The Bloodline Cipher (7 page)

‘We don't got our lockpick with us,' Motti hissed to Tye, climbing quickly inside. ‘Don't look a gift horse in the mouth –'

‘– when you can smack it there instead?' Tye followed him into a simple study, her empty gun at the ready. The black blonde, dressed in a grey pinstripe trouser suit, was getting to her feet, dabbing delicately at her nose, collected and aloof. The redhead, meanwhile, sat curled up and cowering beneath a big wooden desk in the corner – no threat. Tye noticed the black girl had bloodied knuckles and kept the gun trained on her.

‘Red there don't look like a pro housebreaker to me,' Motti said, turning to the girl he'd hit. ‘And since you were beating up on her, I'm guessing you're a stranger here yourself.'

‘If you're guessing, it seems I have you at a disadvantage.' The girl was apparently British and sounded amused. ‘You're Anthony Motson … and your companion is Tye Chery.'

Tye frowned, sensed Motti stiffen beside her. ‘Well, don't that make me nostalgic. Ain't been called Anthony in years.'

‘I see the two of you have wrecked our transport,' the girl went on. ‘Now we'll have to take yours.'

‘Is that so?' Tye kept her face impassive and her grip on the gun tight. ‘How'd you know who we are?'

‘My name's Bree. Glad you could make it.' Her smile grew wider as she held out a hand to Motti, who ignored it. ‘I suppose you're here to help your friends? They could use it. They're in a lot of trouble.'

Motti glowered at her. ‘If they're in trouble, Breezy,
you're
in trouble. Now what say we go find them all together?'

‘Don't trust her,' the redhead told them, in an accent difficult to place. But wherever she was from, she was speaking aloud Tye's own thoughts: this Bree girl seemed too relaxed, too confident by half. ‘She's a psycho,' the girl went on. ‘She and her friends tore this place apart, they've got Mr Blackland –'

‘Ignore Maya here,' Brie interrupted smoothly. ‘She's a student librarian, and really not very helpful.'

Maya flinched. ‘I'm only here for the summer,' she whispered.

‘I'd say your employment's terminated.' Bree turned back to Tye and Motti. ‘We've acquired the Guan Yin manuscript. The Bloodline Cipher is ours. And pretty soon we'll have all your friends, too. In pieces.'

‘Then the cavalry's arrived just in time,' snarled Motti. ‘You're gonna take us to them right now.'

Suddenly Tye noticed Bree's eyes flick twice between them and the inner door.
That's why she's so confident
. ‘Mot, she's been stalling for time.' Tye took a warning step nearer the girl, both hands on the gun. ‘Someone's coming –'

The handle of the door jerked suddenly, and the heavy wood swung open to reveal a man standing in the doorway, paunchy and grey. Motti was already running to intercept. He punched the old man in the stomach and chopped him on the back of the neck as he crumpled to the carpet.

‘No!' Maya shouted as she saw him fall. ‘Mr Blackland!'

The owner?
Tye took in the huge bloodstain spreading over the back of the man's pale shirt and swore.
Poor old guy's dead
, she realised with a sick feeling,
a decoy, just propped in the doorway to distract while –

Motti looked up angrily from the corpse – right into the swing of a baseball bat. He yelled out as the wooden club cracked against the side of his head, shattering his glasses, knocking him to the ground.

‘Motti! Tye yelled, swinging the gun round to cover his attacker – but Bree had anticipated the movement and swung her palm down edgeways in a karate chop that almost took Tye's wrist off. The gun slipped from her numbed fingers – but Tye was already turning to kick Bree in the stomach. The blow hit home, and Tye followed through with an uppercut. But her opponent feinted backwards, caught Tye's forearm and bent it back hard. Gasping with pain, Tye was forced to the ground where she got a knee in the face. Tye jack-knifed backwards, hit the floor in a daze beside Motti. He was out cold, a thick crimson dribble running down his temple from the hairline. Tye felt a stab of panic and fought to stay calm. If she could only rest a few moments, get her strength back …

Bree had picked up Tye's gun and now surveyed her dispassionately. Abruptly she turned towards the doorway. ‘Shall we kill one of them?'

‘I don't see why not,' said a new voice – deep and cracked with age, with an accent that spoke of no particular place. Tye hadn't heard anyone else come into the room, but suddenly the hairs on the back of her neck were standing up. ‘After all, her friends will soon be captured. And we only need one of them to bring the message back to Coldhardt.'

