Right to the Kill (Harmony Black Book 5)

by Craig Schaefer

  Men in handcuffs tended to draw attention; Randy’s hands swung free at his sides as he led the way across the sleepy suburban street. Jessie had patted him down before they got in the car and now she stayed right with him, one hand clamped firm on his shoulder. He didn’t try anything. Then again, he seemed to believe he was going to walk away after being an accessory to multiple murders—Harmony had muttered reassuring words like “witness protection program” on the drive over—so he had an incentive to cooperate.

  “We can go in through the garage,” he said. “He always has us lug the heavy stuff through the garage.”

  Randy punched in an entry code next to one of the broad bay doors. An engine rumbled and the ivory slats rolled upward. The garage was as empty as the driveway outside. Hermetically clean, not a single stray oil spot on the concrete, and paint cans on a utility shelf stood arranged in perfect symmetry.

  The door between the garage and the house was locked. Randy looked at the unmoving knob like it had just ruined his entire imaginary plea bargain. Jessie sighed and stepped around him.

  “Harmony, watch him.”

  She unfolded a black velveteen envelope. A row of lockpicks nested inside. She chose a pick and a tension rake, crouched on one knee, and got to work.

  Cold air gusted over them as the door swung wide. Cranston kept the AC on even when he wasn’t at home, turning the pristine house into a tomb. Jessie held up a hand. She stood on the threshold, ears perked, hunting for any sign of movement. Once the silence satisfied her, she let Randy take the lead. They wound through the icy halls, past Cranston’s personal dojo and the aquarium library, toward a stubby hall just off the kitchen. The hall bloomed into a pantry lined with metal shelves, stocked with enough staple goods—sacks of flour, sacks of rice—to hold out against a siege.

  He nudged one of the flour sacks aside. It had been carefully placed to conceal a keypad.

  “This is as far as I’ve ever been,” he said. “The man’s very particular about who he lets inside.”

  He tapped four buttons. The pad responded with a high-pitched beep. The shelving unit beside it popped loose, along with a chunk of the wall. Randy grabbed a shelf and hauled it back, turning the whole unit on a concealed hinge. Beyond was a plunging stairwell, frost-white and smelling of bleach. Randy dusted his hands off.

  “Voilà,” he said. “So, how does this work? Can I go now? We cool?”

  Jessie and Harmony shared a wordless conversation. Harmony knew Jessie would have been just fine with blowing his brains across the wall of oatmeal canisters behind him, but they might need to cover their tracks and lay a trap for Cranston when he got home. A dead body would spoil that. Besides, as she pointed out with a tiny incline of her head, they had no idea what was up ahead. Cranston might have set traps of his own.

  “Inside,” Jessie told him. “You go first.”

  “Like I said, I’ve never been down there. I can’t help with that—”

  She grabbed his shoulder and gave him a shove.

  “Do it anyway,” she said.

  The stairwell turned, doubling back twice and still diving, aiming for the heart of the house. And in that cold and bleached heart, beneath the distant thrum of a generator, stood Cranston’s laboratory.

  It was a close cousin to his public front at Nautilus Research, but sized down for the work of a single man. Ultrawide monitors perched on glass workstations along one wall, next to a server rack. There were storage shelves bearing sealed canisters, most of them in hazard orange or venom green, and benches laden with testing equipment. All of it pristine, not a speck of dust permitted in Judah Cranston’s inner sanctum. Stark light streamed down from operating-room fixtures, spaced between the metal rafters.

  And there was a tank.

  Just one, eight feet tall and maybe ten across, and the antiseptic air took on a salty tang from the murky water within. Harmony tasted it as she breathed, standing frozen, transfixed by the sight before her. Cranston didn’t keep sharks down here.

  There was a woman in the tank.

  She floated in the water, sinuous arms rippling, completely submerged. A mane of golden hair flowed behind her like a bridal train. She was naked, her skin alabaster, her face a motionless mask of serenity as if she were some classic statue brought to life. Just below her navel, bare skin became a coat of coppery scales. Instead of legs, her body ended in a tail with glittering metallic fins.

  “That ain’t real,” Randy whispered.

