“What do you know about the Network?” I asked her.
“Until a short time ago, we knew what everyone else knows: that they were an urban legend. A myth of the criminal underworld. Recent events have proved otherwise. Their members are self-proclaimed servants of the so-called Kings of Man.” Caitlin stared at Jessie. “I believe you know that much.”
Jessie put her sunglasses back on. She pushed the tinted lenses up over her turquoise eyes, shrouding them from sight. “We’re aware.”
“These Kings aren’t demons,” Caitlin said. “No part of our courts or our kind, and they’re as hostile to us as they are to humanity. Their ultimate goals . . . unknown, but unquestionably toxic. You need to stop Crohn and, just as importantly, delete the data he stole. Every shred of evidence, anything he could use to provoke a war. Don’t do it for my people: do it for yours.”
She put her fingers to her lips and let out a short, shrill whistle. The office door opened. One of her men stepped inside, silent as he approached the table. He leaned in and dropped eight thick stacks of money on the pale wood. Hundreds, in tight-packed bands. He left without a word.
“Seeing as you’re currently rebuilding your organization from the ground up,” Caitlin said, “this should cover your mission expenses. Fifty thousand dollars. Untraceable and clean.”
“We’re not taking your money,” Jessie told her.
“Access to liquid assets,” Caitlin said patiently, “could make the difference between failure and success. Time is not on our side here. Please. Accept it as a gift. No strings attached.”
Jessie shoved back her chair.
“I was born on a Tuesday. Not last Tuesday. And I’ve never seen a free lunch that didn’t have a fishhook buried in it.”
She turned to leave. I followed her to the door.
“As you wish,” Caitlin said. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you both in person. I do hope that if and when we meet again, it’s not as mortal enemies, but that’s really up to you. Oh, and . . . Harmony?”
I paused, glancing back over my shoulder.
“Could I speak to you a moment?” she asked. “Privately.”
Jessie had the door halfway open. She shut it again, hard enough to rattle the frame, keeping her hand on the knob.
“Anything you have to say to my partner,” Jessie said, “you can say in front of me.”
A faint twinkle played in Caitlin’s eyes.
“I could,” she said, “but that might be awkward for everyone involved. Please. Just two minutes of your time.”
I didn’t know what game she was playing, but she’d been straight with us so far—at least, as straight as I could expect from a demon. And if she wanted to kill us, she’d have already made her move. My intuition told me to take a chance.
I looked to Jessie.
“Two minutes,” I said.
She nodded, slow, and turned the knob. “I’ll be right outside.”
Then she stepped out and shut the office door behind her. Leaving me alone with Caitlin.
THIRTY-SEVEN
“You’re fighting a revolution,” Caitlin told me. “Striking out against the eastern courts, demanding sovereignty. An interesting time. All of history—yours and ours—is bookmarked by revolutions.”
“Sounds like you’re talking from experience.”
She chuckled. Her hips swayed as she walked to the credenza, refreshing her mug of coffee. My gaze flicked to her shadow, cast in the light from the tall office windows.
Her shadow had a tail. Thin, serpentine, moving in time with her footsteps.
“I was in New York City in the summer of 1775,” she said. “I wasn’t a hound then—I wasn’t anything then, really—just an ambitious traveler, exploring this world and its pleasures. Passing an evening in a public house, I listened in on a band of young men at the next table as they spoke of revolution, egging each other on with their boasts and their dreams. I was charmed, utterly charmed. They had the perfect combination of daring and naïveté.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Bought them a round of drinks and subtly encouraged them, as I do. I wanted to see what would happen.” She sipped her coffee. “Much as I do now. Are you prepared for what happens after the war’s won, Harmony? It’s not enough for Vigilant Lock to be independent. You’ll have to nurture it, shape it, decide its mandate and its purpose. Following orders is easy; giving them is considerably more complicated, especially when you’re deciding matters of life and death. Other people’s lives and deaths, people who are counting on you to make the right call each and every time. Take it from me—I speak from experience.”
“I think we’ll do all right.”
She set down her mug and approached me.
