Eye of the Sh*t Storm Read online

  He’s not actually very good at being muscle. I’ve watched him try and fight people, and it’s like watching a drunk try to dance the macarena. But he does an excellent job of looking scary. He’s doing it now as he stands behind Annie’s chair, scowling the scowliest scowl that anyone has ever scowled.

  Annie Cruz isn’t scowling, but she doesn’t have to. She doesn’t need a facial expression to look scary – it’s something she was born with. She’s in the director’s chair on the other side of the table from Robert, wearing a dark green camo jacket over a black T and jeans. Annie has a buzzcut – she used to have a huge set of dreads, but she shaved them all off recently. Her skin is the colour of brown butter, currently beaded with sweat from the hot sunshine. At least, I hope it’s from the sunshine.

  If my ability is to move shit with my mind, Annie’s ability is moving people. It was her contacts who put us in touch with the Legends. Annie’s Army, we call them – a deep network of connects stretching across California. Janitors. Senators. Construction workers. Doctors. Movie stars. Fluffers. Probably half the Lakers. Annie’s connects go deep.

  Robert keeps glancing at me, and I’m pretty sure I know why. From his perspective, I’m the odd one out. A small-ish woman with short, spiky black hair, dressed in a bright blue Xzibit Restless tank top over skinny jeans and Air Jordans. Africa’s the muscle, Annie’s in charge… but he can’t work out what I’m there for, and it’s making him uncomfortable.

  Good.

  “Y’all want some coffee?” Robert rumbles, addressing Annie.

  She shakes her head.

  “You sure? I make a real good pot of coffee.” He gestures to a French press, bumping up against the bag of meth. “Nicaraguan Roast. I let the grounds bloom – that means you pour a little water in, let it sit for a minute before you pour the rest. It really opens up the flavour. You should try some.”

  There’s a gun on the table, different from the ones the bikers have. A really freaking big gun, too, with a bulging scope and a stock you could use to split someone’s head open.

  The rifle is a modified Heckler and Koch 416, if I remember the mission brief. The Legends are not supposed to have modified Heckler and Koch 416s. Nobody is, except the military. So it’s really worrying that this little gang of upstart bikers has a shipment of two hundred they are trying to offload in Los Angeles.

  “How much?” Annie says. She sounds distracted, as if only just remembering why we’re here. That’s not good. She’s on point for this mission, and we need her to be on her A-game.

  “Ain’t you gonna test it?” Robert asks.

  “Later.” Annie yawns. “We got our own shop.”

  Robert ignores her, getting to his feet and hauling the rifle towards him. One of his buddies passes him a magazine, which he inserts. “This is the gun that killed Osama.”

  I can’t help myself. “That one in particular? No wonder you’re charging so much.”

  One of the bikers stifles a chuckle. Robert gives him a dirty look. He swings the rifle up, points it into the blue sky and pulls the trigger. Once. Twice. Three times. The shots are loud enough to set my ears ringing.

  He turns around, grinning when he sees the looks on our faces. “Come on. Cops won’t do nothing. After the Big One, they’re running themselves ragged anyway. I could let off a rocket launcher up here, probably.” He pauses. “Are you interested in those, by the way? Because we could—”

  “No.” Annie says. “How much?”

  Robert falls silent, as if he can’t believe the disrespect we’re showing. He puts the rifle back on the table. The irony is, after the quake, government regs on guns are stricter than ever in California. Quite why the government never understands that making something illegal results in a massive black market trade is beyond me.

  At last, Robert says, “Three grand per.”

  Annie doesn’t hesitate. “Two.”

  “Three. Best I can do, even wholesale. You can sell for four, and I got two hundred ready to go as we speak. That’s…” He frowns, glances at one of the other bikers, a short man with a really bad goatee and a beer belly, holding a rifle almost as big as he is. “Alan, what’s the profit on that?”

  Alan rolls his eyes upwards, his mouth moving silently. Africa and I exchange a look.

