by T. G. Ayer
I pointed at them, giving Mai-the-bellhop a small smile, “What are those?”
She nodded slowly, and then flashed a bright white teeth as she responded in an impeccable British accent. “In Chinese culture it is always good protect one’s home. Our magic men and old folk will often mark the entrances of a place of abode with signs meant to ward off evil.”
I smiled, realizing too late that I probably looked too interested, or too convinced. If not both.
“So it keeps away the ghosts?” I asked, trying to appear flippant.
Mai nodded, her own expression now serious. “And evil spirits and witchcraft curses.”
I pasted on a bright smile, “That’s pretty cool,” and was saved from further smalltalk when the elevator pinged our arrival.
Leaving the glass box with a small wave at my helper, I entered the hallway. My heels immediately sank into the deep pile as I headed to my door.
Judging by the number of doors leading off the long wide hallway, only eight suites occupied the top floor.
Garner was definitely using one of them, what with her name on the building itself and all. I didn’t care though, even if there was a distinct possibility that she could be watching me.
For all I knew my suite was filled with cameras.
But I didn’t have anything to hide. I swiped the card through the electronic reader, entered the room and paused in the hall. Because, well, there was a hall, a tan leather lounge suite to my left, a twelve seater dining table to my right, and a second, less formal living area straight ahead.
Plush. Luxury. Silken. Gilded.
Nice.
I took a deep breath and dropped my satchel on the glossy redwood dining table. Then I dialed room-service and ordered up some food.
As I rang Steph, I drew the little black mini hard-drive from my pocket and studied it.
“Hey, traveler.” Steph’s smile could be heard in her voice.
“Hi,” I stuck a hand into the bag and rummaged around for the cable I needed, “I have a case.”
“Boy, do I love those four little words.”
“Not as if you don’t have anything else to do.” I smiled back as I connected the cable to my cellphone and attached the flash drive to the housing on the other end.
“Meh. School’s boring.”
“Steph. You’re eighteen and your major is biomechanics. But you’re a hacker. Of course, school will be boring.”
She laughed. “No. It’s boring ‘cos the work is too easy. I could have completed the course last year.”
“So? Why didn’t you?”
I was acceptably stunned. Steph didn’t usually talk about her smarts. The way she behaved, I’d always thought she was embarrassed by her intelligence.
“Twelve months ago, I couldn’t afford to do two years worth of papers in a single year.”
“And now you can.” I felt a thrill of satisfaction for Steph.
“Yes, I can. So I’ll finish this year, thank goodness.” I heard a loud snap and recognized Steph’s signature gum-chewing habit. “Now . . . what’s the deal?”
Back to business.
“Okay, I’m uploading some data from the new client’s flash-drive.” I could almost see Steph’s evil grin. “Which I procured legitimately because she gave it to me.” I rolled my eyes.
Steph and I had once run a small side business while I’d been still battling my teen hormonal demands. I advertised in the classifieds as a finder of lost things and had received random jobs.
Once, a guy had lost the keys to his Ferrari and didn’t want to have new locks put in. Apparently it was the last Ferrari ever built, and he didn’t want to change a thing.
So I found his keys.
And Senator Gillman’s stolen coin which had apparently belonged to Abraham Lincoln.
It was only when I’d—quite by accident—retrieved the Shah of Iran’s daughter Farah, saving her from her kidnappers, that I realized how much more important my cases could be.
And how much more satisfying.
Still, I continued to do high-paying jobs for mega-buck companies while finding missing people for this who couldn’t afford it. Steph had said that hopefully our Robin Hood days would come to an end at some point.
Very likely that had just happened.
I got Steph to scan the files on the flash drive while I studied the physical file. Spreading the contents across the super-king bed in the main bedroom of the gigantic suite, I stood and stared at it.
Despite Garner’s confidence, the file seemed lacking.
The cops hadn’t canvassed the boy’s friends well enough, hadn’t tracked his whereabouts either. Garner had mentioned that the boy’s vigilante activities were a secret and that she’d never, ever mentioned it to anyone.
True to her word, nothing in the file indicated the kid was up to anything illegal or nefarious.
Steph rang back ten minutes later. “So,” gum cracked in my ear again, “the flash drive is pretty interesting.”
“What do you have?”
“I’m sending you the info via email. Most of this shit was encrypted, as if the client wanted to ensure it would remain inaccessible if it fell into the wrong hands.”
I was barely listening. My headache had gone, and I wondered again why I hadn’t felt anything from the poltergeist.
Was the room warded liked the elevator?
I inspected the room, studying the threshold and window casings and found a raft of different markings.
I snapped off a few photos, determined to find out what about these symbols had worked to give me even a few minutes of reprieve from the curse.
Or if it was the symbols in the first place.
“Hey, Steph. I’m sending you a couple photographs. Can you analyze and translate them for me?”
“Sure thing, boss lady.”
I snorted but didn’t have time to respond as my inbox pinged new items at me every few seconds.