“I know what Nadine did to you in Chicago,” she said. The words hung between us, expecting an answer I wasn’t sure how to give. “And now I can smell the lingering cologne of another of my kind on you. Not her perfume. You’ve indulged, haven’t you?”
My pride stung, my weakness on full display like the centerfold of a dirty magazine, but lying felt like a waste of time.
“Once,” I said.
“I assume your partner doesn’t know, which is why I wanted to speak to you privately. You felt more than relieved after you gave in, didn’t you? Energized. I imagine your magic flowed like water through a broken dam. For a little while, anyway. Now the hunger is coming back, worse than last time.”
The weight of my guilt dragged my gaze to the floor. “Yes.”
“Like Nadine, I am a daughter of the Choir of Lust. I’m familiar with your condition. I’ve inflicted it myself a time or two, as a means of control and coercion. Or simply for the pleasure of torment. Never on a magician, though, for good reason. Harmony . . . your magic didn’t flow.”
I looked up, furrowing my brow. “But it did. It got us through a fight back in—”
She closed the distance between us.
“It wasn’t your magic,” Caitlin said.
I fell silent. Not sure how to answer that.
“You were simply processing the demonic energy imbued by the kiss. It wasn’t your magic. It was ours. If you go back for more, you’ll do it again and again, gradually losing connection to your own powers. It isn’t just the addiction; eventually, you’ll be utterly incapable of working a simple spell without the touch of my kind to fuel you.”
She put her hand on my shoulder.
“You have to quit,” she told me. “Entirely. There will be pain. You will most assuredly crave the bliss of death before Nadine’s curse has worked its way out of your system. The hunger will be unimaginable. But you have to do it.”
“Why are you helping me?” I asked, my voice softer than I intended it to be.
“Because you are that rarest of gifts—an enemy I respect. I predict two possible eventualities. Either you’ll come to your senses, realize that my prince offers the best future for your species, and willingly serve me, or we will meet in honorable battle. In no case do I wish to see you as Nadine would have you: broken, hopelessly mired in addiction, and cut off from your power forever. That serves no good purpose.”
Her hand tightened on my shoulder.
“We are warriors, Harmony. When next we meet, it may be with spears in our hands, but today we share a battlefield. If you won’t take my money, take my advice, from one soldier to another: Fight this sickness while you still can. Don’t let Nadine have the last laugh.”
“Thank you,” I said, looking her in the eye.
“Good luck with your revolution.”
“So what was that all about?” Jessie asked as we pushed through the front door of the office building, out into the desert sunlight.
“Trying to get me to take the money,” I told her. I hated lying to Jessie, hated myself for doing it, but I didn’t see an alternative.
Caitlin was right. I needed to quit, to go cold turkey, to get the toxic remnants of Nadine’s attack and Romeo’s kiss out of my veins once and fo
r all. With the clock ticking down and our enemies on the move, not to mention a war about to begin, the timing couldn’t possibly be worse. I needed the fuel, another hit of energy from Romeo’s kiss, to get through this fight. I needed to never touch him again, or I’d be risking a downward spiral with no way back.
I needed to decide what was more important: me . . . or the mission.
Even I could only deny basic human needs like food and sleep for so long. We needed a team meeting, so we killed two birds with one stone by calling April, Kevin, and Aselia downtown for lunch. We ended up at Tiki Pete’s, a strip-mall Thai place a few blocks from the Vegas Strip. A reporter recited sports scores from a ceiling-mounted TV over the bar, across from empty tables and booths where strips of duct tape covered the cracks in the vinyl seats.
“You know we’ve got a standing invitation at the Monaco, right?” Kevin asked as he gave the restaurant a dubious look. “Like, actual gourmet food? For free?”
“No time, and this is closer to the airport.” Jessie led the way, grabbing a table and giving the hostess a wave. “We gotta eat and run. Los Angeles is the hub of Bobby Diehl’s empire, and that’s probably where Crohn is headed. I want us camped on Diehl’s doorstep before sundown. We make our move today.”
