Wired (6 page)

“Mason took the meaning out of life for him and never showed an ounce of remorse,” Leonardo continued. “When you most desperately need loyalty from him, that will be the moment you will know without a doubt that all you have from Mason Merrick is betrayal. He would kill you if he had to, to get what he wants.”

My jaw dropped. “You're crazy. He would never
kill
me. You're not really saying that, right?” I asked, feeling oddly caught between laughing and crying. These were simply words, a suggestion. I didn't know why they should affect me like they did. “He just walked me home. He's had a million chances to—”

Leonardo gave a casual shrug. “At the moment, it's not advantageous for him. But make no mistake,
what he is doing now is ingratiating himself, making you trust him so that you will stay near him.”

I narrowed my eyes. Maybe Leonardo really
did
know about my history, as he seemed to know about my tendency to live life through a TV screen or the pages of a book. But distrust filled me. “Maybe that's more like what
you're
trying to do.”

Kaysar didn't seem the least bit concerned by my accusation, and I was getting closer and closer to completely losing my shit.

“Why are you telling me this?” I finally asked. “Why are you here if you don't want to hurt me or take me with you or whatever?”

A look of irritation crossed his face. “To have a moment for us before Mason completely poisons you against me. It's bad enough that he knew you before. He has the advantage of planting whatever story he so chooses, which gives me the disadvantage of trying to prove to you otherwise.”

“You haven't proven a thing to me yet,” I said. “Neither of you has.”

Leonardo ran his fingers lightly across my cheek. “Mason's true colors will do it all for me, and then you will know that I have not been lying to you, that I want to work with you, not against you.”

His cell phone must have been on vibrate; his hands suddenly fell away from me and he took a step back to take the call. “Please excuse me, Roxanne.” A few silent moments later, he slid the device back in his pocket, and I knew from his body language that he was leaving. With his eyes fixed on something behind me, he pulled a silver case from his breast
pocket, retrieved a cigarette and absently tapped it on the lid.

Only now did I notice his hands were free of the cuts and welts one would expect to see, given the evidence of the fight left upon Mason's face. Leonardo seemed . . . healed. Odder than that, even, was the easy way he'd been moving his arm—as if he'd never taken a bullet. “How—?

The tip of the cigarette suddenly slid across the silver case and Leonardo dropped the smoke to the ground. He curled his fingers into a fist, as if he were trying to resist something. “What is he up to?” he murmured, his eyes narrowing. “Mason's working on something. So like him, these tentative fits and starts. His style is so rough. Bumping and jerking us around.” He frowned and muttered something under his breath about not being sure what layer he was on.

“He's not even here,” I remarked.

Leonardo murmured another gracious apology and checked his cell phone again. He seemed to be struggling with a decision, seemed aware of something to which I wasn't privy.

Then, without any warning, he pulled a gun from his waistband. I flinched, but he shook his head. “I want you to take this.” Flipping the weapon around so that the barrel pointed away from me, he handed it over, following up with a fistful of bullets from his suit pocket. “And these.” He poured the bullets into my free hand.

“I already have some,” I said, in a voice that I hardly reco gnized as my own.

“Take them,” he replied, strain evident in his
voice. “And do not hesitate to defend yourself. This is not a game.”

He grimaced suddenly, and I thought I heard him say Mason's name under his breath like a curse.

“What?” I asked.

Leonardo either didn't hear me or didn't choose to answer. His gaze shifted beyond my right shoulder and he stepped back into shadow.

“Hey!” I tried to find his eyes in the dark, but to no avail, then slowly turned and looked over my shoulder. Nearly blinded by white light, my eyes took a moment to bring the fuzziness into focus. The buzz and blur of a busy office swirled once more around me. The receptionist was holding a manila envelope out. “Sorry for the confusion. It seems you normally do this by e-mail. But he said just to give you this.”

I stared at her, just stared at her until she rustled the envelope under my nose. I managed to extend my arm and take it in spite of trembling fingers.

“Who's ‘he'?”

