Touching Silver (19 page)

“I hope you can find him,” she said neutrally. She almost offered to help. Most of her job was about finding people who had spent several years trying to avoid capture. “At least you probably know him as well as he knows you.”

“Thank God for small mercies,” he joked, and then, “Olivia…” A door opened in the background, and he immediately cleared his throat. “Nathan’s out. Here he is.”

Olivia didn’t even have the chance to say goodbye before Nathan took the phone. “Olivia? I guess you’re on a first name basis again?”

“Not really. I was hoping I could speak to you today about the Silver Maiden. And maybe you could come and talk to Stacy. She’s still asking about you.”

“Yeah, no problem. I’m a little tied up right now…”

“I know. Look, I know Parker is a real threat, even if Isaac doesn’t. I don’t want to take you away from that, but…”

“This is important too. I know. Remy is sleeping off her jet lag. Can we meet later this morning? Maybe around eleven?”

“Yes,” she said quickly, thankful he wasn’t going to tell her to fuck off. “Can you come by the station? Stacy is at a safe house right now. We can drive there from here.”

“Sounds good. Do you want to speak to Isaac again?”

“I don’t know if…”

“Sure, you can. He’s right here.”

She braced herself against the sound of Isaac’s voice. “Hey.” It was different this time, almost hopeful. “Did you want something?”

“My key.” She winced. “That came out wrong. Never mind.”

“So…you
don’t
want your key back?”

“I can just call the locksmith. I mean, we don’t know how Parker got a hold of your keys when he got into your apartment.”

His soft breath was almost tangible through the line. “I don’t want you to go through all that hassle if you don’t have to. If you want the key, Olivia, you know it’s yours.”

It shouldn’t matter, but she wanted to know anyway. “Do you want to give it back?”

“No, God no.” It came out in a rush, like he’d been holding it in, just waiting for the reason to release it. “Last night was hell. I spent most of it trying to figure out what went wrong, and all I came up with was how much I missed you, and how much I fucked up. Hate me as much as you want, but please, Olivia, if nothing else, I don’t want you to think I don’t respect you. Or that I believe you can’t take care of yourself. I know you can. You’re the most capable woman I’ve ever met. You’re definitely the only one I ever trusted. I don’t…I’m just…just believe me, okay?”

Olivia frowned. The speech was almost enough, except for one minor detail. She was the only woman he’d ever trusted? She had no desire to be the exception to whatever deep-seated issues he had with women. But she wanted to be generous with him. She desperately wanted to not think the worst.

“Isaac…do you have a problem trusting women or are you just paranoid in general?”

He snorted. “You’re the one who saw my record. It’s got nothing to do with the fact that you’re a woman. I don’t trust just anybody. Didn’t,” he corrected.

She took a deep breath. “Isaac, you really hurt my feelings last night. I’m not even sure what I did to make you so angry. And then you just walked away.”

“I know. But I didn’t know everything then that I do now, and my head…well, I told you what a mess my head was. Let me make it up to you. Whatever you want.”

“I…I don’t know, Isaac. Maybe we can meet tonight after I finish up here.”

The catch in his voice was audible. “Why don’t you call me when you’re done with Stacy? We can wing it from there.”

She smiled. He was giving her control, letting her be the one to call the next move. For Isaac, that was huge. “I can do that.”

She disconnected the call and sat back in her chair, chewing the bottom of her lip thoughtfully. If it were anybody else, she might have just written him off. But it wasn’t anybody else. It was Isaac, and he was already under her skin.

Until she saw Olivia waiting for them at the station, Remy wasn’t sure why Nathan brought her along. She wouldn’t be talking to Stacy, and frankly she didn’t want to. She was still reeling from hearing the voices at the temple, and the last thing she wanted—as much as she wanted to help the missing girls—was to face what she feared might be part of the source.