  “Two hundred large,” Alan says. His voice is nasally, monotone. Like he’s an accountant giving a presentation to the board. Hell, for all I know, that’s what he was before the quake. With what it did to LA, it wrecked a lot of lives. Maybe Alan’s was one of them.

  Our mission objectives are simple. We confirm that the Legends are selling guns, and get a favour to take home from this party. We find out as much as we can about their base of operations, which is something I’m super-handy for – and we find out who their supplier is. Then we make an exit, report everything back to our handler, Moira Tanner, who then sends in a team of special forces to do the hard work while we go get a beer somewhere.

  Why not just send in the special forces right away, you ask? Because America’s finest thick-necked goons don’t just go in guns blazing every time they get a whiff of something hinky. They want intel. Sometimes that means long stake-outs and planting bugs and ridiculous disguises, but it’s much easier to use your very own psychokinetic, who can case the entire building just by walking through it.

  See, moving shit with my mind is only the start of my ability. To move things, I have to sense them, using my mind to track their position in space. That means I can easily build up a picture of my surroundings, even if I can’t see them.

  I can feel the coins and phones in the pockets of every biker here, the shape of the rings on their fingers and the metal studs on their jackets. My ability also lets me know that there are bikers here we haven’t seen yet, other figures who will suddenly appear to tilt the odds if things do go south. I can feel the phone being held by the dude in the hotel room’s bathroom, feel it vibrate as he taps at the screen. Another two dudes in the suite’s bedroom. One of them is messing around with a pistol in a way that is probably going to get his dick shot off.

  I call it echolocation, because I’m super-original and clever.

  “Six hundred thousand.” Robert rolls the words out. He spreads his hands like he’s done a magic trick.

  Annie drops her head, as if thinking about it. I sneak a glance at her, and what I see worries me even more. Her eyes are closed, her mouth set in a thin line. Like she’s having to gather herself.

  I have a sudden urge to check in with Reggie – our boss, back at the office. She’s a former Army helicopter pilot who now runs China Shop, and is one hell of a hacker. There’s not a whole lot for her to do on this particular job, but she was still heavily involved in the planning, and she’s watching us right now. Each of us wear tiny, adhesive pinhole cameras on our shirts, undetectable by any sweeping devices. Sometimes, working for the government means cool toys.

  Normally we have comms earpieces, too, but we left those at home. Hard to pretend to be gun-buying criminals when you have one of those in your ears. Anyway, the cameras have a very tiny mic, so Reggie can hear us even if she can’t talk to us.

  Annie raises her chin. “OK,” she says. “Six hundred. But I am gonna run some tests, make sure these aren’t just stock.” She reaches for the gun. “Got a little setup out in Oxnard. Everything gravy, then we come back and settle up.”

  Robert has the grin of a Hollywood actor: big and white and completely fake. “Hold your horses there. That little sampler doesn’t go anywhere without Pop’s say so.” Is it my imagination, or is there the very slightest waver of his smile as he says the name?

  “So get Pop up here,” I say.

  “Naw, Pop’s got more important shit to do. I will call though.” He pulls out his own phone… and stops when another biker pushes open the sliding door to the patio. He’s missing an arm, and the other is a forest of tattoos. He’s clutching a cellphone, and as he crosses the balcony to Robert, he gives me a completely blank look
.

  Uh-oh.

  The guy bends down and whispers in Robert’s ear, like something out of a bad James Bond movie. Robert’s expression doesn’t change. A weird thought: he enjoys this. Enjoys the whole rooftop-balcony-meeting, Nicaraguan coffee, sophisticated criminal schtick. It’s the kind of thing he’d never have gotten to do when he was just a shitty street-level biker. For him, the earthquake represented a growth opportunity.

  A sudden quiet settles over the balcony. Even the wind has stopped.

  “OK.” Robert claps the edge of the table, gets to his feet. “Looks like we’re all good to go here.”

  “Thought you needed to call Pop,” Annie says.

  “Naw, not a problem. Pop says I can do whatever I need to.” He rolls his eyes slightly at me, as if trying to say, Can you believe how difficult your partner is being?

  It is very tempting to beat him to death with his own phone. But I’m a hero and a classy human, so I restrain myself.

