Right to the Kill (Harmony Black Book 5)

by Craig Schaefer

  Harmony ran her hands under the tap, massaging the bloodstains away. So Neptune was a pawn after all, roped in as part of Cranston’s scheme to rattle her and Jessie.

  Or she was his partner, and she’d come here tonight with a sob story to worm her way into Harmony’s good graces.

  She wanted to trust Neptune. She was aching to trust somebody tonight. But after Ethan, she couldn’t let herself lower those iron walls again so soon.

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “I asked,” Neptune said. “After you left. He said it was just business. He said I didn’t need to worry about it. He said you were being…dealt with.”

  “Dealt with,” Harmony echoed.

  Her head bobbed. “Those exact words. I asked what he meant. He changed the subject, said I was doing a great job on our new research projects and that he was putting a bonus in my next paycheck.”

  Dealt with, Harmony thought. Like sending a couple of demon-blooded killers to their hotel? One flaw in that theory. They’d faced another pair of supernatural operatives tonight, the bikers who broke into Nautilus Research. And they clearly weren’t on Cranston’s side.

  Either there were two demonic couples out there—the data thieves and Cranston’s shooters—or Cranston hadn’t made his move yet.

  She reached for a dry towel. Neptune reached for something else to say. Harmony could hear it in her pensive silence. She gave her room to let it out.

  “Something is wrong,” Neptune said. “Something has been wrong, for a while now, and I’ve been keeping my head in the sand and ignoring it.”

  “With Nautilus Research?”

  “With Dr. Cranston,” she said. “He’s working on something, a side project all his own, and he froze me and the rest of the staff out. He’s got us making deliveries to his house, he’s brought on extra staff who report directly to him—”

  “Extra staff,” Harmony said. “Two men? In their twenties, one a Latino, the other a white guy with a lot of tattoos?”

  “That’s them. I don’t know who they are, they just pick up orders that get shipped to the research lab to take back to him. They give me the creeps. They’re not scientists, I know that much. They come off like…well, thugs. One time I heard them joking about how the research center reminded them of the fish sticks at Hillsborough.”

  “Hillsborough?”

  “County jail,” Neptune said. “I don’t know why a man like Dr. Cranston would hire people like that.”

  Harmony dried her hands. No more blood, not the kind anyone could see.

  “Helena? Could I ask you something?” Neptune said.

  “Of course.”

  “In the hall, when you had your head back and you answered your phone, I…I saw your jacket fall open.” Neptune eyed her, uneasy. “Why do you have a gun?”

  “A lot of people carry weapons when they travel.”

  “And when I saw you in the lobby,” Neptune said, “why did you look like you’d just been in a fight? Your throat—”

  She gestured. Harmony glanced in the bathroom mirror. Bruising. Damn.

  Neptune was afraid. That, or a hell of an actress. Harmony had to decide which. Keep her walls up or open a tiny gap, just big enough to set Neptune’s fears at ease. She had the look of a woman who was done letting things slide. Good chance, if she froze her out, Neptune would go poking around on her own. If she did that, odds were she’d learn more about her boss than she ever wanted to.

  Neptune stared into Harmony’s eyes, searching for something.

  “He’s dangerous, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Harmony said. “He is.”

  “Who is Natalie Cooper?”

  Harmony weighed her answers. She settled on the truth.

  “A friend of mine.”

  “And…she’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Harmony said. “She is.”

  Neptune took a halting step backward. Through the shock, clarity. She wasn’t stupid. Harmony knew she wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know.

  “I need you to do something for me,” Harmony said, “and it’s very important.”

  “Name it,” Neptune whispered.

  “Nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary. You go to work, you do your job, you don’t even hint that you’re aware of any of this. Keep your head down and let us handle it.”

  “But I can be helpful—”

  Harmony stepped close to her, intimate, holding Neptune’s gaze.

  “He’s dangerous. I can keep you safe. I am going to keep you safe; that’s my job. But if you draw his attention, I can’t protect you. Understand?”

  Her head bobbed once.

