by Z. J. Cannon
I had specifically told her to keep herself isolated until Arkanica was no longer a threat. “Is she in contact with anyone else?”
“I mean, she mentions other hackers from time to time. Sorry, I mean web design specialists. That’s what she said I should call her, because, you know, the website and all.” Now he was the one to give me a suspicious look. “How is it any of your business who she talks to? How do you know her, anyway? You her dad or something?” From the look he was giving me, I was guessing he had other, less savory possibilities running through his mind.
“I knew her grandfather,” I said shortly. “She needed protection, and I gave it to her.” Although apparently my efforts had been in vain, if she was breaking her isolation to make new friends around the world. Friends who sold drugs on whatever this “dark web” was, and talked casually about black-market weapons.
“Looks to me like she’s the one protecting you.”
I clenched my jaw and didn’t answer. “Where are we going?” I asked instead.
“My brother owns a club downtown. Figured I’d take you straight to him. Less chance of the ice queen back there tracking you down, and besides, my brother isn’t someone you keep waiting for long. I promised him a surprise tonight, and if I don’t deliver, I’ll never hear the end of it.” His laughter had a nervous edge.
I looked out the car window. I could have sworn we had passed that same Italian restaurant a couple of minutes ago. “It looks to me like we’re driving in circles.”
“I figured we’d drive around a bit before I take you to see my brother. Give you an idea of what to expect, how to talk to him.”
“How about a place to change clothes?”
“Good luck with that while you’re wearing those.” He nodded at my handcuffs. “It’s not necessary anyway. You’ll fit right in at my brother’s place.”
“You keep talking about this brother of yours. How about you start by telling me who this person is?”
“My brother is an entrepreneur,” said Ji-Hyun. “A very successful one, I might add. We’re all very proud.” He smirked.
“You’re going to have to get a little more specific than that. I highly doubt this mysterious brother of yours is running in the same circles as Eddie Ellison.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised. But no, he’s not the techie type. He prefers not to put himself in a box. He’s more of a generalist. He sees what the market needs, and he provides it.”
Belatedly, the pieces came together in my head. “You’re talking about organized crime.”
Ji-Hyun heaved a sigh. “Man, Skye was right about you. I mean, yeah, but you’re not supposed to say that. Jesus, have you never watched a mafia movie?” He shot me a sidelong look, and frowned at whatever he saw in my face. “What, are you surprised my name isn’t Soprano? Just because the Italians and the Irish have had a lock on the city since the beginning of time, that doesn’t mean there’s no room for new blood.”
That hadn’t been anywhere close to what was in my mind. What I was wondering was how Skye had gone from agreeing to the terms of her isolation, to palling around with mobsters behind my back. I should have made her promise to avoid all unnecessary human contact—not that it would have done any good. Humans could break their promises anytime they chose.
I didn’t have the right to police Skye’s friends, I reminded myself. But while that was technically true, it was little consolation. I had brought Skye into this. It was my fault she was no longer living with the cousins who had taken her in as a child, traveling the country in an RV and living the carefree life of a teenager. When I had first gone up against Arkanica, they had dug up my old connections with Skye, and threatened her life to get me to back off. Then I had made things worse by not only bringing her to me, thinking I could protect her more easily in person, but then asking for her help getting into their computer systems. Now she was as much of a fugitive as I was, and with no magic to protect herself.
In other words, if not for me, she would never have been in a position to make friends with someone like Ji-Hyun in the first place.
She and I were going to have a long talk when this was all over. For now, I turned to Ji-Hyun, and tried to smooth away whatever emotion he had seen on my face. “What exactly did Skye say about me?” I couldn’t resist asking.
He shrugged. “Just that you can be kind of sheltered for how long you’ve been around.”
I had a few things to say about that assessment—for one thing, I at least understood the importance of staying isolated when my life was in danger—but I didn’t voice any of them. “You said there were other things you needed to tell me about your brother,” I said instead. “About how to talk to him.”
“Right.” Ji-Hyun drummed on the steering wheel. “Let me ask you something. Let’s say you want to do business with someone. You both know you can help each other, but you don’t know if you can trust each other, and if it comes to a fight, you don’t know who’s got the bigger dick. What do you do?”
Unconsciously, I reached for my watch. My fingers hit the handcuffs instead. “I can’t say I find myself in that position very often.” I tried to avoid situations when I would have to do business with humans. I spent most of my time either avoiding them, protecting them, or bringing them to justice. Justice meaning whatever my magic decided it meant that day.
“Skye said it would probably go something like this: you go in, all smiles, and tell them what you need. If they don’t give it to you, you start making threats. Repeat as needed until they give in. Sound about right?”
I couldn’t say I was comfortable with the fact that Skye could summarize my dealings with humans so well. Reluctantly, I nodded.
“That’s what I was afraid of.” Ji-Hyun winced. “That’s not going to work with my brother. You start making threats, that’s how he’s going to see you—as a threat. And my brother believes in dealing with threats quickly and efficiently.”
