Critical Space ak-5 Read online

  Things change. When she got out of rehab, we began spending more and more time together. Now, often as not, Bridgett was at my place as much as her own apartment in Chelsea. She had a shelf in the bathroom for her toiletries, two drawers in the bureau for clothes, and slowly books and music from her collection had been migrating across town.

  In May, I'd asked why she didn't just move in already and get it over with, and she'd told me that this was enough, then cut off further discussion by saying that she didn't want to be pressured. She asked me not to ruin it.

  So I tried not to ruin it.

  That didn't keep me from saying, "Hi, honey, I'm home," though.

  Her smile broadened and she came down the hall toward me, so I moved to meet her. We caught up with each other at the kitchen and necked briefly, and then she pulled off the kiss and I put my face into her shoulder, and we held one another like that for a bit longer. She was wearing a black tank top, and her skin was warm and smelled of the oatmeal soap she now kept in my shower.

  "Never, ever, say that to me again," Bridgett said.

  "Let's go to bed," I told her shoulder.

  "Hmm." She moved her mouth closer to my ear, and I heard her teeth clink against my earrings. "Tempting, but you've got company."

  I let her go, straightening my glasses to see Natalie waiting at the end of the hall, watching us. She was in slacks and her blazer, and she didn't look very happy, and I guessed that she'd come from work.

  "Hey, Nat."

  "Atticus."

  I opened the refrigerator and got myself a bottle of Anchor Steam, then offered one to each of the two ladies. They said no. I had a swallow, then dropped into one of the chairs at the table and began removing my necktie.

  "That Skye Van Brandt's autograph?" Natalie asked.

  "She's got a hell of an arm." I smoothed the tie down on the table, trying to get the creases out.

  "Her manager called this afternoon, screaming his head off," Natalie said. "Says you walked out on her. Then Skye called, asking where you were, if you were coming back, sounding pretty distraught…"

  "She's an actress," I said. "She gets distraught if her makeup isn't right."

  "She's a movie star, actually," Natalie corrected. "Then her agent called, and he got shrill with me, saying that Skye couldn't work like this, whatever that means. Then Skye called back, but this time she had a bitch on, and when I told her I hadn't been able to reach you…"

  "I shut off my phone."

  "So I'd gathered. When I told her I hadn't been able to reach you, she called me several four-letter words, in a variety of combinations, then hung up. Then her manager called back and said you were fired. So, essentially, as a result of whatever happened in El Paso, I was verbally abused by the Skye Van Brandt organization this afternoon. Would you like to tell me what happened in El Paso, Atticus? Because I'm really curious."

  "You know I wouldn't just walk out for no reason," I said.

  "I do," Natalie said. "I also know that Skye Van Brandt's a spoiled brat, and that you should have been done with the job two days ago. Did she do that?" She indicated my forehead with a manicured nail.

  "With an ashtray."

  "Why?" Bridgett asked.

  "I wouldn't carry her luggage."

  They looked at each other. Bridgett began to giggle.

  "That's nice," I said. "I'm glad you're amused, because I sure as hell wasn't. Aside from the pain that comes from being beaned with a glass ashtray, I nearly lost consciousness, I had blood in my eyes, and I couldn't see."

  "You poor thing," Bridgett said.

  I ignored her, speaking to Natalie. "She made it impossible for me to protect her."

  "By walking out on her you left her exposed," Natalie said.

  "To what? Back strain? Skye Van Brandt didn't need a PSA, Nat, she needed a babysitter. I was for show, that's all. And, for the record, I wasn't fired – I quit."

  "It could make it hard for us to get more work."

  "You mean more of that kind of work, and no it won't. We bill them as normal, and if they make a stink, we'll let them know our attorney will be in touch."

  "You'd sue over this?" Bridgett asked.

  "Of course not," I said. "But they won't dare trash our reputation, and if they get even the least bit snarky I've got no qualms about threatening them with a civil suit for assault."

