Psycho Within Us (The Psycho Series Book 2) (40 page)

At CMS, Kaley carefully applied just the right amount of pressure with her thumb—to much, and it would smudge it so that one could easily see her fingerprint in the lead, too little, and it wouldn’t smear at all.

In the storehouse, she remained standing at the
steel door.  There were phantoms behind the door, much like the phantoms she’d felt in the basement on Avery Street.  The ghost pains of others that had come before, others that had been raped and beaten and tortured for the demented pleasure of Dmitry, Olga, Mikhael, and whatever customers they sold the video footage to around the world.

Knowing what had happened last time, she
wasn’t sure she wanted to step through that door.

At school, Kaley looked at the shading she’d done to her bowl.  It was far better than what she’d done to the
fruit
in that bowl.  In just a week’s time, she’d gotten better, thanks to Lenny’s tip, but now the shading looked incongruent. 
I really ought to re-shade the fruit using the smearing, so that it all matches up
.  Lenny had also taught her that if she just licked her finger, just a tad, that it could smear the lead in other interesting ways. 
Maybe I’ll play with that
.

After much deliberation, Kaley finally smeared her lead
and to hell with Ms. Hurgess and her disdain for such techniques.

Outside
of the storehouse, she heard a gunshot.  A very,
very
loud one.

“
You’re getting better,” said Lenny.

Kaley looked up at him.  “Really?  You think so?”

“Yeah.”  He smiled.

Kaley smiled back.  “Thanks.”  She stepped through the door.

“
Surprise, fucker!
” Spencer exclaimed, rounding the stack of crates and squeezing the trigger.  The shotgun belched thunder.  Even having prepared himself for the recoil, the Benelli still almost knocked him off his feet.  The ice all along the planks gave weak footing, and he staggered back a step or two.

The Benelli, meant as a combat shotgun and used by SWAT teams the world over to blow open the hardest locks at close range, ripped through the red-parkaed man. 
It blew his stomach out both sides, twisting his upper body around in a macabre dance.  He had such a look of surprise on his face as his body hit the icy ground and slid across the dock, his innards spilling out, that Spencer couldn’t help but laugh.  He was bent over wheezing, putting the shotgun barrel on the frozen wooden planks and using it for a cane to steady himself.  “God damn, son,” he laughed.  “God damn!  You shoulda seen yer face!”

He laughed harder and louder.  And why not? 
There didn’t appear to be anybody else out here.  From the tremors and thoughts he’d felt Kaley feeding him, he didn’t think there were any other guards out here tonight. 
A single guard
. 
A groundskeeper
. 
But what were they keeping here?
  He had an idea about that.

Still chuckling,
Spencer stood upright and searched the fellow’s corpse.  The Benelli had nearly hewn the man in half.  “Looks like a grenade went off in your stomach,
comrade
.”  He had a Makarov pistol, a cell phone, a pair of condoms, and a billfold with ID, a few hundred rubles, a Visa and MasterCard, a flier with a naked woman on it and a phone number at the bottom, presumably a call girl.  He also had the same red bear tattoo as all other
vory
.

Pitbull
, he thought.  The word came to him again, still rolling around in his mind.

Spencer was just tucking the Makarov behind his hip when he heard something.  A low, sibilant
sound.  It was indescribable; a sound his ears were wholly unaccustomed to.  His ears wanted to deny it, the same way antibodies wanted to deny admittance to a foreign pathogen.  In short, it wasn’t from around here.

Cries from somewhere, a tremor.  It wasn’t a tremor from Spencer, but from the world around him. 
There was great pressure on his ears, like when you drove into higher elevations and your ears popped, but this was about ten times worse.  “Fuck me!” he said, cupping one of his ears.

Then, he
heard something snap. 
The ice
.  The dock house ahead was sitting on the dock itself, which stretched out over the frozen waters a good fifty yards.  The ice below made another loud crack, and that low, deep sibilant noise continued, ceasless and atonal. 
Ssssssssssssssssssss
.  One of the doors on the dock house swung slowly open and closed on rusty hinges, revealing the darkness within in small snatches.

Then, silence.

Nothing moved, nothing breathed.  The pressure on his ears was alleviated.  The door on the dock house stopped swinging.  Even the wind stopped, though the snow kept on falling.

“Little girl?” he said out loud.  No answer. 
He reached into his pocket and got another shell, loaded it, cocked the Benelli.  “Kaley Dupré, do you hear me?” 

Spencer
…
I’ve found them
.

He didn’t like the sound of that.  Since he could sometimes sense her heart, he didn’t like the feel of it, either.  “What’re you talkin’ about?  Found who?”

Come and see
.

“Look, whatever you found, you need to return with me to the car, right now.”

Can’t
.

“Whattaya mean you can’t?”

I can’t leave them like this
.

“Let me ask you a question.  Do you hear that?”

Hear what?

“Exactly.  Silence.  I don’t hear a
goddam thing, and after the Prisoner an’ his people have been chatty all night, I don’t think that’s a good sign.  The world was movin’ out here a minute ago, the ice cracked, the dock was vibratin’.  Things are in motion, savvy?”  Then, he had a peek into her mind.  Perhaps she sent it to him on purpose, because it was easier than explaining. 
Women
…
naw, not women
. 
A lot younger
.  He sighed, and knew what this meant.  “It’s time to get the hell outta Dodge, little girl.”

I can’t just—

“Ya know what happened the last time you stuck around that much pain?  Ya think
they
don’t know that?”

I won’t—

“Listen to me!  You hang around in there much longer, you’re gonna open a hole bigger than the one in the ozone, the one Al Gore’s tryin’ to close!  Only it won’t be UV rays an’ global warmin’ you gotta worry about!  We gotta leave! 
Now!
”

That’s easy for you to say!  You don’t care about them!  You don’t have a soul!

