Owl and the City of Angels (8 page)

Benji thought about it, then nodded. “We should be able to head straight there. We just need to get past the gate and one of the lines.”

“How did you even know I’d be back this way?” I said, throwing the robe over my head, keeping my backpack and Captain in front.

“Easy—with the way they roped off the city, I figured there was a chance you’d be back this way—last place they’d look for you.”

Yeah—for the last place I should have run, again it was damn predictable. . . .

Benji checked his watch. “Come on,” he said, once I’d approximated him in outfit and appearance. He shoved a set of papers in my hands: Kelly Black—probably his partner. “If anyone stops us, let me do the talking, and just say yes,” he said.

“I think I know protocol.”

Benji snorted. “Not since they’ve tightened ranks, you don’t. Just follow my lead.”

“Isn’t that how the Chinchorro mummies woke up?”

“You’re never going to let that go, are you?”

I would have given him a snappy comeback, but we were in earshot of the two guards.

I felt Captain stir in my backpack, and he let out a muffled mew.

“Captain,” I whispered. “I know we’ve had our differences these last few days, but please, for the love of God, stay quiet.”

I recognized the guards from my time as Serena, but I’d never picked up their names. Both of them would have preferred to be somewhere else in this heat, but whereas the first was happy to ignore us and imagine he was somewhere else, the second wanted to make damn sure everyone at the dig knew exactly how pissed he was to be here.

He gave us a second once-over. “Papers?”

I handed him mine along with Benji’s as the guard examined my face, his mouth drawn in a tight line.

A bead of sweat collected on my upper lip.

His eyes passed over me, though as he focused back in on Benji, his frown deepened. “Why do you need to leave the site? Dig break’s not supposed to be for another hour and we’ve got rioters heading this way.”

Why were we leaving the site? Because we wanted a goddamn soda or beer, or we just felt like taking a goddamn nap—in other words, none of your goddamn business and get back to pretending you’re doing something and leave the smart people alone!

“Had another batch of stone fall—we need medical supplies and clean water,” Benji said.

I kept my mouth shut, out of shock over Benji’s polite justification more than anything else. I’d been so busy trying to get a few minutes away from postdoc Mike over the past three days that I’d had minimal contact with the guards and missed the jump in scrutiny. . . and my major concern had been getting into the site, not out for snacks.

The guard glanced from Benji to me, then shrugged. “Just try to be more careful in there.”

If I’d had control of my voice again, I’d have told the guy exactly where he could take his careful and go. Benji, however, only nodded. “Sure thing,” he said, and the two of us kept walking through the gate before I could shoot my mouth off.

Knowing my track record, there was probably a benefit to that.

Captain, picking up on my nerves, continued to squirm under the robes. “Knock it off,” I hissed as we waited for the intersection to clear.
Come on, lights, come on, lights .
. .

“Hey!” one of the guards yelled.

Both of us froze on the edge of the sidewalk and turned around, slowly; me trying desperately to keep imminent panic off my face.

“Be back in fifteen,” the guard said. “We’ve got a shift change, and I don’t want to miss my break.”

My panic evaporated. Seriously?

Benji raised a hand and gave them a meek wave and smile.

“And watch for the rioters—I don’t want to have to come out and find you.”

Seriously? What were we, two?

“Jesus, Benji. When did security get like this?”

“They’ve been upping security for the last year, but it wasn’t until Bali that they pulled private contractors in,” he said as we crossed the street and lost ourselves in the crowd. “That’s who those guys are—they’re responsible for accounting where archaeologists are at all times and making certain we’re
safe
.” If there was any question about what Benji thought about the contracted security, the way he spat out
safe
cleared up any misconceptions.

“So basically you’re prisoners now. Great,” I said.

Benji didn’t dignify that with an answer, but he didn’t deny it either as we continued down the road. He checked over his shoulder before shoving me inside a convenience store, then glanced out the front again.

“There’s a pair of agents coming,” Benji said. “They’ll swing back around and loop the other street.”

