Zero Sum Game

Chapter 8

Camarito was barely more than a truck stop, a ramshackle collection of buildings pretending to be a town. The gas station lighting up Main Street tried very hard to be a travel center and almost made it before giving up. A couple of truckers hunched over coffee at the mostly-deserted tables outside; Rio and I took one far away from everyone else. I sat back and watched the night while Rio went inside to pick up some coffees.

The childish part of my brain wanted to write Arthur Tresting off entirely. Nobody who threatened and belittled my friends—or my not-friends, whatever—deserved my help, or even my acquaintanceship. But a small, insistent voice pointed out that Tresting’s distrust of Rio was not outrageously unreasonable, and was maybe even an indication Tresting might be a good guy, or something. I was never quite clear on where the gray ended and the black and white began, but it wasn’t a stretch to put both Rio and me among the condemned, whereas Tresting—I wasn’t sure. I didn’t like him, but much as I wanted to, I couldn’t dismiss him or the information he might have just because of what he’d said about Rio.

After all, he wasn’t wrong.

Rio…Rio came into this world not quite right. He doesn’t feel emotion the way other people do. Doesn’t empathize. He honestly does not care about other people.

The one thing that drives him is inflicting pain. He craves it. He needs it. Some people are born for certain careers in this world; Rio’s talents mold him to excel at the worst of them all, the man with his tray of silver instruments whose mere presence in a room will cause people to scream and confess, the man who will smile through the spray of blood and revel in how much he loves his work.

I have no illusions about Rio.

In some strange joke of the universe’s, however, he was raised with religion. Lacking his own internal moral compass, he substituted Christianity’s, and became an instrument of God.

It’s twisted, of course. I freely admit it. Any Christian you stop on the street would pale with horror at the way Rio follows the Bible, because it doesn’t stop him from hurting people. Only as a Christian, he seeks out the people he judges deserve God’s vengeance, and he doesn’t bother with the little sins, the unfaithful husbands or petty thieves. Rio searches for people like himself. Or worse.

And then he introduces them to God.

Rio doesn’t have friends. It’s not part of his makeup. Some people hire him, usually people who aren’t very nice and can live with themselves after hiring someone like Rio. He’s choosy about the jobs he takes, and in between times, he freelances. For him, the payoff is never about the money anyway.

Rio and I had known each other a long time. As far as I could tell, he put up with me because I didn’t actively annoy him, and as for me, well…I understood him. Hell, he was a lot easier to understand than most of humanity. He practically had axioms. And because I understood him, I could trust him.

He was the only person I did trust.

And though I might not delude myself about the type of person Rio was, that trust had bred loyalty. Even if it didn’t bother the man himself, other people talking smack about Rio made my trigger finger real itchy, and I didn’t care who knew it. You didn’t knock my not-friends in front of me and expect to walk away unscathed.

Rio came back outside and set two paper cups on the table, taking one of the metal chairs for himself that allowed him to see almost every angle. Usually I would have taken that seat, but I always felt Rio outranked me in the paranoia hierarchy, so I ceded him the vantage point.

“What was Tresting’s information?” he asked as he sat.

I passed on everything the PI had told me, from the methods he’d used to track Polk and me to his nebulous theories about Pithica, not reserving judgment on the latter’s credibility. Rio listened silently.

“So, what’s the deal, then?” I demanded. “You’ve heard of whatever this Pithica thing is.”

“I told you not to get involved,” said Rio.

“Exactly,” I agreed. “Which means you know something.”

He sipped his drink. “On the whole, I know very little. Far less than I would like. What I do know suggests Arthur Tresting is more correct than not.”

“What?”

“I, too, have followed some unusual patterns. What interests me more,” he continued, “is who made such a concerted effort to draw you into this. That, I think, is a question worth answering.”

I was still trying to take in the fact that he didn’t think Tresting was a raving lunatic. “I take it you didn’t call Dawna Polk ever,” I said slowly.

“No. In fact, I have no idea who that is.”

“Courtney Polk,” I explained. “The girl I mentioned before, the one I got out. Kid who says she ‘accidentally’ became a drug mule for the Colombians. She got caught, the Colombians threw her in a basement, and then her sister Dawna contacted me and said that you called her and told her to hire me.”

“Yet I never made such a call. Interesting.”

“Did you see Courtney in there?”

“I remember thinking her rather stupid.” His voice was matter-of-fact. “It did not occur to me that she would be worth risking my other goals for.”

“Well, whatever your goals are, it sounds like you’ve been compromised.”

“So it would appear.” He took another sip of his drink. He was taking it very in stride—but then, I’d never seen Rio flustered about anything.

“Somebody in there is onto you,” I continued, feeling it out aloud, “and somehow knew about your relationship with me, and called Dawna impersonating you. I don’t know why, but I intend to find out.”

Rio tilted his head slightly, as if considering. “That is one theory.”

“It’s the only possible theory,” I contradicted. Rio just kept looking at me. “What? You have something better? Nothing else fits all the facts.”

