Mind Games (39 page)

“What could be wrong, Justine, on this glorious day?” he asks. “You look beautiful. I have no doubt you’ve come from yet another triumph. …” He pauses, skin creamy and flawless, one of the effects of no sunshine. “He doesn’t suspect, does he?”

“No.”

“Well then.” He sits back. “Tell all.”

“You want me to tell all? The way you’ve told all?” I glare at him. “Like about Henji?”

The happiness drains from his face.

I lean in. “Imagine my surprise when I discovered Otto is
not
a ruthless killer running a criminal organization after all. It seems Otto is not only your nemesis, but a man who has dedicated his life to protecting innocent citizens.” I hold up a hand, warning him not to speak. “And imagine my surprise, also, that my actions to disillusion Otto will result in hordes of dangerous highcaps running free.”

Packard laughs. “Oh, Justine, this is what I was warning you about. He’s toying with you. Do you see how good he is? How he’s turned you around—”

“Stop. Don’t insult me. No wonder you were so desperate for me and my vein star paranoia! I was perfect for going after Otto. It was always about Otto. You were just using me. And laughing all the way.”

“I never laugh about you.”

“Oh, stop. And all that talk about Otto being a sociopath and a wolf in sheep’s clothing? God, I am so sick of you deceiving me! And what about those photos? Otto gouging out that man’s eyes with his own hands and cracking a guy’s head in a giant vise and all the rest? You cooked it up, right? No more lies. No more.”

Packard contemplates me grimly. Finally he says, “No, Otto didn’t do those things.”

My breath goes still. “Then how’d you get the gouged-eyes photo? It had to be taken right after—”

His brow tightens. He’s guessed my thoughts. “Oh, Justine, you know me at least that well. Do you really think I could do that to a person?”

I look down. If nothing else, I know him at least that well. “Maybe not that.”

“Believe me, Otto
was
responsible for that. It might
not have been his thumbs in the man’s eyes, but it was his fault all the same. By sealing that man up, he made him helpless and vulnerable to various enemies. Look at Diesel. Lord knows who else has died in those makeshift prisons of his.”

I stare at the Korean painting on the wall. The brushstroke legs of the horse.

“You said Otto doesn’t suspect,” he says. “Did you mean it? He really doesn’t know?”

“Not yet.”

“How could you have extracted so much information from him without his knowing?”

“It wasn’t easy.”

He smiles his beautiful, evil smile. “Oh, you are good.”

“Stop it.”

“I won’t ever stop.” He takes my hand and squeezes it, then pulls it to his soft, warm lips. Otto may be depth and order and harmony, but Packard is heat and the wild unpredictability of life. He feels me feel him. He thinks he can use the hot coil of our chemistry to pull me back to his side. “Justine—”

I pull my hand away. “How could you put me in this situation? I want you to be free, but to unleash a bunch of violent criminals for a bloodbath? To disillusion an innocent man?”

“Otto’s hardly innocent. And nobody’s unleashing a bloodbath.”

“You obviously don’t know about the new crop of ultraviolent highcaps.”

“I would control those people. I would help them find outlets for their destructive impulses. Do you forget what I am? The violence is Otto’s fault. If he hadn’t sealed me up, you wouldn’t turn on the news and see the hurtling bricks, collapsing bridges, and sleepwalking killers. It’s Otto’s fault—all of it. I kept order in the
underworld. By sealing me up, Otto created anarchy. Did I run a criminal organization? Maybe I did. But the streets were safe when I was in charge.”

It all starts to make a fuzzy kind of sense. “Eight years ago.”

Packard looks at me hard. “He sealed me up, and it sparked the crime wave. When I ran my organization, this city was a safer, cleaner, better place. I was creating something magnificent before Otto destroyed it. When I get out, I’ll restore sanity to the highcap world, and that will improve every strata of life. We’ll make things better for people, and we’ll have everything we want—you and me and all the disillusionists. I wouldn’t allow there to be a bloodbath.”

