“You didn’t hear? The Clerk’s gone. The cleaning staff, too. All of the admins are gone. You’re looking good, Daniels. Looking really good.” Lago gave me a long once-over.
“Stop looking at her and you might live longer,” Curran said, his voice nice and friendly.
Lago glanced at Curran and held his arms up in the air. “Hey, no offense. Just a compliment.”
Curran didn’t answer. Lago shifted in his seat, uncomfortable, and turned to me. “Who’s the guy?”
“He’s my . . .” Fiancé, honey-bunny? “He’s mine.”
Lago nodded knowingly. “The thing with the Beast Lord didn’t turn out, huh? That’s okay, I heard that guy is a dick. You don’t need that shit.”
Curran’s face showed no emotion. Lago stuck his hand out. “Lago Vista. Call me Lago.”
“Lennart.” Curran reached over and shook Lago’s hand. I held my breath to see if Lago’s fingers would survive. He didn’t writhe in pain and no bones crunched. And that was exactly why Curran was such a scary bastard. When he lost control, it was because he made a deliberate choice to do so.
“So what happened to the admins?” Curran asked.
“The Guild Assembly failed to pass the budget. No budget, no paycheck. The cleaning crew was the first to walk off, then the cooking staff. The Clerk hung on for about six weeks, but he left, too.”
Holy crap. “Who’s taking the calls?”
Lago shrugged. “Whoever feels like answering the phone? It doesn’t ring much anymore.”
Great.
“Why didn’t they pass the budget?” Curran asked.
“Because Bob Carver wanted to raid his pension fund.” Lago gulped his coffee and grimaced at the taste.
Bob Carver had been in for about fifteen years, and he was one of the rare breed of mercenary who played well with others. He was part of a four-person crew known as the Four Horsemen and they took the larger, more difficult jobs. Half of the Assembly consisted of admins and the other half of mercs, and Bob Carver was chief personnel officer and the mercs’ leader. Before my father decided to take an active interest in my existence, I functioned as the third part of that triangle, representing the Pack’s interests. I didn’t think I made that much difference, but it must’ve been just enough to keep the tide of crazy at bay, because in my absence the Guild had clearly gone off the rails.
Curran kept looking at Lago, listening and waiting. Lago gulped more coffee. “It works like this: if you last twenty years in the Guild, you get a pension. You start paying into it from your first job. Not much money, like five percent, but at the end of twenty years it adds up. If you die before your twenty years are up, you’re screwed. Whatever you paid into the pension fund stays there. Your family gets the death benefit, but that’s it. I don’t know what the hell Bob needed the money for, but he wanted to borrow against his contribution.”
“That’s illegal,” Curran said. “And stupid. If everyone raids the pension fund, there will be no pension fund.”
Lago winked at me. “I like him. But yeah, you’re right. That’s basically what Mark said. Mark’s our operations manager. Bob really needs the money, I guess, because he got a bunch of mercs on his side and hammered enough votes to stop the budget. He says he won’t back down until they give him his money.”
Awesome. Just awesome.
I leaned closer. “Lago, do you know Eduardo Ortego? Big guy, dark hair, looks like he can run through walls?”
“I’ve seen him around.”
“Did he have a beef with anyone?”
“Sure. You remember Christian Heyward?”
“Big guy? African American with the bulldog?”
“That’s the one.”
The Christian Heyward I remembered was a genuinely nice family man, who had a very low tolerance for bullshit. He came in with his American Bulldog, did his gigs, and went home to his wife and kids. “He had a problem with Eduardo?”
“No. He quit the day Eduardo registered, so they gave him Heyward’s zone. It’s a good zone. Some people got pissed off because of it, but nothing too major. You know how it is: your guy looked like he could handle himself and nobody wanted to get hurt. They bitched behind his back, but that’s as far as it got. Nobody wanted their bones broken.”
“His girlfriend was here yesterday,” Curran said. “Looking for him. Someone took her car.”
