Mortal Ties (29 page)

Tony crossed to them and went down on one knee, putting his eyes more or less level
with Beth. He held out both hands. Hesitantly she put hers in them. He squeezed and
looked her in the eyes and spoke in his slow, measured way. “Someone tried to hurt
or kill you. Maybe you killed him instead. Maybe you hurt him very badly. You are
having a hard time with this.” He paused.

Beth nodded.

“That’s okay. Killing is not supposed to be easy.”

Beth’s mouth rounded in a silent “oh.” Tension eased out of her shoulders. “You mean
I’m supposed to be confused.”

“You are.”

“And I should quit thinking I need to figure everything out right away.”

He chuckled, a rumble so low Lily barely heard it. “
Pequita
, no one ever gets everything figured out.”

She smiled back and looked more like herself. Flirty. “Hey, who are you calling ‘little
one’?”

“Almost everyone.”

Beth laughed. It was a good laugh, and it looked like it surprised her as much as
it did Lily.

Out in the hall someone said, “…give me that look. I don’t know what your problem
is, but I’m perfectly entitled to go in the—”

“Deirdre!” Beth sprang up. “That’s Deirdre. I’m in here,” she called hurrying to the
door, and a tall skinny blond with enormous hoop earrings and a small butterfly tat
on her collarbone sailed into the room. “Beth! I just checked my messages, and I’m
so sorry I didn’t check earlier! Are you all right? You look—”

“I’m good except—”

“—like you’ve been through the wringer, and I—”

“—that I’m awful, too, and I’m so glad to see you!”

The two collided in a hug and just kept talking over, under, and around each other.

Lily sighed and smiled and stood, suddenly tired. She
looked at Tony, who was unwinding his not-quite-seven feet back to standing. She cocked
her head and said quietly, “What would you have said to her if she’d said she felt
anger or regret instead of confusion?”

Deep in those brown, bovine eyes a spark of humor glinted. “Same thing. You asked
her good questions,” he added in an encouraging way.

“Then tried to give her my answers instead of waiting for her to find her own.”

“We always want to fix things for the people who matter. Can’t, mostly, but we want
to.”

“I think you’re going to make a good Rho.”

“Do you?” He slid her a glance as opaque as any Isen might use. “Even though I don’t
think so quick?”

“The thing Isen does best, the thing the clan needs him for the most, is people. You
don’t handle people his way, but your way—” Her phone vibrated. She took it out. “Your
way works, too.”

Her caller was Arjenie. She asked about Beth first. Lily wasn’t sure how she’d heard,
but Rule had of course told his Rho, so maybe Isen had called Benedict, who would
have told Arjenie. Lily assured her Beth was okay, then they got to the business of
the call. Which was basically that Arjenie hadn’t been able to turn up a Hugo in San
Francisco that fit Cullen’s description, or a Hugo who’d been through the prison system
anywhere in the country who was a good match, and she was out of options to check.
Lily grimaced and thanked her and disconnected.

“This Hugo you’re looking for,” Tony said. “He is here in San Francisco?”

“He was. We think he still is. Why?”

“I know people. Those in my clan will know people I don’t. Tell me about him.”

“He’s a big man—big as in fat, weighs around three hundred, or did five years ago
when he hung out at a bar called Rats. At that time he was either bald or shaved his
head. He’s white, maybe fifty-five years old, and has a tattoo of a lightning bolt
on his forehead. He’s got an Air Gift
and contacts in the magical community. At one time he was the go-to guy for people
who wanted magical items stolen.”

Tony nodded slowly. “I’ll find him for you.”

Just like that? Well, Rule had said Tony had lived here a long time. Maybe he wasn’t
as young as he looked, after all. Why not let him have a try? “Thank you. He’s one
of the few leads we—”

“Lily,” Beth said, having detangled from her friend, and tugged Deirdre forward. “You
know Deirdre, right? And Deirdre, this in Tony, whose last name I’ve forgotten—sorry.
Tony, Deirdre Marks.”

