The Bone Triangle (9 page)

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. A skilled one, too. She’s removed countless things from our stores. But we’ve got cameras. We studied the files and determined who had to be doing it. We finally caught her about a week ago. She’d been stealing from us, and when an employee spotted her, we followed her—well, it doesn’t matter.”

“Where is she now? Jail?”

He shrugged. “She was picked up by a detective and driven to the police station. I would expect her family has bailed her out by now.”

My ears perked up. “A detective? Was it a man named Jay McKesson?”

“I’m not sure; you should check with the police.”

“It’s important that you identify the man who took her,” I told him. “I have talked to the police, and she’s gone missing.” I quickly described McKesson to him, and the watchman had to admit it did sound like the same person. He couldn’t be sure, however.

I thanked him and left. In my heart, I felt fairly certain McKesson had picked up Jacqueline. It would be just like him to do so, then glibly lie when I asked him about it. McKesson was as slippery as any criminal I’d ever met.

I pulled out my cell phone and called McKesson. As usual, he answered on the second ring. “What’s up, Draith?”

“I’m working for Rostok now.”

“Yeah? Doing what?”

“I’m on a missing person’s case. Rostok told me to talk to you about it.”

McKesson sighed. “All right, but make it quick, I’m busy.”

“You’ve got the Swanson girl,” I said, deciding not to be coy about it.

“No, I don’t.”

“Where is she then? Did you take her in for shoplifting or not?”

He hesitated. “Yeah. But she’s gone now.”

I frowned. “If her mother bailed her out, why did she bother to pay me to find her?”

“It’s not that simple—she escaped.”

“Out of jail?”

“No, we never made it that far. She was in the back of my car in cuffs, and then she wasn’t. She was gone.”

“That must have made your buddies back at the police station laugh harder than usual.”

McKesson grunted. “I didn’t tell them.”

“No reports, nothing?”

“She’s a rogue. She has some kind of power. I’m sure that whatever let her get out of my cuffs and my car must have let her steal all that stuff at the mall, too. In short, she can take care of herself.”

“All right,” I said. “Now tell me where she took off on you. What cross streets? What day and time?”

McKesson grumbled. I caught the word
bullshit
. “Just a minute. Why does Rostok care about this girl, anyway?”

It was my turn to hesitate. I was of course lying about Rostok wanting me to find Jacqueline. He wanted me to find Ezzie and didn’t even know Jacqueline existed. But as McKesson had done his share of lying, I was determined to get everything I could out of him. I quickly came up with an angle and went with it. “Ezzie is missing. He thought the cases might be linked.”

“That is such crap, Draith. Good play, but this is good-bye.”

“Hold on,” I said quickly. “Jay, are you there?”

My cell was quiet for a few seconds, and I thought he’d dropped the call.

“What else do you have?” he asked finally. “It had better be good.”

“People have been vanishing just a few blocks to the west of the Strip,” I said quickly. “This girl vanished from your car, I bet in that area. Ezzie slithered through my house, from one rip to another in a few minutes. These rips came and went
fast
, too fast for your watch to detect and home in on them. Don’t you think all these cases of small, fast-opening rips might be related?”

McKesson was quiet for several seconds. “Not good enough,” he said finally, and disconnected.

I cursed at my phone and shoved it into my pocket. I was running out of leads, but I had one more card to play. I called a friend of mine, another rogue named Gilling. He didn’t answer, but I knew he’d call back. He was the curious type. He’d want to know why I was calling him.

I took stock of my cash supply. I had a total of $722 on me, after having bought the new clothes. I grimaced. That wasn’t much. I didn’t even have a car, and a taxi ride back to Henderson was expensive for a man who couldn’t pay his bills. It looked like I was going to have to head to the bus station.

Grumbling, I walked the Strip without enjoying it. Many dark thoughts assailed me. Once again, I considered robbing the casinos, but that was easier said than done. Sure, I might have slipped in and pulled a handle or two, using my sunglasses to jam the internals. The coins would pour out, and I’d make a few hundred bucks. But then what? The casino people all knew me, and there were cameras everywhere. I’d be surprised if I made it to the door.

There were other possibilities, of course. Bigger scores. I could open a safe as easily as a door or slot machine. I could empty a bank vault, if I wanted to. But I didn’t want to do
it. I wasn’t a thief—I was a rogue. There had to be a way to make money without stealing.

While I walked and thought this over, I made a serious mistake. I kept my money in my hand. As I passed a row of palm trees tightly wound up with white Christmas lights, I felt a tug.

I whirled around—but there was no one there. No one close, anyway. Frantically, I flipped through my cash. One of my hundreds was missing.

“Dammit,” I hissed. I couldn’t believe it. I felt a flush of rage. I’d been abused too much today. Losing my last dollars to some other rogue was too much.

I couldn’t be sure, but I thought the tug had come from in front of me and pulled the bill away over my wrist. I stuffed my cash down to the bottom of my front pocket, did an about-face, and started walking the way I’d come. Eyes wide, I watched everything—every shadow, every object on the street. I had no idea how the trick had been performed, but I was sure I’d just been hit by someone’s power. I’d met up with enough people with artifacts to know the signs.

The stretch of sidewalk I was on ran between two of the big casinos. It wasn’t exactly dark, but it wasn’t lit up like a carnival funhouse, either. Much of the Strip rippled with blinking lights and blaring music. This particular region was relatively quiet. I listened closely. Artifacts rarely had much range. Whoever had performed this vile trick on me was probably still nearby.

“I know you’re here,” I said, “and I’m going to find you.”

That did it. I heard slapping feet. I didn’t see anyone, but I heard light shoes on concrete. I sped up, beginning to trot.