  “That’s a mermaid,” Jessie said. “Cranston has a mermaid.”

  “That ain’t real.”

  Harmony took a step toward the glass. The mermaid turned to follow her movements, eyes curious. The ancient coin Harmony wore as a necklace, her family relic, began to thrum and shiver against her breastbone.

  “Where the hell did he find a mermaid?” Randy said.

  “Not here.” Harmony’s fingertip thumped the knot of her tie. The coin fell still, for the moment. “I don’t think she’s from this world.”

  “You mean…she’s an alien mermaid? Like, from Mars or something?”

  Behind her, Jessie was on her phone. “Just who I wanted to…really? What’s his excuse? Okay. I mean, we’re going to have words, but…right. Give him Cranston’s address. I want him here in ten. Tell him to go through the garage and look for a pantry off the kitchen with a stairway going down. We’ll be in the basement.”

  Harmony drifted across the lab, like the mermaid’s gaze was tugging at her feet.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “That was April,” Jessie said. “Agent Dominguez just reported in, and he’s on his way. Apparently, he was covering the front of the Rusty Nail when they were taking Cooper out the back. He didn’t want to admit how badly he fucked up, so he’s been on the ground here running his own investigation, trying to get some results so he wouldn’t be coming back empty-handed.”

  “That’s not how we do things.”

  “And he’s going to hear that from me, but apparently he’s got something big for us.”

  Not this big, whatever it was. The mermaid held Harmony’s gaze, her expression frozen and unreadable as her tail gently swayed in the brine. Her hands beckoned, undulating like a belly dancer in slow motion.

  Harmony stood before the glass. On the other side, the mermaid swam close, hovering almost nose-to-nose.

  Then she erupted. The mermaid’s face split open, ripping into four strips of muscle and flesh that unfurled like the petals of a lethal flower. There was no skull underneath, just a gaping red and hungry maw, and the underbellies of the creature’s flesh-tendrils were lined with hundreds of shark teeth. The teeth slapped at the wall of the tank, desperate and flailing.

  Randy staggered back with a strangled curse on his lips. Harmony held her ground, motionless, watching. The creature’s frenzy ended as quickly as it began. The torn petals of her face folded back together, putting her human disguise in place. She lifted her alabaster chin at Harmony, a silent pout, then shifted her attention to the others.

  “I don’t know how we’re going to move this tank,” Jessie muttered. She crouched to study the foundation, a strip of chrome that ringed the glass base. “How did he get her down here in the first place? Summoning? Is it some kind of demon?”

  Harmony shook her head. “My coin doesn’t react to demons. This is interdimensional.”

  “Think Cranston’s hooked up with the Network? Or what’s left of it anyway?”

  “Maybe.” She heard the doubt in her own voice. This felt different. Just an intuitive nudge.

  Jessie stood up and propped a hand on her hip. The mermaid stared at her. Her arms began to sway once more, beckoning her closer.

  “Bitch,” Jessie said, “I don’t think so.”

  The mermaid crossed her arms over her breasts and glowered at her.

  “You can understand us, can’t you?” Harmony murmured.

  The mermaid glanced her way.

  “You’re sentient. Why is
Cranston keeping you here? Are you his prisoner or something else?”

  “I’m more curious about why he’s been feeding people to her,” Jessie said.

  “That might be the only thing she can eat. Look. Her face isn’t her face, it’s camouflage.”

  One of the face-petals peeled back in the water, just left of her nose, revealing the glint of shark teeth.

  “Some animals, even some carnivorous plants, evolve scents and lures designed to mimic their prey. To draw them close, keep them off guard until they attack. Wherever she’s from, it’s a place where mermaids are at least one step higher than humans on the food chain.”

  “Jesus,” Randy said. “You mean this is the thing that ate Oscar? I’m gonna be sick.”

  Jessie’s hand eased toward her blazer. And the shoulder holster underneath.

  “And it’s the thing that ate our friend Cooper. Which reminds me, we’ve got a little unfinished business—”

  “Agents?” called a voice from above, lightly tinged with a Spanish accent. “Dominguez here. Is it clear?”

