Limitless (28 page)

“Oh, thank goodness,” Wexford said, a cup of tea in his hands and a tired look on his face. “Perhaps now we can get to the crux of this without interruption.”

“You know every single cop movie gets to the point of the lead detective getting thrown off the case,” I said, looking from Wexford to Marshwin. Neither looked impressed with my comparison.

“We are not removing you from anything,” Marshwin said primly. “And as you’re hardly a lead detective, I don’t see how this applies. My lead detective is suffering from a concussion in the hospital.”

That was true. Webster was a little out of sorts, but I’d heard he’d regained consciousness. He was definitely out of the game for a bit, though, and I hadn’t spoken to him since he’d woken up.

“It’s not as though we have the power to force you in any direction,” Wexford said. “Nor would I care to, in any case.” He stirred his tea with that little spoon. “I prefer to retain the shape of my face as it presently is.”

“It’s a good look for you,” I said. My comment elicited a slight smile from him in return, as he raised his teacup in salute.

“However,” Marshwin said, “you do have a problem coming. The government will call for your expulsion, since you are presently the most visible metahuman in our country.”

“Is there a list of other ones?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Angela Tewkesbury would be the only other one I’ve heard of, and you can be well assured I’m not listing her as such on my report.”

I stared at her through narrowed eyes. “Worried she might get carted off and gassed?”

“Och,” Marshwin said, her disgust evident. “No, I don’t think she’ll be treated any such way, but it doesn’t mean I think any good will actually come of it, either.”

“I guess you could let Antonio Ruelle be the test for you,” I said. “Since it looks like he’ll be staying regardless, and he’s known.”

“Ah, yes,” Wexford said, “he will be a guest of Her Majesty for an indefinite period, and I suspect you are right. He’ll be an excellent judge of what’s to happen to metahumans in the United Kingdom, though from what I’ve heard his future won’t be particularly sinister. More boring, I’m afraid, being in confinement roughly all the time.”

“He could do worse,” I said with a grunt.

“He could indeed, as you have pointed out,” Marshwin said and glanced at the clock nervously. “I’m afraid I don’t have a great deal of time left to humor you, Ms. Nealon. I can’t allow you to remain in the building, not with this bloody law. As for this investigation,” she looked almost contrite, “I am assigning it to another detective inspector. I think it’s fairly obvious, given the direction the winds are blowing, that our conversations are at an end for now. If you plan to do something about this ‘Philip,’ whoever he is, make it soon.”

“You’ve got nothing on him?” I asked. “From the description I gave you?”

“Nothing,” Marshwin said and set her knuckles on her desk. “I wish you the best of luck in all your endeavors, but do your endeavoring elsewhere now, if you please.” She stood straighter. “My department has enough problems without having the whole of the government land upon my head.”

“I shall be glad to walk you out, Ms. Nealon,” Wexford said, suddenly on his feet. He had his coat draped over his arm, and a thin smile on his face. “If you wouldn’t be averse to my company.”

“I could not imagine a politer way to be thrown out of a building,” I said and walked through the door, which he had opened for me.

“You mustn’t blame Mary for her circumstances,” Wexford said, putting on his coat as we threaded our way through a quiet and near-empty bullpen, “she’s caught quite in the middle of this unpleasantness. I suspect you know something of being given orders from on high that make little sense to you.”

“I have a passing familiarity with it, yeah,” I said, thinking of the ten billion rules and regulations I’d been forced to adapt to after my agency, which had been so easy to run back when it was only the work to worry about, got a lot more complicated after the war once we’d gone public and the oversight had gotten serious.

“This Philip has left us with a bit of a black eye,” he said, letting me lead the way through the door out of the bullpen. “Extreme measures will have to be taken in order to soothe the unease among the populace. I apologize if these measures cause your life to be more difficult.”

“Why? Did you vote for them?” I asked sourly.

“Indeed not,” he said with a chuckle, “nor would I have were I able to.” He let a little sigh. “I came back to London with the Prime Minister after a few lovely years on my country estate. I can tell you at this point, given all that is going on, I wish I had stayed away.”

“Why didn’t you?” I asked.

