Part 18 (1/2)
Chapter 12.
S tefan couldn't tell what she was thinking, and he didn't have time to find out; the FBI descended like a plague of jacketed locusts on the scene, swarmed over the place, demanded credentials and explanations from Katie and finally allowed the paramedics access to attend to Lial, who was still-barely-alive. Stefan collapsed wearily back against a rusty piece of marine junk and stared at the blood on his hands. Literal, figurative...It didn't really matter. It was all just...too much.
”Here.” A female voice, but not Katie's; he looked up to see a fresh-faced young woman wearing an FBI jacket and flak vest holding out a handful of moist towelettes. ”You're Stefan, right? Stefan Blackman?”
The FBI never asked about your ident.i.ty without already knowing the answer, Stefan thought. He nodded, but didn't speak. There were plenty of people in view, and a dull roar of noise and bright harsh photography flashes, but no sign of Katie.
He missed her.
”Hi. Rachel Evans,” she said, and didn't offer to shake hands, but then he was still wiping his down and trying to clean the blood away. ”You were-a.s.sisting Special Agent Rush?”
”She told me to wait in the car,” he said.
”I see.” She lowered herself into a crouch, coming to eye level with him; she was older than he'd thought at first glance, with fine lines around her china-blue eyes. It was her hair that made her look twenty, he decided. Strawberry-blond, worn long and straight, with an old-fas.h.i.+oned headband to hold it back from her face. She was probably closer to thirty. ”May I ask why you didn't follow the agent's instructions?”
”She was-she was walking into a trap.” He finished scrubbing his hands and balled up the moist cloths; Evans silently held out her hand, accepted them and sealed them in a plastic bag that she put in her pocket. Either that was out of concern for the crime scene, or she'd just collected evidence. He had no idea which.
”And you knew this how, Mr. Blackman?”
He didn't know what Katie was saying, but she probably wasn't telling them about his visions. ”I saw Lial. The wounded kid. I know him.”
”You know him,” she repeated. ”I see. In what context?”
”I'm a street magician. I meet all kinds of people. Lial's in the GD, the Gangster Disciples. I knew when I saw him here, out of his territory, there was something wrong.”
Evans stared at him, unblinking. ”Street magician.”
This will go a lot faster if you don't repeat everything I say, he thought, but he was just able to stop himself from saying it aloud. ”Like David Blaine, Criss Angel...?”
She had no idea, clearly. He usually got some kind of aha! off that, but she just continued to watch him without a flicker of expression.
”In Los Angeles.”
”In and around. I spend a lot of time in Venice Beach.”
That finally got a reaction; Evans took a notebook out of her pocket and made a note. About Venice Beach? Was that a hotbed of terrorists these days? ”And how did you become acquainted with Special Agent Rush?” she asked.
It went downhill from there. He tried to avoid mentioning the visions, but at a certain point it was obvious he was avoiding something, and if there was one thing Evans seemed to be really good at, it was homing in on whatever he was trying to conceal. Before long the whole unlikely story was in front of her, and she'd stopped taking notes. He couldn't tell if she was just frozen in disbelief, or had decided the whole story was too far-fetched to bother doc.u.menting it.
When he was finished-and it took another hour of questioning, from Evans and then from another agent, clearly her senior-Stefan asked to make phone calls-denied-and then asked to see Katie. Also denied. Finally, word came down that Katie was on her way to see him, and for the first time he felt a surge of hope.
Until he saw her.
It was like looking at a stranger. She saw him, but she didn't see him.... It was as if everything that they'd been through in the past twenty-four hours hadn't happened at all.
As if the two of them had never met before.
”Katie,” he murmured, and heard the pain in his voice. She didn't react to that at all.
”I've asked that you be released for now,” she said. ”They're going to investigate further to find out your links to the Gangster Disciples....
”My what?”
”...and you shouldn't leave town. I called your dad. He's coming to pick you up. Your car's being impounded. It'll be examined for forensic evidence.”
”Forensic evidence of what, Katie? And you know it's not my car. It's Angelo's car. He'll kill me if you take it apart.”
She didn't answer him, not directly. ”I know that you meant well, Stefan. I know that you intended to help me, and maybe you even believe that you did, but the end result is that those girls are missing, and I lost my chance to save them. And if I'd been on my own, this wouldn't have happened.”
”Yeah,” he said and got to his feet to face her. ”Yeah, you're right about that. It wouldn't have happened because you wouldn't have been able to so much as trace the van out of Phoenix, much less come this close. Katie-”
”I have to go,” she said. ”I need to work.”
She turned her back on him, and walked away. He clenched his fists, saw a red haze settle over everything, and deliberately breathed in and out until it faded. He had a gypsy temper, as well as a gypsy instinct for wandering. What the h.e.l.l was that, she needed to work? They'd been working, both of them, trusting each other, depending on each other...and now...
Now she was an FBI agent, he was some street-corner palm reader, barely a step up from a three-card-monty dealer. A palm reader with gang ties, and who the h.e.l.l knew what else they suspected. Maybe it wasn't Katie, not completely, but she was willing to let it happen to him.
She was willing to walk away.
”Katie!” he called. She kept on walking. ”You really think I won't embarra.s.s you in public if I have to?”
She wheeled around and came back at him, fast. He held his ground, meeting her angry dark eyes steadily.
”You wouldn't dare,” she said. Her tone was low and viciously intense.
”I don't want to,” Stefan agreed, ”but I'm not letting you just dump me like this. Katie, whatever happens, I want to see you. I need to see you. Remember that.”
”Remember this,” she snapped back. ”If those girls die and I find out that you had anything, anything to do with delaying me along the way, G.o.d help you, Stefan. We're done now.”
And then she was gone, and he was standing alone in a roomful of people, all of them staring at him with identical, chilly expressions that conveyed their doubts more than words could. He knew he should be worried for himself-an FBI investigation wasn't anything to shrug off-but mostly, he was just worried about Katie Rush.
She'd cut the bond between them so brutally that he wondered how, and when, she'd start to bleed.
And who'd be there for her when she did.
It was the hardest thing she'd ever done, walking away from Stefan. He'd looked so alone there, and so...disappointed in her. But surely he had to understand how she felt. Looking at him reminded her bitterly and agonizingly of the past day, of the girls on their knees, silhouetted in the doorway, of Stefan's grim determination to do whatever it took to save them.
She'd let him down. She'd let herself down. And now they were both at risk. She had to distance herself from him, and try to avoid pulling him down with her. They were going to crucify her, no question, and she fully deserved it.
Stefan...Stefan deserved to go back to his life. She'd hurt him, badly, at the end, but that was better. It was just better that he give up and go back to the beach, back to the pretty tanned girls and the uncomplicated fun they represented. He didn't belong in her world, and she definitely didn't belong in his.
Still, what she'd said to him had caught her by surprise. She'd simply meant to say whatever was necessary to push him away, but that had been...bitter. She hadn't known she was so angry until it had boiled out of her, and that had been wrong, directing it at him. Stefan had never tried to hurt her.
Two task force agents were waiting for her outside; she glanced over at the forest-green Jaguar-Angelo's car-that they were loading onto a flatbed truck for processing at the local field office. That was a waste of time, she knew, but it hadn't been prudent to argue about it. She was out on a small enough limb as it was.
Still, Stefan was right: Angelo was going to kill him about the car.