Incognita Read online

  “Anyway, I’m guessing that text went to more than one person,” the guy continues. “Those guys who just tried to do you in, they probably tailed you from your apartment.”

  “So what does that mean? That I’m the dry cleaning getting picked up? You think this was some kind of assassination assignment?”

  “Unless you actually do run a dry cleaning business.”

  “Who sent the text? Do you remember the phone number or . . .”

  “It was someone named Grace Fitzgerald.”

  I nearly stop breathing. “That can’t be. Or . . . maybe she didn’t realize what she was doing . . .”

  As soon as I say it, I know it’s ridiculous. Mrs. Fitzgerald is the most deliberate person I know. She can rattle off pi to the twentieth digit and recite articles to Virgil full of highly technical details. She does not make mistakes, especially with sensitive information like my address.

  I need to put a hand on the side of the building because it feels like the ground just suddenly shifted under me.

  Mrs. Fitzgerald gave my address to an assassin.

  I look at the watch clamped on my wrist. The very thing that’s supposed to summon help when I need it suddenly feels like a snake wrapped around my arm. I’m glad I didn’t try activating the panic button, alerting Mrs. Fitzgerald that I’m in trouble.

  The guy moves back and forth in front of me like he’s not sure which direction I’m going to fall. “So . . . somebody you know, I’m guessing?”

  “She’s my legal guardian.”

  “Yeah. Well, scratch her off your Christmas card list this year because she just sold you out.”

  “I just . . . She’s always been so—strange, yes, but my father trusts her so completely.” With good reason. She’s worked for Virgil devotedly for years. And if she wanted to have me killed, her opportunities have been plentiful. Why do it now and in such a strange, roundabout way?

  “People are unbelievable dirtbags sometimes, eh?” the guy says.

  A barge blows its horn mournfully in the distance. Last ferry to Staten Island for the night. It’s been almost an hour since Thomas disappeared from the party. I feel like he’s slipping farther and farther away and now nothing is making sense.

  I press the power button on the guy’s stolen phone, but predictably, nothing happens. “So where did you get this phone? And why did you care about finding the address?” And what a shame he didn’t grab the charger while he was at it.

  “Long story.”

  “Sorry, don’t have time for long stories.”

  “Well, mine’s gonna take a while.”

  “Then I’ll have to hear it later.” I shove the phone back at him. “Right now I need to find someone. It’s an emergency.”

  He takes the phone and nods, not meeting my eyes. “Sure, it’s cool. I don’t know where I came from, who I am, or how to get home, and I was thinking you might be able to give me some clue about at least one of those things. But, hey, we all got our own problems, right?”

  That’s a familiar list of unknowns. It lines up pretty well with the list I had a year ago.

  He shakes his head and smiles down at the sidewalk. He’s trying very hard to seem like he doesn’t care and that’s what makes it so much harder to walk away. Behind that forced smile is someone scared out of his mind.

  “Do you—do you know your name?”

  “Mikey.”

  “Mikey what?”

  “Don’t remember.”

  I exhale and close my eyes. “That’s what I figured.”

  As much as I want to turn and leave, I can’t stand the idea of brushing him off when he’s asking for help. There are some decisions that you can’t make just for your own safety or convenience without some part of you screaming “Hypocrite!” Didn’t I once stand where Mikey is now, asking for help from a stranger? And Thomas gave it to me. Now I’m just walking away.

  Sure, I’ve got good reasons. Thomas is that good reason. I have to find him. That’s what’s important right now. But still . . .

  I make a decision and open my eyes. “So what happened to you? You were in a fight or an accident, weren’t you?”

  “Both.” He leans against the brick wall of the alley. “I’ll warn you right now, it’s a pretty whacked out story.”

  “I’m sure I can handle it. Got a few whacked out stories of my own, as a matter of fact.”

  He takes a deep breath like he’s squaring up to lift a huge barbell over his head.

  “Three weeks ago, I’m in—I don’t know what you’d call it, like reform school but in a hospital. They gave me these drugs and did all this stuff to me—I can’t even describe it because I barely remember it. They told me they were helping me and it was either this or go to juvie. So I guess I must’ve picked the hospital. Seemed like a better deal, you know?”

  Yeah, I know.

  “Obviously I got some history, and I’m sure it ain’t good if they won’t tell me what it is. Anyway, I’m trying to mind my own business, keep my head low, do whatever they tell me, so I can get out of there and get on with my life.”

  “Get a fresh start,” I say.

  The words are a shot of novocaine; my mouth goes numb as I say them.

  “Yeah. Exactly. It was pretty much the same routine every day until these guys in suits show up and say they’re shutting the place down. They don’t say why, just that we’re done. Treatment’s over. We’re all being transferred someplace else.”

  I try to listen carefully but it’s hard because I’m so cold and I have a terrible feeling I know where this story is going. I look toward the river, glassy black dotted with the shifting lights reflected off it.

  “Twenty-four hours later I’m on a bus and we’re heading up the Pennsylvania Turnpike to this halfway house outside Philadelphia. We never made it.”

  “What happened?”