I got the meaning. If they were looping back along the main streets and I used the alley, I had a short window of opportunity in which to slip by them. I had to marvel how good these guys had gotten since I’d left . . .

Come to think of it, I wonder if I’d have ever gotten out in the first place if things had been like this . . . I pushed that thought to the back of my mind. Archaeologists like Benji were more than happy to treat me like I had the plague, and I don’t have a martyring bone in my body. As far as I was concerned, they could get buried in the bed they’d all made for themselves.

Funny how much easier it is to tell the world to fuck off in my head . . . why is that?

Having guessed we probably weren’t in the store to buy anything, the man behind the counter glanced warily between Benji and me. With the threat of rioters looming, I didn’t blame him. His fear I knew how to deal with. I passed the equivalent of twenty dollars across the counter, nodding to the back exit. He took the money, glanced again at me and Benji, shrugged, and went back to reading his magazine. I saw the two agents pass by. “Those two out front means the one in the street over will walk by soon, right?”

Benji nodded.

Time to use the ever-diminishing window of exit. “Come on,” I said, and shoved Benji towards the back door. He didn’t say anything as I continued shoving him into the street, across the road, and into the next alley. We were almost at the next street crossing—three blocks from the docks—when Benji dug his feet in. He swore under his breath and pushed me into the shadow of a structurally unsound escape stairwell.

“Hey!”

“Shhh, will you? They changed their pattern.”

For a second I thought it might be a setup—that Benji was leading me into a trap. One look at his panic-stricken face erased that though. Benji didn’t do well under pressure.

It dawned on me just how many sleepless nights he must have had to stick himself in this situation.

“We’ll wait until they go by and dodge through?”

Benji shook his head. “No, you don’t understand, the pattern will be off. They’ve been running it to prevent exactly what we’re doing. I picked it up while I was keeping an eye out for you—it wasn’t hard, they coordinate it across the radio channel. The point is there’s at least two agents for the next three streets.”

OK, that did throw a slight wrench into our plans.
All right, Owl, you’re supposed to be the pro here. Think fast.

A wise rule of thumb says the best lies are steeped in truth. Time to challenge that theory.

“Here’s what we’re going to do. You’ll head them off and run interference while I run for it.”

Benji frowned. “Not a chance in hell. I’m not letting you throw me under the bus. I don’t have that guilty of a conscience over Bali.”

Yup, back to the Benji I knew and exploited. “Relax. I’m not throwing you under the bus. In fact, I’m probably doing you a favor.”

He stopped wringing his hair. “How the hell do you figure that?”

“Easy. You’re going to lie like hell,” I said, and steered him back into the alley to give him the short rundown of my plan.

I slapped him on the back to send him in the direction of the street we’d passed through a minute before. He got a few steps away from me, shaking his head before stopping in his tracks. He turned to face me with a look of determination, the kind that usually leads to a disagreement over ethics or some misplaced need to do the right thing—I should know, I used to wear the same expression.

“Benji,” I started.

“Look, I know you took the Medusa head. You did a lousy job excavating it out of the sarcophagus, by the way.”

Yeah, well, I’d been in a rush. And not the time to get brave, Benji.

“Benji—” I began, adding a warning to my voice.

He held up his hands, and I saw a tinge of contempt cross his face—just for a moment, but it was there. “Save it. I don’t expect you to give it back. I just wanted to say now we’re really even.”

“Fine,” I said, maybe a little more aggressively than I needed to, but this was the Benji I remembered. It wasn’t like I expected the goodwill to last past the clearing of his conscience.

There was something else though. He ran his hand through his hair again, deciding whether to say anything. “Look, I don’t know what you stole, and I seriously do not fucking care—it’s way too high above my pay grade, but whatever it is, these guys really want you.
Bad
. Just . . . I don’t know . . . try to be careful . . . or something.” And with a shake of his head, he jogged out of the alley towards the street.

That left me with more foreboding than I wanted to think about . . . and there went Benji breaking the mold again.

I didn’t have to wait long for his diversion.

