by Jenna Black
“What?” I asked, wondering if he’d suddenly misplaced his mind.
“To heat up the tar.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but my brain went on strike and refused to feed me any pithy replies.
“Here’s my suggestion,” he said, and I swear even though he was pissed at me he was enjoying my discomfiture. “Since you’re such bosom buddies with the Director of Special Forces, you call him. I suppose technically that’s calling the police, but he’ll probably be able to make a better judgment on whether to take this on in an official capacity or whether to keep it off the books.”
Once again, I couldn’t think of a good reply—unless it was duh! Maybe the sleep deprivation had stolen more brain cells than I realized. Or maybe I’d just been picking a fight, because hey, I’m ornery that way.
“You still shouldn’t have read it,” I said, but there was no heat left in my words.
“Are you going to call Adam, or aren’t you?”
I wanted to ask what he would do if I said no, but I was too chicken. I was pretty sure he’d say he’d call Adam himself, and that would lead to more arguing. For once, I wasn’t up for that.
“Yeah, I’ll call him.”
CHAPTER 21
I should have known better than to expect Brian to trundle on home like a good little lawyer. I hoped he was sticking around for the reason he stated—that he wanted to help me—not because he didn’t trust me to make the call. Not that I had any room to throw stones where trust was concerned.
I hated the idea of calling Adam when he and Dom were in the middle of their own personal crisis—assuming Adam had done as he’d said and let Dom know about the crisis. But Claudia Brewster’s daughters couldn’t wait until the love boat sailed on smooth waters, so I picked up the phone and dialed his number.
No one answered, and this wasn’t exactly the kind of message I could leave on an answering machine. I figured he was probably at work, so I called his cell phone, but that went straight to voice mail. I bit my lip. It seemed silly, and maybe even a bit hypocritical, to worry about Adam. If there was anyone more capable of taking care of himself than Adam, I didn’t know him. I left a terse message for him to call me ASAP, then decided to try his office number. I hated calling his office. Everyone who’d ever answered the phone there was an asshole—including Adam, now that I thought about it—but I called anyway.
“He called in sick today,” said the man who answered the phone. He had a nasally voice that made everything he said sound like a whine, though so far he’d been perfectly polite.
I held the phone away from my face for a moment and stared at it as if it were somehow responsible for the crap I’d just heard. “He’s a demon,” I said with forced patience when I decided the phone wasn’t to blame. “Demons don’t get sick.” One of the fringe benefits that went with being possessed, though giving up your entire life seemed a bit too much to pay.
“No,” the officer whined, “but they do get sick days. And Director White took one. I’ll put you through to his voice mail.”
“No, that’s not—” But he’d already hit the transfer button. Like I said, assholes all. “. . necessary,” I finished, hanging up the phone. This was a shitty time for Adam to go AWOL. He was probably at home, just ignoring the phone. I so didn’t want to go there in person looking for him. If he and Dom were in the Dreaded Black Room, they probably wouldn’t even hear the bell.
However, I didn’t have any better ideas, and I was all too conscious that the clock was ticking. I didn’t know what the chances were that the kidnappers were ever planning to let those kids go, but I figured that as with all missing persons cases, our best hopes of finding them were in the first forty-eight hours.
“Road trip,” I said to Brian, and he followed me without question.
When we got to my car, I found I had a flat tire—a nuisance I so didn’t need right now. I didn’t feel like taking the time to change the tire, so we took a cab to Adam’s place. It was past rush hour, so it didn’t take long to snag one, and since the cabbie drove at somewhere around the speed of light, we were at Adam’s practically before we left my apartment. A peek at the small parking lot across the street showed me that both Adam’s and Dom’s cars were in residence.
Ever the gentleman, Brian paid the cabbie—which was probably a good thing, since I didn’t think I had any cash on me—and together we climbed the steps up to Adam’s door. I pressed the doorbell, but I didn’t hear any sound. I pressed again, harder. Still nothing. Great! A broken doorbell reduced the chances of anyone hearing me from about twenty percent to about zero.
