“You have a number?” Fran hadn’t given me the number to her office even though she’d tried to recruit me several times.
There was a smile in Eloise’s voice. “Fran said if you had it you might prank call the place the next time The Collective pissed you off.”
“She knows me too well.”
“I’ll call you back in a second.”
We hung up and the food arrived. The waitress gaped a little more at Noir and then did her back-away-and-turn move.
Noir chuckled. “Shall I give her my number?”
“Do you want to give the poor woman a heart attack?”
He snorted and then picked up his spoon. His gaze flicked to me. “You’re not eating?”
“After this call.” I stared at the phone, willing it to ring.
Noir took a bite of his stew and made an appreciative sound. My stomach rumbled.
“Wila, eat,” he ordered.
I picked up my spoon and took a delicious mouthful just as the phone rang. Swallowing without really tasting the food, I answered.
“Wila ... Shit, Wila. Something is really wrong.” Eloise’s voice trembled. “I called and I asked for Fran Kendall and the guy said there was no one by that name working there. So I got a little annoyed and asked him to check again. He said there was no record of Fran Kendall working for The Collective.”
Ice filled my veins. “Tell me you hung up.”
“I should have, I know that now, but I didn’t. I got annoyed and I told him ... I told him I was her best friend, and I’d bloody know where she worked and that there must be a glitch in their system. And then the line went all echoing and he asked who I was. So I told him—”
Oh, man. “You gave him your name?”
“Well, yes. Oh, God. I shouldn’t have, I realized that as soon as he hung up.”
“Eloise, listen to me carefully. Don’t grab anything, just get out of your flat. Don’t take your car, just get out and walk. Take the main streets where there are lots of people and head to the river park. Head to our bench. I’ll meet you there.”
“The echo was a trace ...”
“Yes, Eloise. Go. Go now.” I hung up and then slid out of the booth. “Noir, you need to get me to the river park on the other side of Southside now. Please.”
He didn’t question me. He simply slid from the booth, pulled me against him, and then fragmented us both.
My heart was thudding way too loud when we materialized in the park a second later. Neph milled about by the river, throwing bread to the ducks or simply sitting on benches to eat their lunches. A family with small kids played catch farther up the hill away from the river bank.
How long did it take to walk from Eloise’s apartment building to the park? Fifteen minutes if she walked fast, twenty to twenty-five if she walked slower.
“Bastion?” Noir asked. “What’s going on?”
“I think The Collective has done something to my friend, Fran, and now they’re going to try and kidnap my other friend.” I blinked back tears of frustration. “I don’t have many friends, Noir. Fran and Eloise are it. We grew up together, they’re like my sisters.” I filled him in on the conversation with Eloise. He’d only heard my side of it, and when I finished his expression was somber.
“Wila, did you tell her to ditch her mobile phone?”
“What? No, I—” Trackers. Oh, fuck. Oh, bloody fuck.
I broke into a run.
Chapter 7
People whizzed by, or I whizzed past people, my boots hammering cement. I knew the route she’d take. It was the route she always took, we always took. We’d met for lunch almost every day for six months before things had gotten hectic for us both, before her business had taken to new heights and my investigations had started to run around the clock. We’d even had a bench. Our bench. It was where I’d been headed when Noir had highlighted my error. The phone. Please let her have ditched her phone.
I’d see her any moment now, her golden hair bouncing like she’d just stepped out of an advert for shampoo. I’d see her.
But the distance between me and her apartment got eaten away, and then I was standing on the other side of the street from her building. George, the old guy who manned reception, would be able to help. I made to cross the street but Noir grabbed my elbow, pulling me back against his chest.
“Wait. Look,” he whispered urgently in my ear.
A black unmarked van had just pulled up. Two guys dressed casually in jeans and T-shirts jumped out and walked into the foyer. The van drove off.
My breath was tight with dread. “Collective?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure what branch,” Noir said. “They weren’t in uniform.”
