Taking the Highway

ANDRE STOOD IN HIS living room and stared out the front window. Everything was the same—the small square of lawn, the paved driveway with his unharmed Raven in it, the maple tree across the street flaring fluorescent orange in the dawn sunlight. He stood in his snug house, on his familiar street, in his safely generic neighborhood, and he’d never felt more nakedly exposed in his life.

It would be so easy to place him in the zone last night. Anyone with the slightest motivation, from a journalist to a street sweeper, could track his movements. Signs of him were everywhere—the Yavorit’s bullets, records from his phone implant, fingerprints on the abandoned house.

Five times, he’d picked up his datapad, scrolled through his messages, almost called Sofia. Five times, he’d put the datapad down without doing a damn thing.

He put on his jacket, grabbed his wallet and headed for the door. He would go to headquarters. He would find Captain Evans. He would tell the captain everything—more than everything. The shooting, sure, but he’d also tell her that it was his idea to go into the zone last night. In fact, he’d forced Sofia to go. He had put Sofia’s life in danger, had driven Sofia into a confrontation with armed assailants. She was innocent. He’d take the blame for everything. He alone would face the consequences.

He stopped at the door, slammed his fist into it, and then rested his forehead on the cool wood. He tore his jacket off, threw it on the sofa, and stared out the window. Whatever Sofia had told them, she’d already told them last night. If he stuck his nose in it now, contradicting her story, it would end her career. He couldn’t call her, blip her, or contact her in any way. He’d never even gotten to tell her about Topher Price-Powell. He could only hope that the dead shooter would lead her right back to Topher.

He also hoped that Nikhil had an airtight alibi for last night.

Andre plucked at the floor-length curtains framing the view, lining up the folds, making each pleat the exact same width. He pulled too hard at one side of the fabric, messing up his perfect picture, cursed long and loud, and started over. He was glad that no one had tried to call him this morning, that no one had blipped him. Every nerve hummed with raw energy, a simmering power that made him feel dangerous, as if he’d snap the head off the first person he met. At the same time, folding the curtains seemed too much of a task, as if his spinning mind and touchy nerves had sapped all the strength from his muscles. Even moving his fingers over the fabric took effort.

He turned his back to the window, sunk onto the sofa and stared across the room at the companel, its screen a flat accusation of everything he’d neglected. He closed his eyes. Opened them. The companel stared back, a blinking icon of a dollar sign, reminding him that he still hadn’t looked at his mother’s tax information.

He walked to the desk chair and slid into it, touching the file to open it. It was just data. Just numbers. Numbers with no ambiguity. No morality. Mom either owed taxes or she didn’t, and they’d deal with the reality of it either way.



ANDRE ENLARGED THE VISIBLE area of his comscreen until it covered the entire wall. He ran the numbers through the calculator again, knowing it wouldn’t give any better results. His mother’s tax situation couldn’t be simpler. She earned a basic salary growing herbs. That was it. No annuities, no stocks, no bonds, no assets. She did not owe any additional taxes. She hadn’t owed any for a long, long time.

Because Mom was broke.

How long had she been broke? He compared documents, lining things up year by year. Information from ten, fifteen, twenty years ago filled the wall with numbers.

Once, Dad had earned seven figures. Then he was jobless, pulling in exactly zero. Three long years without income as he drank himself to death, and then a tiny insurance payout when he succeeded—a payout so small as to be worthless. Andre addressed the computer. “Command: show me the life insurance policy on Henri LaCroix.” Numbers scrolled across the screen—premiums and payouts. Payouts? He checked more files. Ah. His parents had borrowed from their life insurance, using it all before they really needed it.

And he never knew.

He’d been in high school when Dad lost his job, in college when he died. Certainly old enough to be told the truth. If Mom couldn’t tell him, Oliver should have.

College. Andre yelled at the screen. “Back! Back! Go back, damn it!” He needed Mom’s tax returns from fourteen years ago, his junior year of college, the year Dad died. He backspaced through files until he found the information he was looking for. Or rather, lack of it. Mom hadn’t claimed any tax credits for his college tuition. She couldn’t have afforded college if she wanted to.

