Afterwards we all collapsed on each other in the back seat, dazed.
“Man,” Thor said, caressing my thigh. “When Matteo wouldn’t leave and you were on the edge like that, Isis, I thought I might lose it, too.”
“That was an evil game,” I said.
“But so much fun,” Thor said.
CHAPTER THREE
We headed back to my guys’ place, a mod hideout hidden in the hills. We needed to clean up and change and get back to the bank. It was Matteo’s shift to sit on the bank.
Odin took the souped-up Navigator up the steep drive and parked it next to the souped-up Camaro and the souped-up Jetta. My bank robbers liked a shitload of horsepower, if you know what I mean. He put on the emergency brake and the three of us hopped out.
Odin was the first to spot the package on the stoop. “What the hell is that?” he said, stretching out an arm as if to say no further.
We all just stood there, some twenty feet away, staring at the package.
It was definitely weird for there to be a package on our stoop. The mailbox was way down at the end of the drive, and we only ever got junk mail anyway. Not like any of us would ever whip out a credit card and order something online, and all of our bank accounts were offshore, if not offshore of offshore. The only people who knew where we crashed were our closest comrades. And they would know not to leave a package.
Thor squinted at it, eyes brilliant blue in the sunshine. “Hmm.” There was no way this was good.
It was about the size of a shoebox and wrapped in white paper.
“Get back behind the Nav,” Odin commanded. We all went back behind the SUV. Odin grabbed a stone and threw it at the package with impressive accuracy. Bop. The package rolled and slid.
“Bomb test?” I asked.
Thor, not to be outdone, threw his own damn rock. Thor’s rock was larger and he threw it harder. The package rolled.
I gasped.
There was one word written on it in huge, childish block letters: Isis.
It wasn’t the cute kind of block letters, either. More like the insane kind. The kind you don’t ever want to see your name written in.
“Ice?” Odin asked. “Any ideas…?”
“None.”
“What the hell,” Thor muttered under his breath. He’d already pulled out his silver Sig. Were they going to shoot it, now?
“Written in the left hand,” Odin observed. “To make the writing untraceable. Gloves.”
Thor yanked open the door and pulled a what looked like a tissue box from the glove compartment, except it was full of latex gloves. He handed a pair to Odin.
Odin snapped them on. “Stay there.”
I held my breath as he headed around and up to the stoop. He picked up the box and held it, simply contemplating it, one hand on either side, like a basketball player about to make a free-throw. Then he lifted it and sniffed it. After that, he put it to his ear and listened, and turned it to examine the paper wrapper folds on one end. For his final act, he licked those folds.
“Yuck,” I said.
Thor put a quieting hand on my arm. Odin just stood there, brows drawn low in a scowl at the package, as if, having exhausted all five senses, he now hoped to receive an ESP communication from it, a feat that wouldn’t entirely shock me, I suppose. Odin was the most brilliant of us—a kind of artist who sailed through the highest stratospheres of techie-ness and psychological understanding.
I held my breath as he shook it. Then he turned to us. “I’m going-g to open this fucker up. You mind?”
“Go for it,” I said.
“Do it,” Thor said, strolling up.
“No, stay back.” Odin said.
“You better be downwind,” Thor grumbled.
“I am.” Odin set it back down on the stoop and undid the white paper, careful not to rip anything, pulling it off in a large piece. One of the sides was kind of shiny.
It turns out it was the size of a shoebox because it was a shoebox, with the Nike swoosh on the side. Somehow I doubted it contained shoes. I held my breath as Odin flipped off the lid and bent over the contents.
“What is it?” Thor asked.
“Come see,” Odin said.
We went up and stood with Odin, the three of us peering into the box, which contained a plastic baggie with a feather and some gloppy, partly-dried brownish fluid inside of it. The feather had once been white, but was now half-stained with the fluid which, let’s face it, looked an awful lot like blood. Some of the fluid clung to the sides of the baggie.
