“What do you want from me?” she asked him. “What is the point of all this?”
“Why did your father go to prison?” Broker asked, watching her over the rim of his cup. “Why did he die?”
Her breath caught. “That’s not relevant. Or your business.”
“Answer the question.”
She cut the tip of her thumb on the scalpel. “No.”
Broker smiled coldly. “He went to prison because of you. Because he was protecting you. Voluntary manslaughter. Murder, in the heat of passion.”
She felt Moochie and Francis watching. Saw Marco’s greasy-lipped smirk on the edge of her vision. Ignored them all, staring into Broker’s cold, cold, eyes. “You already know.”
“I know about the child molester who moved into the neighborhood. A man whom your father found standing outside your window in the middle of the night. And I know about the baseball bat he took to that man’s head, pounding it into pulp.” His lips thinned, and he stroked his temple. “Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?”
Rikki could hardly breathe. “Why are you doing this?”
“Ask instead why your father reacted as he did. Instinct? Need? Because it was the right thing to do?” Broker tapped the tabletop, smiling idly. “We all have reasons for our actions, Doctor Kinn. All of us righteous, even at our most abhorrent.”
“He was a good man,” she whispered. “The best.”
Broker raised his brow, that ugly smile flitting across his mouth. “He would have been free by now, isn’t that correct? It was a three-year sentence. Three years, and he was dead after only twelve months. Stabbed twice in the gut. All because he committed himself to protecting you.”
She threw her cup of tea at him. He knocked it aside. Hot water sprayed everywhere. Chairs scraped back; Marco was ready to jump across the table, but Broker held up one hand, and with the other, wiped water from his burned cheeks.
“Wildcat,” he said. “I like that about you.”
“You must like something more than that,” Rikki replied shakily, heart racing. “One woman out of six billion, and you choose to make my life your business. What have I got to offer someone with your connections?”
Broker stripped off his jacket and laid it across the table. His body was trim, well muscled beneath the damp spots in his fine white shirt. “Your description is apt. Six billion people in this world. All of them different. No two alike. Why is that, Doctor Kinn? What makes each of us unique?”
“Our DNA,” she said, after a brief pause.
Broker smiled. “Exactly.”
Impossible, ridiculous. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh, I believe you do.”
Rikki wrestled with the idea, and her opinion did not change. “You want something in my DNA?”
He did not confirm or deny, but the answer was there in his silence. Rikki sat back, studying his face, those cold dead eyes that could not hide themselves, no matter how much he tried to smile.
Tread carefully, Rikki thought, clutching the scalpel under the table. She said, “Assuming I believe you, how the hell do you know I have what you want?”
“As I told you, Doctor Kinn, I make it my business to know many things.”
“But in my case?”
His eyes narrowed. “There was a man, once, who was very powerful. He lived a very long time. And he had many children. He left behind a strong bloodline, Doctor Kinn. Many lines, all over the world. And it was once my job to track them.”
Rikki had to wrap her mind around that concept. “You’re implying I’m a descendant.”
“I am implying nothing.”
“This is crazy,” she retorted.
Broker stood. “Come along, Doctor Kinn.”
Rikki did not want to move. She wanted to fight. To take the scalpel still gripped tight in her hand and make her own slasher flick.
But a little voice told her to move, and she got up. So did Marco, Francis, and Moochie. One big party. In the Congo. In the house of a psychopath. She hoped Amiri got here soon.
Flanked by the mercenaries, Broker led Rikki down the hall, past the stone fountain, and down another passage that was less decorated, the halls wider. They passed no one else, and she heard nothing but the sounds of breathing, the rustle of clothing. And yet, there was nothing empty about the facility she moved through; she could feel the unseen presence of others, suffered that weight as she passed doors, and curtains covering sections of wall beside those doors. The air smelled like a hospital, cold and sterile.
Broker pulled aside one curtain as they walked, letting it fall back almost immediately. Long enough to reveal a window. Long enough to show a woman sitting on a cot in a white padded room. Mireille. Cradling her face.
