Personal Demon (38 page)

His look was enough.

“One day, Karl. Give me that, and if you want to help, I’d love that.”

“Twenty-four hours. There’s a flight leaving at ten tomorrow, and I’m buying tickets.”

In other words, he’d expected this, and was just registering his protest.

“Thank you, Karl.”

“Credits. I’m stockpiling ’em.”

I OPENED PAIGE’S
second message and braced for the photo. A young Hispanic man with shaggy hair and a tiny scar through his eyebrow seemed to sleep peacefully on a carpet. Rodriguez.

Jaz had said Rodriguez lived with his older sister in Miami, the one who’d called with the college news.

Rodriguez was a half-demon, so his family didn’t know about his supernatural life. Presumably his death was being handled by the Cabal. How could they let his sister know of his death, but deny her details or access to his body?

Would they find a way…or just let him disappear?

When I called Paige, she sounded so exhausted I was sure she hadn’t gotten to bed. Instead of her inviting me to breakfast, I offered to bring her one. But she brushed me off with thanks.

I aimed a glower at Karl, who could overhear Paige and had the grace to look mildly chagrined.

I told Paige who her victim was, and that I could only give a surname and sketchy bio.

“The tech guy, huh?” she murmured. “That makes sense. He had a lot of gear on him.”

“Did the Cabal shoot him?” I tried to keep the accusation out of my voice. Wasn’t sure I succeeded.

“I don’t think so. We caught him in an alley and we were just about to get information from him.

Obviously someone didn’t want to take that chance.”

“Someone from the gang?”

“We presume so.”

I doubted it. Guy would trust Rodriguez to keep his mouth shut at least long enough for a rescue attempt.

More likely it had been a Cabal sniper who didn’t dare admit his mistake to Lucas. If it had been the gang, they’d been aiming for whoever was holding Rodriguez.

I didn’t argue, though. The truth would come out. The Cabals might kill one of their own to keep him from talking, but I was sure the gang wouldn’t.

“There’s something else we were hoping you could help with,” Paige said. “You may have heard the gang mention an off-site place where they keep supplies and such?”

“Yes, but I don’t have any idea where it is.”

“The Cabal has the address. It’s a warehouse unit. We’ve had a team staking it out since three. At around four, two young men went inside. They haven’t come out. We presume it’s a rendezvous point and the others were already in there.”

Others? With Rodriguez dead, there were only three members left.

“What about Jaz and Sonny? Have you found out anything? Is the Cabal still claiming they aren’t responsible?”

A pause.

My heart hammered. “You’ve found them? Their bodies?”

“No, but Lucas is certain the Cabal isn’t behind this. With everything that’s happened, Benicio would come clean, if only because it could help solve the case. Lucas is—” A buzz of the phone, as if she was moving. “He’s beginning to suspect they were never abducted.”

“What?”

“I’ll explain later. About the warehouse, though. Lucas wants to go in within the hour, and we thought you might want to be there just to, you know, negotiate. If things don’t go as hoped, Lucas really doesn’t want this to end badly.”

That was her politic way of saying they feared if the gang resisted, the roust could turn into a massacre.

“We’ll be there.”

HOPE: PARTY TIME

K
arl picked the lock of the unit adjacent to the one rented by the gang. Snipers covered us from the neighboring building. I knew that was supposed to make us feel safe, but it didn’t, any more than the Kevlar vest I wore or the panic button in my pocket.

The door opened in to a cavernous, dark room filled with carpet rolls. I turned on my flashlight and we picked our way over the rolls to the far side of the room. Karl pressed himself against the wall shared with the gang’s unit, listening. I knew what I should be doing—“listening” for chaos vibes or visions. But I was still raw from the night before, and spent the first couple of minutes just standing there, clenching the flashlight, braced against visions. When not so much as a stray chaos vibe pinged, I relaxed.

I glanced at Karl. He shook his head. No sounds from the unit either.

I took out my cell and called Guy. No one answered. Karl couldn’t hear the ring from the adjoining unit. I hung up and tried Max. No answer. Same with Tony.