“Oh yeah?” I will myself not to cry. “The way you lied to me, and used me, and betrayed me … it feels like a bloodbath in me. Inside me.”

Softly, he says, “I know.” He looks away. “Justine, I have to be free.”

“And the hell with everyone else?”

I walk off into the empty dining room, wrap my fingers over a chair back. I think about Packard free, walking in the sunshine. In spite of everything, I want that for him. Am I an idiot for still caring about him? I can’t help it. I want it for him, but the price is too high.

I sense him drawing near, but I don’t turn around. I picture the scene Rickie described—Packard stepping out of a shiny car with his gang, mighty and free in the fresh air.

“Think, Justine, what it could mean,” he says. “The whole city would be free from the grip of fear.” His hands close on my shoulders. “I know how it must’ve been for you these past years, seeing the people around you feeling so much fear. How it would remind you of where you came from.”

My heart hitches in my chest. Goddamn him and his insight.

“Only I can make it happen.”

“As if you care about how the people of Midcity feel. Even criminals having their changes of heart. You don’t even give a shit—that was just a convenient side effect.”

“Side effect or not, we were making a difference. Freeing me will make a bigger, far more profound difference.”

I shut my eyes, feeling the fire of his passion and his crazy ideas. For one wild moment, I imagine all of us happy together, and Midcity free from fear. I wrap my arms around myself as if that will counteract the feeling and turn to Packard. “What about Otto?”

“You don’t know him, Justine.”

“I didn’t know him when he was Henji. Is that what you mean?”

“What did he tell you about that?”

“About when you were boys living in the abandoned school? About why he leveled it?”

He studies my eyes. “Henji wouldn’t talk about that. Somebody else gave you that.” He waits. He’s right, of course. It was Rickie who told me.

“Is that Henji’s real name?”

He considers the question. “No. I gave him that name. Back when he came to live with us boys.
Henji’s
short for
Stonehenge
. His ability to manipulate structure with force fields was fascinating to us. But you have to understand, Henji—the man you know as Otto—has no imagination. He’s a lover of rules who sees only black and white. Look what he’s created by mindlessly enforcing laws—he’s part of a machine that crushes the creative impulse. We’re so much more. You have vision, imagination. When I think of the inspired maneuvering it must have taken to zing Otto twice and extract all the information without him having any idea—God, the ingeniousness of it!”

He slides his fingers down to my forearms. I’m softening
and melting the way I always do when he touches me. “You’re part of this family. Otto has certain enchantments, but he’s a drone. He’ll try to make you over into a mindless doll the way Cubby did, accepting only the part of you that fits into his unimaginative life.”

I plant a hand in his chest and shove, sending him back a step. “I wanted that life and I still do.”

“You used to, but you’re beyond it now. That’s why I make you feel good and wild and free—because this is what your heart wants; this is where your home is.” He comes closer. “You know it’s true. And I say to you, Justine, let’s be wild and free. Let’s blaze right up into the stratosphere.”

This is Packard at his most glorious, and what I’ve always relished about him. I put my hand to his pale cheek and he takes it and holds it, gazing at me hard, all hot, handsome heat. “I have to be free.”

“I want you to be free, Packard.” I see the smile starting in his eyes, and then I take my hand from him. “But I won’t let you destroy any more lives. I don’t care what you’re offering. And I won’t disillusion Otto. I won’t let you hurt him. I’m telling you—”

“Justine, I know he must seem safe and strong to you, and he leads the type of upstanding life you were always shut out of, but you can’t let him mesmerize you. You’re bigger than that. And he shares your brand of hypochondria—I’m sure Otto could feel like your soul mate in a certain light, but you have to see through to the man.”

It occurs to me here that Otto does seem like my soul mate.

Packard has gone pale. “No,” he whispers.

He’s guessed of course. About Otto and me. Maybe all of it.

