Bite Back 05 - Angel Stakes

by Mark Henwick

I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe we were in luck.

  No.

  “Yeah, the only time I couldn’t see the door clearly was when the dry cleaning van came.”

  Shit!

  She was gone. I knew it somehow. She’d slipped out in that van.

  A minute later, Yelena had the tires smoking as we took the final corner.

  Fay Daniels’ house was Spanish Colonial style. White stucco. Arched windows and doorways. Terracotta coarse-tiled roof. Balconies.

  Ground floor lights shone through the windows.

  Jacob, alerted by my call, ran across from his hiding place as we skidded to a halt outside.

  I vaulted the wrought-iron gates and sprinted up the tiled driveway, with Yelena a few paces behind.

  The house felt empty.

  The door was locked of course, and I had no lock picks with me. I slammed my shoulder against it in frustration.

  “Clear!” Yelena said.

  She’d been carrying my HK all day. As I stood back, she fired six shots into the wooden door in a neat circle. As soon as she flicked the safety, I slammed my foot into the center of the damaged area, breaking through.

  I reached through the hole and opened the locks.

  The door swung wide.

  No reaction from inside the house. No voices, no noise. Nothing.

  Yelena passed me the HK and took out her own Sig Sauer.

  We slipped through into the hallway.

  Ritzy. Glossy wooden floors. Big open rooms. White leather furniture. Recessed lighting. Carpeted stairs.

  Empty.

  We checked the ground floor rooms, leapfrogging each other from corner to corner, a growing sense of despair blooming inside me. We’d been two steps behind Forsythe all the way. He’d had time to abduct Dante, warn his lawyer and escape his tail.

  They had to have decided to go as soon as it was obvious that the police were mounting an operation. As soon as Forsythe’s contact in the Major Crimes division had told him about the wire on Dante.

  And running meant Fay Daniels was involved somehow. However it had started. What I was seeing was evidence of a planned and calculated decision.

  The desk in the study had a mess of papers with an obvious gap where a laptop had sat. I glanced at a couple of pages. Industry contracts. Preparation papers for a civil case against me. There would be nothing incriminating here. The laptop—if we could ever track it down—that would be something else.

  Yelena and I trotted upstairs, swinging around to cover possible attacks from the passages off the landing, but there was no one here.

  Only the main bedroom had evidence of use. Clothes tossed on the bed. Closets left open. Half-empty cabinet in the bathroom.

  She’d left. In a hurry, but not in a panic. She’d been confident she was far enough ahead of us.

  The wolf was back, snarling.

  Calm. Calm. Think your way through this.

  “Airport?” Yelena said.

  “Maybe,” I muttered.

  We went downstairs and Yelena started rifling through the papers to see if there was anything that suggested a purchase or a destination.

  I called Matt.

  “Any alerts raised on tickets bought for Forsythe or Daniels?” I asked.

  “Nothing in their names,” he said. “Forsythe’s company is always buying airline tickets, but everything today is for people who’ve traveled on company business before.”

  Fake ID?

  I had nothing to go on but instinct, and that was telling me Forsythe wasn’t going to try getting out of the country by impersonating someone else. And that he had some kind of unfinished business in LA; otherwise, why keep Dante alive?

  I could hope he had unfinished business.

  What about Daniels? Would she risk a fake ID at the airport?

  No. She had a better option.

  I cut the call impatiently. I’d apologize to Matt later.

  “Billie. Where are you?” I asked when I got through.

  “Still downtown.”

  “I’m at Daniels’ house. She bolted,” I said. “I need you—”

  “I have no one but my Belles now, woman, and some of us are dead on our feet.”

  I’d sent her on tasks she hadn’t been trained for, which had failed. She’d be a saint not to be angry about that, and she wasn’t, by a long way. And she was an alpha I was ordering around.

  I was going to need to scale down my request and work on the tact.

  “I’m sorry. Can I ask one more favor?”

