Mortal Ties

by Eileen Wilks

  Lily had quietly retrieved her notebook while he was talking. “Where did you go?”

  “At first I just ran. Once I was sure I’d lost them…there’s a little coffee shop on Bradbury that stays open all night. I was close enough, so I went there. They’d searched me, but they hadn’t taken anything. I still had both phones—”

  “Both?” The door to the hall opened. A quick glance told her it was Scott; Rule asked him something using hand-talk, and he left again. Lily focused on Jasper.

  “My phone and the throwaway Friar sent me. I contacted Friar.”

  “You have his number.”

  “No, he calls me. To contact him, I log on to a chat board and leave a message. I was told what name to use. They look for posts from handydog12 and for certain key words. That’s how I let him know I had the prototype—I used ‘success’ in a post. To get him to call me I posted ‘disregard my last message.’ Thirty minutes later he called me. I told him about the attempt.”

  “Did you tell him the thieves weren’t successful?”

  “Yes.” He leaned forward, looking at the hands he clasped between his knees. “I thought about lying, but if those were his men, he’d know, wouldn’t he? I couldn’t take the chance. If I lie, he punishes Adam. That’s why they hurt Adam before. Friar caught me in a lie.”

  Drummond stirred. “I’ve got a couple questions for him.”

  In a few minutes, she told him, if I haven’t asked your questions already, you’ll get a shot. It was getting easier all the time to talk to him this way. Out loud she said, “You told Friar what happened, but you didn’t go get the prototype and give it to him.”

  “No.” He looked up. “Once I do that, he doesn’t need Adam anymore, does he? He…we were supposed to make the exchange that night, but I didn’t trust him. I told him so. I said he’d need to prove they weren’t his men. He laughed at me. He didn’t have to prove anything, but if I wanted to hang on to the device for a few days, why, he had plenty for me to do. That’s when he told me to call Rule and what to say when he got here.”

  “He expected Rule to bring Cullen?”

  Jasper nodded. “And you. And he wanted Rule to bring the Finder, but I couldn’t talk him into that.” Bitterly he added, “I wanted him to bring the Finder, too. If he had, I would have taken a chance. I could have passed one of you a note. Friar has my house most thoroughly bugged, so I had to follow his script when you were there, but I could have passed a note. If your Finder could have found Adam…but you didn’t bring her.”

  “If your house is bugged, he must know you left it tonight.”

  The twist of his mouth was meant to be a smile. “Now you’re impugning my professional abilities. I left recordings, of course. Several of them, because there are bugs in almost every room. No visual, but audio is damn near as tricky if it’s done well, and his people did a good job. But I’m better.”

  “How long before your recordings end?”

  He glanced at his watch. “I can stay another three hours, tops. The recordings will run out in four hours and seven minutes. Right about now,” he added, “I’m in the kitchen getting some nibbles from the refrigerator.”

  “If he has someone watching—”

  “The lights are on timers.”

  A high-end thief would need to be good at fooling surveillance, she supposed.

  “I don’t think there are watchers 24/7,” Rule said. “Chris and Allan haven’t spotted any. How did you leave your house without my men seeing you?”

  “There’s a way to go from my basement to my neighbor’s. I go to the third floor in his house, out a window, and into that huge oak in his backyard. From that tree I connect with another one in the yard behind him, then down, out the gate, and away.”

  “Your neighbor doesn’t mind you wandering through his house to get to his tree?”

  “My goal is for him to remain unaware of it. Mr. Peterson is eighty-two, deaf, and goes to bed at nine every night, so this isn’t challenging. His dog has excellent hearing, but we’re buds, so he doesn’t object to me visiting.”

  Rule’s eyebrows lifted. “Surely this is not the Mr. Peterson with the Great Dane.”

  Jasper smiled faintly. “In fact, it is. Mr. Peterson is a remarkably fit eighty-two, and while Ajax has a bad habit of hopping over the fence when he’s bored, he behaves well on their daily walks.”

  Drummond spoke from his spot near the wall. “Machek doesn’t sound all that retired to me.”