  “Let us handle this. It’ll all be over soon.”

  “How will I know when it’s over?” Neptune asked.

  “I’ll tell you myself. And I won’t be able to tell you everything, but I’ll answer whatever questions I can. That’s a promise. Okay?”

  Her hands rested soft on Neptune’s shoulders. Neptune let her turn her around, ease her toward the hotel-room door. She hovered on the threshold, though. She wanted something. Harmony understood. Neptune wanted the same thing she did tonight: some firm ground under her feet and someone she could trust.

  “Harmony,” she told her. “My real name is Harmony.”

  Neptune gave her a faint smile and stepped into the hall. Now she had something she could take home with her.

  Harmony locked the door, flipped the bolt, and hooked a finger around the knot of her tie. She undressed on her way to the bed, snuffing out the lights. She was asleep thirty seconds after her head hit the pillow.

  * * *

  The trill of her phone pulled Harmony from the depths of sleep. It felt like she’d only been gone for seconds, but the first rays of sunlight filtered into her room through the gossamer curtains.

  “Hey,” Jessie said, “can you swing on by? I need you to guard the prisoner while I take a shower.”

  The prisoner in question was tied to the bedposts with sheets twisted into ropes. Jessie had tossed a shower towel over her naked body. She glared, sullen, as Harmony walked into the room.

  “Harmony, Coraline. Coraline, Harmony. Careful, there’s some broken glass by…what’s left of the credenza.”

  “She’s tied to the bed,” Harmony said.

  “Yeah, well, sometimes I like to be tied up, sometimes I do the tying up.” Jessie shrugged. “It’s called being a switch. Deal with it.”

  Jessie picked her way across the wreckage, dressed in a hotel bathrobe and flip-flops. She yanked the curtains open and let sunlight stream into the room. Coraline winced at the light.

  “Damn it. Warn me before you do that.” She turned her head away from the window and locked eyes with Harmony. “Did you kill him?”

  “Who? Ethan? No. He ran away.”

  “Ugh. Typical. Also, note that he did not come to rescue me. Also typical.”

  “Friend of yours?” Harmony asked.

  “My kid brother. Did you beat his ass?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Good,” Coraline said. “He’s had it coming for a while, so don’t feel bad.”

  “I don’t.”

  “We actually met our new friend earlier last night,” Jessie said. “She was the one who hit us with the magic flash-bang. Ethan was driving the motorbike.”

  “So you don’t work for Cranston,” Harmony said.

  Coraline pursed her lips in sullen silence.

  Jessie strolled from the window. She leaned in, putting her hands on the edge of the mattress.

  “Our new friend here—”

  “We are not friends,” Coraline said.

  “Works for the Court of Windswept Razors.”

  New York. The Razors were one of the smallest courts of hell, with less territory than the rest, but they were also one of the wealthiest. Ruling Manhattan meant ruling Wall Street; some of the biggest movers and shakers in the city had signed their employment contracts in blood.

 
“New management’s taking over,” Coraline said. “The old hound is out—‘out’ as in shredded and splattered all over his office—and Ariel is in.”

  Harmony rolled her eyes. “Of course she calls herself Ariel.”

  Jessie shook her head, not following. Harmony looked across the bed at her.

  “Really?” Harmony said. “Ariel. Because the last Razors boss called himself Prospero.”

  “You lost me,” Jessie said.

  “Shakespeare. The Tempest. Jessie, do you read any of the stuff I suggest?”

  “Hey, Jess,” Coraline stage-whispered. “Your partner is a nerd.”

  Harmony gestured to the woman on the mattress. “And she’s here why?”

  “Because I’m amazing in bed,” Jessie said.

  “Barely adequate,” Coraline shot back.

  “You weren’t saying that an hour ago—”

  Harmony crossed her arms. “Not what I meant.”

  “We’re here for the same reason you are,” Coraline said. “Bobby Diehl. We’ve been hunting down Network operatives in New York, a task made considerably easier by their high command all vanishing on the same night. The ones we’ve captured and interrogated have no damn idea what’s going on; all their comms are dead, and nobody’s handing down marching orders. Diehl’s a loose end, and Ariel wants him snipped.”

