The Unseen (16 page)

He picked up the latte he'd ordered, took a sip, and typed
Guoanbu
into the Google search engine. Immediately several hits confirmed what he'd been thinking: Guoanbu was the intelligence agency for the Chinese government.

He sighed, setting down his cup. Saul was a double agent for the Chinese government. Lucas wasn't a hundred percent certain what that meant, but he knew it was big. He also knew that meant he couldn't work with Saul.

Or could he? Maybe his best bet was to be a double agent himself; work with Saul and pretend to be infiltrating Creep Club, but instead feed information to . . . to whom, exactly?

He didn't know.

Lucas felt his nerves getting jittery, and he knew it had nothing to do with the caffeine. For so many years now he'd cultivated his anonymity, made himself invisible, lived between the seams of society. He'd lived happily, comfortably, with his manufactured histories for the people he watched, his mementos snatched from offices.

He'd been alone, just him with his own thoughts, his own creations. Comfortably cocooned inside his shell.

But now, all of the events of the last few days had pulled him into the blinding light. He felt like exposed prey, waiting for death to come swooping down and clutch him in its razor-sharp talons.

He was no longer in control of his world.

Even worse, he wasn't sure who was.

Okay, it was time to make a plan. He closed the browser window on The LiveWire's computer, flushed the cache, and reset the app to erase its history. No sense leaving more tracks.

He picked up his cup and went to the door, making eye contact with no one else in the café.

He'd swing by Donavan's apartment before returning to his current hideout. That was the next step, the only step he could take right now. He wanted to leave it all behind—just head out on the highway, catch a ride headed west, and set up again in a new city, because he really didn't know what he was doing here in the District anyway. That was the logical thing, the sensible thing, the Lucaslike thing he had always done.

But maybe the Lucaslike thing wasn't what he
should
do. So long ago, as a young boy in the orphanage, he had stared at the lights of DC, dreaming that those lights held something for him, that they would one day draw him to something important. That they would make him part of something bigger than himself.

And now, despite the odds, they had. This was a chance to belong to something bigger, something he knew was far removed from spying on people at their desks. He was part of . . . something. He knew about a double agent, someone who was most likely selling state secrets to the Chinese government. He couldn't just walk away from that.

He had to walk into it.

He arrived back at Donavan's apartment in the late afternoon, taking half an hour to watch for movement or activity before approaching the door. He knocked and, when no answer came, looked for the key in its usual hiding spot. He was surprised to find it still there. He wasn't sure that was a good sign.

Inside, Donavan's apartment was the same as it had been the last few days. Same laundry, same dirty dishes, and now a slightly putrid smell—maybe something going bad in the refrigerator—hung in the air.

This made Lucas's stomach do a slow revolution, because it meant his last hope of a link to the Creep Club had gone into deep hiding. He shouldn't be surprised, really; after all, he himself had recently done the same thing. When your home turf is compromised, you move, leave everything behind. That's exactly what Donavan had done. Maybe even before Lucas had entered the picture. In retrospect, Donavan was just a pawn to get him into this game, wasn't he? Maybe Donavan's “apartment” wasn't even really his apartment, but just part of the game.

Still, as he rode the Metro back to his fourth-floor apartment in the late afternoon, Lucas knew he was getting pushed out of this giant chess match before he'd even had a chance to plot a few moves. With Donavan missing, Lucas's connections were gone. With his connections gone, he had no way to string along Saul.

He needed to think, so he retreated to the hidden closet inside the bathroom at Dandy Don's Donuts. This late in the day, few customers were there. So he sat, staring at empty tables through his peephole, considering his options, trying to work his angles.

If he could somehow find the next meeting of the Creep Club, maybe . . . maybe he could present his evidence against Saul. But without Donavan, he was unmoored.

Maybe Saul had ears to the ground, people who could tell him when and where the next meeting was going to take place. Use Saul to get information, then turn it back around. Possible, but he didn't like it as his first option.