  He didn’t to Lily, either. Jasper still had all the gadgets he needed to fool surveillance. He’d worked out a route to leave his house unseen and had apparently used it before tonight. “How long did it take you to make the recordings you’re using tonight?”

  Jasper’s lips thinned. “I’ve had plenty of time. Nine days. When he first took Adam I suspected he’d bugged the house. Never mind why for now—I suppose you’ll want to hear all about that, but later. I didn’t know about him being a listener, not then, so I looked for less arcane ways of eavesdropping. Once I was sure I’d found all the bugs, I started making the recordings. It seemed likely I’d want to leave without him knowing at some point.”

  “Okay. How do you know the prototype is missing?”

  “Because it isn’t where I left it.”

  “But you weren’t going to make the exchange for the next few days. Why would you check on or move it? Isn’t there a chance you’d lead Friar to it?”

  “Oh. Right. I see why you wondered.” He grimaced. “It’s hard to overcome the habit of secrecy. I’d followed my usual procedure, you see, so I needed to move it to a better hiding place.”

  “Your usual procedure being—?”

  “FedEx, in this case.”

  “If you FedEx’ed it to yourself last night, it wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow.”

  “No, I use their delivery trucks, but not that way. UPS vehicles work, too, but FedEx was closer.”

  The front door opened. “—said I’d take it. Isn’t there someone else with vital and sensitive work you need to interrupt? No? Then you can guard my ass while I…oh. Hello.”

  Cullen had entered pushing a room service cart, trailing his two guards. He stopped short when he saw Jasper. “Now that’s interesting. Not interesting enough to justify interrupting me, but I suppose you have questions you want to ask.”

  “Something like that,” Rule said dryly. “I’m guessing the Find spell still isn’t working.”

  “Not worth a damn. Weirdest thing I ever saw.” Cullen lifted the lid of one of the dishes. “That looks good. Did I eat supper?”

  “Yes, but don’t let that stop you. Perhaps you’d get something for my guest as well.”

  “If you mean me, I don’t want anything,” Jasper said.

  “I’ll take a cup of coffee,” Lily said. “Jasper—”

  “Oh, good, interrupt my spellcasting so I can play waiter.” Cullen did sarcasm so well. But he did pour a cup for her and drift in her direction while biting into the half sandwich he’d picked up.

  “Are you going to keep interrupting me as some sort of payback?” she asked as she took the cup.

  “Maybe. What am I interrupting?”

  “Your prototype wasn’t really missing before. It is now. Jasper dropped by to tell us about it. He went to get it today, and it was gone. He was about to explain what that has to do with FedEx.”

  “Um. Yes.” Jasper cast a wary glance at Cullen. “I prefer to avoid confrontation with those whose property I’ve appropriated. Some of them have nasty tempers and even nastier spells. My first goal is always to put as much distance as possible between me and the object’s previous owner. If I can hand it off to the person who ordered the job right away, fine. If not, I affix the item to a delivery truck. FedEx is my first choice. The trucks stay in motion and they—”

  Cullen broke in. “Tell me you didn’t just duct tape the skull to the axle.”

  “I did use duct tape. That takes a few minutes to cut through at retrieval, but it�
��s worth it to make the object secure. But don’t worry. The skull is in a bowling ball bag with plenty of padding. That did limit my options for where to tape it. I prefer to put objects near the engine, but a dry run showed that wouldn’t work this time.”

  Cullen nodded. “Makes sense.”

  Lily rolled her eyes. First Cullen bitches about having his spellcasting interrupted, then he compliments the thief who made it necessary. “Explain.”

  “If you’re using a spell, it’s harder to find something that’s moving, and some Find spells—not mine, but some—are dispersed by large chunks of metal, like an engine. Doesn’t work against a good Finder, though.”

  “True,” Jasper said, “but last night I needed to hide it from people other than your Finder. I was out of her range—or so I’d been told. Her limit is a hundred miles, right?”

  Cullen scowled. “Told by who?”

  “Robert Friar.”

  “And you believe a vesceris corpi whose word is as rotten and rancid as that which he consumes?”

  Jasper spoke admiringly. “That was a master-level insult. I agree about Friar, but in this case I think he spoke accurately. He wanted me to succeed.”