“Not really my style. I mean, whatever would I wear them with?” I said, going for the joke, like that might make this less alarming.
My guys weren’t amused. Odin carefully unfolded the note. It read, YOU ARE MINE. In that same insane blocky lettering.
Okay, now I was scared.
“Fucking-g going to kill somebody,” Odin said, yanking out his gun. “You stay here with Ice and keep a good eye on the surroundings. I’m taking a walk around, then inside.
“Got it,” Thor said, weapon at the ready.
“Then we’ll print it, though I don’t imagine we’ll find much,” Odin grumbled. “I can think of a dozen people who know we’re here, and none of them would be stupid enough to leave prints.”
“Nobody we know is stupid enough to do this in the first place,” Thor said. “Maybe somebody is off the rails.”
“Maybe.” Odin headed off to the side to make a check of the area around the house.
“Oh, my God,” I said, heart pounding. Just the writing was so insane looking. And the blood.
“Pig’s blood, I bet,” Thor said. “Because this paper, it’s butcher paper.”
“It’s blood.”
Thor looped his arm around my shoulder. “We’ll keep you safe, Isis. Nothing and nobody comes between us. Ever. Got it? You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, though I couldn’t stop shaking. In all the mayhem that was our life now, the one place I’d felt secure was this hideout.
He pulled me tighter. “This shit does not stand.”
After a few minutes, Odin came out the front door with a handful of large plastic Ziploc baggies. “Nobody’s here.” He and Thor bagged the stuff separately and we went in.
“It could be worse. It could be your real name,” Thor said once we were safe inside.
That freaked me out even more. If anyone knew my real name, it meant that they could get to my sisters. I’d cut all contact with them, mostly to keep us all safe, though I sent them money by buying up the wildly overpriced “Paris Hilton” model of sheep wool comforter.
He set the package on the kitchen table next to what looked like a tackle box, except it was full of brushes and tiny bottles. A fingerprint kit. Thor pulled on a pair of latex gloves and spread out the paper.
“We have a fingerprint kit?” As soon as I said it, I realized it was a stupid thing to be surprised by. I knew Odin and Zeus as bank robbers and thought of them that way, but they’d come out of intelligence. Spies.
They’d been super cops once.
“You’d be surprised how handy something like this is,” Thor said. “Though the last time Zeus used it, it was to find out who pissed in the bird bath during a poker night.”
“Zeus was mad as hell,” Odin said.
“I’d think that was more the realm of a DNA test,” I said, watching Odin brush powder off the butcher paper.
“There’s a pole next to the birdbath,” Thor explained. “People were drunk. He figured whoever it was would’ve held onto it for support. And he was right. He made the guy come out and scrub it.”
“But, to run fingerprints you need a database of fingerprints,” I said.
“There are a few federal databases we can still get at,” Odin said.
I nodded. Right. They still had a friend or two deep inside the web of government agencies.
“And most of the people we know happen to be in that database, which is convenient at times like
these,” Odin added.
“We can’t tell Zeus about this until he’s home with us,” Thor said. “He’ll go ballistic. No good to have him finding out while he’s inside those HVAC ducts.”
“Fuck,” Odin said, emphatically.
Thor examined the shoebox. “No price tag anywhere. This is a pretty common style, I think. But let me check it out.” He grabbed his iPad from his pack.
“No prints on the baggie,” Odin said. He opened it up and pulled out the bloody feather with a tweezers and set it into smaller baggie, sealing it up. “Get online, Isis, and see if you can determine the type of bird this comes from.”
“How do I do that?” I asked.
“Figure it out,” Odin barked. “I’d think if a person is able to find entire cartoon porn websites devoted to fetishes about being taken captive and forcibly ravished by woodsmen, I’d think you could identify a feather, don’t you?”
I snatched the baggie. They weren’t supposed to tease me about my taste in cartoon porn anymore. Being taken prisoner while walking in the forest and ravished by hunky hooded woodsmen in tights wasn’t a fun thought now, in light of this horrible package. If there were no fingerprints, how were they supposed to figure out who sent the box? “Who cares what bird it’s from?”
