Athena Force 8: Contact (21 page)

Faith tried sniffing the car—and sneezed, violently. Then again. Her nose burned and her already swollen throat ached. She had to back away from the car, eyes watering.

“What is this?” demanded Lynn, swiping a finger across one fender. But Faith knew what it was.

Cayenne pepper.
Exactly what she’d smelled when Butch was killed!

That’s when she heard the faint metallic click, echoing down the block. Then another. “Lynn,
down!
”

Both girls hit the asphalt as a shot exploded into the night. Faith found herself up close and personal with hardened tar. Window glass rained down on top of her. She pulled herself over to where Lynn lay.
Not my sister. Not my sister.
“Lynn!”

“I’m fine.” Lynn shook glass out of her hair. “I move faster than you, remember?”

Faith tried to lean past the fender, but began to sneeze again. “Damn!”

“He knows what you can do,” guessed Lynn.

“He what?”

“Some people use pepper to repel guard dogs, or to throw them off a scent. Apparently he just…adapted it.” When Faith stared, Lynn explained, “I know security.”

Faith remembered sniffing the letter that Chet had left at the Biltmore, while Greg watched. But surely that wouldn’t have been enough! “Have you got a cell phone?”

“Of course I’ve got a cell phone. Who doesn’t have a cell phone? Oh.” When Faith extended her hand, Lynn gave her the phone.

This time, Faith didn’t dial through the detective division. She went straight to the source.

“Chopin here.”

“Don’t hang up,” she murmured. “If you’re able to record phone calls, start recording. You’re going to want to hear this.”

“Gee,” said Roy, drily. “You wouldn’t be some kind of
anonymous contact,
would you? Got more psychic hunches for me?”

“Either you’re a good detective or you aren’t, Serpico.” Well, whoever Serpico was, she’d gotten the impression he was one of the good guys. “Just listen for a few minutes. Oh. And, shots fired at Charbineau off Pelican, in Algiers Point.”

She could hear his swearing even as she pocketed the phone, raised her hands—and stood into the open, August night.

Lynn said a less-than-ladylike word herself.

“It’s okay, Greg,” Faith called. “It’s just me. Don’t do anything you’re going to regret.”

“Who says I’m going to regret it?” he demanded. But although he was still pointing the weapon at her, he wasn’t firing. Not yet.

Then again, he had a point. If he’d been able to hide his knowledge of the real serial killer, to murder Butch, to try to kill her—or Cassandra, as he’d thought she was at the time—and still keep all traces of guilt out of his breath, out of his heartbeat, out of his
energy
…clearly Chet wasn’t the only member of the family missing some piece of humanity. Why would he regret it?

“I thought we had a connection,” she said, and took a step closer to him, her arms still spread to show her harmlessness. “I know you’re just trying to protect your brother. It’s like you told me at lunch. Families can be a lot of trouble, but you still love them, right?”

Greg laughed. “And I thought you majored in pre-law, Faith, not psychology.”

“I minored in psychology, but that doesn’t mean I’m trying to play you. Didn’t I go out with you, as soon as I quit? Aren’t you the one I always went to, when I was upset about anything?”

Greg said nothing—until she took a step closer. Then he raised the gun, which had begun to sink. “I don’t have much to lose here.”

“Sure you do. I know you were trying to kill Cassandra in the cemetery, not Butch. That makes it an accident.” Actually, it didn’t. If he was trying to kill her, intent followed the bullet. But she wasn’t telling him that.

“You don’t know the NOPD! A cop killer is a cop killer.”

“And an accident is an accident. But deliberately shooting me here, right in front of the home you grew up in—you can’t excuse that one.”

“Who’ll know?”

Anyone listening to the tape Roy was hopefully making, for one. But Faith knew she couldn’t count on that. “My sister. You saw us go into the house, right? Maybe you were already inside, checking for whatever the police had missed. Then we came. That’s why you flattened her tires and waited for us.”