“What?” I protest. “You lied to me and sent me after him specifically because you knew that we’d connect,
because all you truly care about in life is getting free. And now you’re upset because what? We connect? And now you want me to believe that falling for Otto is just part of what a screwed-up misfit I am? I am so done with your psycho-whammy.”

Packard just stares. He’s frozen on the outside, but there’s an earthquake in him. The look in his eyes gives it away.

I don’t know why I feel like I betrayed him, but I do. I still feel this crazy connection to him. I need to break from his gaze, but I can’t. “I don’t know why you’re so upset when you’re the one who betrayed me,” I say stupidly. “Over and over and over. And lied and lied.”

“I saved your life.”

“Only to send me to risk it with Otto. You’re just using us. It stops here.”

This is where he turns; the change is nearly palpable—a certain set to his jaw, a lifelessness in his eyes. It makes my heart hurt. “You will zing him again. And then you will zing him again. Whatever it takes to destabilize him, and then you will connect Otto with Vesuvius.”

I shudder at the thought of Vesuvius ripping apart Otto’s self-esteem. “Or what?”

“You know what.” His voice is steady, dispassionate. “If you reveal or otherwise destroy my plan out of some infatuation with that foppish drone, I’ll end up imprisoned somewhere far worse than this. And do you really think Otto would allow me to see my disillusionists again? No. Which means you and all your friends end up drooling vegetables on your way to slow, ignoble deaths. And if you simply refuse, Justine, I’ll find another way to go after Otto, and you alone will be cut off, and you alone will face that end.”

“You wouldn’t.”

His eyes burn with emotion—what emotion, I can’t tell. For once, I can’t read him.

“I am the master, and you are the minion. And I need to be free.”

The horrible silence that settles between us makes words seem irrelevant.

“You will zing Otto as many times as it takes, and you—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I turn and beeline back to the booth and pull my purse off the seat, conscious of him watching me, conscious, suddenly, that Packard has every reason in the world to hate me, let me die, even kill me. I could destroy years of work and his best hope for freedom. Our eyes meet as I pass him on the way to the door, but he doesn’t move.

I get out of there and walk forever, barely conscious of where I’m going. There’s just this awful churning feeling inside me.

I think about my disillusionist friends and allies. How could I allow them to end up like poor Jarvis? Or for Otto to be destroyed? And would Packard really cut me off?

Packard’s betrayal hurts like hell—more than I could ever imagine. I’d felt so close to him all these months, in spite of what he did. The feeling between us was an alive thing, like nothing I’d ever known. And he was just using me the whole time?

It hurts like hell. And my motto, “Promoting freedom and transformation,” proves to be no help whatsoever.

I walk in the sunshine, wondering if Packard’s heart is beating as wildly as mine.

          Thirty-four

I
SHOULDN’T ANSWER
my phone when I see it’s Otto calling the next morning, but this crazy part of me just wants to hear his voice and have a sweet, excited conversation with him and pretend he’s my new boyfriend.

“Justine, hello!”

The smile in his voice makes me smile. “Hello, Otto.”

“What are you doing this very minute?”

“I’m drinking coffee and thinking about making oatmeal. What are you doing?”

“That’s not important.”

“Are you saying that what Midcity’s chief of police is doing is less important than oatmeal?” I tease.

“Did you start it yet?”

“No.”

“Good. Come down to the station and have breakfast here. In my office. I’ll have something brought in.”

“Oh, Otto, I practically just got out of bed.”

“Justine, I have to see you. It’s important.” Is there something different about his voice? Or does the idea of going to the station just bother me? “I’m dispatching my car.”

“What’s so urgent?”

“You’ll see.”

“Is it something urgent on the salacious side?”

He just laughs.

I would have preferred an answer on that, but I have this idea that maybe I can have one last nice time with him and pretend, like I used to with Cubby, that we really can be together. I know it’s pretend now. Aspirational. Otto will hate me no matter what I do. “Okay,” I say, “but I can’t stay long.” I give him my address.