Rachel Caine - Thin Air

I froze. Maybe the old me would have known what to do, but the new, not-so-improved me had no earthly idea what the right move might be. I just waited for the hammer to fall.

She’s looking for me. I held myself completely still, completely silent, until I felt the shadow drift away. Maybe this was how the rabbit felt when the shadow of the hawk moved overhead. It was humbling and horrifying, and I had no idea how I was supposed to react except that I had a deep, burning desire to get the hell out. Come on, Venna , I thought. If you’re not too busy braiding your hair.

I finally let myself draw in a breath, blinked, and came down the two unstable steps to the soft, sandy ground. It still felt strange, but maybe it was just me. Maybe I was just paranoid.

You’re not paranoid. Somebody’s out to get you, remember? Several somebodies, maybe, but certainly including that evil doppelgänger back at the clinic. And if the Joanne back at the clinic had her way-somehow I was almost sure she was managing it-she’d have convinced Lewis of her sincerity by now. And, though it turned my stomach to think about it, she might have even fooled David. In which case it wouldn’t be her getting her hands dirty, coming after me. She’d have plenty of shock troops available, and all the eyes and ears of the Wardens.

A breath of wind touched me from the west. It blew hair across my eyes, and I reached up to push it away. In the half second of partial vision, something flickered across my line of sight, and was gone.

“David?” I whispered. I felt nothing, and if it was David, he didn’t show himself. I don’t know why I wanted it to be him; he was trouble, and nothing but. Especially now.

And I still missed him, as stupid and shallow as that might be.

I stalked out the gate, dragging the designer luggage ruthlessly across gravel and sand, and popped the trunk of the black sedan. I heaved the suitcase up to dump it inside, and staggered backward, off balance, in shock. Because the trunk was already occupied.

Dead guy. Dead guy in the luggage area, and recently dead, too. There was very little blood, and just one neat hole in the center of his forehead and a thin trickle, but I didn’t want to examine the exit wound, which was luckily facing away from me.

I didn’t recognize him, naturally.

I was still staring at the body, frozen in shock, when Eamon reached over and slammed the trunk lid closed. “Full up. Suitcase in the backseat,” he said. “There’s a love.”

I dropped the suitcase and backed away from him. He looked surprised. Well, not really surprised, but as if he wanted to look surprised. Eamon was a master at putting on emotions like outfits.

“Something wrong?” he asked. “You’re not one to shy away from violence; I know that for a fact.”

“You killed him,” I said. “Who is he?”

“You don’t know?” He studied my face, and I felt naked. Way too exposed. “I know you’re not generally popular with your peers, but I’m surprised you don’t at least know the ones who want you dead.”

“This isn’t about me. This is about the dead man in your trunk. ” I was clenching my teeth now, and wishing I had a weapon. A big one. Large-caliber. “What the hell is going on?”

“No idea,” Eamon said. “He was waiting for you outside of the prison with a rather nice three-eighty, which would have put a large and bloody hole in your back, shredded your lungs, and blown your heart halfway to hell. I say your back because of where he’d stationed himself. Because of the angle.”

I felt sick, and a little bit relieved. Okay, so it’s a bad guy dead in the trunk. That’s better, right? Of course it wasn’t, and just because the psychopath went after other villains didn’t make him any less of a psychopath, did it? Besides, I had no idea if Eamon was telling the truth. He seemed sincere, but he seemed a lot of things he wasn’t-nothing if not facile.

“Oh, don’t look so worried,” Eamon said, and opened the back door of the car for Sarah. She moved as if she were missing some bones, folding like wet cardboard when she was finally in the seat. I opened the other side and put her suitcase inside. She promptly used it as a pillow, and went right to sleep. “I doubt he’ll be missed. Contract killers rarely have what you might call an extensive social circle.”

Eamon had brought out a cheap-looking velour blanket. He spread it over Sarah as he spoke. It was an odd gesture of kindness from a guy who thought nothing of loading up the trunk with corpses, and his contradictions were starting to make my head hurt.

“What are you going to do with him?” I asked.

“Let’s just say he won’t be accompanying us all the way to California,” Eamon replied. “There’s plenty of desert between here and there.”

“Do you know who he is?” I asked.

“Not a fucking clue,” he said, and reached in his pocket. He took out a slim black wallet, which he flipped over the car’s roof to me. I caught it, startled. “Perhaps you’ll see something that rings a bell, eh?”

I opened it and checked for ID. There was a driver’s license for a guy named John T. Hunter. I wondered if that was a joke of some kind: John The Hunter. Like, assassin. But why would I have a professional assassin on my case? Then again, why wouldn’t I? Given the gigantic mountain of nothing that I knew about my life, I supposed I couldn’t rule it out.

Other than the license, his wallet was empty except for a fat stash of cash, which I felt sick about taking, but hey, I needed it.

“Well?” Eamon asked, staring at me over the top of the black car. “His chances of recovery aren’t improving, I assure you. So I’d suggest we roll along.”

“What if I just walk away?” I asked. “What if I go to the police?” I darted a look into the backseat. Sarah slept on peacefully.

“Well, two things will happen. First, you’ll be arrested, because of course I’ll have to give a statement that you shot this poor man and stole his money. Second, your sister will be dead, and it’ll look as if you had quite a bit to do with it. Did you know that statistically most murders are committed by a person close to the victim? Shocking.” He said it flatly, without any emphasis, but I believed him. “All right, even if you’ve lost your memory, you know exactly who I am and what I can do, because there’s ample evidence in the trunk with a bullet in his head. So let’s stop dancing around the proprieties and get on with it, shall we? I need your particular talents for one thing and one thing only, and then, as far as I’m concerned, you can go to hell and take Sarah with you. Are we clear?”

His eyes glittered. There was something feral in him, something pushed into a corner. I didn’t doubt he’d kill. He was right. The body in the trunk was proof enough of that.

I didn’t answer him. I held his stare long enough to promise him a whole lot of things, most of them violent, and then I opened the front driver’s-side door, got in, and started the engine. I considered gunning it and leaving him there in the dust, but all he had to do was make a phone call, and I was a wanted felon with a body in the trunk.

Play along. Find an opportunity. Wait for Venna.

It was risky, but it was the only card in my hand at the moment.

We buried Mr. Hunter, whatever his name might have actually been, in a shallow, sandy grave six miles from Ares, in a stretch of desert that probably hadn’t had human visitors for ten years, and wouldn’t again for ten more. Eamon and I buried him, that is; Sarah slept on in the backseat, the sleep of the OxyContin-coddled innocent. By the time it was done I felt sick, angry, filthy, and gritty with sweat and sand. I wanted to kill Eamon, in a figurative if not literal sense. He had , apparently, saved my life, even though he’d shot someone to do it. Once again, the sticky gray center with him. I wanted to be able to hate him with a whole heart.