“That’s a shame. Can’t help you, man. I wasn’t here yesterday. But one of them might.” Lago glanced at the gathering. “Most of these assholes are here every day. Good luck getting their attention, though. Half of them are drunk, half of them are hungover, and the other half don’t give a shit.”
“Thanks.” I had no problem with attention getting.
I got up. I needed to do something flashy and loud but not too scary, or the mercs would just take off. I headed for the table closest to the door. If they ran, they’d have to get past us. Curran walked next to me. “So I am a dick?”
“I can’t help that you have a reputation.”
He grinned. “You want help?”
“No, I got it.” His kind of help would likely involve a roar, and the mercs would scatter.
If I started with Eduardo missing, I’d get nowhere. They all probably saw George asking questions about him yesterday. Nobody helped her then and nobody would help me with it now. A missing person was serious business and mercs didn’t like attention. They’d clam up. None of them would want to be a witness or to volunteer any information. I had to make it about the missing SUV. That was theft—serious theft, but still only theft—and everyone would understand that we’d handle it without the cops involved.
A dried-up French fry crunched under my foot.
“I can’t believe Jim tried to sell us this leaky boat.” The next time I saw him, I’d let him know exactly how I felt about it.
“Jim is a Beast Lord,” Curran said. “Pack comes first. Friendships come second.”
Three feet from the table I jumped and landed on its top. I didn’t land softly. I landed with a serious thud.
The mercs turned and looked at me. Recognition registered on some faces.
“You know me,” I said. “You know what I can do.”
They were looking at me.
“A one-armed woman came here yesterday in a blue FJ Cruiser. Someone took it. I want to know who.”
“Daniels.” A woman got up from her table and started toward me. Forty, built like a brick house, and mean eyed. She looked familiar. Her clothes and the bruise on her face said she had had a rough night and was looking for someone she could use to vent her frustration. “I owe you.”
I knew her but couldn’t remember the name . . . I gave her my hard stare just in case. She kept coming. Shoot. I was out of practice. “Really?”
“Yeah. You took my gig.”
Ah. Alice Golansky. The last time I saw her was almost two years ago. Well, wasn’t that a blast from the past.
“So let me get this straight. You’re mad, because two years ago you were too drunk to do a job and passed out in the Guild’s mess hall, and the Clerk sent me out in your place?”
She shrugged her shoulders and raised her fists. Well, well. Someone had some karate training. “I’m going to teach you not to steal jobs.”
“You do realize that gig was assigned to me?” Not to mention that the job happened two years ago.
“You think you’re so high and mighty. I’m gonna pull you off that table and stomp your face in.”
Curran smiled.
Okay. “You thought this through?” I asked.
She looked up at me and punched her palm with her fist. “Oh yeah.”
I dropped to my knee and hammered a punch into her jaw. My fist had shot down like a jackhammer. I’d sunk all of the momentum of the drop into it. Knocking someone out was tricky, because it required power, speed, and the
element of surprise, but when it worked, it made a statement. Alice’s eyes rolled into her head. She went rigid and fell straight back, like a cut tree. Her head bounced off the floor a bit.
The hall was suddenly silent. Ha! Still got it.
“Anybody else got any disputes they’d like to settle?” I asked.
The mercs sat silent.
“I’ll ask again.” I stood up. “Blue FJ Cruiser. Who has it?”
No answer.
“Maybe you didn’t hear her,” Curran said. “Or maybe you can’t see her well. Let me help.”
The table under me moved. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him holding it a foot off the ground with one hand. Okay then.
The mercs froze.
“It was Mac,” a large Latino man wearing faded fatigues said from the left. His name was Charlie and he used to be a regular when I worked for the Guild. “Mac and his idiot redneck cousin, what’s his name . . . Bubba? Skeeter . . . ?”
“Leroy,” Crystal said, tossing back her bleached blond hair. “Mac and Leroy.”
The names didn’t sound familiar. Curran quietly lowered the table back to Earth.
“Yeah, Leroy,” Charlie said. “I saw them getting into it this morning. They were going to do a job in Chamblee on Chamblee Dunwoody Road.”