I left a voice mail message for Tony, asking where they were and what was happening. I could see them not answering my call—they had no idea whether I’d been kidnapped or had betrayed them, and if Guy wasn’t there, they might not risk picking up. But they’d certainly discuss it or comment on it, and probably check the voice message. Still Karl heard nothing.

We went outside to find Lucas.

TEN MINUTES LATER,
Karl was picking another lock—the door into the gang unit. This time he had not only snipers but two members of the SWAT team flanking him, one pressed against either side of the doorway.

Karl sampled the air, then checked with me. No chaos vibes either. The officers followed us inside.

This unit was divided into three sections—two rooms with closed doors plus a large open storage area. The officers passed us and swept the open area, then retreated to check the closed rooms. The first held two cots, a microwave and a minifridge—a place to hole up if needed. The room was empty.

One officer opened the second door, and they swung in. A grunt. Then a wave, telling us it was safe. It was not, however, empty. Max and Tony were passed out drunk at a dining table, a bottle of Glenlivet single-malt Scotch within reach.

I bent to read a note that had slid to the floor.

Party Time!

Yeah, it’s the good stuff this time.

Guy

I whispered, “So what do we do?”

Karl’s hand closed on my arm, and I thought he was telling me to be quieter. But he tugged me back and I realized he didn’t want me getting too close. Smart—I didn’t want to be within arm’s reach if the guys woke up.

I turned to say something to Karl, then saw his expression and, at the same time, over his shoulder, Tony’s.

He lay on the table, arms askew, but his eyes were half open. Empty eyes…

I reached to grab his shoulder. An officer stopped me.

“D-dead?” I managed.

My gaze shot to Max. His head lay on his folded arms, face hidden. But his body was still.

No, it couldn’t be. If they were dead, I’d feel it. I’d
see
their deaths. Nothing chaotic could have happened—

I saw the bottle again and flashed back to the night before. To the guard inside the house, looking as if
he
had just passed out, coffee cup by his hand. I hadn’t felt so much as a twinge from his death. Because it had been unchaotic. Dead before he realized what was happening.

Karl leaned over the open bottle, being careful not to touch it, sniffed and nodded. One of the officers lifted his radio to his lips.

I walked back and crouched by the note. Someone must have planted it and made it look like it came from Guy.

The wording was perfect. “Party time.” The joke about letting them have the “good stuff.” Even the brand—the same kind Sonny had swiped from the stock at Easy Rider the night of the sweet sixteen heist.

After the rest of the team poured in and secured the building, Paige and Lucas joined us. Karl quietly asked whether I wanted to step out, but didn’t argue when I refused. There was no chaos here to upset me, and I felt better staying with Max and Tony, so I could ensure they were treated as people, not anonymous casualties.

I couldn’t cling to my naiveté any longer. Guy knew how to convince his people that he had their best interests in mind, but as much as I’d liked him he was, at heart, as power-hungry and ruthless as any Cabal sorcerer.

He’d killed Rodriguez, Tony and Max, and maybe Jaz and Sonny.

Lucas must think Carlos was behind this, which would explain how the killer got easy access to his father’s and Hector’s homes, and lured William at the office. But he’d have needed help. He’d chosen Guy, a shrewd and ambitious gang leader with a reputation for discretion and caution, everything Carlos was not.

They’d hatched a plan, probably recruiting the Cabal security guards I’d seen. They’d used the guards to rob and beat Jaz and Sonny, planting the seeds. Then, with Jaz and Sonny gone and Bianca dead at the hands of the Cabal guard, Guy could whip the rest of the gang into full revenge mode. Having me disappear—presumably kidnapped—was a bonus he hadn’t counted on, but had undoubtedly used to full effect.

The gang would help Carlos and provide him with an alibi—he’d been with a woman, and narrowly escaped death himself. But then these witnesses needed to be silenced. That’s all Rodriquez, Tony and Max had been to Guy, despite his talk of brotherhood—tools to be used and discarded.

And Jaz and Sonny? Were they dead too? If so, why not display their bodies? Was Guy holding them somewhere, in case they still proved useful?

If we could find them, we might have our witnesses.

LUCAS’S PHONE RANG
almost nonstop as he supervised the crime scene, and he was getting frustrated.

