And Marcella Renee Morgan wasn’t going anywhere.
XXVI
TWO DAYS AGO
ON THE ROAD
MITCHELL Turner had a bad feeling.
He got them, now and then, the way other people got migraines or déjà vu.
Sometimes it was dull, abstract, a sense of wrongness that crept in like night, slow but inevitable. Other times it was sudden and sharp, like a pain in his side. Mitch didn’t know where the feelings came from, but he knew to listen when they did.
Bad feelings were warnings, when you had bad luck.
And all Mitch’s life, he’d had bad luck.
Bad luck made sure he was the one who got caught.
Bad luck landed him in jail.
Bad luck crossed his path with Victor’s—though he didn’t see it at the time.
It was like a rubber band. Mitch could only get so far away before the invisible hand slipped and he went crashing back into trouble. Other people were always surprised when bad things happened. When good things stopped. Not him. When Mitch had one of those feelings, he listened.
Watched his step.
Kept one eye on the breakable things in his life.
He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Sydney, curled up in her red bomber jacket, booted feet draped over Dol. She was wearing a pink wig, the synthetic strands falling over her eyes. Mitch shot a surreptitious glance at the passenger’s seat and saw Victor staring out the window, his face unreadable as ever.
Merit rose in the distance ahead of them.
“Everything that goes around, comes around,” said Victor. His cool blue gaze cut sideways. “You should keep driving.”
Mitch frowned in confusion.
“If this doesn’t work,” added Victor softly. “Even if it does. Take Syd and—”
“We’re not leaving,” said Sydney, bolt upright in the backseat.
Victor sighed. “I should have,” he murmured.
The bad feeling nipped like a shadow at Mitch’s heels. How long had it been following him? Days? Weeks? Months? Had it been there since the night at Falcon Price, when he set fire to Serena’s body? Or was it simply the fact that when it came to Mitch’s luck, it was only a matter of time before it ran out?
“How far?” asked Sydney in the backseat.
Mitch’s throat felt dry when he answered.
“We’re almost there.”
* * *
FUCK.
June had overslept, woken with the sun full up and in her eyes. This is why she preferred killing to stalking—you could do it on your own schedule.
She lurched out of bed, stumbled to the window, studied the apartments across the street. There was no sign of Syd on the balcony. No glimpse of Victor or Mitch in the rooms beyond. For days, they’d passed like shadows through the apartment, lounged on furniture, taken the dog for walks.
Now, the curtains were pulled back, and the place looked barren.
June swore, and got dressed.
She crossed the road, caught the door just as someone was coming out. They didn’t even look twice—and why should they? She was just a kid, thirteen, gangly, innocent. June loped up the stairs, shifting again before she reached the fifth-floor landing, ready to pass herself off as a college kid, canvassing for politicians.
She knocked on their door, but no one answered.
June pressed her ear to the wood, swore again at the wall of silence, then produced a few narrow picks and let herself in.
The door swung open.
The apartment was empty.
A horrible déjà vu—of another city, another abandoned place, a full year of useless searching—but June steadied herself. Sydney was no longer a stranger. They knew each other. Trusted each other. June returned to her hotel room and fetched her phone from the bedside table, sighing with relief.
Sydney had already texted.
Syd: You’ll never guess where we’re going.
June knew the answer before she even read Sydney’s next message.
Merit.
Five minutes later, June was on the road, driving a solid twenty over the speed limit as she barreled toward Merit in their wake. She called Marcella on the way.
“He’s on the move,” she said, catching herself before she said they. “And headed to Merit.”
“Well,” said Marcella, “I wonder what gave him that idea.”
“It wasn’t you?”
“No,” she said, sounding a little put out. “But this is better. See that he gets here safely. We’ll welcome him with open arms.”
June frowned as she wove around a semi. “I thought you were trading him to EON.”