“Souls never got anybody anywhere.”  Spencer was backing up towards the dock house.  If she wouldn’t come out willingly, he’d have to go in after her.  Almost at the door, he paused to take a look back, towards the Subaru, and, if he wasn’t mistaken, he saw a pair of headlights suddenly flick off.  Was that someone else arriving, or just his imagination?

“I’m comin’ to get ya.”

Why?  What do you care?

“I still need yo
u!”

For what?

Spencer opened the door, stepped inside. 
A bargaining chip
, he thought, but didn’t say.  He also hoped that she was nowhere in his mind, as she often found it disgusting to go traipsing through his mental landscape.  Their Connection could sometimes be just as strong as that between her and her sister.  If Kaley decided to go in and see what he was thinking, she would see the deal he’d struck with the Prisoner.

And
Kaley would also know what he was beginning to deduce.  Spencer’s mind had started circling around a theory, and his theory was slowly solidifying into a conclusion. 
It makes a certain kind of sense
. 
And I’m never wrong about people
.

Just as
he shut the door behind him, the wind suddenly picked up again.  The winds started making snapping noises.  The ground trembled for a moment, then there was total silence again.

Spencer knew he needn’t bother with searching the place
for any others.  If they were around, Kaley would have felt them, and he would’ve felt them through her.  He was close enough that they had that Connection now. 
And it doesn’t hurt to make the most of it
.

So, without having to delay, he set about searching a few of the offices
for documents containing some kind of actionable information.  He smashed open doors, tore open a few drawers, and selected a few promising scraps.  Having smuggled a few cars in through ports before, he knew what to look for.  The docks servicing a port like this ought to have plenty of itineraries and invoices on hand, and they did.  His marginal grasp of the Russian language helped him figure out what was important and what he ought to disregard.

Spencer
, Kaley was calling. 
They need help
.

“I told you to get outta
there,” he said, opening up a filing cabinet.

I notice you’re not leaving
.

“I’ve got business here.”

So do I
.

“Yeah, well, my business doesn’t open a goddam hole in the space-time continuum, bitch.  Now
move
!”  He found another cabinet that was padlocked, and rather than smash it open he took a step back, aimed at the padlock from the side, and let the Benelli take care of it.  The lock blew off, and when he opened the cabinet, he found the papers he was searching for, albeit some of them shredded by a bit of shot that came through.  “Zverev,” he whispered, smiling to himself.  He found it: the name
Vitaly Zverev
written on numerous Customs documents and weigh station checks, copies of the originals, as well as a couple dozen invoices.

Spencer
couldn’t take all of these folders, as large and cumbersome as they were, so he took some of the more promising documents, wadded them and stuffed them inside his jacket, and then used Zakhar’s cell phone to take quick pictures of some of the others.  It still might not be enough, but it would be a start.

“Kaley girl?” he said.  “You ready to g—”  More tremors.  Then, it passed.  Like a mild earthquake, a 3.0 on the Richter, nothing more.  “All right, that seals it.  We’re leavin’ if I have to carry yer scrawny ass!”

You
can’t
carry me
, she reminded him.

“If anybody can find a way to motivate an apparition,” he said, stepping out of the office, “it’s me.”

Upon stepping out of his car, Shcherbakov paused.  At first, he wasn’t quite sure what was wrong.  Then, he caught it. 
There’s no wind
.

The pistol was in his hand.  Zakhar Ogorodnikov’s Subaru Forester was about thirty
yards ahead of him, lights switched off, motor not running.  It looked like his taillights had been smashed, if the Wolf’s eyes weren’t deceiving him.

Pistol at low-ready, crouched and listening, Shcherbakov remained still.  Sound carried
far out here, especially without the interference of wind.  The snow was still falling, though.  In fact, it was falling quite strangely, at an angle, as if carried by a wind. 
But there
is
no wind
.  It took him a moment to realize it was all headed in the same direction, towards the docks.

Shaking it off as an odd weather phenomenon, the Wolf moved slowly up behind the Subaru.  The pistol was now raised, aimed at the back windshield.  There appeared to be no movement coming from inside.  Sensing a possible trap, Shcherbakov bent to one knee and remained there, listening and scanning the area around him.  It was obvious that his target wasn’t easy to corner, and thought steps ahead.  The quiet vehicle might mean nothing, but it might mean everything.

After a moment, he stood in a crouch and eased up behind the SUV.  Peeking inside, he saw no one.  The windows were too fogged.  However, in the unnatural silence, he thought he heard a whimper.  Keeping low, the Wolf touched the rear driver’s side door with his left hand, aimed his pistol with his right, counted to three, and flung open the door and stepped back.

A
boy yelped, and nearly got himself shot as he leapt back across the floorboard.  Shcherbakov trained his pistol on the boy, but his eyes went in every direction, still suspecting Pelletier might have left the child as a distraction.

The boy was a frail little thing, with a face drawn and etiolated, garbed in clothes that were far too big for him. 
Zakhar’s clothes
, Shcherbakov reasoned.  “Where is he?” he said.  The boy needed no more threat than the gun.  He raised a hand, pointed.  Shcherbakov glanced over his shoulder.  “Towards the dock?”  The boy nodded.  “Get out of the car.”  The boy did as bidden, and in no time at all the Wolf had him bound in zip ties, then took him back to his Priora and shoved him, whimpering, into the trunk.  Before he shut it, though, he said, “I know you have probably been through a lot tonight, but keep your silence and you may survive it.  Do you understand?”  He’d said it all in Russian, and got a blank stare, so repeated it in English.  When the boy nodded, he said, “Good.  I’ll be back.”