  “Come on down,” Harmony called back.

  Resonating thumps echoed his footsteps in the stairwell. Dominguez was tall and lean, with slicked-back hair the color of charcoal and a snake charmer’s smile. He pulled a hand truck behind him, the source of the thumping, using it to tote a hefty steamer trunk with brass fittings. He laid the trunk down while he talked.

  “I knew you’d want to see this right away,” he said.

  “What I wanted,” Jessie said, “was for you to report in. We had no idea if you were dead or alive.”

  “Hey,” Dominguez said, “you knew my background when you recruited me. Long-range reconnaissance patrol is what I do. I’m used to going dark for months at a time.”

  “That’s not how we do things.”

  “I’ll make it up to you,” he said.

  He flipped up the lid of the trunk. Harmony’s eyes narrowed. His story—that he’d been covering the bar from a distance, expecting Cooper to come out the front—was consistent with his orders. Going dark on the spur of the moment and playing cowboy was consistent with his background. That was as far as she could follow him; from there, everything about this situation felt wrong, a smooth solid line dissolving into fractal chaos.

  “No comment?” she asked him.

  “About?”

  Harmony gestured to the tank.

  “There’s a mermaid three feet to my right, and you haven’t said a word. Either you’re staggeringly imperceptive, or you should be playing poker for a living.”

  “I’m pretty good at poker,” he said, flashing her a smile. “But nah, I’ve been down here already. Ran an infiltration op yesterday afternoon, when Cranston was out running errands. Seriously, I’m ten steps ahead of you two. You ought to be thankful I’m here to bring you up to speed.”

  Randy had been staring, silent. Now he jabbed an uncertain finger at Dominguez.

  “I know you.”

  The smile disappeared. “You don’t know me, pal.”

  “No, I’ve seen you. The night Oscar got shot. The doc told me to get lost, to go build up an alibi. When I was pulling out of the driveway, you were pulling in—”

  Dominguez’s hand appeared from behind the trunk lid, gripping a matte-black pistol. The tube of a sound suppressor spat twice. One bullet caught Randy in the shoulder. The other punched through his cheek and spattered blood and bone against the glass of the tank. Harmony was reaching for her gun when he trained his sights on her.

  “I wouldn’t,” he said. “Seen you on the range, Black. You’re fast, damn fast. But I can empty my magazine before you clear your holster, and you know it.”

  She froze. So did Jessie, standing at her side. Randy’s slack-jawed corpse slumped to the laboratory floor.

  “So much for doing this the smooth and easy way,” Dominguez said. “No problem, though. Like I said, I’m ten steps ahead of you two. By the way, Bobby Diehl sends his regards.”

  24.

  Inside the tank, the mermaid hovered over the bloody smear from Randy’s ruptured skull. Her face-petals split wide, and two greedy, sinuous tongues lapped at the glass as if she could taste the blood from the other side.

  “You’re a traitor,” Harmony said.

  “I’m a realist,” Dominguez replied. “I thought I knew what I was signing up for when I joined Vigilant Lock. I thought I knew what hell looked like.”

  “You’re definitely going to find out,” Jessie muttered.

  “I was at Vandemere Zoo, the night of the Wisdom’s Grave op. I thought I was ready. The shit I saw…we took down a whole squad of Network shooters, and the fuckers got back up again. We chopped ’em into ground beef and they were still moving. And that wasn’t the worst of it. These…dog-things, they dragged one of my guys down and ate him alive, right in front of me. I saw dead men walking, with armored plates bolted into their skin.”

  “We were there,” Jessie said. “What, you pissed off because nobody gave you a medal afterward?”

  “I’m pissed off because I didn’t realize signing up for this outfit was suicide. I’m all for doing my patriotic bid, but you people are insane. You’ve got this one tiny shadow operation, working out of a goddamn basement, barely able to keep the lights on, and you think you’re going to…what? Fight something like that? It’s not just the occasional monster here or there or some nutcase who learns real magic. There is an army of those things, worlds full of stark raving nightmares, and we’re nothing but a lit match in the wind. Look at that thing in the tank.”