I had a suspicion I didn’t have much to worry about from Ji-Hyun’s brother on that front, at least once I got these handcuffs off. But of course I couldn’t say that. I rubbed the thick, scarred skin where the watch normally sat. “Then what do you suggest?”
“The thing about my brother is, he’s always got his eye on the future. My parents used to say he was one of those kids who was planning his retirement portfolio in kindergarten—you know the type. When he meets someone new, he doesn’t want to know what they can do for him in that moment. He wants to know if the relationship will be profitable over the long term. Simply put, he wants to make friends.” Ji-Hyun flashed me a grin.
I didn’t return the smile. “I have a feeling your advice boils down to more than, ‘Be friendly.’”
“Don’t be too friendly. It’s too easy to mistake for weakness, and don’t get me wrong, you’ll need to do the dick-measuring thing. Don’t take it personally—he does it with everyone. He needs to know who has the power, and he needs the other person to know he has more than them. And if he doesn’t… well, he’ll look for a way to change that at the earliest opportunity. I don’t recommend letting things get that far. I know you’re kind of a big shot, but my advice to you is, smile and nod and remember that you’re on his turf. You do not want him to feel threatened by you.” Another quick smile. “But of course, he also has to know you’re powerful enough to be worth dealing with, and clever enough that he shouldn’t bother taking advantage of you. It’s a fine line to walk. Not many people manage it.”
I didn’t ask what happened to the people who failed to walk that line. “Look powerful, but not too powerful,” I summarized. “And do my best to make friends.” Not my strongest skill, on the best of days. I had learned a long time ago that it was healthier to keep my distance from humans whenever possible. As a result, I was even rustier at friendship that I was at seduction.
“And keep in mind that it’s all about relationships,” Ji-Hyun said. “Really, that’s the most important thing. You’re not trying to get something out of him.
You’re building a relationship—one that will benefit you both over the long term. Make him believe that, and you’ll do just fine.”
I didn’t find his smile reassuring. “How do I know he can even do anything for me?” I asked. “It sounds to me like I’ll be walking into a dangerous situation. If I’m going to be in danger either way, I might as well go back to the police station, and see if that DeWitt woman is still around.”
Ji-Hyun waved away my concerns. “I told you, my brother’s a generalist. Whatever you need, he can get it for you. As long as you can do something for him in return. But I’m sure that won’t be a problem for you.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. But I was still skeptical about whether he could help me in the first place. I was sure he could get me a few things I needed—a better fake identity, for one. But none of those things were worth this kind of risk. And I didn’t have the resources Arkanica’s manufactured version of Kieran Thorne did. I didn’t even have the advantages my wealth had once afforded me. I didn’t have anything to offer that Ji-Hyun’s brother was likely to be interested in.
There was only one thing worth meeting Ji-Hyun’s brother for. “I need Eddie Ellison,” I said flatly. “Either that, or a lead on a man named Charles Engstrom. Unless he can get me that, you can drop me off here.”
“Never heard of Engstrom,” Ji-Hyun said. “But Ellison? Sure. As it happens, one of my brother’s people has a lucrative business arrangement with Ellison’s assistant. He charges the assistant through the nose—no pun intended—for the city’s finest cocaine, and the assistant sells it on to Ellison at even more of a markup. Everyone wins. So yeah, we can connect the two of you.” He glanced over at me. “What do you say? Are you in? Or are you going to undo all my hard work, get both Skye and my brother pissed at me, and probably get yourself thrown in some secret offshore prison for good measure when you try to go off on your own?”
I had no idea whether he was telling me the truth about Ellison. But the chance was too tempting to pass up. DeWitt was probably long gone by now, and even if I managed to throw myself into her path, the second I was in her hands I would be a prisoner again. Although I wasn’t entirely sure I wasn’t a prisoner now. I looked down at my still-cuffed hands. “What happens if I say no to this deal of yours?”
Ji-Hyun shrugged. “I get hung out to dry, for one. Which hardly seems fair considering all the trouble I went to, forging those papers for you on such short notice. Other than that? Search me. Maybe you find what you’re looking for another way, maybe you don’t. From that point on, you stop being my problem.” He sighed. “Except, of course, for the fact that I’ll hear about it from Skye until the end of time. She’s weirdly attached to you, did you know that? In spite of everything you’ve done. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was like one of those serial killer groupies.”
I looked out the window. We had pulled over to the side of the road, and were coming to a stop. Outside, the sign for a club called Prodigy flashed neon green. “So you’re saying I’m free to go.”
“Of course.” He looked down at the handcuffs. “Still can’t do anything about those, though. But hey, if you can manage everything else without any help, I’m sure you’re not worried about a little thing like that.”
His words hung in the air, a challenge.
“And what kind of price is your brother likely to ask in exchange for his help?” I asked.
Again, Ji-Hyun shrugged. “That’s for the two of you to work out.”
I wasn’t sure which part of this I liked less—that I was being maneuvered into a situation where people were going to expect me to make promises I might not be able to keep, or that Skye was already involved with these people. Or maybe it was that I hadn’t been in control of a single thing that had happened to me since the elevator door had closed behind me in Ellison’s penthouse.