  “He lives in Los Angeles,” Harmony said. “Why is that your problem?”

  “Because his money lives in New York. Some of it, anyway. The streams we’ve been able to trace. He’s got a private account that’s been making regular payouts to Nautilus Research for a couple of years now. He’s basically keeping them in business as a shadow investor.”

  “So you figured Cranston could tell you where Bobby is hiding, same as us.”

  “Tell her the rest,” Jessie said.

  Coraline rolled her head back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling.

  “Prometheus Chemical,” she said. “New Jersey company, does specialty manufacturing jobs. We have an inside line there, and that’s all I’m going to say about that. Judah Cranston contacted them through a back channel asking about a special purchase order. And they shipped him what he wanted before we could put a quash on it.”

  Harmony’s thoughts went to the shipping records. The diversified purchases, spread out to keep them under the federal radar.

  “What did he buy? Chemicals?”

  “Machine parts,” Coraline said. “A specialized delivery mechanism, custom-made to his specifications. Nice and compact, about the size of a briefcase.”

  “Delivery,” Harmony echoed.

  “For a compressed aerosol spray. Just set a timer and walk away. When it goes off, everyone and everything within a hundred yards gets a lungful of the payload.”

  Judah wasn’t building a bomb for Bobby Diehl. He was building a chemical weapon.

  “He had some bullshit about how it was for dispensing antibiotics for endangered marine life,” Coraline said. “Even produced a patent for it, to back his story up. But you take all those puzzle pieces and click ’em together…”

  Jessie ticked them off on her fingers. “The spread-out chemical purchases, the equipment being shipped to his house, the thugs on his private payroll, not to mention Bobby Diehl being his shadow partner—”

  “Exactly. Whatever Dr. Frankenstein is cooking up, we want it stopped, same as you.”

  Harmony squinted at her. “Still not seeing your angle here.”

  “Hello? New York City is already the prime target for every pissed-off militant with a grudge. Bobby Diehl is a stone-cold lunatic, he’s cornered, and his time’s running out. If he’s preparing his big middle finger to the world, aiming to rack up an epic body count before he goes to hell, we figure there’s only two places he’d pick.”

  “Los Angeles or New York,” Harmony said.

  “Ariel wants this shit dealt with before he plays mad bomber on our doorstep. You two were a bonus grab. Once we told Ariel a couple of Vigilant’s head honchos were on site, she told us to drop everything and snatch you both. Snatch you, not hurt you, so she could have a chat under ‘controlled conditions.’ She was very specific about that. Didn’t work out according to plan.”

  “At least you tried,” Jessie said.

  A phone lay abandoned in the wreckage of the room, over in the far corner. Its screen lit up, a call incoming with a FaceTime request, and a melodic chime filled the room. The caller ID simply read “Her.”

  “Oh shit,” Coraline sighed. “Speaking of the boss.”

  20.

  The melodic chime demanded attention.

  “What happens if you don’t answer?” Harmony asked. Jessie scooped up the phone.

  “Depends on whether my reject of a brother reported in yet, and what kind of excuse he made up. The East Coast courts are all allied, so if she wanted to fly a tactical team down here and get all shooty, she can arrange that.”

  Jessie and Harmony shared a glance.

  “She already knows we’re here,” Harmony said.

  Jessie answered the phone.

  She moved over to Harmony’s side, turning the screen so they could both see the woman on the other end. She was pale, prim, her lips frosted pink. Her black sun hat and cat-eyed glasses reminded Harmony of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

  “We’re sorry,” Jessie said, “Coraline can’t come to the phone right now.”

  Ariel spoke fast, breezy as her stride, walking down a city sidewalk as she held her phone in front of her. Her other hand gripped a grande Starbucks coffee in a cardboard sheath.

  “This is not how I wanted our introduction to go. Lemons, lemonade, moving on. Is Coraline dead?”

