Then the pain began and all that came out of her mouth after that was the screams. The red veil seemed to catch fire, and black flowers blossomed in her mind. She bared her teeth, biting the phone, biting at her own hands.
And that’s when a sound came from deep inside her. It wasn’t the blowfly buzz, or even a scream.
When Holly threw back her head and let it loose, it all tore out of her as a howl of pure, unfiltered, unstoppable rage.
CHAPTER TWO
I just got back from a dirty little piece of business in San Antonio and wasn’t looking for more trouble. I’d gone down there as a gunslinger-on-loan from the DMS to intercept a bunch of cartel mules that were bringing in something nasty through a series of underground tunnels. Not drugs this time. No, these cats had containers filled with live mosquitoes carrying a very nasty new strain of the Zika virus. We tried to make it a clean arrest, but a couple of the bad guys decided to play it stupid rather than smart. That’s something I’ve never understood. What’s the worst that could happen to them if they surrendered? A few years in prison? Deportation? Better than being dead, which hurts more and lasts a long time.
We yelled at them, told them to drop their weapons, told them that they had no chance. They drew on us. We put them down. It was all very loud and nasty.
And, oh yeah, the transport containers? Not bulletproof. So we had to use flame units to incinerate everything in the tunnels. Even the few bad guys who, by then, were trying to surrender — they all died. Some quickly, some very badly.
I carried the sound of those screams with me all the way home. I knew it would be stored in that special place in my mind where the worst things I’ve experienced are placed on display in well-lighted niches. Ready for me to look at when I think I’m too happy.
My secretary, Lydia Rose, was waiting for me when I got off the elevator. She is a lovely woman. Short, round, with masses of black hair and the brightest smile in California. She took one look at my face and her smile dimmed perceptibly.
“Was it bad, Joe?”
“It could have gone better,” I said.
Ghost was with me. He’d been shampooed, too, but he smelled like smoked dog.
Lydia Rose glanced up at me. “You probably don’t want to hear this, then, but Mr. Church wants you to call. He says it’s something important.”
“Of course it is,” I said. “The ass is probably about to fall off the world and everyone else but me is smart enough to screen their calls.”
“Should I set up the call?”
I sighed. “Sure.”
Ghost gave me a pitying look and trotted into my office. Lydia Rose asked, “Is Junie back yet?”
My live-in lover, Junie Flynn, was in some remote village in the Brazilian rain forest on a joint World Health Organization and FreeTech venture intended to improve water purity. Hepatitis A started going wild down there a year ago, and Junie’s researchers had come up with some spiffy new method of purifying river and rain water. The technology was part of the vast body of research and development conducted for decidedly non-humanitarian purposes by some of the groups we’ve torn down. Funny how something made to destroy can be spun around and used for the common good. That’s what FreeTech is. Junie runs it, along with Alexander Chismer — Toys — formerly a bad guy who’s now trying to save his soul by saving the world — and a dedicated staff of scientists and developers. The downside — or, perhaps the selfish side — of this is that she’s away. A lot. The Brazil trip was supposed to be two weeks long, but we were already into the second month.
“No, she’s damn well not,” I grumped, and slammed my office door.
A moment later I heard Lydia Rose yell, “Well, don’t take it out on the whole damn world!”
My phone rang. Outside the window I could see the beautiful sand and beautiful surf under the beautiful sun and knew with absolute certainty that I wasn’t going to be enjoying any of it. I answered with great reluctance.
“What’s your operational status?” asked Church. No “Hello,” no “Good job in San Antonio. Thanks for saving the world.” That’s Church.
“I’d like to get drunk and eat too many fish tacos.”
“Get them to go,” he said. “I need you on a plane to Prague.”
“Why do I want to go to Prague?”
Church said, “Do you remember the sewers of Paris? Remember what you went there to destroy?”
“Yes, and I’m pretty sure I actually did destroy it.”
“Life is full of ugly surprises, Captain. It’s surfaced again in Prague. Same technology, or perhaps the next generation of it.” He explained the situation to me. It started with a case that I seemed to be handling on the installment plan. It happens like that sometimes. You think you closed the file on something and it turns out there’s more to do. Either the case is bigger or you missed something or someone comes along and tries to resurrect it. There’s a saying that evil never dies; it merely waits and grows stronger in the dark. I used to think stuff like that was poetic claptrap. I’ve since come to realize the unfortunate wisdom in old adages.
Church told me that a team of agents working for Barrier, the British counterpart of the DMS, caught wind of something while they were in the Czech Republic working on another case. They couldn’t stop their own operation, so they handed it off to us.
“Jesus,” I said.
“Go to Prague,” he said.
“I don’t have a team on deck,” I said. “Top and Bunny are still out scouting for recruits. Triton and Boardwalk Teams are out on gigs. Unless you want me to take my secretary, I’ll have to do this alone.”
“Call a friend,” said Church, and hung up.
I set the phone down, got up, and looked out at the beautiful spring day. Call a friend. Church was famous for his “friends in the industry,” a catchall label to describe key people whose knowledge and qualities he trusted. I had my own friends, as he well knew. He hadn’t named a name, but he didn’t have to.
I took out my cell phone, punched in a number, leaned my forehead against the cool glass, and waited for her to answer.
“Hello, Joseph,” she said after the third ring.
“Hello, Violin.”
CHAPTER THREE
Preston Wiśniewski was a connoisseur of screams.
In the seventeen years that he had worked as the building super for the Imperial Hotel, he’d heard them all. The sharp, sudden scream of a new resident seeing a rat for the first time. The piteous scream of a junkie finding his or her lover dead with a needle still in the vein. The outraged scream of an inexperienced prostitute the first time a john took her anally. The staccato scream of someone being whipped. The piercing scream of sheer, unbridled lunacy. The phlegmy scream of someone losing a fight in a very bad way. The soulless jackal screams of gangbangers as they stomped someone to death. The apologetic scream of a girl who tried to renege on services paid for.
So many different kinds of screams.
He sat at his kitchen table on the second floor, dressed in blue work pants and a T-shirt with a faded logo of Mr. Clean on the chest, working his way through a Sudoku that was giving him problems. The scream made him glance up, and he listened to the memory of it in his mind.