“Dunno,” the clerk said with a shrug. “Haven't seen him around before.”

“Can you describe him? Was he wearing a suit? Or just casual?”

She looked taken aback. “Oh. I guess I really didn't notice. I was on the phone and someone dropped it on the desk.”

“Thanks,” I murmured. She blended back into her workday; I glanced around at the hall. Leonardo Kaysar was gone, but a black cigarette lay under a chair.

I went to open the envelope I'd been given, and
saw a jagged edge where someone had hurriedly run their finger to burst the seam. Had it been like that when the clerk handed it to me and I was just too distracted to notice? I looked inside. Nothing. I stuck my hand in and searched the corners with my fingers. Still nothing.

I wheeled around and practically mowed down the new person being helped by the receptionist. “It's gone,” I blurted.

A crease wrinkled her forehead and she sighed. I held up the envelope to explain. “There's nothing in here.”

She shook her head, pursing her lips in what I interpreted as an effort to keep herself from calling me an idiot. “I don't know anything about it,” she repeated. “Sorry, but maybe they just forgot the papers.”

“But it was thicker than this, wasn't it? When you handed it to me? And it was sealed?”

The man I'd interrupted crossed his arms over his chest, and both he and the clerk looked at me blankly. He wore a charcoal suit. I glanced around at the others standing in the reception area. The Starbucks travel mugs were still there, but the people holding them weren't wearing jeans and T-shirts. They were all wearing suits or skirts.

“I said the guy gave it to me to give to you. It was a sealed envelope, just like the others. And I handed it to you and that's all I know. Was there anything else?” the receptionist asked crisply. She was through with me.

“No,” I whispered. “Thanks.” The two went back to their discussion and I numbly folded the empty envelope and stuck it in my bag. I hadn't thought
much about a new project itself at all; I'd just come to pick one up, feeling it was the most natural thing in the world to do. But in light of Leonardo Kaysar's words, I wish I'd looked things over in my apartment a little more, scanned my computer for any clues as to what I might be working on, and more than anything I sure wished I knew what had been in that envelope.

I pushed out onto the street and started walking, playing bits and pieces of Leonardo Kaysar's conversation back in my mind. I was halfway down the block when certain discrepancies occurred to me, like, I'd passed neither a big-and-tall store nor a frame shop. Slowly I pivoted and retraced my steps to face a now wall-windowed agency storefront, shivering as cool air swept over my damp skin. Beyond the glass I stared through the bustle of the agency down at a cigarette being stepped on and kicked along the floor of the waiting area by the oblivious. Crushed tobacco scattered into the crevices of the beige carpet, disappearing like so many grains of sand.

I glanced around me. Somehow, some way, I wasn't on the block on that route I'd walked many, many times. I was on the block in the middle of . . . who the hell knew where. I turned in a circle, taking in the buildings and street signs once more just to be sure. But I was sure. The block on which I'd entered the agency wasn't the block on which I'd exited. In short, the agency had apparently changed locations in the time I'd been inside. And somehow I knew I was close enough to home now to skip the bus and walk.

This is not a game
. That one phrase was just about
the only thing Leonardo and Mason had agreed upon. Maybe what they really meant was that this wasn't a game for
me
. On some level, even if neither of them was willing to admit it, I would bet that this was most certainly a game for them. One they seemed to have been playing together for a long time.

Denial. Denial is denial only the first couple of times. After that, it's just a polite word for delusional. I turned away from the windowed agency and started walking.

The walk home from the agency took me a few blocks north of the 7-Eleven near my house. I thought about the contents of my refrigerator and those menus and what I must have craved last night. While it would have been just as easy to head straight home, I had the sense that something in the convenience store was a missing piece of this growing puzzle into which Mason and Leonardo had dropped me.

A prickle of dread fluttered over the surface of my skin as I opened the door, a contrast to the welcoming electronic chime as I stepped over the threshold. Naveed was restocking cigarettes behind the counter. He looked up at the sound and smiled at me. “Good day, Roxanne.”

