Plastic Smile (Russell's Attic Book 4) (7 page)

I kept my gun trained right between his eyes. “Who the
fuck
are you?”

Chapter 6

“Cassandra,
please,” he said. “Put the gun down.”

“You’ve been following me.”
Nobody
was able to follow me. Not like that. “And what did you just call me?”

The dark-haired man took a slow, cautious step forward, but not as if he was afraid—more like one might approach a frightened puppy. I felt like I was seeing his outlines properly for the first time: a handsome face with well-defined features, a medium build in nondescript casual clothes, a little taller than average but not enough to be remarkable.

“Cassandra,” he said. “It’s your name, remember?”

What the hell? “I know that,” I said. “I want to know how
you
know it.”

He let out a breath that sounded like relief. “It’s okay. We knew each other a long time ago. You wouldn’t remember.”

I scrabbled at the disordered mess of my brain, at every memory I could muster up. Every time in the past few days I’d felt like I was being watched, seeing his blurred shape out of the corner of my eye…the impressions crossed with my dreams until I didn’t know which had actually happened. The dark man running with me through a forest, crouching together in a hidden place, afraid…

“Cassandra, what’s wrong?”

I tried to reach back, strained for something solid, and suddenly he seemed horribly familiar, like someone I’d known in another life. But I still couldn’t
remember
him—

“Cassandra, stop! Stop trying!”

He had closed the distance between us and was gripping my shoulders, heedless of the gun that was now in his face. And I—I hadn’t seen him do it.
Somehow I had missed the movements of a potential threat while in the middle of a standoff.

I tore back from him, away, tightening my grip on the Colt, making my aim straight and sure. “Don’t touch me. Don’t fucking touch me!”

“Cassandra—”

“Stop calling me that!” Who was this man, this…apparition? And the only person I’d ever known who used my name every other sentence that way was Rio—

Rio.

I saw Rio and this man standing together, talking, backlit against a deepening twilight—

“Cassandra! Stop! Come back to me!”

He’d come up and grabbed my wrist this time, pressing my gun down. I twisted out of his grip, shoving him back. My heart slammed in my chest, my adrenaline spiking. “What the hell are you doing to me?”

He didn’t seem to have heard my question; his eyes were crawling slowly over my face like he was surveying me as a home furnishing. “Oh—oh God—what happened?”

“What do you mean, what happened?
Who are you?”

He blinked very fast, his forehead knitting, and his eyes fastened on mine again. His gaze was arresting, a dark magnetism that threatened to pull me in. I choked on it.

“Cassandra,” he said softly. “I have to ask you something.”

“Tell me who the fuck you are first.”

“My name is Simon. Like I said, I knew you. A long time ago.”

“That doesn’t tell me shit.”

“Maybe not,” he said. “But I have to ask something of you. It may—it may seem crazy.”

“How were you following me?” My voice was hoarse. I didn’t bother trying to raise the gun again.

“When I try not to be noticed, people usually don’t notice me. It’s nothing nefarious, I swear to you.”

“You’re doing something to me. My thoughts. My memory.” Fuck, I’d met other people like him before—or at least, one other person. Dawna Polk.

Dawna Polk, psychic extraordinaire, who’d had me betraying Rio, Arthur betraying Checker, and her minions so brainwashed they believed entirely in her cause.

“Holy shit,” I said. “That’s why I can’t—you’re from Pithica. We had a deal!”

“No! No. I’m not Pithica. I swear.”

Buzzing filled my brain, as if it wasn’t getting enough oxygen. “You say you’re not them, but you know who they are. You know that name.”

“Yes. And I see you do, too.” He searched my face.

“You, you’re…you’re like them.” A psychic. Another bloody psychic.

We stared at each other. I needed to escape, or kill him, or break his bones until he told me everything he knew about me that I didn’t.

I wasn’t going to do any of those things. Shit. Shit, shit,
shit.

“Cassandra, I’m not trying to—I won’t make you do anything against your will, I wouldn’t. I promise. I haven’t been, and I’m not now. I tried not to be noticed, I admit, and I’m, I’m effective at that, but I wasn’t doing anything to you. I swear.”