He stopped as we stood in the hall, waiting for the elevator. “I should think it would be obvious to you, of all people. How did Tennyson put it? Oh, yes: ‘How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use! As tho’ to breathe were life!’” He straightened, standing tall. “There is more to life than merely surviving, or living for one’s self, after all.”

“Lot of that sentiment going around lately,” I muttered as the elevator dinged. I stepped in and Wexford followed a step behind me.

“Have you ever dealt with this type of meta before?” Wexford asked, facing the front of the elevator as the doors shut. “Cassandra, I think you called him?”

“Kindasorta,” I said, letting the wheels turn on their own. “I knew a girl—Adelaide—who was like me, a succubus. She’d absorbed one at one point.” At the behest of Omega, no less, which was trying to stuff her full of powers.

“Do you know the limits of their powers?” Wexford asked. “How they operate?”

“Not really,” I said with a shrug. “They can see the future somehow. Beyond that… I’ve got nothing.”

“Knowledge is power, as they say.” Wexford had his hands clasped in front of him, and he moved them to start buttoning his coat. I didn’t see his motion, it was so smooth, but he reached in the coat and came back with a manila folder that he slipped behind him. It took me a moment to realize that he was holding it there because there was a security camera in the corner of the lift, and that section of his body was hidden from it by the way he stood. “One gets the feeling that one is always being watched in London. It doesn’t exactly inspire me, but it is a different sort of knowledge, I suppose.”

“Probably didn’t get watched constantly on your country estate, huh?” I shuffled slightly and took the proffered folder, rolling it up and slipping it up my left sleeve while using his body as cover. I tried not to look too obvious about it, but I suspected I failed miserably.

“Good luck, Ms. Nealon,” Wexford said as the door opened. A couple cops were waiting to get on the elevator, and Wexford slipped off between them. “May you find all the knowledge you are looking for.” With a last smile, he disappeared down the hall before I could get out of the elevator, and by the time I managed to get out, he was gone.

Chapter 66

I got the hell out of New Scotland Yard as fast as I could, slipping down the first alley I came across. I parked my back against a wall, feeling the hard concrete against the back of my head as I leaned, and tried to ignore the smell of the dumpster nearby. It was worse than the smell of the one I’d been thrown in, somehow. I looked at it out of the corner of my eye as I slipped the folder out of my left sleeve, which was, not coincidentally, the sleeve on my coat that was intact.

A street light hung over my head, and the dark horizon was showing only the barest hints that it might eventually have a sun over it somewhere. I stood in the alley, catching my breath, and checked for nearby surveillance cameras. I saw none.

I paused for just a second, realizing I probably looked like I was homeless, given that part of my clothing was ripped, part of it was burned, and—oh, yeah, I still didn’t have any money. Son of a bitch. I also had no place to stay, since there was not a chance in hell I was going to go back to Marjorie now that I’d gotten her son’s apartment blown up with him nearly in it.

I stared at the manila envelope in my hands and channeled all that rage, that nearly-make-me-cry rage that I had been bottling up since I’d tried to shake Webster awake and failed, and I poured it all into thinking about Philip.

Then I opened the folder and saw his face in a photo, looking back out at me.

M
INISTRY OF
D
EFENSE
was stamped all over the damned thing. With a C instead of an S in defense. It took me about two seconds, even given how exhausted I was, to realize that this was a personnel file. Philip Delsim had worked for Britain’s defense ministry until he’d been canned about five years ago for—according to this—stealing secrets and selling them to an unknown source. They had a little of the evidence, pictures of him with a lady who didn’t look too unlike a British nanny.

“Son of a bitch.” Her name was Eleanor Madigan, and I knew her.

I scrambled and pulled my phone out of my coat pocket, fumbling to dial a contact I’d put into the damned thing just this afternoon. When I heard someone pick up on the other end of the line, I started talking before they’d even said anything. “Karthik, I need you to plug the name Philip Delsim into the Omega database.”

“All right,” he said, sounding a little stilted, like he’d just woken up. “Is there some reason I’m doing this at four o’clock in the morning?”

“Yeah,” I said, “because he’s the son of a bitch who’s about to get his ass kicked by me for all this shit he’s started.”

