Larch collapsed into a chair. But he turned to the computer, clicked in, worked the controller. Took a dizzyingly fast joyride through urban sprawl. “There.” He stopped at a tallish building, maybe thirty floors. “I don’t know any more than that. They met me in the lobby, blindfolded me on the elevator. Believe me, I didn’t want to know what floor the guy operated out of. I’m pretty sure he had the whole floor to himself, though, because they didn’t seem worried about anyone else being in the hallway. But they kept me blindfold the whole time, so I don’t even know what he looks like. Just that he has this nasal accent, like he’s from New York or Boston or something.”
“Those are kind of different,” Denise said.
Larch seemed to notice for the first time that there were three of us in his office. “Sorry. I was born in Orange County. All that East Coast stuff sounds the same.”
“What about the bodyguard?” Laurel said.
“Ex-mil’s all I know. Though he must have been in the room, because the moment I opened the carrier, I could hear the insects fly out, one by one, like he was taking control of them, then and there. He never spoke, but Perkins called him Jay something or other. Jail? Something weird like that. Jayelle?”
“J.L.?” I asked.
Larch shrugged. “Could be. I really don’t get those East Coast accents.”
I woke screaming.
I’d been in the ravine, my shoulder not feeling like a shoulder. I was trying to reach behind my back like the first-aid said, only my arm wouldn’t do it because something was in the way and the Ladenites were coming, were going to get me, because I couldn’t get up and move, but who cared because it was the shoulder with the tat and I was blind and Senseless and might as well die but that made no sense because the tat was still a tat and the dislocation hadn’t torn a nerve, so where was my swarm? Why didn’t I know what was happening? Would I even know when a Ladenite tossed in a grenade, concussing me, killing me, letting my swarm get away… ?
Phone, I thought, as my senses gelled to the here-and-now. Only there wasn’t any phone because I wasn’t in my apartment. I was in some damn airport, with dozens of people staring at me like I was crazy. Which I guess I was.
Two of the dozens were Denise and Laurel. “Are you okay?” I think it was Denise who said it, but I wasn’t sure.
I nodded. I wasn’t ready for words yet. Not unless they were to a faceless voice on the phone who’d been there himself. My arm was pins and needles from how I’d somehow slumped and fallen asleep on it.
“What happened? A nightmare?”
“Something like that.”
“How often do you get those?”
“Couple of times a week.” I forced myself to keep talking. “Sometimes more, sometimes less. Especially when I’m not sleeping well.” Which I never was, but there was no point going into that.
“You didn’t do that when we were together.”
That wasn’t quite true. But the flashbacks had been different then, and as long as she was there, I’d been all right. At night, I never let myself roll far enough away not to be able to touch her. A fingertip on her back, shoulder, hip—the barest touch was all I needed. Heaven would have been to stay at home… and keep the Sense. Purgatory was having to choose. Hell was losing it all. I’m not much of a theologian, but I know a lot about hell. Hell is the never-ending land of if-only. Coulda-shoulda-woulda, that’s how the psychs put it, always with an implicit don’t go there, as if that’s possible. I coulda-shoulda said no to the Sense and served out my term as an ordinary grunt. But would I have done it?
I wrenched out of the past, looked at Denise. Really looked at her, for the first time since… The familiar laugh lines, now etched with worry. The once-perfect complexion just starting to change. A decade younger than me, aging well. “There was one time when it was a lot worse,” I said.
Her fingers touched her throat. “Why didn’t you explain?”
I shrugged. “It was classified.” Their answer, not mine. And they’d had me in De-con within an hour. Maybe I wouldn’t have cared as much about national security if I’d had more time to think. “But you’d have still thought I was too dangerous.” Which, in fact, I had been. Then there’d been Jerret, and after that she’d been as angry as Cora had been.
The Sense or her? If I could choose again, which would it be?
Then I realized that I’d been given a second chance and hadn’t made the same choice. Back in Laurel’s office, I’d been handed my dream—and walked away from it. Because Denise was there.
When you’ve only got one lead, at least there’s no uncertainty about what to do next. We needed to find out if Perkins was in that highrise. If he was, Jerret and Cora wouldn’t be far away.
The question was how to do it. The building was a cylindrical tower of blue-tinted glass, a lot of space to search. Not to mention that banging on doors was likely to get us shot.
It was Denise who came up with the solution.
“Look,” she said, “we know he’s got a whole floor to himself, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“And this is an older building. Late 1980s, maybe early 1990s. Certainly no later than 1995 or 2000.”
“If you say so.”
“So it’s not going to be full up. Trust me, this is what I do. That’s one of those dead eras in real estate. Everyone loves the latest/greatest, or the cool, older stuff. There’s nothing wrong with a building like this—they’re often great bargains—but for this guy to pick it… well, it says a lot about him.”
“Such as?” This wasn’t a side of Denise I’d ever seen.
“There are a couple of possibilities, but I’m guessing he’s about forty years old, grew up in a place like this when it was new, but not all that happily. He probably thinks that by redoing it he can somehow change all that.” Just like I’d tried to do with Cora, she didn’t say. But her gaze was an accusation.
Laurel saved me. “So what’s the relevance?”
“For Perkins, not a lot, unless I was selling to him. A lot of what I do is applied psychology. But the point is that this building isn’t full up: I’d guarantee it. Any floor with a vacancy’s not the right one. All we need is the vacancy list.”
Unfortunately, getting it wasn’t quite that simple.
Inside, the building seemed innocent enough. Starbucks in the lobby; overweight security guards behind a fake-marble desk. Banked elevators. Boutiques to one side, restaurant/brewpub to the other. An upscale health club in the back, with enough windows that only the most chicly fit would dare use it.
Plastic letters on a brass signboard announced office suites on the lower floors: bland-sounding names with alphabet-soup credentials. Jones Smith Consultants, LLC. Adain Pappalardo, NACT. That type of thing. Fancy-sounding lounge/restaurant on the thirty-fourth floor.
Denise had been online while I’d stepped into a Rite Aid for supplies. Now, barely glancing at the signboard, she pushed the elevator call button, then the button for the third floor. Two minutes later, we were in the sales/rental office, talking to a pale, dark-haired woman whose nameplate proclaimed her to be Hailey Carlton.
Denise handed over her business card. “We’re interested in apartments with lakefront or skyline views,” she said—a nice way of saying everything. “Your building is a bit old, but the location’s attractive. Do you have a vacancy list?”
Hailey smiled. “Yes, but since July, other than for the hotel floors, of course, it’s been sales only. We’re in the process of remodeling and converting.”
“That’s fine,” Denise said. “Even if they don’t wind up living here, Ki-, Kim and… Laura here might be interested in investment properties.”