“Odd,” he said. “You’re usually better at this.”

“Better at what?”

“You say the only possibility is that someone else contacted Dawna Polk using my name.”

“Well, yeah.” I searched for the flaw in that logic, puzzled. “That is the only possibility.”

“Unless she lied to you.”

“Who?”

Rio regarded me as though I were speaking a foreign language. “Dawna.”

I laughed. “She wasn’t lying to me. Jesus, if you’d seen her—she was practically in hysterics about this whole thing.”

“Did you do a background check on her?”

I frowned. I background check all my clients if I have the time. But…“I didn’t need to. Seriously. You’re being ridiculous. Let’s concentrate on the real possibilities.”

“Cas. You’re acting strange.”

“What do you mean, strange? Because I’m not jumping to suspect the least likely person in this whole tangle?”

“No. Because you’re disregarding it as an option.”

“So?”

“So, that is very unlike you.”

I found myself becoming annoyed. Which was unheard of—I couldn’t remember ever having gotten annoyed at Rio. Why was he insisting on being so infuriating over this Dawna thing? “Oh, so you have my deductive process axiomitized and memorized, do you?” I said.

“You will not acknowledge her deception as possible?”

“No!”

He sat back in his chair. “Odd.”

I didn’t like the judgment I heard in that word. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Ordinarily, you acknowledge every possibility. It is part of what makes you good at what you do,” Rio said evenly, and if I hadn’t been feeling so hostile toward him at the moment, I might have been flattered by that. “Logic, yes? It’s how you’re wired.”

“How I’m wired?”

“I do not mean it as an insult.”

“Well, maybe I’m taking it as one!” I snapped. “I’m allowed to have a gut instinct about people, you know!”

“Cas, you detest reliance on gut instinct.”

“And maybe you don’t know everything about how I work!” My voice was rising, a biting fury building in me by the second. “It’s such a bad thing not to suspect an innocent woman? Oh, right, I forgot—you wouldn’t know anything about valuing other human beings—”

“This isn’t like you, either,” Rio observed calmly. “Something’s affecting you.”

“Something’s affecting me?” I cried incredulously. “Well, yes, genius, things affect me! You think you’re such an expert on emotion all of a sudden? You? Did you ever think that maybe I’m reacting like a normal human person?”

“Cas—” Rio tried to cut in, but I wasn’t having any of it.

“The poor woman has done nothing but care about her little sister, and she’s being dragged into this whole violent mess with drug dealers and cops, and now we find out someone very dangerous called her and lied to her, and you want to dump it all on her? Maybe while we’re doing that, the people we should have been investigating will take their sweet time to come kill her and Courtney!”

“Cas, sit down—”

“No, fuck you, Rio!” I spat. I wasn’t sure when I had stood, but I was looming over him, so angry I felt like my skin was splitting open, my insides seizing. “I don’t owe you a goddamn thing! What, does it ruin your sick little masturbatory fantasies that I might care what happens to someone else? Too bad! Because unlike some fucked-up people, I have emotions, and morals, and a sense of right and wrong that doesn’t come from some demented version of the Bible!” Red was fuzzing around the corners of my vision. I wanted to hit him, to hit him so hard that he wouldn’t get back up. The math pricked my senses all over, whispering of all the ways I could strike. Maim. Kill. “And you? You dare preach to me about how I should or shouldn’t act, well, fuck you, because I’m not a fucking psychopath!”

My final words rang in the air between us, echoing in the space between trust and history.

“Oh, God…” I whispered.

“Do you believe me now?” Rio asked dryly.

“Oh, God, Rio…” I couldn’t move.

“I’m not angry,” said Rio. “Sit down.”

Of course he wasn’t angry. Somehow, I wished that he would be, that he would get up and slug me, fight back, because I…I had stabbed him as ruthlessly and effectively as I knew how, and it didn’t matter that he was pulling the knife out and dismissing it as a flesh wound, because I had crossed the line, that line—

“Sit down,” said Rio again, his voice calm and even and without injury.

I couldn’t sit down, but I was leaning on the table to keep from falling. “Rio, I can’t…I’m so sorry…”

“You are not usually so blunt,” said Rio, “but we both know what I am.”

“But that wasn’t even true, I—” I was having trouble speaking. Everything was wrong, twisted and crumpled. “I owe you my life, I owe you everything…”

“And on that we shall agree to disagree, since I will insist on giving the credit to the Lord.” He gave me a small smile. “Be careful, Cas. It would perhaps not be a good thing if you were to give me an ego.”

I laughed before I could stop myself; it came out half a hiccup. It wasn’t funny; Rio without boundaries was about the most unfunny thing I could possibly imagine—not to mention nightmarish and heartbreaking and absolutely fucking terrifying—but it was either laugh or turn and walk away and never speak to Rio again because I couldn’t deal with what I’d said, and as appealing as that sounded, it also sounded really fucking dumb.

