Plastic Smile (Russell's Attic Book 4) (25 page)

The sound of laughter, the scent of ink and newsprint.

“He was right,” I admitted to Rio.

“It is why he removed himself from your life after causing you to forget him. I do believe his intent now is to help you remain, not to alter you further.”

Now that I had some memory of it, most of my nightmares featured Simon reaching out, wiping me clean. Scraping out every piece of who I’d been while Valarmathi screamed.

“You don’t understand what he did to me,” I said.

“You are correct. I don’t.” He paused. “He did not prevaricate, however, when he says you would not have survived. I do not know if there might have been some untried way to save your mind, but there was…extreme trauma.”

“So he, what, lobotomized me?” I laughed harshly. “Nothing excuses him, Rio.”

“I did not say it did.”

Silence fell between us for a moment.

“Will you tell me anything more about who she was?” I asked. “And…what happened to us? My sanity’s going anyway; what harm can it do?”

“I will not accelerate the process, Cas.”

I hadn’t figured he would, really. I twirled noodles around my plastic fork.

Why don’t you want to go?

Because I believe them.

“Maybe she’ll come back,” I said. “Maybe she’s taking me back over, taking back what’s rightfully hers.”

Rio paused, very carefully. “I do not think that a likely scenario, Cas.”

Extreme trauma. Right.

An empty airport. No, it’s worth it, it has to be.

“Hypothetically,” I said to Rio, “what would you say if I tried to trade my mind for your war on Los Angeles?”

“You know I could not do so. Cas, you have brainwashed an entire city.”

“I wouldn’t put it
that
way.”

He smiled. “As for your personal decisions, they are yours to make. Regardless of whether I would convince you to make different ones.”

Free will, choices, et cetera, and what I was doing was sinful. I hadn’t expected another answer.

“Cas,” Rio said. His face had gone serious again. “In that vein. I believe it only fair to inform you. The fact that you have imposed a deadline means I, too, must accelerate.”

I blinked. “What?”

“You will not be able to combat me much longer,” Rio said calmly. “Nor will you have the capacity to reverse whatever you have done to people’s minds here.”

“Yeah, I’m
counting
on that,” I said.

“Which means I must convince you to do so before you are no longer capable.”

“Rio,” I said. “What are you going to do?”

He took a sip of his drink and didn’t answer.

I never had a choice,
laughed Valarmathi.

I shook her off. “Rio!”

“Reverse this, Cas. Or a great many people will have their blood on your hands.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“No,” he said. “It is not.”

“Do you know how much good this is doing?” I argued. “And what’s going to happen if we stop? Especially with how much you’ve been provoking people; I was looking at the stats just today. You’re talking about human lives, Rio. A lot of them.”

Rio didn’t move, his eyes fixed on mine.

Then he said, glacially slowly, “‘We?’”

I stopped breathing.

“Your friends aided you in this, Cas?”

For some reason it had never occurred to me—every time I’d talked to Rio about what I’d done, it had always been with the arrogance of my own solution. And as far as he knew, I had a long history of working alone.

Oh,
fuck.

“You promised you wouldn’t threaten them.” The paper noodle cup from my dinner had crumpled in my fist, the leftover broth trickling over my fingers. “You promised, Rio—”

“And I shall not break that promise,” he said.

My fist unclenched. “Good. Thank you.”

“Do not thank me, Cas.”

Oh, Jesus. His other threat. The deadline. “Goddammit. Please. Don’t do this.” I swallowed. “What do you expect me to do, fight you?”

“It would not make a difference if you did,” he answered serenely. “Things are already in motion. Though I can stop it, if you acquiesce.”

“You bastard,” I said.

He inclined his head. “Quite.”

“How long do I have?”

“Forty-six hours, before events are irreversible.”

“Fuck you.” I stood up and started back toward my car. I had forty-six hours to find out what Rio was planning and save Los Angeles.

A megaphone blared with unintelligible syllables, and the cold blistered the bare soles of my feet.

“Consider quickly, Cas,” Rio called after me. “I may move faster.”

♦ ♦ ♦

I got
back to Checker’s place to find him just getting off the phone, shaking and pale. “Cas! That was Arthur—he—he just—”

“What’s going on? Is he all right?”