He pounded his fist on the table. “Damn you, Oliver!” His fist stung, and he hit it harder. He hit it a third time and yelled again, this time in pain. Had he heard something snap? He stood, kicking his chair over and used his left hand to open the freezer. No ice. Screw it. He stuck his entire right hand in the freezer and held it between a bottle of vodka and a bag of frozen peas.

The Challenger. It was as simple as that. Through the fiasco at Quensis, even through Dad’s losing battle with the booze, Andre had never worried about his parents’ financial situation because of the goddamned car. Mom had never worked while Dad was alive—he thought she never had to. But really, it was all about the car. He remembered telling himself that if things were bad, they wouldn’t still have the Challenger. Dad would have sold it. It would have paid a lot of bills. Probably all of them.

He shouted at the kitchen companel, commanding it to call his brother.

Oliver’s e-secretary bloomed to life on the screen. “Oliver LaCroix is not taking—”

“Screw that. Get me Oliver.”

“Hello, Mr. LaCroix.” The e-sec smiled prettily. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Override. I’m only talking to Oliver. Get him.”

“I’m sorry. Oliver LaCroix is not available for—”

“Make him available.” Andre used his police code to override the e-sec, making emergency lights and sirens blare into Oliver’s house, his datapad and any other tech he might have. Oliver would respond in three, two, one . . .

The image of the e-sec blurred and faded, revealing his older brother, standing in his living room in a suit and overcoat. “This had better be good, kid.”

“Did you tell Mom to send me that stuff?”

“What stuff?”

“She had some story about taxes, some lame excuse to have me look at her finances.”

“Oh, that. Don’t worry about it.” Oliver shrugged out of his coat. “I told her to wait until after the economic summit and I’d take care of it. Mom doesn’t owe any taxes.”

“I know she doesn’t. She sent me everything.”

Oliver’s face froze for an instant, then sagged. “I can’t talk about this now. I just got home and I’ve got to change to get back to the—”

“She sent me everything, Oliver! Stuff going back twenty years. Every tax return, every supporting document. I’m surprised she didn’t send me the receipt for your baby shoes!”

“Aw, shit, Andre. You weren’t supposed to—”

“You paid for my college. You paid for everything, and you never told me. What were you saving it for?” Andre slammed the freezer door and marched at the companel. “How far along in life were you going to let me get before you threw it in my face? When it was politically expedient for you?”

“A little gratitude, here. I took care of you, kid.”

“You never gave me a choice!”

“There was no choice.”

“Bullshit.” Andre wanted to pound his fist on the table, but his pinky and ring fingers were already starting to swell. “God, Oliver, can you please stop handling me? For once in your life quit treating me like an idiot. You did what you wanted to do, what was easiest for you.”

“You think it was easy? Then you really are an idiot.”

Andre made the best fists he could, considering his rapidly-swelling hand. He glared at his mother’s tax return, glowing at him from the wall in the next room. “Nobody tells me anything! First Dad, then you, now Nikhil.”

Oliver leaned into the screen. “Nikhil?”

He’d said it. The name was out, on his screen, on Oliver’s, and every point in between. Up to a satellite in space and down again. Clearly audible to anyone who was monitoring his calls or had put a tracer on him or had bugged his apartment, his clothes, his body.

And he no longer cared. “Yes, Nikhil. Get him. I want to talk to that little punk.”

“He’s gone.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.” Oliver sank down onto the sofa and put his head in his hands. “He took off four days ago. His datapad has been deactivated and none of his friends will tell me where he is. I keep thinking, any minute now, I’m going to get a call, or an e-gram, or even a blip. Something to let me know he’s okay. When you called with the sirens . . .”

“Aw, hell.” Andre’s hand was starting to throb with every heartbeat. He opened the freezer and took out the vodka bottle, wrapping his hand around it to numb the pain. He sat at the kitchen table and looked at the slumped form of his older brother. Suddenly, it wasn’t Oliver sitting there. It was a much older, much sadder man. Dad.

“I think he’s been back since,” Oliver said. “He waits until I’m at work and goes through my desk.”

“Looking for cash?”

“I don’t use cash.”

Andre’s heart squeezed. “Tell me you don’t keep a gun at home.”

“He broke into my locked filing cabinet.”

“Which contained?”