But then she saw the careful scrutiny in Olivia’s gaze when they greeted each other again. Nathan had told her about the visions, and how Olivia had found the other side of the Silver Maiden. Remy wanted to see it so badly, she had to bite her tongue from blurting out the request when she shook Olivia’s hand. She confessed as much to Nathan when they were in the Mustang on the way to the safe house. He merely smiled and covered her hand with his. She could tell his thoughts were elsewhere, mainly on Isaac.

Another reason to talk to Olivia.

She waited until Nathan had gone upstairs to Stacy’s bedroom.

“Does it flap you seeing me now?”

Olivia furrowed her brow. “No?”

Remy grinned. “You don’t know what the fuck I’m saying, do you?”

“I’m not familiar with the lingo, no.”

She slouched in the overstuffed chair, picking at her nails. “I forget that still, you know? Been here for six months now, and I’ll be settling at the store or something like that, and I’ll say something I think is royal, and people look at me like I’m cracked. And Nate gets it all now, so I forget not everybody does.”

Olivia crossed one leg over the other, resting her hands on her knee. “I lived in Europe for a year. Sometimes I’d get frustrated because not everybody understood American idioms, even if they spoke fluently. Maybe it’s a bit like that.”

“Maybe.”

She liked this woman. Her first impressions of Olivia blurred, the sudden reminder of the Silver Maiden taking precedence. They hadn’t had time for girl talk, and they both understood that. But the fact that she was sitting here, treating Remy with respect even knowing what she knew, meant something. She wasn’t trying to make Remy prove anything. That was valuable, in and of itself.

“What I asked earlier…Nathan told me what happened with you and your half of the Silver Maiden. I was just curious if seeing me now was different than seeing me before.”

“It’s a little strange,” Olivia admitted. “I feel like I know you better because…well, I didn’t mention this to Isaac or Nathan, but it seemed like I could feel what you were feeling.” She grimaced. “That isn’t quite right. It’s hard to explain. And I’m feeling a bit…tired this afternoon.”

Remy nodded. “Parker sallying off like that was a tough blow for Nathan when he found out. Isaac too. That part of their life was supposed to be over and here it comes back. I just hope I’ve got hardware when we see Parker next time. After what he’s done to the guys…” She stopped. Talking about wanting to kill a man in cold blood was probably one of the stupider things she could have started talking about to a cop.

Olivia either didn’t notice or chose to ignore it. “I guess finding out he was released really rattled Isaac. If I had known who he was before last night, I might have ordered Tiberius to attack sooner.”

“Isaac or Parker?”

Olivia snorted. “Parker. Though I was tempted to send Tiberius after Isaac last night too.”

“Hey, I wouldn’t have blamed you. Sometimes when Isaac gets going, he can be a real ass.”

“Yeah. A real ass.” She looked up the stairs to Stacy’s closed bedroom door. “So he gets like that with you and Nathan?”

Nathan had only given her sketchy facts about the fight between Isaac and Olivia, which meant only one thing. Isaac had said or done something capable of truly pissing Remy off. Nathan protected Isaac. His shielding tendencies were a fact of life she’d long ago accepted as a part of their relationship.

“With me, mostly,” she said. “It takes a lot for Isaac to lose it with Nathan. And Nathan lets a lot of stuff slide, so it’s hard to know what’s said in fun and what’s not.”

Olivia nodded. She lapsed into silence for a few moments, her blue eyes thoughtful, and Remy wondered if she was finished talking. But then she asked softly, “Are you scared? I don’t understand anything about the coins, or how they work, or why but…I’ll be honest, the one I have scares me, and it hasn’t actually sent me through time.”

Remy’s skin crawled. It was as if Olivia had been reading her thoughts earlier.

“I’m scared every fucking day. I got a second chance—well, both of us got second chances. And he’s the best thing that ever happened to me, hands down. My biggest nightmare is that I’m going to lose it just as easy as I got it. And there’s not going to be anything I can do to stop it, just like there was nothing I could do to stop from coming here.”

“But that’s not true, is it? I bought Isaac’s story about you, so I guess I’ll have to buy Stacy’s story, as well. And she seems to think Gabriel is using the coin to send the girls somewhere. So maybe it’s not out of your control.”

