Mortal Ties

by Eileen Wilks

  “Yeah.” Lily pulled out her own phone. “Local FBI, in this case. There’s a chance this is connected to, ah…a Unit matter. I’ll explain that in a minute.” She looked up the number, touched the call button, then glanced at Rule. “One of your people, maybe, for the house?”

  He nodded. “We do want to be sure he isn’t there and injured.”

  Or dead, but neither of them would mention that possibility in front of Beth.

  Cullen spoke for the first time since sitting down. “I’m good with locks.”

  Rule stood. “You’re too appealing a target. I’ll talk to Scott. He’ll know who else can handle the lock.”

  “I’m faster. Besides, there could be a connection.”

  “Target?” Beth said, looking between them. “What do you mean, he’s a target?”

  Meanwhile, Lily had identified herself and asked to speak to Special Agent Bergman. She’d already talked to the woman once today, on the flight in. That wasn’t the first time they’d spoken. It was Bergman’s office that’d run the original check on Sean Friar when Lily first crossed paths with his brother, Robert Friar.

  Bergman agreed to have someone look into Sean Friar’s apparent disappearance right away. Lily gave her Beth’s number and address verbally; the rest of the info could be sent electronically…in a minute. First she had to do something she dreaded.

  Rule stood at the door, talking to Scott. Cullen was still on his stool. Beth was standing bolt still, staring at Cullen.

  “What do you mean, someone wants to kidnap you?”

  “Or kill me,” Cullen said cheerfully. “We aren’t sure which, but taking me hostage seems more likely.”

  “But—but—” She spun to face Lily. “Someone wants to kidnap Cullen and someone already has kidnapped Sean, so—”

  “Whoa.” Lily held up both hands. “We don’t know what’s happened with your friend. It’s a huge jump from ‘I don’t know where he is’ to ‘he’s been kidnapped.’ ”

  “Did someone try to kidnap Cullen? Is that why you’re here?” She shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would you come here if someone tried to kidnap him back in San Diego?”

  “It’s connected to the case.” Lily felt the slow, dull throb of a headache begin. She rubbed her neck. “Beth, I need to tell you some things you won’t like hearing. There’s other stuff I won’t be able to tell you. You won’t like that, either.” She patted the couch. “Sit down and let’s talk.”

  Beth didn’t move. “Is this an I’ve-got-bad-news sit down?”

  “It’s an I-don’t-want-to-crane-my-neck-watching-you-pace sit down. Come on. Sit.”

  Beth scowled, took three steps, and dropped onto the couch. “So talk.”

  Lily took a deep breath. “Sean Friar is the brother of a very bad guy named Robert Friar.”

  Beth rolled her eyes. “Like I didn’t know that.”

  Lily couldn’t think of one thing to say.

  “Sean and I are friends. Maybe I’d like to be more, but the friend part is for real. Of course he’s told me about his brother. Half brother, really—same mother, different fathers. Robert was adopted by Sean’s father, who was Robert’s stepfather, which is how come they have the same last name.”

  “You knew. You knew, and you didn’t say a word to me.” Lily grabbed onto her temper and yanked it back. It was not good technique to yell at a witness…even when that witness was your own stupid, thinks-she’s-at-the-center-of-the-world little sister who…deep breath, she told herself. “What do you know about Robert Friar?” Beth had to know some of it. The news had been full of the story for a week.

  “You’re pissed.”

  “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  “I knew you’d react like this! I knew it! That’s why I didn’t tell you about Sean, because you’d leap to all kinds of conclusions before you even met him!”

  Lily leaned forward. “Did you stop to think for even one moment that this might be about more than your feelings? That maybe, just maybe, I might have more on my mind where Friar is concerned than interfering in your—oh, but it isn’t a romance, is it? Your friendship with the brother of a man who tried to kill thousands, including Toby, and—”

  A warm hand landed on her shoulder. “Lily.” Rule squeezed gently. “May I take this for now?”

  Sure. Yes. Because if she said another word, she was going to speak it while shaking Beth so hard whatever passed for brains in her sister’s head spilled out.