Chapter 67

“Philip Delsim?” The words echoed from the speakerphone, bouncing off the concrete walls. The room smelled stale, like air that hadn’t been circulated in a very, very long time. The dank of the underground setting crept in off the walls, and it almost sounded like water was dripping faintly in the distance. This far beneath the Omega building, that would hardly be surprising.

Philip Delsim stared straight ahead as Karthik spoke. He had one of Liliana’s daggers right at his throat, the blood trickling down his deep brown skin and turning the collar of the purple dress shirt he was wearing nearly black.

Philip held a single finger to his lips, now using it as an aid for contemplation as he listened to Sienna Nealon’s voice on the other end of the line while she fed instructions to Karthik like he was some trained lap dog. He listened, watched Karthik, and waited. And then he prompted Karthik toward the keyboard inches away, setting him to motion typing.

“Philip Delsim,” Karthik said. His voice was flat, about on point for a man who might have been woken in the small hours of the morning. Philip considered it fortunate timing, since he’d been waiting to start Liliana working on Karthik. He imagined it might have been somewhat worse had Nealon called only twenty minutes later; answering the phone while he was screaming would have been quite out of the question for this lad once he’d lost twenty or thirty percent of his skin. Karthik glanced at Philip, a silent look asking permission.

Philip nodded once, glancing over the monitor quickly. “I’ve got a file here,” Karthik said. “Ten year veteran of the Ministry of Defense,” Karthik said. “Was working as a double agent with Omega, feeding us… feeding them… secrets, other things. Details of interest.”

“Is there anything there about him being a Cassandra-type?” Her voice came through tinged with excitement. She thought she was a clever girl, she really did. Her breathless thrill at putting elementary pieces together was no more impressive than a full-grown adult knowing how to add one plus one, but she was foolish enough not to be aware of this.

Once again, Karthik looked to Philip for permission, which Philip gave with a nod and an arched eyebrow. This was power.

“Yes, he’s a Cassandra-type…” Karthik’s voice trailed off as Philip reached out to a section of the text with a single finger, and when Karthik’s eyes met his, Philip shook his head once, a simple no that was communicated perfectly. “No family.”

“So he was Omega’s rat inside the British government,” her voice came through. “Now he’s mad at both of them for some reason.” The dull sheen of frustration clipped her words even with that dreadful American accent. “Any idea why?”

Philip shook his head once. “The file doesn’t say,” Karthik spoke in proxy for him.

“Any last known addresses?” Sienna asked, voice crackling through the phone.

Karthik waited just a second while Philip nodded and pointed straight to the only address on the page. “There is one.” He gave it, slowly, repeating it back to her twice to make sure she had it. All the while, Philip listened with a sweet sense of satisfaction. Either this would end her—this bullheaded, charge-into-everything-shoulder-first bitch—or it’d put her out of the way long enough for him to do the last thing that needed to be done. He could feel the probabilities shifting, knew the trend and the direction they were heading. It might not be long now, if he was lucky. He glanced at Karthik. And if his current hostage was indeed the right one.

“Thanks, Karthik,” she said, and her enthusiasm was amusing in its supreme idiocy. “I’ll check it out.” She hung up without a word of farewell.

“The quintessential rude American,” Philip opined once he was certain that the line was dead. He took the phone out of Karthik’s outstretched hand and nodded to Liliana, who tugged at his neck, pulling him out of the chair upon which he sat. “That should keep her busy for a bit.” He smiled at Karthik. “And now you should be busy for a bit as well, I think.”

“I have nothing against you,” Karthik said, the knife against his throat. Philip stared at the welling blood, the crimson seeping into his collar. “I have done nothing to you.”

“Of course not,” Philip said, standing. “And if it was just you and me, there would no reason to do what I’m about to have done to you.” He planted a firm hand on Karthik’s shoulder. “But it’s not just you and me, you see…”

He let his eyes drift over to Janus, where he sat bolted to a chair, secured with actual bolts, with chains, hand and foot bound the metal legs. “It’s you, Janus, and I,” Philip said. “And Janus… he just does not wish to yield.” He turned to look back at Karthik. “So I suppose it’s down to you to convince him to.” He waved faintly at Liliana. “She’ll do her best to persuade you, with blade and pain.”