“It all matters,” Odin said.
“Are you sure you’re not just trying to give me something to do so I’m not freaking out?”
“This is an investigation. We glean all the information we possibly can, and then and only then do we assess whether it is worthwhile to know,” Odin said.
I sat down at the far end of the table with my laptop and started on my task, trying not to focus too hard on the horror of the darkened blood marring the white feather. Or that somebody would send that to me. I looked up ornithology sites. Feathers tended to look similar to one another, but there were differences, I found. The little feathery strands were called barbs, and they had really tiny parts coming off of them called barbules, which is how the barbs stuck together. It was lucky the thing was only half-coated in dried blood.
“Can I borrow the magnifying glass?” I looked up to see Odin using it. “After you’re done?” I added.
“Have it now, goddess.” Odin came around and set it next to the keyboard. Then he leaned in to kiss my hair. “Whoever did this,” he whispered warm into my hair, “we will run him down to the ends of hell and pull his guts from his belly like fishing rope. Because nobody fucking-g threatens you.”
Shivers came over me. “Thank you, baby,” I whispered, loving him so much and feeling so wonderfully loved and held and protected by these men. My family.
Odin went to a drawer and pulled out a leather case that contained another magnifying glass.
I went back to studying diagrams. I had a feeling we were looking at a pigeon feather, but I hadn’t found an exact match. Odin and Thor were discussing everybody who knew where this particular hideout was, who had also met me, creating a list of suspects. They ruled a few people out, like Matteo, who had been with us all day.
Thor set down the iPad. “So apparently every athletic store and discount store in the known world carries this model.”
Odin turned the shoebox all around, blowing gently on the dust. “Fucker’s full of prints.”
“Could be from the shoe store.”
Odin set it on the plastic and grabbed a magnifying glass. He examined the top of the box, then dusted the rest of it. “Four different individuals at least. It looks like somebody tried to wipe them. Poorly. Good.” He took out his smartphone and made a few scans, then hit some keys, sending them, presumably, to their guy in intelligence.
“How long?” I asked.
“We’ll see,” Odin said. “Our guy can’t be obvious about it. He has to put them in a batch already running.”
Odin got on the phone with Matteo and asked him to sit on the bank a little longer, explaining the situation and asking if Matteo had fielded any questions about Isis. He nodded, grunted, and hung up.
I will confess that I was a little bit unhappy we were still full speed ahead on the Prime Royale with this new development.
“What’d he say?” Thor asked.
“That a shitload of people ask about Isis,” Odin said. “They all knew Venus. They’re curious.”
I looked down at my screen. Venus had been with my guys a few years back. She’d hated being trapped on the run. She’d nearly gotten them caught on a job, and then she killed herself by jumping a hundred feet into a quarry pit. Venus was a tender spot—they spent years blaming and hating themselves for her suicide. Zeus especially blamed himself.
I wondered about Venus often—what she was like, how she interacted with the guys. Times when I felt insecure, I wondered if I really measured up to her. But mostly I felt sad for her, and I thought I would’ve liked to have known her.
“And our gang cloud tattoo.” He pointed his eyes down at my ankle. “Matteo thinks it made you a bigger target. And now the cherub angels on our arms?”
“Hmm,” Thor said.
“I love the tattoo. Screw that.” At least, I liked the tattoo of an angry cloud with four badass lightning bolts representing the four of us. It showed we were a family, and I was proud to have it.
“You making progress with that feather?” Odin asked.
“A little.” I got back to examining the barbules.
Later, Odin sent Thor out to a lab downtown with some of the blood for a DNA test. I knew the place—it was mostly for drug testing and paternity testing, but apparently they could test blood for to see what sort of animal it came from.
After that, Odin called Robert Manning, the A/V guy who’d installed surveillance at the end of the driveway, and requested extra security cameras installed around the perimeter of the house, so that no inch of tundra would go unfilmed. Then he made sandwiches.
