However, the victim was a known agent and fixer in the hidden world of magic, and so 13OPS got involved.
Involved put it mildly.
They were leading an investigation into the hit on Webb, and even a cursory investigation swiftly revealed the courier team’s intrusion at the horse farm. The team seemed to satisfy 13OPS that they’d hardly have killed Webb when they’d already defeated him—and that at the time of his death he’d been trying to position himself as their agent.
Donna wasn’t sure whether to be glad or sorry that Olga wasn’t part of the 13OPS investigation. On the one hand, they could have worked with her. On the other hand, perhaps it wasn’t possible for Olga and Darius to work together. As it was, the courier team simply avoided 13OPS as much as possible with Rest couriering Austin and Gabe various places for in-person investigations, and Darius doing whatever it was he did on the darknet.
She left them to it. Her more immediate concern was Viola and running the gallery in her absence.
Rest had, reluctantly and with warnings to be careful and stay inside Larry’s newly re-warded house, couriered her to San Francisco that morning. The slowness of Larry’s recovery made it clear that without the powerful healer mages who’d assisted him, he’d have died.
“I’ve closed the gallery,” Viola said, sitting in the conservatory at the rear of Larry’s house.
The dull day, so very different to the desert’s clarity of light and vast distances, darkened the green of the ferns and deepened the purple hues of the African violets. The scent of chai tea combined with the damp earth scent from the potted plants.
“Temporarily,” Viola added before Donna could say anything. “As terrible as Larry’s situation was, he’s on his way back to being his ordinary, extraordinarily annoying self, but I think I could do with a week of recovery, and I gathered that Rest doesn’t want you wandering off alone?”
“Not just me,” Donna said. But the team’s business wasn’t something she could share with Viola. Still, no one was going anywhere alone till they knew who’d ordered the hit on Webb.
She sipped her tea. This wasn’t the time to discuss changes to her employment. However, that didn’t mean she couldn’t use this time to go over a few things for herself for when she did discuss the future with Viola.
The older woman smiled. “Yes, your boyfriend seemed unimpressed with Larry’s security standards. I would never have thought of contracting the Stag Agency to ward the house.”
Stag had sent a wizard yesterday, and the man, ambling around with the appearance of a gardener for the benefit of curious mundane neighbors, had installed a double ward: first around the yard, and then, the house. No one with ill intent, including the intent to harm the inhabitants or to steal, could enter the mansion.
Donna had to admit she felt safer with the sense of the vibrant ward enclosing them.
Kelly-Ann called Viola’s name from the foyer.
“Coming!” Viola shouted. “And I’ll bet the problem is Larry being difficult.”
Donna smiled as Viola strode out of the conservatory to deal with her ex-husband’s intransigence.
Viola might pretend to be annoyed, but she loved to be needed. The tail of her purple yak wool poncho fluttered with her brisk walk. “What has that man done, now?”
Donna gulped the last of her chai tea and stood. She had her own man to track down. Not Rest, but either Mark or Nate, Larry’s two assistants. Since she’d promised Rest she wouldn’t leave the San Francisco house till he returned for her, she’d ask one of the two assistants to please run and collect her laptop and some of her files from her apartment. She’d catch up on paperwork for the gallery along with client emails and requests.
In a case of perfect timing, Mark hurried into the conservatory, his gaze instantly focusing on her.
“Mark—”
“You’re in danger,” he said urgently. The conservatory wasn’t large and he was a big, athletic man. He was in her personal space in two seconds.
In the next second, he hit her a stunning blow and caught her as she fell unconscious. She didn’t even have time to be shocked.
Donna woke on the tiled linoleum floor of an old office. It was cold. Her head ached in a way that promised movement would bring the pain alive in a throbbing migraine-level burst. She could see the floor and the legs of a metal desk, a chair and a man’s polished black shoes.
She closed her eyes. Mark didn’t wear those kind of shoes. He wore boots.
