Black_Tide (32 page)

"I asked you a question, child."

Yes, I want to go home.

"There is a price."

What is the price?

"You have to die."

She bowed her head.
Won't death bring me back here?

The angel lifted her chin with a finger. "Don't be silly, child. This isn't your fate, it belongs to another."

What . . . what is my fate?

"None can say, yet. You've not been judged." She smiled, and the radiance dazzled Monica, made her head swim, her whole body weak with awe. The angel spread her arms. "Now come, child, come into my arms, and I will take you home."

Monica hesitated.
You do not love me. Why would you help?

"Because the other whose fate this is deserves it." Her jade eyes blazed with wrath. "He belongs here, and I want him back."

So to get what you want I have to die.

"I cannot reverse the spell without power. All power requires sacrifice. Even mine."

Monica stepped into her embrace—

*   *   *

—and opened her eyes, and lowered the pistol. Blood spurted from Yardley's forehead, and his fingers sagged away from the switch.

She dropped the gun and ran for Adam, who'd wandered into the room after Jason had let him go. She cradled his head and turned him around, away from his broken father, away from the ruined body of Murdock Yardley.

Over his head she watched her husband. Matt's fingers flexed, his legs twitched. He blinked, first one eye, then two.

Jason approached, cautious. "What just happened?" His voice carried a note of gravity, heaviness, of more than the question asked.

Behind Monica's eyes a plain of shattered needles stretched forever. "He was reaching for a self-destruct or something, so I shot him. It was self-defense."

Jason frowned. "No, I mean what happened after you shot him?"

Adam put his head on her shoulder, and the plane of glass retreated to lurk in a dark corner of her mind, where it gibbered and gnawed at her sanity.

She closed her eyes and pushed it deeper. "I went somewhere, somewhere very bad, and I came back."

"Adam brought you back."

She shook her head. "No, not Adam. The place wasn't meant for me. Someone else belonged there, so I came back."

He watched her with his gray confessor's eyes, then turned to approach her shattered husband.

After a few minutes, Matt took some water, and twenty minutes after that ate six MREs, one after another, licking the containers clean, going so far as to suck down the hot sauce in the tiny bottles.

An hour later they returned to Jason's beat-up Camry.

*   *   *

Matt sagged into the car, reached forward and plucked Jason's phone out of the cup holder. He dialed Janet's private cell. She picked up on the third ring.

"Janet LaLonde."

"Janet. Matt."

"Holy crap what happened? They found a whole squad of marines just torn to pieces, and no sign of either of you."

"Yardley's dead. Hone in on the GPS of this phone and then go a half mile north-west straight through the woods. Send a recovery team, but make sure they're men we can trust."

"I'll call the FBI—"

"No! Keene betrayed us. Used Yardley to distract me while he took Sakura."

"Took Sakura."

"Yeah. She's gone. They have her."

"I'm on it. Be careful out there."

"Thanks, Janet."

*   *   *

Sitting naked in a pool of congealing blood, Janet looked from the ruined body of Anita Yardley to the split-open German Shepherd to the black char where her pentagram used to be, and burst into tears.

"I'm sorry, D. I'm so sorry."

Libby Kamen held her head high as the bailiff led her toward the courtroom. In the white marble hallway, she tried not to smile at the FBI man she'd bribed to take her from that god-awful house near the turkey farm. He'd kept his word, but with nowhere for her to run he'd also kept her in custody.

She rounded the corner into a sea of reporters. No stranger to flashing bulbs, she wondered how her unkempt hair and orange prison jumpsuit would play on the tabloid covers. She cursed the garish whitehead on her right cheek, and the lack of foundation to cover it up.

Well, the fashion police had to talk about something, and jail gave her street cred.

The judge droned on about charges, stupid crap like resisting arrest and conspiracy to commit murder. She zoned out through the boring litany, perking up when her fat lawyer nudged her arm.

She raised her chin and spoke in a loud, clear voice, as coached. "Not guilty, your honor."

Lardo nodded his approval, chins jiggling.