“Trying to look unofficial?” My pulse was racing because there was no point in going in after them. They were here to clean up, because they already had her. They were here to make it look like Eloise never had been. But how? How would they erase her life, her business? It made no sense.
“Wila. We should go.”
“I have to find her, Noir. I have to get her back.”
“If The Collective has her then maybe finding this quarantine facility will get us some clues?”
But how the heck were we going to do that? I’d taken the job with no clue how I’d achieve my objective.
“Excuse me, miss? Got any change?” An old bag lady shook her can in my face.
An idea bloomed in my mind. “Noir, I think I know who might be able to help us.”
***
The bag lady polished off her second burger, and I handed her a Styrofoam cup of tea.
“Thank you.” She took the cup. “You are so kind.”
Guilt twisted my stomach, because my kindness had an ulterior motive and that made me feel like shit.
The smell of fried onions from the burger van drifted on the air, attracting customers from all over the marketplace. We’d snagged a rickety bench and Noir stood to one side, letting me do my thing.
The bag lady finished her tea and popped the cup in her cart. “Bless you, child. Thank you again.”
Her gray eyes were filled with intelligence, her face lined with a map of her life. What had led her to the streets? Where were her loved ones? What had her youth been like?
She smiled up at me. “Oh, I know that look.” She patted my hand. “Don’t fret, pet. I do just fine.” She cocked her head. “But I get the impression that there’s something you want to ask me.”
She was perceptive this one, or maybe I just looked desperate. “I need help, and I think Missy Honour may be able to help me. I just need to find her.”
Her expression hardened like baked clay. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”
The twitch under her left eye said otherwise. Of course she wouldn’t spill so easily. Missy ran an illegal radio station for the plebs, one that The Institute would probably love to have shut down. As far as the bag lady knew, I could be working for them.
“Look, I get it. You don’t know me. But maybe Missy will. My name’s Wilomena Bastion, and I run an investigations business and a friend of mine was just taken by The Collective. I need Missy’s help if I’m going to get her back.”
She blinked slowly.
“Please, just tell her to contact me. I’m sure she’ll be able to find me.”
The bag lady stood up, grabbed her cart, and walked off.
Noir walked up to me. “Nothing to do but wait now, Wila.”
If the hobo network was really a thing, if my gut about the bag lady had been correct, then my message would get to Missy.
“Take me home, Noir.”
***
There was no rest, only pacing the office and staring at the phone.
“Wila, please eat something,” Gilbert implored. He’d made a doorstop sandwich but it sat untouched on a plate on my desk.
My stomach was too queasy to even think about food. “I’m not hungry.”
“You’ll need your energy to deal with whatever’s to come,” Trevor pointed
out.
Oh, God. They meant well, but they needed to shut up. I needed to just pace and stew and wait for the damn phone to ring. Eloise and Fran ... They had my best friends and were doing goodness knows what to them. There was nothing I could do about Azren and Valance right now, but Fran and Eloise were closer to home. If there was a way to get them back, I’d have to take it. Why was this happening? Why was fate taking away all the people that meant something to me? Wasn’t it enough I’d been abandoned as a baby, wasn’t it enough that I’d had to grow up knowing I’d been unwanted, grow up yearning for familial connections? I’d found my tribe in the girls. I’d found my family with Gilbert and Trevor. I’d been ready to complete my heart with Azren and Valance and it was all falling apart.
I had to get them all back. Starting with the girls. Starting now.
My first instinct had been to go to Loraine Vincent. To confront the fuck out of her, but the logical reasoning side of my brain overrode the emotional. Who knew if Vincent was involved or not, and even if she wasn’t, even if she could help, there was no guarantee that whichever branch was doing this wouldn’t somehow cotton on to the fact that there was someone else looking for the women they’d taken. If they got hold of me, then it was game over. I needed to stay below the radar if I was going to find my friends and get them out. Yes, there was no guarantee that they would have been taken to quarantine. But if I could get to the secret facility, maybe, with a little help from Gilbert, I could infiltrate their systems. I’d find my friends.