Rikki started to stop. Francis nudged her. She said, “It wasn’t her fault.”
“I know,” Broker said, and stopped. “Here we are.”
Rikki hesitated. Marco grabbed her arm. Broker opened the door and she saw an examining table inside. Straps. Stirrups.
She swung with the scalpel and caught Marco in the shoulder. He roared, slamming her into the wall. She hit it hard enough to bounce, but she ignored the pain and tried to run. Francis caught her around the waist. Moochie grabbed her arms. Marco wrenched the scalpel from his shoulder and lunged. Francis side-checked him with his hip.
Broker said, “Get her inside.”
She kicked. She screamed. She tried to bite, but Francis was quick and Moochie stayed out of range. They got her on the table, just barely, taking her blows with soft grunts. Marco tried grabbing her feet. She clocked him in the face and his nose spurted blood.
Broker sighed, and hit the intercom by the door. “Ajax, report to this location, please.”
Rikki did not miss the look that passed between Francis and Moochie. She kept fighting, but she was watching their faces, too. They would not look her in the eyes.
A new man appeared in the doorway. He looked like he ate steroids with his Cheerios. His arms were oiled monoliths—chest broad, straining against his too-small shirt—his legs thick and bowed at the knee. He had hairy knuckles. A thick brow.
Broker said, “Ajax? If you would.”
Ajax reached behind the door. Pulled hard. A man stumbled into view. Bloody, broken, hardly able to stand. His face almost too swollen to recognize.
But she did. Because he was a friend.
“Jean-Claude,” Rikki breathed, and Broker leaned close to her ear.
“Everyone who protects you suffers,” he whispered. “This man saved your life, Doctor Kinn. He wrested you from blood and pain and death. Look at what you give him in return.”
Jean-Claude was so quiet, Rikki wondered if he hardly knew she was there. Or if he even cared. His eyes were swollen shut. He smelled like blood. He smelled like her memories. She remembered his warnings at the ferry, his fear, and wanted to kill Broker. Again. “You son of a bitch. You could knock me out, easier.”
“Yes,” he replied smoothly, “but sedatives contaminate several of the tests I need to run. Otherwise, my dear, you would be quite unconscious, and this poor man safe at home with his wife and children. Unfortunately for him, I know how sentimental you are.”
Broker flicked his finger at Ajax. The big man hauled Jean-Claude away, leaving behind a smear of blood where he had slouched. Tears burned Rikki’s eyes. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want you,” Broker said softly.
Rikki looked at him. Hate filled her throat. Hate lodged in her gut. Her heart ached with hate.
She stuck her feet in the stirrups. She held her breath and gazed up at Francis and Moochie, who stared back, impossibly grim. They released her shoulders and arms, and she lay down. She thought of Amiri, what he had undergone at the hands of these people. If he could survive, so could she. If she could survive what had been done to her, she could handle anything.
Broker stood over her. “You are a very strong woman, Doctor Kinn. To break you would require almost killing you, and
I do not want that.”
“Why are you doing this?” she whispered. “Why?”
“Because someone must,” he said, and for one moment something came alive in his eyes, something that was not warm or soft, but hard and vital. “Because otherwise, Doctor Kinn, we are all going to die.”
Chapter Eighteen
There was no need to travel with Jaaved. The man had his instructions—indeed, he already held some inkling of where Broker kept his facility. He had been in the region because he’d been summoned, but he’d had revenge on his mind. Revenge and, perhaps, one Doctor Kinn.
Amiri and his father left Jaaved in the wee hours of morning and ran. Ran fast, ran hard, right up until they reached the base camp where Amiri had left Rikki and Rictor.
Chaos had spit on the land. Amiri saw no dead, smelled little blood, but the miasma of fear and anger coated the air, thick as rotting soup. Ramshackle homes had been torn apart, with clothes, pans, books—anything not tied down—now spilled onto the grass. Men and women were trying to clean away the destruction, but they did so with movements that alternated between sharp, furious and exhausted. Ekemi was amongst them. He no longer wore his glasses, and his nose looked as though it might be broken.