“Who says I’ll leave your sister talking?” demanded Greg.

Which was when Lynn stepped up beside him, grabbed his gun-hand, and said, “I do.”

Greg squeezed off one shot into the asphalt before Lynn wrenched the gun free with her superstrength. Then, looking wide-eyed from her to Faith, Greg turned and ran.

Faith took off after him. “Don’t lose the gun,” she shouted over her shoulder. “Do
not
lose that gun! Uh…weapon.”

“I didn’t plan to,” said Lynn, catching up more easily than seemed fair. “What’s the big deal?”

“Ballistics should be able to match it to Butch’s murder, that’s what,” Faith panted. “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be able to outrun me?”

“Why not tire the guy out first?”

Good point. And Faith, either because of her genetic engineering or just because she had almost twenty years on Greg, was no bad runner either. She and Lynn stretched full out, their footsteps quickly syncing with each other’s.

“We’re…passing the old…gas station,” Faith gasped, as they sprinted past the old historical site. That was for the benefit of the police, of course, not for Lynn. “I think he’s…headed for the…ferry.”

Sure enough, Greg had turned onto Seguin.

Worse, they could hear the clanging bells that announced the ferry’s imminent departure from the landing.

“Should we stop him?” called Lynn, barely winded.

“He’s heading…in a good direction….” So they kept running. The clanging got louder, and she heard a scraping noise—the ferry pulling up the skirt boards. Greg wasn’t taking the pedestrian stairway. He was racing down the car ramp, ducking past the gate arm.

“Hey!” yelled a guard. “Ferry’s departing! Stop—”

The sisters, pounding past him, seemed to surprise him into silence.

“Uh-oh,” said Lynn.

Greg leaped onto the ferry. And it really was departing, sliding out of its mooring and into the broad, dark river. Lynn picked up her pace, quickly outstripped Faith and launched herself outward, across the water—

Landing solidly on two feet.

“Faith!” she exclaimed, spinning and holding out her gloved hand.

The ferry was a good four feet from the ramp now, and drawing farther away by the second—five feet…six…

Hoping her genetic abilities went past sensory perceptions, Faith put on an extra burst of speed, hurdled the open space—

And landed with one skidding foot, then both knees.

The phone flew out of her pocket at the impact, skidded across the ferry deck, and arced out into the river with a solid
plunk.

She regained her feet in time to help her sister chase Greg Boulanger around several cars and, finally, to tackle him to the floor. They wrestled his arms behind him until the security guard, already angered by their flagrant disregard for safety, made it to their side.

“You’ve got handcuffs, right?” panted Faith, both annoyed and admiring that Lynn was barely breathing hard. “You’d better use them, then call the NOPD…and let him know…to meet us.”

She held her breath for a moment, as the guard patted Greg down, but luckily the man didn’t disturb anything. Which was good, considering what Faith had just smelled.

Now she knew why Greg had gone to Chet’s house.

He had the locks of the victims’ hair, Chet’s souvenirs of his killings, in his left hip pocket.

“P
olice stations,” said Lynn, “aren’t my favorite places.”

“Trust me,” said Faith. “It’s better on this side of the mirror.”

They stood, as unobtrusive as they could make themselves, with a handful of officers watching Max and Roy interrogate Greg Boulanger through the one-way mirror. Greg was seated in the same chair Faith had used earlier that day, handcuffed to the same table.

She felt fairly confident that, unlike her, Greg couldn’t hear them commenting. Especially since she and Lynn weren’t actually supposed to be watching this, and so were speaking in the barest of whispers. Luckily, they both had some version of superhearing.

“We know you’ve been covering for your brother, Greg,” growled Roy, on the other side of the glass. Sleeves rolled up and hair fingered off his forehead, he looked good doing it, too. “You let him into the morgue. You falsified evidence. And we’ve got the .38.”

“Which Faith Corbett gave to you.”

