Kill the Messenger

9

Jace hobbled slowly down the stairs from the apartment in his socks, boots tied together and slung over his shoulder. He had slept maybe a total of an hour and a half. He had just drifted off again around four when Tyler had crawled onto the futon with him and whispered that he was scared. Jace told him it was okay, and to go to sleep.

Tyler was still young enough to believe him about things he wanted to believe. Jace couldn’t remember ever having been that young. He’d never had the luxury of a buffer. Alicia may have wanted to protect him but hadn’t believed she should. Instead, she had given him the best gift she thought she had to give: survival skills.

She had always told him not to waste valuable time panicking. There was no point in it, no benefit to be gained. Still, it was partly panic—and pain—that had kept his brain running like a hamster in a wheel those few precious hours he should have been sleeping. At four-thirty he slipped out of bed, onto the floor on his hands and knees, taking stock of what hurt most.

The ankle felt thick and difficult to move. He had packed it in ice bags overnight, trying to bring down the swelling, hoping he could get by with taping it, that he hadn’t done more damage to the ligaments than he thought. Slowly, slowly, he braced a hand on the Chinese stool, took a deep breath, and struggled to stand.

Even a normal, hectic day on the job could come back the next morning like a bad hangover. Back hurting, hamstrings tight, Achilles tendons hard as rocks. Bruises, cuts, scrapes. Lungs aching from breathing exhaust. Eyes stinging, fingers frozen in a curl from gripping the handlebars.

Today seemed no worse than any bad day after a wreck, except for the idea that someone wanted to kill him.

He went into the bathroom, took a quick cold shower to clear his pounding head, then taped the ankle as tight as he dared. It was half again the size it should have been, but he could put weight on it, and that was all that counted.

At the bottom of the stairs he sat down and worked his boot on, clenching his jaw at the discomfort. Small beads of sweat popped on his forehead. He could hear the ice delivery truck idling outside the big door of the loading dock. The first call of morning in Chinatown, and most other ethnic neighborhoods Jace knew: deliveries to the small family grocers, the meat markets, the restaurants. Once a week the butcher across the street received crates of live chickens and ducks, adding to the wake-up call. Jace found the noise and routine comforting, the way he imagined he would feel if he had been born into a big family.

The rattle of a chain. The grinding of the motor that lifted the overhead door. The voice of Madame Chen’s nephew, Chi, barking orders to third cousin Boo Zhu. The scrape of metal against the concrete as Boo Zhu hopped off the dock and dragged his shovel with him.

Jace pulled in a deep breath of damp, fish-scented air, and went to work. He said nothing to Chi about being injured. Chi didn’t ask. Chi, who ran the day-to-day business of the fish market, disliked Jace and disapproved of his aunt’s decision to take the Damon brothers in. In six years he had not changed his mind.

Jace didn’t care about Chi. He did his job and gave Chi no reason to complain about anything other than the fact that Jace wasn’t Chinese and didn’t speak Chinese. Something Chi found impossible to tolerate despite the fact that he had been born in Pasadena and spoke English as well as anyone.

Madame Chen had very bluntly pointed out to Chi that bilingual skills were not a requirement for shoveling shaved ice from one place to the next. Boo Zhu, who was twenty-seven and mentally handicapped, barely spoke any language at all, and managed to get through his work without a problem.

The rain had become a thick, cold drizzle. Still, Jace was sweating like a workhorse, feeling nauseous and weak as pain burned through his ankle with every shovelful of ice. Fifteen minutes into the job, Madame Chen appeared on the loading dock, a tiny figure swallowed up in a trench coat, a huge Burberry plaid umbrella in hand. She called to Jace to come into her office, earning him a withering glare from Chi.

“My father-in-law tells me you are hurt,” she said, shutting the umbrella as she led the way into the cramped, cluttered space.

“I’m fine, Madame Chen.”

Frowning, she stared up at his face—wet, pale, scraped, bruised. “Fine? You are not fine.”

“It was just an accident. Being a messenger is sometimes a dangerous job. You know that.”

“I know you are never coming home so late at night from your job. Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“Trouble? Why would you ask that? I’ve been hurt before. It’s nothing new.”

“I don’t like answers that are not answers, JayCee.”

Hands on his hips, Jace looked away, fixing his gaze on a wall calendar from a local bank, which wished everyone a happy Chinese New Year. Madame Chen turned on the small space heater beneath her desk, and the thing made a humming sound and released a hot electrical smell that was unnerving. He thought for a moment about what to tell her. She probably deserved the truth, out of respect alone, but he didn’t want to involve the Chens in this mess. He didn’t understand it all himself yet. No one could trace him to this address, so there seemed no reason to alarm her.

“A truth does not take so long to tell,” she said firmly. “Only a fiction requires so much thought.”

Jace sighed. “I was making a delivery late yesterday, and someone almost ran me over. I took a bad fall.”

“And you called the police to report this, which is why you were so late in returning home,” she said, clearly not believing that to have been the case.

“No. It was dark. It happened fast. I couldn’t get the license plate number.”

“Instead, you went to the emergency room to be examined by a doctor.”

Jace looked away again, more out of aggravation than evasiveness. Madame Chen was the only person besides his own mother he could not lie to successfully. He could fool and trick anyone else into believing anything he wanted them to believe. Because no one else cared enough about what he was telling them. He was just a messenger, and they heard what they wanted to hear, what was easiest to accept.

“I walked home,” he said. “It took a long time because it was a long way and my bike is broken.”

Madame Chen said something in Chinese that was probably not very ladylike.

“You don’t call a cab?”

“Cabs cost money.”

“You don’t call me?” she said, offended.

“I tried to call. The line was busy.”

“You have no respect,” she said, jamming her hands on her hips. “Six years I worry about you. You have no respect for me.”

“That’s not true,” Jace protested. “I respect you very much, Madame Chen. I don’t want to worry you.”

She hissed like a snake and shook a finger at him. “You are like Boo Zhu now? With stones in your head? You think I am like Boo Zhu?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You are like my family, JayCee,” she said quietly.

Jace felt a burning at the backs of his eyes. He never allowed himself to want that, not in any way less abstract than the loose sense of community he had thought about earlier. Tyler was his family.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“That you offended me, or that I consider you family?”

A crooked smile twisted his mouth. “Both, I guess. I don’t like to burden you.”

She shook her head sadly. “You were old in the womb. Not in the way of your brother, but in the way of a man who has seen too much.”

It wasn’t the first time she had made this particular comment. Jace never replied. There was no point in stating the obvious.

“I have to go, Madame Chen. I have business to take care of. I have to get the bike fixed.”

“And how will you get where you are going? On a magic carpet?”

He didn’t answer. She pulled a set of keys off a nail on the wall. “Take my car. And don’t tell me you can’t. You will.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

Madame Chen owned a two-year-old Mini Cooper, black with a cream-colored top and a moon roof. Jace carefully wedged The Beast into the car and crept out into the early traffic. The car gave him a disguise of sorts. Predator wouldn’t be looking for a Mini Cooper.

The trick of the day would be getting in and out of the Speed offices without being seen by anyone watching the building. He needed to get to Eta before the cops did.