So I sat down, my face in my hands, and said, “Rio, I think something’s affecting me.”

“An astute observation,” he replied with a straight face. “Considering the context, I suggest we look into Miss Dawna Polk.”

I still felt a strong ridiculousness at the idea, to the point of defensiveness, but now I shoved it aside angrily. Something had interfered with my logic here, had made me lash out irrationally against the one person in my life I could depend on, say things to that one person I would have laid out anyone else for so much as thinking. The one person.

I was going to figure out what was going on here if it was the last thing I did. Whoever had done this to me—Dawna Polk or Pithica or some shadowy government organization of people in dark suits—I was going to take the bastards down so hard it would register on the Richter scale. I realized I was literally growling, deep in my throat, a low, animal sound.

“I have a conjecture about what might be happening,” said Rio. “Tell me, Cas. Did you tell Dawna Polk you were meeting me here?”

“Yes, I—” My head suddenly started ringing as if I’d been clocked, and I felt as if I were seeing double. I told her…But that wasn’t like me either. I hardly ever told anybody anything. Why would I have told Dawna I was meeting Rio? And where?

Well, she was crying and wanted to know you were doing something for Courtney, and you’re clumsy with people so you were probably just talking in order to say something…

I didn’t know what shocked me more: that my brain was trying to rationalize this, or that this type of rationalization might have worked a few minutes ago. A deep and furious self-loathing thrummed through me.

I had told Dawna everything because she had asked. And then I’d been attacked.

“Jesus Christ,” I mumbled into my hands. “What the hell?”

“I believe Dawna Polk might answer some questions for us,” said Rio.

“I know how to find her.” The shock and horror were coalescing into rage in the pit of my stomach. Dawna had done something to me. A drug? I hadn’t drunk anything with her, only eaten an energy bar that I’d brought with me, but there were other ways. Dawna Polk, you are going to give me answers. And after that…

Well. I wasn’t a forgiving person.

“I think, perhaps, it would be better if I took that part of the job,” said Rio smoothly. “It appears I cannot go back to my role here, and there is the chance you are…still affected.”

I made an angry noise. “I’ll be on my guard.”

“Even so. Let me take Dawna. Your time may be spent more profitably by talking to your new detective friend.”

I almost laughed. “Tresting? I think you might not have a good grasp of the word ‘friend.’”

Rio smiled slightly, and I felt myself flushing at the unintentional truth. “Doubtless,” he said, “But Tresting will have other contacts. And it is quite clear he will not talk to me. You can find out more of what he knows. I’ll track Miss Polk.”

I swirled the dregs of my coffee in the paper cup reluctantly. What he was saying made too much sense not to agree. “I guess this means we’re working together on this one, huh.”

“It appears you have become involved despite me.”

“Yeah, I’m irritating like that. I suppose there’s no getting around the fact that Tresting might be useful.”

“It seems not.”

I groaned and stood. “Best get it over with, then. I’ll call him in the morning. You want me to set up a meet with Dawna for you?”

“Perhaps, but not yet. For now, whatever contact information you have will suffice.”

I gave him everything I had on her. Embarrassingly, it was precious little, much less than I would usually be comfortable with. Rio didn’t comment, for which I was grateful.

“Off to try to talk to people, I guess,” I said. “Wish me luck.”

Rio touched his forehead in a brief salute. “Go with God, Cas.”

“Yeah. You too.”

“Oh, and Cas.” I turned back. “Do not concern yourself with defending my honor. It serves no purpose.”

“La, la, la,” I sang. “I can’t hear you.” I threw him a grin, hoping it looked remotely genuine, and strode off.

I stole a flashy sports car for the trip back to LA. I wanted to go fast, to feel the wind in my hair and watch the desert whip by too fast to see.

Dawna Polk had attacked me. Whatever she had done had wormed its way into my brain somehow, twisted my thoughts, manipulated me…beneath my fury lurked a sick sense of violation, an oily stain on my soul.

Dawna Polk was going down for this.

When I got back to the neighborhood my safe house was in, I yanked the e-brake and spun, sending the trendy speedster into a sideways skid against the curb between two SUVs with less than twenty centimeters of clearance. Yup, I’m that good at math: I can parallel park in Los Angeles.

Despite my anger, exhaustion overtook me as I climbed the stairs to the flat. I was going on two days without sleep. I needed some rest, some real rest, and I couldn’t call Tresting till the morning anyway. Well, I could, but I didn’t figure annoying him in the wee hours of the morning to be the brightest move at this point. I cut the ziptie I’d secured the knob with and nudged the door open quietly so as not to wake Courtney if she was still sacked out.

The loft was dark and quiet.

Shit.

My subconscious knew something was wrong before I registered the computations that told me the silence was too absolute. I hit the lights, dreading what they’d show me. The loft’s single room was empty, its small bathroom open and vacant as well. The other side of the handcuffs lay open and impotent on the mattress.

Courtney Polk was gone.