“Him?” I turned to follow him as he walked past. “If he gives me any problems, I’ll just shoot him.”
I heard the security guard behind me, a warble of uncertainty as he whispered to his colleagues. I followed the long-haired man back to the elevator, stopping in front of the door after he pressed the down button. “I didn’t need your help,” he said, stepping into the box.
“Of course you didn’t,” I said with an easy nod. “You were about to lay waste to three local rent-a-cops and probably a couple nurses because you had it all well under control.”
“Damned right.” His sullen look finally cracked and I caught the shake of his head that was followed by a grin. “How have you been, Sienna? I haven’t seen you in my dreams lately.”
I blew air noiselessly between my lips. “Honestly, I’ve been too busy to think about you, Reed.”
“Ouch.” He ran a hand through his long hair. “So you’re a full-on Directorate agent now, huh?”
“Nah. I work for the FBI. Longer hours, worse pay.”
He rolled his eyes. “Sure. Should we play the game of denial about why each of us is here, or can we cut the crap and get right to the truth?”
“I will if you will.”
“You’re here because of the guy, right?” He stared me down. “The guy going around treating convenience store clerks like he’s Chris Brown?”
I started to lie, but he was watching me. I’d known Reed longer than just about anybody, though I hadn’t spoken to him in months. “Yeah. We figure this is a new meta, just manifesting, that needs a serious reining in.”
“Yeah?” He tugged on the front of his shirt. He was wearing a nice one, a white dress shirt that was untucked, with a suit coat over it and dark jeans. “You talk to the guy in Owatonna?”
“You mean the guy with a big hole in his memory?”
“He was kind of a dead end, wasn’t he?” Reed smiled. “The ones in Wyoming and South Dakota had the exact same problem, oddly enough. How big of a believer are you in coincidence? Because I’m not much of one; and head traumas don’t typically cause that much memory loss.”
“What kind of meta would be able to do that?” I folded my arms, felt the familiar lump under my left arm as I rested my hand on my pistol.
He shrugged, looking for all the world like he was a man unconcerned with anything. “Well, the beatings could be caused by just about any type…as for the other, there’s a few that could cause that, but one in particular I’m thinking of.”
I waited a minute for him to answer. “I thought we weren’t gonna do the mystery game.”
“I said we weren’t gonna do the denial game – I never said I was gonna tell you everything I know.” He turned and pushed the button to call the elevator and stared at me, puzzlement brewing on his face. “Why Clarke? Why not just go with Nealon?”
I rolled my eyes and lowered my voice. “Because if you’re going to commit a felony, it’s best not to use your real name, especially if said name is being entered into the FBI database as an agent. That tends to leave a pretty exact record if anything goes wrong.”
He frowned. “Well, wouldn’t they have had to put a picture of you into the database in a personnel file?”
“I—” I stopped and thought about it. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not planning on making a major problem of it.”
“Huh.” He stared back at me with cool amusement. “I might worry about that a little bit if I were you, especially given who you work for.”
“Oh yeah?” We both looked up as the elevator dinged. “Care to share what you mean by that?”
He smiled as he stepped into the elevator. “Nope.” His hand reached out to hold the door as Kat came up to join us. “What’s the word, blondie? Does this guy have a swiss melt for a memory too?”
Kat had the rarest of expressions cross her face, irritation, as she shot me a look, as though she were asking permission before speaking in front of him. I nodded at her. “Yeah,” she said. “He’s perfectly healthy, his brain is fine, but the memory’s just gone, like it never existed.”
“Same old story.” Reed pulled his hand back and the elevator door started to close. “See you ladies down the road. Oh, and Sienna? You smell like whiskey. Just FYI.”
The elevator doors closed before I could snap back a reply. I looked to Kat, who was slightly flushed. “Of course I smell like whiskey,” I said. “I’ve been drinking whiskey.” Kat shrugged as I pushed the elevator button to call another one. “Ass,” I said, lowering my voice.
“Who was he?” Kat waited until we were walking across the parking lot to ask.
“Him?” I chucked a thumb toward the hospital building. “When Zack and Kurt came to my house for the first time, they ended up drawing guns—”
“What?” She looked at me with incredulity. “Really?”
“Really. I kinda got into a scuffle with them first. Anyway, I ended up running when Kurt started shooting, and Reed was waiting outside and offered me an escape route, so I took him up on it.”
“They shot at you?” She stopped and grabbed me by the arm. I felt the strength in her grip; it wasn’t quite as much as I could bring to bear, but the girl was no slouch. “With real bullets?”
“Tranquilizer darts. But I didn’t know that until later.”
“So who is he?” She stared at me evenly, and had the slightest smile. “He’s kinda cute, you know.”
“I had noticed that, yes.” I pulled my arm gently from her grasp. “And if he’d ever stick around for more than five minutes without disappearing, that might matter.”
“Oooh,” she said in a somewhat high and floating voice. “A man of mystery?”
“The very definition of it.” I opened the passenger door to the SUV and climbed in, tossing a glance back to confirm Scott was still snoring softly in the back, head against the window and mouth open wide. “I bet you could do with a little bit more of that in your life right about now.”
“Huh?” She cocked her head at me, question written on her face, then swiveled to look when I indicated the backseat. She saw Scott, shook her head and stuck the key in the ignition. “So what did he tell you?”
“Not much. Said he’d interviewed the victims out in Wyoming and South Dakota, that they had the same memory gap as the guy in Owatonna.” I leaned back against the headrest. “So now we’ve got four people who got the holy hell beat out of them and they don’t remember a thing about it. We’ve got no idea where they’re going and no clue who’s doing it – except…” I frowned.
“What?” She was at rapt attention, looking at me.
“Reed confirmed one thing.” I chewed my lip. “He said a meta was definitely causing the memory loss – and I think he knew which kind of meta it was.”
Kat looked at me blankly. “So what kind of meta causes memory loss when they attack you?”
I looked out into the black night, and I racked my brain for something, anything, I’d learned in my studies, anything at all about metas that could make memories disappear. Without that clue, we were without anything to do or any lead to investigate until the next call came in. “I don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t know.”
Chapter 9
Someone Else
The heat was near unbearable. Somehow I’d done it again, scored the crappiest possible car I could get my hands on. I’d stopped in some half-assed town called Ellsworth just over the Wisconsin line and stolen an old Dodge that was sitting overnight in a grocery store parking lot. The reeferhead’s Honda had started making gawdawful grinding noises in southern Minnesota. I tried to make it last, filled it up in Red Wing, but no, it started going into catastrophic failure mode after I crossed the river. This is what happens when you have to choose between buying weed and performing regularly scheduled maintenance, I suppose.