  Rule took her silence for assent. “Beth, Robert Friar is the man who took me and Cullen and several others captive. He attempted to set explosives off at Clanhome, which would have killed Toby and many others in my clan.”

  Beth nodded seriously. “I heard about all that, of course—on the TV, since Lily refused to discuss it, but it was all over the news. Friar was with that elf, right? I can’t think of the elf guy’s name, but they were killed when the elf did some kind of big magic and brought the mountain down on them. You and Lily and Cullen escaped in the nick of time with—was it Benedict?”

  “And a few others, yes.”

  “That’s horrible, it’s really, deeply horrible, but”—she gave Lily a dirty look—“it had nothing to do with Sean.”

  “It wouldn’t, perhaps,” Rule said, “except that we don’t think Robert Friar died.”

  “What? But that—the news said—Sean thinks his brother is dead!” She bounced to her feet to glare at Lily. “You let him think his brother was dead!”

  Lily kept her voice steady. “We have no concrete evidence that he survived, but no body was found, and we do know…have you heard of patterning?”

  Beth shook her head impatiently. “I haven’t, and what does that have to do with Sean?”

  “Patterning is the ability to manipulate possibilities. It’s a rare Gift and usually shows up in its weak form, but it’s known in some circles as the Gift of the gods. A really strong patterner can make even highly unlikely events occur—such as surviving the collapse of a mountain.”

  Beth followed her meaning well enough. “Except that Sean’s brother wasn’t Gifted.”

  “He didn’t start out that way, but Robert Friar is now a listener and a patterner. He received his second Gift just before the node imploded and brought down the cave system.”

  “No one can give someone else a Gift.”

  “Old Ones do the damnedest things,” Lily said dryly.

  Beth opened her mouth. Closed it. After a moment she said quietly, “I think I need to hear a lot more than I have about what happened.”

  “I think maybe you do.” Lily looked at Rule, a frown pleating her forehead. “I know you don’t like to split up.”

  “I don’t, no. Tony can wait a little longer. You’re worried about leaving your sister alone.” He raised one brow slightly.

  She knew what he was asking. And he was right, dammit. She couldn’t make any sense of Sean Friar’s apparent disappearance, but just because she couldn’t see what Friar was up to didn’t mean he wasn’t knee-deep in whatever was happening here. He had to be. Her sister hadn’t just happened to meet Friar’s brother, not without a push from someone who could manipulate possibilities.

  Of course, Beth wasn’t entirely alone and hadn’t been since she moved here. The time had come for her to meet Murray and the others who’d been watching over her. Guarding her from a distance wasn’t a good option anymore.

  Lily sighed, sure she knew how her sister was going to take that news.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “THAT didn’t go well,” she said, clicking her seat belt in place.

  “It could have been worse.”

  “I suppose.” It had helped some that it was so abundantly obvious that the guards Rule had assigned to Beth hadn’t been spying on her, reporting on her. If they had, Rule would have known about Sean Friar months ago.

  Rule squeezed her hand. “At least she’s letting Murray stay in the apartment with her for now.”

  “Not because she sees the need. Mu
rray gave her puppy dog eyes, and she caved.” Lily hadn’t met Murray before, so he’d been almost as much of a surprise to her as he was to Beth, though for different reasons. She had this theory that lupi were genetically incapable of ugly. It made sense—the continuation of their species depended on them charming, seducing, and otherwise trying to impregnate as many women as possible.

  Murray turned out to be the exception. Sort of. He was short and squat and looked like he’d grabbed his features at random from the bargain bin, yet somehow he was five feet, five inches of adorable. Maybe it was the so-ugly-they’re-cute deal some creatures had going, like that breed of dog that seemed to be made entirely out of wrinkles.

  “Whatever works.”

  “I guess.” Bergman’s agent had arrived just as they were leaving—Richard Snow, a studious-looking fellow with a competent manner. Cullen was already gone by then; he’d left with Marcus and Steve to check out Sean Friar’s house. Well, Marcus would check out the house. Cullen would let Marcus in, then wait outside with Steve, who would be keeping an eye out for trouble.

