DATE: 3/19/03
SUMMARY: Final chapter of "Dawn Takes In a Stray"
SPOILERS: none.
DISCLAIMER: Dark Angel characters and universe belong to Cameron, Eglee, and FOX. I'm not making any money.
ARCHIVE: List archives and by submission; others ask. Do not repost
without permission.
THANKS: To Dawn, for letting me put her likeness in this story, and for Megan for beta-reading, and many helpful comments.
Chapter 9. "Terminal ballistics"
Terminal Ballistics: the study of what happens to a projectile when it hits a target.
****
Lydecker opened his eyes and stared at the dust hanging in the sun-lit air, light against the shadowed ceiling. He could only remember a fragment of the dream. It had something to do with the way the edge of Dawn's tan curved over her hip bone, and that didn't make sense anymore now that he was definitely awake.
He decided it was a nice change of subject matter. He had gotten used to waking up from dreams of being trapped at the turbulent surface of cold water. This was Dawn's bed, so it made a certain amount of sense that his dreams would be different, even though she wasn't here.
He could hear a drawer open in the kitchen, and the metallic sound of spoons hammering against each other. "Coffee and breakfast. A good idea, even if I have to cook it myself."
*****
Dawn tried to sort through the junk that was stacked next to her computer. She found a couple of pens, and tested them against the corner of a scrap print-out. Every single one of them was dry. She smelled coffee, and looked up to see Dek smiling at her.
"I need a bunch of words, Dek." Dawn handed him a pad of paper, and a mechanical pencil. "One of the things my code-cracker does is look for words or phrases in the decrypted text. If you can make a list of things that might be in these files, it will help identify the output."
Dek crossed the room, put his coffee mug down on the window sill, and moved the chair from under the window.
"Don't use that one!" she exclaimed. "One of the legs is about to come off, and I need to glue it." He nudged the chair with his foot, then sat down on the corner of the bed.
"I want you to mail the original CDs to a friend of mine." He scribbled something on the top page, and ripped it off the pad. "We can trust him to pass on the information to a couple of other people who might need to know."
"OK, I can do that. Won't go anywhere till Monday, though." She shoved the address into the pocket of her jeans, and sorted through the top drawer of her dresser to find a matched pair of socks. She was a bit surprised to see the square black shape of the Glock still on top.
"That's fine. Just get one of the copies out of this building." He tapped the pencil nervously against the bed frame.
*****
"I can do this!" she told herself. The pieces of the black knife were too small to do anything other than cut her hands, but she could hear Dawn's footsteps tapping down the stairs.
She could handle Lydecker alone. Lydecker, alone, was vulnerable. He was old, slow, and in the end, dead.
She opened the door to the second floor landing, then closed it silently behind her.
With the key to Dawn's apartment in her hand, she soundlessly inched her boots across the worn linoleum.
******
Lydecker gazed out the window. A breeze was trying to blow the damp fallen leaves off the grass, but wasn't succeeding. The coffee mug was cool in his hand, and he decided that fresh pot was more important than adding a few more keywords to the list.
He turned around to see a twenty-something woman with red curls, and a firm grip on the Glock. She was straddling the chair, leaning on the back. "An amateur," he thought. "An amateur who wants to talk." If she were a professional, he would be dead already. Maybe without even noticing.
"Who are you?" he asked, hoping to get a conversation going and keep it going until some sort of opening presented itself. In an ideal world, he'd find a reason for her to put the gun down. He could hear his pulse in his ears.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Cool hazel eyes, and half a smile.
The Glock was still pointed at his chest, slightly to left of center. He crouched enough to set the mug on the floor, very slowly. The pistol slowly tilted, as if it were attached to him, not to her.
"Ok, here is how these things are supposed to go. You tell me who you are, and that you are here to make me pay for an old mistake." That ought to start a good long discussion. If she was asking questions, she would be thinking about his answer, or her next question, or just about anything except squeezing the trigger. He remembered the hollow point ammunition he'd loaded into the magazine, and imagined the mushroom shape of the expanding bullet in his flesh.
"Exactly." She reminded him of an old picture he'd seen. One where his mother was young and happy. Except the teenager who was going to be Mom had been holding a fishing rod, and a large perch, and this woman had a steady and competent grip on a firearm.
"Well, I've made a whole bunch of mistakes. Do you want to tell me which mistake this is for?" He leaned against the window frame, and willed himself not to twitch. Five and one half pounds of pressure on her trigger finger would put him on the wrong end of an applied ballistics experiment. No fun - Lydecker knew from experience.
"I told you, you won't believe me." Her straight, even front teeth pressed her lip.
"Are you an old girlfriend?" He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "No, can't be. I keep better track than that." The Glock hadn't moved.
"You want my ID?" Her lip curled, and her eyes narrowed. She used her left hand to pull her ponytail over her shoulder, and dragged the collar of her shirt down her neck. Her wrist relaxed, and now the Glock was pointed towards the floor.
"She's one of my kids," he thought, startled. "But which one?" As he walked around her, he realized that the chair that Dawn had been sitting in was still in front of the computer. Which meant that the broken one was under his new acquaintance, who wanted him to read her bar code.
He brushed his fingers across the back of her neck, as if to move hair aside. But that was just a distraction, and he kicked the left leg of the chair, sending it flying, and the girl tipping backwards towards him. Then the pistol was in his hands.
*****
She hit the floor, and felt the pistol being wrenched from her hand. She lay motionless, expecting the end. "Why does Lydecker always win?" she asked herself. She felt sure he was going to kill her, for real this time. Her fear kept her eyes closed.
In the silence, she could hear his ragged breathing. No orders, no gun shots.
Long ago, someone had told her "If you give up, you have already lost the fight." That someone might even have been Lydecker. Lying on the floor waiting for death was wrong. She slowly rolled over onto her stomach, and looked up, into the barrel of the pistol.
"Where did you get that tattoo?" he hissed.
"You should know." She felt her lower lip trembling.
"The girl – the experiment – with that code is dead." Both of his hands were wrapped around the pistol. Some icy, analytical part of her brain noticed that his knuckles were white.
"That's news to me." She slowly slid her hands closer to her shoulders. "Or, do you have some plans?"
"That experiment was terminated in oh-nine," he insisted, less sure this time.
"Nobody told me that."
"I shot you!" She watched the pistol tremble in his grasp.
"That's why I'm here." She could hear the front door open, and footsteps on the stairs. She held her breath, and waited for the right moment.
A key turned in the lock, and she watched Lydecker's eyes flick away from her, and towards the apartment door.
"All taken care of," said a girl's voice from the next room.
"Get out!" he snapped, as the girl's head appeared in the bedroom door.
