Borderline (The Arcadia Project, #1)(54)

“You’re thinking he’s yours? He doesn’t have to be your Echo to have feelings for you.”

“But we’ve never met.”

“I dunno. Maybe his connection to Berenbaum gives him some way of observing you. Hell, maybe he’s been hiding nearby every time you and Berenbaum talked.”

I frowned. “Clay said something like that. That he thought Berenbaum knew where Rivenholt was. I just don’t want to think Berenbaum would lie to me.”

“Who is Clay again?”

“The cop who just arrested him, I’m pretty sure.” On that note, I dialed Clay’s number for the eighth time. Still nothing. Finally I gave up and dialed ASK-LAPD, choosing dispatch from the menu options.

“Hey,” I said to the woman who answered the phone. “I’ve been working with Brian Clay on a missing persons thing, and he’s not answering his phone. I wondered if you have some way to get in touch with him? It’s urgent.”

“Can you give me the name again?” Her tone was crisp and competent, and there was a trace of Mexico in her accent.

“Brian Clay.” I spelled it for her.

For a moment I heard nothing but background chatter. Then, “We have no officer by that name. Did this person specifi-cally claim to be with the LAPD?”

The bottom dropped out of my stomach. “He did.” Too many paradigm shifts in one hour; I was getting queasy.

“Was he in uniform?”

“No, but his badge looked legit.”

“Did he stop your vehicle or act as a police officer in any capacity?”

“All he did was ask me some questions about a friend of mine, but I’m pretty sure he just, ah, arrested someone at Union Station and hurt the man pretty badly in the process.”

“We’ll send someone to investigate. If he contacts you again, please call us right away. You can even use 911 for this. Authentic-looking badges are not hard to come by, so in future if you have doubt,s it’s always okay to call us and confirm identity before giving an officer any information.”

But I hadn’t had doubts. That was the part that bothered me most. I’d been so distracted with magic and fairies that it hadn’t even occurred to me to apply a healthy dose of skepticism to the mundane stuff.

I described Clay in as much detail as I could and gave the nice lady my contact information in a kind of shame-haze. I’d sent this guy after Rivenholt; I might as well have spilled the blood on the tracks with my own hand.

“Was that what I think it was?” Teo said when I hung up.

“If you think I found out Brian Clay is a lying, thieving piece of shit with a fake badge, then yes.”

I called Berenbaum’s mobile, but he wasn’t answering. I tried his office number, but Araceli didn’t answer either, and with so much up in the air, leaving a message seemed pointless.

“Teo, give me Caryl’s number,” I said.

“Only Caryl is authorized to do that.”

“For God’s sake, Teo, this is a disaster of epic proportions. Exceptions can be made.”

“No. She can’t have just anyone calling her when she might not have Elliott out. But more importantly, it’s the rules. Once you sign the contract, you don’t ever break the Project rules, Millie. Instant termination.”

“I hope you mean firing.”

“Usually.”

I let that one slide. “Fine, then, you call her and hand me the phone.”

“I’m driving, Millie. We’ll be at the Residence in, like, ten minutes.”

“Do it, Teo, or I’ll tell her you kissed me. That’s against the rules, right?”

“No, dumbass,” he said. “Remember Phil and Gloria?”

“I keep trying to forget.”

He was already groping in his pocket for his phone, eyes still on the road as he tilted his hips up off the seat. I idly painted a mental picture of myself straddling him—my old self, of course; I doubted I was nimble enough to do that anymore.

He held the phone up in his line of sight, flicking his eyes over to it as he drove. “If a cop drives by and pulls me over right now, you are paying the f*cking fine.”

“Just make sure it’s a real cop first.”

He held the phone to his ear and listened. I studied his face, trying to feel something other than embarrassed amusement at what had happened between us at the station. He was sexy in theory, but not really in practice. It wouldn’t take much tweaking to make him dangerously crush-worthy, but I’d been in the dating pool long enough to know that what you see is what you get.

“Caryl,” Teo said, “call Lisa.” A pause as Teo lost a shade of color. “What? I didn’t—did I not say Millie? Sorry. Just call her, all right? Same damn phone.”

I watched the unintentionally erotic display he made trying to put his phone back in his pocket. “Were you and Lisa close?” I said.

“Not really. Learned my lesson after Amir. But she was all right. She and I were both pochos, so there was stuff I didn’t have to explain.”

“What’s a pocho?”

He winced a little, then laughed. “You don’t get to say that. It means spoiled, overripe. A term Mexicans have for people like me who are more American than Mexican, you know? They say it like it’s a bad thing.” He snorted another laugh, but his body was drawn and tense.