  Lily drummed her fingers on her thigh. Nothing was adding up. Rule’s brother’s partner was missing, held hostage. Friar seemed to be involved. Lily’s sister’s not-a-boyfriend—who was also Friar’s brother—was missing. Fate unknown.

  That had to be more than coincidence. Didn’t it?

  “I see three possibilities,” she said abruptly. “One, Sean is genuinely missing—dead, injured, or held hostage by person or persons unknown for reasons unknown. Two, he’s dancing to his brother’s tune, and his absence is part of some plot. Three, he isn’t Mr. Reliability the way Beth thinks. He fell off the wagon and is on a binge or sleeping one off.”

  “Alcoholism is an insidious disease,” Rule agreed in the mild way that meant he didn’t really agree. “But Beth has good people instincts.”

  “She’s only known him for three months.”

  Rule reached for her hand. “It didn’t take us three months.”

  “We were different.” Oh, that sounded lame. “We had the mate bond.”

  “Mmm. That did force us to pay attention. Perhaps Beth doesn’t need as much of a prod as we did.”

  That made her grin in spite of herself. “The women in my family are pretty stubborn. The question is, where does Beth have her stubbornness dial turned? If it’s set to ‘Sean is my soul mate,’ she’d miss seeing all the signs that he isn’t.”

  “How much of your attitude is professional skepticism, do you think? And how much is because you don’t want your sister involved in any way with Robert Friar’s brother?”

  “I have no idea. But it’s way too much of a coincidence for Beth even to meet Friar’s brother, much less fall for him.”

  “Friar is a patterner with too much power. He wouldn’t have needed his brother’s active cooperation to bring about a meeting.”

  “But why?” Lily spread her hands. “What is he after? If he wants to grab Beth and use her against me, he doesn’t need this complicated setup. Why such complexity?”

  “Ruben says patterners work in complex weavings. It’s the natural outgrowth of their Gift.”

  Lily drummed her fingers again. When in doubt, look at outcomes. “What does this give him that he couldn’t get another way?”

  “Hmm. Well, if the theft of the prototype hadn’t brought us to San Francisco, Beth’s cry for help when Sean disappeared would have.”

  Was that it? Did Friar have some reason he needed them in San Francisco? Maybe he intended to blow the city up. She shivered. That sounded like something he’d try, but he had to have a reason. There were easier ways to kill her and Rule than by destroying a city. “Maybe he doesn’t need us here. Maybe he just wants us to not be at Clanhome.”

  “Perhaps.” Rule tipped his head as if listening to his own thoughts. “But I can’t fit that in with the demand made by Adam King’s kidnapper.”

  “Yeah.” If Friar wanted Cullen, kidnapping his own brother would be an odd way to go about getting him. She sighed. “I feel like I’m swimming in glue.”

  “What if,” Rule said slowly, “he needs Cullen for some reason and wants to eliminate the two of us at the same time?”

  Lily’s stomach tightened the way it did when something clicked. “And get his hands on the prototype? Because that’s part of it. There are simpler ways to get our attention, but…that feels right. Or like it’s on the right track, anyway.”

  She reached for her phone. She was late in briefing Ruben—and she had a lot to tell him.

  RULE had booked them into a posh downtown hotel. He hadn’t had time to research less expensive spots, and he’d stayed there before so he knew the Childer had decent security. Hardly impregnable, he said, but the hotel sometimes hosted visiting heads of state and others with security concerns and bodyguards, so they paid more attention to it than the average chain.

  The guards who’d gone with them to Jasper’s house had followed in two vehicles. They waited for the first one to arrive before letting the attendant have their BMW so they could make an entrance worthy of a mafia don, surrounded by men with wary eyes. Lily didn’t argue with the necessity. Anyone setting up a hit would consider this point a prime opportunity. Once they were inside the danger went down considerably, due both to the Childer’s security and to the guard Scott had posted in the lobby. Gun oil had a distinctive scent. Rick would have known it if anyone in the lobby were armed.