  “The address they gave the bus driver. It was, like, the middle of nowhere. Cows and corn and all that. The guy thought he was lost and then . . .”

  Mikey looks suddenly like a little kid trying to work up the courage to check his closet for monsters.

  “You’re probably not going to believe me but . . .”

  He puts both hands on his head, his jaw clenched. He’s determined to get through the story even though he also looks like it’s the last thing he wants to do.

  “This black SUV pulls up next to us, and I hear this loud pop. I didn’t know what happened. Thought maybe a tire blew out. Suddenly we’re swerving all over the road. I can see the driver slumped over the wheel. The bus flips onto its side into a ditch. There’s about five or six kids on the bus and a couple security escorts. I was in the backseat and I kind of hid back there because I got this really bad feeling about this, that it maybe wasn’t just an accident.”

  He squints. Larry, the doctor who helped perform my surgeries, once told me that I squinted a lot during memory modification procedures. He said people do that when they remember bad things—to try to limit the glare of a painful memory. But you can’t close your eyes to things inside your mind.

  He glances up briefly and clears his throat.

  “The other kids with me, they’re moaning and calling for help. A couple of the guards tried to get up. I’m just real still, trying to figure out if I’m hurt and how bad. Through the back door, I watch these three guys get out of the SUV and climb up onto the side of the bus. At first I think maybe they’re gonna pull us out, but then they start walking along the side of the bus and they . . .”

  He’s swallowing, like there’s lump after lump of rock-hard emotion catching in his throat. He closes his eyes and makes his finger and thumb into a gun. He points down toward the pavement.

  “They just start firing down through the windows, shooting people at point-blank range. ’Til everyone’s dead.”

  “Except you.”

  “Right.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, I wasn’t going to stay there and wait to get shot. What am I,
stupid? So I kicked open the emergency door at the back of the bus and slid out. I ran into the rows of corn. I ran hard, but this guy started chasing me, he was right on me like that. He takes a shot at me and then tackles me. Puts this Glock right in my face.”

  “And?”

  He shrugs and ducks his head like no big deal. I can see that his skin is prickling from the cold river wind.

  “I got away,” he says.

  “That’s it? Just ‘I got away’?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How?”

  “Let’s just say that I’m good with my hands.”

  I point to the phone he’s holding. “And how did you get that?”

  “Took it off the guy who tried to shoot me and whose butt I subsequently kicked. Now I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on. Actually, forget that. I don’t even want to know anymore. I just want to go home. Assuming I’ve got one.”

  Even as he says it, I feel like some gate is dropping, separating me from him. It’s not that I don’t believe his story, it’s not that I don’t care, it’s that I don’t want to get involved. But I’m barely back from this battlefield myself, and I don’t think I’m up for another tour of duty. It’s selfish, I know it is. And yet, with Thomas missing, and with people trying to kill me, I just don’t think I have the capacity to delve into this kid’s situation. Not at the moment, anyway.

  Mikey shifts his weight back and forth. He runs his hand over his sleek, black hair. “I know none of this is your problem . . .”

  “Look, I do want to help if I can,” I say. “Now’s just a really bad time. But you know where I live—come look for me in a couple days.”

  “Yeah, sure. Assuming we both live that long,” he says morosely.

  I take a few steps back toward the street. Mikey’s still-wet jacket lands on the ground in front of me.

  “Here. Take this. Not safe walking around looking like that. Some guys are pigs.”

  I hesitate a moment but then pull it on. “Thanks.”

  “Hey,” Mikey says suddenly, like something’s just occurred to him. “Did you ask me about a redhead kid earlier?”

  I freeze. “Yeah. That’s who I need to find.”

  “He your boyfriend or something?”

  I sigh impatiently. “Is that relevant?”

  “I mean, was he at that party thing with you?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “I saw him get hustled off the yacht. I was watching for you to come out.”

  It would’ve been helpful if he’d mentioned this earlier, but I bite back my frustration. “So you saw the guys who grabbed him? Was it the same set of guys who threw me in the river?”

  He rubs his chin. “Nah. The guys who threw you into the river were real pros. The other guys with the redhead were . . . let’s just say they were a lot less impressive overall.”

  I pull my skirt up and start jogging back toward the yacht.

  He’s right behind me. “You’re not gonna go looking for them on your own, are you?”

  “No, I should—I’ll just go to the cops and tell them what I saw—no, better yet, you can come with me and tell them what you saw.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” He grabs my jacket—his jacket—and pulls me up short. “I’m not going to any cops.”

  “Why not?”

  He’s suddenly looking so jittery, for a moment I think he’s going to bolt. “I just . . . Everything in my body is, like, allergic to cops. I get these feelings, you know? Not memories, but like an aftertaste, almost?”

  I should keep moving. If he can’t help me, if he won’t help me, I’m not obligated to worry about him. Thomas’s safety should be my priority. Second only to my own safety.

  But I hear myself saying, “Yeah. I know what that’s like.”

  “They told me that I wouldn’t remember anything from my past, but sometimes I do,” he says. “Did that happen to you?”

  “Yeah. A bit.”

  He looks up at the sky. “Soon as I got here, to New York, I felt like . . . like I belonged here. You know?” He points toward the river, toward Brooklyn. “I feel like I’m so close, but I just can’t get there.”