“No, which her sister gave to the patrolman who first met the ferry. Neither one of us touched it.” Roy was in Greg’s face now, full fury. “Yours are the only prints on it, Greg. And oh yeah—the freakin’ thing is
licensed to you!
”

“Someone stole it.”

“Then you committed a crime by not reporting it stolen!”

“Then I’ll pay the fine.”

One of the officers said to another, “He’s staying pretty cool.” She was right. What really surprised Faith was, Greg’s pulse and breathing remained steady throughout the interrogation. He was guilty—she’d stared down the barrel of the gun that had murdered Butch. She
knew
he was guilty.

But if she’d come upon this interrogation knowing nothing, even she would have been fooled.

“I don’t know what it is,” she murmured to Lynn. “Either it’s because he honestly feels no guilt, or because someone taught him. Or both.”

“Taught him what?”

“How to control his body reactions. This guy could pass a lie detector test without breaking a sweat.”

“Actually,” whispered Lynn, “that’s
how
you pass a lie detector test.” But she wrinkled her nose, teasing, as she said it.

Faith loved that she had sisters to tease her, now.

“Look, Chopin, the bitch may have you fooled,” said Greg. “But you need to know something about her, man. She’s a freak of nature. She hears things, feels things—even smells things that normal humans can’t even register.”

“Yeah,” said Roy, as if he’d already known that. Considering this afternoon, maybe he had. “And it makes her a real pistol in the sack.”

That
got a reaction out of Greg, just as he’d meant it to. An almost imperceptible catch in his breath, a faint acceleration of his pulse. Greg controlled it with deeper breathing. In only a moment, he’d regained his balance.

But Faith had seen him falter, all the same. And she recognized the technique. “Oh my God.”

Then she recognized that the other police officers out here had noticed her—and were staring. Thanks, Roy.

“I’m sure that’s just an interrogation trick,” Lynn told them, shy but determined to defend Faith.

“Actually, no, I have been to bed with him.” Whether or not she was a
pistol.
Most of the male cops looked impressed. A few of the female cops looked jealous. “But what I meant was—my roommate, Krystal. She taught me the same techniques. They’re common, sure—controlling your body’s stress through your breathing, that sort of thing, but still. She also knew about my, er,
heightened senses.
”

Lynn nodded, following her.

“And Krystal had a lover sometime before her murder, even though we didn’t know she’d been dating anyone.”

“Would she have been gullible enough to sleep with Greg?”

“He fooled me, didn’t he?”

Captain Downs, who’d relieved Captain Crawford hours before, ducked into the room. “Folks, this isn’t supposed to be entertainment. Especially not for civilians. As for civilians
involved
with the case—”

Most of the police officers dispersed, but as she left, one—a pretty redhead—said, “The pistol’s got an interesting theory, Cap. You might want to hear it.”

Downs, a fifty-something black man with a salt-and-pepper flattop—shooed Faith and Lynn out before he raised his eyebrows and waited for the theory. So Faith explained how Greg might have dated Krystal. “Maybe they kept it quiet so it wouldn’t make things weird for us at work. I don’t know. It’s pure speculation. But think about it—Chet went years since killing his last psychic. Why did he suddenly notice Krystal Tanner?”

The detectives had already discovered the family connection between Chester Simpson and his half brother, Greg.

Captain Downs considered Faith for a moment. Then he said, “You’re not quite as big a pain as Crawford said you were, little lady.” And he went inside and tapped on the glass.

It was Max who came to the door—and Faith wished she didn’t feel disappointed. When the captain whispered their theory, Max nodded and went back to his interrogation. “Let’s talk about Krystal Tanner, Greg.”

Greg’s pulse sped.

“Now out!” ordered Downs. “If you want to wait for the detectives, you can go to the booking room.”

So they headed out to the desks. A drug addict twitched in one chair. Another chair was occupied by a man in a tuxedo—a man so drunk he kept swaying sideways, into an apparent hooker who kept pushing him back the other direction.

