It’s one song later—just after dark—that a man comes into the shop. Sonia takes out her earphones, immediately sizing up the man as a strange one. Strange in an unpleasant sort of way. She’s been repositioning paintings so that they don’t topple over every time some fool customer brushes up against them, and finds herself at a disadvantage being so far from her sales counter. She keeps a revolver beneath that counter. She only had to use it once, when a low-life thug demanded the cash in her register. She pulled out the revolver, and he headed for the hills. She didn’t even have to use it. Right now, the man is standing between her and that revolver.
Putting down the picture she’s holding, she tries to stand as straight as she can, considering her aggravated hip. “Can I help you?”
As he approaches, and comes into clearer focus, she sees what it is about him that’s so disturbing. The left side of his face is that of a middle-aged man. But the right, from just above the jawline, is someone else’s. Someone younger. Facial grafts are not entirely uncommon, but rarely do they preserve the integrity of the donor face. For whatever reason, this man intentionally took not just the skin, but the underlying bone structure of the donor as well. The sight of him is deeply unnerving, which was clearly his intent.
“I hope you can help me,” he says, continuing to saunter toward her. “I’m looking for a very specific chair to complete a set. Solid frame, but a bit unbalanced. Firm, but overstuffed. That is to say, a little full of itself.”
“Dining chairs are down aisle three,” Sonia tells him, but she already knows he’s not really looking for a chair.
“It won’t be down aisle three,” he says, holding her eye contact with two markedly mismatching eyes—one that clearly came with the grafted half of his face. “But I think it’s here somewhere. The piece of flotsam I’m looking for goes by the name of Connor Lassiter.”
“Hmph,” says Sonia, keeping her poker face and pushing past him without any sense of urgency or terror. “Why would the Akron AWOL be in an antique shop? Wherever he is, I’m sure he has better things to do than polish my furniture.”
“Perhaps I should ask Grace Skinner, then,” he says. “Once she regains consciousness.”
Now that he’s behind her, and the counter is in front of her, she bolts toward it, but even with her cane, she can only move so fast.
Suddenly a gunshot rings out. The bullet hits her cane, splintering it to pieces, and she goes down sideways, hitting the hardwood floor. Pain explodes in her hip. She’s sure that it’s broken. What happens next comes with blinding speed, yet somehow in slow motion at the same time, her pain baffling the impetus of time.
She’s dragged into the back room, and before she knows what has happened she finds herself slumped at her desk chair unable to move, her hip screaming in agony. He’s used the chain from an old hanging lamp to secure her, wrapping it around her until it would take cable shears to free her.
Her attacker, with nothing but time on his hands now, saunters out into the shop again, whistling a tune she doesn’t know. He locks the front door and retu
rns, sitting on the edge of the old steamer trunk. Did they hear the gunshot down below? Sonia wonders. Are they smart enough to stay silent? For it’s not her life she’s worried about; it’s theirs.
“Now then,” say both sides of the man’s awful face, “let’s talk about the friends we have in common.”
33 • Nelson
With the infected, sun-scarred side of his face replaced, Jasper Thomas Nelson feels like a new man. Argent Skinner wasn’t exactly a cooperative donor, of course.
“You said it yourself,” he had told Argent before the undamaged side of the young man’s face was harvested by Divan. “My left half and your right half make a whole.” And although Argent insisted this is not what he meant, the complaints of a donor really don’t matter.
Seeing the look on Grace Skinner’s face when she saw him was an added perk. It will be even more rewarding to capture Lassiter’s expression when they meet.
He had used a fast-acting, short-term tranq on Grace. Good thing, too. A stronger, slower tranq would have left her screaming long enough to attract plenty of attention. As it was, no one came to her aid. Nelson was able to throw her into a dense hedge, to keep her out of sight and out of mind. Then he proceeded to the antique shop where the tracking chip showed she was spending all of her time—that is, until today, when she went on an excursion all over Akron.
The moment he saw the old woman in the shop, Nelson read in her face a solid preview of all the things he needed to know. Lassiter is there, or has been there, or is hidden somewhere nearby—and Nelson is willing to wager that that stinking tithe-turned-clapper is here too. He doesn’t know which will be more satisfying—taking the Akron AWOL to be unwound, or slowly killing Lev Calder for what he did at the Graveyard. Punishment for stealing Lassiter away from him, and leaving Nelson tranq’d by the side of the road for flesh-eating predators and the fiery eye of the Arizona sun.
Everything Nelson said to the old woman in the front room of her shop was to throw her off-balance, to probe her to see what she might unintentionally give away. Her reaction told him that he had hit a bull’s-eye.
Now, here in the back room, he has her at his gentle mercy. All that remains is to extract the information he needs. This will certainly be easier than catching Lassiter at the airplane Graveyard. This will be a cakewalk, and after all he’s been through, heaven knows, he deserves it.
34 • Sonia
This man is no Juvey-cop. He’s not even a proper parts pirate. Sonia knows there is something fundamentally wrong with him. Something internally disfigured far worse than is revealed by his horrible face.
“If the media has it right, the triple threat has come together again,” he says. “Connor Lassiter, Lev Calder, and Risa Ward. I’m hoping you can confirm that for me.”
Sonia catches him eying the groceries stacked around the back room. She curses herself for not bringing them downstairs.
“Clearly, you’re feeding a horde, and this is an ADR safe house. I didn’t know there were any left.”
Sonia says nothing. The trunk is on the rug, and the rug is smoothed out, leaving no hint that either has been moved. Not hint of the trapdoor beneath. He might suspect that she’s harboring AWOLs, but he has no idea where.
When she doesn’t answer him, he sighs and stands up, approaching her. “Don’t assume I’m going to enjoy what I’m about to do,” he says. “I do it only because it’s necessary.” Then he reaches out to her and presses his thumb against her broken left hip, with more force than anyone should be capable of delivering.
Beyond unbearable, the pain is unthinkable. She tries to bite it back, but it comes warbling out as a feeble wail between her gritted teeth. Dark worms squirm across her eyesight, threatening to overtake her, but then they recede to the periphery as he removes his thumb and backs away, assessing her. The pain remains and she feels weaker than she’s ever felt. She wishes she could take the splintered end of her shattered cane and jam it through his stolen eye.