I grabbed the knocker and gave it a few heavy thumps. The sound was gratifyingly loud, but after a good sixty seconds of waiting, no one came to the door. I tried again, with the same result.
“I guess no one’s home,” Brian said.
“Their cars are in the lot.”
He shrugged. “It is actually possible to get places in this city without driving.”
“Remember, I’m the smart-ass. You’re the nice guy.”
He grinned. “Oh yeah. Sorry, forgot about that.” I rolled my eyes at him, then backed down the steps and craned my head upward. There didn’t appear to be any lights on in the house, but then it was the middle of the day.
“You don’t happen to know how to pick locks, do you?” I asked. Brian just gave me a look that said I was crazy. It was my turn to shrug. “Never hurts to ask.”
Any moment now, Brian was going to decide it was time to give up on Adam, and I felt sure his next suggestion would be a call to 911. I couldn’t let that happen.
If you let me in, I can break the door, Lugh whispered in my head.
I hesitated. The fact that I could hear him at all meant my defenses were already weak. Weak enough for me to voluntarily let Lugh take over? A shiver crawled down my spine then back up again. I grabbed Brian’s arm and dragged him around the corner. I didn’t want too many people watching us as we cased the place. The last thing I needed was some Good Samaritan calling us in as suspicious loiterers.
“Let’s go sit down for a moment,” I said, jerking my chin toward a bus stop half a block down. A bus was just pulling away, so the bench was empty when we got there.
“Okay,” Brian said slowly, watching me suspiciously. But he didn’t press until we’d both sat down. “What’s up?”
I took a deep breath and ordered myself not to panic. “I’m going to try to let Lugh take over so he can break the door down.”
Brian’s eyebrows shot up in almost comical surprise. “That’s ridiculous! They’re almost certainly not home, and I doubt Adam would appreciate having you vandalize his house.”
“Not me, Lugh. And I’m pretty sure they’re home.”
“They can’t be. You knocked loud enough to raise the dead.”
Brian had been in Adam’s house once before. He’d even been on the second floor, but I didn’t know if the door to the black room had been open at the time.
I cleared my throat. “When you were in Adam’s house, did you see his, uh. .” I didn’t know what to call it. I supposed “dungeon” was the proper term, but I couldn’t make myself say it. I cleared my throat again. “Did you see the black room?”
“Black room?” Brian asked in a voice that told me the answer was no.
I stared at the pavement, trying not to remember too much about that damn room. “Yeah. At the head of the stairs. It’s where Adam keeps his, uh, S&M stuff.” I’d never told Brian about what Adam had done to me in that room, what I’d let him do to me. I didn’t want him to feel guilty about the hell I’d gone through to get Adam to help me rescue him.
“What about it?” Brian asked softly.
“I think they’re in there now. And I think I could shoot a cannon through the front door and they wouldn’t bother to come check it out.”
“Oh,” Brian said. Thankfully, he left it at that.
“Wish me luck,” I mumbled, then let out a deep sigh and tried to
relax. I closed my eyes and visualized opening the doors of my mind. The wail of a siren broke my concentration, and my eyes popped open in time to see a police car zoom down a cross street.
I closed my eyes again and ordered myself to focus. Which lasted about ten seconds. Then a pimpmobile cruised by with its stereo blasting rap loud enough to make the sidewalk vibrate. After that, I was distracted by the roar and stink of a bus traveling in the opposite direction.
All typical city sounds. Sounds that I ignore with ease every day of the week. But each was an excuse to let my mind shy away from what I asked it to do. Just this once, I cursed the strength of my subconscious defenses. I tried reminding myself that the lives of two innocent children might lie in the balance, but although stress had helped erode the barriers of my mind before, it wasn’t working now.
Sorry, Lugh, I thought. I just don’t know how to let go. He didn’t answer me, which was just as well.