“I don’t understand how they’re erasing people,” Trevor said. “Eloise and Fran have friends.”
“Friends but no family. They’re both orphans like me.”
“But still, there are people who would miss them.”
“Maybe in Eloise’s case, but Fran never really made connections outside of our trio. Her work is her world, and now that world has swallowed her up. Easy for them to fake a transfer to cover her disappearance to her peers, if they even cared to ask. I think the guy Eloise spoke to cocked up when he said there was no trace of Fran in the system. He should have gone with the transfer cover.”
“But a close friend like Eloise wouldn’t have bought that,” Trevor said. “Friends don’t transfer without letting you know. Maybe they didn’t know Fran had close friends, maybe they hoped no one would question her dropping off the radar.”
Noir sat on the sofa watching me pace. He didn’t ask me to sit, or eat, or drink tea, and damn, I was grateful for that. But what I wanted—what I needed—was to go into the basement and speak to the voice. Just be close to him. And man, if that wasn’t one of the most fucked up things ever.
Gilbert poured me a cup of tea, but I didn’t make a move to pick it up. And then the phone rang, shrill and demanding in the tense silence.
“Wilomena Bastion speaking.” I held my breath.
“Miss Bastion.”
Wait, I knew that clipped, cursory tone. “Ms. Vincent?” What the fuck was she doing calling me?
“Meet me at the carwash on the corner of Harper and Trent Street on Eastside. Come alone.” She hung up.
I stared at the phone and then at Noir. “I don’t have time for her shit right now.”
“You’re sure it was Vincent?”
“I’d know that voice anywhere, but why the cloak-and-dagger shit?” I gnawed on my bottom lip. Was it a coincidence that I’d asked a bag lady to get a message to Missy Honour and now Loraine Vincent, the head of Collective Operations, was ringing me? “I’m going to go meet her.”
Noir’s jaw tensed. “It could be a trap. What if this is about Eloise? What if they know she contacted you?”
“Then you do your Arcana thing and come save my arse.” I smiled sweetly at him, but he didn’t melt. I sighed. “I don’t have a choice. If you’re right and this is a trap, then I’d rather walk into it than have them come for me here. I won’t risk Trev or Gil getting hurt.”
“Wila, I doubt there’s much they could do to me,” Gilbert said.
I snorted. “They have Arcana magic, who knows what they’ll do. And Trevor is very much flesh and blood.” I shook my head. “No. I’ll go to the meeting.”
Noir stood up. “I’m coming with you. I’ll make sure I’m cloaked; she won’t even know I’m there.”
She’d said to come alone, but hadn’t given any consequences if I didn’t. No come alone or else the Jack Pomeranian gets it. Or, come alone or you’ll never taste tea again. Shudder.
“Fine.” I blew out a breath. “We can’t leave together, just in case she has someone watching the house. I’ll leave first. I’ll take Mini. You can do your atomizer thing and beam yourself there.”
Noir gave me a mock salute and handed me my bolt bag and dustkicker, which I’d thrown casually across the sofa arm. “Keep it on. It will protect you from minor Arcana magic attacks as well as weapon attacks.”
I slipped on the leather and checked for K nestled in his super-small form in my pocket. Things had been moving at a snail’s pace since Azren and Valance had been taken from me, but I had a feeling that from this moment on there’d be no rest for my wicked bones.
***
The carwash was one of those self-service places attached to a coffee-to-go place. I parked Mini on the opposite side of the road and then crossed the deserted street. This part of Eastside was dead in the late afternoon. Many of the businesses opened up in the evening and then stayed open till the early hours of the morning. On this side of Eastside, you got the drug pushers, the whores, and the gangs dealing in the import and export of illegal goodies. Why the heck had Vincent asked me to meet her here, and even more importantly, where the heck was she?