There was one thing to be said for a headache and probable concussion: she didn’t have the energy to panic. She assessed her current state. Beyond the headache, her right shoulder hurt from lying on her side with her arms cuffed behind her back. They were probably silver cuffs or enchanted; sufficient at any rate to suppress her minor witch magic when she attempted to focus it.
And wouldn’t you know it, her seer talent hadn’t warned her she’d be kidnapped.
She needed to know who by, and why, and where she was.
How long was I unconscious?
Her kidnapper had taken pains to suppress her magic, but not to gag her. That suggested, ominously, that she could scream and no one would hear her. Or they’d hear her, but not care.
A tear of fright and pain slid from her right eye and into her hairline. Her head hurt. She was in no state to fight anyone, but she had to. She couldn’t risk assuming that someone would rescue her. Her kidnapper had already circumvented the new wards on Larry’s house to get to her.
“Are you awake?” A clipped, impatient male voice asked. He sounded as if he was an older man. He had something of Darius’s tone of command, but weaker. For all the bite in his voice, he was nervous.
He should be worried. Rest will kill him.
Whoever he was.
A chair scraped. Footsteps approached her.
She thought of opening her eyes, but he gripped her shoulders and hauled her upright to sit propped against a cold, hard wall, and it was all she could do to a) not vomit, and b) remain conscious.
“They’ll want proof you’re alive.”
She opened her eyes. The angle of her head meant she had a better view of her prison and kidnapper.
The room was windowless, the walls painted a beige color that had grayed over the decades. There was a row of filing cabinets behind the desk and an old-fashioned rotary dial phone on it. The man standing in front of Donna, between her and the desk, had short gray hair, pale blue eyes and a thin-lipped mouth that twitched. He held a cellphone.
“It shouldn’t work in here,” he said. “But it does.”
He was stalling.
Despite her pounding headache, she recognized his nervousness. Perhaps she could use it to elicit some information. “Where?”
“Below Alcatraz,” he answered absently. “One of the Psy-Ops remote viewing locations from the 1960s.”
A shroud of horror descended on Donna. She hated Alcatraz, hated seeing it from the mainland and hated remembering the suffering endured here, even if the men imprisoned on the island had been the worst of the worst. Too much evil. It mightn’t be death magic, but evil and suffering left a psychic smog, too.
“The tunnels are warded,” the man continued. “Castillo can’t portal in through wards.”
The man knew about Rest, he knew about secret military projects, and he was stupid enough to kidnap her.
“General Olafur,” she said.
His gaze snapped from the cellphone in his hand to her. “You recognize me?”
“By reputation.” As a treacherous snake. “Kidnapping me was not a good idea.”
“I had to. Had to!”
Her head throbbed worse than ever at his shout. “Blackmail?” she whispered.
“Am I being blackmailed?” he asked. Laughter like a sob shook him. “Not since Webb died. But who killed him? I’ll be next.”
“Why you?”
“Because I know things.”
If not for the painful concussion, she’d have rolled her eyes
. What a self-important poseur. Lots of people knew dangerous information. Unless… “Do you know who killed Webb?”
His mouth shut like a trap. He picked up a scrap of paper and dialed a number. “Captain Selbourne, this is General Olafur. I propose a trade.” How had the retired general acquired Darius’s cellphone number?
The room was small enough for Donna to hear Darius’s response.
“First you got one of my team killed. Now you’ve kidnapped one of them. If she dies, I’ll make sure you lose everything. Then I’ll kill you.”
Donna’s head hurt as much as ever, but her panic eased a little. She’d already believed Rest and his team would be doing everything they could to find her. But hearing Darius declare her one of them, that felt good. She forced her eyes to stay open, even if she had to squint against the pain, and fixed the general with a steady glare.
His skin had a pasty tinge to it under the fluorescent lighting. “Don’t threaten me, Selbourne. Castillo cares about this woman. If he wants to see her again, alive, we need to strike a deal.”
