by C. D. Gorri
“I swear. I’m just a hacker. I don’t mean anything more to him than that. I’ve been with him a long time. I know where all the bodies are buried, you know? Tonight, he was out on a job with his crew. The whole crew, like I told you guys before. It was the first time they ever left me alone like that. And I may have totally screwed him over on the job he was doing tonight, so… yeah, that’s why he came for me.”
Max isn’t convinced. “How did he find you so fast? Our warehouse has more concealment magic on it than most mages can conceive of. The address doesn’t exist. They shouldn’t have been able to find you like that.”
I know exactly how he found me, but I can’t tell Max about my marker. That thing puts me in more danger than anything else in this world. I’d rather spend the rest of my life carried around on Noah’s back like one of their packs than tell this guy how vulnerable I am. And if I have learned anything, it’s that people don’t just let you off the hook with things like that. Whoever has my marker owns me, and there is not much I can do about it.
Max throws a chip of stone against the wall behind me. It shatters on contact sending tiny bits of dust sailing through the air.
Noah leans toward me and then pulls back when his brother shoots him one of his scowls. “Max. Seriously. It doesn’t help anything to get angry.”
Max takes a deep breath and then scowls at me from across the fire. “You’re lying about something. And we don’t have time to sit around and play these games. I need to know some things and you’re going to tell me what you know.”
I am so frustrated I could scream. “I am telling you I had no idea Jason was in the basement. I literally found him when I was leaving. I am supposed to be halfway to London by now, and instead I am sitting in a weird ass cave with a magic eight ball and a bunch of wolves.”
“You’re lucky we were with you, because you didn’t have a chance without us.” Max says. “You may not know how Jason got there, but you have to know all the people who Malovich was doing deals with, right?”
I nod. “Yeah. He keeps everything in his server network. If it was there, chances are it crossed my path at some point.”
Max rubs his hand over his face and beard. “Okay. So earlier you said that you didn’t know the name Falbor, right?”
“Yeah. That’s not a name I’m familiar with.”
“What about Duranko?” he adds.
I shake my head.
Noah peels the wrapper off a granola bar and takes a bite. “How about Pilara?”
“No.”
Max gets to his feet and starts pacing, moving in and out of the firelight. He presses his fingers into his forehead. “Think. Think.”
“You know, since we’re here, we could call Lady Annika,” Noah suggests this and then looks away from Max. It’s like he doesn’t want to ask but he wants to offer ideas.
Max shakes his head. “Last time she came through she had to pull all kinds of favors. She said that they were already up to their necks in favors owed to everyone from the Malley clan to the Corvusics.
Now there is a name that I recognize. My mouth goes dry at the mention of it. Don Corvusic is probably one of the scariest men I have ever seen, and that’s saying something, considering who my boss has been for the past seven years.
“Don Corvusic?” His name slips out on my breath and hearing it in my voice makes me clap my mouth shut.
Grigory Malovich is on the FBI’s most wanted list for a litany of things that include drugs, corruption, money laundering, and at least nine of the most brutal murders ever. And he looks vanilla next to Don Corvusic.
Malovich is a narcissistic, power-hungry crazy man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. He’s twisted and cruel, and he gets off on violence. But he has a line that he doesn’t cross. It sounds crazy to think it now, but I never feared for my safety while I was working for him.
On the other side of the crazy coin, Don Corvusic is a psychopath who traffics women and children, in addition to all the other kinds of things that a mafia family without a shred of moral code could do.
When he came to Malovich’s headquarters, my boss pulled me aside and tried to explain the situation to me. He made it clear that even he couldn’t protect me should Corvusic see me and take a shine to me. The man doesn’t ever stop when there is something he wants. I was told to stay in my room and not to show my face to anyone who wasn’t on Malovich’s payroll.
Max stops and looks at Noah and then at me. “What do you know about the Corvusic clan? I knew they did business here, but I had no idea they were working with the Russians. It doesn’t make sense. What’s their connection?”
I shrug. “I don’t know, but if they are working with Malovich, there will definitely be a record of all of it. I can get that for you, if you bring me back to the castle.”
Max nods. “All right. But as someone who just risked everything to get away from the place, you’re in an awful hurry to get back. So, before we do anything else, I need you to level with me. What did you leave behind?”
I let his question sit in the air between us for a moment while I toss a mental coin in the air. It spins round and round, hovering on the edge of a choice. A plan starts to formulate in my head, and if there is any hope of success, I need their help. I need Max and Noah to trust me. And I need to trust them in return.
The biggest risks I have ever taken in my life were allowing that marker to exist and then attempting to steal it back and escape. Revealing the marker to anyone puts me in serious danger. It’s bad enough that Malovich has it. But when it comes down to it, he’s the devil I know.
The scarier thought is of my marker landing in the hands of someone who doesn’t care about my skills or my mind. Someone who just wants to use my body and then sell the marker to someone else when they grow tired of me. I’ve heard some stories that will haunt me forever.
There are worse things than death.
I have to get my marker back, otherwise what is the point of anything? And if there is any hope of that, I need help.