“I never said that,” replied Marcella pointedly. “I told you I hadn’t decided yet. And I haven’t. You know I like to know my options, and I have to admit that Stell’s reaction to the news of Victor Vale has piqued my interest. I’ve done a little homework, and this Vale is quite an interesting case. He could turn out to be an asset. Or perhaps not. But I certainly don’t plan on handing him over to EON until I’ve had a chance to meet him.”
Never one to waste a weapon, thought June.
“Who knows,” mused Marcella. “Maybe he’ll prove pliable.”
Victor struck June as many things—pliable wasn’t one of them. If anything, he seemed to be rather intransigent, cold smoke to Marcella’s fire. But opposites attracted for a reason. Would it be such a bad thing? June had always assumed she’d have to pry Sydney from Victor’s grasp, but maybe she wouldn’t have to. Maybe he would join them, three EOs becoming five. That was a nice number, wasn’t it? Five. Almost a family.
Marcella was still talking.
“I want you to make contact,” she was saying. “Arrange a meeting with our new friend. I’ll send you the details. Oh, and June?”
“Yeah?”
“Somebody convinced Victor to come to Merit, and it wasn’t me.”
“My money’s on EON.”
“That would probably be a good bet. Obviously, we can’t let them get to Victor first. So do try not to lose him.”
June swore again, and gunned the engine.
IV
JUDGMENT DAY
I
THE DAY BEFORE
MERIT
THE Kingsley was a blade of a building, thrust up through the city’s skyline.
But Victor hadn’t chosen the place for the modern aesthetics. No, the selling point had been its underground parking, which mitigated the problems of exposure—a tattooed man with a shaved head, a giant black dog, and a short blond child would always stand out, even in a city like Merit—and the closed-circuit security, which Mitch would have hacked by the time they unpacked, and—much to Sydney’s apparent delight—a rooftop garden.
Mitch set their bags down inside the door.
“Don’t get comfortable,” said Victor. “We’re not staying long.”
Mitch and Sydney shouldn’t have come at all, but Victor had long given up trying to dissuade them. Attachment was a vexing thing, as pernicious as weeds.
He should have left, before it ever took root.
“I’ll be back,” he said, turning toward the door.
Sydney caught his arm. “Be careful,” she said.
What a nuisance, Victor told himself, even as he rested his hand on her head.
“Careful is a calculated risk,” he said. “And I’m very good at making those.”
Victor pulled away, forcing Syd to let go, and left without looking back.
He took the elevator to the street and stepped out, alone, into the afternoon sun, checking his watch. It was just after three. According to Mitch, the doctor’s shift at Merit Central ended at five. Victor would be there to meet him.
Ellis Dumont.
A more spiritual person might have seen the EO’s sudden appearance as a sign of divine intervention, but Victor had never put much stock in fate, and even less in faith. Dumont’s presence in the matrix was convenient to the point of suspicion, his location in Merit its own red flag.
No, Dumont was either a gift or a trap.
Victor was inclined to think the latter.
But he couldn’t afford to stake his life on it.
His latest episode had crossed the four-minute threshold. He’d come back, but Victor knew he was playing a dangerous game. The odds were terrible, the stakes monumental.
It was Russian roulette, except that a bullet would be a cleaner end.
He had considered that, a quick, clean death. Not a suicide, of course—a reset. But that would introduce another factor, another risk. If he died again—truly died—would Sydney be able to bring him back? And if she did, how much of his power would be left? How much of him?
Four blocks later, Victor turned the corner and stepped through the sliding glass doors into a gym. He would have preferred to meet in a bar, but Dominic Rusher was five years sober, and in a moment of distraction Victor had agreed to meet him here instead.
He’d always hated gyms.
He’d avoided sports in school, avoided the weight yard in prison, preferring to hone his strength in other ways. He had enjoyed swimming, once. The soothing repetition, the measured breath, the way physical mass had no bearing on skill.
Now, as he strode past the hulking, sweating masses lifting weights, he had a vivid memory of watching football players trying to swim, attacking the pool as if they could muscle it out of the way. The current worked against them. They sank like stones. Spluttered for air. Bested by something as simple and natural as water.