I scanned through them, my eyes growing ever wider.
He called himself The Phaser and he’d been in the news lately. He’d brought down a corrupt banking syndicate with its head office in Switzerland. He’d crushed a drug cartel in Western America by holding their money ransom.
The news had hailed him a hero. The cops had cursed him for making their security look like a joke. The people had rejoiced, and the criminals had called for him to be taken down.
I shook my head.
“Shit,” I said softly.
“Yep. That’s what I said too.” Steph snapped her gum. “So this is her son?”
“According to what she said, and I’m guessing nobody would lie about something like this unless they’re a little strange in the head.”
“And is she?”
“Is she what?”
“Strange in the head?”
I blinked and focused. “No. A little entitled. A little pretentious. Which is to be expected when swimming in money. Otherwise, she’s just a concerned mother desperate to find her son.”
“Or she’s just a concerned mother desperate to stop her son from destroying her.” Steph’s dry tone came over the line.
“Mmh. She did mention that she wanted to stop him from stealing her money,” I frowned, “Was that for real?”
“Yeah. It’s interspersed with all the other cases. Attacks on banks in which Garner holds her funds. Everything from the Cayman Islands to Switzerland to South Africa. Offshore, America, it doesn’t matter. He’s been systematically entering and searching for something. A few time he’s left with safe deposit boxes and on a number of occasions he’s accessed the mainframe from inside and deleted the contents of all her bank accounts.”
“Surely her insurance has paid for it.”
“On a couple of occasions, he’s used his own access cards to withdraw millions, negating the insurance payout.”
“He has access?”
“Sole heir.”
“Interesting,” I pondered. “Where did her money come from?”
>
“She was a day-trader. Married a Texas oil baron.”
“Before the oil dried up, of course.”
That had been a bad move on Elise’s part. But then, nobody had ever expected the oil to dry up. For centuries, oil had been mined from the depths of the earth, but anyone with two grey cells to rub together would know that mined product isn’t endless, isn’t self-replenishing.
Eventually, it all dried up. Like the world’s oil reserves.
All gone.
Bringing cities, and countries, to a standstill.
“Someone knows her history,” said Steph, sounding impressed as she cut into my thoughts. “So Elise marries Jeb Garner, gives him a son, then loses the man in a light aircraft crash when the kid is eight. She and the kid inherit everything, including his lucrative hotel chain, plus his string of exclusive diamond design stores. He was said to have blood diamond contacts, but nothing proven.”
“Aha.”
“Yeah.”
“So the son hates his family wealth because he believes it’s all blood money?”
“Question is . . . is it?”
“Question is . . . is it our job to care?” asked Steph lightly.
“Of course, it is. If it’s blood money, then the kid is right and I’m not going to help her stop him.”
“And if the kid is wrong?”
I chuckled. “Isn’t it your job to find out, hacker?”
“Whatever,” she said, deliberately snapping gum in my ear. “Right, so about your Chinese symbols.”
“Yup?” I asked as a knock sounded at the door.
I opened for the food and waited as the waiter laid the meal out on a small table beside the window. He left without asking for a tip, which I supposed was a penthouse perk.
“So they are magical wards.” Steph was almost blasé about it. “The symbols are ancient, dating back almost three millennia.”
“But I didn’t see any power attached to it.”
“Apparently, they don’t work like that. The Asian warlocks found a way to insert power into the written word. Process unknown.”
“So these words bind a place against evil?”
“No. Everything magical,” Steph paused, “Hold on. It’s helping you, isn’t it?”
“Yup. For the first time, I’m actually at peace.”
I felt both guilty and relieved that Steph knew a little about the effects of the poltergeist, happy that she could help, and frustrated that she was on the list of suspects as one of my closest friends.
“Cool,” her voice echoed on the line, “I’ll recreate them for you and have them installed all around the house.”
“Thanks, Steph. I’ll be back in the morning.”
“Your morning?”
Time zones were annoying, even in the normal world. When jumping to different planes, keeping track of the drastic changes in time was a bitch, and so much worse than earth time zone issues.
“Yeah, Hong Kong time. I have until the morning to decide if I’m taking the case.” I recalled the look Garner had given me. Something between desperation and demand.
Which put me somewhere between wiling and unwilling to help her.
“So . . . are you taking the case?”
“What do you think?”
I knew why Steph wanted me to take it. Not to help Garner, but to save her son from getting caught.
Unfortunately for Garner, Steph and I were of the same mind.
Chapter 5
In the peaceful privacy of the hotel suite I did all the things I would have done at home.
I soaked in the tub.
Only the bath was twice the size of mine, and almost as deep as a hot tub, and it was filled with scented water, sparkling dust and rose petals.
The best part of it? The water didn’t try to drown me, I didn’t slip or fall, and nothing broke. Not even a single crystal glass or perfume decanter or shampoo bottle.
I ate a delicious dinner.
Only the meal—kobo beef and Szechuan noodles—was cooked by a five-star culinary wizard with things like Michelins on his belt. A single meal would probably cost more than I made on a single case.
