Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two (32 page)

As it was, I saw zero recognition in his handsome face.

The impression strengthened the longer I watched him.

I also started to wonder if maybe Razmun wasn’t in here looking for me and Nik, after all. I watched the whole scene in my peripherals, only looking at them directly via the bar mirror, and then just long enough to memorize details on the six guys I didn’t know. Even so, I saw enough to wonder about Razmun’s motives. He didn’t look like someone on the hunt. He didn’t look like someone trying not to be seen, either.

Truthfully? He looked like an ordinary business guy here for a meeting.

Of course, in saying that, I was using human, Earth criteria and signals.

Still, I couldn’t help thinking I was right. I also couldn’t help noticing that Razmun wore an Earth suit...an expensive-looking one. He looked similar to how he had on the television the other night, in fact, like a young politician making his mark on the local scene.

The thought made me sink deeper into my chair, hunching my shoulders.

After the barest hesitation, Razmun crossed the floor, approaching the booth full of Slavs and the mirrored wall door. The giant Slav continued to stand there, waiting for him. Razmun continued to move cautiously, I noted, taking in every detail of the men in front of him, as if he thought things might take a sudden, nasty turn.

As he got closer to that mirrored wall, the guy in the leather booth rose to his feet, too.
 

For the first time, I got a look at his face.

Once I had, I started a bit, staring at him openly, if via the mirror.

He
was
pretty cute.

More to the point, he was the guy from Laurie Devereaux’s phone––meaning, the guy Hilary snapped a sneak picture of outside her favorite clothing store in Westlake Mall.

The same guy who had been handing out flyers to teenaged girls, inviting them to an open call for young models.
 

As for the giant Russian in the silk shirt, he reminded me more and more of something out of a cartoon, or maybe that old Dick Tracy movie with the villains with the weird-looking faces. He stood around six-foot-five and weighed maybe three hundred pounds...so yeah, a hulk of a guy, even for his age, which I estimated at late thirties, early forties.
 

Now that I could see him more or less directly, I noted that he had a face like he’d lost a fight with a tractor, or maybe an eighteen-wheeler truck. His whole countenance looked squashed as a result. Scars ran down both of his cheeks in a nearly symmetrical pattern. I glimpsed scars on visible portions of his body, too, including on his neck and hands.

The young guy, with the svelte body and the designer leather jacket, looked a lot more like the son of someone powerful versus someone who’d earned what he had on his own. He was young, for one thing. But something else about him screamed inherited money, too...something I had no way of cataloguing specifically. Maybe it was the fact that his friends reminded me more of a high school posse than true business associates.

Either way, I distinctly got the feeling that tractor-face had a much longer connection to this organization, whatever it was, then the young guy with the Italian shoes.

The giant with the fucked-up face also looked like he’d been in the States longer.

While he still had a lingering flavor of “new immigrant” to his clothes and jewelry, something told me he’d spent more time here, maybe not all of it in Seattle. His loud but expensive-looking shirt looked like he bought it when he’d been about thirty pounds lighter. It pooched just enough between the buttons to show off bits of his thick, pale flesh.

Like the younger guys from the booth, he had some kind of grease in his dark blond hair, and wore at least one gold chain around his neck.

All in all, he looked a lot more like guys I’d seen in New York than what I usually ran into on the West Coast.

Moreover, he had career criminal written all over him.

I watched Razmun approach him and the other Europeans, still using the mirror and my peripherals. Right as the morph got within speaking distance, the young guy stepped in front of the giant with the squashed face and extended his hand. They shook, Razmun still looking wary, and the younger guy grinned at him, flashing white teeth in the dark area by the mirrored door.

Then two things happened.

One, I caught a glimpse of a fast-moving, black, furry shape right as it disappeared through the still-open mirrored door, behind the feet of the big Russian.

Shit. That had to be Nik.

Then the second thing happened.

Another person burst into the bar, moving fast and causing a ripple of tense energy to course through the room ahead of him. He moved like he was late, or really tightly wound...or both. Either way, I couldn’t help looking towards the door and towards him as he entered.

When I did, again using the mirror, I sucked in a surprised breath.

Holy crap. Evers.

As in Michael Evers, the guy who wanted both me and Nik dead.

More importantly, Evers turned out to be the guy Razmun had been expecting to meet.

That little nugget hit me the instant I saw Razmun turn to see who’d entered the bar. I watched Razmun’s posture loosen, right before he smiled, extending a hand to shake Evers’, who I quickly realized stood almost as tall as tractor-face. Michael Evers’ body was a lot more fit and broad-shouldered than the Russian’s, and he was at least ten years younger, but between the two of them and the not-inconsiderable height of Razmun himself, at least in his human form, the three of them made a formidable-looking group.

That was even apart from the five guys from the leather booth.

Any or all of whom might be packing heat.

My sense of unreality worsened as I watched Razmun and Evers continue to stand there, exchanging now-friendly introductions with the rest of the group. The men were all smiles now...all buddy-buddy and we’re-all-just-some-business-guys-doing-business together...which made it even weirder.