Then they still haven't got the others
. ‘What message?' she asked, playing for time; the gun might be useless, but she couldn't run out and leave Motti. ‘Who are you?'

‘My name is Heidel.'

Tye angled her head back, craned her neck to see who was speaking. She caught a glimpse of a tall man, standing stooped in a black suit. He had a lined, lugubrious face and a mane of silver-grey. A hint of cruelty played about the edges of his lips as he held the bat in two gloved hands.

‘What do you say, Ms Chery?' Heidel went on. ‘Would you care to sacrifice yourself for your friend, or would you rather he died in your place? He is sleeping rather heavily, he will never know you betrayed him …' The old man's tone hardened. ‘The way your benefactor Coldhardt betrayed
me
.'

‘Benefactor?'
Keep him talking
, Tye thought. ‘We're only Coldhardt's employees, we don't mean anything to him beyond –'

‘You're his family,' said Heidel angrily. ‘That's how it works. The big man gathers his little ones to him.
Insists that they prove their love by risking everything, time after time. Rewards them when they win.' He walked towards her. ‘And their luck holds for a time. But then doubt steals in, or the strain gets too great, and … in walks death. Or betrayal.' Tye had a clear look at Heidel's eyes now. They were clear blue, no passion there. They looked … wrong, somehow – as wrong as a man in a flashy suit wielding a bloody wooden bat. ‘So which will it be, Tye Chery – death or betrayal, which would you give a head start?' He smiled coldly. ‘Because believe me, each follows the other.'

Then someone cleared his throat. ‘Did you get that out of a fortune cookie or something?'

Tye wanted to sob with relief. ‘
Jonah?
' She propped herself up on her elbows and saw him step through the doorway with Patch.

Then her hopes sank like her heart; standing right behind them were a beach-blond himbo and a pale, dark-eyed girl with jet-black hair.

‘Prisoners and escort,' said Bree, and the smile she gave Tye was sickeningly triumphant.

Jonah tried to take in the scene quickly and coolly – but his mind, like his eyes, couldn't choose where to settle. There was an old man at his feet clearly dead, Motti looking not a lot better on the floor, Tye at the feet of a girl with a gun and some aging mobster type who could have been Coldhardt's brother – oh, and a pixie-like red-haired girl hiding under a desk.

Quite a crowd
, Jonah thought.
Here goes nothing
.

‘Yep, it's prisoner and escort all right,' he told the black girl with the dyed hair. ‘But guess what …?'

‘You're
all
our prisoners,' hissed Con behind him, shoving Sadie and Sorin into the study. Sorin had reached the west-side staircase ahead of them and Sadie had cut them off from behind, just as Jonah had feared. But Patch, once again, had managed to turn things round …

As Sadie and Sorin stumbled forward, the black girl swung her gun to cover Jonah, and the mobster raised his baseball bat.

‘Back off!' Patch shouted.

‘Do as he says,' said Sorin, and Sadie nodded – dishevelled and looking mad as all hell. The mobster slowly lowered the gun, but the black girl kept aim.

Tye looked up at her. ‘Better give it up, Bree. It's not even loaded.'

‘As if,' Bree sneered.

‘No loud noises, please.' Jonah glanced at Patch, who was holding his false eye in one hand; now he flipped up his eye patch to reveal the empty socket. ‘Patch has got his eye on you. And since you know so much about us, I'm assuming you're aware of how he keeps all kinds of stuff in that insulated glass. Tonight it's stuffed full of plastic explosive – enough, we reckoned, to take out the radio mast that Blackland uses to keep tabs on his books.'

‘The arming device is in the pupil,' Con explained, as Patch showed around the fake eyeball like a magician's assistant. ‘You press on it once to arm it – then, when you take your finger off, you've got maybe five seconds before it blows.'

‘I'd show you,' said Patch, looking pale and sweaty, ‘but I've
already
armed it. If I take my finger off the pupil I'll blow up the whole bleedin' lot of us.'

‘You're bluffing,' said the old man calmly.

‘No, Heidel.' Sorin shook his head. ‘We saw him arm the mechanism. Or else we'd have taken them.'

‘Kendall wouldn't harm his friends,' Bree stated.

