Limitless (22 page)

“Well, he broke that rule today in rather spectacular fashion,” Webster said.

“Oh?” Karthik asked. “What did he do?”

“Blew up three buildings around the Hartsford Gallery and killed nearly a hundred cops,” Webster said.

Karthik’s eyes widened. “What’s that American expression? ‘Go big or go home’?”

“Known associates?” I asked, bringing us back on point before I was forced to come up with something to rebut that quote. Given my track record of late, it would probably backfire in yet another hilarious double entendre.

Karthik scrolled, then held up his hands. “I have nothing for you there. His mentor has been dead for a decade. I can give you a list of groups that have hired him—” He froze. “Well, that’s interesting.”

I felt a tickle down the back of my neck. “Let me guess: Omega has tried to hire him in the past.”

“He made the bombs that we destroyed your Directorate with,” Karthik said in surprise. “Went to America and built them himself, showed our people where to place them based on maps of the targets—”

I felt a twitch in my eyelid. That was just another reason for me to lay a beatdown on Antonio. For a group of people I hadn’t even formally met until a few hours ago, this bunch of assholes had a lot of personal ties to me in some way or another. “Last known address?” I asked.

“Still in Cwumbran,” Karthik said.

“Oh, for—” Webster said, exasperated. “It’s pronounced Cumbran.”

“What the hell?” I felt my whole face scrunch at him. “What law of English allows for a silent W?”

“Who cares?” Webster asked, throwing his hands up. “So, if this bloke is from Cwmbran, I can have the constabulary up there knock down his door.”

“Send the local police to kick in the door of a bomb maker who created a booby trap that blew my foot off,” I said, not bothering to hide my disbelief. “You might want to reconsider that one, Ace.”

“Bomb squad, then,” Webster said, looking a bit sheepish.

“Good call.” I turned back to Karthik. “I need the contact info you have for those other two people you mentioned that were still here in London.” I racked my brain. “Um… I already forgot their names.”

Karthik looked a little steely-eyed at me. “You didn’t remember them when they were under your protection in America either, so why would you recall them now?” He let that little dagger of guilt twist in for a moment. “Angela Tewkesbury and Ryan Mortenson. I’ll find you their last known addresses, but I believe Ryan has left the city by now, and Angela has bolted if she knows what is good for her.”

I gave him a slow nod. “Best we check up on them anyway,” I said. “Because sometimes people just don’t know when to leave.” I caught him looking away, unable to meet my eyes as he went about the business of looking up the files I’d asked for.

Chapter 50

I waited for Webster to get off the phone before speaking to him on our drive back to Scotland Yard. He’d made a call, got some cops dispatched to take a look at Mortenson and Tewkesbury’s last known addresses. He’d taken one look at them and informed me that they were across the city, which was apparently not easily reachable for us at this time of day, late in the afternoon.

Staring at the cars ahead of us as we eased onto a roundabout, I bowed to his wisdom on the matter of London traffic.

“How long do you think it’ll take the police to get to them?” I asked. The car smelled a little like fish and chips because one of us—okay, it was me—had wrapped up a bit of fish in a paper napkin and brought it along two stops ago. What? I was hungry.

“Couple of hours, I’d imagine,” he said, nodding as he took us out of the roundabout on the other side. I had to admit, I preferred intersections with stop signs or stop lights to traffic circles, but part of that was because I’d traveled through a Wisconsin town last year that had gone nuts with the damned things, slowing down what otherwise might have been a pretty fast trip into a slow, painful crawl. The town only had a thousand people, tops. Just spring for the traffic lights, you damned cheapskates.

“Hopefully we’ll catch up to them alive,” I said, just putting that thought out there. Webster seemed a little distant, like he was running through a few thoughts of his own after sending out his orders.

“Hopefully,” he said by way of agreement. I could tell he was working up to something, and then he said, “Can I ask you about the war?”

Not exactly the question I’d been thinking he’d ask. “Okay,” I said.

“How many people did you kill?”