But I can offer something in return.
I take a deep breath as the coin in my head lands. My choice is made. I take a deep breath and just let it all out, hoping like hell I am not making a mistake.
Chapter Nine
DANA
“What the fuck? He’s got a marker on you? A legit, binding marker? What is this, the Dark Ages?” Max’s voice echoes through the cave. He’s furious on my behalf, and for once I have to acknowledge it’s nice that his anger is meant for someone else.
“Poor Chicken,” Noah shakes his head and looks at me like I just told him I was diagnosed with something terminal, and I have only a few days to live. “It’s not right that he made you do that.”
I raise my hands like a pair of white flags. I don’t owe them an explanation, but the idea of me being some unwitting victim of Malovich’s evil plan isn’t something I can let stand. I am alive because I fought for myself and stood up to a powerful crime boss. “Stop. You don’t understand.”
“What’s there to understand?” Max asks. “That man ought to be drawn and quartered for what he did to you. A fucking marker?”
I shake my head. “Don’t. For all the ways that he’s an absolute lowlife monster, Malovich wasn’t the one who made me do it. The marker was my idea.” The words leave my throat, pushed out on the force of the shame rising inside me.
A marker is considered the worst possible kind of abasement. A marker means you’re less than a dog. You’re dog shit in the grooves on the sole of a shoe that isn’t worth cleaning, so you just throw the pair in the trash. A marker consigns a person to slavery. You give up your autonomy and place your wellbeing, your will, and your life in someone else’s hands.
Noah gasps, and if he had a cheeseburger right now, I bet he would be unwrapping one in a hurry.
Max flinches as if I’d slapped him. “How… How could y—?”
My shame rises up my throat and I feel my face grow hot. I’m grateful
for the glow of the fire that covers all of us in a bronzed glow. “When I met Malovich, I was only sixteen. I was a kid. I was living on the street, and I was desperate. He caught me hacking. I got caught stealing from him and believe me when I say that he didn’t care what happened to me. I was just a thief.” I shiver as the memory of that night slithers back into my head.
“He was trying to decide whether to give me to his men so they could have some fun before he killed me.” I let that hang there for a moment, so they know exactly what kind of fun I mean. “I know what that man is capable of. I don’t expect you to understand. But offering him my marker was the bravest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I don’t even want to think where I’d be if I hadn’t done it.”
“Fuck,” Max whispers. He stares into the fire, and I wonder if he’s trying to put himself in my shoes or if he’s just thinking about how he was wrong.
“I’d really like to get my marker back,” I say, hoping that they will look at my problem differently now that they have all the information. “But I can’t do it alone. If you’re willing to help me, I can get you whatever Malovich has on the Corvusic family.”
“You mean go back to the castle,” Noah says.
“I don’t have what I need to hack them from outside. If you get me in, I can access the system and download whatever you want. And I can shut down security long enough for you to go get my bag and get out. You’d be going in blind, but I can draw you a map.”
Max glances at Noah and then looks up at me, a small smile threatening to ruin his scowl. “We have a map of the castle. I can go get it so we can make a plan, but if you leave this cave, you’ll be outside the protection of the shield. Malovich will be able to track you again.”
I nod, because that’s the one piece of this that I can’t control, but there is really no other play here. “Then I guess we need to move really, really fast.”
Chapter Ten
DANA
By the time Max gets back to the cave with the maps, it’s midday and the cave is full of bright sunlight. The bats have moved back in, and the fire is still going, and Noah is on his fifth or sixth cheeseburger.
Not one to judge, I fish my second cheeseburger from one of the bags that Max brought back with him. I unwrap and dig in. The packs they brought with them are go-bags with everything you could think of needing while on the run. They have several pockets full of snacks but there’s only so much granola and trail mix one person can take.
We spend the afternoon making a plan, much of which entails me explaining what all the rooms on the castle map are used for.
I flip to the basement map and go over it all again. “Okay. This is where Malovich’s private office is. And here’s the safe.” I trace my finger along the rat-maze of hallways Max needs to memorize in order to get there without getting lost.
I recite from memory the litany that I drilled into my brain for months while I was plotting my escape. “Long hall. Left. Another hall. Left. Halfway down the next hall. Right. Door at the end of the hall.”
Max repeats it and then does it again. “Got it. And you’re sure the doors aren’t locked?”
I slip the card key from my back pocket. It will take days for Malovich to get someone in there to rekey his security. “This key opens every lock in the castle.”
Noah takes a sip of soda and swallows a mouthful. “How do you know your marker will be in his office?” Wouldn’t he keep it on him after all that’s happened?”
I shake my head. I know that he found my bag, because he would have needed to use my marker to find me at Max and Noah’s apartment. “He’s meticulous about locking his stuff up. It’s a compulsion. He’s paused meetings to make sure things are secured after the handoff. I think he has trust issues.”
“Wonder why?” Max arches a brow at me.
“Was that… Max, did you just make a joke?” I feign surprise and try to inject some levity into the moment.