“He is, but—Cas, Rio was just in his apartment.”

“
What?”
For a moment I couldn’t make a single thought connect into words. “He wouldn’t hurt him. Or you. He told me—”

“He didn’t hurt him,” Checker said. “He just—he came and took his computer. And Arthur said he kept telling him there was nothing on there, not related to what we were doing, and Rio said something like it being too bad he had promised you not to
compel
him to give details—”

I almost choked in relief. “See, I told you he wouldn’t—”

“What are you
on?
He
broke in and stole Arthur’s computer!
And now he’s probably coming here, or to Arthur’s office, or—”

“Go back to one of my places, if you’re worried about it,” I said.

“Because there are any you’re sure he doesn’t know about?” Checker cried. “Besides, if he promised not to do anything to
me,
then he’s just going to come here and raid everything I own whether I’m here or not. My security isn’t going to be good enough to—”

“Then stay here, and I’ll hang here with you. Listen, we have to start working on—”

“Cas, shut up a minute! He’s going after your friends, do you hear me? You have to stop him before—”

“He’s not going to hurt any of you!”

Checker’s phone chimed. He stared at it, and the blood drained from his face. “Cas, Arthur’s driving to the office—he says Pilar’s there, says he can’t reach her—”

“Rio wouldn’t—”

“Get the
fuck
over there!” Checker screamed in my face. “Now!
Go now!”

I actually backed up a step. If he’d been a different person, I think he would have hit me.

Fists slamming, the grappling of limbs and flesh…

I groped my way out to my car.
Rio wouldn’t,
the pieces of my brain that were working kept repeating.
Rio wouldn’t—
even if he hadn’t promised me, he wouldn’t hurt someone like Pilar—would he? Pitting criminals and militias against each other was one thing; if innocent people got hurt in the crossfire it would still be the gangsters’ doing. Going after someone innocent himself, just to get to me—

I floored the accelerator.

Walls filled my vision, tile the color of blood.

The F-350 Rio had been driving tonight was parked outside Arthur’s office.

Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck—

I pounded up the outside staircase and burst through the door.

Rio stood over Pilar. She was curled on the floor clutching one wrist with her other hand, and he was pointing a .44 Magnum directly at her head. Her little compact CZ dangled from his other hand.

“Rio!”
The shout tore out of me. “Rio,
stop—
what in the
living fuck—”
I ducked in front of him and helped Pilar up, hustling her away from him. She whimpered. “You gave me your word, Rio—you
told me—”

“She has information,” Rio explained serenely, lowering his gun. “Your other friends would have been better, but you are correct: I promised I would not threaten them.”

I lost the ability to breathe, like someone had smashed a wrecking ball into my lungs.

I hadn’t mentioned Pilar by name to him. Holy
fuck.

“You don’t get to threaten Pilar, either!” I made sure I was standing in front of her. “You stay the
fuck
away from her! She’s innocent, do you hear me?”

“Not of your project, it appears.” Rio’s voice was mild.

“
My
project! Mine! You want information on it, you threaten me!”

“I will not threaten you, Cas.”

Silver needles and white cloth, and I reached for a syringe and jammed it into my thigh—

I was losing my mind, and Rio had just coolly put a gun to Pilar’s head.

“No. No.
No.”
I didn’t care how far back we went; there was a line Rio was
not fucking allowed to cross.
I closed the distance between us and snatched Pilar’s gun, then marched back and handed it to her.

She raised it in her left hand and pointed it at Rio, her grip shaking.

He tilted his head at her, as if bemused, leaving his own weapon down.

For a moment I doubted my senses. It wasn’t as if they’d been very reliable lately. “What are you doing?” I said to Pilar.

“Cas, I think—I think you should move—I think I should shoot him—” Her voice was so low I could hardly hear it, and her hand shook harder, the little CZ vibrating.

“No one is shooting anybody!” Oh, Jesus. “Pilar, put down the gun or I’ll make you.”

“You didn’t hear—what he said to me—what he said he’d do—”

My stomach twisted. “Rio doesn’t hurt innocent people,” I insisted loudly. “He was just threatening you.”

