I was hurrying back to my car when my cell phone rang. I liberated it from my pocket and checked the screen.
I hadn’t even stopped to program my client into my contacts yet, but I was pretty sure I recognized the number. I had that sort of memory.
“Jessica, is everything okay?” I started.
I didn’t know why I gave that greeting, exactly. My precog hadn’t kicked up, and it wasn’t exactly unusual for a client to call for an update so soon. It had been almost a full day, I realized, looking at the angle of the sun. But there was something vulnerable about Jessica that put me in full-on protective mode. I could only imagine how it made her two older brothers feel when they were themselves. I could also imagine that being inspired with abject fear at your former protectors would do a number on you.
“I’m at the police station,” she began, voice quavering as I’d half expected.
“Still?”
“I…it’s the only place I feel safe right now. I just heard Viktor Ramone’s name, and… Tori, what’s going on? No one will tell me.”
I ran through about a million responses in a millisecond. “I’ll be right there,” I found myself saying. “Wait for me.”
“You’ll tell me what’s going on?” she asked.
“Among other things.”
I tried to remind myself I was her P.I., not her caretaker, but the memo didn’t take. I drove over to the station knowing I was going to drag her away from there, get food into her, convince her she couldn’t stay. There had to be someone who could look after her while her brothers were on the loose. Somewhere she could go…
The drive took me longer than I’d have liked, but I saw Jessica as soon as I stepped inside. She watched the door as if she was waiting for Godot, cell phone clenched in her hand. She spotted me as soon as I entered and raced up. She looked like she wanted to hug me, but stopped just short. “Oh, Tori, oh thank God. What’s going on?”
The desk sergeant watched us with something between bemusement and exasperation. “You can’t block the door,” he said.
I took her by the elbow and maneuvered her back out onto the street. She looked terrified. “Have you eaten?” I asked.
“No, but—”
She probably weighed about a hundred and ten pounds dripping wet. She couldn’t afford to miss many meals.
“Come on,” I said, hand still on her elbow, aiming her down the street at a diner I knew existed but had never patronized.
It was a diner near a cop shop. That was all I needed to know to make certain assumptions—heavy on starches and proteins, better than even chance at drinkable coffee.
She dug her heels in after just a few steps, and I was forced to either stop or manhandle her along, and I wasn’t inclined to do that.
“Tell me what’s going on or I’m not going another step.”
I glanced around. We were completely exposed standing out on the street. Sure, there were a hundred or so cops just steps away, but it wasn’t like they were forming a phalanx around us. If anything happened, they’d come running, but it would be too late.
“You asked about Viktor Ramone. Your brothers…infected him somehow with their crazy. He lost it today on-set and…” How did I put this delicately? “Ran his stunt car into another car. And then into a cameraman. There were fatalities.”
She gasped, her hand going to her mouth and then falling away. “But…how?”
“I’d feel a lot better if we could talk about this off the street.”
She looked around and seemed to cringe in on herself at that, as if to make a smaller target. But it got her moving again. One foot in front of the other.
I put myself between her and the street so that I was on one side of her with buildings on the other. It wasn’t far, and my precog wasn’t kicking up any kind of warning, but…better safe than sorry.
We made it to the diner, and I ushered her in ahead of me, but then zagged around her so that I could lead the way to a booth in the back, where I could sit facing the rest of the place. She automatically sat across from me, and we both took a menu that had been left in a wire rack with various condiments. She stared at hers, unseeing. I wasn’t hungry. Not with all I’d seen, but I’d take the coffee. I didn’t think my day was going to end any time soon. I should probably try to eat something, if only to insulate my stomach against all the acidity.
The waitress arrived, smelling like she’d just come in from a cigarette break, which didn’t do wonders for my appetite. Still, I ordered coffee and fries. Jessica tried to wave her away without ordering, but I wasn’t having any of that. “You serve breakfast all day?” I asked.
The waitress agreed that they did. “Give her a grand slam…or whatever your equivalent is.”
“I’m vegan,” Jessica protested.
I checked myself before my eyes could roll. “Don’t worry, honey,” she said, “we’ve got something for that.” And she walked away without saying what it might be.
“You get that a lot?” I asked.
“That’s actually one of the better responses,” she said. “Worst is, ‘You mean like Spock?’”
“Isn’t that Vulcan?”
“Exactly.”
She gave a fleeting smile, and then fixed me with a hard look, as though she was about to grill me. “I want details on what happened with Viktor and what you’ve learned so far.”
“You do realize that every second I spend updating you, I’m not out doing my job?”
“You have to eat sometime, right? And, besides, I’m going out of my mind. I don’t know what to do or where to go.”
“What about the friend you stayed with last night?”
“I don’t want to put her in danger. Ian and Richie know all my friends, and…look, I know people can track phones. Mom and Dad put some kind of GPS or whatever on Ian and Richie’s phones when they started staying out and getting into trouble, even before the trip. I’m afraid.”
A cup of coffee landed in front of me then, a little sloshing over onto the saucer. Jessica ended up with a sweating glass of water, and the waitress walked away before she could ask for anything else, although it seemed the furthest thing from her mind.
“Did you tell the police about the tracer on their phones?”
“Of course.”
