Just Like a Man (2 page)

"But the guy is especially good at making threats," his former boss said. "Serious threats. And we've never doubted for a moment that he would carry them out if he didn't get what he wanted."

"Has he made any threats since he resurfaced?" Raptor asked.

"Not yet."

"Then why do you need me?"

"Because it's
Sorcerer,
man. What other reason do you need?"

Raptor shook his head slowly, more than a little reluctant to become a part of whatever imbroglio was brewing between OPUS and Sorcerer. "I can't believe this is why you jerked me out of my life on absolutely no notice and flew me here. You should have known I wouldn't take the job. I don't care who it involves."

His superior gritted his teeth, then stubbed out his cigar so brutally that the government-issue ashtray went skittering over the side of the government-issue desk to land in a smoldering heap of broken government-issue glass on the government-issue linoleum beneath. "No, I flew you here," he said fiercely, "because I knew you
would
take the job. I know you, Raptor. You're a man of your word."

"I'm also a father now," Raptor reminded him. "A single father, at that. And that supersedes everything that came before. Everything. Even OPUS."

"Nothing supersedes OPUS."

"Family does."

He could tell by the other man's expression that his ex-boss didn't believe that for a minute, despite the fact that the other man wore a plain gold band on the ring finger of his left hand. "If you don't complete this assignment," he said, "we could be looking at a time when nobody in the world will have a family anymore. Including you."

Raptor swallowed hard. Somehow, he could believe that. Maybe his superior was being overly dramatic. But he doubted it because whatever the hell was going on, Sorcerer was involved. And Sorcerer had always played by his own rules and had always played for keeps. And his rule book, Raptor knew, wasn't anything like anyone else's. In fact, he was pretty sure Sorcerer's rule book contained only one rule: I want the world, and I want it now. Okay, so maybe that was two rules. And maybe they weren't so much rules as they were a personal philosophy. What mattered was that you didn't want to get in Sorcerer's way.

"I'm finished with OPUS," he said halfheartedly, knowing he meant it, but knowing, too, what he had to do.

"Well, OPUS isn't finished with you," his superior said. "We need you again. You know Sorcerer better than anyone does. You always have. We can't do this without you."

Raptor expelled a long, weary breath. "When do you need me?"

"Yesterday," the other man told him.

He shook his head. "Can't yesterday. Can't this week. I'm booked up. I have math/science night at school on Monday, a Scout meeting on Tuesday, a Parents' Association meeting on Wednesday, and it's my turn to carpool swim practice Thursday. Saturday, I have to coach Little League. Look, a week from Friday is the last day of school. How about I go after Sorcerer then?"

He was only half joking. He was a lot more scared of some of the mothers in the Parents' Association than he was Sorcerer. Those women expected him to volunteer for stuff.

"It doesn't work like that, and you know it," the other man said. "This isn't going to be a one-day assignment, Raptor. This will take months. Becoming a father has obviously made you soft."

Damn right it had. And Raptor wouldn't have it any other way.

"Look," his superior began again, "if it will help matters, you can take your son with you on this assignment. He'll get a helluva book report out of it."

Raptor emitted a single, derisive chuckle. "Yeah, right."

His boss turned serious. Too serious. "No, I mean it, Raptor. Your son will come in handy on this mission."

Raptor eyed the other man warily for a moment, fearful he meant what he said. But that wasn't possible. His son was only nine years old, and his boss knew it. So, "Oh, sure," he said. "And I guess you'll be giving him a weapon, too, huh?"

"No, he won't get a weapon. Good God, man, he's only nine years old. But like I said, he'll come in handy for this assignment."

"Very funny. Get real."

"I am real, Raptor. We need your son for this mission. So you're going to have to bring him in, too."

"I guess you're all wondering why I called you here today."

The minute the words were out of her mouth, Hannah Frost regretted them. She was the overworked, overextended, overdressed, but egregiously underpaid—not that she was bitter or anything—director of a tony private school in Indianapolis, not a fez-wearing, hookah-puffing nightclub owner in a Howard Hawks
film noire.
In place of exotic Moroccan attire, she sported a classic—meaning she'd owned it for more than a decade—dove-gray Ralph Lauren suit and crisp white silk blouse, her only accessory discreet pearl earrings. And a fez would have wreaked havoc on the fawn-colored hair she'd cinched into a flawless French twist that morning.

She
did,
after all, have a position as an overworked, overextended, overdressed, but egregiously underpaid—not that she was bitter or anything—director of a tony private school in Indianapolis to uphold. Not to mention scores of trophy wife/mothers to compete with. And the mothers—Hannah hesitated to call them
moms
—of the Emerson Academy were fashionistas out the wazoo. To put it in less-than-academic terms. To put it in even less academic terms, Sidney Greenstreet and Humphrey Bogart would have had their sartorial butts kicked by those women.