Regretfully, I opened my eyes. “No dice,” I told Brian. He probably gave me a reproachful look, but since I was staring off into space, I didn’t see it.
“So what’s plan C?” he asked.
I was about to admit that I didn’t have a plan C, but then I realized that I did.
The only reason I’d tried to let Lugh take control was because I needed a demon’s strength to break Adam’s door. There was nothing to say it had to be my demon’s strength.
“I guess I call in the cavalry,” I said, though in my case the cavalry wore very black hats. Trying not to clench my teeth too hard, I fished out my phone and called Raphael.
“Morgan or Lugh?” he asked as soon as he answered.
I was severely tempted to say it was Lugh, thinking perhaps Raphael would be more willing to help if he thought he was getting orders from his king. I managed to resist the temptation, though, not sure if I could pull it off.
“It’s Morgan,” I said. “I need your help.”
“Where are you? Are you in trouble?”
The alarm in his voice might have been gratifying if I thought it had anything to do with concern for me. “No more trouble than usual,” I assured him. “But I need your help just the same. How fast can you make it to the corner of Twenty-Second and Walnut?” His apartment building was only about five blocks away, so I figured it would be pretty fast.
“I’m on my way now,” he said, and I could hear his hurried footsteps. “I’ll be there in ten minutes, tops.”
He hung up before I had a chance to say thank you. Not that I’d been going to thank him anyway, not until after he’d actually helped me. I figured he might be a bit peeved when he got here and found out what I wanted him to do. And why. Somehow I doubted he’d be anxious to play the white knight and rescue those little girls. In fact, he’d probably blow a gasket when he found out what I’d been up to.
For all his many faults, I didn’t think Raphael would like the idea of any harm coming to those children. His moral compass was severely bent, but I didn’t believe it was completely broken. However, he would consider protecting Lugh a higher priority, and making any attempt to rescue the children was bound to put Lugh in some kind of danger. I just had to get him to break that door down before he knew why I wanted him to.
I was planning out my argument when my cell phone rang. When I saw the call was from Adam, I felt a rush of mingled relief and irritation.
I answered the phone, practically shaking with outrage. “Isn’t there some kind of rule that you have to be available by phone at all times?” I snapped. Saying hello is highly overrated.
“I am,” he said simply.
“I’ve been trying to reach you for hours!” An exaggeration, but it sure felt like hours.
I could almost hear him shrug. “My office has my emergency number.”
I reminded myself to stop by his office and thank the whining asshole who’d answered the phone for all his “help.” “Where are you? I need to talk to you. Now.”
“I’m at home. I’ll be at your place in twenty minutes.”
“No, I’ll be at yours in two. I guess you didn’t hear me knocking.”
“Oh. That was you?” He cleared his throat. “Sorry. I was, uh, busy.”
“I’ll bet,” I muttered. “How’s Dom?”
Adam hesitated. “He’s fine,” he finally said, but there was something funny in his voice.
I wanted to ask what was wrong, but there was no reason to talk about it on the phone when I was right around the corner. “Whatever,” I said, figuring I’d grill him about it in a couple of minutes. “I’ll be there in a few. And just so you know, I’ll have Brian and Raphael with me.”
“Wonderful,” he said sourly. “I’m in the mood for a party right now.”
“Don’t get pissed at me! If you’d answered your phone when I first called, this would have been a lot simpler.”
“Whatever,” he said, and I guessed that funny voice was supposed to be mimicking mine. His impersonation could use a little work.
I couldn’t think of anything else to say, at least nothing that wasn’t so snarky it would get us off on even more of a wrong foot, so I just hung up and waited for Raphael.
Raphael must have been alarmed by my call even though I’d told him I wasn’t in any more trouble than usual. He showed up in less time that it would take me to cover half the distance. People had gathered at the bus stop, and though like typical city dwellers they were all pretending they were the only people around, I knew full well we couldn’t afford to talk about the situation in anyone’s hearing. So when Raphael strode toward me with the obvious intention of giving me the third degree, I jerked my thumb toward the corner.