With two brothers dead, the third in custody, his father in mourning and the entire Cabal in upheaval, the only man they could turn to was the one who didn’t want the job.

I was shocked at how well he handled the pressure, especially under the circumstances and with no sleep.

He might have never worked for his father, but he knew the organization and, it seemed, how to direct it.

Three calls came in succession as Lucas tried to supervise the removal of Max and Tony’s bodies. Paige took the last for him.

As she listened, she frowned. “Are you sure about the time of death?”

Lucas glanced over sharply. She motioned for him to keep working.

“Yes, I understand,” she said. “It’s not an exact science, but it’s definitely been more than twenty-four hours?”

A pause, then she looked my way. “I think I have someone who can make a positive ID.”

I froze.

“I’ll bring her down.” She hung up and came over to me. “They found someone from the gang.”

“Who?”

She shook her head. “Better wait until you see. Just to be sure.”

DID THE BODY
belong to Jaz or Sonny?

The question looped through my mind all the way to the Cabal morgue. I could have pushed Paige for an answer, but then Karl would see how important it was to me and I didn’t want that.

Either way—Jaz or Sonny—this was going to hurt.

HOPE: POSITIVE ID

A
young man in a suit that screamed “security detail” met Paige, Karl and me in the Cortez Corporation lobby and explained the situation as he led us to the basement, where the morgue and lab were located. The body had come from a contact in the city morgue.

“How does that work?” I asked.

“Mr. Cortez has friends everywhere and systems for everything. No one’s ever going to come looking for this guy.”

“The coroner said it was murder?” Paige prompted.

“Gunshot to the back of the skull. Right through the CNS. That’s the central nervous system.”

“Right.”

“And it was a professional body dump too.” He glanced at Paige uneasily, as if she might be shocked at the thought that someone could be a professional in such a thing. “It was pure luck that he was found so quickly. They ran his prints through their system, but he wasn’t in it. He was in ours, though.”

“So that’s how you flag them,” I said.

He deflated a little, as if I’d figured out the secret behind an illusion.

“But if his prints match the ones on file, he’s already been ID’d,” Karl said. “I don’t understand why you need Hope.”

“We have a name,” Paige said. “Whether it matches this man is another question.” She lowered her voice.

“I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.”

The officer pushed open a set of swinging doors into the morgue. I’ve been in morgues before. Quite a few.

One of Philadelphia’s coroners was a past beau of my mother’s, and when I’m on a story where a body is involved, he can usually make a few calls and get me in. He says it’s because he trusts me to do a fair job, but I suspect he’s still trying to earn brownie points with my mom.

A city morgue is usually pretty shabby. This one looked more like a slick TV show. No peeling paint or old textbooks propping up broken equipment tables. Everything gleamed and blipped and beeped. It was so state of the art that I wasn’t sure what half the machines did.

I couldn’t help but think we had indeed walked onto a set, that this was a fake morgue constructed to trick visitors and dispel the rumors I’d heard about how the Cabal really investigated suspicious deaths—by tossing the body into an incinerator and faking the reports.

A woman in a lab coat introduced herself as Dr. Aberquero. Late thirties, with a pinched face, no makeup and her black hair tightly drawn back. When she turned to shake Karl’s hand though, a flash of consternation clouded her face as she stammered an introduction, probably regretting that decision to show up for work without makeup.

She cleared her throat and tore her gaze from Karl. “The, er, decedent shows no signs of trauma except for the gunshot, which entered at the base of the skull, killing him instantly…”

Karl slid a glance my way, and I shook my head. No chaos. Confirmation that whoever was on that table had, indeed, died without knowing what was happening to him, like Max and Tony.

Karl cleared his throat. “We appreciate the explanation, Dr. Aberquero, but I’m afraid anything beyond

‘gunshot to the head’ is wasted on us.” A wry smile that had her fingers trembling on her clipboard. “We really just came to identify the body.”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

She stepped back, nearly smacking into me and blocking my approach to the table as she gave Karl ample room to move forward.

I stepped around her. Karl surreptitiously slid his hand against the small of my back, warm and reassuring.