He bites back his smile, and pushes his scowl onto his brow, but the grin was there for a moment. And I’ll take it as a tiny win.
We go over everything another time and when we are sure we’ve got it down, Max banks the fire and sets the alarm on his watch.
“We’ve got about five hours until dark. It’s going to take an hour to get there. We should try to get some sleep.”
Noah spreads his sleeping bag out next to Jason, and settles in. Max unpacks his own bag and then digs another sleeping bag from the third pack. I realize with a weird sense of foreboding that I’m using supplies that were meant for Jason.
Max catches me looking over at Jason and it’s like he’s reading my mind. “He’s unconscious. He won’t miss it for now. Take it.” His voice is almost kind, but the command is still there.
I spread out the sleeping bag and slip inside, playing the plan out in my head like I am watching it on a screen from headquarters. It’s a good plan. It will work if we don’t run into any issues.
I’m banking on the fact that half of Malovich’s team—the half with the real tactical skills—is still locked in the bank vault, and that some more are on site, trying to get them out. With any luck, we’ll break into the castle and find a skeleton crew guarding the place.
Because otherwise this mission is going to amount to nothing more than a glorified death wish.
I close my eyes and whisper a prayer to Neo that all of this wasn’t for nothing.
Chapter Eleven
MAX
I can’t believe I am back in this van, parked on the park’s maintenance road, scoping out the castle again. The last time we were here I would have given anything to have Noah and his stinking cheeseburger wrappers gone, but without my brother here I feel oddly at odds. We had to leave him behind. Someone had to stay with Jason, and since Dana is a required part of the plan, that left me no choice.
I glance back at the half-full fast-food bag Noah left behind earlier and shake my head. Well, at least the smell makes me feel like he’s here in spirit.
Dana sits in the passenger seat and scopes the castle through binoculars. “It looks like someone’s leaving. There are two guys heading down the driveway. That’s good. That’s two down.”
“Yeah, but how many does that leave inside?” I ask.
“With any luck, we won’t run into any of them. If we come in through the service entrance, we’ll be right next to the server room. Nobody is ever around there. And you’ll be close to the elevator. Malovich has other keycards, so he could be in his office with some security, but it’s not likely to be everyone all in the same place.”
“Yeah,” I say. Trying not to focus on the fact that I am about to break into a den of wolf shifters by myself. I may be strong and a fierce warrior, but so are they. “Let’s just go. The longer we wait, the more time he has to track you.”
*.*.*.*
The service entrance is exactly where the map says, and the keycard opens it without setting off any obvious alarms. We hurry through the kitchen and the adjacent hall and when we get to the server room, Dana slips inside.
She holds the door open. “We’ll meet back at the van. If something goes wrong, you just get out. I’ll figure out a way to find you.”
“Nothing is going to go wrong. It’s a solid plan. Just focus on your part and I’ll do mine. I’ll see you at the van.”
She nods once and closes the door, careful to hold the latch so it doesn’t make a sound.
I head down the hall and inch along the wall at the corner, my mind picturing the location of the elevator. There. Okay. There it is, right where it’s meant to be. I sit for a ten count, making sure the elevator isn’t moving. It would suck to call the elevator only to have it open and I’m standing there staring at a bunch of goons.
Once I am sure it’s quiet, I press the call button. The doors slide open immediately, which is a good thing because Dana said that it stayed in the last position it was when it was last used. If the elevator is up here, that means nobody is down there.
I step
in and slip the card into the slot and hold my breath as it takes me into the lower level. When I step out of the elevator, I start running, Dana’s voice playing in my head.
Long hall. Left. Another hall. Left. Halfway down the next hall. Right. Door at the end of the hall.
The room is dark and there’s nobody here and I find the safe in a matter of seconds. I spin the combination dial and must fuck it up because it doesn’t open. I try again, clearing the tumblers with a spin and going back to the start.
Eight.
Eleven.
Twenty-nine.
Sixteen.
Five.
The latch gives this time and I swing the door open, rewarded with a little black backpack like you’d take along for a day hike. It’s stuffed into the otherwise empty safe. I pull the bag and unzip it, checking to make sure her marker is inside.
My hands move through boxes and stacks of wrapped cash and a bunch of other loose things that look like jewelry and coins. I know her marker the moment my fingers touch it. I pull it out and hold it under the light shining from the interior of the safe.
It’s a large bronze coin with a small thumbprint that has been pressed into the metal with magic. Her thumbprint. A ring of strange symbols is etched in a circle around the print. I flip it over and there’s a figure eight on the back. The symbol of forever. Moving it in my hand, I can feel the shifting liquid inside. I know what it is and the thought of it makes me want to rage.
What kind of man takes this from a woman? What kind of man would agree to do this, even though she was the one who offered? What kind of man could let a young girl open her vein and fill this marker with an ounce of her blood, giving away all of her power?
I drop her marker into the bag and zip it shut and slip it onto my back. Then I make my way back to the door.
I take one step into the hallway and freeze.
Voices.
Someone’s coming.
Fuck.