  “What?” Jessie said. “Big tough guy like you afraid of a fish?”

  “Oh, fuck you, Temple. That thing is from another dimension, and somehow it evolved to eat humans. What does that tell you about the nature of the universe, huh? What does that tell you about humanity?”

  “It tells us that humanity needs to be protected,” Harmony said. “No matter what. That’s the job. That’s the mission you signed up for.”

  “Yeah, when I thought there was a chance. We’re not ‘fighting the good fight’ or whatever Pollyanna bullshit you want to preach at me. We’re just waiting to get eaten. Well, not me. I started shopping for a better offer.”

  Jessie arched an eyebrow. “Bobby Diehl? That’s your idea of a better offer? Maybe you haven’t noticed, but he’s a cornered rat.”

  “Bobby’s the man with the plan. See, he figured it out. It was after he went on the run and left everything behind, but eventually he figured out Cooper was your mole inside his company. He wasn’t going to let that slide. Meanwhile, he had his deal with Cranston, so he figured he’d kill two birds with one big fucking rock. Me. He’s paying me six figures to kill Cooper—the slower the better, and I think that worked out just fine—and bring him the package Cranston promised him.”

  “Wait a second,” Harmony said. “We thought Cranston murdered Cooper because he was backing out of the deal with Bobby. So why are you still breathing?”

  “Because the minute I landed in Tampa, I went to see Cranston alone. Cooper had no idea; I mean, the whole plan was that I’d trail her and keep hidden, so she didn’t know I was never watching her back at all. I ‘confessed’ to Cranston that Cooper was an assassin. Bobby had sent her to kill him. Then I said, you know, I’d be happy to be his bodyguard for some financial consideration.”

  “You’re not a double agent,” Jessie said. “You’re a triple.”

  “It worked like a charm. Cranston’s thugs grabbed Cooper, the doc vigorously interrogated her for a few hours about an assassination plot that didn’t even exist, and then he fed what was left of her to the mermaid. Know what I love about paranoid people? So easy to manipulate. I got it all on video for Bobby’s viewing entertainment. The guy’s crazy about snuff movies. And here’s the best part.”

  He kept his eyes on them but nodded sideways, toward one of the workstations. A digital timer counted down on the screen of a laptop, twenty-six hours on the clock, next to a softly whi
rring industrial centrifuge. A briefcase on the nearby table stood open, exposing mechanical guts and test-tube-sized indentations. The delivery mechanism.

  “Obviously, the deal’s off. Cranston’s taking his toy—I don’t know what it is, some kind of bioweapon—and going into hiding. He’s just got to finish synthesizing it. Automated process. Once that timer runs down, he’s going to package it all up and hit the road.”

  “And you’re his new best friend,” Harmony said. “So you’ll be right beside him.”

  “In the perfect place to stab him in the back. Or shoot him, whichever works. I call the Concierge, get a pickup, and fly to Xanadu to deliver Bobby the snuff footage and the weapon. I got paid by you, I got paid by Cranston, and next I’m getting paid by Bobby, all for one trip. Not bad, huh?”

  “You’re forgetting something,” Jessie said.

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “You’re forgetting the part where we track Bobby down and bury him in a hole deeper than the Mariana Trench. His fifteen minutes are just about up. You really want to go down with him? In his best-case scenario, he decides to go out with a bang and takes everybody he can with him. Which includes you, champ.”

  “You know, he was worried. Thought you people might have some vague idea of what he’s got planned. Can’t wait to tell him how clueless you are.”

  “You’re bringing him a bioweapon,” Harmony said. “It isn’t hard to guess.”

  “You’re thinking way too small. Now do me a favor. Take out your pieces, nice and slow, holding them between your thumb and your index finger. Then put them down on the floor.”

  Harmony rankled at giving up her weapon, but framed in the traitor’s sights, she didn’t have a choice. She could draw her gun along with her magic, conjure a shield of air thick enough to stop bullets—but she couldn’t do any of it faster than he could squeeze that trigger. Her hand inched along, gingerly plucking her pistol from the shoulder holster, her other hand open and out as she laid the gun down on the tile floor. At her side, Jessie did the same.