Besides, what would he do if he showed up at the next Creep Club meeting, anyway? His last one hadn't exactly been a rousing success, and he was fairly sure he wouldn't be welcomed back with open arms.

No, it would be better if he were at the meeting, but not part of it. If he could find the meeting and creep into it, he could get a better idea what they were discussing, and get a handle on Donavan again.

Follow his movements.

If only he had a way to hook back into —

He smiled as his mind made a connection. There
was
a way back into the Creep Club.

He accessed his memory banks, replaying the video Dilbert had presented at the last meeting. The title cards for the video rolled by. First:
S
ymphony in
V
iolence
. Then:
Music by Johann Strauss
. And finally:
Subjects: Kleiderman and Leila Delgado, 4815 Suncrest, Alexandria, VA.

Dilbert had said he was still collecting video, adding to his workin-progress.

Lucas had an address; if he visited Kleiderman and Leila Delgado's home, he was sure he'd find Dilbert.

And once he found Dilbert, he'd find his way back into the Creep Club.

THE DELGADO HOME WAS A LARGE, CAPE COD-STYLE HOUSE OF TAN AND cream tones in a well-to-do neighborhood. A mere facade for the things that happened inside the home, Lucas knew; images of Dilbert's hideous film floated back to him again.

Stereotypically, when you thought of domestic abuse, you thought of poor people in trailer homes, drunk men who lashed out at their families in impotent rage.

But this was more like Green Acres.

Lucas wasn't interested in the couple right now; in fact, he stayed away from the house entirely. Instead, he set up inside a garden shed in the backyard, squeezing in between the lawnmower and some other gardening implements that obviously never saw any use. In a neighborhood such as this one, you didn't mow the yard. You had a lawn service.

Inside the storage shed, Lucas curled into a ball and waited for night to fall. While he waited, he retrieved his spotting scope and cased the exterior of the home, looking for signs of Dilbert's presence.

He gasped a bit when he saw it: the familiar CC symbol—two uppercase letters, turned on their sides to resemble mountains—scratched under a water spigot near a basement window. Evidently the Creep Club members loved to leave their calling cards at every building or home they visited.

After seeing it at the Stranahan Building, Lucas realized he'd seen the symbol on several buildings around the DC area; he'd always written it off as just one more bit of graffiti left by a casual infiltrator, but now he realized the symbol was so much more than that. It was a sign to others within the Creep Club, a way of marking territory.

Lucas shivered, put the spotting scope away, sat down, and tried to relax while he waited for night to fall. Something inside told him Dilbert wouldn't show up until it was dark outside.

He pulled his jacket tighter around him and put his backpack over the front of him like a makeshift blanket, surprised at how chilly it was; the last several days it had been warmer than usual, but now the whole DC area was in the midst of a cold snap. In August. Go figure.

The astringent smell of gasoline from the mower, mixed with the earthy smell of grass clippings, made him light-headed. All in all, probably not the best place to spend a few hours waiting. But it was the safest.

He pulled his knees up toward his chest and rested his chin on his knees. Within a few minutes his mind was retreating to the past, to times he hadn't visited in so long.

The orphanage. The far-off lights of the city.

After several minutes, darkness fell, and Lucas saw lights inside the home flicker on. He moved, still peering through the tiny crack between the shed doors, but saw no activity in the basement beside the—

Wait. He saw shadows shifting, very subtly. He smiled, knowing instantly that it was Dilbert. He had no reason to know this, and yet he knew it anyway.

His smile was interrupted by something shattering inside the home, followed by a long scream.

Lucas felt his throat dry instantly. This was precisely why he had holed up in the garden shed; he knew things would happen inside that house he wanted to avoid. He remembered the images from Dilbert's presentation, and he had no desire to see them acted out live and in person.

So he had chosen this garden shed, where he could wait for a sign from Dilbert, then follow him unobtrusively, tail him until the next Creep Club meeting.

