I thumbed through the pages. “You had the conversations transcribed?”
“No big deal. This girl does secretary stuff for me. Gotta keep her busy. You’re paying.”
“Thanks.”
“They also talked about somebody torching a restaurant in Miami Beach.”
“I heard about that.”
Yup. Heard about it.
“There was also a shooting there in the restaurant. Some girl.”
“Heard about that too.”
“Did you hear that the body disappeared?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Vanished from the morgue.”
She’s with her mother, the Máithrín, now.
“Interesting.”
“Anyway, there’s a bunch of notes in there.”
“I appreciate your attention to detail.”
Bromach sniffed the air, wrinkling his nose.
Our waitress materialized, a compact Latina with eyes deep like the soul of a poet. “Have you decided?”
“We’ll all have ropa vieja,” I replied.
Bromach responded with his patented pickleface.
“I promise, Bromach, it’ll change your life.”
“I’ll take mine to go.” Andy turned to me. “Got my money?”
From my wallet, I dug out five one-hundred dollar bills and gave them to him. “As agreed.” Then I gave him another five.
“What’s this for?”
“Your girl who does secretary stuff.”
* * *
It felt oddly uncomfortable and perfectly comfortable to be on stakeout with Nat. There was so much that had happened and he didn’t know any of it and I couldn’t talk about it. At the same time, so much had happened before my life in the Fae that Nat was like a rugged pair of hiking boots. Broken in but not broken down and ideally suited for work.
“Sorry again about Hope,” he said.
“Thanks.” I’d told Nat as much of the truth as I could. How Hope had gotten herself into a place where she maybe didn’t belong and some very bad people had ended her, including the Tweedles, who Nat had met. One Tweedle was dead. The other was out of commission. I didn’t offer a lot of details, other than I felt responsible for Hope’s death, and Nat didn’t ask. He was more than willing to help tonight. He could read what he needed in my eyes.
I still hurt.
We waited, and the quiet was soothing.
I’d always thought of myself as a principled soldier and an honorable officer, and the rules of society were worth upholding. But over the past while, the paths I should follow in doing so had become less restricted in my mind.
And when magic got involved, rules and regulations went out the window.
The way I had it figured, somebody was supposed to bring Hope’s body back for proof, but they’d gotten sidetracked. You’re welcome. And that had saved my personal side of bacon because if Hope’s body had been returned, the video of the fake me shooting the fake her suddenly had teeth and I’d be facing life in prison or worse.
Parked outside Marcus’s mansion, I read through Andy’s reports again. Marcus had demanded proof of Hope’s demise. The Dubhcridhe were never going to deliver on that unless they could steal her out from under the nose of the world’s most powerful Earth Mage. But I wanted Marcus to pay out in the worst way. The money belonged to Hope and her dad.
“We following?” Nat asked. Marcus’s black SUV had pulled out of the black iron gate at the end of his driveway.
“Yeah.” The SUV turned toward Miami.
I had an idea.
Nat followed skillfully, staying in the neighboring lane, sometimes two cars back, sometimes three.
“Nat. I want Marcus to see me. Line me up with the back window. Get close.”
This will be risky.
I waited for Nat to choose his moment. There was a car in front of us at the next light, so we were too far behind them to be noticed. Nat would have to wait for the traffic to even out or he’d have to get around the car in front of us so I could make my play.
The light turned green. There were two lanes going in either direction. The car in front of us wasn’t keeping up with the SUV. In the middle of the block, Nat gunned over the white line into the lane on our left, which wasn’t, strictly speaking, empty. Cars swerved to avoid hitting us head-on and laid on the horns.
That should get us some attention.
Nat got back in our lane, having passed the car in front of us. Marcus’s driver kept them on the speed limit and we let them catch up. As soon as my window was lined up with Marcus’s, Nat crowded the lane. I leaned out and knocked on the window of the SUV.
There was the distinct possibility that I’d get shot at, but I had a full shield coin and the best driver on the planet.
“You in there, Marcus?” I yelled.
Marcus’s driver accelerated. Nat matched speed and kept crowding them. I knocked on the window again.
“Hope’s dead. I know it was you.” I tried to sound distraught. It wasn’t hard.
We were almost twenty miles an hour over the speed limit now and accelerating. There was a car in their lane and parked cars on the side so they had to slow down. Nat matched them again and I kept yelling like an idiot.
“Did you kill her yourself, Marcus? Did you have the guts?”
We came to an intersection. The street to the right was a one-way, so Marcus’s driver had to keep straight. He floored it, using the crosswalk to pass the car in front of them. There was nobody in the crosswalk, but there wasn’t enough intersection to get by the parked cars. They clipped a Mercedes on the other side of the intersection, setting off its alarm.
They accelerated again. Nat lined me up.
“I’ll find out, Marcus. I’m coming for you.”
I pointed at the window then retreated into the seat. “Let them go.”
The next intersection was one-way in their favor. They turned right, we kept straight.
“Can we go back to that intersection again? I want to help out that Mercedes.”