The sexy dude in the cheap suit spoke next. "Your honor, the prosecution requests that the defendant be remanded to a maximum-security prison without bail. She is a flight risk with the means to go anywhere in the world, and has a history of volatile behavior."

With great effort Libby managed to not roll her eyes, and instead glared at Fatty McFatso.

He cleared his throat and held up a wad of papers. "Your honor, my client is a fifteen-year-old girl with no history of violence. Yes, she has some minor infractions on her record, but has never risen to the level of needing to be placed in jail, much less remanded without bail. Her accounts have been frozen, so she has no means. She got involved with some bad actors much older than she, and it is they who perpetuated these atrocities, not she. Miss Kamen is keen to face these baseless accusations against her character, and will appear before the court on the appointed day."

Her stomach knotted and she schooled her face to calm. Big K had been her mentor, her world. He'd taught her everything that mattered, the value of loyalty and dedication, to take no shit, no prisoners, and whatever you wanted. He'd committed himself to his friend Murdock even to the point of death. He'd taught her everything she knew about cause, about justice, about righteousness, about how to live. Hot rage flushed her face. How dare this blob of lard call him a "bad actor?"

The judge nodded to both lawyers. "After taking into consideration both concerns, Miss Kamen will be remanded to house arrest upon the remission of one hundred million dollars bond, or two hundred fifty million dollars cash."

He banged the gavel, and Libby whirled on her lawyer. "Pay it."

*   *   *

Matt stalked through One Center Plaza, a growing flurry of discombobulated functionaries and at least one security guard in his wake. He ignored their entreaties and took the stairs four at a time, leaving everyone in the dust, to Suite 600.

He crashed through the fire door at a steady walk, and everyone turned in his direction, a bevy of white shirts and ties not quite tight and coffee cups and paperwork.

"Where's Keene?"

A brunette in her late forties, smartly dressed in a gray pants-suit that didn't quite cover her middle-aged pudge, approached him. "Do you have information on Agent Keene's whereabouts?"

Matt frowned. "I was hoping he was here."

She didn't react except to say, "When was the last time you saw Agent Keene?"

"Thursday."

"Five days ago Thursday?"

"Yes."

She exchanged looks with almost everyone. A young man ducked into an office and picked up a phone. "Mister . . ."

"Rowley."

"Mister Rowley, what is the nature of your relationship with Agent Keene?"

"He sold me out and kidnapped my partner."

The stairwell door burst open and two security guards huffed through, faces red, hands on their holsters. The woman in charge held up a hand but didn't dismiss them.

"Let's talk in my office."

Without waiting for his reply or agreement she walked into a glass-walled room, "Agent in Charge Cheryl Battisti" engraved in brass on the door. She allowed him through, closed it behind him, and walked around to sit at her oversized desk, cluttered with two computers and several stacks of files.

"Agent Keene hasn't reported to work in almost two weeks. The Bureau filed a missing persons report on his behalf eleven days ago. A search of his home found no signs of struggle, and aside from his keys and wallet missing there were no signs that he'd left town. Where did you see him Thursday?"

"Centralia, Pennsylvania." He explained the situation, leaving out Yardley's name and the giant sci-fi exo-suit, but deliberately brought up the dead squad of marines.

"The news called that a training accident."

Matt shook his head. "That's a cover up. We sent in a recovery team but they never made the site. The Shop had already taken over under guise of an environmental disaster relating to the mine fire and some minor earthquakes, but FEMA crews don't need military hardware for a toxic gas leak."

As he spoke, her expression went from dispassionate curiosity to bland distaste. She plucked a card from behind her keyboard and slid it across the desk. "If you have any other information, don't hesitate to call me."

She glanced up, out of the room, and stood, her palms on the desk.

Before the security guards could get there, Matt produced his own card and held it out. "You think I'm crazy, but I'm not."

She took it. "Special Threats, huh? That's the Bureau the President created after ICAP disintegrated." She waved down the guards. "And Special Threats was working with Agent Keene. Why didn't I know of this?"