“We’re going to Adam’s,” I said, and started moving before he had a chance to reply. I felt his eyes boring into the back of my head, but I did my best to ignore it. Brian fell into step beside me, and moments later, I heard Raphael hurry to catch up.
“You gonna tell me what’s going on?” Raphael asked when he reached my other side.
I wished Adam’s call had come just a couple minutes earlier so I could have avoided Raphael’s company, but I supposed if he was to serve as one of Lugh’s advisors, it was for the best that he come along. Besides, if he’d been following Lugh’s orders, maybe he’d found some more information about the Houston facility. And maybe the information I’d gotten could fill in some of the gaps.
“When we get inside,” I answered. I still felt like Raphael was staring holes in me, but I refused to confirm my suspicion by looking at him.
Adam was waiting for us when we arrived. I didn’t even have to knock. It looked like he’d dressed in a hurry. His T-shirt was only haphazardly tucked into his jeans, his feet were bare, and his hair was mussed. He gave Brian and Raphael each a long look, then opened the door wide enough to let us in.
When Dominic was playing hostess, any conversations that took place in this house happened in the kitchen, usually accompanied by food. But there was no sign of Dominic now, so Adam directed us to the living room instead. I hoped Dom was upstairs wrapped in blissful post-coital slumber. However, Adam seemed pretty tense, and I worried about what that might mean.
Much though I wanted to ask about Dom, he couldn’t be my first priority at the moment. So instead, I forced myself to stay on topic and explain to Adam and Raphael what had happened.
I wasn’t surprised when there was a long silence after I’d finished. I sure wished I could read their minds like Lugh could read mine. And I sure hoped Adam was enough of a cop to want to help Claudia’s daughters, even if sticking his neck out for them might not be in Lugh’s best interests. After all, Lugh didn’t seem to have any objections to the idea of mounting a rescue. Or if he did, he wasn’t stupid enough to think he could bully me into keeping out of it.
The silence went on a little too long, and like an idiot I rushed to fill it.
“I didn’t find out about all this until this morning,” I said, then squirmed a bit, knowing no one was going to like hearing what I had to say ne
xt. “All I knew last night was that Claudia had ‘fired’ me and that some goons thought beating me up would make me back down.”
Adam fixed me with one of his black looks. “What did you do?” he asked, and I tried not to wither under his preemptive disapproval.
“I, um, stopped by The Seven Deadlies.”
Brian looked vaguely ill at the mention of the club; Raphael looked worried; Adam, predictably, looked furious. I wondered if talking fast and loud would keep the boys from letting me know what they thought of me right now. I decided it wouldn’t hurt to try.
“I figured Shae knew more than she was telling us, so I had a little chat with her.” Adam looked like he was about to kill me, so angry I caught the faint glow in his eyes that meant his demon was shining through. I kept talking, though my instinct for self-preservation suggested now would be a good time to run like hell. Adam has a very effective death glare.
“I found out that Tommy’s been paying her to procure women for him.”
That surprised Adam enough to dim the glow in his eyes. “Come again?”
There seemed to be more oxygen in the room now that he wasn’t glaring at me like that, and I heaved a sigh of relief. “She apparently can get a great deal of information about her regular customers. Tommy wanted her to find him women whose families have a history of hereditary cancer. And it sounded like he specifically selected ones who might be a bit careless about their birth control.” Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Raphael, seeking any clue that this meant something to him. Unfortunately, he has an effective poker face, unlike mine.
“She doesn’t know why, but I can make an educated guess.” This time, I faced Raphael full on. “Care to tell me your theory?”
He lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug. “I haven’t gotten any new information since we last spoke, if that’s what you’re asking. But it does seem pretty obvious that Tommy’s trying to spread his genes.” He looked thoughtful. “My guess would be that Houston had more success with their project than I’d realized. Tommy must be a pretty valuable specimen.”