  "Ooh, he is pissed off," Bridgett told Natalie.

  "Damn right I am."

  "You might want to get that under control," Natalie said. "We've got clients coming into the office tomorrow at one, they're going to want to meet with you."

  "Is it a real job?" I asked.

  Natalie looked at me skeptically.

  "One where we actually do what we're trained to do," I explained. "Not another dog-and-jackass show."

  "Is that what you think we've been doing?"

  "Don't you?"

  "No, but this clearly isn't the time to discuss it. I'll see you tomorrow."

  "I'll walk you out," Bridgett told her.

  They left me alone in the kitchen, and I could hear them talking softly at the front door. Natalie and Bridgett have a friendship that predates my knowing either of them, and while it'd been stormy in the past, they seemed to have worked most of their difficulties through. I finished the beer and heard the door close, and Bridgett came back as I was rinsing the bottle out in the sink.

  "Okay, sport," she said. "What are we going to do about your mood?"

  "My mood's fine."

  "True, you do sullen so well."

  "Don't start."

  "And feeling sorry for yourself even better."

  "I asked you not to start."

  "You did not, you told me not to start, and you know how I respond to that." She leaned back against the wall, arms folded across her chest. "I'm going to ask again, what do you want to do?"

  "I want to shower. I want to have something to eat. I want to go to bed."

  "That it?"

  "Well, I'd prefer not to do these things alone."

  "Then we have a problem, because I already ate."

  "I can go without dinner."

  "Problem solved."

  ***

  A little after midnight I discovered that going without dinner had been a bad idea, and we got out of bed and pulled some clothes on, then went back into the kitchen. I boiled some water for Bridgett's herbal tea, fixed a glass of juice for myself, and we sat at the table and munched on sliced apple and cheese and bread. Bridgett had pulled on her tank top and a pair of my shorts, and I could see the track marks on her arms, puffy scars that were hard to the touch. She caught me looking at them.

  "I'm fine," she said.

  "I know," I said. "They just make me sad."

  "Scars can do that. You've got a couple that make me feel the same way."

  "And now a new one."

  "Skye Van Brandt hasn't earned the right to scar you. It'll heal clean." She put some cheddar on an apple slice, munched, and chased it with a sip of tea. "She's not what's bugging you, though."

  "How about the ennui of the working class?"

  "Try again."

  I swirled the cranberry juice around in my glass. "I shouldn't have walked out on Skye. That bugs me, but I'm not sure if it bugs me more than the fact that I took the job in the first place. I knew it was bogus going into it, but I did it anyway."

  "The money was good," Bridgett said.

  "I didn't do it for the money."

  "Star-fucking, then?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Not literally, you dope. Just wanting to be close to the glitterati. There's a glamour in it, admit it."

  "The glamour has long since worn thin. I've seen how the other half lives, Bridgett, and I'm not interested. It's not that."

  "Why then?"

  I finished my juice, looked at the empty glass in my hand. "Something to do, I suppose."

  "There are better ways to combat boredom."

  "Don't I know it."


  She finished her tea and we cleared the table, then shut off the lights and got back into bed. Bridgett curls up when she sleeps, and she pressed her back into me, settling, and was asleep in minutes. It took me much longer to relax, and nearly another hour before I managed to doze.

  Then Bridgett was nudging me awake, and I was wincing in the sunlight, listening to her tell me that I was wanted by the FBI.

  Chapter 3

  "How many times are we going to do this?" I asked Special Agent Scott Fowler.

  "Hell if I know," he answered. "Until they don't have any more questions, I expect. Get in."

  I took the passenger seat and Scott waited until I had buckled up before starting the engine and pulling out into the traffic on Lexington Avenue. It was an unseasonably cool summer morning, and pedestrians who had opted for shorts and tank tops were walking with the brisk purpose of people desperate to get warm again.