Nat backtracked while I wrote down the license plate number of Marcus’s SUV and a note describing what had happened. The back windows on the Mercedes were rolled down half an inch and I slipped the note through the gap as we paused.
We drove away. I wondered if confronting Marcus had been the best thing to do. It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision.
Impetuous.
“Marcus doesn’t trust the people he hired to kill Hope,” I said. “I want him to pay them off, and then I can try and break up their little romance.” Messing up relations between Marcus and Ur would be easier with fifteen million dollars on the line.
Nat said, “Dangerous move.”
“Maybe.”
We turned toward the highway heading south. Nat said, “Be careful.”
Yeah.
Nat dropped me off at my house.
* * *
Penny Andy had mentioned something about a stock that was about to blow up, and he’d assumed the comment was related to insider trading on the stock market. The transcript of the conversation didn’t read like that for me.
The day I’d rescued Oz, we’d driven past a building that Oz had said was important. He’d said there were plans for it but didn’t have details. I tried to remember where we’d been, suspicious. I pulled up a map of Miami online and looked for the building.
A minute later, I knew what Marcus was planning.
His building was located on Stock Street.
* * *
Late Monday morning, Marcus’s driver arrived in the same black SUV to pick him up. It still had damage on the front from hitting the Mercedes and I hoped the owner of the Mercedes had gotten my note. I’d urged them to follow up quickly. Marcus would probably be filing a claim with his insurance and probably claiming it wasn’t his fault.
With luck, Marcus’s claim would be denied, and he’d be stuck for the repair to the SUV and his insurance would pay for the Mercedes too.
Small
victories.
They stopped at the bank, walking in together with a black briefcase. Thirty minutes later, they came out the same way. I wasn’t entirely sure if the briefcase was a payout or not. It wouldn’t be big enough to hold the millions promised. Banks only carry $100 bills, so you could fit one-million dollars cash into a briefcase, but that was it. Maybe it was a down-payment, which would tick off both Ur and me.
I followed Marcus to a restaurant and called Nat while I went around the corner to get a burger from a fast food place. Carrying my bag of cheap fried sustenance, I hustled back to my car to eat and wait.
Waiting was fine. Going with the flow. Events were following their course, but at the same time, I could feel the weight of them growing heavier. Big Things were about to happen and there was an energy in my bones that excited me and scared me. Plans were coming to fruition and the anticipated delivery of promises was almost tangible.
This time, I was bringing it. Not them. And I wasn’t doing it for myself, but for Hope.
I remained patient and picked up Marcus’s SUV as it left the restaurant parking lot. They didn’t seem worried about a six-foot-plus monkey wrench with good hair and a private investigator’s license messing up their plans.
Maybe my yelling and making a fuss had worked. Marcus wanted me to be the distraught boyfriend, so that’s how I’d behaved. In his mind, there should be only one reason I’d make a scene: I was heartbroken because Hope was really dead.
The truth, packaged my way.
They headed in the direction of Stock Street with me not far behind.
Big Things are happening.
* * *
I couldn’t tell if Erin was worried or just tired. She stared at the floor with a flat expression. It was also difficult to get back to calling Erin “Erin” again, after calling her Fáidh for four days.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I haven’t heard from Blake.”
“He isn’t supposed to come back yet, is he?”
Erin’s fingers did a slow ballet, or slow battle, as she picked at the polish on her nails. She must be very worried. Her nails were usually immaculate.
“He’s due home tomorrow, but he always calls or sends a text.”
“Maybe he’s just involved with the kids and didn’t have time.”
Erin nodded. “I keep telling myself that.”
“Go with the ‘no news is good news’ option.”
“Very Tao.” Erin said it without conviction. It’s easier to tell yourself not to worry than actually not worry.
I put a hand on her shoulder and she put her hand on mine.
“Someone approaching the building, sire.”
“All right, Bromach. And don’t call me sire.”
At least Erin and I had been given a moment.
Bromach had blinked us into an empty office across the street from the building Marcus owned. From here, we had a perfect view of Stock Street and the building’s second floor. Marcus and his bodyguard were inside. We watched while the sun went down leaving behind a thin dusk, each of us with our special skills, and special burdens. Bromach with his Air magic but his lack of social graces. Oz with his illusionary magic but his broken heart. And Erin with her Water magic and, well, there really wasn’t anything wrong with Erin, but she had two husbands with their own kinds of damage, and she had to deal with us.
Bromach pointed to a sedan that had rolled into the lot, past the “Do Not Enter—Construction” sign. It continued up the dirt and gravel to park behind Marcus’s SUV. While I wasn’t into the kind of work that put butter on Penny Andy’s bread, I did have a good camera with a zoom lens. I’d given it to Erin because her hands were steadier and I could see details of distant things without help anyway.
A woman got out, dressed in dark pants and a dark zip-up windbreaker with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. It took me a moment to identify her.
Holy mostaccioli.
“Who’s that?” Erin asked.
“Katie Castellanos,” I said. “The news girl from the WSFN television station.”
“What is she doing here?”
“No idea.”
“Is she working on a news story?”
“Maybe.”
