In this Night We Own (The Commander Book 6) (20 page)

---

“Malnutrition, exhaustion, and some minor bruising and lacerations, but nothing major,” Zielinski said to me.  Tom sat on the examining table in his underwear, and he was happy, beautiful, and still a little bit fragile.  Zielinski turned to Tom.

“I want you to eat well and put on some weight.  Get plenty of rest, and some light exercise.  I’m going to recommend a specific vitamin compound I want you to take every day.  I want you to come in a week from now and I’ll check you again.  Give me a call if any of those injuries become infected or are slow to heal.  They shouldn’t be a problem, but your body isn’t as capable of dealing with those injuries right now as normal, and if one of these injuries doesn’t heal properly, it could cause all sorts of problems.”

Tom nodded, but he wasn’t especially concerned.  His body had always been strong.  I agreed with Tom; his was a good body.  The long, lean, muscular lines were attractive in a masculine way, and even as thin as he was, he was still beautiful, his body reduced to essentials.

Zielinski frowned.  He didn’t think Tom took him sufficiently seriously.  Tom’s eyes wandered the room, taking in every picture and instrument.  He caught my eye and smiled.

“Look here,” Zielinski said, angry. “You can make a perfectly good recovery if you take care of yourself, but I’m not interested in cutting off a gangrenous leg because you let some infection get out of control.”

Zielinski turned to me and surprised a stupid little grin on my face.  “Ma’am,” he said, but interrupted his comment when he saw the smile.  He turned from me to Tom and winced.

“Oh, hell,” he said.

---

“So how soon can I get started, ma’am?” Tom said, as we walked back to the car.  The hot Houston summer had finally broken, replaced by a first brush of the cool and wet.  Off to the north, heavy rain fell, but the drenching hadn’t gotten here yet.  The rain would flood the streets when it arrived.  Again.  A few large drops hit my face as we crossed the parking lot.

I considered Tom’s question.  He was in crap shape.  I would like to see him take it easy for several weeks, but he needed the work.

“I’d like you to recover your health before you start anything serious,” I said.  “But there isn’t any reason that you can’t start on a few things.  No more than four hours a day until you recover your health.  I’m going to put Darryl and Francesco under your orders.  They’re both reasonably easy to work with and shouldn’t give you any trouble.  Work with them, talk to them, find out what you need to know.”

Tom frowned at me.  On other occasions, there might be a touch of desire in his gaze, but the male disguise threw him off.  “You don’t need to give me the easy ones, ma’am.”

“You’ll get the harder ones later.  While you’re injured, we’ll keep it to the easy folks.”

“Ma’am, my body is injured, not my mind.”

Argument.  I had gone for a strong one, and I expected him to push back.  His pushing back bothered me less than pushing did from most people.  I tapped him on the forehead.

“Your mind is injured, too.  We wait.”

Tom thought about my words, still struggling to fit me into his understanding.  Torturer, confessor, superior, lover.  All mutually contradictory.  He would take a while to sort through things.  Eventually, he shrugged.

“You’re the boss,” he said.

Part 3
Revenge by Other Means

Let your plans be dark and as impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

Sun Tsu

Chapter 7

No Crows enjoy the bitch side of Focuses.

“The Life of Crows”

Carol Hancock: October 1, 1968 – October 5, 1968

Keaton sat in her white chair and flipped through my documentation, tense and unwilling to bend.  The afternoon sun tried unsuccessfully to make the room seem cheery.  My October meeting wasn’t going well, and I didn’t know why.  The problem wasn’t Haggerty, who had been steadily improving her competence as an Arm.  In fact, Keaton had even granted her a hunting territory of her own, Los Angeles, where she was out hunting now.  Keaton wasn’t low on juice, either.  Newton, although he still refused to meet Keaton in person, had been having a good run locating prey, so many that according to Keaton she had actually hauled one bit of prey, a decent woman Transform, over to a Transform Clinic, where she awaited a Focus.  Such events should have put a smile on her face, not her psycho-Keaton glower.

“No Chimera sightings?”

“No, none at all, ma’am, and I’ve been staying away from the Hunter territories, as you ordered.”  I sat on the ottoman, and given Keaton’s temper was glad I hadn’t given in to my momentary impulse to take the couch.

Flip.  Flip.  “Anything on the top end recruit front?”

“Yes,
ma’am
,” I said, proud.  “I’ve found and finished recruiting my number two.  His name’s Tom Delacort.  When he’s more experienced, I’d be happy to introduce you to him, ma’am.”  I went on to give a full report on Tom, which took an hour.  Now that I had finished turning him, I wanted Keaton to know about him, so she could factor him into how she used me and my organization.  I suspected he would be as big a boost to my organization’s prowess as Zielinski.

Keaton tapped her fingers, tense, unhappy.  The entire time.  For no discernible reason.