Despite the lack of fez and
film noire,
however, Hannah was surrounded by the usual suspects. At least, that was what she was thinking as she surveyed the trio of characters seated on the other side of her desk. One of those people, in fact, was a
too-usual
suspect: Alex Sawyer, the Emerson Academy's newest pupil, who had arrived in their midst only a month before, at the start of the new school year.

His permanent record—yes, in fact, those did exist, in spite of urban legends to the contrary—indicated that his transfer had come about because he hadn't been a "good fit" at his last school. And any educator worth her salt knew that
not a good fit
was teacher code for
major troublemaker.
Especially since Alex's last school had been one that prided itself on accommodating even the most challenging students.

Interestingly, though, Alex had quickly proven himself to be Emerson's brightest pupil, too, remarkably gifted in both math and language arts. Even though he had just started fourth grade, he was reading at a high school level and doing algebra fairly effortlessly. Unfortunately, in addition to being a remarkably gifted student, Alex Sawyer was also a remarkably gifted pain in the butt.

All of nine years old he was, with a mop of unruly brown curls and hazel eyes that could break the heart of a lesser tony private school director. A faint smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose completed the picture of what could have been a lovable, precocious movie moppet. But Alex Sawyer wasn't a movie moppet, Hannah knew. No, Alex Sawyer was the prince of darkness.

Oh, his conduct was acceptable enough. In fact, there were times when Hannah thought the boy was a little
too
well behaved. He was never late to class, he always had his homework finished neatly and on time, and he voiced all the requisite niceties like
please
and
thank you
and
Wow, is that a new look for you? It's fabulous!

But the kid was a liar, no two ways about it—which, now that she thought about it, sort of negated that nicety about the fabulous new look thing—and since coming to Emerson, the boy hadn't made a single remark that could be reasonably believed. If he commented one day that the sky was blue, then, by golly, Hannah wanted to call the National Weather Service to find out what was wrong with the atmospheric conditions overhead.

A handful of Alex's prevarications had gone
too
far, though, something that had led him to Hannah's office on more than one occasion. For example, his mother, he had told his new acquaintances at Emerson the week he arrived, had mysteriously disappeared five years ago after being force-fed an untraceable toxin bioengineered by an arcane band of rogue spies in some Eastern European country that Hannah was fairly certain didn't exist. In any event,
she'd
never heard of Badguyistan. Not to mention that, according to Alex's records, his mother and father had divorced five years ago on the very mundane grounds of irreconcilable differences, with his father being awarded full custody. So that was a definite clue that maybe, just maybe, Alex was making up that stuff about the rogue spies.

The father, it went without saying, was currently number two on the list of usual suspects seated across from Hannah, even though the man was anything but usual. This was his first visit to her office, even though she'd tried to see him several times before now. But Michael Sawyer seemed to go out of town a lot for his job, something that—just a shot in the dark—might be contributing to his son's incessant need to invent outlandish tales. Alex obviously craved a more stable family environment. Because he had also told his class-mates that he used to have twin sisters, who had, alas, been kidnapped and sold into bondage by an arcane band of rogue slave traders in yet another country that Hannah was pretty confident didn't exist—Outer Villainopolis. According to Alex's records, however, he was—and had always been—an only child. Besides, there was also no mention in those records of him having lived anywhere other than Indiana for the past five years, and before that, he'd been a resident of Maryland, where he was born. And the last time Hannah had checked, indentured servitude hadn't been a major source of income for Indiana
or
Maryland.

And then there was the latest Alex fiction that had begun making the rounds of the Emerson Academy earlier in the week, that his father could hack into the computers of the Pentagon, the Kremlin, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund,
and
Toys "R" Us, and had done so on a number of occasions. But Hannah knew that Michael Sawyer was a CPA who couldn't hack his way out of a paper bag. She knew the CPA part from Alex's school registration, and about the paper bag hacking because Michael Sawyer had told her about it within moments of his arrival in her office, when presented with the news that his son had been reporting otherwise.

In spite of his reassurances to the contrary, however, there was something about Alex's father that did sort of smack of forbidden entry. Certainly he didn't look like a CPA—or, at least, not like the stereotype of CPA. Maybe he was sort of an liber-accountant, Hannah thought. That might explain the aura of… of… überness… about him.

Tall, dark, and handsome really wasn't a fitting description for him, maybe because that was a stereotype, too. But the man was most definitely tall, easily topping six feet. Hannah, at five-ten, wasn't accustomed to having to tilt her head back to make eye contact with anyone, but from the moment Michael Sawyer had walked into her office, she'd felt downright petite. And also strangely uneasy, because there was something about him, something smoldering and urgent and fierce, that made her think he might spontaneously combust at any moment. Or maybe she felt like that because whenever she looked at him, she felt smoldering and urgent and fierce, as if
she
might spontaneously combust at any moment.