Borderline (The Arcadia Project, #1)(43)

20


I had never been further from a smile in my life, but I managed to locate one after an exhaustive search. “Who is it?” I said under my breath.

“Young white guy, late twenties, maybe thirty. He was standing around on the sidewalk near the house and followed us across the street. He’s coming right over here now, so go ahead and look.”

I turned, feeling cold all over, but when I spotted the guy he was talking about, my fear turned into something more like vertigo. It was the same goateed guy I’d seen at the resort, in the bar at Regazo de Lujo.

“What the hell,” I said, loud enough for the approaching man to hear.

He stopped a respectful conversational distance away and hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans. He was dressed in a short-sleeved blue button-down, open over a gray T-shirt. I caught a hint of aftershave, something woody and macho.

“Hi,” he said. “We keep running into each other.”

“Maybe because you’re following me.”

He showed us a badge: LAPD. “Do you mind if I ask you a couple questions?”

Hello, paradigm shift.

“You do not have to talk to him,” Tjuan said.

“Actually,” I said slowly, “I suspect we’re looking for the same person.”

The cop squinted at me as though my wheelchair were parked in front of the sun. “Would you be looking for an actor by the name of John Riven?”

“That’s right. What’s he done to get the law after him?”

“I can’t go into the details,” he said. “How well do you know him?”

“We’ve never met.”

“May I ask why you’ve been looking for him?”

“A friend of mine is concerned about him.”

He frowned. “Is your friend David Berenbaum?”

“Why?”

“Because I think Berenbaum knows where he is.”

“I think you’re wrong about that, but I don’t have much information to give you except that Johnny’s not at Regazo de Lujo. That much you know.”

“It’s very important I find him,” the cop said firmly.

“I need more than that,” I said.

He seemed to think for a moment, then said flatly, “A young woman has disappeared, and there’s evidence he may have abducted her.”

He couldn’t have surprised me more if he had clubbed me over the head.

“Who is it that’s missing?”

“I can’t go into that.”

I searched the officer’s eyes. They were dark as motor oil, old in his boyish face. He seemed earnest, but there was something else there too: anger. Not my brand of fast-rising flame that exhausts itself within the hour, but something that burned slow and cool. I suddenly really wanted him to be on my side.

“You want me to contact you if I hear anything?”

“That would be great,” he said. He pulled out a business card and handed it to Tjuan, who was closer. Tjuan handed the card immediately to me as though it had peed on him.

I glanced at the card—it simply said BRIAN CLAY and gave a number—then tucked it into the pocket of my shorts. When I looked up again, Clay was giving me that where do I know you from look. Now that I knew he was a cop, I could narrow it down. I didn’t exactly have a rap sheet.

“I remember you,” I said. “At least I think I do. I’m Millicent Roper.”

He shook his head slowly, searching my face.

“The film student who tried to kill herself by jumping off a building at UCLA last year. Big news for a couple of minutes.”

His expression went tight and blank like I’d sucker punched him. “Oh,” he said.

“Did I . . . ?” I trailed off, ready with a stab of guilt without needing to know quite why. “What is it? Is there something I don’t remember?”

He looked as out of sorts as I felt; I almost felt sorry for him. He combed a hand back through his hair, then mussed it again. “Are you all right now?” he said.

I looked down at my wheelchair.

He flinched a little. “I mean besides—I’m sorry, that was—”

“No, I know what you meant. I’m fine. It’s okay. I think some cops spoke to me early on, in the hospital, when I first woke up. You were one of them?”

He shifted his weight, shook his head. “I was the guy who showed up too late to save you.”

You think you’ve given yourself forty lashes for everyone you hurt, and then you realize you’ll never know the numbers.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. The improbability of it all hadn’t hit me yet; I was too busy looking into those too-old eyes and realizing I was just one more reason for the shadows in them.

“It’s okay,” he said. “A lot worse has happened to me since.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“Does it?”

“Kind of.”

To my surprise he laughed, a weird short burst like a dog lunging for an open door. “Well . . . Well, good,” he drawled. He jammed his hands in his pockets and nodded to me, and to Tjuan, who had apparently turned his back on the two of us some time ago. “Give me a call if you find out anything,” said Officer Clay, and then he took off down the sidewalk like it was pouring rain.