about my abilities, or they never would have risked it. Which meant they didn’t know about my connection to Halberd. Or Teplova. Or Coach.
Which meant … they weren’t Pithica. Dawna knew exactly who I was and what I could do.
The screaming relief of that conclusion made me want to sit on the floor and weep. If this wasn’t Pithica, if the connection to Halberd and my past was only the coincidence of selection bias as I’d first tried to insist … Tabitha might have a chance after all.
But what did it mean that it hadn’t been D.J.? The person had talked to Checker like they’d known him, assuming the detail about trolling actors or whatever was accurate. So D.J. still had to be involved here somewhere, didn’t he? After all, it had been Arthur’s investigation that led him to stumble into all this in the first place …
Unless we’d had it all wrong.
I laid Pilar on Checker’s couch and tried to make sure she wasn’t about to chew off her own limbs. “Cas,” she whispered plaintively. “Cas—I, I, I…”
“Stay there,” I said. “Sorry.”
Then I dashed out to the Hole and burst in the door. “Assumptions off the table. If D.J. isn’t involved here, what does that mean?”
Checker straightened toward me, his eyes wide and owl-like. “He still has to be, right?”
The signature matches in the explosives, the obscene real estate listing, the voice on the phone—
“Someone is sure trying very hard to convince us of that,” I answered.
“No, I still think he is,” Checker said. “I’m looking at this cell phone—you got this from the guy who—?”
I nodded curtly, gesturing him on.
“There are only a couple of contacts on here. One tracks back to Eva Teplova. And one is … it’s totally anonymous, but I’m finding it all over the dark web, and the context … Cas, it does make me think it’s D.J. I think—I think your guy had his phone number.”
That brought me up short.
But everything was fitting together just a little bit wrong. Like we’d built a whole system with one contradictory axiom.
“We do know there’s some explosives expert involved here…” I thought for a second. “Call the number.”
“Are you sure? If I keep searching it, maybe I can find—”
“Yeah. Call it. I want to see who picks up.”
Checker’s face cleared as he got it. “I’ll keep us muted unless you give me the word. Are you ready?”
I leaned on the desktop over his shoulder. “Go.”
He dialed through the computer, every keystroke like a falling hailstone.
A phone rang on the other end. Once. Twice. Three times.
Four times.
A rustle as someone picked up.
“Hello? You’ve got me!” sang a merry voice on the other end. “What can I do you for?”
I recognized the high, singsong cadence instantly as D.J.’s, the amplitudes falling out into matching cycles and patterns. I pointed at the speakers. “That’s D.J. That’s him.”
Checker had gone white. “What the hell is going on? I don’t understand. Why have someone impersonate him instead of just…”
“Hello? Hello? Hello?” crowed D.J. over the speakers. “Is this a prank call? Because I fucking love pranks. They turn me on something wicked.”
“Unmute it,” I said. “I want to talk to him.”
Checker didn’t seem able to hit the button. I reached over and did it for him.
“I’m up for phone sex, but you do have to pay me,” D.J. was chattering on. “Nothing’s free in life, yanno.”
I took a deep breath. If D.J. was behind everything, he already knew what I was about to tell him. If he wasn’t …
“I’m here with an old friend of yours,” I said, and nudged Checker in the arm.
“Hey,” Checker said faintly, after a second.
So much emotion was packed into that one syllable it sounded alien. But D.J. went dead quiet. And then he screamed.
Or—I thought he was screaming. It must have been more like a squeal of excitement. “Charles! Oh my coke-addled gods. How the fuck are you?”
“Not … great,” Checker managed. “D.J., we need to know…”
“You need something from me? How marvelous. How absolutely spiffing. Oh hey, look, you’re on a fancy computer connection too! Go modern tech.”
A video window filled the screen.
D.J. looked exactly like my vague recollection of him: short and rotund, with very dark skin and long braided dreads. His appearance didn’t immediately parse as male or female, and I’d gotten the sense that was intentional.
It might only help if he saw Checker was who he said he was. I enabled our own side of the video link, and the little