The Courier (San Angeles) (21 page)

“No, not every day.” He stood up. “Can I get you more coffee?” He walked into the kitchen.

My mood changed almost immediately. What the hell was that all about? He didn’t want to talk about his job, or what?

When he walked back into the living room with two coffees, the smile was gone from his face.

“If you don’t want to talk about it . . .” I said.

“No. I think you need to know before you agree to sign up.” He looked at his watch. “Before they get here and pressure you into a decision.”

Quincy pulled his vibrating comm unit from his pocket and looked at the caller ID before answering. Maybe now he’d get some information he could use. “Quincy.”

The voice on the other end sounded shaky. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“I—”

“You’re on the Meridian payroll now, mister. And there is only one way out, with no benefits, for you or your mom.”

The phone went quiet for a while. Quincy waited, letting his threat sink into the dweeb on the other end of the connection.

“I know where they are.” The voice sounded defeated. “If I tell you, ACE will go into shutdown. They will know someone has been leaking information.”

Quincy stopped to think. If they lost this source, Jeremy would be mighty pissed off. Then again, the girl had gotten away from him more than once, and that didn’t make him a happy man.

He reached for his pen and paper. “Tell me.”

Miller began pacing again. “I started out pretty much like you. A young kid with street smarts. My parents dead.” His hand moved involuntarily to his scarred cheek. “They died and I was left alone on the streets. I was fifteen then. So full of myself, of what I thought I knew. ACE likes people like us. No family ties to worry about if things go wrong. So they recruited me as a courier, like you. I did mainly Earthside jobs for a couple of years, before they shipped me off-planet. That’s when things changed.

“I was making a standard run to the Mars mining colony. One of our guys had some new information for us. I don’t know if it was low-level garbage or some high-end stuff. They don’t tell us, and it didn’t matter to me. On the trip back, I was attacked. Someone didn’t want the information in ACE’s hands. The training took over, maybe too good. By the end of the trip, I had three bodies stuffed under my bunk. The AD you met last night, Nigel, figured my talents were wasted. I was moved to the Black Ops team, and I’ve been here ever since. That was three years ago.”

I just sat there. I knew, somewhere deep inside, that Miller had killed before. But hearing him just come out and say it made it feel
colder and more calculated. His story also made him about twenty-one years old. Way younger than he looked.

“Do you still think I’m a cool guy?” He gave me a half smile.

“I . . . We all need to do things we’re not proud of to stay alive. You just . . . well, you did what you had to.” I couldn’t help but think about Frank on Level 1, and what I had done. The coffee in my cup had gone cold. I leaned forward to place it on the table and settled back into the couch. The top of the black box dug into my shoulder blades again. “If I decide not to become a courier for ACE, what happens?”

“We let you go. We’ll drop you off wherever you want. I can even move you to another city if you want. When we get there, I take the black box and you never hear from us again.”

“And once the box is off, they can track me again?”

“Yeah.”

“That doesn’t leave me much choice, does it?”

Miller moved to the couch and sat beside me. “Sometimes running free is better than the alternative. It’s possible that when they realize you don’t have the package anymore, they’ll leave you alone.”

“How possible?”

“I don’t know. All I can say is that they’ll know you don’t have it anymore. I can’t promise more than that.”

Impulsively, I reached out and grabbed his hand. “Thanks.” I knew this was more honesty than I had gotten from anybody since this mess started.

“For what.”

“Everything.” I reached up and touched his scars with my fingertips. “How . . . ?”

He stood and moved to the vid screen wall.

“I’m sorry.”

“No . . . No, it’s okay. It’s just something I don’t think about too much.” Miller started pacing again. “When I was fifteen, our house got broken into. They busted in through a window, and before my dad could do anything, he and Mom were in the middle of the living room, tied to chairs. Well, by the time they were done, I had these scars, and my parents were dead. But I was alive. I ended up in foster homes for a few months before I decided I’d had enough. I ran away. ACE picked me up a few months later, and the rest is history. What about you, what’s your story? You’re what, seventeen or eighteen?”

“Sixteen . . . but I’ll be seventeen real soon.” For a split second I thought I saw disappointment flicker across his face. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. “I just got tired of being a victim, you know? I left home when I was fourteen, and I’ve been alone ever since. Until now, that is. It’s as though . . . as though I’m the victim again. The one being controlled instead of being in control.” I wasn’t sure why I was talking to him like this. I guess Miller just made me feel safe.