If the police hadn’t tracked them by now one way or another, it likely meant the boys had turned off or disabled their phones…yet when Jessica had come to the office this morning, she’d mentioned her brothers weren’t answering. She’d never said anything about her calls going right to voicemail, as they would have done if the phones had been off. They could have since died or whatever, but…
Just in case, I had to ask. “Have you heard anything from your brothers? Have they responded to your calls? Texts? Anything?”
“No,” she said. “I’m almost afraid…”
“Did you leave them messages? What have you said to them so far?”
She was busy shredding the napkin in front of her into little tiny pieces and failed to meet my eyes. “I asked them what they’d done and why. I cried, asked them to turn themselves in.”
I thought a second before responding. “Try them again. Call them. E-mail them. Leave messages on all their social media. Even if they’ve tossed their old numbers, they might access webmail or other things. Tell them you’re sorry you jumped to conclusions. That you know they couldn’t have done it. That you want to help.”
“But—”
“You don’t have to believe it. Just say it. We want them to make contact. Arrange a meeting.”
Her hands paused in their shredding, and she shrank back into her seat. “I can’t,” she whispered.
“Don’t worry. I wouldn’t let you go alone. You’d have plenty of backup. We’d catch them and stop them before anyone else gets hurt.”
“You really think it will work?”
“Only one way to find out.”
Jessica picked up the phone she’d put face up on the table and, with shaky hands, started to type.
The waitress arrived at that moment with two plates, one easily identifiable as fries. The other full of something that looked like scrambled eggs if all the color had been leached out of them and then added back in the form of tomatoes and green peppers. “Tofu scramble,” she announced, placing it in front of Jessica. There was butterless toast on the side. “Jam’s on the table.”
She turned to go when Jessica shot out a hand and connected with her wrist. The waitress turned back, trying to turn irritation into a smile.
“An orange juice,” Jessica said timidly. “Please.”
She nodded, pulled her wrist free and headed toward the kitchen.
Jessica put down her phone to pick up her fork, looking to me apologetically. “I’ll send more in a second. I…suddenly, I’m feeling shaky. I think I needed this.”
She forked a bite into her mouth, and I watched to see her reaction. It seemed to go down just fine, and I reached for my own fries, which were salted to within an inch of their lives, just the way I liked them.
The coffee clashed, but to hell with it. Coffee and carbs were two of my favorite food groups. I let them battle it out.
I let Jessica get a few bites into her meal before I started again, “So, about getting you some place safe—”
“Can’t I stay with you?” she cut in.
I stared. “I was thinking more along the lines of a hotel. A nice one. With security.”
“But…” She put her fork down, which I’d been afraid of, and started to tear up, which I should have seen coming, but apparently my precog didn’t consider tears much of a threat. “But it’s not like security will be at my door. Ian and Richie got to Mom and Dad. They got to Viktor. They can get to me.”
“They were living in the same house as your parents, and Viktor let them in.”
“The hotel’s a public place. I’d have to go out some time for food and they could grab me. Or I could order in and they could pretend to be room service. Or put something in my food. Or…”
She seemed to run out of ideas, though not fear. That shone in her eyes along with the tears. Jessica was flat out terrified. She’d been sheltered all her life, and now she’d lost her family and her shelter in one fell swoop.
“Please,” she said. “I’ll pay you double. Whatever you want. Just…please don’t send me somewhere to die.”
Holy melodrama, Batman.
“Eat,” I said.
“But—”
“Eat. I’ll take you to my place for tonight,” I said, instantly regretting it. “But I can’t watch you twenty-four/seven. I have to be out hunting your brothers. So tomorrow, you look into a bodyguard and a hotel, yes?”
She sniffled and used her shredded napkin to wipe the tears out of her eyes. She didn’t seem able to speak yet, so she just nodded. “Thank you,” she said finally, voice quiet and husky.
She picked up her fork again and started to eat. She was halfway through when the waitress arrived with her orange juice and a check, never asking if we wanted anything else. So, of course, I asked for another coffee. She eyed mine, still half full, huffed and went away. I’d drained my cup by the time she came back with the coffee pot, but I didn’t really have any urge for that second cup. I doctored it anyway out of habit.
“And the toast,” I told Jessica, when she was about to push her plate away.
Jessica gave me a sad smile. “Yes, Mom.”
Then she seemed to realize what she’d said, and the tears sprang up once again. It wasn’t long before snot joined the tears. Her shredded napkin wasn’t going to do the trick, so I gave her mine, only slightly the worse for fry grease. She blew her nose loudly. Not knowing what else to do, I grabbed the check. I’d expense the meal later. It would be on her bill. But for now… I took some cash out of my wallet and laid it down.
Instead of sliding immediately out of the booth, Jessica took up one of the pieces of toast and started spreading it with strawberry jelly. I saw a couple of tears hit as she spread and wondered if the salt would add to the flavor. Oh, bad me. No cookie. Probably I needed sensitivity training.
Or another french fry.
Two pieces of somewhat soggy toast and half her glass of orange juice later, we got out of there. Jessica had her car but didn’t want to take it, so we left it in the garage where she’d parked and took mine. A text came in as I started it up, and I checked it before pulling out of my spot.
Apollo: Where R U?
I texted him back, Headed home.
His reply came almost instantaneous. Meet U there.
But someone else beat him to it.