“Hey! Help! You guys—IAA—Owl snatched me from the dig site!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. He gave them one hell of a performance as he stumbled down the alley and waved towards the agents; with the broken, swollen nose, he not only sounded convincing but he also looked the part. I ducked farther under the haphazard stairwell and pulled down my headscarf as the two agents patrolling the street ran past. I heard one of them yelling into his headset—hopefully calling for backup from the rest of the agents nearby.

That was my cue. Captain summed it up with a meow.

“You said it. Let’s get the hell out of Dodge.”

I hazarded one last glance at Benji distracting the agents before bolting into the street. I made it to the next alley without incident. Two more blocks to go.

I hustled through the next street and into the adjoining alley before skidding to a stop at the end. I could see the water now and smell the heavy fuel mixed with sewage that Alexandria’s harbor is notorious for. Only one more block to go. Almost home free. I don’t think I really believed Benji would pull through until that moment—not that I had any time to ponder the greater meaning of that in relation to my on-and-off friendship with the universe . . .

But, yeah, we were square after this.

Now to find Nadya without attracting undue attention . . . I pulled out my phone to text her while I kept one eye on the docks, watching for IAA.

I felt the hand on my shoulder and the muzzle of a gun as it pressed into my back.

I swear to God there hadn’t been even a footstep. I started to raise my hands.

“Stop right there,” I heard a woman say, and the gun jammed further into my lower back. Captain growled, but the woman didn’t seem to notice, and for once Captain had the wherewithal to stay hidden. I shushed him and hoped the agent didn’t notice. First, Captain doesn’t stand a chance against guns, and second, the IAA has been blissfully oblivious to the existence of my vampire-attacking cat. Them knowing would be bad for both of us.

The agent spun me around, and I came face-to-face with a six-foot-tall woman in her late thirties, dressed in the requisite black suit, her gray hair pulled back in a ponytail. The gun was now aimed at my chest.

The best way I’ve found to deal with abusive authoritative figures is to show ambivalence in the face of threats. Chances are good I’ll get hurt, but it pisses them off enough that they start making mistakes. I glanced down at the gun, then up at the agent’s face, arching an eyebrow. “I thought you guys were supposed to capture me alive,” I said.

She shrugged, keeping her temper in check, and leveled the revolver down at my leg. “Alive and shot are two very different things,” she said.

“Madam?” I heard a second, younger, less-jaded-sounding voice ask over the communications.

“I’ve apprehended Owl. Let Director Brook know and send backup to my location—”

I inched my foot away from the wall, hoping the audio distraction might give me a chance to run.

A knee connected with my midsection faster than I could have dodged, and I doubled over in pain. The agent continued with her conversation as if nothing had happened. With minimal wincing, I pushed myself back up to standing and bit back the first smart-mouthed response that came to mind. This one wanted an excuse to beat me up; worse, she knew what she was doing.

Finished with her check-in, she stood in front of me. I didn’t like the smile that spread across her face. “You know, come to think of it, you do have a reputation for running,” she said, taking the collar of my jacket and forcing me to face the wall. “No reason you can’t be shot in the process, considering the trouble you’ve caused.”

I winced as she shoved me hard into the wall. “OK, I don’t care how many of you the IAA overstaffed, there’s no way a Medusa head and Moroccan death mask warrant this level of make-work—”

I didn’t have a chance to finish as she hit the back of my head. God, do I hate IAA muscle. Impossible to have a civil conversation . . .

If I ran, she’d just beat me up more before shooting me. Wincing, I stood still and braced myself for another smack to the head or the sound of a gunshot.

Crack
—

Funny . . . that didn’t sound like a gun. Smack to the head? No, I’d feel pain by now.

I opened my eyes. The agent was lying on her side in a heap. Nadya stood in the doorway, holding a cricket bat over her shoulder.

“You wouldn’t believe what the kids down the street charged me for this thing,” she said as she discarded it back inside. “Come on, help me move her.” Together the two of us dragged her none too gently inside the doorway. We both heard the female voice over the comm.

“Roger that. Team three, two, and five, head off to main entrances while we attempt to establish visual. Please respond, team four.”