Now! She rolled sideways and scrambled to her feet, just ahead of the Glock's muzzle. She moved towards her enemy, trapping his hand, and the gun. It was an easy setup for a simple throw.
When it was finished, the gun was hers. Lydecker was face down on the floor, with one hand flat under her left foot.
"I never saw the body," whispered Lydecker. "I was too busy trying to find the others." She wondered why he wasn't trying to escape.
"You're Evelyn Walker," interjected Dawn, who was still standing in the doorway.
"Just another fake name," she said. "Lydecker! Who am I?"
"You are X-5 . . ."
"Stop!" she interrupted, shifting her weight. "What's my name?"
"Eva." A hoarse whisper. His shoulders shook with a deep breath. "They called you Eva when they thought I wasn't listening."
She lifted her foot, and backed away. Dawn knelt next to the old man, so Eva positioned herself in the open doorway. He wasn't going to get away again.
*****
Lydecker stared at the caramel colored oak floor. "Pain is temporary," he reminded himself. It didn't matter now. Eventually Eva was going to figure out how to spill his blood. Not that he didn't deserve it, on some cosmic level. He'd thought about dying, in the weeks after his kids escaped.
Dawn's shadow darkened the wood, and he felt her hand on his shoulder.
"Are you OK?" Dawn's voice was a tense whisper.
He corrected himself. "Physical pain is temporary. Emotional damage is permanent." Shooting Eva was a mistake. Dreams about a pool of blood slowly growing around the girl still turned up now, making his first morning thought about exactly how much bourbon would be required to erase the dream.
Lydecker felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Eva was going to make Dawn watch. Whatever happened, Dawn wouldn't forget.
****
Dawn felt a shiver go through Dek's shoulder, and she let her hand slide off and away from him. She studied the lines of his face, and tried to remember where she had seen that combination of pain and determination before. "Emotional meltdown – any second now."
The red-haired girl, Eva, blocked the doorway. She seemed so certain that the pistol in her hands gave her control. "Two thousand nine," thought Dawn. "If she's twenty now, she would have been eight or nine back then."
Dawn felt the tension singing in the air between the two of them. The conflict between the old soldier and the young one was going to turn into real violence soon.
"Shit," she scolded herself. "Either sort it out, or call in a family therapist. Lots of luck finding one with weekend office hours."
"So, Eva," she asked cautiously, "what happened after you escaped?"
"I don't remember," the girl answered, with a frown creasing her forehead. "I woke up in the back seat of an SUV. It was moving, and telephone poles flickered past the window, until it was totally dark. I was still half-drugged, and everything hurt, and when I finally managed to sit up and look out, it was just flat snow, and a long straight road.
"The man in the driver's seat noticed that I was awake, and asked how I was, and I wouldn't talk to him. He had a beard, and wore an orange knit hat. I guess I assumed that he was the enemy. 'I'm taking you home,' he told me." Eva shook her head. "I didn't understand."
"Where did you go?" Dawn reminded herself to breathe. Just keep them all talking.
"He stopped the car in front of a little house in the middle of nowhere. The lights in front of the door came on, and a woman wearing a red sweater and pale blue fuzzy slippers stepped out into the snow and the wind. I wondered if she was enemy, too."
"Were they?"
"No. The man carried me upstairs. I thought about fighting it, but knew that I couldn't. She followed, and they put me to bed in a little room with pink wallpaper, and stuffed teddy bears on top of the dresser." Dawn noticed Eva's slight smile before she continued. "The woman kissed me, told me 'good night,' and promised she'd cook whatever I wanted for breakfast in the morning."
Dawn glanced at Dek. He was watching Eva now, instead of whatever horrors he'd been seeing inside his head.
"I couldn't figure it out," continued Eva. "I decided that it was some sort of trick, or some kind of trap. You always taught us not to ever leave anyone behind, back then. I knew the rest of my unit would come find me."
"When did they find you?" asked Lydecker. He sat up slowly, and pushed the floor away with his left hand.
"I waited for a long time. Months passed. No one ever came. No sign of anyone. Then I knew that you killed them all. You shot me first, then the rest. They were never going to rescue me, because they were all dead. I promised myself that one day I'd find you, and then we'd be even." Her voice shook, but the pistol didn't.
"But they aren't dead!" exclaimed Dawn. "I saw. . ." an empty room, she realized.
Eva's attention and the gun focused on her. "I didn't realize nine millimeters was that big," Dawn thought, and decided that "cold sweat" was a really good description of the phenomenon.
"Go on," ordered Eva.
"Dek told me that one of the boys from the oh-nine escape was captive – he didn't say who by – and I wanted to go talk." Dawn took a deep breath, and continued. "The room was empty, and there were signs of machinery that used to be there."
"An empty room?" Eva snarled. "Please, just tell me why I shouldn't shoot both of you."
"Because X5-599 was alive when I visited him," interrupted Lydecker. "I couldn't get him out, but lots of the others are still alive on the outside."
"Live liar, or dead and quiet?" Eva's face was blank, as she swung the gun back to point at Lydecker. "Why are you still alive?"
****
"If I tell you why I'm not dead yet, will you stop trying to kill me?" Lydecker wasn't expecting agreement, and he didn't get it. He flexed his fingers slowly, feeling bruised flesh complain as he closed his hand.
"No. No promises." The gun didn't move.
"When you were five, it became clear that the X-5s didn't have any of the problems that the X-2s had. So, it was time to start training you for combat. All sorts. We decided that I needed to be able to work with you and the rest of the Xs with as little risk as possible."
"The day Zack turned eight, he told me he was sure he could take you in a fair fight." A slight smile lifted one corner of her mouth.
"He was right, Eva." Lydecker remembered the boy's focused expression. "One of the deep conditioning things that the psyc guys did was make you unable to kill me. Not anyone else, just me."
"So she can't hurt you?" asked Dawn hopefully.
"No such luck," he answered. "Ten years ago, she couldn't kill me. No telling what is left of that conditioning now. And, in any case, the less we tampered with their innate aggression, the better the final results. She can definitely hurt me." He opened his hand again, carefully.
"So I miss a perfectly good shot because you've been messing with my mind?" Eva muttered through clenched teeth. "I wonder if I can push you out a window and let gravity kill you."
"Too messy, Eva."
Silence. The rustle of a squirrel in dead leaves, and the rumble of traffic on the main road seemed to leave the empty spaces in the room alone.
"Who has the weapon, here?" asked Eva.
Lydecker looked at Dawn. Dawn was definitely not carrying the HK pistol. Where had she put it?
"You do, Eva." He decided to shift the conversation a little bit. Every little bit of confusion on distraction would help. "The rest of your unit escaped. What do you want to know?"
"Why haven't I heard about them?"