“You betrayed us once.”
The general wouldn’t look at her. “I have nothing to gain by killing her. So if I do, it’ll be because you force me to it.”
Is he lying? Is that why he won’t look at me?
“What do you want?” Darius asked flatly.
The general drew a deep, betraying breath of relief. “Your promise of protection.”
“What?!!” Darius’s incredulity came through the phone.
Mentally, Donna echoed it. Did this lame-brain think kidnapping and threatening her life would win him Rest’s cooperation?
Yes, yes he did.
“Your team is capable of it. Castillo hid for two years, till now. I want my wife and I hidden and protected for a year, and then, new identities.”
“Who are you afraid of, Olafur?”
The general hung up. He put the phone down on the desk beside him, staring at it.
“Why me?” Donna asked.
“Weak point. I saw you at the hospital two years ago. Saw the way Castillo was with you. My wife is how Webb got me. Her debts. My love. You’re Castillo’s vulnerability.”
“So you know he’ll do anything to get me back?”
Olafur looked at her directly. “I’m counting on it. The wards here are the strongest the military uses. They’ll baffle anyone trying to backtrack the cellphone’s signal. Not even a finder talent could locate you here, and I made it look as if we took a plane out. To get you back, he’ll have to promise me what I want.”
Maybe an average finder talent couldn’t find her below Alcatraz prison, but Sadie could. If Rest thought to contact her. Even if he didn’t, Viola would. And if Viola raised the alarm, once Olga knew Donna had been kidnapped, it wouldn’t only be the courier team coming after the retired general.
I just have to survive till they get here. “How long was I unconscious?”
“Nearly four hours.”
She had one more question. “Why would you accept his promise?”
Brutal self-knowledge twisted his thin mouth. “Because unlike me, the combat courier team keeps their word.” Olafur picked up the phone and redialed. He spoke without preliminaries. “Are you ready to make a deal?”
However, it wasn’t Darius who answered.
It was Rest and he was terse. “You hurt Donna, you die slowly. Remember that.”
Then the walls of the room, stone and cement walls, shook.
Donna moaned at the pain in her head as the room trembled. A portal slammed open.
Rest ignored the general, dropping instead to his knees beside Donna.
“Mark hit me over the head.”
“I know,” Rest said quietly. “He’s sorry.”
“Key.” Austin had secured the general. The key to the cuffs that restrained Donna flew through the air to Rest.
He unlocked the cuffs and slipped them off her. Then he scooped her up. He walked into the portal with Austin and Gabe tagging him, Gabe shoving Olafur to follow.
Before she could question where Darius was, a portal opened to a smell of ocean and old concrete. Darius grabbed Austin’s outstretched hand and walked into the portal. Dimly Donna realized that he’d stood on the island and broken the unbreakable wards around the subterranean room so that Rest could portal in and rescue her. Austin and Gabe had dealt with Olafur so that Rest could concentrate on her.
The Path made her concussion a violently unpleasant experience. She was safe. Her team was safe. She released her grip on consciousness and slipped into welcome oblivion.
Only to be hauled out by Kelly-Ann healing her in a guest room at Larry’s house.
“How are you feeling?” the healer asked.
Donna could feel Rest’s hand holding hers. She squeezed it. “Fine. Better than that.”
“Okay, then.” Kelly-Ann leaned back. “Your concussion—”
Donna wasn’t listening. Rest had pulled her into his arms and was kissing her, and she kissed him back with all the fervor of someone who’d nearly died.
“Five minutes,” Kelly-Ann said somewhere in the background. “Then everyone downstairs will want to see you.” She walked out and closed the bedroom door behind her.
Maybe it was five minutes. Maybe the others managed to give them a little extra time. But then Austin hammered on the door. “Places to go. Generals to torture,” he shouted. “Let’s go people.”
“You won’t really torture Olafur, will you?” Donna asked Rest.
“Me? No. They couldn’t trust me to stop.”
