Ambushed (29 page)

"Money
isn't obscene, Adri, it's just a tool. It's only obscene to those who
give into their basest qualities once they have it."

It
sounded eerily like something my dad might have said and I spent the
next couple of hours pondering what I would do with millions of
dollars. I finally fell asleep without having come to any kind of
firm conclusion other than that I'd get some to my dad so that he
could retire when the time came for him to stop working.

We
arrived at the parking garage a little before noon, which meant that
we had a little bit of time to kill. I'd adjusted one of the shoulder
rigs in the armory down to the point where it mostly fit me, but I
still had to fight the urge to fidget with it underneath my jacket.
The last thing I needed was for a cop to realize I was illegally
carrying a concealed weapon.

Taggart
finally broke the silence five minutes before we were supposed to get
out of the car and start walking.

"I'm
sorry, Adri. I wish that things could have been different, I didn't
want to have to tell you about Alec."

"I'm
sorry too, but it's better to know than to go on blindly thinking
he's interested in me."

I
reached for the door, but Taggart stopped me with a gentle hand on my
shoulder. "One of my contacts came through with a location and a
route. We know enough to save Agony, assuming that Dominic and her
friends are willing to help us."

"That's
good news."

"I
know, but it doesn't feel like it, does it?"

That
stopped me more surely than if he'd chained me to my chair. "I
guess you're right, it doesn't. Why is that?"

"Because
it means we have a choice to make. We either rescue him or we leave
him to his fate."

"Except
we aren't going to choose to abandon him."

Taggart
nodded solemnly. "Exactly. Having this information means that
our options, the options we can live with, have narrowed down. Either
Dominic and her friends will help us, or we'll go to Alec and take
our risks with him."

"And
either way everything is about to change. We'll either rescue your
friend or die trying, but either way things will never be the same."

"Yes,
exactly. The Coun'hij has looked for me for years, but it's always
been a secondary concern. A jailbreak of this magnitude will cause
them to shuffle around their priorities. Our lives will get very
difficult even if we succeed."

"I
guess I can understand why some people become paralyzed when faced
with the tough decisions. If you don't make a decision then you can't
be blamed when things go wrong. Only that's a lie too. Failing to
make a decision is still making a decision; it's accepting whatever
the universe throws at you because you failed to act."

Taggart
opened his mouth to respond, but I tapped the clock in the dash.
"We're going to be late. Come on, we don't want to make
Dominic's friends any more jittery than they already are."

The
parking garage they'd selected for the meet was absolutely huge. It
was the kind of place that had seven or eight elevators, took up an
entire city block and served four or five different stores. In short,
if you were willing to black out a few security cameras, it was the
perfect place for a clandestine meeting.

We'd
both been wearing big glasses to disguise our faces from any security
cameras that the Coun'hij might have access to. It was probably an
unnecessary precaution while we were in the car and safely shielded
by tinted windows, but it wasn't going to be enough outside of the
car.

I
flipped up the hood on my jacket, pulling it far enough forward that
shadows would obscure most of my face, and then opened my door and
slipped out of the car. Taggart had a neck warmer pulled up over the
lower half of his face, which was ludicrous given how warm it was
still in Texas, but it served to make him unrecognizable for any kind
of facial recognition software.

It
took us only a couple of minutes to find the appropriate section of
the parking garage. It was a dead end that had been blocked off with
cones and I was able to pick out several cameras on the way there
that had been covered up, painted, or otherwise put out of
commission. It was comforting to know that we weren't being tracked
to the meeting place, at least not by any kind of automated
surveillance system.

Someone
did see us approach though because less than ten seconds after we
arrived Dominic and the rest showed up behind us. They'd all taken
similar precautions to make sure they weren't recognizable, but as
they arrived they pulled off their glasses and discarded their wigs.

I
pulled my hood back away from my face and moved my sunglasses up onto
my hair as I looked for Dom. It shouldn't have taken me as long as it
did to recognize her, but she seemed so different that I had a hard
time believing she was the same person I'd saved from a beating back
in Minnesota.

Her
face was the same with lovely, dark skin and exotic brown eyes, but
her bearing was night and day different. She no longer looked like
she was expecting to be attacked at the drop of a hat, and she wasn't
quite so gaunt. There'd been some hints as to the changes she'd
undergone from our meetings in the dream world, but nothing like
this. Apparently her subconscious image of herself was lagging behind
the actual changes.

"Thank
you, Dominic. I appreciate you arranging for this meeting."

A
big guy to her left spoke up before she could respond. "It might
be best to save the thanks until we all know whether or not you can
be allowed to leave."

His
tone wasn't overtly menacing, in fact the words were delivered with a
calm certainty that almost hid the fact that he'd just told us that
they'd kill us if they didn't like what they heard. I turned so I
could get a better look at him.

He
didn't look old enough to be the leader of such a large group. With
him and Dominic included, there was a total of eight people standing
in a half circle between us and the rest of the garage. Some of his
people looked like they'd been through hell and back. I would have
expected the leader of that kind of group to be some kind of
heavily-tattooed biker complete with chains, piercings and a
bewildering array of scars. Instead I was looking at someone who
looked like they could have belonged to the ruling family of Saudi
Arabia.

He
had one of those thin beards that was little more than a series of
lines that followed the bold planes of his face and the precise
diction you only found in someone who had a passion for languages. I
opened my mouth to introduce myself, but he didn't give me a chance.

"My
name is Isaac. Dominic tells me that the two of you met in South
Dakota and that you were wearing a band uniform."

I
shook my head. "It was Minnesota and I was wearing my
cheerleading uniform."

Everyone
seemed to be waiting expectantly. It was Taggart who explained. "Ask
Dominic something that only she should know."