  I look across the river. I don’t know what he sees over there, but I know how he feels while he’s looking. I know that ache. I know that longing for something that you’re not even sure exists.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Okay what?”

  “I’ll do what I can. You help me find my boyfriend, I’ll try to help you find out where you came from.”

  “Really?” He looks down. “I appreciate it. It’s Sarah, right? I heard your doorman call you that one day.”

  “I go by Angel.” I shake his hand. “You up for a little search and rescue?”

  He nods eagerly.

  I stand there shivering, trying to think. For once, I’m tempted to try using my Velocius abilities, just to see if that’ll help me come up with some plan. But I’m not even sure how to trigger Velocius. These powers seem to choose the appropriate moment, not the other way around, and though I can control them in that moment, I haven’t tried actually kick-starting the process. It’s like I know how to fly the plane once it’s in the air, but I don’t know how to take off.

  “Has your boy got a phone on him?” asks Mikey.

  “Yes, but he wasn’t answering it, and I don’t know the number now that my phone is in the river.”

  “Too bad. We could have tracked that phone tag.”

  Track the tag . . . “His ankle monitor!”

  “His what?”

  “He’s wearing an ankle monitor. It must have a GPS tag, right? That’s what they’re designed for.”

  “An ankle monitor?” A wide, approving smile spreads over Mikey’s face. “What did he do?”

  “It’s a really, really long story, but the Feds are keeping tabs on him at the moment. They’d be able to find him, right?”

  “I don’t think getting the Feds involved is a good idea.”

  “Why?”

  “First, they’re the same as cops, only slightly better-dressed. And second, aren’t you supposed to have a bunch of Feds watching out for you 24/7?”

  I shoot him a sharp look. “How do you know that?”

  “I been following you for two weeks. I see those losers all the time. You gotta wonder, where were they when you got thrown in the river?”

  That’s a really good question. I reflexively search the street. There’s rarely a time when I can’t spot them, especially when I’m out in public. Mikey’s right. Those guys who tried to drown me should never have gotten that close to me.

  “If your own bodyguards suddenly vanished when they’re supposed to be looking out for you, just long enough for someone to try and drown you, I got my doubts that the rest of the FBI is gonna be in your corner.”

  “Fair point,” I acknowledge. “But if we’re not going to the Feds or the cops, how am I going to find Thomas?”

  He answers by waving at me to follow him. We jog a block or so, back toward the yacht, staying in the shadows until we come out near the place where I saw him earlier this evening. The whole street is blocked off with NYPD sawhorses. Half a dozen limousines are parked on each side, their drivers standing out on the sidewalk chatting among themselves.

  “See that?” Mikey points toward the far end of the street, at a police cruiser with a very tired-looking cop inside. “Probably doing overtime or pulled the short straw for security duty for this fancy party,” he says.

  “I thought you weren’t on board with asking the cops for help,” I say.

  An unmistakable twinkle appears in his eye. “We’re not gonna ask for their help. We’re gonna take it.”

  Chapter 5

  The empty stalls of an outdoor fish market block our view of the yacht, but I can hear that the party is still going strong. But where we are, behind the security barricades, the only human beings in sight are the drivers of the shiny black limos.

  “Every cop car has a computer in
it so they can look up license plates and arrest warrants,” Mikey tells me. “We just need to look up your boy’s ankle monitor in the probation registry, and it’ll give us his location.”

  “So we’re somehow going to trick them into giving us that information? Or do I just saunter up and ask nicely? I mean, I assume I’m the one who’s gonna have to talk to them, considering your cop allergy.”

  “Ha. No. Talking to the cops is not a good idea for either of us, especially you. They’d probably want to take you home, which is exactly where that Fitzgerald lady told those assassins to find you.”

  Again, I have to agree. I’m probably safer being MIA at the moment. “So what’s your plan?”

  “We need to get that cop out of that car so we can use his computer.”

  “Oh, is that all?”

  “Yeah. You create some kind of distraction and make sure the driver gets out of the car. I’m gonna go around the block and come back from that direction. Soon as you see me coming toward you, go.” He slaps me so hard on the back it makes me cough. Guess there was still river water in my lungs after all.

  “Good luck.”

  I wait two minutes and then see Mikey come around the corner, slipping past a sawhorse and walking up the street toward me. When he gets within ten yards of the police car, I step out under the glare of the streetlight onto the sidewalk and walk as fast as my wet satin skirt will allow.

  Mikey makes eye contact with me and nods.

  I dart into the street in front of the cop car, then let myself go limp and fall to the pavement. The driver immediately gets out and says, “Whoa, you all right?”

  Mikey dashes over to the car, opens the passenger door quietly, and slips into the front seat, staying as low as he can.

  I push myself up onto my side and put one hand to my forehead. “I just got all dizzy for a second.”

  “Hold on. Don’t try to get up. Let’s get you checked out.”

  The cop takes a small flashlight from his belt and shines it quickly in each eye. It blinds me for a second and when I’m able to focus my eyes again, I see a second cop walking up the street holding two cups of coffee.