We gave them the rundown in between poring over faded, grease-stained menus. I ordered the lunch special, pad thai and a Diet Coke for $3.99. I made a mental note to buy antacid on the way back to the plane.
Aselia rubbed her forehead like she was staving off a headache. “So now we have to stop the demonic courts from going to war. And, I’m sorry, who are these Network assholes? That wasn’t even a thing, back in my day.”
“It probably was; you just didn’t know about it,” I told her. “From what we can gather, picture the Mafia on occult steroids, buried behind five layers of whispers and urban legends. They snare their foot soldiers with magical geises to compel their silence. Nobody talks, and anybody who gets close to exposing them is killed before they can go public. That was the only reason we were keeping Bobby Diehl alive: he’s in line for a membership, and we have agents buried deep inside his organization. His personal assistant is a Vigilant operative.”
“Yeah, that no-kill order?” Jessie chopped the air with the flat of her hand. “Rescinded. We’ve got three mission objectives, gang: One, take out Benjamin Crohn. Two, find and destroy the data he stole from Vigilant’s servers. Every scrap of evidence, anything the Network could use—it’s gotta be scrubbed off the face of the earth. Three, safely extract Agent Cooper and the rest of Beach Cell. They’ve been in deep cover at Diehl Innovations for months, and the second Crohn makes contact with Bobby, they’re gonna get burned, and they’re gonna get dead. Can’t let that happen. Optional objective: terminate Bobby Diehl.”
The waitress came around with our drinks. Kevin cracked open a can of Mountain Dew and unwrapped a fat paper straw.
“The tower in LA is the hub of Diehl’s business empire,” he said. “So it’s networked with every plant, every satellite office . . . What if we shut it all down?”
“Whatcha thinking?” Jessie asked.
Kevin gestured with his straw. “I could write up a worm to freeze their network. Wouldn’t take too long if I use preexisting code, just a few tweaks . . . we shut down their e-mail servers, communication apps—basically, the only way Crohn’s gonna deliver Bobby those files is if he prints them out and walks them in by hand. It’s a short-term solution, but that could buy you time to get the job done.”
“Are you sure you can pull it off?” I asked him. “We’ve seen what Bobby Diehl is capable of. Blending magic and high technology is kind of his thing.”
“Yeah, his thing, but the flunkies in his IT department don’t know they’re working for an evil mastermind. Unless he personally built their e-mail server from the ground up, he’s not the brain I’ll be facing off against. It’s probably a bunch of off-the-rack code with a custom upgrade or two. I can handle it.”
“I like it,” Jessie said. “Let’s do it.”
“Only issue is, to pull this off we’re gonna need on-site access. You need to break into the physical server room at the tower.”
“If we could get word to Agent Cooper, seeing as she works a heartbeat away from Diehl’s office—” April paused, her eyes on the television set. “Ah. Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.”
It was the first time I’d seen Bobby Diehl on a television set without his ubiquitous used-car-salesman grin. Red-faced and flustered, he stood at a press-conference podium, flanked by grim and silent lawyers. The ticker across the bottom of the screen read: NASDAQ: DIEHL INNOVATIONS STOCK DOWN BY TWENTY-EIGHT POINTS.
“These allegations are . . . outrageous,” Diehl stammered. “I have never met these people, I have never heard of this RedEye program, and I categorically deny the accusations against me. Not only will I be fully vindicated, I promise that my legal team will see that those slandering me are punished to the fullest extent of the law. That’s . . . that’s all. That’s all I have to say. Thank you.”
The camera cut back to a dubious-looking anchor. “While no official charges have been filed against Robert Diehl, sources inside the FBI indicate that an exploration is ongoing, and we may see a formal indictment by the end of this month.”
“Not gonna lie,” Jessie said. “Watching him squirm is the best part of my week. Somebody’s starting to figure out he’s not as bulletproof as he thought.”
My gaze slid from the television to the rumpled paper place mats. I wasn’t focused on anything in particular as I thought things over.