“My pleasure,” Tony said gravely.

Deirdre’s eyes went big as she looked him up and down. “Wow. I mean…wow.”

“Lily, I’ve told Deirdre most of it, but I couldn’t remember his name. You know—the
sorry son of a bitch who tried to get me who I don’t really want to die, even if he
is a sorry son of a bitch. I’ve forgotten his name.”

Lily didn’t smile except inside, where relief broke out in a grin. “Robert. His name
is Robert Clampett, but on the street he goes by Little Mo.”

T
HREE-PLUS
hours later, Little Mo had made it through surgery. The doctors put his chances at
around fifty percent, but they’d go up if he made it through the night. Beth was at
the hotel in a small but luxurious room on their floor. Her friend Deirdre had opted
to stay there with her tonight, which sort of negated the don’t-put-your-friends-in-danger
argument, but at least they were guarded.

Murray was at Laban Clanhome. It was on a small ranch outside the city, much closer
than Nokolai Clanhome—the ranch where the black dragon picked up his payment for overflying
San Francisco once a week, in fact. This was one of the ways Laban had benefited from
its association with Nokolai. The government paid them handsomely for providing Sam
a cow or three. Housing Murray gave Laban another opportunity to regain face.

Tony was somewhere in San Francisco, presumably looking for Hugo. Rule was back at
the hotel, and Lily was headed there.

“Did you eat?” Rule asked.

“I ordered in for everyone. Bad enough I kept them late. Didn’t have to keep them
hungry, too. You ate, too, right?”

“It’s nine thirty-five.” Meaning of course he’d eaten. Rule never let himself get
too hungry, and his metabolism insisted on plenty of fuel. “Pizza or hamburgers?”

“Hamburgers.”

“Extra pickles for yours.”

She smiled. “Right. See you in ten.” She disconnected.

“More like fifteen, in this traffic,” Scott said. He was driving. Lily sat up front
with him; Mike and Todd were in the back. As squad leader, Scott probably should have
been at the hotel, but she hadn’t argued when Rule wanted to send him and the others
with her. She knew he trusted Scott the most. Rule had a real problem with the two
of them splitting up when she might be targeted.

But he’d needed to stay at the hospital until Murray could be moved, and Lily couldn’t
wait there with him. In the hours since she dropped her sister off at the hotel she’d
talked to her father, Ruben, Grandmother, and the agent monitoring the taps on Jasper
Machek’s various phone lines. Nothing of note there. Next she’d sat in on the SFPD
interview with the man who’d probably given Little Mo and the rest their orders—Robert
“Peep” Holland. The nickname was a reference to his first arrest. At the downy age
of fifteen he’d been booked as a Peeping Tom, but he’d probably been planning a robbery,
judging by his subsequent career. After that, she’d needed to brief Bergman and her
people, and that had turned into a brainstorming session.

The interview with Peep had been brief and unproductive. Not Detective Jones’s fault.
Peep had been around the block so many times he’d mapped out each crack in the sidewalk.
He had no idea what they were talking about and he wanted his lawyer.

The session with Bergman and her people had gone better. Lily had needed to tell them
about Jasper Machek’s unofficially missing lover, the theft of the prototype, and
Robert Friar’s possible connection to both. She followed that with a rundown on Robert
Friar—what was known, what was suspected, how his Gifts worked. Of course, they should
have known that already. Friar might be officially
presumed dead, but there were “watch for” bulletins out on him all over the country.
But unGifted cops sometimes glazed over about magical shit. They didn’t understand
it, wanted it to go away, and so they tuned out.

They would be treating the attack on Beth as an attempted kidnapping, and the disappearances
of Sean Friar and Adam King as suspected kidnappings.

Why kidnappings? That was the ten-thousand-dollar question, and they didn’t come up
with any answers. Murder was a hell of a lot easier. Even with a good team to handle
the snatch itself—and Little Mo’s bunch were competent; they’d have succeeded if they
hadn’t been up against lupi—you had to keep your hostage alive, locked up, and hidden.
Holding multiple people hostage for several days compounded the difficulty. Why would
Friar do that?