“Thanks,” I said as he set down a plate.
“Zeus is going-g to freak the fuck out,” Odin said.
I nodded glumly, staring at my sandwich. I didn’t have much of an appetite, but Odin ate ravenously. It took a lot to make my guys lose their appetites.
“This man will bitterly regret the day he ever so much as thought of you with anything but the purest of admiration.”
“I don’t want him to think of me at all.”
Odin lowered his voice. “Soon he won’t.”
I got up and washed my hands in the kitchen sink, which looked out over the cozy living spaces of the hideout, decorated in a style I’d describe as mod cabin, built for comfort and relaxation, and not at all flashy. The style involved plush rugs, blocky upholstered furniture, and old snowshoes on the wall in front of the fireplace.
Odin eyed me carefully as I sat back down across from him. “You okay?”
I tore off a crusty bit of bread. “It’s just creepy.”
“Hey.” He came around and settled a hand lightly onto my hair. “We have you, goddess.”
“I know, and it’s not that I don’t think you’ll get him, but that doesn’t take away the yuckiness of a gift like that.”
“He’ll hurt him extra for the yuckiness.”
I smiled up at him. Odin’s Mediterranean complexion had darkened in the LA sun, and he had a perfect five o’clock shadow below his hot, jaggedly scarred cheekbone. “More than pulling his guts from his belly like fishing rope?”
“I’ll do it slowly,” he growled.
“Oh,” I said. Because, what else do you say to that?
“Finish your lunch. We go to the butchers.”
CHAPTER FOUR
After visiting eight butcher shops, we learned one thing: there are lots in people in Los Angeles buying blood. Some buy sheep and cow blood, but mostly pig’s blood. And butchers are happy to supply it; even the supermarket butchers sold it. Some of them chalked it up to the vampire craze. Others sold it for theatrical realism or religious ceremonies.
You never saw it in the case. I suppose that might be a bit much, containers of blood di
splayed next to the roast beef or sliced ham. Pig’s blood! Try it for your next black magic ritual or Civil War re-enactment! Only $9.99 a quart!
Another thing we learned: they all had the same butcher paper supplier.
I slid into the warm and toasty SUV after the last butcher visit and clicked on my seatbelt. Odin started the engine. “Who the fuck knew about all this?”
“I thought we were weird,” I said.
“This is not a profitable avenue,” he said.
It was nearly four when we got back home. Thor was outside standing next to a ladder over the front door. Up on the top was Robert Manning, the A/V security guy, a tank-like forty-something man with military tattoos all over his arms. He was a former Navy SEAL with blond hair that was always perfectly combed, just long enough to feather back, and it seemed to float around his head in close orbit, as feathered hair sometimes does.
“Just installed one of these in the home of a big star. Can’t tell ya who,” Manning said.
Well, that star was smart. Hiring the guy who installed video monitoring systems and security gate controls for criminals seemed like a good way to go. Though then again, it could be a little of the fox setting up security for the henhouse.
Apparently the gates Manning installed were guaranteed to hold up against any vehicle up to a Humvee. You got two Hummers, that’s where the gate goes, he’d said to us when we moved back in here. My guys liked him. Manning didn’t know who they’d been in their other life, and they’d never worked together, but the four of them had a certain camaraderie, a certain understanding that seemed to go beyond the usual fellow criminal bonds. I always thought they smelled military training on each other.
He stepped down from his ladder, wiping his hands on a rag. “Come on inside, I’ll show you the range.”
We followed him into the kitchen. He opened a laptop, punched up a website, and entered a code. “I’ll be sending all this to you. Here’s your number one camera, out front. Number two is in back, and three and four are east and west. Here are the corners. The system stores three days before it records over. Video files are large.” He looked up, furrowed brow. “Sorry to hear about all this, miss.”
The Deeper Game (Taken Hostage by Hunky Bank Robbers Book 3) Page 4