Amiri did not want to speak to him. Guilt twinged, but he had to know. Had to be sure.
He shifted shape. His father remained a cheetah, and flopped down on his side, eyes closed. Resting. Amiri watched him, feeling lost in another, far stranger world. Heart aching. But staring did no good, changed nothing. He left the jungle to find out what had happened to Rikki and Rictor.
People saw him coming. Few recognized him from the night before, given the spike of fear and uneasiness that marred the already devastated faces. His nudity walked almost twenty feet ahead of him—which, for the first time in quite some while, made him regret that he could not carry clothes while running as a cheetah.
Someone ran to fetch Ekemi. Amiri was close enough to see the man’s expression change. It was not terribly pleasant. Not that Amiri blamed him. Of late, he felt rather like a bad charm.
“Rikki,” Amiri said, as soon as Ekemi was in earshot. The man’s uniform was stained with blood, as was the skin around his nose and lip. He glanced down at Amiri’s nudity, but showed nothing on his face except stricken concern.
“They took her,” Ekemi said. “There was a helicopter.”
Amiri’s jaw locked. His entire face frozen—a cold mask, revealing nothing, though beneath his skin he screamed. He had left her. He had known what would happen, and had gone anyway.
You did what you had to. As did she.
His father’s whisper. Still inside his head, even though the man himself was a stone’s throw away. The irony was sickening.
“Did they harm her?” He had trouble getting the words out.
Bitterness stole across Ekemi’s face. “Not to my knowledge, but I was … otherwise occupied. They took the boy, too. The child you brought with you.”
“Kimbareta?” Amiri frowned. “What of Rictor?”
“Your friend is gone. He asked for a rifle, took some clothing and ammunition, and disappeared into the forest.” Ekemi shook his head. “I believe he was trying to follow the helicopter.”
He forced himself to breathe. “I will rectify this situation, Ekemi. I will make it right.”
“No.” Ekemi backed away from him. Not unkindly, but with a finality that cut, nonetheless. “We will be fine on our own.”
Amiri tried to argue, but stopped. Ekemi had every reason to be wary. Later, maybe. When this was all done. He would find a way.
He held out his hand. Ekemi shook it, briefly.
“Thank you,” Amiri said. “For everything, thank you.”
“Go,” said the man, gravely. “Go and do what you must.”
Spoken as though he believed Amiri were capable of saving Rikki. As though he had no doubt.
A small comfort. Amiri turned and ran.
His father was not waiting where he had been left. Amiri tracked the old cheetah around the border of the camp, finding him crouched above a bent sapling, mouth open, inhaling a scent on his tongue. Amiri knelt beside him, and touched the broken plant. Brought his fingers back to his nose. He tasted rain, the weight of a thunderstorm.
His father shifted just enough to speak, still more animal than man. “The one who passed here is not human.”
“No,” Amiri said. “None of us know what he is.”
“Old blood,” Aitan rasped. “Gods and monsters.”
An appropriate description. Perhaps even for themselves.
They continued on, embraced by the cheetah, and though they were made for open plains and dry winds, the jungle held no secrets, no barriers. Amiri slipped through the morning shadows, relentless, and inside his heart he sensed a pulse that was only Rikki—as though he could feel her heartbeat closed tight within him, reaching and pulling him near.
His father’s motives remained more elusive.
Time passed. Amiri’s throat burned. He thought about finding water, and was close to doing so when a gunshot blasted the heavy mid-morning air. He heard shouts, branches breaking.
Power poured into his muscles. He surged ahead of his father, cutting a streak through the tangle. Sunlight danced through the leaves into his eyes. He caught the scent of thunder, blood, men … and found Rictor, who was pressed on his side in a mass of ferns, using a fallen tree as cover, a rifle balanced and braced against his shoulder. He wore pants, but no shirt. The gashes across his back were livid, raw, etched in green. Nothing, from his upper shoulders to the base of his spine, had been spared.