"They learned all the skills I was going to teach them." He had vivid memories of several of Max's narrow escapes. "How to blend in. Don't be noticed, don't attract attention. They were all smart kids."
"If you were lying, sir, that is exactly what you would tell me."
"It's the truth."
"Prove it. Figure out what your life is worth, and buy it."
"Tinga's dead, Eva. Just recently, and not my doing. She has a four-year-old son. Smart kid."
"Nice try. Dead is dead."
"Zack is the one I've seen most recently. He was hurt, but he is recovering. I don't know where he is now."
"Show me the money, asshole."
"Max. Max is free. I don't know where she is, but I think I know how you can make contact."
"You are just trying to get rid of me."
"I'm telling you the truth. There aren't any lies that will get me out of this."
"Find something I can believe, then."
Lydecker tried to slow down the whirling energy of his thoughts. "I just need to focus," he told himself. "One thing. Just pick one thing to accomplish here. Get the initiative back from Eva. Take control. You can pull the trigger on her one more time. It will cost, but you can do it. Where did Dawn put the HK?"
****
Dawn watched Dek's eyes focus in the distance. "What is he up to?" she wondered. "More important, how does he get Eva to back down?"
"They are all dead, Lydecker," snarled Eva. "You can't even show me the bodies."
Dawn wondered what sort of proof that Eva would accept, short of having a live X-5 walk into the room. Twelve boxes in the living room were filled with newspaper clippings and news printouts, all of which indirectly pointed to the existence of the X project. Dawn believed. Why wouldn't Eva?
She watched Lydecker search the room, with only his eyes moving. "He's up to something," she thought. "Someone's going to die. Like the security guard, like the driver that was following us." She felt small and cold.
Death. It was so easy to make dead people disappear. All that would be left of Eva was little yellowed slips of newsprint. Maybe not even that. Dawn would have to make another file folder, with the picture of baby Eva from a scientific conference in '02, and another picture of an 'unknown woman found dead.' There would be a print of the score bulletin from the pistol match and a few other things, but that would be it.
Dawn had so many boxes, so many newspaper clippings.
"I've got your proof, Eva!" She could picture the cream-colored, dog-eared folder, in the third box on the left. It was held together with rubber bands, and had an enormous number of newspaper articles with lurid headlines. She hadn't put anything in that folder for months.
Eva and Dek were both staring at her, and she felt her cheeks heat up. "I need to get something from the other room."
"No games," said Eva, "Or you help me dig a large hole." Eva stepped out of the doorway, and Dawn dived past her. The stacked boxes in the living room held the answer.
The first box was the wrong one, and it split and spilled as Dawn dropped it. Two more landed with enough force to shake the plates in the kitchen cupboards. She set down the next box firmly, and tossed the lid onto the bed that Dek had been sleeping in.
It wasn't hard to find the right folder. Blood and guts always sold newspapers, so she'd found lots of articles on that killer. A thick folder, telling a story that she didn't understand. It took both hands to lift it out from the mass of files.
Dawn ran the few steps back in to her bedroom. Dek and Eva were still trying to stare each other down.
"Take a look," she said, and spilled the contents of the file onto the floor at Eva's feet.
"Here is the first one. It's a murder. The victim is found with no teeth, and a fresh tattoo. It's a bar code." Dawn carefully unfolded the yellowed clipping. "No arrests, no convictions, nothing."
"Until the next one." She pressed another piece of newspaper flat against the floor. This one was written for a tabloid: it also had one of the crime scene photos. The twisted and bloody body, just as it had been found.
"And the next one." She didn't even bother to flatten this clipping. The picture showed a bar code tattoo.
*****
Lydecker watched Dawn spill the clippings from a folder. That had been a huge failure. The kid had been totally bug-fuck crazy, and it hadn't quite been covered up. Too sensational, too bloody. The tabloids had been all over it. It made him feel sick to think that Dawn had been tracking that.
"Ben!" Eva's eyes were wide, and the color had left her face. "Holy shit. It's Ben."
Lydecker slowly got to his feet, and backed away from the two women and the file of newspaper clippings. He slid his hand under the pillows on Dawn's bed, and between the mattress and the headboard. "Okay, Dawn," he thought, "what did you do with it? I don't have time for a real search."
He noted that Eva had put the Glock on the floor, and was kneeling to examine Dawn's file of clippings.
Quickly and silently, he crossed the room to Dawn's computer and the desk. The top drawer slid open, and he patted the crumpled receipts and a printer manual with a coffee stain. Nothing but paper.
A glance towards the two women confirmed that both of them were still looking through Dawn's pile of scrap newspaper.
"Did you know him?" Dawn asked quietly. Her face was towards Eva, so he couldn't see the expression that went with that soft tone.
"Part of my unit," Eva answered, "he was always the one who could explain things. He made up these incredible stories."
Lydecker opened the second drawer. The rattle of screwdrivers warned him to go slowly. The pistol was resting on a tangle of red and black wires. He lifted it out, and closed the drawer. He turned back towards Eva, carefully keeping the weapon between his body and the desk.
"Is this Ben?" Dawn pointed at one of the larger and more gruesome photos.
Eva shifted the papers around. "That's Ben's bar code."
"What is it doing on all these people?"
Lydecker checked the safety with his thumb, and slid the pistol under his waistband. The feel of the situation had changed. Eva was focused on Dawn's file, and seemed to have forgotten her earlier plans. The cold metal against his spine was warming, slowly.
"I don't know, but our unit had a mission that ended like this." She pulled a clipping to the top of the pile. A twisted body had been photographed in full color.
"Why?"
"We'd been ordered to keep a man from escaping. He was armed, we weren't, and when we caught up with him. . ." Eva shivered.
"Who was he?" Dawn's forehead creased.
"Someone motivated," interrupted Lydecker. His hands were on the edge of the desk, and he wondered if he shouldn't just draw and fire now. "We pulled a man off death row, and told him he was free if he could run away."
"That's crazy!"
"No, it's not. It was a real-world test. A live fire exercise to prove the concept."
"We were eight," Eva protested. She pushed a curl of red hair back behind her ear.
"You were old enough." He let his fingertips rest on the table behind him. The time wasn't right to draw. "You and your unit worked as a team, and didn't hesitate. You accomplished your objective."
"Who asks a kid to do something like that?" demanded Dawn. She held up a color print from some conspiracy web site.
"He did." Eva swept the clippings to one side, and put her hand on the Glock.
"Can you do that again?" Lydecker felt cold sweat come with the certainty that he'd probably not be able to draw in time.
"Just watch me," snarled Eva. She scrambled to her feet, and the Glock pointed at his chest, again.
"Why?" asked Dawn. "Ben got out. Dek didn't kill Ben. The rest of the X-5s are still free."
"How do you know?" Eva was still looking at him across the sights, even though she was now listening to Dawn.
