Free 06 - Vengeful by Robert J. Crane Page B

cities where my clothes had been burned off in fights than coping with the idea that anyone would see me taking memories out of someone’s head.
    It was private, it was weird, and it was the last thing I had left that I didn’t want to admit to anyone.
    “He doesn’t know anything,” Zollers said, sparing me the awkward discomfort of reaching into Charlie Boy’s mind to figure that out for myself. Dr. Zollers plainly didn’t think reaching into minds was that awkward, but his method didn’t result from inappropriately long and awkward touches that released a feeling inside me that was akin to—well, you know. In that regard, I felt way, way too close to the succubi of fiction, the ones that everyone in the press seemed super eager to lump me in with. Like an idiot with a hammer who saw nothing but nails everywhere, everything was about sex with these bastards. Put the hammer away, you dinks. “If you want,” Zollers said, “I’ll take him to the police in his car, let you two drive back to HQ on your own.”
    I let Charles go, frowning. “Why?” I asked, turning to look at him.
    Zollers shrugged lightly. “Do you trust me?”
    I started to smart off, then stopped myself. “Yeah.”
    He held out a hand, and I shoved Charles roughly toward him. As I did so, I saw a glazed look run over Charles O’Shea’s face that told me he wasn’t going to escape Zollers’s custody of his own volition. “See you back there.” Zollers smiled weakly, and Charlie walked behind him in perfect sync.
    “Was that weird?” Augustus asked me, stepping up to stand at my side, scratching his head.
    “Yes.” We watched them go, and I shook my head, trying to figure out the next move. “We should …” I couldn’t stop shaking my head. “Go back, I guess.”
    “Yeah, all right,” he said, shrugging. He was walking a little tentatively, and he led the way back to the car, one of the dark agency SUVs that we took everywhere. “You think you’re gonna calm down anytime soon?” He looked at me sideways on that one.
    “Sorry,” I said as I made my way to the driver’s seat and unlocked the door. I hated driving, but every time I suggested Augustus do it he called me Miss Daisy, another of his never-ending attempts at humor.
    “You about ripped that guy out of my hands,” he said, getting in the front seat of the SUV and slamming the door behind him as I did the same. “I mean, I’m just recovering here, thought I’m going out on some nice, light little detail where we go to brace some punk, and …” He frowned as I started the car. “You know, we didn’t even get anything out of that.”
    “I know,” I said, sighing, letting my head slump forward a little. “We’re on the wrong side of the email wall, here, chasing this guy and those assassins I got this morning. It’s like there’s a watertight compartment between us and the Brain, and—” I paused, catching a hint of something in the air.
    “What?” Augustus locked eyes with me and must have seen the alarm in my face, because he started to look a little panicked, too.
    “Watertight compartments can get busted open, too,” said a voice from the back seat as I spun around to look at the young man waiting there, his glasses catching a gleam from the sunlight outside, his dark skin only a few shades off from the leather he sat upon. “You just need someone like me to make like an iceberg and do the work.”

17.

    “Jamal!” Augustus half-hissed, half-screamed, looking more than a little perturbed at his brother. “You scared the hell out of me! Who creeps into the backseat of a fricking federal agency car and just sits there? What if she’d killed you, scaring her like that?”
    “Hey,” I said, nonplussed. “I haven’t even killed anyone yet today, and if ever there was a time for it—” I looked him up and down. “Also, I’m not the one who looks scared.”
    “Well, he startled me,” Augustus said, more than a little nonplussed himself.