“We’re a lot alike, you and I. You’ll do good in ACE.”

“If I decide that’s what I want.”

“Yeah, if you decide.” Miller filled the awkward silence that followed by moving back to the kitchen. “Look, I’m gonna finish up in the kitchen. Why don’t you relax a bit? The guys from ACE should be here in about forty-five minutes.”

“Okay. I’m going to take a shower, if that’s all right.”

Miller looked at me, and I wondered if he was seeing me half naked again or just realizing how grubby I looked.

“Last door down the hall. Take your time. You might want to double up on the tape holding the box on.” He turned and walked back into the kitchen, his ears turning a deep red.

It made me like him more.

The shower was soothing and deliciously warm, though the hot
water stung when it hit my recent injuries. I must have stood under the running water for over half an hour, until my skin started to look wrinkled.

I didn’t close the bathroom door behind me when I went in, leaving it open about a centimeter. But it may as well have been locked. Miller didn’t even stick his head in to make sure I had a towel.

I wasn’t sure if I should be disappointed or relieved. And I wasn’t really sure why I did it in the first place. This wasn’t the time to get involved with anyone. Maybe I just wanted some human contact, something to show me I was still part of the real world.

As I toweled off, the sound of voices drifted down the hallway. I gently closed the door and flicked the lock.

It sounded like it was decision time. I wasn’t ready, but delaying it wouldn’t change anything. I got dressed, straightened my short hair with my fingers, and walked back to the living room.

“Ms. Ballard? I’m Assistant Director William Clark, and this is Ted, from ACE Human Resources.” They both sat on the couch, indicating the loveseat for me. Miller stood by the entry to the kitchen.

“Before we start anything else, where is the package?”

“On the dresser in the bedroom,” I said.

“Miller, get the package and give it to the driver outside. We need to find out what this is all about.”

William turned to face me and spoke again. “I understand AD Wood talked to you about joining our organization. Although we don’t know why he wanted to recruit you, we trust his judgment. So, we need an answer. Ted?”

“Hi, Kris. It’s good to see you. Let’s talk about salary and career paths, shall we?”

I made Ted go through his whole spiel. It was some of the most
boring shit I had ever listened to, but he seemed to be really enjoying it. At one point, I looked up at Miller and he had to leave the living room so no one could see him laughing. I don’t think Ted ever caught on, even when William stopped him.

“You’ve had a chance to talk to Nigel, and to Miller here. I’m sorry for forcing the issue, but we need to move forward. Your little package is at the center of a very big crisis.”

“Before I answer, Nigel said he knew my parents, said they worked for ACE.”

William and Ted looked at each other before William answered. “We don’t know anything about that, but we’ll look into it if your answer is yes.”

“You don’t leave me much choice,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“If I choose not to join you, I don’t get to find out about my mom and dad, and I die. You remove the black box, my ID tag goes live again, and SoCal or IBC or whoever finds me and kills me.”

“We don’t know that’s going to happen.”

“We don’t know it won’t.”

William looked over at Miller, standing behind me near the kitchen. I didn’t turn around to see what he did, but whatever it was, William came to a decision. “The possibility is pretty high.”

“Well then, seeing as I’m not fucking suicidal, I guess I’m in.”

William and Ted rose from the couch. “Good. Miller knows what to do. Welcome aboard, Kris.” They turned and left the house.

I had made up my mind in the shower. Saying it out loud to people who could do something about it seemed to flip a switch in my brain. I was actually looking forward to the training regimen Nigel had described. It wouldn’t be like my old life, which had to be good, and there was bound to be a nice place to live, and in my own way, I was following Mom and Dad’s footsteps. I felt lighter, as though a
world of worries and stress had been lifted off my shoulders. No one would try to kill me, not yet anyway, and I could move on with my life.

“Welcome aboard,” Miller said. “It’s not an easy life, but it has its benefits. I’ll get the car out of the garage. Grab whatever you need from your room and meet me on the front street.”

Miller turned and left through the side door. The house seemed suddenly empty without him.