  “So we can go ahead and test this?” Annie lifts the gun as she gets to her feet.

  “Sure, sure. Answer me one question, though.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  His smile never wavers. “What’s China Shop?”

  Double uh-oh.

  Annie, to her credit, gets it together – just as well, because I can’t keep the alarm off my face. “Moving company. It’s the legit part of our operation.”

  Robert leans back against the thick balcony railing. “So… you don’t do any work for the government?”

  Triple uh-oh, quadruple goddamn-it and all of the yikes.

  We don’t get a chance to deny any of it. Three of the bikers grab hold of Africa. They kick his legs out from underneath him, grabbing him in a chokehold as he goes over backwards. Three more hit Annie, wrestling her to the table. Two of them, Alan and the one-armed guy, grab hold of me, squeezing my biceps tight. Goddammit, who the hell tipped these assholes off?

  “Get the fuck off me,” Annie snarls.

  I need to do something, but I’ll have to play this very carefully. I’m not supposed to reveal my ability, even in cases where the people watching are unlikely to alert the media.

  What happens next happens really freaking fast.

  Robert pulls the modified H&K off the table, whips it up to point at Africa. He aims carefully, centre-mass, not wanting to hit his buddies. Then without another word, he pulls the trigger.

  Or tries to. I don’t let him. Trigger stays locked. He snarls, chucks the gun to the ground, snatches a rifle from one of his buddies. I lock that one down too, all the while thinking, Come on, come on, find a way out of this.

  Robert gives up and drops the weapon, jerks his chin at the men holding us. My heart skitter-beats as they heft Africa like a sack of grain. He roars, tries to buck them off. But like I said, he’s lanky and skinny and utterly useless in a fight.

  And before Annie and I can say anything, before I can switch my PK to the men holding Africa, they lift him onto the balcony wall, and topple him over the edge.

  There is a long, horrible second where he’s looking right at me. His eyes are wide, terrified. Disbelieving.

  His feet flick upwards, as if saluting the deep blue morning sky. Then Africa is gone.

  THREE

  Teagan

  You’re probably wondering why I let that happen.

  After all, what’s to stop me grabbing every object on the balcony, from guns to ashtrays to those cute directors chairs, and using them to beat ten shades of shit out of our biker pals?

  That was my first thought too. The problem is that it reveals my ability in a major way. Reggie is always… well, everybody is always telling me to think before I act. And in this case, I actually do. There’s a better, smarter solution here.

  Of course, it has a few problems of its own. I need to keep everyone’s eyes on me. I can’t tell Annie, or Africa. And it may or may not result in us all falling to our deaths.

  I go fucking nuts, twisting and yelling. Alan has to plant his feet, jerk back as I try to smash his nose in with the back of my head. One of the other goons grabs my legs, ignoring my furious, angry howls. “You cocksuckers, what the fuck? What the fuck? I’ll fucking kill you, I’ll tear your dicks off and play a drum solo with them, you – let go!”

  Thinking: That’s it, keep your eyes on me, don’t you dare look over that balcony…

  With a mutual grunt, Alan and his accomplice lift my screaming self onto the two-feet-thick railing. Behind me, Annie’s breathing is hot, harsh, panicked. “Teagan,” she says, and the note of desperation in her voice is terrifying. God, I wish I could tell her what I have planned, even though I’d probably leave out the part where it might kill us all.

  I lock eyes with Alan. No matter what happens, I have to keep their attention “I’m going to punch a hole in your skull, you bean-counting motherf—”

  His expression doesn’t change as he and his buddy roll me right off the edge of the balcony railing.

  I get a split-second glimpse of Annie, staring at me in horror. Then gravity takes me, clamping onto my stomach. I go head-over-heels backwards, the bright sunlight blinding me. The terror tries to wipe my mind clean, force me to give into it…

  Just as I land face-first on the floating couch.