“That sounds like a distinction without a difference,” I said. I lifted my Colt back up, slowly, cautiously. “If you’re not doing anything to me, why does it feel like I couldn’t shoot you no matter how hard I tried?”

His head straightened back and his hands hitched higher. “There are some things—I’m not doing anything consciously, but—Cassandra, please, it’s not an exact science.”

“You just can’t help brainwashing everyone around you, is that it?”

“No! That’s not—I’m not.”

“I’m probably going to forget this whole conversation, aren’t I,” I said.

“No.” His eyes stretched wide and scandalized. “Cassandra, I wouldn’t. I won’t. That’s why I’m standing here asking you; I wouldn’t have to if I didn’t…” His expression crumpled. “Cassandra. You trusted me once. Please.”

That seemed unlikely.

He ran a hand through his curly hair. “Cassandra, I’m begging you. You’re in danger, and I don’t know
what,
or how, not unless you let me—” He bit his lip again, cutting himself off.

“Let you
what?”

“I need to—look closer. Please.”

“You mean read my mind.”

He closed his eyes. “Yes, but—”

“No way. No way in hell.”

“Only to figure out what kind of danger you’re in. That’s all I’ll look for, I swear.”

“The only person I’m in danger from right now is you and your twisted brain-screwing powers.”

He sucked in a breath. “Then tell me—what happened with Pithica? How do you know that word?”

“How do
you
know it? How do you know
me?”

“Cassandra—”

“
Stop calling me that.”

“Please!” He reached out to catch my arm. “Please let me—”

I snapped my hand over his wrist this time instead, so fast it was a blur, and wrenched. Simon yelped, his body following his arm to stumble to the side as I let go.

“I said not to touch me,” I said. “And I never, ever, ever want you in my fucking head.”

Adrenaline and fear punched through my system. If he was really like Dawna, he could make me give him permission—whatever he felt he needed it for—and think I had done it gladly. Who knew why he hadn’t forced me to his side already, but Dawna’s machinations had been games within games, twisting my logical processes around until I’d lost which way was up.

I backed away, edging toward where I’d left my car.

“Cassandra!” he called again.

“What did I say?” Raising the Colt was probably useless, but I did it anyway. “Get away from me and stay away. Don’t follow me. Don’t ever come near me again. Ever.”

I got to my car, drove away, and kept driving. I switched cars and drove some more, crisscrossing the city half a dozen times before going to a hole in the wall I hadn’t stopped at in months.

I didn’t sense anyone behind me, but that didn’t mean anything, did it?

Fuck.

I finally pulled over and leaned my head against the steering wheel. Every muscle ached, and the work gloves pulled at my scabbing hands every time I shifted my fingers.

I should probably tell Checker what had just happened. That a man from my past had appeared. That a man from my past had appeared, and was a…was one of
them.

Heck, I should probably tell Checker and Arthur both, and Pilar, and Rio—anyone Simon might approach and attack with his powers.

Rio—

Try Los Angeles. It’s a big enough city. America will be easier to disappear in.

I closed my eyes and tried to moderate my breathing.

Shit. I’d left Simon outside Checker’s house. I hadn’t even been thinking about it. And I’d seen him outside Arthur’s office—he knew everyone I associated with, could approach any one of them, find out whatever he wanted, turn any of them into his puppet.

Was Checker’s inane crusade to figure out my secrets already a part of this Simon person’s master plan? How much could I trust anyone?

Or maybe he wants you not to tell anyone. Maybe that’s his plan, to convince you to keep him a secret, like a tree that’s fallen with nobody to hear it, an unobserved particle, until he’s gotten whatever he wants out of you.

This was the trouble with psychics. I never knew which decisions were my own.

But come on, what would I even tell Checker anyway? That a psychic man from my past had followed me for probably weeks and then demanded
permission
to read my mind? It was starting to sound mad.

This isn’t a joke—Cassandra, listen to me, please, you’ll go mad—

I jerked.

You’re in danger,
I heard Simon say again, overlapping with the memory of Checker:
You could be in danger. You could have other enemies out there.

Enemies. For all I knew, Simon might be one of them.

Christ, I didn’t have time for this mess.