I was taken completely aback. I shouldn’t have been; I got asked this question all the time, usually by starry-eyed girls and hormone-propelled guys. From the guys it was the ultimate macho question; from the girls it was usually a quiet indictment. It didn’t always work that way, of course. I’d had a guy ask me once in a bar in Minneapolis and then spit on me when I’d given him the honest answer. Letting him walk away with both of his lungs still in his chest may have been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I’m including the day that I turned into a flaming dragon and shredded a man with my jaws.

Needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled to find out what Webster’s reaction was going to be, because he didn’t seem like the macho, hormone-driven type that would punch me on the shoulder and call me “Bro” as a compliment once he heard.

Still, I answered honestly. “I don’t know.”

He blinked at the wheel in near disbelief. “You don’t know? You’re not sure how many people you killed?”

“I didn’t exactly keep a pad with hash marks, you know? I didn’t have a cockpit where I could paint the tally as I went.” I squeezed my arms tightly across my chest. “It was war. Toward the end, especially, they weren’t human beings to me. They were numbers. I had a hundred of them to wipe out and I damned well did it.”

“So…” he didn’t sound like he wanted to let it go, “… a hundred?”

I felt my eyes burn in the most curious way. “More than that.”

“Two hundred?”

I felt a scratch in my throat and attempted to clear it to no avail. “Probably somewhere between a hundred and two hundred.”

“Were they all part of that band that was exterminating your people?”

I felt a shiver unrelated to the air conditioner. “Mostly. Them or the mercenaries they hired to do some of their dirty work.” Or the enemies I made even before Century and their extermination scheme fell into my crosshairs.

“Ever kill any civilians?” he asked.

“No,” I snapped.

“Just curious,” he said, shrugging. “It’s war, I know sometimes accidents happen.”

“Not to me,” I said. “I didn’t have any accidents. I was very focused when I was… doing what I was doing.” For a person who said the first part with such certainty, I sure did let the second part of that sentence trail off.

“I would say it’s probably best you’re out of it now,” he said, tentatively, “but I suppose these last few days it probably seems like you’re right back in the thick of it again.”

I grunted. What could I say to that? This time the body count was all at the feet of the other side. Well, so far it had been.

“Why did you stay on?” Webster asked. He must have caught my cockeyed look at him. “After the war, I mean. The way you said it, you’d seen that pile of gold in the Omega base, and you had access to it. It was all yours.”

“Honestly,” I said, looking out the window, “I totally forgot about it until just now.”

“You forgot about a pile of gold that could make you as rich as Harry Potter, at least?” Webster chuckled. “I notice you didn’t bring any of it with you.”

I held up my hands. “I don’t have a purse to carry it in.”

He gave that half-shrug again. “Still, it seems like to me a lady just looking to do a job might have jumped all over that pile of gold like—”

I felt the dam that was my patience break open, and I leaned over to him. “Just get to the point and say what you mean to say already.”

“I was just wondering,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “why someone would choose to keep doing a job that—by your own admission—gives you no time off, has you running ’round the world like your arse is on fire and you’re in a perpetual race to put it out. I was wondering why someone would do all that when they had riches beyond most measures right at their fingertips.”

I stared straight ahead. “Why do you think?”

“Because you want to be a force for good, I reckon.”

I felt a light cackle build until it burst forth from my lips. “You say ‘be a force for good’ like it’s something easy to choose. Like it doesn’t require sacrifices that eat the whole heart out of you.”

He turned his head, almost apologetic. “There are other jobs—”

“You think this is a job?” I snapped. “Clock in at nine, punch out at five? It’s not. It’s my life. Twenty-four hours a day, seven a week, three-sixty-five.” I felt my speech deteriorate as the sentence tailed off, like I was so beyond caring that it didn’t even matter to me that I was missing words.

“Then why don’t you quit?” he asked simply.

I stayed speechless for about a minute, and my mind snapped back to the multitude of people who had died in the days after I left my house for the first time. “Because once upon a time I sat back and let a lot of people die while I felt completely powerless to stop them. And now I’ve got power enough to stop anyone who threatens to do the same.”

“So it’s like a debt, then?” His eyes were dark, his manner quiet.