  The lobby was small, the antiques real, the carpet a magnificent Oriental. They were met by the manager, who handed them their keys personally and introduced them to the security chief, a burly man whose appearance matched his name—Connor Murphy. Murphy had a good handshake and a trace of a Find Gift. When he released Lily’s hand he said conversationally, “Twenty years with the SFPD.”

  She nodded back, pleased. “Good to know.”

  Rule introduced Scott and asked if Murphy would mind discussing security with him. That, of course, was why the manager had arranged the meeting, so Scott peeled off after sending two of the guards up ahead of them to make sure their floor was secure. And she and Rule rode up in the elevator alone. It was the most privacy they’d had since she’d sat on his lap last night.

  Lily watched the number lights gradually change. It was a slow elevator. “I hate this.”

  Rule cast her a glance, his brows pulled down over eyes gone anxious. “Lily—”

  “I don’t expect you to fix things. I understand the need for guards. I just wanted to point out that I hate it. You said you booked us a suite?”

  His eyes stayed on her face, searching for something. She wasn’t sure what. “Two bedrooms and a sitting room. Scott and three of the others will bunk in the second bedroom. Cullen will have to put up with the couch in the sitting room. The rest will be in a similar suite next to ours. They’ll be crowded, but the hotel brought in extra beds. There’s a door between the two suites.”

  All of which made good sense from a security standpoint. You didn’t split your forces if you didn’t have to. Lily hadn’t had the FBI’s advanced training in protecting a witness or other targets, but she knew the basics. “Is there anything I should know about…”

  “What?”

  She sighed. “Drummond’s back.” When Rule glanced around—an automatic reaction, however useless—she nodded at the white mist hovering in one corner. “He’s behind you, up near the ceiling. All misty at the moment, so I guess he doesn’t have anything to say.”

  Rule’s mouth thinned. “I don’t like the way he can pop in without me knowing. I know you’ll tell me, but I don’t like it.”

  She nodded. “We’ve got little enough privacy these days, and knowing he can show up at any moment.…shit. I just thought of something.”

  “Nothing pleasant, I take it.”

  “Major creep-out. Drummond’s the only ghost I’ve ever seen, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been others hanging around, watching. And I never knew.”

  The elevator eased to
a halt, the doors sliding open. “You’re right,” Rule said. “That’s a major creep-out.”

  Lily didn’t have to ask which door led to their suite. The pair of young men standing guard outside it tipped her off. She raised her eyebrows at the identity of one of them. “Joe, you were still in the lobby when we got on the elevator. How’d you get up here ahead of us?”

  “Awesome lupi superpowers.”

  “He took the stairs,” Rule said dryly.

  Which actually was awesome lupi superpowers. The elevator might be slow, but he still had to have run up all ten floors. He wasn’t winded. “Barnaby’s in the stairwell,” Joe went on. “Steve and Todd are in your suite with Mike and the new Rho and his witness. Man.” He shook his head. “That must be why you wanted Mike to hold down the fort here.”

  Lily glanced at Rule, puzzled. Mike knew how to sweep for bugs. That’s the reason Rule had sent him to the hotel. “Is there something I should know?”

  “Tony is a physically impressive young man,” Rule said blandly. “Shall we go meet him?”

  He clearly wasn’t going to say more at the moment, so she nodded. The other guard—Todd—let them in.

  It was a typical hotel entry. Short hall, bathroom to the left, closet to the right, but it opened onto a not-so-typical sitting room. Lily hoped the antiques weren’t real. Lupi could be hard on their surroundings at times. There was plenty of room and seating available for the five men waiting there. One of them rose from the plush red couch the moment he saw them—and made the room and everyone else shrink.

  Tony Romano was huge. Mike was a big guy, and Tony topped him by at least half a foot, making him maybe six-ten. And every inch of him was beautifully proportioned, like a larger-than-life-size statue of some god or ancient hero. He had the dark hair and olive complexion his name suggested and a face saved from outright prettiness by a strong nose. He was also absurdly young, or looked young. That didn’t mean much with a lupus, but something about him made her think his apparent age wasn’t that far off from his calendar age. Maybe it was his eyes—big, brown, and innocent. And a little dull, as if not much went on in that beautifully shaped head.