Mortal Ties (32 page)

“Just what I said, and this isn’t the time to talk about it.”

Turner opened the door and moved silently into the other room. Drummond followed Yu
through the door. He could go through walls, but he liked to use doors. Made him feel
more real. She had her rig fastened by the time she stopped beside Turner. She drew
her weapon and held it down at her side.

The two of them glowed. He’d told Yu that all the embodied had a glow, but these two
lit up brighter than most…and brighter still when they stood close like that. Drummond
thought he knew why. It was that weird, glowy cord stretched between them.

No one else had one. None of the people he’d seen since
he died, anyway, and with nothing to do but watch, he’d been paying attention. He
didn’t know what the cord-thing was, but it glowed like the living did. As if it was
alive. It freaked him out. He stepped back, not wanting to touch the eerie thing.

Turner stood in front of the vent, studying it. Yu started to say something, but Turner
tapped her arm and laid a finger to his lips.

“You hear something?” she whispered so softly that Drummond wasn’t sure he heard it
with his ears. Well, whatever passed for ears with him like this. It wasn’t like when
she’d talked in his head at the branch office, so it probably had to do with their
goddamn mystical connection.

Turner nodded and tipped his head to one side. Yu glanced that way and nodded back
as if she knew exactly what he meant.

Maybe she did. She went to the door to the other bedroom and opened it. She didn’t
step inside, though, but whispered real softly again. “Get up. Be quiet. Someone’s
coming.”

In total silence, three men went from what looked like sound sleep to standing. Then
they stood there, naked and motionless. Waiting.

Yu jerked her head at them—come on—and went back in the sitting room, where Turner
looked at them and wiggled his hands around as if it meant something, pointing now
and then. Two of the naked guys stood with him in front of the vent. One went to the
door to the suite and opened it.

“Did he tell them to do all that?” Drummond said.

Yu glanced at him, opened her mouth, then closed it. And put words right into his
damn mind again.
Yes. It’s ASL, mostly. He wants the guards at the door to know what’s happening.

The guy who’d gone to the door came back. Drummond hadn’t heard him say anything to
the two guys guarding the door. Maybe he’d used ASL, too. Turner made some more
hand-talk at him, and he loped silently into the bedroom he’d emerged from, returning
with a wood-gripped 9 mm in one hand—a Smith and Wesson 952, he thought. An expensive
piece, if so. He was still buck naked.

Turner pointed at the other two, made a circle in the air…and the two guys without
guns turned into wolves.

Al had been around when lupi turned into wolves once, but he hadn’t really watched.
He’d been busy at the time, what with being freshly dead and trying to stop a bunch
of demons shaped like wolves from killing a few hundred people. This time, he paid
attention. It gave him the creeps to think of a man morphing into a beast, but it
was better to know your enemy, right? So he watched, but he didn’t see much. It was
like they flowed somewhere else, somewhere he couldn’t go, then flowed back, reformed.

He hadn’t expected to hear anything. “Did you…” He had to stop and clear his throat.
“Does that music happen every time they do that?”

Yu looked at him sharply.
You heard music?

He nodded. Clear and distant, so distant he shouldn’t have heard it…and pure. Pure
like a baby’s laugh or the way stars look, spattering the darkness. Pure like nothing
he’d ever heard or imagined. “Real faint,” he said. “It was…” He shook his head, out
of words.

Yu had a funny look on her face, like he’d made her sad. Wistful, maybe.
Moonsong
, she said in the way he didn’t like but was getting used to.
You heard moonsong.

A faint scraping came from the vent. Drummond shook off his preoccupation with something
he’d barely heard and paid attention to what was happening now. So did Yu and her
wolf man and the two wolves.

The vent cover wiggled, started to fall. A man’s hand shot out and grabbed it. A man’s
head emerged. “Oh,” Jasper Machek said, blinking like an owl at the odd group assembled
below him. And, “Shit.”

