Critical Point (Cas Russell #3) - S. L. Huang Page 0,4

As of four months ago, almost all of Los Angeles had owed me a broken skull, but my mistakes had been psychically erased in the most discomfiting way possible, and most of them appeared to have forgotten. I doubted the telepathic sweep had gotten everyone, though. Some people seemed to have dismissed the rumors of my involvement, given the ultimately bizarre and seemingly inconsistent sequence of events, but I suspected there existed others—people who’d recognized a voice on the radio and now nursed perfectly rational grudges even as their cohorts laughed them off.

Then there were all the people I’d screwed over directly by breaking into their secure lairs and threatening them. I was pretty sure Yamamoto wasn’t the only crime lord still taking my rampage as a personal insult, and I hadn’t even pointed a gun at him.

But even with all the lurking threats, I still didn’t believe in coincidences, or at least only believed in them when they fit the relevant probability distribution. And for my office to blow up exactly after Arthur had gone missing … especially considering he’d left a message on his voicemail about being connected with me …

“You’re not supposed to see me,” moaned my passenger.

I blinked.

Somehow I’d stopped paying attention to him. Weird. Especially considering he was currently my most likely source of answers. The ringing in my ears had died down enough to hear the very loud rap music in the car next to us; it was past time to run an interrogation.

“Yeah, I’ve heard blowing people up is great for stealth,” I said back to him. “In fact, we’re going to have a nice little conversation now. Talk and you’ll live.”

“I don’t know anything,” said the Aussie man. The emphasis on the words was odd, as if he wasn’t used to speaking aloud. “You were supposed to stay. You were supposed to stay and not see.”

What?

“Nobody sees,” he continued. “I’m not here.” He started giggling.

Oh. Oh, shit. This guy was … not all there. Someone else must be taking advantage of him.

Fuck.

I thought for a minute and then drove to a four-story apartment building where I kept a one-bedroom place on the top floor. The Aussie man whimpered about hidden secrets and invisible friends all the way up.

I didn’t want to hurt him again—I wasn’t opposed to hurting people in general, but in this case, it didn’t seem fair—but when he wouldn’t get out of the car, I had to hustle him out with a grip on his jacket. I got him up to the apartment and sat him down in the bedroom. There wasn’t a bed, only a couch with one of its cushions missing, but hey, I didn’t run a Hilton.

“What’s your name?” I tried.

“People don’t talk to me,” he said. “And I don’t talk to people.”

“A man after my own heart.” I sighed. “Who told you to blow up my office?”

“They told me to do it,” he agreed. “And they were right.”

“Who told you?”

“The one who makes the music,” he said. “Playing the songs when you ask.”

“Does this person have a name?”

“I’m not supposed to tell anyone. How did you know it was me?”

“You basically told me,” I said. “I do tend to notice when people try to kill me.”

“No, you don’t. It wasn’t me. You’re wrong.”

I gave up.

He had access to the bathroom, and I opened some cans of overly processed food and left them in the room with a spoon and a few bottles of water. Then I locked the door to the bedroom and shoved a wedge under the outside door to the apartment for good measure. The windows in the place were painted shut and four stories up—the only danger of him getting out was if he started making noise and someone investigated. But this building was mostly empty units or people who spent their entire days high, so I didn’t think it likely.

Two years ago, I probably would have tied the guy up and gagged him, or at least considered it. “Fuck you, Arthur,” I muttered.

Are you sure it’s all Arthur?

I stomped down the stairs. No—Arthur had been trying to convince me to have a conscience long before I’d had a telepath in my head regularly. I wasn’t going to go there.

Wasn’t going to start second-guessing myself.

I’d repeated the same words so often over the past four months that I was sick of them.

Besides, I reminded myself, it was bad enough if it was just Arthur pushing at my morals—pretending to be my friend,