  Lily yanked them back on track. “Tell me when you went to get the prototype, why you went at that time, and how you found the right truck.”

  “To answer your last question first—GPS. I went to get it tonight at eight forty because it had been stationary for thirty minutes, suggesting the driver was done for the day.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, it was at a garage, up on a rack. The GPS tracker was still in place, but the prototype was gone.”

  “You didn’t just look at the truck. You searched elsewhere.”

  “In the trash, the Dumpster—everywhere I could think of.” He leaned forward intently. “That’s why I’m here. I don’t think Friar has it. Either one of the other people looking for it—”

  “There’s more than Friar after it?” Cullen asked sharply.

  “Yes, yes—I’ll get to that in a minute. Either one of the others somehow tracked it down, or one of the mechanics took it home with him. Either way…” He looked directly at Rule. “Seabourne can’t find it. He’s tried. We need your Finder now. You have to send for her.”

  Rule’s face was tight. “Two things you need to know. First, she isn’t under my authority. Second, she’s a young mother with a new baby, and Friar wants to kill her.”

  Hope drained from Jasper’s face as visibly as water swirling down the drain. “Then you won’t—you can’t—”

  “I can’t send for her. I can ask her to come.” Rule looked at Lily for a long moment and sighed. “I will call her.”

  “Like hell you will!” And Cullen sprang at him.

  TWENTY-NINE

  LILY transferred quickly to the couch to get out of the way. Rule parried Cullen’s charge with a variation on a hip lift—and sure enough, Cullen crashed into the chair she’d just vacated. It toppled. Lily sighed. “So much for the undamaged furniture.”

  “What—” Jasper turned wide eyes on her. “Aren’t they going to stop it? I thought those men were Rule’s guards, and he’s the big leader. The Rho. Why are they just standing around?”

  “Cullen is Rule’s friend. He’s got certain privileges.” She winced. The next exchange of blows had been so quick she didn’t see who got hit where, but when they separated Rule’s nose was bleeding. “Plus Cullen is Nokolai, not Leidolf, so Rule is his Lu Nuncio, not his Rho. The rules are different for a Lu Nuncio, and Rule hasn’t ordered Cullen to stop.”

  “Being friends means it’s okay for Cullen to beat the hell out of Rule?”

  “Not that different from human men, are they? Don’t worry. He can’t hurt Rule too much. Cullen’s fast, but Rule’s a much better fighter. He—shit!”

  Rule had gone sailing this time, skidding on his back into a table—which nearly went over, but Scott darted forward and steadied it at the last minute. Lily sent him a pleased smile. “Rule wants to let Cullen burn off some steam. The Finder you want so badly is Cullen’s wife.”

  “His…but lupi don’t marry.”

  Lily looked down at her ring. “Cullen’s unusual in many ways. And your assumptions are out of date.”

  “I know. Sorry.” He waved a hand. “But I thought you and Rule were the first to decide to tie the knot.”

  “You can’t believe everything you read. Cullen and Cynna kept their wedding quieter than we are keeping ours.”

  “Cullen—” Rule ducked a roundhouse kick. “I’m trying not to break any of your body parts,” he said, exasperated, “but you need to start calming down.”

  Cullen crouched. “When you tell me you aren’t going to drag Cynna into this—”

  Enough. “He won’t have to.” Lily stood. “I’d already decided to call her.”

  Cullen spun to face her, anger and incredulity vying for control of his ridiculously beautiful face, which was bleeding where one of Rule’s blows had connected with his cheekbone. “You would do that?”

  “Before we left, she asked me to promise I’d let her know if we needed her. I did. She wants to be sure it’s her decision, not yours or mine or Rule’s.” She glanced down at Jasper and added gently, “It doesn’t mean she’ll come. She may not be able to. But I will ask.”

  Cullen stared at her, turned, and stalked into the bedroom. He was limping slightly. A few seconds later she heard the water come on. He must have noticed the blood and decided to wash it off.