“The city council keeps some things on hardcopy only. Paper can’t be hacked.”

“Yeah, Madison Zuchek has quite the paper fetish.”

Oliver finally lifted his head and looked at the screen. “I keep paper too. Something is not right in the mayor’s office.”

Andre gripped the vodka bottle tighter, resisting the urge to throw it at the screen. What was Oliver keeping from him this time?

“There have been these accidents. No one cared much because the people who died didn’t exactly have the city’s best interests at heart, you know what I mean?”

“Were these ‘accidents’ investigated?”

Oliver nodded. “Sure. Sure. Always by the same team.”

“And you kept notes.”

“Detailed notes.”

Andre leaped to his feet. “I’ve got to find Nikhil.”

“I know. There was a reason I locked up those files. If he shows them to the wrong person—”

“Where did he go, Oliver?”

“I told you, I don’t—”

“Friends, associates, obscure relatives I didn’t know we had. Someone is sheltering him.”

Oliver shrugged helplessly. “For all I know, he hitchhiked to Arizona.”

Andre wanted to reach into the screen and shake the doll-like Oliver sitting there. “He’s here. And the longer he stays in Detroit, the worse it gets.”

“Do you think something’s already happened to him?”

“Nothing’s happened to him that he didn’t make happen.” Andre stood and returned the vodka to the freezer, exchanging it for the bag of frozen peas. He wrapped it around his hand like an ice pack. “It’s not Nikhil’s safety I’m worried about. If I don’t stop him, he’s going to wreck Overdrive again.”

Oliver’s eyes darted to the floor, a look of disbelief on his face. “No. Nikhil isn’t—”

“I hope he isn’t. But you’ve got to help me. Topher Price-Powell. I’ll start there.”

“I tried. His house has been dark for days.”

“Give me the coordinates anyway. I have to start somewhere.”

Oliver nodded. “I’ll try to chase Nikhil down in the e-verse. He kept it real most of the time, but—” A pounding noise, someone knocking hard at the door, made Oliver whip his head around. He held up a finger, smiling. “That’s him.”

“Don’t answer it!” Andre thrust his left hand at the screen, trying to stop Oliver from moving. The throbbing in his right hand was traveling up his arm, making him feel adrenalized and short of breath. It couldn’t be Nikhil. Nobody knocked on his own front door.

Oliver’s eyes darted downward, checking the popup on the screen. “It’s a cop. He says he’s a friend of yours.”

“I don’t have any friends. Not anymore. Don’t answer it.”

“I’ll call you in five minutes.” Oliver hung up.

“Damn it!” He slammed his right hand on the table. The bag of peas split open and they spilled over the table and rolled onto the floor. “Get him back!” he yelled at his comscreen. “Command: dial Oliver LaCroix.”

No answer.

He grabbed the garbage can from under the sink and swept the peas into it. A friend. Oliver said it was a friend. Andre commanded his phone to call Danny.

“Yeah.” Danny answered on voice-only.

“Where are you?”

“Who is this, my wife?”

“I need to know if you’re at my brother’s house.” But the sounds in the background—beer, ballgame, laughter—told him the answer.

“Are you drunk?”

“No.”

“I’m getting that way. I’m at the Pen.” Silence, punctuated by glassware hitting glassware. “Why would I be at your brother’s house?”

“Someone is.”

“Do you need backup? You want me to put the brakes on the beers?”

“I don’t even know what’s wrong.” Andre disconnected and tried Oliver again. Still no answer.

Now what? Unless he knew exactly what was in those files, he didn’t have anything to bring to the higher-ups. But how much higher could he go? Sure, he could try an end-run around Madison Zuchek and go directly to the mayor’s office, but Mother Mad was Mayor Smith’s hands and voice, and possibly brain. How much could a city manager do without the mayor’s knowledge? He had to assume that anything that went on in Detroit went on with the full knowledge and cooperation of the mayor.

His companel trilled for attention. Oliver. He stabbed the answer button. “Finally! I was about to—”

He stopped and did a double-take. It wasn’t Oliver’s face on the screen. He was once again staring into the cold gray eyes of Jae Geoffrey Talic.

“Listen,” Talic said. “Listen very carefully.”