Downpour (31 page)

I gave him a suspicious glance. “How do you know how long I’ve been in town?”

“I like to be thorough. I checked with the hotels and guesthouses,’cause you don’t look like the camping type.”

I snorted. It wasn’t that I wouldn’t or couldn’t go camping; I’d just never had much cause or chance to. Though I suppose surveillance details were kind of like camping, in a homeless-guy-living-in-his-car kind of way. And thinking about cars made me ask, “Hey, do you have a list of the items found in Leung’s car? I’d like to take it to my client and see if anything stands out.”

Faith glanced down, thinking. “I believe I do. Hang on a second.” He banged around on the nearest computer keyboard for a moment and coaxed a page from a cranky laser printer that made grinding and coughing noises and shook as if the page were being generated by a hidden Gutenberg press tended by asthmatic souls of the damned. Faith handed the still-warm paper to me. “Good luck with that. And if you come up with any ideas, don’t act on ’em. Call me first.”

I agreed, knowing I was probably lying. “Oh, one more thing,” I said as he shooed me toward the door.

Faith cocked me a look with raised brows. “Yeah?”

“What happened at the lake in 1989?”

“’Eighty-nine?” He gave it some thought. “Nothing. Nothing I know about at least. Ridenour’d be the one to ask. He would have been pretty new back then, but I imagine if anything significant happened, he’s the one who would know.”

I plunged back out into the rain in Faith’s wake and watched him head deeper into the parking lot until the rain hid him from sight, reflecting light from the sodium vapor lamps into scrims and rippling swags of liquid gold streaked black in the fallen night.

The rain was no heavier by the water, but the wind off the Strait of Juan de Fuca blew it in at a cutting angle that filled the windshield with blurry white lines. I had to concentrate on the road just to be sure I was on it, and not wandering into some ghostly pocket of the Grey, but I found the Black Ball Ferry Line’s passenger pickup zone without having to circle around more than once.

There was only one passenger at the dock at that time of night, since the last boat from Victoria hadn’t arrived yet. The size and shape were right, but in the downpour it was hard to tell if it really was Quinton. After what had happened to Strother, I was a touch more paranoid than usual and moved my pistol into the center console. I kept my hand on it as I unlocked the doors.

He bounded into the front seat and shut the door, sweeping off his hat and dropping it onto his boots along with his backpack. Then he pushed back the hood of the sweatshirt he had on underneath the coat, and as the light fell on his face I almost shot him.

“Whoa!” he shouted, putting up his hands as he saw my hand on the gun. “Next time I’ll say something first.”

I let my breath out in a relieved puff at the familiar sound of his voice and drew my hand away from the pistol. I peered at him for a second, just in case it wasn’t really Quinton but some kind of Grey trick. “What the hell happened to your hair?” I asked as I started to pull the truck back onto the road.

He made an embarrassed chuckling sound and ran one hand over his head. His long ponytail was gone and his hair was clipped into a neat, short style that probably looked boringly corporate when it wasn’t damp and mussed. He’d shaved off his beard as well, and his face seemed too large and a little too hard around the jaw without it. He looked more like the old ID photo I’d seen of him when the NSA had come calling a couple of years earlier than like my beloved, shaggy anarchist. I recognized him from other details as well, but it took some restraint not to stare at his broad cheekbones and naked chin.

“Well . . . um . . . I had a need to change my look.”

“Are you running from someone? Is that why you’ve been so jumpy? Is that why you’re here?”

“Not as such.”

“How ’bout you get to that ‘such’ and tell me what’s going on?”

“Could we go somewhere drier and quieter for that? And private?” he added, reaching into his pocket for his pager. Then he popped off the back and removed the batteries, eyeing me with an unspoken suggestion that I do the same.

I pointed at my phone where it sat in one of the cup holders. Quinton took it and removed its battery also, putting the two parts in separate holes in the console. He seemed to breathe easier once it was done.

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“It’s a long story. I’d rather tell it all at once. Where are you staying?”

“I was at a hotel a few blocks away, but I wasn’t planning on going back there. One of the local cops—”

“Was killed in your previous hotel room. Yeah. I got that story out of the desk clerk. So you were going to take a different room tonight?”