  Scott himself seemed comfortable, though I knew to him anything below sixty-five degrees was, by his own definition, "freezing." We were both Californians by birth, but Scott was from SoCal, and grew up spending his after-school hours and weekends catching waves along the lower Pacific Coast. He's got four years on me, wears glasses, has two earrings, and looks perpetually ready to hit the beach at the drop of a hat. But for his suits, which are uniformly blue or gray, you'd be hard-pressed to tell just by looking at him that he works for the FBI.

  "You were out of town," Scott said. "The lovely Skye. Nicely done."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "It's in the paper. 'Seen canoodling at The Grey Moss Inn outside El Paso, Texas, smoldering starlet Skye Van Brandt and celebrity protection specialist Atticus Kodiak.' "

  "Whoa," I said. "Backup. What?"

  "Page Six. The Post. There's a copy on the backseat." Scott was grinning like he'd snuck a mouthful of some very tasty and forbidden treat. "Bridgett know?"

  I was twisting around for the paper, finding it already folded open to the celebrity gossip pages. There was a small file photograph of Skye, and the copy was pretty much as Scott had quoted with the addition that, "Van Brandt's publicist denies any involvement between the two."

  "This is utter crap," I said.

  Fowler laughed, negotiating the merge onto the FDR. "They make all that shit up anyway. You'd never be caught dead canoodling anyone at The Grey Moss Inn."

  "Wait until tomorrow," I said. "They'll run a story saying that she and I had a fight and that we're 'headed for Splitsville.' "

  "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. You and Skye were so good together."

  "Shut up and drive." I tossed the paper back behind the seat. "Did something happen?"

  "No idea. The SAIC just told me that the Backroom Boys wanted to see you again, and could I get you into the office this morning. I told him I'd try."

  "That's it?"

  "If I knew anything else, I'd tell you, Atticus," Scott said. "Probably more of the same. Somebody somewhere found something someplace and they're hoping you can shed light on it."

  "Here we go again," I muttered.

  "Here we go again," Scott agreed.

  ***

  We parked in the garage, and then Scott led me up into the Federal Building, where I got my visitor's pass and was escorted past the metal detectors, then into the elevator and up to the Bureau offices. What had once seemed a maze of corridors and turns had now become familiar, and we went past the pictures of the President, the Attorney General, and the Director, walking along floors carpeted in gray and blue, passing agents and secretaries until we reached the same conference room as every time before.

  They were waiting for us inside, already seated, six of them this time, which was the most who had been present for quite a while. There were five men, three of them at the table, two seated with their backs against the far wall, and one woman, also at the table. The man at the head of the table was Hispanic and in his fifties, with a stack of file folders to one elbow, and I pegged him for American before he spoke, either CIA or NSA or State, though the odds were he wouldn't identify himself as such. To his right sat two more men, both Asian. The woman was to his left, black, perhaps shy of fifty, and when she spoke, her accent was South African. The men seated at the back were both white, but the lights were dimmed for the presentation, and I didn't get a good look at their features.

  These were the Backroom Boys, and so far they had never been the same group twice. This was the sixth time I'd been summoned to appear before them in the last eleven months, and I was resenting it like hell right now. The first couple of times hadn't been so bad; there'd been a novelty value, and I'd been eager to help the cause of international law enforcement, to offer what small insight and experience I could. Now, even if the cast kept changing, the parts didn't, and I knew all the lines by heart.

  The man at the head of the table rose and said, "Thank you for coming, Mr. Kodiak. My name is Marietta. I work at the State Department."

  "Sure," I said.

  Everyone except Scott put their eyes on me for a moment, taking stock. I was wearing old jeans and a T-shirt and my Army jacket. The butterfly sutures I'd put on my forehead the previous night had come off, and I hadn't had time to shave. I imagined that I looked pretty sordid, less a professional security specialist than some thug who had wandered into the wrong line of work.

  Fine by me. If everyone was going to play a part, I'd play one, too.

  Marietta indicated the woman, introducing her as a representative from Interpol's headquarters in The Hague. The two men on Marietta's right worked for the South Korean Intelligence Agency. He ignored the men behind him, and from his manner I assumed that all of us present were to do the same. Which meant they were probably spooks.