He held up his hands in a plaintive gesture. "We have extensive communique records that show you did, including authorizing joint FBI-Penn PD ventures and a cooperating statement with USMC Recon."

She sat back down. "Never happened."

"Gathered that. Only it did." He slid a folder across her desk. "You going to help me find Keene or what?"

*   *   *

Janet LaLonde walked from the government sedan, up the marble steps, to the front door of Humans for Humanity's world headquarters. The cold snap had even reached Martonville, Texas, making it a brisk sixty-five degrees, but she'd chosen a low-cut cream-colored skirt suit that came almost halfway down her thighs and had cost her six thousand dollars. Given the leer from the security guard, it would do its job just fine.

She smiled and chomped on a piece of gum. "Hi there."

The giant black man in an expensive black suit kept his eyes glued to hers, and she could almost see him sweating with the effort. "Afternoon, ma'am. Do you have an appointment?"

"Nope. But I'm here to see Mr. Kellett about a donation. It's . . ." She leaned in, too close. ". . . urgent."

He cleared his throat. "Let me see if he's available."

Holding the door like a proper gentleman, he let her in out of the cold, then stepped back outside to talk on his radio. A schoolmarmish lady in a floral print dress sized her up, shook her head with a disapproving cluck, and went back to her paperwork behind a reception counter.

Two minutes later, Mr. Kellett appeared in the inner doorway. A frail old man with frail old manners, he extended an arm to help her navigate the ridiculous purple carpet in her four-inch heels. She took it, and ran a fingertip across his dry, wrinkled skin.

She entered his office, ten times more preposterous than the ornate hallway, and pretended to admire the giant painting, a Kellett hale and hearty, less taken by entropy if not much younger. They sat in a pair of plush chairs, facing one another, and his eyes flicked down between her legs as she sat and crossed them.

Yeah, old man. Scarlet lace. See it and want it.
She strangled a twinge of remorse in its crib. Of the seven deadly sins, she'd mastered only one.

"So what is this about, Miss . . . ?"

She leaned forward and put out her hand, giving him just a glimpse down the front of her dress. He took her hand, kissed it with dry lips.

"Janet LaLonde. Call me Janet."

He pulled back. "What can I do for you, Janet?"

She removed a folded piece of paper from her thousand-dollar calfskin purse and slid it across the coffee table, the public and secondary reason she'd come.

He picked it up, unfolded it, and frowned. "You can't be serious."

She shrugged. "Couldn't trust a process server with that, sorry. Given the evidence we already have you'll probably go to jail, but meantime we'll be suing you for every penny you've ever had. We froze your US assets this morning, and scheduled the press release for two o'clock."

She stood and he leapt to his feet, hands balled into fists.
Wrath might work, if lust didn't.
She turned around, giving him a coy look over her shoulder as her hands reached up to the zipper under her hair and pulled it down.

"What is this? Get out of my office." He flushed, anger and, she hoped, something more.

Janet pulled the rest of the way, exposing the massive Jade Cross on her back, and whirled around. She tugged and her dress fell. His eyes widened—she wore no bra—and with a sigh he dropped to his knees, eyes transfixed by the gem between her breasts.

She plucked it from its chain and held it out, the ancient lapis lazuli orb bluer than the Texas sky. "Lust isn't just a sin, Mr. Kellett. It's a deadly sin, a mortal sin, one of seven, and to succumb to it is to forfeit your soul."

She approached, her dress falling to the floor, and his eyes followed the stone. Her high heels clacked across the marble tile as she stalked up to him. She looked down at him in her terrible glory, black wisps of power coalescing around her.

A tear appeared in his eye. "Why?"

"Because I may have need of you before all this is done, and if you're not already damned, close enough."

She stepped over him, putting her sex in his face, and pulled the red lace to the side. His tears fell freely now, and as he buried his mouth in her, his eyes never left the gem.

Ten minutes later, Janet shook Ronald Kellett's hand and left the building, his soul around her neck.

*   *   *

Matt picked up the phone. "Go ahead."