  “Ask,” she grunted.

  “Santa Monica: check the plane at the airport and the yacht in the marina?”

  “Yo.”

  She cut the call the way I had on Matt.

  It was unfair throwing this on the packs without warning. Werewolves lived in their communities. They had jobs and clients and human colleagues and responsibilities, and this kind of task tore through all that and messed it up. The best I could do was to spread it around all the packs.

  Will they take orders from me?

  What bargaining power did I have?

  Paige. The halfy at the ritual. She’d come from the Pasadena pack. She’d been the only halfy the LA Were had sent. Did helping her change give me enough credit with the Pasadena to overcome my dislocating the alpha’s shoulder?

  Yelena interrupted my thoughts, handing me her cell.

  “Tarez,” she said, looking worried. “Been trying to get through on yours. Urgent and relevant.”

  If Tarez has his association with the LA Were confirmed, maybe he can get them to help.

  “Yes?” I said abruptly into the cell.

  “Amber, you’re on speaker. I have House Prowser here.”

  Together? What did they want?

  “Okay,” I said. “Look, before we talk, can you get some of the security teams reassigned to looking for Forsythe? He’s disappeared, and it’s critical—”

  “We know about Forsythe. The Belles messaged me when they couldn’t get you. But I’m sorry, Amber, we can’t spare anyone, Athanate or Were.” I could hear a confusion of urgent voices in the background. “We have a situation. There was an attempt by Basilikos on the conference center, and unfortunately we couldn’t completely contain it. There’ll be a police investigation. So, we’re simultaneously guarding the delegates, moving them to another secure location and tracking down the remaining Basilikos before they try anything else.”

  “Thank God you got the Were to the discussion table when you did,” Prowser said. “As I understand it, we couldn’t manage this without them.”

  What’s important enough that the pair of them are calling me in the middle of that?

  “Yes, and thank you,” Tarez said, and his voice slowed. “With Forsythe, it may be that what House Prowser has to say will help.”

  He didn’t sound convinced. Absolutely the opposite.

  She spoke. “I promised to make inquiries about human trafficking back in my domain.”

  “Yes, I remember, your House was involved with putting a similar criminal in jail.”

  “Quite. To cut the story short, my House has been able to acquire the means to break the encryption these criminals use to conduct their business. We’ve found the ones in Detroit are part of the same network as Forsythe.” She stopped. “I’m sorry, House Farrell. I feel I don’t know enough, but I know what they’re planning and I have to show you.”

  Oh, God, what had she discovered?

  “What?”

  “Forsythe has been running what they call the Southwest Division.” She hesitated. “I’m sending a copy of their website we’re looking at to your cell.”

  Both Yelena and I had House Altau’s new encrypted cellphones. In addition to the improved security, they had all the cool apps that allowed you to use the cell like a teleconference machine.

  I switched her to speaker and triggered the screen view.

  It showed part of a business website with a latest news announcement for the ‘Christmas event’.
An auction.

  People, damn them. People.

  The auction had been pushed back to tonight, in order to accommodate two special late additions.

  There was ice in my belly.

  ‘Item one – featured in recent SoCal news. Note: this item is strictly for export only.’ Tamanny.

  “But Forsythe’s running,” Yelena said, looking over my shoulder. “He needs to get out of the country. What’s he doing holding an auction?”

  “In the language of these animals,” Prowser said, “that export label means only bids from people with the capability of smuggling her out of the country secretly would be allowed. My sources suspect, Diakon Vylkove, that Forsythe will accompany the buyer out of the country in whatever clandestine manner they’ve devised.”

  “Dante?” I asked, my stomach churning with anger and fear.

  “Nothing. We assume she’s the second addition.”

  Breathe. Breathe.

  The wolf and the Athanate wanted out.

  I will let you out when the time comes. I promise.

  First I had to get Dante and Tamanny back. To do that, I had to find Forsythe. Time was running out. I couldn’t afford to go berserk.