"There are lots more odd news stories about teenage kids who run too fast or jump too high. There are others."
"How many?"
"I don't know, exactly," Dawn confessed. "There usually isn't enough information to identify an individual, and Dek hasn't been helping, much."
Lydecker felt Eva's attention shift back to him. The creases between her eyebrows had smoothed out, and the hard line of her mouth had softened.
"Who is still out here?" she asked. "How do I re-join my unit?" The pleading tone of her voice surprised him.
"I'll tell you what I know," he answered as gently as he knew how. He could tell that his hands would be shaking if he didn't have them pressed against the desk. "Put down my pistol and we'll talk."
He watched her set the Glock back on Dawn's dresser. He realized that his own resolve to shoot Eva had evaporated. It wasn't necessary, and he wouldn't have been able to put pressure on the trigger anyway. "I'm not going to repeat that mistake," he told himself. "Maybe this will work out after all."
"Where do I look?" Eva asked, with her hands in her coat pockets. Her expression reminded him of a lost child. The urge to put an arm around her was familiar, and he pushed it back the way he always did before.
"Jace, Zack, Krit, Syl, and a few others have all been in Seattle at some time during the past year. They made contact with Max, who is still there." He picked up the pad of paper that was still resting on the corner of the bed, and tossed it to Eva.
"I don't know where to find her, but that address will be a good start." He watched Eva tilt the paper, so she could read the imprint of his writing on the otherwise blank top sheet.
"Logan Cale." Eva ripped off the page. "Foggle Tower, in Seattle. That shouldn't be too hard to find. Who is he?" She folded it carefully, and put it in a pocket.
"He's a good guy. I know he will be able to put you in touch with Max, and probably some of the others." Lydecker knew that his kids would need to stick together to deal with White. Logan would be keeping track of them, if he could.
"Eva?" Dawn hesitated. "Will you come back and tell me who you find? Help me with my files?"
"No promises, Dawn. I'm just not sure what I'll do when I find them."
"Oh," interrupted Lydecker. "You are probably going to want this back." He slowly slid the pistol out of his belt and held it in front of him. He grasped it between the pad of his thumb and his fingertips, with the muzzle pointing at the floor.
Eva's eyes went wide, and she carefully accepted the pistol, checked the safety, and put it in her coat pocket with Logan's address. "Where did you find this?"
"A relaxing little walk in the woods." He knew she wasn't going to be aiming at him again, there was no point in bringing it up.
"You could have shot me, just now." He could barely hear her whisper, but he couldn't miss her hands trembling.
"No, I couldn't." He was surprised at how hard it was to keep his voice steady. "It was a mistake the first time."
Lydecker remembered her as a little girl, with a strawberry-blonde brush cut. He put an arm around Eva's shoulders, and felt the tension ripple through her. "Back off," he told himself. He felt like his throat was squeezing shut. "It's too little, too late." He stumbled back towards the desk.
The girl's coffee-colored eyes fixed on him for a moment. "Thank you for the address, I appreciate it." She nodded to Dawn, who was sorting bits of newspaper, then turned towards the door.
"Wait!" said Lydecker, suddenly. "Let me know if you find them. You don't have to tell me where. You don't have to talk to me. Call Dawn. She'll pass a message along."
"You're in no position to make demands of me." Her voice was even, except for a little undertone of amusement. She looked over her shoulder, back at him.
"Not a demand. I just want to know that you're okay, that they're okay."
"Don't expect any Father's day cards, old man." Eva's frown softened. "Don't hold your breath, but one day I might decide to drop by and give you a status report. You don't deserve it, though."
"No, I don't," he agreed.
Eva stomped out of the apartment, and the door slammed closed behind her.
****
Dawn tried to fit the last of her papers back into the torn folder. She wondered what "Ben" was like, in person. None of the photos were actually Ben. They were just pictures of things he'd done.
She climbed to her feet, and stepped over part of a chair leg. In the living room, she set the "Ben" folder on the big pile of papers which were spilling out of the torn box.
She re-traced her footsteps back to the bedroom. Dek was sitting in the chair in front of her desk, and looking at the broken pieces of wood that were scattered on the floor. "It can't be fixed."
"I'm not so sure about that." She picked up one of the legs.
"Eva is never going to make contact again." He covered his face with his hands.
"You don't know that. Are you really happy she tried to track you down and kill you?"
"I'm just glad she's alive. I'm scared, Dawn. The more I know about what they are up against. . ."
"She survived you! Give the girl some credit."
"Oh, yes." He looked up at Dawn, and frowned. "You know, there was no guarantee that Eva wouldn't kill you after she finished with me."
"I wasn't thinking about that."
"You should have been." He stood up, and kicked aside a broken wooden slat. "You are safer if I'm somewhere else."
"Where?"
"You are safer if you don't know." He stood in front of the dresser.
"Wait just a Goddamn minute!" Dawn's rage surprised herself. "Why don't you ask me what I want? It didn't take me that long to figure out that you were trouble."
"You just didn't figure out how much trouble." Now he was facing her, but examining the Glock. She could see the glint of brass as he shifted the slide back, then let it drop. The pistol was still loaded.
"Uh, I don't mean to rub it in, but Eva surprised you, too." That got his full attention.
Dek looked away from her, and seemed embarrassed. "That was a very skillful piece of negotiation, Dawn. Thanks." He set the pistol back where he'd picked it up.
"I like us as a team, Dek. You can go if you really need to, but I'm not going to kick you out." She wondered if hitting Lydecker with a chair leg would slow him down, or just make him mad.
"Do you know how long it's been since I was a team player?" He crouched, and reached under the bed.
Dawn shook her head. Dek handed her a long fragment, which used to be the back leg of the chair. "You aren't doing badly," she said.
He collected a couple of slats, and a crossbar that had rolled under the desk. "I don't want to fuck it up. If I can't fix it right, I shouldn't start." He set the pieces of wood in her hands.
"I know you're willing to take chances, Dek, if it's something you want." She examined the dried glue on the end of one of the bits.
"Yes, but what about you? Are you really willing to put a lot of time and effort into some old piece of junk?"
"Please don't go!"
"You know that the next time I need to run, you will have to come with me."
"Is that a threat?" For some reason, Dawn felt a need to giggle.
"It won't be safe." He took the pile of broken chair parts out of her hands, and set them down in the corner.
"Neither is crossing the street, Dek. I know it sounds weird, but I feel safer with you around." She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, tightly.
Lydecker looked down at her hand, but didn't pull away.
"Okay, Dawn. First, I'm going to make another pot of coffee." He laughed softly. "Then, I'm going to tell you the whole story, everything. We will see how safe you feel after that."
"It will be too late to change my mind, then."