That’s when I saw it, as a car drove by. The headlights splashed the wall of a closed head shop to my left. I grinned,
seeing the stark shadow of a running person. The shadow was there, but the person wasn’t. The thief was invisible, as least to my eyes. But somehow, the runner threw a full shadow on the wall when the bright headlights hit her. The running shadow was tall, thin, and had long flowing hair.

I rushed forward, pretending I didn’t have any idea where the invisible trickster was. Then, when I thought I was at about the right point, I lunged to my left, sweeping my arms in a wide motion. My fingers made contact.

“Gotcha!” I shouted triumphantly. I got an arm around her waist—at least I figured it was her waist. I still couldn’t see her.

She screamed, and I knew I’d caught myself a rogue. She scratched me, and I threw her down, feeling a trifle bad about it. I couldn’t take the chance she’d claw my eyes out when I couldn’t see her. I knelt and put my hands on her back, holding her down. I figured even if she had a weapon, it would be hard to shoot me from that position.

“Get off me,” she said. She sounded pissed off.

I smiled, shaking my head. “Are you going to give me back my money, Jacqueline?” I asked.

She stopped thrashing around. I had the palm of my hand pressed down on her back, and I felt her ribs heaving under my fingers in a near panic.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

“Quentin Draith,” I said. “Turn off your trick. I can see you anyway.”

“Can you see this?”

I chuckled. “You’re giving me the finger, right?”

Jacqueline let herself become visible then, and I smiled down at her. “Nice to meet you.”

“You could really see me? How?”

“I lied,” I said. “The finger was just a lucky guess.”

For some reason, this made her angry again. Maybe it was the grin on my face. “Help!” she screamed. “Somebody get this rapist off me!”

That worked. I stood up quickly and let her climb to her feet. A few passersby took notice and stopped walking. That was the first phase, I knew. When witnessing a crime, most potential heroes didn’t charge right in. They stood and stared for a moment, figuring out what they were looking at. Then, if it looked safe enough, or if they were brave enough, they might approach, shouting at the attacker. Before reaching that stage, however, they would pull out a cell and call the cops.

“I’m calling McKesson,” I said, pulling out my own cell phone. “If the cops come, I’ll make sure he’ll get his hands on you. He’ll strip you down to your undies, and you won’t be getting out of his car a second time.”

She looked at me with big blue eyes. They weren’t happy eyes. “Here,” she said, holding out my hundred dollar bill. “Take this. We’ll call it even.”

I took the money and stuffed it away. “Did you really need a hundred bucks that badly?” I asked.

She shrugged. “No. It was kind of a joke. I usually lift a map or something from a tourist. The look on people’s faces is priceless.”

Now that we were talking calmly, the staring people started moving again. They put away their cells and walked off, talking among themselves and casting frequent glances our way. I felt a wave of relief. Things might have gone much worse.

“Truce?” I asked. “How about if I buy you a cup of coffee?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I was robbing you, not asking for a date.”

“In that case,
you
can buy the coffee.”

She gave a puff of laughter and pushed her hair out of her face. “You were a bastard, knocking me down like that.”

“Sorry. I couldn’t see you, remember? I didn’t know what I was up against. You might have been armed.”

“Are you a cop? You tackled me like a cop.”

“I get that a lot. But no, I’m not.”

We found a place and sat down in a booth across from one another. She was quite attractive, and my earlier surge of anger faded. Having my hundred bucks back in my pocket had improved my attitude, too.

“So,” I said, “let’s see what I can figure out from what I know about your story. You were happy as a rich girl in college, but that ended and then people expected you to get a job. Getting a job is tough these days—especially for people with degrees in…” Here, I stopped and gestured for her to fill in the blank.

“Cognitive studies,” she said unhappily.

“Exactly. Soon, you were upper-twenties, with Mom urging you to find a nice man with an MBA to marry. Am I getting warm here?”

She crossed her arms and shrugged.

“Somewhere along the way, you discovered this artifact…” I said, pausing in hopes she would identify it. She did not, she merely nodded. I continued, hiding my disappointment. “You found a new source of joy in life, and began playing a few tricks. You were low on money, as Mom wasn’t interested in upping your allowance years after graduation. Maybe at first, you only took a few candy bars—”

“Shoes,” she said. “It was shoes. They’re insanely expensive.”

“Right. And then maybe Mom discovered this horde of ill-gotten shoes and the questions flew. Questions you couldn’t answer. So, you decided to strike out on your own. Who needs a bedroom and a curfew when you can go invisible and take whatever you need?”

Jacqueline shook her head and sipped her coffee. “It wasn’t
exactly
like that, but you are close enough. Are you done?”

“Almost. The power has a flaw, it seems. It only clouds the mind of those who see you. They can’t see you—can’t notice you. But they can still see physical effects like shadows. Worse, cameras aren’t affected at all. There are videos all over town of you stealing things. You figured this out and panicked.”

She was staring at me now, impressed. She licked her lips. “There is no way you know all this just from running into me. What’s your story?”

I threw her picture down on the table between us and sipped my coffee. It was hot, but tasted like plastic. For once, I wished I’d ordered one loaded with sugar and cream.

“My mom hired you,” she said, staring at the picture. “And I have to admit, you are incredibly good at finding people. What do
you
have?”

I shrugged.

“Come on,” she said, leaning close. “I know other people must have something magical like I do. You know all about it, so give me a hint. You’ve got to have something.”

I thought about it for a second. One rule almost all rogues develop eventually is a very tight lip when it comes to the nature of their own artifacts. But I wanted more from her, so I figured I would have to give a little bit.

I took out a red plastic cube from my pocket. It was a six-sided die. Each of the pips was drilled into the plastic and painted white. I rolled it on the table between us, and it clattered. I rolled a five.

“Roll it,” I said.