Lily didn’t think he was. Neither did Bergman. Chances were that Sean Friar and Adam
King were already dead, but maybe not. They had no idea what Friar’s game plan was,
so maybe he needed them alive. In any event, they had to proceed as if the hostages
were still around to be rescued.

At the end of the briefing Lily had turned to Special Agent Bergman and said, “This
is a Unit case, both because of Friar’s probable involvement and because of the prototype.
But we’ve got two kidnappings and one attempt, and you’ve got ten times my experience
with that sort of thing. You know your people and you know the city. What do you want
to do?”

Bergman had taken off like a racehorse given its head. She was quick, she was precise,
and she knew her stuff. In five minutes she’d outlined a course of action that included
liaising with the locals on the attempt on Beth—one of Bergman’s men had worked with
Detective Jones and had a good relationship with her; bringing Carrie Ann Rucker back
for a second round of questions; putting more people on Sean Friar’s disappearance
to find out when, where, and how he’d been snatched; and finding out what Peep was
afraid of. “We can’t sweat him with threats of prosecution,”
she said. “Prison’s his home away from home. We need to know what scares him and use
that.”

She also wanted to look for matches to the attempt on Beth because “those assholes
knew what they were doing. This wasn’t their first tango, but nothing in their priors
suggests that kind of expertise. I think they had help.” And she wanted to put a tap
on Jasper Machek’s phone.

“Help…as in training?” Lily nodded thoughtfully. “Well worth checking out. The tap’s
in place as of two hours ago. I’ll see that you get transcripts. You’re in charge
of investigating the kidnappings.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Drummond demanded.

He’d faded in to join them in a misty-white-cloud sort of way when Lily began the
briefing. Now he was fully formed, floating, and fuming.

It was really hard not to react.

Bergman spoke levelly. “It’s a Unit case.”

“Yes, it is, and you’ll report to me, but you don’t need me to tell you how to tie
your shoes.”

Drummond glared down at her. “No, I can do that! Dammit, Yu, with me to help, you
can handle this just fine.”

“Set things up,” Lily went on briskly to Bergman, “keep things moving, keep me informed.
If your people get anything—anything at all—that gives a tug on Robert Friar’s whereabouts,
call me that instant. Do not attempt him yourself.”

Drummond announced that she was a goddamned idiot.

Bergman nodded, still wary. “That’s standing orders for Friar. ‘Contact Unit Twelve
immediately. Do not attempt to apprehend.’ ”

“I’m underlining it. This is not about territory or who gets the collar.”

“I’m not territorial.”

Sure she was, but Lily didn’t have a problem with that. “Robert Friar can’t be handled
without magical protections that your people don’t have, and I can’t give them.” She
paused to glance around the small conference table at the four agents other than Bergman…

Drummond sank to floor level and stomped silently up to Lily. “Dammit, you need to
listen to me! Investigations like this are what I do, and I’m damn good at what I
do. If you can’t handle an investigation this big, let me help so—”

Shut up!

He looked startled—and did. That disconcerted her as much as his yelling had. Lily
hoped her reaction didn’t show as she finished her visual circuit of everyone present—everyone
but Drummond. “Everyone clear on that? Okay. What do you need that you don’t have?”

Bergman snorted. “A dozen senior agents, a car that doesn’t stall out when I try to
go over fifty, and a vacation in the Bahamas.”

“Can’t help with the vacation. Do you have an immediate need for a dozen senior agents,
or was that number just for ha-ha?”

Bergman’s eyes narrowed. “You can get me a dozen senior agents?”

“To get Robert Friar? Damn straight. I can pull in the army if I need them, but I’d
better really, deeply need them. How many senior agents do you really, deeply need?”

Bergman went silent, her eyes unfocused. She was taking time to come up with a real
number. Lily appreciated that. “Three seniors, three juniors,” she said at last. “I
can put the three seniors to work right away, and the juniors can handle some of the
grunt work.”