I drank an awesome red wine.
A ridiculously exclusive cab sav from the Napa Valley’s last batch known to man. Drake’s contact would have been cheaper.
But the best, and most important, part of my evening? The fact that I had experienced all of these normal, mundane things in total, absolute peace.
Without the burden of the evil spirit. Without a care about nosebleeds, and headaches and cupboards opening without anything touching them.
Here in the hotel room in Hong Kong, I was safe from the poltergeist that haunted me.
And I was most reluctant to leave its safe confines.
But I had to.
I’d dressed in a pair of black satin pajamas—a birthday gift from Drake because apparently he didn’t believe that sleeping in my underwear was an acceptable thing—and had just checked the messages on my cellphone when the door slammed open and two men rushed in.
Taken by surprise, I failed to teleport fast enough, and ended up with my mouth taped, a black hood over my head and silver cuffs around my wrists.
I had managed to drop my cellphone into my pajama pocket, though. One possible avenue to freedom.
I’d been taken so fast that both the daggers in my boots were probably laughing at me right now.
So much for being able to take care of myself.
Disgusted, more with myself than anything, I jabbed my elbow into ribs and guts and whatever other body parts I could reach, frustrated by the darkness that hampered my vision.
Although I elicited a few groans and a couple of lines of profanity that I couldn’t understand, my two captors never let go.
Whoever these men were, they knew I had abilities beyond that of a normal human being. Hence the silver cuffs.
The two thugs manhandled me, each gripping an upper arm as they tried to push me toward the doorway. I had two choices. Struggle and give them hell, or play it cool and get as much info as I could.
Then, hope like hell I find a moment alone to use my weapons or teleport the heck out of this mess.
I relaxed and let them lead me out of the hotel suite—so much for five-star security—and toward the elevators. Heading straight past and on toward the door to the stairwell, they took me one flight up.
The door opened on a gust of muggy late-night air.
The low throb of the rotating blades of a helicopter reverberated through my bones, thrusting air at me in unrelenting blasts.
The two thugs bundled me inside the chopper and the small craft took flight, zipping through the Hong Kong night, destination unknown.
Only a few minutes, probably no more than three, had passed when the chopper banked to the right and hovered as the pilot confirmed his intention to land.
He touched down smoothly, and I was annoyed at being impressed with his technical skill while in the process of being abducted, and he being party to said abduction.
The thugs hustled me out of the chopper, one tossing me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
Probably wise, as I’d begun to lose my patience with them and had delivered a swift hard kick to one of them, connecting with the family jewels.
We entered a second stairwell, the density of air around me changing with the thudding of boot-heels and metallic clatter of skin against metal banisters.
They halted after two flights, then paused as a door whooshed open for them. Despite being blind to my surroundings, it was easy to keep track of my location.
They certainly weren’t doing a good job of subterfuge.
They marched along a corridor, this one with carpets just as plush and deep as at Garner’s hotel. Another short halt as a card was swiped and a second door glided open.
Inside the room, the change in temperature proclaimed that the owner preferred things slightly cooler than most.
My transport slid me off his
shoulder to my feet, then sat me down backwards. I dropped inelegantly into a chair and heard my satchel thud onto the floor beside me.
At least they’d had the sense to bring my stuff with me.
Very thorough.
I caught the scent of incense on the air and sat back, figuring it was much better to remain calm. There was absolutely nothing I could do right now. The metal cuffs hummed against my skin and I could feel the magic teasing my bones.
Despite my taped mouth, I wanted to tug at my cuffs, and scream at my captors.
I had shit to do.
I didn’t have time for abductions and illegal incarcerations.
I didn’t have time to be stupid and careless either and I’d done just that. Drake was going to be so pissed off. He’d spend not a single moment in sympathy fore my plight. I could just hear him snort and say I’d asked for it because I was so fucking complacent.
He’d be right.
I wiggled my bare feet. Bound too, but the bite of plastic said ‘zip ties’.
I tested the tape with my tongue, wetting it with saliva over and over and moving it back away from my lips as far as I could get it. Still, I felt helpless especially with the black hood blocking out all signs of light.
Nothing moved in the apartment for a while, until finally a door opened in the distance. They must have left me in an interior room.
This high up, I’d likely be in a private apartment but I wasn’t planning on getting too comfortable.
At least I didn’t have to pee.
Yet.
I was nodding off, after what felt like hours, when I heard someone yelling.
My head snapped back as the sound of a harsh voice drew closer. Close enough to clarify that he wasn’t yelling but rather speaking very loudly in Chinese. He sounded angry, annoyed and very short-tempered.
The door slammed open and the speaker hurried toward me and whipped off the hood. Bright light assaulted my eyes, making everything dark and hard to define.
More Chinese now, this time louder yelling.
I watched the larger thug, his face twisted with worry as he carefully peeled off the tape covering my mouth.
The speaker came around to standing front of me, and I tried to contain my surprise.