I went back to the bedroom and grabbed my jacket. It was still filthy. Someone must have taken it off the chair in the restaurant. Probably Miller. I took the gun and extra clips, shoving them into the jacket’s pockets. It really seemed like too nice a thing to leave behind. Maybe when Miller dropped me off, I’d give it to him as a gift. I figured I had to do something, he’d been so helpful. He was one of the few guys I’d met that didn’t seem to want something from me.

I remembered the feeling of strength in his arms when he put them around me. How, for that brief moment, I had felt safe. It was how I’d felt when my dad held me when I was little, like nothing in the world could hurt me, especially not the monsters under my bed. This time the monsters were real.

I folded the envelope of cash and stuffed it into my back pocket.

I looked through the frilly curtains and saw the car nose out to the end of the driveway. Miller got out and started to walk back to the front door. A silver van drove slowly down the street, passing the house and pulling into another driveway a few doors down. The driver kept his eyes straight ahead, not looking at Miller or the house, but something wasn’t right. There was something about . . .

Oh god. No! It was Quincy. It was fucking Quincy. I yelled through the closed window while Miller kept walking to the front door. He didn’t hear me, couldn’t hear me through the fucking glass. I had to get out there, get to him. He was a sitting duck. The side door, the one Miller went out to get the car. It was the closest. I ran for it, slipping on the hallway carpet and banging into the wall. My shoulder left a dent in the drywall, and pain flared in the pulled muscle. The door pushed open into a garage. Three stairs led down to concrete. Barely slowing down, I took the stairs in one leap. My left heel clipped the last stair and I launched forward, landing on my hands and knees. I screamed as loud as I could. “QUINCY!”

Through the open garage door, I could see the van back out of the driveway and launch toward the house. Its tires squealed on the dry pavement. From the other direction I saw Miller turn and run toward me. He was too far. He wasn’t going to make it. I pushed myself to my feet. My pants were cut and my knees bled through the torn material. The skin on my hands was scraped, but there was no blood. I barely registered the pain.

The van accelerated and jumped the curb onto the grass, swerving between Miller and me. I briefly saw Miller turn and run back the way he had come, back toward the front door of the house. The van slid to a stop, gouging deep furrows into the green turf with its tires. A gunshot sounded in the quiet neighborhood.

I stood in the garage, swaying on my feet. What was I supposed to do? The gun. I still had the fucking gun. I pulled it from my pocket and it almost slipped from my grasp. The sweat on my hands made the gun wet and slick and difficult to hold. Now what? Was I supposed to run out there like a fucking commando? I’d never fired a gun in my life.

Another shot sounded from the far side of the van.

The car. If Quincy stayed on the far side of the van, there was a
chance I could still get to the car idling in the driveway. Two more shots sounded, followed by the sharp twang of metal being hit. I ran and opened the door, sliding behind the wheel. I threw the car into drive and stomped on the pedal, hurling the car onto the street, the motor whining as it went to full power.

I kept going until I had a full house-width between me and the van. Slamming the car into reverse, I stood on the pedal again. The car jumped backward, quicker than I had expected, and flew toward the driveway. I kept the van centered in the rear window. The car’s right tires jumped the curb, almost twisting the steering wheel from my grasp. I kept my foot to the floor and slammed into the side of the van. My head snapped back from the impact. I kept the car moving. The car’s rear end crumpled, pushing the van across the front lawn and past the concrete stairs leading to the front door.

Miller jumped from behind the shield created by the stairs and raced to the passenger door I threw open for him. Before he was fully in the car, I had thrown it back into drive and slammed down on the accelerator again.

I sped down the street, leaving the safe house and Quincy behind. I hoped he had been flattened by the van.

“Left! Turn left here! Good, now the next right, or we’ll get to a dead end. When you get to the next intersection, turn right again.” Miller lay back on the seat, sweat running down his face.

“Are you hurt? Did you get hit?” I asked.

“What?” Miller looked at me.

“Did you get hit?”

“No . . . no, I’m all right, I’m okay.”

“How the fuck did he know where we were?”

“I . . . I dunno. Let me think for a minute.” He turned toward the window.

I turned right and merged with traffic moving down the busy road.

Miller kept looking out the window.

“If one of our safe houses has been compromised, ACE is in trouble. They’ll be going quiet until the leak can be found,” he said.