"I know."
SUMMARY: Final chapter of "Dawn Takes In a Stray"
SPOILERS: none.
DISCLAIMER: Dark Angel characters and universe belong to Cameron, Eglee, and FOX. I'm not making any money.
ARCHIVE: List archives and by submission; others ask. Do not repost
without permission.
THANKS: To Dawn, for letting me put her likeness in this story, and for Megan for beta-reading, and many helpful comments.
Chapter 9. "Terminal ballistics"
Terminal Ballistics: the study of what happens to a projectile when it hits a target.
****
Lydecker opened his eyes and stared at the dust hanging in the sun-lit air, light against the shadowed ceiling. He could only remember a fragment of the dream. It had something to do with the way the edge of Dawn's tan curved over her hip bone, and that didn't make sense anymore now that he was definitely awake.
He decided it was a nice change of subject matter. He had gotten used to waking up from dreams of being trapped at the turbulent surface of cold water. This was Dawn's bed, so it made a certain amount of sense that his dreams would be different, even though she wasn't here.
He could hear a drawer open in the kitchen, and the metallic sound of spoons hammering against each other. "Coffee and breakfast. A good idea, even if I have to cook it myself."
*****
Dawn tried to sort through the junk that was stacked next to her computer. She found a couple of pens, and tested them against the corner of a scrap print-out. Every single one of them was dry. She smelled coffee, and looked up to see Dek smiling at her.
"I need a bunch of words, Dek." Dawn handed him a pad of paper, and a mechanical pencil. "One of the things my code-cracker does is look for words or phrases in the decrypted text. If you can make a list of things that might be in these files, it will help identify the output."
Dek crossed the room, put his coffee mug down on the window sill, and moved the chair from under the window.
"Don't use that one!" she exclaimed. "One of the legs is about to come off, and I need to glue it." He nudged the chair with his foot, then sat down on the corner of the bed.
"I want you to mail the original CDs to a friend of mine." He scribbled something on the top page, and ripped it off the pad. "We can trust him to pass on the information to a couple of other people who might need to know."
"OK, I can do that. Won't go anywhere till Monday, though." She shoved the address into the pocket of her jeans, and sorted through the top drawer of her dresser to find a matched pair of socks. She was a bit surprised to see the square black shape of the Glock still on top.
"That's fine. Just get one of the copies out of this building." He tapped the pencil nervously against the bed frame.
*****
"I can do this!" she told herself. The pieces of the black knife were too small to do anything other than cut her hands, but she could hear Dawn's footsteps tapping down the stairs.
She could handle Lydecker alone. Lydecker, alone, was vulnerable. He was old, slow, and in the end, dead.
She opened the door to the second floor landing, then closed it silently behind her.
With the key to Dawn's apartment in her hand, she soundlessly inched her boots across the worn linoleum.
******
Lydecker gazed out the window. A breeze was trying to blow the damp fallen leaves off the grass, but wasn't succeeding. The coffee mug was cool in his hand, and he decided that fresh pot was more important than adding a few more keywords to the list.
He turned around to see a twenty-something woman with red curls, and a firm grip on the Glock. She was straddling the chair, leaning on the back. "An amateur," he thought. "An amateur who wants to talk." If she were a professional, he would be dead already. Maybe without even noticing.
"Who are you?" he asked, hoping to get a conversation going and keep it going until some sort of opening presented itself. In an ideal world, he'd find a reason for her to put the gun down. He could hear his pulse in his ears.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Cool hazel eyes, and half a smile.
The Glock was still pointed at his chest, slightly to left of center. He crouched enough to set the mug on the floor, very slowly. The pistol slowly tilted, as if it were attached to him, not to her.
"Ok, here is how these things are supposed to go. You tell me who you are, and that you are here to make me pay for an old mistake." That ought to start a good long discussion. If she was asking questions, she would be thinking about his answer, or her next question, or just about anything except squeezing the trigger. He remembered the hollow point ammunition he'd loaded into the magazine, and imagined the mushroom shape of the expanding bullet in his flesh.
"Exactly." She reminded him of an old picture he'd seen. One where his mother was young and happy. Except the teenager who was going to be Mom had been holding a fishing rod, and a large perch, and this woman had a steady and competent grip on a firearm.
"Well, I've made a whole bunch of mistakes. Do you want to tell me which mistake this is for?" He leaned against the window frame, and willed himself not to twitch. Five and one half pounds of pressure on her trigger finger would put him on the wrong end of an applied ballistics experiment. No fun - Lydecker knew from experience.
"I told you, you won't believe me." Her straight, even front teeth pressed her lip.
"Are you an old girlfriend?" He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "No, can't be. I keep better track than that." The Glock hadn't moved.
"You want my ID?" Her lip curled, and her eyes narrowed. She used her left hand to pull her ponytail over her shoulder, and dragged the collar of her shirt down her neck. Her wrist relaxed, and now the Glock was pointed towards the floor.
"She's one of my kids," he thought, startled. "But which one?" As he walked around her, he realized that the chair that Dawn had been sitting in was still in front of the computer. Which meant that the broken one was under his new acquaintance, who wanted him to read her bar code.
He brushed his fingers across the back of her neck, as if to move hair aside. But that was just a distraction, and he kicked the left leg of the chair, sending it flying, and the girl tipping backwards towards him. Then the pistol was in his hands.
*****
She hit the floor, and felt the pistol being wrenched from her hand. She lay motionless, expecting the end. "Why does Lydecker always win?" she asked herself. She felt sure he was going to kill her, for real this time. Her fear kept her eyes closed.
In the silence, she could hear his ragged breathing. No orders, no gun shots.
Long ago, someone had told her "If you give up, you have already lost the fight." That someone might even have been Lydecker. Lying on the floor waiting for death was wrong. She slowly rolled over onto her stomach, and looked up, into the barrel of the pistol.
"Where did you get that tattoo?" he hissed.
"You should know." She felt her lower lip trembling.
"The girl – the experiment – with that code is dead." Both of his hands were wrapped around the pistol. Some icy, analytical part of her brain noticed that his knuckles were white.
"That's news to me." She slowly slid her hands closer to her shoulders. "Or, do you have some plans?"
"That experiment was terminated in oh-nine," he insisted, less sure this time.
"Nobody told me that."
"I shot you!" She watched the pistol tremble in his grasp.
"That's why I'm here." She could hear the front door open, and footsteps on the stairs. She held her breath, and waited for the right moment.
A key turned in the lock, and she watched Lydecker's eyes flick away from her, and towards the apartment door.
"All taken care of," said a girl's voice from the next room.
"Get out!" he snapped, as the girl's head appeared in the bedroom door.