“Do
you
know how they work? Do you know why you found the other side of it? Or why you’re seeing things when you touch it?” Remy shook her head. “As long as we don’t know what makes them tick, we’re shit out of luck. And something tells me Gabriel’s not going to give us a tutorial when we get the other one back from him.”

“I could use a tutorial now. I have no idea what’s going on. And Isaac’s not entirely forthcoming. I think he’d rather pretend none of this is really happening.”

“That’s because he’s not the one who landed ass-first in the wrong fucking year.” Tucking her legs up under her, Remy asked, “What is it you wanna know? Can’t say I’m the expert like Nate is, but better me than Isaac.”

“I’d think you were the expert, considering what you’ve been through.”

She shook her head. “He’s the brains. He’s dug up more shit on them than I could ever hold in my head. I just know the highlights, and what I’ve seen up close and personal.”

“Where did the coins come from?”

“Originally?”

Olivia nodded.

“Somewhere on the Silver River in Argentina. There was this girl. Had a life as a priestess, but that got taken away from her when she got enslaved. All she wanted was to be free, to get her life back, so she got this idea about buying her freedom and made these coins. Except she had to make them in secret, at night, and she couldn’t make the back and the front at the same time because she was afraid of getting caught. But by the time she finished them, it was too late.”

It was different relaying the story now after seeing the temple with her own eyes. Remy imagined the Silver Maiden going into the stone building in search of her sisters in faith and being faced with the gaping maw of solitude all over again.

“They were gone,” she added. “She really had nobody to turn to.”

“Who was gone?” Olivia asked.

“Everybody she had ever known.” Remy had to blink in order to block out the image that sprang to mind, the carnage Kirsten Henryk and her goons had left behind when they’d raided the safe house of the only family Remy had had in her own time. “The other priestesses, anybody who believed in the power of their religion. Nobody was left.”

“So what happened to her? What happened to the coins? Isaac said she was mauled and eaten by a wild animal.”

Remy snorted. “Isaac would. He still can’t come to grips with the fact that I haven’t been born yet. But the Silver Maiden…it’s not crystal what happened. She was dying, and all she wanted was to be free. More than anything. She just disappeared.” She debated about how much more to tell, if it was worth it to express her own opinions, but Olivia looked so sincere, and her questions sounded so genuine, that the debate only lasted for a moment. “I think the coins got her out of there. Maybe they changed her into the animal they found the tracks for, or maybe they whisked her through time like they did me. But I don’t think she died there. She poured her soul into those coins, poured everything she was into them. They wouldn’t abandon her like that when it got a little rough.”

“That’s a much better ending than Isaac’s version. I like it more.” She sighed. “I was hoping there was something in the story to explain what Gabriel thinks he’s doing. What is he going to do to those girls?”

For some reason, Remy had thought Nathan would’ve told Olivia this part. He lived for this kind of shit, though really, they hadn’t had many opportunities so far for idle conversation.

“The priestesses have some sort of power,” she explained. “Alone, yeah, but more when they’re all together. He thinks Gabriel wants to harness it somehow.”

“Arresting Gabriel and getting the coin back is only half the problem. We’ve still got to find the girls and figure out how to bring them back.”

That was exactly the kind of attitude Nathan and Isaac took when approaching a problem. All of a sudden Remy understood what Isaac saw in the woman.

“You think we could sic your dog on Gabriel and get him to bite the answers out of him?”

Olivia’s lips twitched into an amused grin, and the official police veneer faded away. “No. Tiberius responds to my voice and body language. If I sicced him on Gabriel, he’d rip out his throat and leave him for dead. Then we’d never get any answers from him.”

“We got time to teach him to go for the balls, then? The bastard doesn’t need those to talk.”

“Don’t tell anybody, but I do have a special command for that. Officer Williams, the head of the K-9 unit, trained him, so he knows all the best places to attack.”