I was pretty sure Chamblee used to be in Heyward’s zone.
“The cat lady?” a short skinny guy in a red sweater asked. “The one who called before?”
“Yeah,” Charlie said. “She’s got something with wings trying to eat her cats on Chamblee Dunwoody Road.”
That’s right, tell me more.
“Again?” Crystal asked. “Eduardo already went out there on Sunday. He said this lady had a giant tick eating her cats.”
“This was no tick,” Charlie said. “She said it flew. Ticks don’t fly.”
“Well, whatever it was,” Crystal said, “I know he killed it on Sunday, because he came back here to get paid, and then she called again on Monday and he went out there again. That’s the last I saw him.”
It was a repeat job. The client called the Guild the first time on Sunday about a tick, and Eduardo went out and took care of it. Then she called again, on Monday, probably because the problem recurred. He went out to that call and disappeared. Then the client called for the third time, today, which meant that either the creature bothering her had a large family or that Eduardo never made it to her job. But he did finish the Sunday job, which meant there would be a record of it.
“Did this lady say Eduardo showed up on Monday?” I asked.
Charlie shook his head. “She was at work, so she didn’t know if he showed up. But she was really heated it wasn’t taken care of.”
“When did Mac and Leroy leave?” I asked.
“Half an hour ago,” Charlie said.
We’d just missed them.
“Are they poaching in Eduardo’s territory?” I asked.
Crystal spread her arms. “He ain’t here to call them out on it, is he?”
“They’ve got a problem with him?” Curran asked.
Charlie shrugged. “They’ve got a problem with everyone. Ortego’s got good territory. They tried muscling in on him and he beat their asses for them.”
“He wasn’t worried about it,” Crystal said.
“You knew him well, huh?” I asked.
“She talked to him every time he came here,” Charlie said.
Crystal shot him a dirty look.
“Don’t stare at me.” He pointed at us. “They have issues with you. They have no issues with me. Don’t drag the rest of us in with your sorry ass.”
“I tried to know him well, if you catch my meaning.” Crystal made a sour face. “Apparently he’s one of those ‘got a girlfriend’ types. She was over here yesterday. Nothing special. And she’s a cripple.”
Oh, you sad, pathetic excuse for a human being. My fist itched. I really wanted to punch Crystal in the face.
“So you saw a young one-armed woman desperately looking for her guy. You knew Leroy and Mac took her car and you didn’t say anything. None of you assholes told her or offered to give her a ride back home?” I could barely keep a growl out of my voice. “You must’ve all had important shit to do like sitting here, getting drunk, and spitting on the floor.”
Nobody looked me in the eye.
“What are you, the morality police?” an older drunken-looking merc asked.
“Yeah, I am, Chug. Remember that time your leg was broken and Jim and I came to get you out of the hole under a collapsed building?”
“So what?”
“Next time you’re in trouble, don’t call me.”
“I’ll survive,” he said.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” I jumped off the table and headed for the Clerk’s desk. We needed job logs.
“Where are we going?” Curran asked quietly.
“To get the logbook. When a job is completed, it’s written into the logbook before the payment is authorized. According to those clowns, Eduardo had already gone to do a job at that address. On Sunday this lady called about a giant tick, and he went out and killed it, and he got paid. The logbook should have a record of it.”
The problem he had gone out to fix on Monday was still active, because the client had called the Guild again about it this morning and the car-stealing rednecks took the job. Sometimes that happened—you killed some creature but didn’t realize it wasn’t alone, so you had to go out the second time and complete the job. We had to talk to the client. Mac and Leroy would’ve taken the gig ticket with her address with them, so the logs were our best bet.
Something had happened to Eduardo on Monday, during the second job or on the way to it. If he were a normal human, I’d be calling hospitals to see if he was somewhere with an injury, but the standard protocol for hurt shapeshifters dictated that medical personnel notify the Pack immediately. The Pack had its own medmages, led by Doolittle, who had brought me back from the brink of death so many times I had lost count. Eduardo could be hurt, he could be dead, or he could be in jail, arrested for something, but he wasn’t in a hospital.