“When I tagged you, I asked for a complete write-up of your recruitment abilities and tricks,” Keaton said, moving on to the next subject.  “Where is it?”

“Ma’am.  I haven’t had time.”

“Make time,” she said, grabbing my chin and pushing her face up to mine.  Her breath smelled as if she had been into the raw hamburger again.  Given Haggerty’s disastrous excuse for cooking, I didn’t blame her.  “I want it next month.”  Meaning my November 1
st
meeting.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, with no hesitation.  I wanted to finish the project and get the damned thing off my to-do list.  With her other orders, I had moved it far down the priority list.

She flipped through my other recruitment documents, picking at the details, and giving me orders.  She amended her earlier orders in two ways: she wanted fewer suborned thugs, the earlier thousand reduced to six hundred, and more closely held recruits, bumping that up to seventy five.  I had no problems with either.

We went on from there to Zielinski and the researchers.  No problems there.  Next, the Crows, which I reported on as well.  I felt more tension when I got into the Crow details, for no logical reason.  I suspected she and the local boss Crow, Chevalier, had been snarling at each other again.  She didn’t say.  After my Crow report, she picked at the details far more than I expected.  I answered without hiding anything, but the tension rose even higher, almost as if she suspected me of lying to her.  I had nothing to hide, and I bared my heart and mind to her.  She still picked.

“Anything else?”  Almost as if she was waiting to wade into me on something I had missed, forgotten, or wanted to hide from her.  None of that this month, thankfully.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.  I reached into my fat legal briefcase, my portable document store I carried with me when I visited because I never knew where Keaton would be going any given month.  I handed a report to her.  “This is from Gilgamesh.  He had a suspicion that the Clinic Focus kidnapping in early August was a Hunter special, so after consulting with me, he went to check it out.  Turns out he was right.”

She leafed through the report and shook her head.  “They have
two
Focuses?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.  My information didn’t match what she knew.  She suspected my report was a fabrication.  “Ma’am, this is Gilgamesh, not one of us.  His observations have never proven wrong before, but I can’t guarantee that…”

“Shut up,” Keaton said, radiating a feeling of barely repressed Keatonic rage.  She read the report again and slapped it closed.  “When was the last time you were in Chicago?”

“I retrieved several of my people from Chicago on July 23
rd
and 24
th
.  I haven’t been in or near Chicago since.”

“Have you sent any of your people, or anyone else except Gilgamesh, to the Chicago area since the end of July?”

“No, ma’am,” I said.  This was crazy.

“Have you had any contact with any Chimeras of any variety in this time period?”

“No, ma’am,” I said.  Again.  “I’d hoped to set up a meeting with the Boston Nobles either late last month or early next month, but my earlier mentioned difficulties with Focus Rizzari have delayed the meeting indefinitely.”

“Fuck.  Hancock…”  She glared at me, angry, unsure of where she wanted to go next.  “Biggioni?  Tell me what’s been going on with the bitch.”

“Ma’am, nothing.  She hasn’t twitched in my direction since I left the defused bomb on her desk on the morning of the 18
th
of August.”  Which had been in my September 1
st
report to Keaton.  “Well, at least that I know of.  You know of my only other activity regarding Focus Biggioni.”  Gilgamesh’s aborted spy mission.  I had given her a full rundown on that in my earlier Crow report.  “I’m afraid we may have a standoff, where neither of us can do anything to the other without causing worse problems.  Do you have any orders on this, ma’am?”

Keaton glared at me.  I wondered if she remained angry from my pushing of the salt mine mystery last month.  I didn’t know, and I had been keeping my nose out of the entire Midwest to make sure I didn’t interfere with whatever my boss Arm had going.  “Tonya isn’t done with you or me on this,” she said, after nearly a minute of hostile glare.  “She isn’t one to give up.  Keep your eyes open for any openings that may present themselves, and act accordingly.”  Hotter glare.  “Dismissed.”

I got.

Something was going on, something bad, something she wouldn’t share with me.  Keaton hadn’t even bothered to exercise me or spar with me this time.  I had never before had a monthly session with Keaton that truly sucked; this was as bad as before she had me tagged.  I needed to make sure my coming month was productive. Or else.

---

“So what do you think?” I said.  We were about thirty miles from Houston, in a warm rain, and Tom had my people practicing bank robbery techniques on an abandoned farmhouse out in the piney woods. We watched from under an old hackberry tree that only partly kept the rain off.

“It’s a start,” he said.  “Can I make some requests?”

“Request away,” I said.  Off a hundred feet away at the house, the men came storming out and made for the waiting car.  Their work looked good to me, but Tom winced and shook his head.

“We’ve got a skills problem,” he said.  “Most of the men make fine grunts, but except for Francesco and his second story shit, most of these guys can’t do more than wave a gun and act tough.”

“I thought you were training them.”

