killing. Of being a monster. There was nowhere left to go, she said. I told her to calm down, that I’d help her. We’d