I texted Checker to make sure he was okay, and he confirmed right away, which I supposed I could trust as much as anything right now. Then I toyed with the phone, considering, trying to weigh the pros and cons of what to do about Simon without fucking second-guessing myself. But after less than three minutes, I was interrupted by Checker texting again:

GET 2 HOSPTL

JP GOING AFTER ARTHUR

I didn’t wait to ask how he knew. I accelerated so fast I took a layer of rubber off the tires.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. This was what we got for going to a hospital, for reporting to the police like good citizens. Pourdry didn’t just have the game of evading law enforcement down. He had informants.

If anything happened to Arthur, I’d burn Los Angeles down to get to Pourdry. Hell, I’d do that anyway. I was out of patience.

Whoever Simon was, he and his stupid, bizarre, frightening pleadings could wait.

Chapter 7

Hospitals don’t
have great security, but they tend to frown on people with guns. I left my carbine and carried my Colt concealed.

I dashed into the ER, phone to my ear. Checker had been trying to reach Arthur but hadn’t been able to get through—he didn’t know whether Arthur was still in the middle of being treated or the hospital just had bad signal, but he was tracking medical updates in real time. “He’s in exam room four. Straight down the hall from the entrance, through the door in the back right corner of the waiting room, past the nurses’ station, third room on the left.”

I snapped my senses into the mathematical overlap of fields of vision. There were too many people crowding the ER to make myself completely invisible, but I could at least dance around the staff. People who weren’t in authority generally wouldn’t speak up.

I slid between peripheral fields of view like I was dodging lasers, ducking and sliding through the door and then crab-walking by the nurses’ station. In order to stop me they would have had to see me, and not a single person in scrubs or a white coat did. A patient or two caught the edge of my antics and frowned my way, but then they looked to those in charge, assumed they must have noticed me, and shrugged it off to go back to their own business.

I escaped the crowded areas and sprinted down the hallway. Exam Room 4, third door on the left—

I burst in, my gun raised. Arthur looked up. He was on his feet, but still in a hospital gown, and leaning heavily on the exam table. A wiry white guy was sprawled on the floor with a needle stabbed in his neck.

“Oh,” I said. “Nice job. Are you good to get out of here?”

“Hell yeah,” he said. “Just gotta get some clothes on. Two minutes.”

I turned my back while Arthur got dressed, keeping half an eye on the goon on the floor. He was breathing, but shallowly.

“Probably not worth it to wait and ask for crutches,” Arthur mused. “Give me a hand?”

I got under his arm and he leaned heavily across my shoulder. I cracked the door and peeked out. The moment the hallway had a lull in traffic, I pulled it open and helped Arthur hobble out. We hoofed it away from the waiting room and its many eyes, toward the emergency exit at the end of the hall, the one labeled, “Emergency Exit Only—Alarm Will Sound.”

“Wait! Sir?” a woman’s voice called behind us.

“Jig’s up,” I said, and pushed open the emergency door. The alarm blared after us into the night.

“I got the detectives’ number,” Arthur said. “I can call ’em and straighten this out, soon’s we’re safe.”

We piled back into the car and I zoomed us away, toward one of my bolt holes. Since knowing Checker I’d gradually acquired some without the necessity of stairs, just in case. It was coming in handy now.

I tried to pick the most obscure address, the one it was least likely my telepathic stalker had stumbled across in my brain. Could he do that? Or would he have had to trick me into telling him, while the whole time I thought it was my idea?

Maybe I
had
told him and forgotten…

“Keep your eyes out,” I warned Arthur, unnecessarily.

He held a finger up to me, on the phone with Checker. “Did you talk to—they safe? You sure? Okay. Good man. No, it’s best if I don’t know for now. Thanks…Ain’t know yet. You talk to Pilar? Yeah, best to be safe. Tell her I’m sorry.”

“Pilar knew what she was signing up for,” I said. Occasionally needing to keep her head down from bad guys was in her job description, as far as I was concerned.

Arthur shot me an annoyed look and spoke back into the phone. “Yeah, I’m gonna be in touch. You be careful, too, son.” He hung up.

“All squared away?” I said.

“No one should get shot at just ’cause they work with me.”

“Probably no one should get shot at
period,”
I said. “In a perfect world. In the one we live in, grown adults can make their own decisions.”