Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [106]
“I am, in a minute. But only for a minute, while you go get the hot chocolate. I didn’t spring for an expensive phone, bucko. The battery on that thing isn’t going to last all night.”
“Oh yeah,” he said, and the proximity of his voice to the mike told me he was checking the display.
“I haven’t heard it beeping low battery, but still you want to conserve the thing. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you didn’t take the charger when you ran?”
“Shit,” he complained. “I should’ve thought of it. I should’ve grabbed it.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Only a crazy person would’ve thought that meticulously about evacuating a scene.” By which I meant that I, personally, kept my chargers and all important electronics in my oversized purse-slash-messenger-bag. “It’ll be fine for a little while. Now I’m going to hang up, and I want you to call me back when you’re at the edge of the action, okay?”
“Got it. And Raylene?”
“What?”
“Thanks,” he said before flipping the thing shut.
I’m not going to lie. It almost gave me a warm fuzzy.
I exhaled a huge breath—one that I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding. As if this elongated gasp were a signal, Adrian came swanning back out of the bedroom (how could he have heard it in there?) and into the dining area, where I was sitting just shy of a fetal position upright. I began to uncurl, letting my legs straighten out on the floor and putting my head in my hands—leaving the cell phone beside me.
Adrian said, “Dare I ask?”
Without looking up I said, “Ask away.”
“What was that about?”
So I told him. I didn’t tell him everything; I mean, I’m not stupid. I didn’t know him well enough to give him the address of the place or the finer particulars. But I filled him in on the kids, and I made my standard disclaimers regarding my place in their maintenance. I told him about the place that once was a factory, and now was my warehouse, and how it was at right that moment being swarmed over by federal agents—or special forces ops, or CIA dudes, or whatever those guys were. Guys like Peter Desarme.
Right around the time I’d finished explaining everything I felt like explaining, the phone rang again. I’d forgotten I was holding it, and when it began to yodel and vibrate I nearly had a heart attack, flipping the thing up into the air and catching it—miraculously without hanging up on Domino, who was calling me back.
“Kid,” I answered, knowing it was him.
“Hey,” he said in a casual voice that only trembled around the edges, a tiny bit. He was doing good.
“Where are you now?”
“Oh, I’m just on my way home, you know how it is,” he told me, which also told me that there were other people within listening distance.
“Any sign of your sister?” I asked.
“No, not yet. I’ve checked all the obvious spots, but I can’t find her. And near as I can tell, nobody else has, either.” Still level and cool, and now tempered with hypothetical relief. In the background I heard car engines and men talking, and I detected the drizzling patter of rain—which only made it a night ending in y.
I did most of the important question-asking-type-talking, since he obviously couldn’t, out there where all the action was. “Were you able to look inside their vehicles?”
“Pretty much. Nothing to see there.”
“Good. That’s good. Do you think they could’ve taken her away already?”
He slurped at something, the hot chocolate I assumed. Or maybe it was a latte with Irish whiskey in it. There really was no telling with that kid. “I doubt it. Man, there sure are a lot of people out here at this hour. And they keep arriving, too.”
I nodded, as if he could see me or hear my head rattle. “They’re still incoming, and not clearing the scene, that’s what you’re saying.”
“You got it.”
Somebody came close, with a gruff “Move along, kid.”
I could imagine the look Domino gave the speaker, and I didn’t have to imagine his response. “Hey, fuck you, asshole! It’s a public street, I got a right to be here! What’s going on, anyway?”
“None of your goddamned business, you little shit,” the somebody