“One I can never pay back.” I swallowed hard. “Never.”

His cell phone beeped and he held it up, a text message lighting the faceplate. He frowned, a look of distaste marring his handsome face. “What?” I asked.

“Commissioner Marshwin wishes to see us back at the station immediately,” he said, looking up at me. “It would appear that Parliament has come to some decisions… and none of them sound very good.”

Chapter 51

Angela Tewkesbury screamed and screamed, and Philip enjoyed every note of it. He couldn’t decide if it was his imagination or if Liliana was going even rougher on her because she was a girl. Either way, this delicious pain felt likely to go on for some time, and that rather pleased Philip.

The only problem was one that there was simply no escaping. He covered his hand with a sleeve as he yawned, the day’s labors having wearied him terribly.

Liliana noticed, halting her routine of slow cutting, as Tewkesbury made a strangled, crying noise beneath her. “Is this boring you, boss?”

“Not at all,” Philip said, stifling another yawn into his hand. “I’m afraid I’ve just reached the end of my stamina for the day. A good night’s sleep, perhaps a bit of a lie-in, and I’ll be quite fresh and ready to continue tomorrow.”

She looked straight at him, and he could see her assessing, judging, trying to weigh what he had said. “It has been a long day,” she finally said. It sounded like a very reluctant concession.

“Exactly,” Philip said with another yawn. “Let’s adjourn for the night. Give her time to stew in her juices. Give her a chance to look into her future,” he nodded toward Janus, who was stripped and hanging upside down, still dripping blood from Liliana’s previous efforts. “Approaching this again in the morning should offer a fresh perspective, perhaps some new pain.” He kept down another yawn, but only barely. “Or at least a newfound appreciation given that my eyes will actually be open.”

“Perhaps.” Liliana slung her knives downward as she stood from the squat she’d been in. Blood flicked from the blades of her knives and spattered into the puddle on the floor. Philip watched it in a daze, watched the droplets rejoin the sea below, and wondered exactly how much more he’d see spilled before he got everything he wanted.

Chapter 52

Commissioner Marshwin was in her office, in a snit, and—for all I knew—experiencing the worst day of her professional career. The air felt stale as she filled it with heavy words. I tried to pay attention, but it was hard. Mainly because she was talking at a comically elevated level and her accent seemed to go Deep Scottish, something I did not have any experience with.

“And what do you have to say about that?” she asked, presumably noticing the glazed-over look in my eyes at last. She slowed down for this, making herself understood in the process.

“Sorry for your losses,” I said, shrugging. I actually did mean it. It was never easy to be the boss when you lost people in the line of duty. I knew from experience.

“That it?” This with an air of disbelief. It was just her and me in the office, though I wished Webster were here to experience this joyous occasion as well. I didn’t usually take a lot of crap, but today it was coming from all sides, and I didn’t feel quite as predisposed to putting her face in the carpeting as I had the ambassador.

“I’m not sure what else you want me to say.”

“How about an explanation for all this?” She was looking at me with straight-on irritation.

“Some guy is pissed off about something,” I said. “He decided to steal a painting and punch your department in the face in the process. He’s also murdering people by having a knife-wielding psycho beast carve them up like Easter ham.”

“I know this much already from DI Webster’s reports,” she said, more than a little agitated. “You’re telling me you can’t give me any sort of explanation as to who this is causing my problems or why it’s happening?”

“It’s all a mystery to me,” I said. “But hey, I got you a couple names for this guy’s accomplices. Which is more than you’d have without me.”

“This is precisely the sort of madness that has Parliament pondering a law even now to remove your kind from the United Kingdom,” Marshwin said with something between disgust and self-satisfaction.

“Good luck with that,” I said, slapping my hand on my knee and rising to leave.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“To go find this guy, truss him up, and hang him on that coat rack in your corner,” I said, gesturing at the wooden monstrosity that took up three square feet of floor space. “I know the UK doesn’t have the death penalty anymore, but I figure if I leave him there long enough, you’ll drown him in sanctimony and speechifying.”