Read Double Cross [2] for Free Online Page B

on the force, highcaps in hiding.
    Red flashes on dark walls. Gently Otto removes Covian’s hands from his collar. “You need to trust that I’ll be all right.” He whips off his glasses and hands them to me, then he pulls his beret from the pocket of the jacket he’d draped over Covian and puts it on his head, transforming back to flamboyant Mayor Otto Sanchez.
    The EMTs arrive and we give them room to work on Covian. Otto tells a pair of detectives what he saw. Officers are placing tabs next to bullet holes, examining the alley across the street. Only now do I think about the fact that Otto was carrying his gun. Dorks precaution?
    Otto introduces me to the detectives Wang and Mulligan as his consultant, our usual ruse. The publicity of being a celebrity mayor’s girlfriend would destroy my ability to work as a disillusionist. It would also connect Otto to the world of the highcaps and to Packard, a known crime boss. In short, it would connect Otto to all the secret operations of his own administration.
    Detective Wang and his partner ask me questions about what I saw. Nothing, I tell them. They don’t interview us hard, being that Otto was once a superstar detective and their boss. They’re interested in the fact that neither of us is wearing blue, though, and also that Otto noticed that one of the Dorks had eyeglasses. Squarish, brown, possibly tortoiseshell rims.
    They’re putting Covian in an ambulance. His vitalslook good; that’s all they’ll say. Otto and I head down the block where Jimmy the chauffeur is waiting, leaning against the car. He opens the back door and Otto and I climb in.
    “Midway General, please,” Otto says.
    Jimmy nods. Maybe he already knew that. Like Covian, Jimmy’s a short-term precog—certainly a good thing for a driver to be. He puts up the partition window.
    Otto rests his head back against the seat as we zoom away. “He gets shot in my service, and all he can think is that he let me down.”
    “He’s going to be okay.”
    Otto stares out the window. The hum of our tires mixes with the roar of a nearby motorcycle. After a long silence, he turns to me. “I won’t have us victimized like this, Justine. I won’t.” There’s an edge to his voice that I’ve never heard before.
    I put my hand on his arm. “We’ll stop them,” I say.
    Otto gives me a weary gaze. “I’m so glad you’re here. You help me,” he says. “So much.”
    I smile. It’s not the most romantic thing a man might say, but it means a lot to me.
    He shifts and arranges himself to fit perfectly next to me, chin on my head, like we’re two puzzle pieces. We’ve always fit well together; that’s one of the big things about us. Even last fall, in the chaos after I confessed that I’d been sent to disillusion him, we’d attended a charity ball together. We managed to have a nice time of it, in spite of it all.
    But soon after, he told me he needed to step back—
to repair
, he’d said. And there was the election to think about. He’d decided to run, and needed to focus on that for a bit. And we disillusionists regrouped and began disillusioning the prisoners Otto’s holding with his mind. That was the deal: Packard’s freedom in exchange for usdisillusioning Otto’s prisoners. Every one we turn loose reduces the dangerous strain on Otto’s brain.
    Otto runs his thumb back and forth along the silky lining of my coat in a motion that seems almost self-soothing. Otto doesn’t trust hospitals any more than I do; we’re both acutely aware that more people die in hospitals than anywhere else.
    “I couldn’t make that promise to Covian,” he says suddenly. “I won’t let fear make me hide. But I’ll tell you this—I won’t use highcap bodyguards anymore. Even Jimmy.” He gestures toward the front. “I won’t put the highcaps who work for me in danger just because I won’t hide. Human bodyguards and human drivers
only
until this is over.”
    “You should wear a vest, too.”
    “I do,”