Now! She rolled sideways and scrambled to her feet, just ahead of the Glock's muzzle. She moved towards her enemy, trapping his hand, and the gun. It was an easy setup for a simple throw.
When it was finished, the gun was hers. Lydecker was face down on the floor, with one hand flat under her left foot.
"I never saw the body," whispered Lydecker. "I was too busy trying to find the others." She wondered why he wasn't trying to escape.
"You're Evelyn Walker," interjected Dawn, who was still standing in the doorway.
"Just another fake name," she said. "Lydecker! Who am I?"
"You are X-5 . . ."
"Stop!" she interrupted, shifting her weight. "What's my name?"
"Eva." A hoarse whisper. His shoulders shook with a deep breath. "They called you Eva when they thought I wasn't listening."
She lifted her foot, and backed away. Dawn knelt next to the old man, so Eva positioned herself in the open doorway. He wasn't going to get away again.
*****
Lydecker stared at the caramel colored oak floor. "Pain is temporary," he reminded himself. It didn't matter now. Eventually Eva was going to figure out how to spill his blood. Not that he didn't deserve it, on some cosmic level. He'd thought about dying, in the weeks after his kids escaped.
Dawn's shadow darkened the wood, and he felt her hand on his shoulder.
"Are you OK?" Dawn's voice was a tense whisper.
He corrected himself. "Physical pain is temporary. Emotional damage is permanent." Shooting Eva was a mistake. Dreams about a pool of blood slowly growing around the girl still turned up now, making his first morning thought about exactly how much bourbon would be required to erase the dream.
Lydecker felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Eva was going to make Dawn watch. Whatever happened, Dawn wouldn't forget.
****
Dawn felt a shiver go through Dek's shoulder, and she let her hand slide off and away from him. She studied the lines of his face, and tried to remember where she had seen that combination of pain and determination before. "Emotional meltdown – any second now."
The red-haired girl, Eva, blocked the doorway. She seemed so certain that the pistol in her hands gave her control. "Two thousand nine," thought Dawn. "If she's twenty now, she would have been eight or nine back then."
Dawn felt the tension singing in the air between the two of them. The conflict between the old soldier and the young one was going to turn into real violence soon.
"Shit," she scolded herself. "Either sort it out, or call in a family therapist. Lots of luck finding one with weekend office hours."
"So, Eva," she asked cautiously, "what happened after you escaped?"
"I don't remember," the girl answered, with a frown creasing her forehead. "I woke up in the back seat of an SUV. It was moving, and telephone poles flickered past the window, until it was totally dark. I was still half-drugged, and everything hurt, and when I finally managed to sit up and look out, it was just flat snow, and a long straight road.
"The man in the driver's seat noticed that I was awake, and asked how I was, and I wouldn't talk to him. He had a beard, and wore an orange knit hat. I guess I assumed that he was the enemy. 'I'm taking you home,' he told me." Eva shook her head. "I didn't understand."
"Where did you go?" Dawn reminded herself to breathe. Just keep them all talking.
"He stopped the car in front of a little house in the middle of nowhere. The lights in front of the door came on, and a woman wearing a red sweater and pale blue fuzzy slippers stepped out into the snow and the wind. I wondered if she was enemy, too."
"Were they?"
"No. The man carried me upstairs. I thought about fighting it, but knew that I couldn't. She followed, and they put me to bed in a little room with pink wallpaper, and stuffed teddy bears on top of the dresser." Dawn noticed Eva's slight smile before she continued. "The woman kissed me, told me 'good night,' and promised she'd cook whatever I wanted for breakfast in the morning."
Dawn glanced at Dek. He was watching Eva now, instead of whatever horrors he'd been seeing inside his head.
"I couldn't figure it out," continued Eva. "I decided that it was some sort of trick, or some kind of trap. You always taught us not to ever leave anyone behind, back then. I knew the rest of my unit would come find me."
"When did they find you?" asked Lydecker. He sat up slowly, and pushed the floor away with his left hand.
"I waited for a long time. Months passed. No one ever came. No sign of anyone. Then I knew that you killed them all. You shot me first, then the rest. They were never going to rescue me, because they were all dead. I promised myself that one day I'd find you, and then we'd be even." Her voice shook, but the pistol didn't.
"But they aren't dead!" exclaimed Dawn. "I saw. . ." an empty room, she realized.
Eva's attention and the gun focused on her. "I didn't realize nine millimeters was that big," Dawn thought, and decided that "cold sweat" was a really good description of the phenomenon.
"Go on," ordered Eva.
"Dek told me that one of the boys from the oh-nine escape was captive – he didn't say who by – and I wanted to go talk." Dawn took a deep breath, and continued. "The room was empty, and there were signs of machinery that used to be there."
"An empty room?" Eva snarled. "Please, just tell me why I shouldn't shoot both of you."
"Because X5-599 was alive when I visited him," interrupted Lydecker. "I couldn't get him out, but lots of the others are still alive on the outside."
"Live liar, or dead and quiet?" Eva's face was blank, as she swung the gun back to point at Lydecker. "Why are you still alive?"
****
"If I tell you why I'm not dead yet, will you stop trying to kill me?" Lydecker wasn't expecting agreement, and he didn't get it. He flexed his fingers slowly, feeling bruised flesh complain as he closed his hand.
"No. No promises." The gun didn't move.
"When you were five, it became clear that the X-5s didn't have any of the problems that the X-2s had. So, it was time to start training you for combat. All sorts. We decided that I needed to be able to work with you and the rest of the Xs with as little risk as possible."
"The day Zack turned eight, he told me he was sure he could take you in a fair fight." A slight smile lifted one corner of her mouth.
"He was right, Eva." Lydecker remembered the boy's focused expression. "One of the deep conditioning things that the psyc guys did was make you unable to kill me. Not anyone else, just me."
"So she can't hurt you?" asked Dawn hopefully.
"No such luck," he answered. "Ten years ago, she couldn't kill me. No telling what is left of that conditioning now. And, in any case, the less we tampered with their innate aggression, the better the final results. She can definitely hurt me." He opened his hand again, carefully.
"So I miss a perfectly good shot because you've been messing with my mind?" Eva muttered through clenched teeth. "I wonder if I can push you out a window and let gravity kill you."
"Too messy, Eva."
Silence. The rustle of a squirrel in dead leaves, and the rumble of traffic on the main road seemed to leave the empty spaces in the room alone.
"Who has the weapon, here?" asked Eva.
Lydecker looked at Dawn. Dawn was definitely not carrying the HK pistol. Where had she put it?
"You do, Eva." He decided to shift the conversation a little bit. Every little bit of confusion on distraction would help. "The rest of your unit escaped. What do you want to know?"
"Why haven't I heard about them?"