  It’s four stories below the penthouse, hovering in mid-air. It’s a two-seater, with thick, squashy foam cushions, and I hit it like a sack of concrete. It punches the air out of my lungs, almost knocks me senseless. I nearly roll right off. But there is a tiny part of my brain that would prefer not die in a stupid way, and it makes me throw out an arm and grab hold. I come to a stop with one leg dangling off the edge, one black Air Jordan waving crazily in the open air.

  No time, no time. I shoot the couch back towards the building while I hang on for dear life. A snap of wind sends snarls my hair around my face, and then I’m over the balcony of the twenty-sixth floor suite. That’s my cue. I tip the couch sideways, go as loose as possible—

  —and roll right onto Africa.

  He’s lying on the balcony, hyperventilating. Confirmed: his bony-ass frame does not make for a soft landing. I yelp as we crash together, rebounding off him and nearly braining myself on the leg of the outside table.

  “Teggan, what—?”

  My voice is a high-pitched, breathless hiss. “Not now!”

  I zip the couch back out into open air, thinking: Please please please let it be fast enough.

  I don’t have a mental lock on Annie. I can move inorganic objects just fine – metal, plastic, whatever – but doing it with organic objects is ridiculously hard. It takes time, and even sensing their position in space takes a lot of concentration. Which means that the couch isn’t lined up right when Annie comes dropping past the twenty-sixth floor.

  She bounces sideways. She must have hit it just right – or wrong. Her legs and arms flail, her scream piercing the air. There’s a horrible, nauseating half-second where I’m sure that I’m not going to make it, that I can’t move the couch fast enough…

  Then I do. I zip the couch underneath her, catching Annie on the downward arc of her bounce. Before anything else horrible can happen, I pull her and the couch towards us, not even letting it clear the railing before I dump her onto the balcony.

  She rolls, bounces again, throws out her arms like a bouncer doing crowd control. Her face comes to a stop a foot from mine. Her mouth is slightly open, all the colour chased from her caramel skin, forehead shiny with sweat and eyes drifting in and out of focus. Africa grips my shoulder, squeezing so tight that my bones creak.

  He opens his mouth to say something, then jerks back when I try to put my hand across it. I snap my head towards Annie, put a finger to my lips. Not that there’s any point. She is utterly, completely incapable of speech.

  I lower the couch to the balcony, right next to the sliding doors. There’s no sound. Just the whipping rush of the wind beyond the balcony railings.

  Then, very distant, from above us: “You see them?�
�

  Another voice. Inaudible.

  “Maybe the wind caught ’em.” That sounded like Alan the Accountant.

  I let out a long, slow, shaky breath. Holy shit. That actually worked.

  Of course it fucking worked. It was, if I say so myself, genius. Twisted, insane genius.

  Used to be that I could only feel out objects up to about fifty feet away. Over the past couple years, I’ve gotten a lot stronger. My PK range is up to two hundred feet – and it doesn’t matter what’s in the way. Plus, I can move fast if I have to. So when I saw Africa about to get the heave-ho, I ran a quick check to find an empty suite below us. Then I zipped open the balcony door, grabbed hold of the couch – which had a nice, handy metal frame – and made Africa a landing pad.

  Of course, I didn’t just leave it to chance. I find that when you tell people you’re going to tear their dicks off and play a drum solo with them, they tend to pay attention – if only because they find it amusing. They didn’t notice the thump from below. They didn’t care about the person they’d already thrown off a balcony, and especially not when the railing is two feet thick. That type of railing is pretty tough to lean out over – try it, if you don’t believe me, next time you meet your gun dealer at a high-end hotel.

  I have to force myself to talk. “And that is the real meaning of couch-surfing.”

  Africa is grinning now. He’s got it. Shaking his head, staring at me like I’m the craziest thing he’s ever seen. “You dëma,” he says, keeping his voice low.

  I’m unsteady on my feet, but somehow I stumble through to the suite. I was expecting it to be a wreck – this place is home to squatters, after all – but it’s surprisingly clean. The bed is made, and there’s even a bunch of flowers on the nightstand. Dead flowers, but still.

  “We must tell Mrs Tanner,” Africa says, as I gently shut the door. “She must know how you handled this, yaaw? You did good. She will be impressed.”