  “She’s fine,” Jessie said. “We’ve got her wrapped up for safekeeping.”

  “Proof of life, please.”

  Jessie tilted the screen toward the woman on the mattress.

  “Hey, boss,” Coraline said. She waggled one of her bound hands in a half-hearted wave.

  “This,” Ariel replied, “is going to come up at your next performance review.”

  Jessie turned the phone around.

  “Ms. Black, Ms. Temple. I just left my seven o’clock and I’m on my way to my seven fifteen, so we have a very small window to articulate our actionables. First off, congratulations on assuming control of Vigilant Lock. From one upward mover to another, kudos.”

  “Doesn’t seem like a thing you’d be happy about,” Harmony said, “considering the East Coast courts—including yours—created the scam behind Vigilant in the first place.”

  “My predecessor worked on that.” Ariel’s sunglasses rose as her nose wrinkled. “I considered it a gross waste of resources and an unacceptable level of risk. But he’s dead now and I have the corner office, metaphorically speaking. Nothing says ‘I was right’ like standing on the corpse of my former manager. I’d like to convene at some point to discuss a formal nonaggression treaty.”

  “Nonaggression?” Jessie asked. “You know what our job is, right?”

  “As I understand it, your self-directed mission is to protect humanity from assault by supernatural elements.”

  “Like demons,” Harmony said.

  “My prince has charged me with seeing to the security of his territory. To keep the status quo, and most importantly, to keep the money flowing. We’re a very small court, and we live or die based on the integrity of the markets. The rogue monsters you hunt—Bobby Diehl, case in point—are a threat to that integrity. So long as you don’t come after me or my people, ultimately your organization is good for my bottom line.”

  Harmony held her silence, but she knew Ariel had a point. They’d already forged an uneasy alliance with her counterpart on the West Coast. With stakes this high, and the reborn Vigilant struggling to find its footing in a world teeming with occult threats, they had to pick their battles.

  “I would like you to consider releasing my employee,” Ariel said, “as a gesture of future goodwill.”

>   “And what do we get out of that?” Jessie said.

  Ariel sipped her coffee.

  “Field support and no interference. Let’s face it, this is a ‘too many cooks’ situation. I’ll pull Coraline and Ethan out and let you handle the on-the-ground investigation. Meanwhile, I will retask my operatives with running background on Judah Cranston and forward all pertinents to you.”

  Jessie and Harmony shared a sidelong glance. Harmony knew what her partner was thinking. “Let you handle” was a nice way of saying “let you take all the risks.” Once they cut Coraline loose, there was no telling if Ariel would even hold up her end of the deal. For that matter, there was no guarantee Coraline and Ethan wouldn’t turn right around and take another shot at them.

  There had to be a way to get more out of this bargain and put Ariel’s overtures of peace to the test. Harmony shuffled the pieces in her mind’s eye, stringing people and places together like programming code—a stream of luminous blue if-then-else statements running combinations and probabilities.

  Then she saw it.

  “What’s your opinion on Nadine?” Harmony asked.

  Ariel’s eyebrows lifted. “Najidanere? She’s unprofessional, erratic, untrustworthy—on a level above and beyond most of my kind, and that’s saying something. Her greatest ambition is to become the queen of flyover country, which is just…kind of sad. Also, relations between our court and the Midwest have never been rosy; with the revelation that we’d been using Vigilant Lock to jab at them as a deniable proxy, well. You can imagine.”

  “Just because Vigilant is under new management,” Harmony said, laying her gambit, “that sort of thing doesn’t necessarily have to end.”

  Ariel paused in mid-sip. She lowered her coffee.

  “You have my attention.”

  “We flipped Nadine’s accountant. Dima Chakroun is working for us now. She notified us that Nadine authorized a five-million-dollar payment into an escrow account.”

  “Five million?” Ariel said. “I didn’t know she had that kind of liquid capital. For what?”

  “That’s what we’d like to know. You have reach with the banks that we don’t. If you happened to find out and slipped us the intel under the table so we could act on it…well, we can keep a secret if you can.”