I crouched behind the Clerk’s desk and tried the log drawer. Normally it was under lock and key. The drawer door swung open.
The mercs watched us.
“Try to look casual.” I pulled the top book out and put it on the desk.
“Why?”
“Because what I’m doing is illegal without a warrant, and we have about twenty witnesses observing our every move.”
Curran crossed his arms, making his biceps bulge, leaned against the desk, and fixed our audience with his stare. Everyone spontaneously decided to look anywhere else but at us. Right. Casual, my foot.
“See,” he said. “No witnesses.”
I flipped the pages. Eduardo was like a brand-new merc. He would do things by the book. Only three log entries on Sunday. Wow. There should have been a dozen or more. On a good day the Guild used to be chaotic with a steady stream of mercs coming and going, and Sunday during a strong magic wave should’ve been a good day for business.
Second name down. Mrs. Oswald, 30862 Chamblee Dunwoody Road. Complaint: giant tick eating cats. Status: resolved, Biohazard contacted to remove the remains. Eduardo Ortego.
One of the two conference doors in the opposite wall opened and Mark Meadows, the Guild’s head admin, stepped out. I almost did a double take. Mark had started as the Guild’s secretary, but after the death of the Guild’s founder, Mark became chief administrative officer. Mark’s slogan in life was, “I’m middle management and proud of it.” His jaw was always perfectly shaved; his face showed no bruises; his hands had no cuts. His nails were manicured and the light scent of expensive cologne followed him wherever he went. He stood out among the rough-and-tumble mercs like a professor at a prison rodeo. Most mercs despised
him, because Mark had no mercy. Profit was his god and no hard-luck story would sway him from following the letter of the Guild’s law in pursuit of the bottom line.
That was the old Mr. Meadows.
This Mark had let himself go. His normally impeccable suit was rumpled. His face was red, his expression flustered. His hair looked like he’d clutched at it with his hands but stopped short of actually pulling it out. His face wore a haunted expression. No doubt coming off another session of the Guild Assembly.
Do not see me, do not see me . . .
His eyes lit up. “Daniels!”
Damn it. “I don’t have time, Mark,” I called.
“But you have time to break the law and invade client privacy by reading the log.”
Ugh. “I’m looking for a missing merc.”
“Too bad. I’m a member of the Assembly and I call on you to formally appear before the Assembly. You can’t refuse.”
The hell I can’t. I slapped the book closed and slid it into its place. “This is me refusing.”
“Well, well, well!” Bob Carver emerged through the open door. He was the same height as Mark, and their hair color was a similar shade of brown, but there the resemblance ended. Mark was in his thirties, ate well, and spent a lot of time at the gym. He was toned. Bob Carver, on the other hand, was lean and hard, whittled by life like a walnut wood carving. In his late forties, he looked like a guy who had been through some rough shit and came out of it tougher.
“Look what the cat dragged in.”
He was playing to the audience. Never good.
“Is he talking to me or you?” Curran asked. His voice was deceptively light.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m sure he’ll get around to telling us.”
“Hello, Your Highnesses.”
Bob pretended to bow with a flourish, eyeing us. Behind him more familiar faces appeared as the mercs inside the room came out to see what the hubbub was about. Veteran Guild members Rigan and Sonia, and the rest of Bob’s Four Horsemen: Ivera, a firebug good with bladed weapons; Ken, the mage, tall and phlegmatic with a distant look on his narrow face, as if he were perpetually pondering something beyond human understanding; and Juke. Juke was a few years younger than me, a good deal thinner, and she wanted very hard to be edgy and hard-core. Instead she managed a pissed-off Goth Pixie look: her short hair stuck out from her head in a short asymmetric cut, her arms were thin like chopsticks, and her smoky eyes and purple lipstick made her delicate features even more fragile. She studied Sōjutsu, the art of yari, Japanese spear, and she was pretty good with it.
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