But the scream changed everything. How could he sit here and do nothing, knowing what was probably happening inside right now? For that matter, how could he tell himself the main reason he was here was to find Dilbert? He had sought out this shed, away from the house, in an attempt to smother what he knew he must do.

But the scream made it all crystal clear again. He was here first to help the woman inside that house. And second, if he got lucky, to figure out some way to tail Dilbert.

It might mean throwing away his chance at reconnecting with the Creep Club, but Lucas had to act. His body knew it before his mind did, because he was already opening the shed doors and moving quickly across the manicured lawn before he finished the argument raging inside him.

He moved quickly, quietly, hoping to escape detection as he approached the house.

Avoid detection.
The words stuck in his mind for a few moments, and he suddenly had a plan.

A security system.

A house like this had to have one. True, it wouldn't be armed right now with people inside the house, but he could change that. He knew his way around security systems, and he knew one of the quickest ways to trip one was to bust off the access panel hiding the electrical system—usually on the exterior of the house.

He crept around the house, careful to stay away from the basement window where he'd seen the shadow of Dilbert. Nothing on the north side.

The scream had ended at least thirty seconds ago, and since then, he'd heard nothing. Nothing but an odd, unnatural silence settling over him. Which was more terrifying than the scream. Lucas tried to shrug off a shiver as he moved to the west side of the house. And there he found what he was looking for: a black panel, recessed in the siding of the west side, a giant SooperSentry sticker on its surface.

Lucas ran to the panel and pulled on its cover, breaking its hinges. Immediately a high, piercing alarm sounded throughout the house.

Still no other sounds, though. No screams. No sobbing, No anything. Lucas crouched down beside the home, closing his eyes for a few seconds as the alarm pumped its shriek into the still air. What about the neighbors? These were larger lots than average, but surely the neighbors had to hear what happened here. The screams, the . . . whatever. Didn't anyone ever try to help?

They look but don't see. They hear but don't feel.

Lucas was still crouched down in the darkness of the home's shadows; no security lighting on this side of the home, oddly enough. He glanced at the home across the street, saw the pulled drape in the front room moving slightly, then falling back into place.

He shook his head. Even out here, even among the so-called normal people, the rules were still the same. How stupid of him to think people were different anywhere. The folks in this neighborhood looked, occasionally. Opened their drapes, whispered to each other over the fences. But they never saw. They didn't want to. Because seeing would mean . . . they'd have to do something.

The alarm abruptly stopped. That would mean the alarm company had called to ask the residents if everything was okay before alerting the police. He had no doubt that the person who answered the phone had told them everything was fine, even given them the right code word; after all, he was Kleiderman Delgado, the home's owner. But to answer the phone, to give that code word, he'd been forced to stop . . . whatever he'd been doing.

And that was a good place to start.

The unsettling silence continued. No screaming, no dishes being thrown, no chaos of any kind. Lucas thought back to the video Dilbert had presented; silence was something definitely out of place at this home.

Almost as if on cue, he heard a muffled moan, and then something falling. Or someone. A door slammed.

Decision time. If he was going to do anything else now, he'd need to reveal himself to Dilbert, and probably blow his chance at finding the next Creep Club meeting. Once he showed his face, he knew Dilbert would leave immediately, probably abandon this whole home as a project. That was, after all, what he himself would do in the same situation.

But that was fine. It was horrible enough to know this kind of thing went on inside DC homes; it was an entirely lower level to watch it and document it.

And perhaps it was worst of all to realize that a secret part of him—the Dark Vibration—wanted to do that recording. Wanted to join Dilbert in the basement.

In the end, it was an easy decision. He needed to help the woman.

Leila.

But before he moved again, an idea occurred to him. He spun around his backpack, shuffled through the items until he came up with what he wanted: another GPS patch from Donavan's. Maybe he didn't have to give up Dilbert to save the woman. Maybe he could find Dilbert, somehow attach the geopatch before he fled, and help the woman.