I think I just couldn’t stutter past the leaps of logic and coincidence wrapped up in all that, not for a few seconds, anyway. Moreover, I struggled to make myself believe that none of this had anything to do with me and Nik.

At that point I was almost staring at their group openly.

Which, yeah, was dumb.
 

Thankfully, none of them seemed to notice.
 

I was still using the bar mirror, at least, but it may not have mattered if I hadn’t been. None of them appeared to be looking around at anyone outside of their tightly-clustered group, not anymore.

I continued to stare, blinking through the dim light as they talked and laughed. I watched them like that until they disappeared through that mirrored door, the giant Russian leading Razmun and the younger Russian through first. The latter paused only long enough to motion to the bartender to bring them all a round of drinks.

When he turned to face me almost directly, I was even more sure he was the guy from Laurie Deveraux’s phone. He turned away quickly, not noticing me at all, so I just sat there, watching helplessly, as the mirrored door closed behind him and the others.

Once it had, I looked around on the floor.
 

I even got up and looked behind the bar, hoping I’d been wrong about what I’d seen. I casually looked around the rest of the dim space, too.

But I hadn’t been. Wrong, that is.

Nik the cat wasn’t there.

Which meant he had to be locked inside that back room.

Sitting back on the barstool with my jacket on it, I tried to decide what to do.

The mirrored door opened again, a few minutes later, when the bartender brought back two bottles of expensive-looking vodka, along with a tray of empty rocks glasses. He also carried an ice bucket jammed under his arm. The bartender returned seconds later, empty-handed, and the door closed with a snap, again without me seeing Nik return to this side.

A part of me still wanted to believe this couldn’t be real, that I was imagining things.

But that really had been Razmun.

...and that really had been Michael Evers, shaking Razmun’s hand and grinning at him like a sociopathic ape.
 

Razmun had come here for a meeting with Michael Evers. I couldn’t make myself interpret what I’d seen any other way. The two of them definitely knew one another. No way had that been Razmun and Evers’ first meeting, or even their second.

And Nik was in there now, presumably to eavesdrop, disguised as a black cat.
 

My mind whirled around the connections, trying to make sense of them.

Michael Evers, according to what I’d just seen, clearly knew the Russians who owned this place, too. Since those same Russians might secretly be mob bosses stealing young girls for sale on the black market, and given who Evers was...

...Okay, that part made a twisted kind of sense.
 

Even so, the sheer
number
of connections and coincidences––as well as coincidences that that didn’t feel much like coincidences––floored me.

Like, how did Evers even
meet
Razmun?

It occurred to me that it had probably happened the opposite way. Meaning, Razmun likely hunted down Evers. I remembered suddenly that I’d told Ledi, back on Palarine, the story about how Nik and I met in that alley. I doubted I’d told him Evers’ name, but
maybe
I had. The thought was chilling, but it was also the only one that made any kind of sense.
 

It still left a lot of questions, however.

Right around when I was thinking all that, I remembered the implant link.

“Nik?”
I ventured, using that same link.
“Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

I expelled a faint breath, half relief and half a sharp rush of frustration.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, Nik?”

“Listening. In fact, you really shouldn’t distract me right now, Dakota.”

I bit my lip, thinking about his words.
“Should I wait for you?”

“No,”
Nik said at once.
“Razmun might see you...or the other one.”
He paused, and I could almost hear the others talking through the connection we shared. Nik seemed to wait for a pause in their dialog, then spoke again.
“I’ll tell you everything I am hearing,”
he said.
“Later, though. Leave my clothes on the ground outside the back of the building. I’ll find them.”

“Nik,”
I said, exasperated.
“Someone else might find them, too.”

“Cover them up with something. The clothes.”

Biting my lip, I nodded, not sure why I was bothering to argue.

“Fine,”
I said finally, exhaling in a grumble.
“But I’m waiting for you, Nik. I’ll wait outside, okay? In the back.”

“That’s not a good idea.”

I exhaled in frustration again.
“I’m not leaving you here.”
 

“I will be careful,”
he said.
“Go home, Dakota. I will be less distracted without you here. Go back to work...to do whatever you had planned after coming here. It is not safe for you to stay here. They have already mentioned your name.”

I pressed my lips together, about to argue again, but Nik cut me off.

“We talked about this, Dakota,”
he reminded me.
“About being business partners. About not risking the job for one another...or taking unnecessary chances unless it was logical.”

I felt my jaw harden. We had talked about it. About needing to act like business partners when we were doing this kind of stuff. About not doing anything crazy to try and protect one another when neither of us needed protecting in that way. A talk I initiated, by the way, in an effort to get Nik to understand that going postal on human beings in public wasn’t a great idea, no matter who they were. Not when he was supposed to be laying low, and not calling attention to himself. I’d also been trying to get Nik to understand that going after dangerous people was
normal
for me, that it was part of my actual job.