“You mean to tell me you can’t recognize one of your own?”
I fanned the photos like a hand of cards. Our tradecraft department may be good, but it can’t turn a gangly teenager into a little round grandma. “You think the FPMP is using its resources to spy on you…when I’m right here, knocking on your window and asking you questions point-blank?”
“I’ve considered that. But maybe the best way to keep someone off-balance is to pretend you’re being transparent. One division says, ‘Don’t worry, we’re just doing research,’ while the other one’s digging through my trash looking for biometrics. And maybe you think you’re just here to ask questions—but what if the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing, and someone else is watchingyou?”
Peoplewerewatching me. I just let them think I was on their side, when in truth, it was Jacob and me against the world. But I wasn’t about to share that with Boswell. “If there’s a secret shadow team tracking me, they’re gonna be real disappointed by how often I stare at the wall trying to remember what I walked into the room for.”
Boswell jutted his chin toward the bus stop. “Go ahead, be a smartass if it lets you sleep at night. I know the score. I can tell when someone’s watching. It’s in the microvibrations—the way the hairs on your arms stand up when someone locks onto you. That’s real. That’s tangible. Like the metallic taste you get on the back of your tongue when you’re being microwaved.”
You can pry my microwave out of my cold, dead, popcorn-dusted hands. He almost had me going for a second there, because I did know that creeping feeling. But more often than not, it turned out I was standing next to a ventilation duct.
I handed Boswell back his Polaroids. “Look, I’m not gonna sit here and play Spy vs. Spy for the sake of your entertainment. Give me something useful about the apartment, or we’re done here.”
“Between the asbestos and the off-gassing, that whole place was a deathtrap. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a ghost or two in every unit.”
“By that logic, we’d be ass-deep in ghosts pretty much everywhere.” Never mind that on a powerful enough psyactive, that did turn out to be the case. “When most people die, they move along.”
“Is that what your handlers tell you?” He gave me a smug, pitying head shake. “Why even pretend you’re here to help? You’re just another cog in the machine.”
I didn’t stop Boswell when he lumbered back to his van and drove off. Part of me was confident he was nothing but a crackpot. The ghost “watching” him in the bedroom was just another version of the spy at the bus stop.
The Addison bus passed by, picking up our spy and depositing a couple of passengers who immediately headed off to their respective destinations. Because they knew I was watching them, or…?
No. I wasnotabout to start seeing spies everywhere.
All that surveillance just wasn’t in the budget. Not if there was nothing here to watch.
Although…cameras ran pretty cheap. Especially if you bought them in bulk.
I could ask our surveillance team if that particular bench was on the roster, but if they told me it wasn’t, would I believe them? Besides, I’m sure F-Pimp wasn’t the only government agency keeping an eye on John Q Public.
It’s hard to know what to think anymore. As much as I didn’t put stock in the ravings of a guy who thought his urine was of corporate interest, I couldn’t definitively say he wasn’t psychic. Maybe even some flavor of psychic we didn’t have a name for.One who was tuned into electronics and could sense an anomaly through thin air.
I wouldn’t know until I checked.
I jogged across the street during a break in traffic to take a closer look for a device as benign as a traffic cam…or something a little more insidious. An outdoor bug would need protection from the weather. And it would need a clear line of sight to the planter where Boswell felt he was being watched.
I winced as I encountered an old wad of chewing gum underneath the bench…but was it really gum? It would be the perfect place to hide a camera.
Cripes. Now I was the one who sounded paranoid.
I supposed I should just write up a report as a false hit and let Boswell fall off the FPMP’s radar. He might be a kook, but he wasn’t violent. And if he was no harm to himself or others, he was free to live his life however he saw fit.
I sat myself down and squinted at the planter where we’d been sitting, and tried to figure out if there was anything nearby worth spying on. A PI might be watching one of the apartments upstairs, or an insurance company could be conducting a surveillance in hopes of denying someone’s claim. But without a workup on the property detailing everyone who lived or worked there, I couldn’t know.
Was it really worth all the effort just to satisfy my curiosity? It’s not like we had a dead body on our hands. Just a guy with a van full of pee. I sat back and sighed, wondering if it was possible for Mood Blaster to retrain me from treating everything like a homicide investigation…and that’s when something in myperipheral vision shifted, and a subtle chill raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
I looked. Not square on. Just putting more attention around the edges. That’s when I saw I wasn’t the only one sitting on that bench.
White light came rushing down. I diverted it into two paths—my inner eye, to gauge the threat, and my protective white balloon, to stop any potential trespassers from slipping into my skin. I didn’t do these things consciously, not anymore. They were a reflex now, like sniffing the creamer before I ruined a perfectly adequate cup of coffee.
Beside me, the ghost flickered, but didn’t move.
I gave him the side-eye, scoping him out to determine my best course of action. Informative—you’re dead. Helpful—yeah, I’ll make sure your wife gets that insurance money. Or, tough love—time to move along.
And then I spotted the needle in his arm and realized he wasn’t a full-fledged ghost at all. Just a flash of trapped energy…a repeater, with his dying gaze fixed on the very spot where Boswell felt he was being watched.
CHAPTER TEN