  Yelena’s hand was on my shoulder. The touch of her eukori flowed through me.

  “How do we find out where?” My voice sounded odd; distant. Almost calm.

  “What about House Prowser’s sources?” Yelena suggested.

  “You can’t manage this, Amber.” Tarez was speaking carefully, as if aware of the effort it took for me to stay calm. “You don’t have the resources to attack a trafficking network.”

  “I’ll find the resources to take down the one part I want,” I said. “Where?”

  “The location is never revealed on the website,” Prowser said. “Interested parties arrive in Los Angeles, where they are collected and taken to the location. A different one every time. Only trusted bidders and their guards are allowed. My sources would not able to manage this.”

  That probably meant the ‘sources’ were dead or horrifically injured. They’d been part of this network; I couldn’t find it in me to sympathize, whatever had happened to them.

  Prowser was still speaking: “However, I spoke to Diakon Huang, as I said I would. He has moved with alacrity. He claims he will know where shortly.”

  How? How?

  Huang might know of a client of Forsythe’s who was from the Empire. He might be able to track that client and know they were in LA, and it was a reasonable assumption that the client would be here for the auction. But how would Huang get someone inside that group? Or had he had someone in the group all along?

  Not important at the moment. The timeframe was. Even if he told us where it was now, how long would it take to get there? What if I was too late?

  “When will he tell us?”

  Another silence before Tarez spoke. “We don’t know. Also, there may be a cost. I haven’t been able to contact Huang since he made this claim, but I know he’s extremely frustrated with the lack of progress in his primary mission. He’ll want something back.”

  His primary mission? Finding Kaothos.

  “We can’t help on that,” I said. “Surely, given what’s happening, he’s not using—”

  “Again, I don’t know, Amber.” Tarez cut me short. “I do know that you can’t do this alone. Look, I’ve been discussing the situation with Naryn, and this has led to him taking responsibility for revealing what we know of the trafficking network to Agent Ingram.”

  Prowser had to have been brought in as well—she was listening to this without surprise.

  Emergence had just taken a lurching step forward. A huge step.

  “Ingram is about to arrive at LAX,” Tarez said. “You must see it makes sense involving them: this FBI project team wasn’t set up to hunt down paranormals. It was set up to discover and apprehend covert criminal organizations. This trafficking network is exactly that.”

  “But—”

  “Listen to me, Amber. One of our strategic problems at the moment is Ingram and the FBI wanting to progress too quickly with Emergence. We slowed them down with the problems in your old army unit, and Naryn’s been looking for something similar. This trafficking network is the ideal candidate. The FBI has been onto Forsythe for a while. He’s the Southwestern boss. They’ve held off picking him up to try and identify who’s his boss, but obviously that’s over now.”

  I shut up. The assistance of Huang and the FBI would both come at a cost which we wouldn’t find out until we couldn’t refuse. And one of which, if Huang was asking where Kaothos was, we didn’t have anyway.

  We were playing angel stakes.

  And neither Skylur nor Diana were in the loop if Naryn had had to take responsibility.

  I was already too far gone. I couldn’t refuse: it was my House. No cost was too high, if I had what Huang wanted.

  Yelena suddenly grabbed my arm and held up some papers in front of me.

  What the hell?

  My eyes struggled to focus and my brain struggled to change gears and understand what the words on the paper said.

  It was a contract. It was what Tamanny’s mother had been hinting at when we’d visited their hotel. Her career in LA.

  Every new turn made this whole setup more sick.

  Of course the contract didn’t spell it out; it was full of all the legal crap you’d expect. But there were clauses about Forsythe becoming sole agent for Tamanny while Mrs. Harper concentrated on re-launching her career, funded by a percentage of profits from Tamanny’s income from all sources.

  Had she sold her own daughter for another chance to be a star? Had she been aware of what had been going to happen to Tamanny at the StarBright show?