"What
did you tell me when I said I was in the middle of the field?"

"We
were on the phone. I'd asked you how far away the nearest person was
and you said nobody was closer than the bleachers to which I
responded that would have to be far enough away."

I
nodded to Taggart. "It's her."

Some
of the tension seemed to leach out of everyone around me. "We're
satisfied that you are who you say you are, but what about him?"

Taggart
stepped forward half a step. "I'm the Dream Stealer. We've come
to ask for your help."

Isaac
shook his head. "If you want our help then you'll tell us your
real name."

"The
name I was born with is Taggart."

I
could tell that Isaac was filing that piece of information away. It
was one more sign of how desperate we were. Taggart had kept his real
name a secret for decades. Giving it up now meant that he wanted
their help badly enough to risk being found by the Coun'hij if Isaac
or any of the others betrayed us.

"Very
well, Adri, Taggart, Dominic says that you've come here to ask for
our help in freeing Agony. Is that true?"

"Yes."

Taggart
had answered, seemingly ready to take the lead in the negotiation,
but Isaac held up a hand. "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to
request that Adri be the one to respond to my questions."

"Why?"

"Because
as little as I trust her, I trust you even less. Adri is here because
Dominic spoke eloquently on her behalf. You are here simply because
Adri trusts you. If I'd had my way we would just be talking to Adri
and you would have been left out of the conversation altogether."

"That's
ridiculous. Adri knows next to nothing about what's at stake. She
couldn't even begin to hope to coordinate an offensive of the size
we'll need."

Isaac
shook his head. "The first thing you need to understand is that
you're not negotiating from a position of strength,
Taggart
.
For us, character always trumps ability. Adri tried to save a
stranger despite the fact that her actions put her in harm's way as
well. Your history on the other hand, is filled with nothing but one
bad decision after another. You're little more than a vicious bully
who's used your gift to play politics without having to pay the kind
of price anyone else would have had to pay."

I
could see Taggart struggling to control his beast, struggling to
contain the rage that I knew he would be feeling as the result of
such a casual dismissal combined with a scathing judgment of his
character. I jumped back into the conversation hoping that I could
help distract him.

"I
only know a little bit of Taggart's history myself, but you should
know that it was he who saved me from the vampire Dominic tried to
warn me about. He risked death to defeat not just one, but two
vampires and in so doing saved me, my sister, and another friend of
ours."

"Doubtlessly
so that he could enlist your aid in his private war against the
Coun'hij."

"No,
he's let me pick my own way. He's asked for help, but he's respected
my right to choose at every step along the way. That's why I sought
out Dominic after so long. I wanted to know if the Coun'hij was
really as bad as he had told me they were."

Dominic
stepped up to Isaac's side. "She's telling the truth."

"I
know, I can smell it on her as well as everyone else can, but just
because she believes he's honorable doesn't mean that he's actually
honorable."

For
the briefest of moments Dominic seemed to be searching for the right
words. "I can't dispute that, but given how well he's treated
Adriana don't you think he deserves some respect in return?"

I
wasn't an expert in shape shifter pack dynamics, but I knew enough
about social dynamics between humans that I would have bet a sizable
amount of money that Dominic wasn't dominant to Isaac. She treated
him with a respect that bordered on reverence, and she was very
careful around him as though worried about her actions being taken
the wrong way.

Based
on everything Taggart had told me about pack life, the normal
response for a dominant being corrected by a submissive would have
been anger and possibly even violence, but Isaac simply bowed his
head.

"Dominic
is right. You have my apology. Still, I would have Adri do the
talking, at least for now. She's undoubtedly a less-practiced liar
than someone your age. Once she's told us her view of things then
you'll be given a chance to respond as well."

Taggart
seemed to gather himself in with a titanic force of will, but when he
nodded there were no longer any visible signs that he was struggling
to control himself.

"Very
well."

Isaac
turned back to me. "Tell me why you're here, Adriana. Tell me
why you think we should help you at great risk to ourselves, and tell
me why exactly it is that you trust Taggart, the Dream Stealer."

I
opened my mouth, unsure of what exactly I was going to say, and the
words just poured out almost of their own accord.

**

I
talked for nearly an hour. I kept expecting someone to show up to
find out why the cameras weren't working, but nobody did. Maybe Isaac
had bribed one of the guards to ignore the blank monitors for a few
hours, or maybe he had someone acting as a lookout. It didn't really
matter other than the fact that Isaac seemed to feel like we had all
of the time in the world for him to get each of his questions
answered.

By
the time he'd finished teasing every event of the last few weeks out
of me, I was in desperate need of a bathroom. Our last pit stop had
been nearly six hours earlier, and it must have been pretty obvious
that I was uncomfortable because Dominic volunteered to escort me up
to one of the stores.

Taggart
seemed for a moment like he was going to protest, but Dominic
promised that she wouldn't let anything happen to me, which was
enough of an assurance that Taggart apparently decided that it wasn't
some kind of ruse designed to split us up.

I
pulled my sunglasses back down onto my face and shifted my hood
forward while Dominic put on a blond wig and glasses of her own and
then we headed off as Isaac began interrogating Taggart.

We
passed the trip up to the bathroom in silence, but by the time I
finished up and we'd started back down to the parking garage, my
curiosity had gotten the better of me.

"Thank
you for arranging this meeting. It doesn't seem like you've been part
of this group for very long so I suspect it was a little
nerve-racking to have to push for something like this."

Dominic
shrugged. She was a strange mixture of shy and confident now that we
were away from the others.

"You're
welcome. I appreciated what you tried to do for me back in Minnesota
and I'm just sorry that I didn't figure out a way to confirm which of
your friends was the vampire."