Like Dawna Polk.
I shivered and wrapped the bed’s thin blanket around myself, pulling it tight. The chronic headache had resurged as a dull throb. Dawna Polk—a woman who could look at you and read anything she liked from you, no limits, easy as you please. A woman who could pluck out your deepest secrets. A woman who could compel you to do anything. Believe anything.
I remembered how I’d felt after I’d spoken with her, when I was defending her to Rio to the point of irrationality. I had felt perfectly normal. Every thought, every reaction, had seemed to follow logically from the last. As far as my brain had been concerned, Rio had been the person acting strange. It had taken Rio’s pushing, and consequently me doing something wholly and appallingly out of character, for me to realize something was wrong—and if “Steve” were to be believed, even that wouldn’t have snapped most people out of it.
Of course, the most obvious question was also the most terrifying one: aside from getting me to tell her my immediate plans and making sure I didn’t look too closely at her, had Dawna Polk suggested anything else to me?
How could I know any of my decisions since talking to her were my own? How could I even be sure I hadn’t been contacting her and then purposely forgetting about it? Leena Kingsley was proof that Dawna was capable of obliterating or changing any memory I thought I had. All of reality was suspect. I couldn’t be sure of anything.
The feeling was paralyzing.
I tried to think back through everything that had happened so far. It all sounded like me, and no odd blank spots struck me, but if I was compromised already, then that meant nothing.
I had a desperate urge to talk to someone who knew what I was supposed to sound like, to check myself and figure out which way in hell was up. I needed to talk to Rio anyway, I thought; we needed to touch base and compare notes, and with Tresting turning his back on me, I needed every lead I could get—and Rio might have new information.
Of course, he’d also been tracking Dawna Polk. If he’d talked to her, too…
I suddenly felt strangled, like I was having trouble getting air. If Dawna Polk had seen to meddle with Rio’s faith in God—if she had shaken his moral compass even in the slightest—
Fuck.
“Get a grip, Cas,” I said out loud.
I couldn’t sit here wallowing in indecision. That itself might be what she wanted. I still had to make choices, and hope like hell they were mine to make.
Do the math, I told myself. How many variables? How many possible paths? She can’t have microscopic control; it’s not practical. The thought let me breathe a little easier. Dawna Polk might have some foothold in my head, but there was no way she could have predicted every event that would happen to me and implanted her preferred reaction to it. At least, I hoped not. And are you really so egotistical that you think you merit her full-time puppet mastery?
It depended on what she wanted with me, I supposed, which brought me back to wondering why she had even called me in the first place. It was clear Pithica already had the resources to pull Courtney out of the cartel’s clutches if they had chosen to. So why me?
I mulled it over for a while, but I had no idea. The only possibility I could think of was what Steve had said—that I had shown some sort of unusual resilience to Dawna’s techniques. Maybe Pithica had known that somehow and wanted to test me on it. Was this all an elaborate game to see whether I was capable of shaking off their influence? Or—Steve had said Pithica had some normal human agents; could everything have been a strange way of recruiting me? Maybe each interaction was supposed to build up some web of faith in Dawna and Pithica until I was their thoroughly domesticated delivery girl.
I shivered again.
But that didn’t make sense either. If that were the case, Dawna Polk would be failing miserably at her indoctrination effort. Pithica had done nothing but try to kill or brainwash both me and the people I’d been working with since I’d rescued Courtney; I feared and distrusted them now more than ever, particularly Dawna. It would be nice to assume they were making mistakes, but that seemed like wishful thinking. No, I was missing something.
Dammit. I wasn’t sure how to begin to unsnarl this whole mess—like I’d told Tresting, I wasn’t an investigator. I didn’t usually need to figure anything out beyond how to get through a locked door.
I definitely needed to get in touch with Rio. And sooner rather than later.
I left most of my small arsenal under the mattress, disdaining the shoddy guns for the Ruger I had stashed in the wall, and set out to find an electronics store.
It was coming on noon when I finally got back to my bolt hole with a couple of new prepaid phones. I stuck one in my wall stash as a backup and dialed the other from memory. Rio picked up on the first ring.
“It’s Cas,” I said.
“Cas,” said Rio, and I could have sworn he sounded relieved. Odd. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“I burned my phone,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Have you seen a paper this morning?”
“A newspaper?”
“Yes, Cas, a newspaper.”
“No need to get sarcastic,” I said. “I’m part of the Internet generation. No, I haven’t. Why?”
“You’re in it.”
That brought me up short. “What?”
“Or rather, a bruised, if accurate, composite of you.”
“I didn’t do it,” I said, feeling sick.
He paused a moment too long. “I know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.
“Beg pardon?”
“That tone,” I said. “You hesitated. What’s going on?”
“Nothing. It also says you’re a person of interest in a shooting in Griffith Park.”
“Oh, that one I did do. Do they have any leads?”
“Not that they mentioned. Cas, you have to keep a lower profile.”
I felt unfairly put upon. “I didn’t ask for this!” I reminded him. “Someone dragged me in, remember? And now people keep trying to kill me! The police are only after me because I tried to kill them back!”
Silence over the line. Then Rio said, “Cas, what’s wrong?”
“What, other than people trying to kill me?” Fear shot through me as I remembered one of the reasons I’d wanted to call Rio in the first place. “Wait, am I acting strange? Do I seem off to you?”
“You are very defensive.”
“Unusually defensive?” I pressed.
“Cas, what’s going on?”
“It’s about Dawna Polk. We found out why she made me act…when she talked to me; she can…” I didn’t want to say it. Saying it would make it real. “We met a group working against Pithica. Rio, they say she’s a real-life telepath. They say she can make you believe anything.” My words sounded crazy to my own ears. “You probably think I’m insane. I think I’m insane.”
“No,” said Rio. The word was slow and deliberate. “I believe you.”
I digested that. “You knew,” I said finally.
“Yes.”
“When I started acting funny the other night—you already knew what she was.”