“Hey, Naveed. How's it going?”

“Excellent, excellent.” He set the carton down on the counter and clasped his hands there, following me through the store with his eyes. I wandered up and down the aisles, looking for something to trigger a memory, or at least for something to catch my fancy.

I could sense Naveed still staring at me and tried a
discreet glance up to one of the round security mirrors. Not discreet enough for someone who was watching my every move.

“You are doing well,” he said in a pep-talk voice. “
Very
well. Something has happened?”

I turned to him and studied his face for a moment, suddenly paranoid that everyone I knew, however obliquely, was somehow in on something I wasn't. But he seemed his usual mild, pleasant self.

“Oh, you heard,” I said. “Yeah, I'm fine. But let me ask you something. Do you remember a guy dressed in a nice suit with a British accent coming in here recently? Someone who just maybe seemed a little out of place in the neighborhood?”

Naveed looked puzzled for a moment, then cocked his head. “No, I don't think so. No.”

“Nobody actually weird?”

“Nobody except you,” he blurted.

I laughed and he looked at me, horror flashing across his face for a split second, as if he felt he'd overstepped the bounds of acceptable etiquette between 7-Eleven proprietor and regular customer by telling a joke. I was quick to reassure him.

“Funny, Naveed. Very funny. Just wondering. Thanks,” I added as I wandered over to look at the boxed doughnuts. I couldn't think of how to describe Leonardo more than “a guy with a British accent and a nice suit,” not in a way that would be meaningful to Naveed. I doubted “a gorgeous male, mature in the debonair and worldly sense, impressive, sexy, and totally can-do in that MI5 sort of way,” would do much for him. And Mason's all-American look, his jeans and T-shirt, wouldn't have stood out from
the usual customers, so there was little point in even asking. If he hadn't been wearing a jacket I could have asked about the snake tattoo, but no go on that. Everything made the fact that I didn't even know what I would ask Naveed about them had he seen either one completely moot.

The oppressive sensation of being watched just wouldn't go away. I slowly stood and looked toward the counter. Naveed continued to eye me intently. He lifted his hand in a hesitant sort of wave.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

He straightened, a look of mock innocence on his face. “No, no. I am just very happy to see you shopping here like this.”

My hand paused over a box of powdered sugar minis.
Okaaaaay
. “Well . . . thanks, man. I'm very happy to be shopping here . . . like . . . this.” And figuring that, after his overblown pleasantry, he might be expecting something more personal in return, I asked, “How's the family?”

He beckoned me forward, consumed by proud enthusiasm. I breathed a sigh of relief. This wasn't the behavior of a truly suspicious man.

“My daughter is getting so big,” he said. “I am certain she is going to be a genius. I have a picture of her right here.”

I passed on the doughnuts and picked up a bag of chips instead. At the counter, Naveed handed me a family photo: mom, dad, big brother, baby sister. “She's adorable,” I said automatically. “You have a really nice family.”

But as I handed the photo back, I started to get nervous. Like, I needed to leave immediately. I put
the chips on the counter with a five-dollar bill.

Naveed started ringing me up, and it seemed to take forever. I had to force myself not to ask him to hurry, and I almost yelped out loud when he put his hand on my arm. He said, “If you are going to come often, maybe think about coming earlier. It is getting dark sooner now.”

He took his hand away and I breathed a sigh of relief. I went to the door, turned back at the threshold, and forced myself to concentrate. “This is a really dumb question, but you don't happen to remember what I bought last time I was in here, do you?”

He looked surprised. “Of course. You came right to the counter and purchased some gum,” he said, pointing to the impulse-buy section along the front of the counter.

Which tells me absolutely nothing. Nobody craves gum at two in the morning and actually acts on it. Chocolate, yes. Salty snacks, yes. Gum, no. I must have gone for something else
.

I forced a smile for Naveed, then slipped through the door, ushered out by the chime, and was already pulling the package of chips open and eating compulsively as I headed for home.