She stared at him wide-eyed.
“The sooner we get answers, the sooner we can go home. Do you want to comb your hair or something?”
“I guess I should.” If he was making the suggestion, she probably looked like something the cat had dragged in. Fortunately, she no longer felt like it. Even when she combed her hair in the bathroom, there wasn’t so much as a bump from Mark’s assault on her. Kelly-Ann was the best of healers. Donna owed her a huge thanks.
Olga had arrived and waited in the casual living room with the team and Viola. The two women crushed Donna in a combined hug. Austin, Darius and Gabe waited, but then they, too, hugged her.
Donna felt a bit weepy at all the love in the room for her. That was, until she saw Mark hanging back and staring at her mournfully.
“What is he doing here?” Free, she meant. “He attacked me.”
Mark turned away and punched a wall.
Rest put an arm around her. “Olafur drugged him. The serum made him susceptible to suggestion, and Mark proved more susceptible than most. Olafur convinced him that you were in danger in the house and had to be removed quickly and quietly. Once you were outside of the wards, Olafur struck Mark down and drove away with you.”
“He drugged Mark?”
Rest nodded confirmation. “He caught Mark on his return from a shopping run.”
“That bastard,” Donna swore. She didn’t stop to think, just ran across the room and hugged Mark. Olafur had kidnapped her, but in some ways he’d done worse to Mark. He’d forced an honorable man into an act of violence against an innocent.
Mark stood rigid for a moment, then his arms crushed her. “I am so sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
“No one here blames you,” Viola added. “But this General Olafur…Olga, I don’t see why we have to wait for a truth teller. Darius is willing to break the man for answers.” And for vengeance, her tone said.
“We will do this by the book.” There was no compromise in Olga’s tone.
They needed to know who had ordered the hit on Webb. Was it the same person who’d used Webb to kidnap Darius and flush Rest out of hiding, with the intent of employing Rest for his courier talent? Why did the person want a courier talent under their control? So many questions, and for Donna, the initial question that she’d raised days ago was still unanswered: was it Gerald Svenson?
“Where is Olafur?” Donna asked as she returned to Rest
’s side.
He held her close. “Bound and gagged, tied to a chair in the kitchen.”
“I do have questions.” Donna looked at Olga.
Her friend sighed. “He won’t answer them.”
“Would it hurt to ask?”
Olga shrugged, and as if that was a signal, everyone got up and moved to the kitchen.
“Darius already asked,” Gabe said quietly to Donna and Rest. “Olafur isn’t talking.”
The retired general was seated on a heavy chair in the middle of an empty patch of floor. He stared at them as they entered.
Austin removed the gag.
“A name, Olafur,” Darius said. “Who scared you enough that you thought it worth kidnapping Donna to attempt a bargain?”
“If I knew a name, I wouldn’t be so scared.”
Olga stepped up to stand beside Darius. He was bigger than her and combat experienced, but strangely, didn’t look any more dangerous. Olga was her own kind of scary. It was her focus that was terrifying. She was relentless. “If you don’t know a name, what do you have to be scared of—apart from him?” She indicated Darius with a tip of her head.
“I’m a loose end,” Olafur said, and that was all he would say.
“He didn’t even apologize for drugging Mark or kidnapping me,” Donna said for the third time, still outraged although the retired general was long gone.
Olga had won the battle by sending for reinforcements, and Olafur was now in 13OPS custody. Dinner was Chinese take-out. Olga had left with the general and his guards, but Darius continued to glower.
Austin looked amused. “Generals don’t apologize.” But his amusement wasn’t for Donna’s attitude. His eyes warmed when he looked at her. His amusement was at Darius losing the battle for Olafur to Olga.
Donna was impatient with Darius’s attitude. He needed to move on, and she had just the information to help him. “Olga always gets her way,” she said helpfully. “But since she always does the right thing, it’s okay.”
Desert Devil (Old School Book 5) Page 18