“Oh, this is better,” said Lynn with gentle sarcasm.

“Weirdly, I’m getting to like it,” admitted Faith. “Do you want something from the machines?”

But before she could force Lynn to choose between wrapped cupcakes and a candy bar, a disturbance from the hallway caught her attention. Faith’s step hesitated when she recognized one of the gangbangers who’d attacked her in the alley. Then another. Then a third. All three of them, as before, wore some piece of green. All three of them had their hands cinched behind their backs. And all three of them sported an assortment of abrasions, black eyes, bleeding noses and swollen lips.

Behind them came an irate desk sergeant, calling for the captain….

And Dawn O’Shaughnessy.

She nudged her captives forward, then folded her arms to wait, her eyes seeking out and finding Faith and Lynn.

Dawn actually didn’t show relief but, as Faith and Lynn hurried to her side, Faith sensed it off her all the same. Something in her heartbeat. Something in her scent.

Faith liked having sisters who worried about her—and sisters to worry about. “What did you
do?
” she demanded.

Dawn widened her eyes and, with a jerk of her head, indicated the gangbangers. Like it was obvious. “I dragged in some witnesses.”

“Witnesses to what?” asked Lynn.

Faith asked, “How’d you handcuff all three of them at the same time?”

“They’re called riot cuffs…kind of like those plastic thingies you get with your trash bags,” said Dawn. “Very portable. And these guys are witnesses to whoever it was wanted Faith here dead.”

Faith and Lynn stared.

Dawn rolled her eyes. “Damn, you’re innocent! If it was just revenge for the earlier fight, maybe they would’ve sent five, maybe six or seven guys. But
twelve
of them? The more I thought about it, the more I figured they were there to take Faith down. Professionally. So tonight I went looking, asked a few questions and persuaded these nice fellows here to tell us who hired them.”

She said to the captain, who’d come out in time for the last half of her story, “Call it a citizen’s arrest.”

“Or I could call it assault and battery,” suggested Captain Downs. But all three of Dawn’s prisoners reacted to that.

“That little girl didn’t beat up me!” “You don’t know nothing about nothing!” “I got these bruises earlier today!”

“So tell them—” started Dawn, but Faith interrupted.

“Captain, I’d like to file a complaint against these men for attacking me in an alley, yesterday afternoon. My sisters witnessed the whole thing. Would you please read them their rights, before we ask them anything else?”

The Storyville gang exchanged sullen glances, disliking the way their night had gone. Dawn cracked her knuckles. Lynn put her hands on her hips. Faith folded her arms.

Together, they made the boys
very
nervous.

Once they were officially advised that anything they said could and would be used against them in a court of law, the youngest gave in first. “Okay! Just keep these psycho bitches off me, man. It was this white dude, works for the city. Real Einstein type, with glasses, curly black hair. Maybe so tall—” He indicated. “With a beard. Like some animal growing on his face.”

He’d just described Greg Boulanger—and in a way that made Faith wonder why she’d ever considered dating him.

“And how did you know him?” asked Faith.

“The man did a little pushing on the side, no big deal,” said the boy with the nose stud. “A little
C
now and then. He said it was stuff he boosted off crime scenes. Anyhow, he comes to us and says blondie here was getting into too much of his personal business. Said we should shut her down.”

Captain Downs beckoned the redheaded cop over. “As soon as Chopin and Leonard are through with their suspect, we need him in a lineup. Now.”

“Merry Christmas, Captain,” said Faith, and turned to her sisters. “I think I’m ready to go home after all.”

Lynn wrapped an arm around her, carefully not touching bare skin. When Dawn would have hung back, Lynn caught her arm, too, and the three of them headed out of the station together.

“Now,” said Faith, “it feels like it’s over.”

“Except for finding out who hired the hit on Rainy Miller Carrington,” Dawn reminded them. Dawn was something of a workaholic, wasn’t she?

