Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [144]
I fully planned to burn the place down behind me on general principle. I was getting the hang of arson. It really sends a message, you know? Not only will I kill your dudes and steal your shit, but I will burn your place down behind me. Yes, I will.
But before that, I had something I wanted to do.
Okay, I didn’t want to do it. But I feel like I needed to do it.
So I sat there inside the dead doctor’s house and I reached for his phone. It was a cordless jobbie with more buttons than any phone ever needs, but it’d work all right. All I needed was something that no one could trace back to me—not under any circumstances. Making a call from a line in a house that was about to burn down … yeah. That’d just about cover it.
I called information and asked for a number in DeKalb County, Georgia. Family name Barrington. I had some questions about Isabelle deJesus, and maybe no one at the Atlanta House would talk, but even denials could tell me plenty if I asked the right way.
It was a shot in the dark, that was for damn sure. But I was pretty sure Adrian would agree that it was a shot worth taking.
17
Ed Bruner was online.
So was I. I’d given him a Yahoo Chat handle and told him to ping me at a certain time, on a certain date. It had been a week since his office had gone up in flames, so he and I were doing this whole song-and-dance thing.
It was a game, probably to both of us.
We had this back-and-forth going on.
I knew about him. He knew about me. But we both kept pretending … just in case we were wrong.
In a way, we had plenty in common. We were both too paranoid to give up and play it straight. Too set in our ways to take the chance. Both of us convinced we were coming from a place of power, and both of us terrified we were wrong.
He typed: “We’ve had some setbacks over here, in the last week or two.”
I replied: “That sucks. I’m sorry to hear it. I really want to come on board with you guys. This whole thing sounds like a blast.”
EBrun1956: You could put it that way.
AbbieGFTW: So when are we going to make this happen, Ed?
AbbieGFTW: I’m chomping at the bit over here.
AbbieGFTW: Want to learn cool new stuff. Find more interesting abandoned buildings and raid them in case of cool shit.
AbbieGFTW: Ed? You there?
EBrun1956: I’m here.
Something was bothering him. Good. The silence of his blinking cursor was louder than any all-caps debate between two teenagers. I decided to prompt him.
AbbieGFTW: Hey, did you ever find out what happened to Trevor?
EBrun1956: Yeah. It turns out, he died.
AbbieGFTW: Seriously? How?
AbbieGFTW: What happened?
EBrun1956: Somebody killed him. Buried him in a basement.
AbbieGFTW: Wow. Crazy!
AbbieGFTW: No wonder we hadn’t heard from him.
EBrun1956: Yeah, no wonder.
AbbieGFTW: Anyone expecting to hear from you?
AbbieGFTW: Anytime soon?
· · ·
AbbieGFTW: Ed?
AbbieGFTW: Ed? You there?
EBrun1956: What kind of question is that?
EBrun1956: Is anyone expecting to hear from me? Lots of people are. More people than you know. Why the fuck would you ask me that?
I quit typing. I crept up behind him and shut the silenced smartphone from which I’d been IMing him. The tiny click of its closing made his whole body go tense, and rightly so.
But to answer his question, I said, “Just curious.”
And to give the old fart credit where credit was due, he swiveled around with some pretty impressive reflexes. He reached for the .38 he kept strapped under the desk, but he didn’t find it. Adrian and I had liberated it hours ago.
Ed Bruner, formerly Major Bruner, now retired … was pretty much exactly what I’d expected. An average-sized man, probably buff once, but age and inactivity had made him soft. His hair was starting to gray, and it was cut fairly close to his scalp. Not quite the buzz of an army drone, though. He’d let it get a smidge