“I
guess you heard me coming,” Jasper Machek said. He shook his head. “I’m rusty, that’s
what. Getting old and rusty.”

“Rule’s hearing is better than ours,” Lily said. “A lot better.”

“So I’m told.” The thought didn’t cheer him up. His face was tight, his expression
abstracted. If he was bothered by the two very large wolves sitting in front of him,
watching his every muscle twitch, it didn’t show.

Drummond was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed, watching and listening. Or
that’s what he seemed to be doing. Could a ghost be supported by a wall?

Rule had assured Machek that the suite had been swept for bugs and Friar couldn’t
eavesdrop here magically. Machek hadn’t believed him, but it was clear that either
Rule was correct or it was too late to worry about it. Once he’d wriggled out of his
hole in the wall, Rule had had Todd pat him down. Not that he could conceal much with
all the Lycra in his clothes—they were skin-tight, even the handy-dandy vest he wore
with its interesting pockets. All the
better for crawling through very tight spaces, Lily assumed.

In the vest’s pockets Todd had found two phones, a set of lockpicks, and a small,
top-of-the-line bug detector. There was also a wallet with five hundred in cash and
an ID that claimed he was Richard Spallings. No weapons. Rule gave everything back
to Jasper, then invited him to have a seat while he called Scott. He filled Scott
in quickly, told him to alert the other guards—those with Cullen and the two Laban
with Beth—and return to the suite. He said he’d call the guards at Machek’s house
himself.

Machek sat bolt upright. “Don’t pull them off my house! If Friar knows you’ve pulled
them, he’ll—”

“I need to know they’re alive and well,” Rule said.

Machek smiled bitterly. “Did you think I could overcome werewolves? I suppose I should
be flattered. They’re fine. They didn’t see me leave because I used an alternative
exit.”

“Did you, now? Perhaps you’ll tell me about that in a moment.” Rule tapped on the
screen of his phone.

Lily was standing beneath the hole Machek had crawled out of, studying it. “I can’t
believe you fit. It’s wide enough, but it’s not even a foot high.”

“Twelve point two inches,” Machek said absently. “Tight but doable.”

“You measured?”

“I did a job here once. That was years ago, but I took a chance they hadn’t refitted
their ducts. People don’t, mostly. Costs too much.”

The hotel hadn’t cleaned their ducts, either. Jasper Machek’s black, stretchy clothes
were covered in dust. Lily had hurriedly tossed a blanket on the couch before he sat
down. They’d managed not to break any furniture so far. Why add a big cleaning bill
to their tab?

Rule finished talking to whichever guard he’d called and disconnected. “Chris and
Alan are fine, if chagrinned that you evaded them. They’ll continue to watch the house.
What can I offer you to eat or drink? The bar here is reasonably well stocked.”

“Nothing.” After a moment he remembered to add, “Thank you.”

Rule looked at Patrick, who’d hastily pulled on a pair of jeans. “Have room service
send up four pots of coffee and an assortment of—”

“Don’t call room service! They can’t know I’m here. If they—”

“Jasper,” Rule said, “There are eight adults registered to this suite, seven of whom
are lupi. It’s barely past ten o’clock. Room service will not be amazed by an order
for refreshments.”

“Of course.” Machek rubbed his face. “I’m panicking. I don’t usually, but this is…I
need to tell you why I’m here.”

“You do, yes,” Rule said, and moved to sit in the chair facing his brother. “Has Friar
called?”

Machek shook his head.

“Sandwiches and fruit okay?” Patrick asked, picking up the hotel phone.

“That would be fine. Jasper, am I to assume you came through the ductwork to avoid
being seen, rather than from some hope of surprising and slaughtering us?”

“Absolutely.”

“It’s usually a bad idea to surprise lupi,” Lily said. “It can be a bad idea to surprise
me, too.”

Machek glanced at her shoulder holster. She’d put her gun up when Todd didn’t find
any weapons on him. “I didn’t have many options. I had to talk to you. The prototype
is missing.”