“It sounded like a good idea to me.”

“Is there some other place, not a hotel, we could go? Someplace a bit . . . off the grid?”

I thought about the key Geoff Newman had given me. The Leung place wasn’t perfectly safe, but it wasn’t likely anyone would come there by chance. It also was guaranteed to have no phone or Internet connections, and probably no cable, either, so if Quinton was being paranoid about electronic surveillance, it was the best choice we had, short of staying in the Rover. We’d done that before and I hadn’t cared for it.

“I have a place. . . .”

TWENTY-FIVE

L
eung’s house was shuttered tight and silent as ever, and a strange luminescence swirled around the eaves like a flock of ghostly swallows, though the energy playing on the rise nearby had shifted lower and darker since I’d last been there. I hoped that was caused by Jin’s having cleaned up the magic circle there and not by something more sinister. I’d had quite enough of sinister for the day and even though I knew there was something unpleasant behind Quinton’s appearance in Port Angeles, I was hoping it wouldn’t wreck all chance of a quiet night snuggled together under the pile of cheap blankets we’d bought in town. I was counting on Geoff Newman’s wariness to have sealed his lips about lending me the house key, so no one would turn up to disturb us.

The hike in from where I’d left the Rover at a discreet distance from the cabin had left us more than damp around the edges, but the lakefront building with its big decks and upper-floor entry was sound and dry inside even after it had been closed up for five years. Most of the houses around the lakes were summer homes, but this one had been meant for year-round residence, so even though there was no water or electricity, it had everything else you could want, including some old canned goods and a couple of firearms—in case of rampaging bears, I supposed. The shutters kept any movement inside from being visible and it would be cozy enough so long as we didn’t make a lot of noise or wave flashlights around like disco lights. We debated, but in the end Quinton started a small fire in the Franklin stove on the bottom floor and we took the risk that anyone would notice the trickle of smoke it put out the chimney.

We huddled in the dark together before the stove with blankets around our shoulders and sock-clad feet propped on a stool just out of scorching range. A couple of fat little candles provided enough light to see, but we hoped not enough to attract attention if a vagrant flicker fell through the storm shutters and onto the water outside. It was still too tense and soggy to be romantic, but the scene had potential.

“So,” I started, teasing, “where’s the ferret?”

“I left her with Brian Danziger. Oh, that reminds me: Ben gave me something for you.” He scrabbled around in his backpack and handed me a small package swaddled in plastic wrap—not quite what I’d had in mind.... “I guess he was expecting you to come by on Monday, so when I showed up this morning, he gave it to me. Did he tell you about the book?”

I’d forgotten completely to go visit the Danzigers. I winced in shame. “Book?” I looked at the package—it wasn’t big enough for a paperback.... “No.”

“That’s not the book. He’s writing a book. Ben is.”

“Yes, I know—a paranormal field guide. He’s been working on it for a while.”

“He got a publication deal. Some small press, but they’re excited. Mara’s taking a sabbatical at the end of the quarter and they’re going to Europe and Asia for a year to finish up some research for it. She’s going to write something about sacred rocks while they’re out—petroglyphs and dolmens . . . I think.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling odd. I’d never thought about the book seriously or how it might change their lives—and mine. The Danzigers had been my lifeline through the Grey so many times that I couldn’t imagine my life without them nearby. That was silly and selfish of me, and I didn’t realize how much I’d taken them for granted—I’d taken most of my small number of friends for granted, really. . . . I rubbed the plastic-covered packet in my hand and began to unwrap it. “So . . . what’s this?”

Quinton sat back down and snuggled into the blanket beside me, but his body was tense. Even in the dim light from a handful of candles, I didn’t have to look at his aura to know he was nervous about something. “Ben said it’s a spell to banish demons. Or
a
demon—I’m kind of unclear on how many. . . .”