‘I don't want to hurt anyone,' said Patch, waggling the eyeball. ‘And I get bloody nervous at times like this, so no one make my hands any shakier, yeah?'

‘Give me my gun back,' said Tye.

Bree weighed the gun in her hand, then held it out to Tye. But as Tye reached for it she tossed it out of the open window. ‘It's useless, remember?' She smirked at Patch. ‘Well, Kendall? Going to blow us all
sky high for my disobedience?'

Jonah tutted. ‘You want to keep your gang under control, Heidel. Any more surprises, we could all wind up dead.'

‘Now stand in the far corner, all of you,' Con snapped. ‘No tricks.'

Heidel stared at her for a few moments. Then he signalled to his gang and slowly, dutifully, they backed away.

Jonah crossed to Tye and knelt beside her. ‘You OK? Is Motti all right?'

Tye shot a poisonous look at Heidel. ‘He's breathing.'

‘For now,' said Bree casually.

‘Unlike that poor old sod on the floor,' said Jonah, straining as Tye helped him half carry, half drag Motti over to where Con and Patch waited. ‘Is that Blackland?'

‘Yes, it's him.' The red-haired girl under the desk had poked her bruised face out. ‘They killed him.'

‘And for what, my dear Maya?' Heidel produced a small, brown book from his pocket. ‘Ah yes, for this. Blackland's greatest treasure. The Guan Yin manuscript.'

‘Give that to us,' Con demanded. ‘Throw it on the floor and –'

‘Oh, I don't think so.' Heidel smiled faintly. ‘That's the problem when one's only weapon is mass destruction – it offers little finesse when negotiating.'

‘Oh?'

‘You won't detonate that explosive if I don't comply with your demands, Con. In a confined space
like this you risk killing yourselves at the same time.' He walked slowly towards them, pausing with his back to the window, holding up the book just as Patch was holding the eyeball. ‘Besides, I know just how valuable the Bloodline Cipher is to Coldhardt. I know what depends on it, what's at stake. You
daren't
destroy this manuscript.'

‘You're insane,' Maya piped up quietly. ‘All of you.'

Jonah remembered Coldhardt's warning back in the hub:
That manuscript is of paramount importance. Take no chances with its welfare … damaged it is of no use to me
.

‘Coldhardt wouldn't need to know
we
destroyed it,' said Con icily. ‘You wouldn't be alive to breathe a word.'

‘So you would betray your master, eh, Con? Perhaps there is hope for you.' Heidel glanced at Patch. ‘It seems we both hold a trump card. But I shall resolve this standoff now by leaving with my colleagues – and the manuscript.' He looked behind him at his followers. Bree nodded, and sauntered over to the window.

‘Wait,' said Con warningly, ‘we say what happens here.'

‘Oh, let 'em go,' Patch moaned. ‘Good riddance!'

‘Yes, let them just leave,' said Maya.

‘We'll meet again,' said Bree, not bothering to look at them as she swung her legs out of the window. Sorin clambered out after her. Sadie didn't move, staring Jonah out. She smiled, held up the priceless enamelled gold ring on her finger – then pointed an imaginary crossbow at his head and mimed pulling the
trigger. The glint in her eyes as she did so sent a chill piercing through him. He looked away, and only then did she follow the others out of the window.

As she left, Con hurled herself at Heidel, grabbing for the manuscript in his hand. The old man blocked her strike with a sweep of his arm, knocking her off-balance. Before Jonah could react, Tye had darted forward to help – but now Heidel had hooked his other arm around Con's neck, crushing his wrist against her windpipe.

‘Let her go!' Patch shouted, thrusting the glass eyeball towards him. ‘I mean it!'

‘You're as impotent as your master, boy,' Heidel snarled, squeezing harder. Con's face turned red, her eyes widened as she struggled for air. ‘Give Coldhardt this message,' he hissed. ‘Time waits for no men, and I am the proof. The living proof of something he will never own.' He backed away to the window, dragging Con along by her throat, then threw her flat on her face to the floor. She lay retching for breath, and as Jonah and Tye rushed to help her, Heidel scrambled through the window with surprising agility. He looked back, his face impassive. ‘I suspect Bree was right; we shall meet again. And when we do, no quarter will be shown.'

‘Yeah,' Jonah muttered as Heidel ran into the night. Con's gasps for breath filled his ears. ‘You're right about that.'