“Still walking around free, though. It’s understandable; Esposito has to tread carefully until he officially gets the nod and becomes the Bureau’s new director. He’s already kicked up a tidal wave, arresting Ben Crohn on national TV, and Bobby Diehl’s one of the richest men in America. You don’t hunt big game without lining up some big guns first.”
“Looks like they didn’t release the news about Crohn escaping from custody,” April said. “Once we resolve the situation, I imagine Linder will concoct an appropriate story to explain his untimely demise. I’m guessing suicide in a holding cell.”
“Can’t beat the classics,” I said. Then I paused, tilting my head.
“Uh-oh.” Jessie poked me. “We have Idea Face. Warning. Warning. Idea Face spotted.”
“Like I just said. The classics. We don’t need a new tactic—we need an old and time-tested one.” I smiled. “Jessie, call Esposito. April, get in touch with the LA Bureau office, and coordinate for our arrival. I’m gonna call an old colleague of mine, back from my forensic-accounting days. I know exactly how we’re going to ruin Bobby Diehl’s life. Legally, publicly, and very old-school.”
Our plan secured, we headed for the airport. Aselia rented a shower and changing room intended for pilots on long hauls. We didn’t have long, but five minutes of hot, clean water and the chance to run a brush through my hair felt like paradise. The thrift-store outfit I’d bought in New York sat discarded. With our names cleared, no need to hide in a crowd any longer; it was time to put on my real clothes. The tie, sea-foam green, looped around the collar of a fresh ivory blouse. The black jacket slid over my shoulders like a second skin. I looked at myself in the mirror, brushed my bangs to one side, and gave myself a nod of approval.
I’d already stabbed Bobby Diehl from a distance, but it wasn’t a mortal wound. Now it was time to give that blade a twist and drive it in deep.
THIRTY-EIGHT
The autumn sun simmered through the amber fog, just another late afternoon in Los Angeles. The Diehl Innovations tower rose up like a silver spike, a needle of chrome and glass surrounded by manicured lawns and sculpted hedgerows. Employees on break lingered along the paved walking paths and relaxed on bamboo benches. It was a modern corporate mecca, pristine and tranquil.
Horns blared as a convoy in black surged up the avenue, sirens and lights shoving traffic aside. SUVs jumped the curb, wheels tearing u
p the grass and spitting loam as they screamed to a halt outside the tower’s glass doors. The back doors of a pair of police trucks burst open, and SWAT officers boiled out like armored wasps. They took the lead and hit the doors with clockwork precision. They streamed into the lobby in two columns, boots pounding on Italian marble floors as they fanned out.
I strode into the lobby with Jessie at my side and a pack of suits at my back. Jessie held up a walkie-talkie, barking orders. “Alpha team, you’re on doors—nobody comes in, nobody leaves. Send some people around to lock down the service entrances and the loading dock. Bravo team, secure the elevators and emergency stairwells. Get somebody into that maintenance room, and lock the whole damn system down.”
Some of the employees milling in the lobby froze, uncertain. A couple tried to run for it. They landed hard and sprouted steel bracelets. I held my badge high above my head like a crusader’s sword.
“FBI,” I shouted. “This is a raid. We have a warrant to search these premises. Cooperate and we’ll be done in no time.”
One of the receptionists was hunched over his phone, whispering in a panic. I pointed at him.
“You calling your boss? You’d better be. Get him down here. Now.”
The man who came down from the executive floor, flanked by a pair of SWAT troopers, wasn’t the fish I wanted to catch. He was in his seventies, dressed in Armani, his hair slicked back, and streaks of gray showing through his dye job.
I didn’t wait for an introduction. “Bobby Diehl. Where is he?”
“I’m Harold Linkletter, senior counsel to Diehl Innovations, and Mr. Diehl’s personal attorney. This is—this is an inexcusable witch hunt, and don’t think there won’t be consequences. Do you even have a warrant?”
I shoved a stack of paper in his face.
“Signed by Judge Morris half an hour ago,” I said. “You will also find a list of employees we want for questioning. Consider yourself added to that list. You will escort these officers through the tower, and help them find the people we want, then bring them down to the lobby. You will do this now.”
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