Dead silence. Rule broke it to say dryly, “Does that mean it wasn’t missing before?”

“Yes. I mean no, it wasn’t.” He rubbed his face again. “Maybe I do need some coffee.
I haven’t been sleeping well. I’ll start over. Most of what I told you was true, but
even the true parts were carefully selected. I was given a script to follow. I did
as I was told, and I’m not apologizing
for it. He has Adam. You were right about that. He…they hurt him once, while I was
on the phone. Friar wanted me to hear.”

Lily exchanged a glance with Rule. He nodded, meaning she could take it for now. “You’ve
talked with Adam.”

He nodded. “Every day. I refused to do anything unless I spoke to him every day. I
made sure they weren’t using a recording. I asked questions they couldn’t have anticipated.”

“When was Adam taken?”

“Nine days ago. That’s a hellishly short time to plan and execute the kind of job
he wanted me to do, but it’s hellishly long in every other way.”

“How did Friar know you could do that kind of job?”

“I’ve got an idea about that, but—look, can I just tell you what happened without
questions for a minute?”

“Go ahead.”

“There was an attempt to get the prototype from me last night. That part was true.
Three men, one armed—at least I only saw one gun. It loomed large in my sight at the
time, but I think it was a smallish 9 mm. They were waiting for me when I got home.
The one with the gun was on the stairs between me and the door. The other two came
up behind me, blocking me. They demanded the prototype. I’d allowed for the possibility
that Friar would double-cross me, so I’d stashed it elsewhere. They assured themselves
I was telling the truth about that, then demanded I tell them where it was. I refused.
They made the obligatory threats. I refused again. They weren’t going to kill me,
not when I was the only person who knew where the damn thing was, and we were on a
public street. It was late, but we were too public for them to hurt me badly. Or so
I hoped.” He paused. “I got lucky. Mr. Peterson’s dog had gotten out again. He’s a
Great Dane with a low boredom threshold, thinks he’s a puppy. He came racing up, all
excited at these new playmates, and jumped up on one of the men. It was enough of
a distraction for me to get away.”

Lily had quietly retrieved her notebook while he was talking. “Where did you go?”

“At first I just ran. Once I was sure I’d lost them…there’s a little coffee shop on
Bradbury that stays open all night. I was close enough, so I went there. They’d searched
me, but they hadn’t taken anything. I still had both phones—”

“Both?” The door to the hall opened. A quick glance told her it was Scott; Rule asked
him something using hand-talk, and he left again. Lily focused on Jasper.

“My phone and the throwaway Friar sent me. I contacted Friar.”

“You have his number.”

“No, he calls me. To contact him, I log on to a chat board and leave a message. I
was told what name to use. They look for posts from handydog12 and for certain key
words. That’s how I let him know I had the prototype—I used ‘success’ in a post. To
get him to call me I posted ‘disregard my last message.’ Thirty minutes later he called
me. I told him about the attempt.”

“Did you tell him the thieves weren’t successful?”

“Yes.” He leaned forward, looking at the hands he clasped between his knees. “I thought
about lying, but if those were his men, he’d know, wouldn’t he? I couldn’t take the
chance. If I lie, he punishes Adam. That’s why they hurt Adam before. Friar caught
me in a lie.”

Drummond stirred. “I’ve got a couple questions for him.”

In a few minutes
, she told him,
if I haven’t asked your questions already, you’ll get a shot.
It was getting easier all the time to talk to him this way. Out loud she said, “You
told Friar what happened, but you didn’t go get the prototype and give it to him.”

“No.” He looked up. “Once I do that, he doesn’t need Adam anymore, does he? He…we
were supposed to make the exchange that night, but I didn’t trust him. I told him
so. I said he’d need to prove they weren’t his men. He
laughed at me. He didn’t have to prove anything, but if I wanted to hang on to the
device for a few days, why, he had plenty for me to do. That’s when he told me to
call Rule and what to say when he got here.”