Borderline (The Arcadia Project, #1)(81)

I felt like a first-class dolt. David turned back to Linda, hands gently closing on her shoulders. “What did she do?”

“What did I do?” I said incredulously. “I answered the phone, and when I hung up she was pointing a gun at me!”

“She knows about the prisoners,” Linda told him.

The what now?

Berenbaum cringed. “They’re not prisoners. Anyway, you thought pointing a fake gun at her was going to give her amnesia? What the hell, Linda.”

They had to be talking about the missing commoners. Why did Linda think they were prisoners? Why did David disagree?

“I don’t know anything, I swear,” I protested. “No one said anything to me about—”

He kept grilling Linda as though I weren’t there. “What were you planning to do with her next? Hog-tie her and toss her in a closet and call Vivian here to wipe her memory?”

“That’s actually not a half-bad idea.”

“What?” I blurted.

Berenbaum still didn’t look at me. “Forget it,” he said to Linda. “Her mind’s got enough problems without Vivian messing around in there.”

Another slow shift in perspective. This time, I did not go gently, but held on fast. David couldn’t be dismissing me. He couldn’t have just reduced my mental illness to a punch line. I felt a need for support and bent to pick up my cane. The movement didn’t catch their eye; I probably could have walked past them and out of the house without their noticing. I wish I had.

“You certainly can pick them,” Linda said bitterly.

Give me two or three years, he had said to me, and I could have people willing to take a bullet for you. I would have taken a bullet for him after the first time he shook my hand. David, David, say it isn’t so.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he snapped at his wife.

“I mean of all the people you could have cheated with all these years, you pick that one?”

“Linda! For God’s sake! I would never touch her!”

The sheer horror on his face made my hands go cold. I leaned on my cane to keep from falling, but then I felt the break, like glass shattering inside me: that swift protective alchemy that turns hurt to white-hot rage.

“You can’t be serious,” Berenbaum said. “She’s not even—”

“Not even a person?” I snarled between gritted teeth. “Like those ‘prisoners’ of yours? I am a person, goddamn it, and I AM STANDING! RIGHT! HERE!”

I heard the sound of splintering safety glass, saw the spider-web of cracks. I hadn’t realized I’d started swinging the cane, but then it felt so good I couldn’t stop; I slammed it against that cherry-red finish, against the vinyl top, tearing it, against the side mirror, knocking it askew.

I would have fallen then, if not for the wall behind me. David vaulted across the hoods of both cars in rapid succession and grabbed me, pinned my arms back against the wall, his face as stricken as though I’d tossed a baby down a flight of stairs.

“Linda,” he said quietly. “Hit the garage door and call security.”

She touched the switch on the wall, then disappeared into the house. With a soft clattering and humming, the garage door lifted into its track, letting in a slab of yellow sunlight. David picked me up and half carried, half dragged me toward the opening.

“Let go of me!” I said in a panic, still clutching my cane with both hands. “You’re hurting me!”

“I’m hurting you?” he said, his voice ragged.

“It’s a goddamned car!” I screamed at him. “I’m a person! I’m a person!”

But I wasn’t, a familiar voice whispered to me. Not to him. Not to anyone.

He said nothing, just set me down ass-first on the driveway and turned to walk stiffly back into the garage. “Pull yourself together and get out of here,” he said as he went, still not looking at me. “We’re done.”

“David,” I called after his back as he walked under the door. I wondered for a moment if I should get up and follow him, do something, but then the door began to rattle back down, and I realized that everything hurt too much for me to stand.

There didn’t seem to be much point in moving, anyway. Even if I called a cab, security would get here first, and I certainly couldn’t outrun anyone on foot. I thought about calling Caryl, but given that I was already on probation, I didn’t want to explain why I was sprawled on my ass in her number one donor’s front yard.

A Prius pulled up to the curb before long, repainted in officious black and white with HILLSTAR SECURITY on the side. A uniformed rent-a-cop got out and approached me with a stormy expression. He was heavyset with suede-colored skin and a broad nose. He did not look like the kind of person prone to sympathy, and contrary to what you see in the movies, giving attitude to law enforcement types never ends in hilarity.

“You’re going to need to come with me,” he said.

I tried to get to my feet, but it was complicated. I seemed to have wrenched something pretty badly during my explosion of violence, though I hadn’t noticed when I was still flooded with adrenaline.

Rent-a-Cop stared at me suspiciously. “If you do not cooperate, I will have to encourage Mr. Berenbaum to press charges. You are guilty of malicious mischief, which means up to a year in jail and a fifty-thousand-dollar fine. Do you want to spend a year in jail, or do you want to move things along?”