That sounded incredibly like a threat, and I felt my throat begin to close in nervousness. I deflected without thinking. “Does someone need a hug?”
He put his hand on the coffee table between us, palm down, fingers loose, and I swear no hand motion in history has ever been so menacing. “You will take me seriously because I can and will kill you. You are a sociopathic murderer, and I’ve seen what you’re capable of, and we tolerate you on this team because you’re good at what you do, but you are not the only one who can do it. I do not share whatever maternal attachment Ostler may feel for you. I am not bound by the ethical concerns that inhibit others’ behavior. If I deem you to be a threat, to this team or to anyone else, I will kill you, and you will not see it coming.”
It occurred to me suddenly that Potash had probably killed more people, up close and personal, than any criminal I’d ever studied. Hit men were considered by many psychologists to be serial killers. Why not government operatives?
I nodded slowly. “Thanks for letting me know.”
He stood up and walked to the elevator. “I assume you’re here to talk to Brooke. Let’s go say hello before we head to the station.” I rose and followed him, saying nothing.
I keep two lists in my head: enemies and everyone else. There isn’t really a friends list, just people I can’t hurt, and people I can.
Potash just changed lists.
11
The hardest part about checking an e-mail address you know the FBI might eventually be watching is figuring out where to check it from. Whatever hotshots they had working in their cybercrimes division would be able to trace the IP address the e-mail was sent from and figure out exactly where I was and when. Using my own laptop was completely out of the question, along with all the other computers in our office or the police station—even if no one saw me using them, the fact that I was in the same building at the same time the e-mails were sent would simply be too suspicious. A public computer would be ideal, which was why I’d originally planned on a library or an Internet cafe, but now that Potash was following me more closely, there was no way to get to one without raising suspicion.
So I dropped my phone out the window the next time we drove on the freeway.
“Crap.”
“Was that your phone?” asked Diana.
“Crap,” I repeated. I was never a very emotional person to begin with, so I didn’t bother acting too bothered about the loss. I craned my neck around to look at the road behind us, but we were already hundreds of yards away.
“Why do you even have the window open anyway?” asked Diana.
“I told you,” I said, “Potash smells like dog.”
“It’s your dog,” said Potash.
“I was trying to find a spot where the sun wasn’t glaring off the screen. It slipped right out of my hand.”
“Ostler’s not going to buy you a new one,” said Diana.
“Ostler’s going to flay you for losing it,” said Potash. “That phone had sensitive information on it.”
“There’s no way it survived,” I said. “That semi behind us looks like it ran right over it.” I had, of course, waited for a semi to come up behind us before I’d dropped it. I turned back around and looked out the front window. “You think they sell phones in the hospital?”
“Probably not,” said Diana. “Not good ones, at least.”
“I don’t need another smartphone,” I said, “just something I can call you guys with.”
She shrugged. “We’ll check when we get there.”
We were going to the hospital because the two comatose Withered were “degrading.” Dr. Pearl was unclear on what that meant. It wasn’t his area of specialty, really, but to be fair, Withered biology wasn’t anyone’s area of specialty. We worked with Pearl because the FBI had cleared him when he worked on Potash, and he was the only one in the hospital we trusted. After all the weird crap we’d put him through, I can’t imagine he trusted us anymore.
The hospital gift shop had a small selection of prepaid phones, just barely smart enough to handle text-based e-mail. I bought one—cash again, of course—and started setting it up while we went upstairs. Pearl met us at the elevator with his eyes red and his thinning hair mussed.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, and gestured down the left hallway. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on now, or do you want to wait until we see them?”
“They’re vampires,” I said.
He hesitated for barely a second. “That only explains one of them.”
“The other one’s a werewolf,” I said. “Keep your nurses away, they’ll fall madly in love with—”
“He’s kidding,” said Diana. “Let’s go see what’s going on.”
Pearl nodded, then glanced at Potash. “How’s the breathing?”
“Still using the CPAP at night,” said Potash. “Don’t even need the oxygen tank during the day.”