But it wasn’t as if I had done a great job of getting what I needed on my own. Ji-Hyun was offering me something I didn’t know how to get any other way—a second chance at Ellison. As long as I avoided making any binding promises, I could walk away at any time. And as for Skye’s involvement, what better way to find out what she had gotten herself into than to meet her new friend’s family?
I stepped out into the warm night breeze, and winced as the throbbing music from the club hit my ears. “Let’s go see your brother.”
Chapter 15
The wall of sound inside the club was almost a tactile experience. It thrummed in my bones like a quickened heartbeat, until I had to fight to remind myself that it wasn’t panic I felt pulsing up through the floor and into my bones. The lights were a dim blue-green, with a wavering shimmer that made the whole place feel like it was underwater. The air smelled like scotch and jasmine, with a hint of cigarette smoke underneath.
It wasn’t crowded—not surprising, for this early in the night. The few people who were here weren’t dancing; they were sitting at the bar and chatting over drinks, or having hushed conversations at corner tables. As Ji-Hyun and I walked across the floor, people acknowledged him with a smile and a nod—and then paused, frowning, when they saw me. Maybe they recognized me from the news, although in this light, that was hardly a given. For all I knew, they just didn’t get many strangers in this place.
A couple of people tried to wave Ji-Hyun over to them. But he didn’t stop to chat. Instead, he led me straight to the back of the room, where a man was sitting alone at a circular booth, taking up half the wide bench all by himself as he puffed on a cigarette with half-closed eyes. The man was painfully stylish, in tight-fitting jeans that had probably cost more than a good suit, and an orange velvet shirt that should have looked tacky and garish but instead gave him the same fiery glow as the outside of the Seaport Tower. His black hair was slicked back, with a single blue-green streak that matched the lights.
Ji-Hyun didn’t have to introduce us. The resemblance was plain just by looking at the two of them together. The man at the back of the club looked about ten years older, but aside from that, they could have been twins.
The man knew we were there. I could tell by the way he held himself perfectly still, and the sharp, canny look he gave us from beneath his eyelids. I was willing to bet he had known we were here the second we had walked in. But he didn’t say anything, or acknowledge our presence in any way. He stayed where he was, his eyes glinting out at us, and took another drag on his cigarette.
Finally, Ji-Hyun cleared his throat. “Your favorite little brother is back,” he said, his voice just a hair too high and too bright.
Ji-Hyun’s brother smiled. “And here I could have sworn you were Ji-Hyun,” he drawled. His smooth, clear voice made him sound like he belonged in a church choir instead of… whatever this place was.
“Very funny.” Ji-Hyun smiled, but I felt him tense. “Well, I’ll be your favorite in… oh, five seconds or so. As soon as you figure out what I’ve brought you.”
“I can already see what you’ve brought me. A man in handcuffs.” Ji-Hyun’s brother raised one eyebrow. “Either that’s the Boston police department’s doing, in which case they’ll be beating down our door looking for him soon enough, or it’s yours, and you’ve forgotten everything I’ve tried to teach you about the fine art of diplomacy. Either way, I fail to see why I should be grateful.”
“Look closer.” Ji-Hyun nudged me a small step forward.
“My mistake. You’ve actually brought me a man in handcuffs wearing cheap leather pants. You should try one of our sisters instead. They might be more receptive to his charms than—” He stopped midsentence. His eyes opened fully. The cigarette hung suspended between his fingers, halfway to his mouth.
Ji-Hyun grinned. “You just recognized him, didn’t you?”
Ji-Hyun’s brother stubbed out his cigarette. Slowly and deliberately, he stood. “Ji-Hyun,” he said, with no trace of his earlier lazy drawl, “what have you done?”
Ji-Hyun took a step back. “He needs help. And badly enough that he isn’t like
ly to quibble over the price. You know who he is, the connections he must have. I thought—”
“No,” his brother said. “You didn’t think. If you had, you would have seen that you gifted me with a walking time bomb and expected me to be grateful.” He bit out the words with cold precision. “Do you think a man like this can escape police custody without the world noticing? How long before someone tracks him straight to our door?”
“I was careful.” Ji-Hyun twisted his hands together in front of him.
“Oh, yes. You have always been known for your caution.” Ji-Hyun’s brother turned his cold gaze on me. “I apologize for my brother. He has always been impulsive. I, on the other hand, believe in making decisions based on logic, not the whims of my heart. Which means if you give me a compelling reason not to have you shot and leave your body for the police somewhere safely away from here, I may be willing to consider it.” He looked down at his watch, a swirl of silver inlaid with sapphires. “You have thirty seconds.”
I straightened my shoulders and tried to forget I was still handcuffed. I curled the corners of my lips upward, as if what he had said had amused me. “I’m sure that bluff works on some people. But you and I both know you won’t risk losing a valuable resource. At least if what your brother has told me about you is true.”
“A valuable resource?” His lip curled. “You think too highly of yourself. Maybe I could have found a use for you once, before you had the eyes of the entire world on you. Now I think I’m better off cutting my losses.” He glanced at his watch again. “You have fifteen seconds to convince me otherwise.”