"They learned all the skills I was going to teach them." He had vivid memories of several of Max's narrow escapes. "How to blend in. Don't be noticed, don't attract attention. They were all smart kids."
"If you were lying, sir, that is exactly what you would tell me."
"It's the truth."
"Prove it. Figure out what your life is worth, and buy it."
"Tinga's dead, Eva. Just recently, and not my doing. She has a four-year-old son. Smart kid."
"Nice try. Dead is dead."
"Zack is the one I've seen most recently. He was hurt, but he is recovering. I don't know where he is now."
"Show me the money, asshole."
"Max. Max is free. I don't know where she is, but I think I know how you can make contact."
"You are just trying to get rid of me."
"I'm telling you the truth. There aren't any lies that will get me out of this."
"Find something I can believe, then."
Lydecker tried to slow down the whirling energy of his thoughts. "I just need to focus," he told himself. "One thing. Just pick one thing to accomplish here. Get the initiative back from Eva. Take control. You can pull the trigger on her one more time. It will cost, but you can do it. Where did Dawn put the HK?"
****
Dawn watched Dek's eyes focus in the distance. "What is he up to?" she wondered. "More important, how does he get Eva to back down?"
"They are all dead, Lydecker," snarled Eva. "You can't even show me the bodies."
Dawn wondered what sort of proof that Eva would accept, short of having a live X-5 walk into the room. Twelve boxes in the living room were filled with newspaper clippings and news printouts, all of which indirectly pointed to the existence of the X project. Dawn believed. Why wouldn't Eva?
She watched Lydecker search the room, with only his eyes moving. "He's up to something," she thought. "Someone's going to die. Like the security guard, like the driver that was following us." She felt small and cold.
Death. It was so easy to make dead people disappear. All that would be left of Eva was little yellowed slips of newsprint. Maybe not even that. Dawn would have to make another file folder, with the picture of baby Eva from a scientific conference in '02, and another picture of an 'unknown woman found dead.' There would be a print of the score bulletin from the pistol match and a few other things, but that would be it.
Dawn had so many boxes, so many newspaper clippings.
"I've got your proof, Eva!" She could picture the cream-colored, dog-eared folder, in the third box on the left. It was held together with rubber bands, and had an enormous number of newspaper articles with lurid headlines. She hadn't put anything in that folder for months.
Eva and Dek were both staring at her, and she felt her cheeks heat up. "I need to get something from the other room."
"No games," said Eva, "Or you help me dig a large hole." Eva stepped out of the doorway, and Dawn dived past her. The stacked boxes in the living room held the answer.
The first box was the wrong one, and it split and spilled as Dawn dropped it. Two more landed with enough force to shake the plates in the kitchen cupboards. She set down the next box firmly, and tossed the lid onto the bed that Dek had been sleeping in.
It wasn't hard to find the right folder. Blood and guts always sold newspapers, so she'd found lots of articles on that killer. A thick folder, telling a story that she didn't understand. It took both hands to lift it out from the mass of files.
Dawn ran the few steps back in to her bedroom. Dek and Eva were still trying to stare each other down.
"Take a look," she said, and spilled the contents of the file onto the floor at Eva's feet.
"Here is the first one. It's a murder. The victim is found with no teeth, and a fresh tattoo. It's a bar code." Dawn carefully unfolded the yellowed clipping. "No arrests, no convictions, nothing."
"Until the next one." She pressed another piece of newspaper flat against the floor. This one was written for a tabloid: it also had one of the crime scene photos. The twisted and bloody body, just as it had been found.
"And the next one." She didn't even bother to flatten this clipping. The picture showed a bar code tattoo.
*****
Lydecker watched Dawn spill the clippings from a folder. That had been a huge failure. The kid had been totally bug-fuck crazy, and it hadn't quite been covered up. Too sensational, too bloody. The tabloids had been all over it. It made him feel sick to think that Dawn had been tracking that.
"Ben!" Eva's eyes were wide, and the color had left her face. "Holy shit. It's Ben."
Lydecker slowly got to his feet, and backed away from the two women and the file of newspaper clippings. He slid his hand under the pillows on Dawn's bed, and between the mattress and the headboard. "Okay, Dawn," he thought, "what did you do with it? I don't have time for a real search."
He noted that Eva had put the Glock on the floor, and was kneeling to examine Dawn's file of clippings.
Quickly and silently, he crossed the room to Dawn's computer and the desk. The top drawer slid open, and he patted the crumpled receipts and a printer manual with a coffee stain. Nothing but paper.
A glance towards the two women confirmed that both of them were still looking through Dawn's pile of scrap newspaper.
"Did you know him?" Dawn asked quietly. Her face was towards Eva, so he couldn't see the expression that went with that soft tone.
"Part of my unit," Eva answered, "he was always the one who could explain things. He made up these incredible stories."
Lydecker opened the second drawer. The rattle of screwdrivers warned him to go slowly. The pistol was resting on a tangle of red and black wires. He lifted it out, and closed the drawer. He turned back towards Eva, carefully keeping the weapon between his body and the desk.
"Is this Ben?" Dawn pointed at one of the larger and more gruesome photos.
Eva shifted the papers around. "That's Ben's bar code."
"What is it doing on all these people?"
Lydecker checked the safety with his thumb, and slid the pistol under his waistband. The feel of the situation had changed. Eva was focused on Dawn's file, and seemed to have forgotten her earlier plans. The cold metal against his spine was warming, slowly.
"I don't know, but our unit had a mission that ended like this." She pulled a clipping to the top of the pile. A twisted body had been photographed in full color.
"Why?"
"We'd been ordered to keep a man from escaping. He was armed, we weren't, and when we caught up with him. . ." Eva shivered.
"Who was he?" Dawn's forehead creased.
"Someone motivated," interrupted Lydecker. His hands were on the edge of the desk, and he wondered if he shouldn't just draw and fire now. "We pulled a man off death row, and told him he was free if he could run away."
"That's crazy!"
"No, it's not. It was a real-world test. A live fire exercise to prove the concept."
"We were eight," Eva protested. She pushed a curl of red hair back behind her ear.
"You were old enough." He let his fingertips rest on the table behind him. The time wasn't right to draw. "You and your unit worked as a team, and didn't hesitate. You accomplished your objective."
"Who asks a kid to do something like that?" demanded Dawn. She held up a color print from some conspiracy web site.
"He did." Eva swept the clippings to one side, and put her hand on the Glock.
"Can you do that again?" Lydecker felt cold sweat come with the certainty that he'd probably not be able to draw in time.
"Just watch me," snarled Eva. She scrambled to her feet, and the Glock pointed at his chest, again.
"Why?" asked Dawn. "Ben got out. Dek didn't kill Ben. The rest of the X-5s are still free."
"How do you know?" Eva was still looking at him across the sights, even though she was now listening to Dawn.