“And finding out if Thomas King is really our father,” added Lynn.

Faith stopped in her tracks.
“Thomas King?”

“I admit, I can see the resemblance,” said Tamara Corbett, trying to peer past the enthusiastic cocker spaniel on her lap to consider the magazines and pictures Faith had brought. Wilbur, as they’d named the stray dog, kept trying to lick Tamara’s face. Despite her protests, Faith’s mom seemed to like that.

Especially now, with its leg in a cast, the dog needed a person. And Tamara had been too lonely for too long. Faith would have taken Wilbur back home to the apartment, if her mother had hated the idea. But this was clearly not hate.

In fact, any dog that could distract a healthy, middle-aged woman from the idea that she may have borne Thomas King’s child was a dog who had a permanent home.

“The Cassandras still aren’t a hundred percent sure. Neither are Lynn and Dawn,” Faith said now. She’d brought her sisters home for lunch, the previous day, while the dog was still staying with her roommates. Tamara had taken to them with as much love and sympathy as she was now giving Wilbur, but with a lot more respect. The way her sisters had responded to Tamara’s immediate acceptance made Faith all the more aware of how lucky she’d been, to grow up with a mother.

A mother who kept secrets, yes. But Faith had no moral high ground to stand on there.

“Once we know for sure,” she continued, drawing one of the magazines closer to her, “we’ll meet him together.”

This particular cover story was “Long Live the King,” written the previous year when the Navy SEAL who’d been presumed dead was discovered in a secret prison. He had thick blond hair, like Faith’s and Dawn’s. Unusual green-gold eyes, like all three of the sisters.

According to the Cassandras, he’d had sperm frozen for his wife, in case one of his dangerous missions left him unable to father children. That was the sperm bank from which Lab 33 had gotten their material.

“The Cassandras are those women from the Athena Academy,” said Tamara, and Faith didn’t have to use her abilities to sense her mother’s feelings of inferiority. The former prep school graduates who’d been Rainy Miller’s friends were all eminently successful—an FBI forensic scientist, a TV reporter and an Air Force test pilot, among other impressive careers. Once they’d learned of Faith’s existence, they hadn’t just answered Lynn’s e-mailed announcement. Several of them had already telephoned with their welcome and encouragement.

“They sound like very special women,” said Tamara.

Faith left the magazines, came around the table and gave her mother a hug. Her mother—and a very happy Wilbur. Their emotions flowed through her gently, familiarly. Now that she’d accepted her abilities, her control over them was increasing by the day. “So are you, Mom.”

“Me? Oh, baby, I’m nothing special. I didn’t even go to college. I never fit in.”

“But that’s why you were so good at keeping me safe all these years! I’m sorry I reacted the way I did, Mom. You may have saved my life with what you did. Without you I could have ended up being trained as a thief, like Lynn, or even an assassin, like Dawn. Or considering my abilities, probably a con artist. You know. Exactly the kind of person who makes life so hard for all my friends in the French Quarter. I would have hated that.”

Tamara let out a broken sigh, petting Faith’s hair. “Oh, I don’t know about that. You may have found you liked it. You always were something of a rebel.”

Faith wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know. Lately, I’ve kind of got a thing for the law.”

He was waiting not far from the streetcar stop.

Faith sensed him almost a block away, but that was because of Roy Chopin’s pushy energy. Especially when he was impatient. Apparently, this afternoon, he was feeling very impatient.

He leaned against the fender of his parked Malibu, arms folded, the picture of nonchalance. But everything in him sped up when he saw her coming. His breathing. His pulse.

She couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or not.

When he saw that she’d seen him, he raised his eyebrows in silent question, but he didn’t make a move toward her. Instead, she detoured over to him. “Are you stalking me?”

“If I were stalking you, I woulda been right outside your mom’s place. Or should I say, the D.A.’s place.”