  When the introductions had been completed, Marietta started the presentation, using a sleek black laptop linked to the LCD projector on the table. He directed his speech to the three at his end of the table. The rest of us might as well not have been there.

  "Mr. Kodiak is a personal protection specialist based here in New York. Almost a year ago he headed the protection detail surrounding a man named Jeremiah Pugh. Pugh had been targeted by a member of The Ten, by the assassin now referred to as Drama. What is so remarkable about this, aside from the fact that Mr. Kodiak kept himself and his principal alive, is that he had personal contact with Drama on multiple occasions, mostly by telephone, but including three physical contacts, one of which was a conversation that occurred in his own home."

  Everyone at Marietta's end of the table looked at me again. I raised my right hand and gave them a small wave. What Marietta wasn't telling them is that before Drama and I had chatted in my apartment, she'd stripped me to my underwear and that she'd held a gun on me the whole time. There was still a bullet hole in the couch from where she had fired a warning shot.

  "As of this date," Marietta continued, "Mr. Kodiak is the only individual known to international law enforcement and intelligence to have had contact with Drama and survive. He is considered to have unique insight into the workings of The Ten…"

  I tuned him out, mostly to keep from registering my disgust. I am an expert on The Ten the way Scott Fowler is a member of the Beach Boys. Drama had been hired to kill the man I'd been hired to protect, and the fact was, I didn't like talking about her, and neither did any of my partners. We'd miraculously survived the experience without harm, without losing life or limb. Mentioning her name at times seemed a little too much like tempting fate, as if she might be summoned from the depths where she slept to wreak havoc on all of our lives once more.

  The Ten were stone-cold killers, ghosts of the modern world who murdered without pause or flaw, without politics or emotion to cloud their judgment. They did what they did for money, and they were good enough that they commanded millions for their services. Nearly nothing was known about them but for a handful of code names, a cloud of rumors, and a few very anemic and dubious facts. Even the name "The Ten" was misleading, since it referred to a theoretical ten be
st, and nobody in their line of work was particularly interested in providing an accurate census. There could be three or five or fifty of them, for all anybody knew.

  People don't like to admit it, but death and killing have long been part of how power travels, how governments do business. The Ten were the logical and inevitable result of that; each had undoubtedly been trained by governmental or military programs, had learned his craft in service to a country or agency before going rogue. Which meant that, in some cases, the organizations hunting members of The Ten would be counting on the same people who had created the members of The Ten; and if the data those people provided wasn't accurate, or forthcoming, or useful, that was hardly a surprise. It made The Ten all that more dangerous, because in the face of total lack of knowledge, the few facts that might be discovered would almost always be viewed as suspect.

  Worst of all, most of the time you never knew one of The Ten was coming until he or she had already gone, until the body was cold, and even then, maybe not. Got a witness you need to keep from testifying? Oh, look… he had an AMI in his sleep, how convenient. Member of parliament making things difficult for your business? Wouldn't be that same Right Honorable Gentleman who was found dead in his apartment, naked, with the body of his young lover, would it? Car crashes, fatal falls, mysterious illnesses, unexplained disappearances, tragic fires… The Ten could create them, it seemed, on demand.

  Drama was one of them, and she scared the shit out of me. The only reason that Dale and Corry and Natalie and I hadn't blown town and taken to living in shacks in Antarctica after our encounter with her was that we knew it wouldn't do us a damn bit of good.

  If Drama wanted us dead, we were dead.

  Just the same, in the first weeks after protecting Pugh, all of us lived in perpetual paranoia. Natalie went to France for a month, saying she'd been meaning to get back to Paris ever since she'd lived there her junior year of college. Corry took his wife and son to visit family in Ecuador; Dale and his lover, Ethan, spent four weeks driving cross-country "in search of America." I stayed in the city, trying to pretend that everything was normal.