John Shirley - Watch Dogs - Dark Clouds

The patrol car passed, the cops missing them—and the three fugitives stood up, letting the coughs come as the demolition ball continued to swing pendulously back and pound the building they’d just been in. After a full minute of coughing out the dust, and a good deal of spitting, Shuggie said, “Man, you are one high maintenance motherfucker!”

Coughing, Wolfe had to laugh. “Yeah. I guess I am. I’m gonna get out of your hair now, brother.”

“Well, stay in touch, bro. I got to get about my business. Got to cover my ass in all this.”

That’s when, pounded with unusual persistence, the building they’d been in simply imploded, crumbled in on itself, in a mighty cloud of rising dust…

Wolfe looked at it. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” Shuggie said. “Those motherfuckers ain’t playin’.” He said it almost admiringly.

A car was pulling up, Renfo at the wheel.

Seline looked at Shuggie. “Thanks, Shuggie. Coming in there, when that wrecking ball was about to hit… you got some pretty big balls yourself.”

“Hey so do you, lady.”

Seline laughed, and Shuggie got in the car and drove off.

Wolfe said, “Come on, let’s get out of sight. Then we got to get you out of town.”

She looked at him, like she was considering saying something…

Then she shrugged and followed him across the street, through a debris choked alley.

“Pearce, you got any more spare safehouses?”

“Wolfe! You’re alive! I heard about what happened… I thought you were bleeding all over the rubble about now.”

“Almost was. Wasn’t for Shuggie, I’d be mush. And Seline too.”

In another safehouse, Aiden Pearce was letting “Doc” Morrsky take his blood pressure as Pearce spoke to Wolfe on the phone.

“Your blood pressure’s okay,” Morrsky said. He was a middle aged man with a red nose, receding hair, and the profile of a weasel. “But we need to get you a CAT scan. I can set it up somewhere, we’ll fake up your identity, they’ll never know who you are.”

“Forget that, Doc.”

“Come on, Pearce, help me out here. Any dizziness?”

“Occasionally,” Pearce admitted.

“Then you’re not going to risk falling over dead by going on any of your goddamn missions till I tell you different.”

“Pearce, you still there?” asked Wolfe, in his ear.

“Yeah, hold on. Doc—I hear and obey. Now get the fuck out of here.”

“You owe me some money.”

“You know it’ll be in your account when you get home. Go. And keep your goddamn mouth shut.”

“Sure, Pearce. You know me.”

Yeah, Pearce thought. I thought I knew Merwiss too.

When Morrsky had gone, Pearce said, “Wolfe… go to the corner of 47th and South Archer. You’ll find Blank there. He’ll give you the address. And when you’re there, call me—I’ve got something new for you.”

“Hope so. The upload cast suspicion on Verrick but I just heard on the radio he’s calling it all a lie spread by an ex-con—that would be me. He’s trying to discredit the whole thing. Casting suspicion on him isn’t enough. Maybe I should’ve talked about the info you got on that attack—made a special doc to go out with the Medina file. And then we could go to the DoJ.”

“No. We’ve got no specifics and we don’t want to drive Purity further underground…”

“We’ve got to do something. I’m starting to get worried we’re not going to find out what this thing is… until it’s too late to stop it. Maybe you can live with that, Pearce. I can’t.”

“Just wait till I verify some stuff… Not get over to that corner.”

Pearce ended the call and sent a text, under an arranged name, to Kiskel. He was going to need some inside dirt—from his inside man at the Blume Corporation.

We need to talk. Life and death for a lot of people.

Sending a phone to you… by special messenger. The Blank kind.

The new safehouse was in the basement of a Southside pool hall near the lake. Wolfe and Seline could hear footsteps overhead, as the players walked around the pool tables, along with outbursts of laughter or hooting derision.

An outside stairway went up to a cracked, weedy old parking lot behind the building. The upper floors of the old brick structure housed an SRO hotel, complete with “bathroom down the hall”.

The basement safehouse was dank and damp, its peeling wallpaper spotted with mold, but it had all the simple necessities of the previous one and more or less the same layout.

Seline was using the shower, now, washing off the dust from the collapsed building, as Wolfe sat on the sofa, drinking beer. He’d bought a six-pack from a liquor store next door to the thrift store where they’d bought fresh clothes.

With the edge of his thumb he wiped a bit of plaster dust from an eye and waited for the PearcePhone on the coffee table to ring.

He wanted to be out doing. Not thinking about Seline—about how she was getting set to leave town. In half an hour, she’d be gone. And that’d be that.

He wouldn’t find a woman like her again, not easily. Not only pretty but brave; not only brave but cool headed; not only cool headed but caring; not only caring but smart…

There was something else between them too. The raw attraction; the visceral tugging he felt when he looked at her. As if she was some missing part of him he’d been searching for, and his body wanted to unite with it, restore its wholeness.

Don’t be a sap, Wolfe. Let her go.

She came out of the bathroom, her hair wrapped in a towel. Her cheeks seemed blush-red; her eyes bright. She sat beside him, and opened a beer. “I’ll get out of here pretty soon…”

“No hurry,” he said.

“Wolfe… listen, I…”

The phone rang. Wolfe automatically picked it up. “Yeah?”

“Wolfe?” It was Pearce. “Listen… There’s a guy who works for Blume, knows a little too much about Verrick. Guy’s name is Lawrence Bullock.”

“Um…” He realized he shouldn’t have answered the phone in that moment. Someone a glance of Seline’s eyes conveyed that fact.

She got up, using the towel to dry her hair, and went to the bathroom, probably to brush it and comb it back…

Already used to living with her.

Give it up, Wolfe. Let her go.

“…this Bullock.” Pearce was saying, “apparently helped Verrick buy his way into Blume. Verrick had some shares but—Bullock pushed for him to be Security Chief, for one thing. And Bullock’s tied into this Purity thing somehow. He talked to Kiskel about Purity, trying to recruit him. Kiskel said no way. Bullock swore him to silence and backed off. So now Bullock’s been acting weird and scared at work—and then the upload on Verrick came out. Apparently this really spooked Bullock.”

“Pearce…”

“Listen, man! Bullock has gotten an invitation to test out one of Blume’s new prototype self driving cars, along with another guy. The other guy is an exec with a shell company used by The Club. Jakey Morrison. So I did some digging—indications are, Morrison may have been the guy who helped Verrick launder that stolen money through the Four Clubs casino. He’s invited as a shareholder in something called Morrison Incorporated which does some automotive investing. Kind of a coincidence these two are in the same autonomous, self-driving car, same time…”

Suddenly Pearce had Wolfe’s full attention. “Yeah. It is.”

“I found a phone record of a call from Verrick to the engineer, arranging the self-driving car ‘experience’ for key people. Got the name of the engineer from Kiskel..Don’t know what Verrick said. But soon after that two guys connected to Verrick were put in the same car.”