  She went to Rule. In the few seconds since the fight stopped, both his eyes were turning black and his nose had swollen. Lupi healed fast, but they went through all the stages first. He was breathing through his mouth. “Ouch. Your poor nose.”

  He touched it gingerly. “He’s a quick son of a bitch. It’s displaced. Mike, you put Samuel’s nose back when it got knocked out of—”

  “I’ll do it,” Cullen called from the bathroom.

  He sounded peevish rather than furious, but Lily raised skeptical eyebrows at Rule. Cullen had the training—if he’d bothered to finish, he could have gotten his medical degree—but how careful would he be at the moment?

  “He messed it up. He can put it back.” Rule looked around the room. “Not too bad, considering.” He took a couple of steps and righted the chair. “The leg’s a bit loose, but it isn’t broken.”

  “Scott saved the table.” Lily retrieved her notebook and coffee cup from the rescued table. In spite of Scott’s care, most of the coffee had slopped out, so she went to refill it. Whether through chance or instinct, the combatants had avoided the room service cart. Good. “You ready for a cup?” she asked Jasper.

  “I guess I am.”

  He looked a bit dazed. Well, it took awhile to get used to lupi ways. She poured hers and Jasper’s cups and said, “Rule?”

  “After my nose is back in place.”

  Cullen emerged from the bedroom with a sopping hand towel. His limp was worse. “Here.” He tossed the towel to Patrick. “Put that in the freezer. Rule will appreciate it being nice and cold after I put his nose back where it belongs.”

  “Couldn’t you just suck the heat away?” Lily asked as she carried Jasper’s coffee to him.

  “The towel won’t have to concentrate to stay cold the way I would. Okay.” Cullen stopped in front of Rule and nodded once, pleased. “Got you pretty good, didn’t I? I’m going to use the pain block spell just long enough to set it,” he said, raising both hands to Rule’s face.

  “Thank you,” Rule said dryly.

  “Hold still.”

  Lily handed Jasper his cup and sat beside him. She took a sip of hers. Good and hot still.

  “If he has a pain blocking spell, why use a cold towel?” Jasper asked.

  “The spell blocks healing along with pain, so they don’t leave it running.” Lily flipped to the right page in her notebook. “We’ve got less than three hours left and a lot to cover. I was about to ask you about the garage where the FedEx truck ended up. The address?”r />
  He gave it to her, adding, “Maybe we’ll luck out. One of the mechanics could have taken it home. He might have thought it was a decoration or just wanted the stones. Even if you can’t see the glow, they’re—”

  “Glow?” Cullen had finished with Rule’s nose. He stiffened all over, like a bird dog on point. “Describe this glow.”

  Jasper gave him a puzzled look. “You ought to know. It’s subtle, like I said—makes the stones look like they’ve got a bit of sunshine trapped inside.”

  “It only glows to those who can see magic. And only when it’s turned on.”

  “I didn’t turn it on. I don’t know how to turn it on, and I’m not an idiot. I didn’t try.”

  “It’s easy to turn on if you’re a sorcerer.”

  “I told you, I’m not—”

  “You see magic. You’re a sorcerer. And you turned the damn thing on. Son of a bitch.” Cullen paced a few steps. Turned. Pointed at a small vase on one table. “Pick that up.”

  “What?”

  “Humor him,” Rule said, “if you don’t mind.”

  “Pick it up,” Cullen repeated, “paying careful attention to your hands. As if you were handling something important and fragile.”

  Looking mystified and annoyed, Jasper went to the table and slowly picked up the vase.

  “You don’t even know you’re leaking, do you?”

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “You don’t leak much. Probably not enough for you to see, given how slight your Gift is. But when you focus on your hands, you shoot out small streams of magic. Enough,” Cullen finished gloomily, “to turn on my damn prototype.”

  “Wait a minute,” Lily said. “You made it so any stray bit of magic could turn it on?”

  “Not stray magic. Focused magic. The kind a sorcerer uses without aid from props likes spells. It was supposed to be a safety precaution. I wouldn’t have thought an untrained, denies-he’s-a-sorcerer, barely Gifted neophyte could focus power he can’t even bloody see, not tightly enough to be a problem. It seems I was wrong.”