"There are lots more odd news stories about teenage kids who run too fast or jump too high. There are others."
"How many?"
"I don't know, exactly," Dawn confessed. "There usually isn't enough information to identify an individual, and Dek hasn't been helping, much."
Lydecker felt Eva's attention shift back to him. The creases between her eyebrows had smoothed out, and the hard line of her mouth had softened.
"Who is still out here?" she asked. "How do I re-join my unit?" The pleading tone of her voice surprised him.
"I'll tell you what I know," he answered as gently as he knew how. He could tell that his hands would be shaking if he didn't have them pressed against the desk. "Put down my pistol and we'll talk."
He watched her set the Glock back on Dawn's dresser. He realized that his own resolve to shoot Eva had evaporated. It wasn't necessary, and he wouldn't have been able to put pressure on the trigger anyway. "I'm not going to repeat that mistake," he told himself. "Maybe this will work out after all."
"Where do I look?" Eva asked, with her hands in her coat pockets. Her expression reminded him of a lost child. The urge to put an arm around her was familiar, and he pushed it back the way he always did before.
"Jace, Zack, Krit, Syl, and a few others have all been in Seattle at some time during the past year. They made contact with Max, who is still there." He picked up the pad of paper that was still resting on the corner of the bed, and tossed it to Eva.
"I don't know where to find her, but that address will be a good start." He watched Eva tilt the paper, so she could read the imprint of his writing on the otherwise blank top sheet.
"Logan Cale." Eva ripped off the page. "Foggle Tower, in Seattle. That shouldn't be too hard to find. Who is he?" She folded it carefully, and put it in a pocket.
"He's a good guy. I know he will be able to put you in touch with Max, and probably some of the others." Lydecker knew that his kids would need to stick together to deal with White. Logan would be keeping track of them, if he could.
"Eva?" Dawn hesitated. "Will you come back and tell me who you find? Help me with my files?"
"No promises, Dawn. I'm just not sure what I'll do when I find them."
"Oh," interrupted Lydecker. "You are probably going to want this back." He slowly slid the pistol out of his belt and held it in front of him. He grasped it between the pad of his thumb and his fingertips, with the muzzle pointing at the floor.
Eva's eyes went wide, and she carefully accepted the pistol, checked the safety, and put it in her coat pocket with Logan's address. "Where did you find this?"
"A relaxing little walk in the woods." He knew she wasn't going to be aiming at him again, there was no point in bringing it up.
"You could have shot me, just now." He could barely hear her whisper, but he couldn't miss her hands trembling.
"No, I couldn't." He was surprised at how hard it was to keep his voice steady. "It was a mistake the first time."
Lydecker remembered her as a little girl, with a strawberry-blonde brush cut. He put an arm around Eva's shoulders, and felt the tension ripple through her. "Back off," he told himself. He felt like his throat was squeezing shut. "It's too little, too late." He stumbled back towards the desk.
The girl's coffee-colored eyes fixed on him for a moment. "Thank you for the address, I appreciate it." She nodded to Dawn, who was sorting bits of newspaper, then turned towards the door.
"Wait!" said Lydecker, suddenly. "Let me know if you find them. You don't have to tell me where. You don't have to talk to me. Call Dawn. She'll pass a message along."
"You're in no position to make demands of me." Her voice was even, except for a little undertone of amusement. She looked over her shoulder, back at him.
"Not a demand. I just want to know that you're okay, that they're okay."
"Don't expect any Father's day cards, old man." Eva's frown softened. "Don't hold your breath, but one day I might decide to drop by and give you a status report. You don't deserve it, though."
"No, I don't," he agreed.
Eva stomped out of the apartment, and the door slammed closed behind her.
****
Dawn tried to fit the last of her papers back into the torn folder. She wondered what "Ben" was like, in person. None of the photos were actually Ben. They were just pictures of things he'd done.
She climbed to her feet, and stepped over part of a chair leg. In the living room, she set the "Ben" folder on the big pile of papers which were spilling out of the torn box.
She re-traced her footsteps back to the bedroom. Dek was sitting in the chair in front of her desk, and looking at the broken pieces of wood that were scattered on the floor. "It can't be fixed."
"I'm not so sure about that." She picked up one of the legs.
"Eva is never going to make contact again." He covered his face with his hands.
"You don't know that. Are you really happy she tried to track you down and kill you?"
"I'm just glad she's alive. I'm scared, Dawn. The more I know about what they are up against. . ."
"She survived you! Give the girl some credit."
"Oh, yes." He looked up at Dawn, and frowned. "You know, there was no guarantee that Eva wouldn't kill you after she finished with me."
"I wasn't thinking about that."
"You should have been." He stood up, and kicked aside a broken wooden slat. "You are safer if I'm somewhere else."
"Where?"
"You are safer if you don't know." He stood in front of the dresser.
"Wait just a Goddamn minute!" Dawn's rage surprised herself. "Why don't you ask me what I want? It didn't take me that long to figure out that you were trouble."
"You just didn't figure out how much trouble." Now he was facing her, but examining the Glock. She could see the glint of brass as he shifted the slide back, then let it drop. The pistol was still loaded.
"Uh, I don't mean to rub it in, but Eva surprised you, too." That got his full attention.
Dek looked away from her, and seemed embarrassed. "That was a very skillful piece of negotiation, Dawn. Thanks." He set the pistol back where he'd picked it up.
"I like us as a team, Dek. You can go if you really need to, but I'm not going to kick you out." She wondered if hitting Lydecker with a chair leg would slow him down, or just make him mad.
"Do you know how long it's been since I was a team player?" He crouched, and reached under the bed.
Dawn shook her head. Dek handed her a long fragment, which used to be the back leg of the chair. "You aren't doing badly," she said.
He collected a couple of slats, and a crossbar that had rolled under the desk. "I don't want to fuck it up. If I can't fix it right, I shouldn't start." He set the pieces of wood in her hands.
"I know you're willing to take chances, Dek, if it's something you want." She examined the dried glue on the end of one of the bits.
"Yes, but what about you? Are you really willing to put a lot of time and effort into some old piece of junk?"
"Please don't go!"
"You know that the next time I need to run, you will have to come with me."
"Is that a threat?" For some reason, Dawn felt a need to giggle.
"It won't be safe." He took the pile of broken chair parts out of her hands, and set them down in the corner.
"Neither is crossing the street, Dek. I know it sounds weird, but I feel safer with you around." She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, tightly.
Lydecker looked down at her hand, but didn't pull away.
"Okay, Dawn. First, I'm going to make another pot of coffee." He laughed softly. "Then, I'm going to tell you the whole story, everything. We will see how safe you feel after that."
"It will be too late to change my mind, then."
"I know."