“There you are wrong, Cas,” said Rio. “I would have done whatever was necessary to ascertain the information I needed. This must needs be done, and as we have mentioned, she is not innocent of this crime.”

Pilar was crying silently, her face soggy with tears. I couldn’t blame her.

“What the
fuck,
Rio,” I said hollowly.

He gave me a small half-nod of conciliation. “I would have released her as soon as I obtained the information I required.”

“I’m
right here!”
screamed Pilar. “I am
right here
and I am
pointing a gun at you
and I am thinking about pulling the trigger and you are going to
look at me
and realize I am a human being and take me
fucking seriously!”

Rio turned his gaze to her, his stare penetrating. “My death will be a great justice,” he said. “Perhaps you will shoot me today. I will not tell you it is undeserved.”

“Pilar!” I forced myself to take a breath, to moderate my tone. “Pilar. Please. Please put down the gun.”

She hesitated for a long moment, then said, “No. Make him leave.”

“Pilar—”

“This is my office.” Her voice had gone back to that low, barely audible hoarseness, flat and dead and very serious. “Make him leave, or I swear to God I will fire. I swear to God, Cas. Get him out of here.”

I could have wrested the weapon out of her hand. I was probably close enough to be able to do it before she could squeeze the trigger. Probably.

Mortar fire thundered through my senses, magazine ammo counts overlapping with probable avenues of safety. Dirt and cold filled my nose and mouth.

Pilar—she wasn’t really planning to fire, was she?

Shit.

I needed to take Rio somewhere anyway, drag him somewhere and tear him a new one, loudly, for a very long time.

He’d crossed a line. Some things were fucking
off limits,
and he should have known. He
did
know—I didn’t care how little he understood about human behavior; he knew better.

And he’d done it anyway.

The ice cracked like a gunshot, and the ATV lurched.

“Rio,” I choked out. “Let’s go.”

He paused for a hairsbreadth, his gaze flicking between Pilar and me. Pilar’s CZ had steadied, her grip tightened. Along with her jaw. Her face was still wet, but she’d stopped crying.

“If you try to hurt her right now, you’ll have to go through me,” I said.

Rio gave a little head-tilt that seemed to say,
well, another time then,
and sidestepped to the door. When it swung shut behind us, Pilar still hadn’t lowered her gun.

Chapter 26

There’s nowhere
in a city that feels truly isolated, but I strode into an alleyway behind a closed and darkened car dealership, clubbing away the encroaching flashbacks of other times and spaces. Rio followed.

When the alleyway got dark enough I turned so fast he would have run into me if he hadn’t had Rio’s reflexes.

If he’d been anyone else I would have slugged him. I almost did it anyway.

“What the
fuck!”
I ripped into him instead. “I told you, I have friends now. If you do anything like that again, if you so much as
startle
them—” I stopped.

I didn’t know what I’d do.

The thought of truly going after Rio physically, actually trying to hurt him—my insides clenched and writhed.

He’ll be your ally,
a voice said.

Forty-six hours, he’d told me, and then he’d—

“This isn’t working.” Rio held me down while the world imploded.

What kind of person was I, that I calmly played chess against him for an entire city, but he went after one woman I happened to know personally, and I fucking lost it?

“Cas?”

I shoved the voices away. I wanted to shove Rio, too, but I crossed my arms instead, trapping my hands to restrain myself. “You attacked a friend of mine.”

“On the contrary,” Rio said. “I promised I would not harm your friends, and I have stood by that. Pilar Velasquez’s name was not on your list.”

Guilt knifed me with renewed savagery. I’d only just gotten comfortable with the idea of considering Arthur and Checker friends, and I still hadn’t been sure what being friends with someone was supposed to mean—figuring out how to fit a third person into that mold had seemed overwhelming. How did someone handle that many obligations?

I supposed it wasn’t something that would worry me for much longer.

I wandered. The city was gray. It wasn’t a city I knew.

Jesus. Who cared what relationship I had with Pilar? However I labeled it, she was still in the category of people I’d kill to protect. “Anyone I work with, Rio,” I spat out. “Anyone I
know.
You can’t—”