  She’d tried to persuade her daughter to go back to the StarBright when Tamanny called her.

  She’d seemed to leave everything to Forsythe after Tamanny disappeared.

  Had she thought Forsythe wasn’t involved in the abduction? Or had he promised her the contract anyway in exchange for her silence? Did she know where her daughter was right now?

  At the hotel, she’d told us she’d given everything to her dance company. Her passion. Her heart, her soul, her youth.

  As sick as that made me feel, my gut said she’d sacrificed her own daughter as well.

  Which left her where, now?

  Another loose end for Forsythe?

  Or maybe the last possible connection to him.

  “Amber?” Tarez’s voice from the speaker. “You still there?”

  “Got another lead. Urgent. Gotta go.”

  “Amber—”

  I ended the call and we ran out.

  Chapter 62

  “Reed! Can you hear me?”

  I was riding bitch again, and I was yelling to be heard over the snarl of the Kawasaki’s engine and the horns of drivers Yelena had just cut off.

  “Farrell? Get right back here or—”

  “No time. Shut up and listen,” I said. “You still have a detective watching Mrs. Harper’s hotel?”

  There was a moment’s hesitation, which worried me.

  “Yeah. What—”

  “Get him in the hotel. Close protection, now. Her life’s in danger.”

  The second hesitation, and that worry blossomed into a full-grown fear. What if the guy watching was one of those Forsythe had bought?

  “Shit.” Reed was speaking to someone else. It sounded like he was still down in Echo Park. “Keep trying,” he yelled. “I’m taking that black and white.”

  I ended the call.

  It sound like Reed had been trying to get to get hold of his detective, and failing.

  All the most likely reasons I could think of weren’t good.

  He was closer than we were, but he’d have force his way through traffic with his lights and sirens. Yelena was threading through the cars like a blade through water.

  We’d arrive about the same time.

  Both probably too late.

  The cell was g
oing again. Billie.

  “Yeah?”

  “No good at Santa Monica,” she said. “The plane took off just before we got here. Daniels is on board, but no sign of Forsythe.”

  I’d call Lynch in Vegas. But what would I ask him to do? What if Daniels had guards waiting at the airport? Even if she didn’t, and Lynch captured her, it’d take Yelena and me a couple of hours to get there. I’d do whatever I needed to find out where the auction was, if she knew, but then I’d be a couple of hours away.

  Too late.

  No matter how fast I ran, or which direction, I was standing still.

  “What about the yacht?”

  “It had an accident. Won’t need watching,” she said.

  Shit. Know your troops. Billie had had enough of watching things. I couldn’t blame her.

  What could I say? “Excellent. Thanks to you and all the Belles. Take a break, Billie.”

  “Sure? Y’all take care.” She signed off.

  Tarez tried to get through, and I ignored it while I put a hurried call through asking Lynch to get to the airport and wait for instructions. Then we were swooping off the freeway and down to the hotel.

  Reed had made good time. He had a detective and a uniform with him. They were running through the busy lobby towards the elevators.

  More police cars pulled up outside. Reed had taken it seriously.

  As we chased after him, one of the men at the reception desk called out. “Officers!”

  Reed didn’t hear. I skidded to a stop.

  He assumed we were more plain-clothes.

  “I wanted to say, I just saw Mrs. Harper on the security cameras. She’s gone up to the helicopter pad on the roof.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said.

  But now we’d missed the elevator, which Reed had commandeered.

  Yelena pulled my arm and pointed. “Mezzanine floor. Elevator opening there now.”

  We raced up the escalator and caught it with the doors closing.

  What was Harper doing up on the helipad? Was there a helicopter coming in?

  There was no cell signal in the elevator. I couldn’t call Reed.

  I lined up a text for him which would go as soon as we got out.

  Pushing the top floor button got us some looks from the other passengers and the ride seemed to take forever. I distracted myself with wondering if Matt had some hack that would override an elevator’s requested floors.