It wasn’t demons that worried Quinton, though. I suspected he didn’t want to talk about why he was really here and why he’d cut his hair, at least not yet. I gave him some time while I removed the plastic and an inner wrapper of brown paper to reveal an intricately folded piece of yellow silk a little larger than my palm. A Chinese character had been inked on one side in red. I remembered what Ben had said about banishing demons, and I guessed this soft little fabric flower was a spell to do just that. It was small enough to shove into a yaoguai’s mouth—if you didn’t mind the risk of losing a hand.

“Ben doesn’t write Chinese,” I said, putting the bundle back into its wrappers and tucking it into my shirt for the time being. “I wonder where he got it.”

“He said some colleague of his made it.”

I wondered what sort of colleague he meant, since I couldn’t imagine the college professors he knew suddenly changing their minds about how weird and silly Ben’s interest in the paranormal was. “Ah,” was all I said.

Quinton tucked me against his side, putting his arm around my waist and pulling the blankets close. I leaned my head against his shoulder. Silence fell between us, deep enough to hear the muffled hiss of the damp sticks burning in the stove.

“Why—” I started, choking off as I realized the question hurt as I tried to say it; it hurt worse than tearing apart a ghost or a god.

Quinton pulled me tighter against him, up into his lap so he could wrap his arms all the way around me. And he suddenly wasn’t so wary, as if I’d broken the tension by finally asking the stupid damned question that had been hanging there like Damocles’ sword.

“Is that, ‘Why have I been avoiding you’ or ‘Why have I been preoccupied’ or ‘Why am I suddenly here’?”

“All of those.”

“Because I screwed up and I had to fix it and I didn’t want you sucked into my mess. That’s why I cut my hair off and shaved and why I look like a total dork from IT. And now it’s over—mostly over—and I—I just need to be here.”

I felt the edge of tears under my eyelids and I hiccuped over them in my throat. “You—you don’t look like a dork.”

“Then I failed,” he said with a sigh, “because I’m supposed to look like the jerk no one notices around the office until he comes in one day with a clanking duffel bag and a long memory.”

“Why?”

“Because I owed the FBI a favor.”

I sat up so fast and far that I almost burned my back on the stove. “What?”

Quinton shook his head. “I knew you wouldn’t like it.”

“Like is not a factor. I just . . . Just tell me what you did and why you had to do it for the feds.”

He looked up sideways with an anticipatory wince. “You’re going to hate me.”

I gaped at him for a moment. Then I leaned forward and kissed him. “I will never hate you. I love you. So talk.”

He sighed as I settled back on the seat next to him and stole part of the blanket back for myself.

“I love you, too, you know. And that’s why I gave myself up.”

TWENTY-SIX

I
wanted to question him, shake him until he told me what the hell he was talking about, but I knew Quinton wasn’t having an easy time telling me his story, so I sat still and held my peace.

“Back . . . back when you were trying to find Edward, you remember I unearthed the video files and I took them to the police.”

“Yes.”

He didn’t look at me but stared at the stove. “Well . . . you didn’t want me to go because of the trouble I’d had with the NSA and the cops, and I argued that I was the only person who could convince them the videos were legit and important. But that wasn’t entirely why I went. I thought . . . that I could save you. That I could convince them to pick up Goodall and the whole plan would fall apart without him. Then you’d be safe and we could find another way to deal with Wygan that didn’t require you to walk into a trap and”—he swallowed hard—“and die.”

I wanted to reach out and hold on to him, but his posture told me not to. I bit my lip and waited for him to continue.

“I knew I couldn’t just walk in and not have to take the consequences. The paperwork said I was dead, but . . . you know there are only half as many dead spies in the world as there are papers to prove it. The only thing I wanted was to make sure you were safe, and the Feebs just wanted to argue with me about who I was and how I’d slipped off their chain. It was taking too long and I was running out of time. So I called my father.”

“The spy? The jerk who ‘loaned’ you to the NSA in the first place?”

He nodded, but he still didn’t look at me. “Yeah. James the First. The big spook himself. I made
them
call him, actually. If you drop the right code words, they’ll check it. I wasn’t sure Dad would go along. I mean . . . we’re not exactly buddies these days, and the way I dropped out made him look bad. But I didn’t care. I . . . just wanted to help you.