Remy smiled broadly. “So see? There’s our plan. I’ll distract the guys so they don’t hear the special command, and you get Gabriel to sing.” She winked conspiratorially. “And trust me. When it comes to getting attention, I’m the best. Rile Isaac up a little and he doesn’t even have room to think, let alone notice what’s going on around him. And Nathan, well…”

“Yeah, I know. I got a front-row seat when you were in the conference room, remember?”

She didn’t laugh at the observation because it was funny. She laughed because it hit home.

“Just goes back to being scared,” she admitted. “I’m not losing a second I can with him. I’m not counting on getting a third chance.”

They lapsed into conversation about dog tricks and the trip to Argentina, but throughout it all, the sense of camaraderie grew. Remy didn’t get it, but after everything that had happened over the past week, she wasn’t arguing. She could use a friend, someone who’d be on her side when the time came. Olivia seemed to exactly fit that bill.

His eyes were starting to go bleary, and the lines on the maps were starting to go in directions Isaac knew were wrong. He needed a break. He needed some sleep. He needed some fucking answers.

Leaning back into the couch, he yawned and rubbed his eyes. He wished Nathan hadn’t had to leave. But at least he would bring back a firsthand account of how Olivia was doing. Their earlier conversation had given Isaac hope that he might have a chance to salvage the relationship. He wanted her back, the opportunity to see where they could go. The part of the trip they’d already taken was the most exciting thing he’d had in years.

He just wanted the chance.

With a groan, he rose from the couch, stretching his back until he heard it crack. His empty mug mocked him from where it sat on the corner of the coffee table, so he bent and picked it up, carrying it out to the kitchen to refill it. He frowned as he poured out another cup. Nathan needed a new coffee maker. And some decent coffee. He might be willing to settle for swill, but Isaac wasn’t.

Carrying his fresh cup back out to the living room, Isaac shook himself awake as he reclaimed his spot on the couch. All right. Time to tackle the maps again. Fresh start. Start back at the beginning.

He picked up the first incident report he could link to Parker’s old haunts. A shootout in a residential neighborhood in Culver City. Three young men left for dead, two more wounded. Gunmen never arrested. He read the write-up more closely, hunting for specific clues that would suggest Parker’s involvement. Nothing. Locals testified the boys were bad news. All five had priors. The entire incident had been written off as another of Gabriel’s deals gone sour when some of his product was found at the scene.

Isaac frowned.
Huh. Gabriel?

He inked a red circle on his map and picked up the second report connected to one of Parker’s favorite spots. This one was in Hollywood. Two of Gabriel’s best had been arrested in a bust at a sex store—

His frown deepened. Gabriel again. This time, confirmed. They’d pled out on lesser charges in exchange for information that had stopped a shipment of weapons into the city. Both men turned up dead within a week. Blame was put on Gabriel’s shoulders.

Isaac drew another red circle on the map.

The third and fourth reports weren’t conclusively linked to Gabriel, but the suspicions were there. Enough for Isaac to see the pattern.

All of Parker’s old stomping grounds were now Gabriel’s. And Isaac had spent the past week focusing exclusively on bringing Gabriel down. Granted, that was partly due to Olivia and the Silver Maiden, but he hadn’t even considered other possibilities for Sonny and Cher, or his pictures, or his car.

He was still staring at all the red circles on his map when the deadbolt on the door turned.

Remy burst into the apartment first but barely spared him a glance before bustling to the bathroom.

“She had a Big Gulp on the way home.” Nathan shut the door behind him. “Find anything brilliant?”

“You tell me.” He shoved the two maps closer to Nathan, watching his reactions intently. “What do you see here?”

Nathan frowned, his eyes narrowing as he compared the maps. “When Parker went to prison, he left a vacuum.” He held up the map with Isaac’s red circles. “Gabriel moved in on his territory?”

Isaac nodded. “Everything that was Parker’s is now Gabriel’s. And the most violent gang activity since Parker’s release has been in that territory. Parker’s trying to get his own back.”

“That makes sense. Five years ago Parker was poised to be a major rival to Gabriel. He won’t want to walk away from that, even if it means starting from scratch. But if he wants to get anywhere, and stay out of prison, he can’t be open about what he’s doing.”