“I’m teaching them what I know, and they’re a hell of a lot better with guns and I’m getting them into shape.  However, the Army doesn’t teach the kind of skills we need.  Or at least not my part of the Army.”  Tom wore a black bomber jacket and khaki pants, and his air of fragility was gone.  He looked almost like he must have been back in the Army.  Tough and smart and hard as nails.  I smiled.  He still turned me on.

“What do you need?”

“The big one is security.  We need someone good with security systems.  Also research.  We need to know what we’re walking into.  We could probably train someone on security systems if we had a teacher, but there’s nobody here that’s gonna be able to handle research decently.  Except maybe you, if you wanted to, but that’s a full time job, and you don’t have time.  We’ve got to get someone sharp, a thinker, who can handle the research.”

I nodded, a little bit startled to find myself analyzed along with my men.  “I might be able to do something about that.  Anything else?” I would be able to find someone to teach security systems, but the research guy would be yet another recruitment project.

“Tools and demolitions would be next up,” Tom said.  “I’ve taught Darryl something about demolitions, but he needs more, and more about the small scale stuff useful for bank robberies, not the stuff about blowing up bridges.  Francesco is good with tools, but he’s B grade, and we want A grade if we’re going to do this right.  There’s probably more, but I want to shake things down with a trial run before I get too specific.”

“What kind of trial run?”

“I figure we’ll do a simple bank robbery, maybe over in Dallas.  In, out, low risk, low take.  I want to see them in the field and get them used to the new discipline.  We’ll need to go up there a couple of days early to case the place and set up.  I’ll need some funds to work with.”  He glanced over at me, making the last a question.

I nodded.  “How soon and how much?”

“I want to head up this weekend.  Hit the bank Tuesday or Wednesday.  And I’d like a couple thousand to work with.  We probably won’t need that much, but I’d like to have it if we do.”  He turned back toward the house, where the men were collecting after their practice run.  Fred was taking a whiz over in the bushes.  The other men congregated under the shelter of the collapsing front entrance, leaving Fred alone.  Not unusual – the other men didn’t care for Fred.

Tom was uneasy about his request, and was trying to appear calm and competent despite that.  He didn’t know how I would react, or how much he could ask for.  He had thought about asking for less, but then decided to ask for what he thought was right, just to find out how it went.

I nodded.  “Yes,” I said.  And then, to ease my own worries: “You’ll use a stolen car for the robbery?  And make sure none of you can be identified.”

Tom nodded back at me, still watching the men by the house.  He was pleased about the money, and he had already thought through my concerns.

“You still have a request you’re sitting on,” I said, reading him.

He shrugged, wiping the rain from his face with his hand.  “Two,” he said. I raised an eyebrow.

“You see that over there?” he said, nodding his head toward the house.  Fred had finished watering the pine trees and tried to join the other men.  They shifted position to cut him out.

“We’ve got a problem there,” Tom said.  “I want him off the team.  The men don’t like him and he doesn’t have the right personality for this sort of thing.  His judgment’s bad and I don’t trust his reactions.”

I glanced at Tom, speculative.  His reasoning sounded good, but his emotions played in his mental basement as well.  Those men had been his guards when I held him captive, and that leaves scars.  He had managed to forgive most of the men.  They had just been doing their job, and he understood that.  Fred was a different story.  Fred had been the bad one, the one with the extra dose of cruelty, the one who enjoyed handing out the pain.

If Fred hadn’t been working for me, he would have found himself having an unpleasant experience in a back alley somewhere.  However, Fred worked for me, and so Tom suppressed his desire to beat the crap out of him.  However, the desire was there, and Tom despised Fred with a narrow-eyed passion.

I nodded.  “He’s off,” I said.  Given the circumstances, this was the least I could do.

“Good,” Tom said.  He appreciated my decision, but he also wondered why I tolerated Fred at all.  He thought better of me.

Tom in general didn’t understand my vices.  He understood necessary harshness, and cruelty when required, but he didn’t understand cruelty for its own sake.  He thought I should be above petty sadism.  I didn’t know how I would deal with this issue.  I suspected this would make things difficult over the long haul.  I had a sneaking suspicion I would have to clean up my act, just to keep Tom’s respect.

“Two?” I said.  Tom hesitated.  The hard one, which he left for last.

“Ma’am, how much were you expecting to involve yourself in this trial run?” he said.  “I know you led these in the past.  You’ve been letting me have free reign so far.  Are you planning to continue that, or were you going to take charge again?”

“Which are you asking for?” I knew the answer already, but I waited him out.

Tom shifted, uneasy.  “I’d like us to try this on our own.  I think we’ll do well, and it will be good for everyone.”

I grinned at him.  “Besides that, you know how I like to fight and how I have a hard time backing down from a challenge.  You don’t want me fucking up the operation.”

Tom gaped for a second, and then closed his mouth with a snap.