There was the possibility Marcus was already trading in his cheerleader girlfriend for a newsgirl girlfriend, but I didn’t think so. Someone had called Katie Castellanos when Hope had appeared with a bomb and here she was again.
“Watch her, Bromach,” I said. “She’s a mortal. She may not know what she’s getting herself into.”
“What shall I do?”
“If it looks like she’s in danger, pull her over here.”
“May I remind you it’s against your father’s wishes to introduce mortals to magic?”
“Consider me reminded,” I replied. “Nothing is worth losing another life.”
Even a mortal one.
“As you wish.”
I had to remind myself that every exhale needed an inhale as I watched Katie walk up the dimly lit stairs. On the second floor, Marcus’s driver turned toward the doorway. He heard her coming.
“He’s pulling out his gun, Bromach,” I said.
“Ready, sire.”
Don’t call me sire.
Katie said something. Marcus shook a fat finger at his bodyguard and the bodyguard put his gun back into his shoulder holster. Marcus stepped to the doorway. When Katie came around the corner, he held his arms out for a hug. She hugged him back.
Maybe the girlfriend idea wasn’t wrong.
Katie gave the bodyguard a little wave. She had no idea he’d had his gun out a few seconds before. He gave her a nod. Katie and Marcus smiled but the conversation was brief and stayed professional.
“They know each other,” Erin said, snapping photos.
“Yeah.” I wondered what Marcus and Katie had in common. More momentum piled behind the events already in motion. If they go back down to the car and open that ample trunk, we may get more answers than we want.
Three seconds later, Katie turned and left the room and the bodyguard followed.
Oh boy.
At the car, Katie opened the trunk. The bodyguard reached inside. He looked like a bruiser but he took his time to arrange whatever was sitting inside the trunk so it was positioned the way he wanted. His shoulders flexed as he lifted something out of the trunk. He turned smoothly to the side, heading back toward the building, and we all saw what he carried.
A large briefcase with wires.
“Katie’s our bomb maker,” I said.
“She’s an evil-doer?” Bromach asked.
Evil-doer?
“Yes, Bromach, she’s an evil-doer.”
“She gets no help from me.” He sniffed.
Erin asked, “Is she working for Marcus?”
“Hard to say. There’s another player we haven’t met.” We might have seen this coming, but they’d stolen the evidence from the first bomb before we’d been able to analyze it.
Oz paled. “He’s really going to blow up the building?” He hadn’t had good experiences with buildings and fire.
“He doesn’t need to blow it up,” I replied. “He only needs to damage it.”
I explained about the information Penny Andy had provided and the research I’d done. “The first bomb wasn’t the one attached to Hope. There was another bomb that went off at an empty warehouse a week before that. The fire department investigated and found pieces of a briefcase. I’m guessing it was practice. The second bomb was supposed to kill Hope and me. This bomb has a secondary purpose as well. This building’s insured by one of Marcus’s competitors. I haven’t figured out what’s wrong with the building. Maybe it’s the location or the quality or he thinks it won’t turn a profit. Maybe Marcus just wants to put a dent in his competitor’s bottom line. Whatever it is, Marcus wants the building condemned.”
“If it’s condemned because of a random bombing, then Marcus doesn’t have to pay for it, right?” Oz asked.
“And Katie gets the news story,” Erin said. “Careers have been made on less.”
I watched Marcus. He had chosen a room that couldn’t be seen from the street—but we could see it, standing here in the dark. He was smart, as usual. I needed to be smarter.
Marcus made a call. He had a quick conversation that involved nodding and a glance at the briefcase he’d brought with him from the bank. The briefcase that might be the payout.
When he ended the call, he watched Katie and his bodyguard. Katie was showing the bodyguard how to arm the bomb. He listened carefully as she went through the steps, asking for clarification, but not touching anything.
Not as stupid as you look.
Katie finished explaining as if the briefcase were no more dangerous than a toaster. The bodyguard gave her a thumbs-up. She turned and said something to Marcus and Marcus put his arms out to give her another hug.
Then she left.
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Fifteen Million Reasons
We watched her get into her car and drive away.
“Do we call the police?” Erin asked.
“I know how you feel,” I replied. “I want to arrest her. You have photos of them together, though. Besides, I have a feeling she’ll be back.”
“Is this about the money, then?” Erin had brought that issue up before.
“I don’t care about getting the money. I care about taking it away. This is all about Hope, remember? Only Hope. My client. Who I failed.”
Some quality of sound in my voice made her pause. “There wasn’t anything you could have done differently.”
“My dad said the same thing. It didn’t help then either.”
“She’s beyond caring, Got.”
“I made a promise. To her. And her father, too. I’m keeping it.”
We stood in the dark and watched Marcus check his watch. Minutes passed.
Bromach cleared his throat. “Another vehicle approaching.”
I gave Erin’s shoulder a squeeze to let her know I understood her feelings. I was stuck on the dilemma of ethical and legal obligation versus the promises I’d made, but now it was time to execute our plan. That was a lot to communicate in a single squeeze but she gave me a fraction of a nod.
Got Hope Page 32