Hovering by the self-service carwash, feeling extremely self-conscious, I tried not to search for Noir. He was here ... somewhere. But if I was being watched by Loraine’s people, I didn’t want to give away the fact that I’d brought company. Best to study the tattered posters pasted to the wall with intensity.
A gang of young Lupin ducked out of the 7-Eleven across the road, their raucous laughter echoing down the empty street. One of them glanced my way, his dark eyes flashing in the afternoon sun, and then he nudged his companion. Suddenly, four pairs of eyes were on me, and my pulse picked up. The last thing I needed was an impromptu brawl, especially with the claw and fang variety.
But then the one who’d noticed me called out, “Hey, you need a car if you’re gonna wash a car.”
The other Lupin jerked his thumb toward Mini parked a few feet down the street from them. “This one yours?”
“Jets don’t reach that far,” another one said.
They exchanged glances and then crossed the road toward me.
Oh shit. My hand slipped into my pocket, tightening around K.
“You need help?” the first guy asked. “You really shouldn’t be hanging around by yourself. Not around these parts. Are you lost?”
“I’m fine. Just waiting on a friend.”
Dark eyes’s friend nudged him and whispered a little too loud, “Maybe she’s working the street?”
Dark eyes cocked his head. “Nah, not in those threads, she isn’t.”
“Bastion?” a sultry female drawl said from behind me.
My body tensed because this voice had a familiar tone to it, sultry and warm and definitely not Vincent, but still it tickled the back of my mind.
I turned to face the woman, tall with tanned skin and ebony waves framing her heart-shaped face. “That’s me.”
Her hand shot out and gripped my arm, and then we were fragmenting.
Chapter 8
We materialized in a small, windowless room lit by crappy overhead lighting. Vincent was seated at a table nursing a mug of something or other. I glanced at the woman who’d done a Noir on me.
Shrugging her off, I took a step away from her. “What the heck is going on?”
Loraine indicated the seat opposite her. “Have a seat, Miss Bastion. It’s time we talked.”
I glanced up at the
dark-skinned woman, who simply smiled and then took the seat next to the one Vincent had offered me.
“We’ve been keeping tabs on you, Wila. May I call you Wila?” Loraine said.
I was in a tiny room, goodness knows where, with no way of getting out on my own. If this was a trap, I was fucked. Best to play it cool.
Parking my butt would be a start. “Sure, why not.”
Loraine smiled, but as usual, it was a cursory expression that didn’t reach her steely eyes. “I apologize for the cloak-and-dagger routine, but we needed to make sure you weren’t followed.”
Something about her sentence rang alarm bells in my head, and then it hit me. I’d used the exact phrase cloak and dagger to describe this situation to Noir. Coincidence? I think not. But I needed to play it cool to find out how this was connected to Eloise and Fran, or if it was even connected to them. What did the head of Operations want from me?
“Okay, so you have me here, now what?” I folded my arms in what was an instinctive defensive gesture and then instantly regretted it.
This time Loraine’s smile was less perfunctory and more cunning. “I want you to work for me, Wila. Work with me.”
This again. “I told you I wasn’t interested last time we spoke. That hasn’t changed.”
“Oh, but it has. Because now The Collective has something that belongs to you. Two somethings to be precise, and I’m the only person that can possibly help you get them back.”
Heat bloomed in my chest. She’d taken my friends to force me to work for her? “Are you blackmailing me?”
Loraine blinked in surprise. “Blackmail? What?”
The dark-skinned woman cleared her throat. “Um, Loraine, it did kinda sound like you were blackmailing her. Maybe rewind and explain you had nothing to do with the kidnappings.”
Okay, I was so confused. “Wait, you didn’t have anything to do with my friends being taken?”
Loraine looked to the dark-skinned woman. “I thought I did explain?”
Chronicles of Arcana (The complete collection books 1-4) Page 42