Men were firing on Rictor. It was difficult for Amiri to see how many, but the scents were thick and the harsh tones of heavy breathing gathered like the wind in his ears. He followed the sounds to their source—found three mercenaries, men in black staying close to trees and the ground. He crept behind them and they never noticed. He felt his father join him, staring.
Broker’s men, Amiri imagined the old man saying; the words were in his eyes. Cold eyes, calculating. Amiri saw no remorse—none—and watched his father lunge from the underbrush, slamming one of the gunmen sideways into the ground. Amiri followed suit, moving so fast the second man could hardly react to his partner’s death before he himself tumbled into the leaves, screaming. Amiri sank his jaws into that soft throat and ripped. Blood gushed into his mouth.
He heard the creak of the last man’s gear as he turned, heard a muffled gasp. A gun went off—a thunderous blast. The mercenary flew sideways, a hole in his chest. Amiri turned. Found Rictor walking toward them, rifle poised. His eyes were like cut glass, sharp. Even before, in the lab, the man had never looked so uncompromisingly lethal. Amiri wondered, briefly, if he was going to die.
“Took you cats long enough,” Rictor rumbled, pacing over to the dead mercenary. He glanced around, scanning the undergrowth, then set down his rifle and started stripping the corpse of weapons. Amiri shifted shape. Rictor glanced up and said, “Your guy doesn’t have bullet holes in his vest.”
It was not an actual request, but Amiri had no desire to sting another man’s pride. He stripped the man he had killed, unbuckling his vest, and tossed the clothing to Rictor. Rictor slipped it on, wincing just slightly.
“What happened here?” Amiri asked, glancing at his father. He found the old cheetah sitting on his haunches, watching Rictor. Blood covered his muzzle. The air smelled thick with death, and was just as still. No birds sang. No monkeys rattled through the canopy.
Rictor met Aitan’s stare, and held it. “Ambush. My hearing’s not as good as yours.”
“I am surprised you are so proficient with a gun,” Amiri murmured. “I cannot imagine you ever had a use for one.”
“Not before now.” Rictor finally tore his gaze from Aitan. “Go ahead. Ask.”
Amiri inclined his head. “Who hurt you?”
“That’s not what I wanted you to ask.”
“And?”
“And I did
it to myself,” he replied darkly. “The moment I got stupid.”
“From birth, then?” said Aitan, shifting into his human body. Rictor gave him a hard look and traded his rifle for the AK-47 and a pistol.
Amiri rose smoothly to his feet. “Interfering, Rictor?”
“Do not talk to me,” he said harshly. “Do not.”
“I simply want to be clear. Are you here to help us?”
“You fuck,” Rictor snapped quietly, and there was enough grief and rage in his eyes that Amiri felt ashamed of himself. But it was brief, because this was survival, and the question had to be asked.
Aitan looked to the east. “We are close. We should hide the bodies. Someone might have heard the fight.”
Rictor’s mouth tightened. He bent down, grabbed ankles, and started pulling. Pain twisted his face, but he made not one sound. Amiri moved to help him, taking the brunt of the burden. Neither man looked at the other.
A radio crackled. Rictor snatched it up and clipped the device to his pocket, turning the volume down low. Amiri glanced at his father. “How close?”
“Less than an hour’s walk, even in these bodies.”
Rictor straightened. “You have a plan?”
“I will tell you on the way,” Amiri said.
“Wow,” Rictor said, some time later. “You’re screwed.”
The three men stood on the edge of a ravine. Below them, nestled in the cleft of the rolling mountain forest, jutted the edge of a large octagonal structure, constructed of glass and concrete. Amiri could not imagine the cost and manpower to construct such a facility in the heart of this isolated place. Everything, flown in. Indeed, he saw several clearings filled with helicopters, as well as a landing pad on the roof of the structure. Arrogant, obvious, exposed.
Amiri exhaled, slowly. “Do you have a better plan, Rictor?”
A grim smile touched the man’s mouth. Mists rose around them; the air was hot, but with a damp fresh scent that provided an illusion of something cooler. Amiri heard voices. Far away, near the bottom of the ravine. Nothing dangerous.
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