by Dan Moren
“Uh, I’m sorry. I forgot what we were talking about.”
Gwen gave him a knowing look that dripped at the edges. “Why you came back?”
“Oh, right. Actually, I’m looking for someone.”
“Yeah?” Her eyebrows went up. “Someone from your past, eh? Old flame? Long lost love?” She grinned.
“Nothing quite so poetic.”
“They got a name?”
Eli turned the question over in his head. If William MacKenzie’s greeting was any indication, Gwen was a regular in the Pig and Thistle. Which meant that if Eamon still frequented the bar, there was a good chance that they’d crossed paths—or that she’d at least know his name and how to find him. Couldn’t hurt to try, could it?
“His name’s Brody. Eamon Brody. You know him?”
Maybe it was Eli’s imagination, but he thought Gwen’s expression went fixed for a second, as though she’d been insulted but didn’t want to show it. William returned, bearing their drinks, and by the time Eli looked over at her again, she looked perfectly normal. Better than normal. Perfect.
“Eamon Brody,” she murmured. “Certainly sounds familiar.” She picked up both the drinks off the bar, letting them swing in her hands for a moment; it looked like she was a bit drunker than Eli had thought. With a sudden frown, she put the drinks down. The one closest to Eli sloshed heavily and about half the drink ended up on the bar.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she snapped at herself. “I’m sorry. Hold on, I’ll have William top it up.” She raised her hand toward the bartender.
“That’s okay,” said Eli. “Probably more than enough for me anyway.”
“No, no,” said Gwen, spreading a hand on her chest, where Eli found his attention once again avoidably drawn. “It’s the least I can do.”
“Uh huh.”
The gap-toothed bartender reappeared, and Gwen quickly explained what had happened, taking the man’s hand in her own and pleading for sympathy. He looked over at Eli, who found his breath catch as the man frowned—had he recognized Eli at last? Finally, he patted Gwen’s hand. “I’ll take care of it, lass. Don’t fret. Back in a flash.”
Gwen looked over at Eli again and smiled, but there was something slightly off about it, like it was painted on.
“Don’t worry about it,” Eli protested again. “I should probably be going anyway.”
“Oh, no,” said Gwen, leaning forward to take his hand between hers. “Not on account of my clumsiness, please.” Her hand was warm on his and her fingers traced his veins, raising the hairs in a sensation he hadn’t felt in a long time. He couldn’t even summon the words to respond to her, distracted as he was by her touch.
True to his word, William was back a moment later setting down another full shot glass for Eli. The bartender carefully straightened the napkin on which it was set and nodded to Eli and Gwen, who gave him a warm smile in return.
The red-haired woman raised her glass. “To friends, old and new.”
Eli lifted his own and echoed her words. “Old and new.” He threw the shot back and swallowed. The familiar taste was still there, but this time it was overshadowed by something much heavier: a bitter, syrupy taste that reminded him of the cough medicine his mother used to make him take.
“Augh,” he spat, turning the glass over with a frown and wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “That’s gone off, I think. Must be a rotten cask?”
Gwen frowned. “Well, that’s no good.”
“No, not good at all,” said Eli, trying to get the foul taste out of his mouth. “Think we can get that one on the house?” The syrupy flavor lingered on his tongue and the sensation made his eyes water. He rubbed at the corners of them.
Gwen sighed, shaking her head and eyeing the bottom of her empty shot glass. She placed it delicately on the table. “You know, it’s a shame.”
“What is?” said Eli off-handedly, still rubbing at his eyes. His vision wouldn’t clear and he felt his movements getting sluggish. Two drinks? I must be more out of practice than I thou—
He stiffened suddenly and his mouth went dry. Shit, shit, shit. Too late, he levered himself off the bar stool, feeling his knees wobble beneath him. He looked over at Gwen, who was regarding him with a mixture of pity and regret, and then back at his empty glass.
“I was just beginning to like you,” said Gwen.
Eli took a deep breath, but everything seemed cloudy and hot. He pulled at the collar of his shirt and stumbled away from the bar. The crowd suddenly seemed to clear in front of him, but he staggered through it like he was lost in the fog off the harbor.
“Should be going,” he slurred to nobody in particular. He felt hands firmly seize both of his elbows, and the next step he took met only air. There was a sensation of being lifted up gently, borne on a stretcher made of clouds. A bright light shone in his eyes; it was the last thing he remembered.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“So on a scale of one to complete blithering idiot, where are we putting this kid?”
Kovalic gave Tapper a sidelong glance. The older man had never been one to mince words. Perks of being an old codger, he supposed. For his own part, he couldn’t come up with any response better than a noncommittal grunt as the two of them wound through the darkened streets of Raleigh City.
“He’s new at this. Give him time.”
“Come on, you don’t have to be a wormhole physicist to figure out an address written on the back of a credit chit.”
The first message from Three, that Eli Brody had failed to get off at the bus stop for the safe house, had come in about twenty minutes ago. Since then, the third member of their team had been keeping close tabs on Brody, who apparently had decided that a nighttime stroll in the capital’s port district might do him a world of good.
“You think he’s going to ground?” Tapper asked, giving voice to the thoughts that Kovalic himself was trying to ignore.
Kovalic grimaced. “I don’t think so.” As the general had pointed out, there was no place for Brody to run. No place that kept him out of the way of both the Commonwealth and the Illyricans, anyway. Besides, he had to know that Kovalic would find him.
And even though Brody hadn’t been thrilled to help them, Kovalic didn’t think he was the type of person to go back on his word. Besides, there was still his sister, and from what he could tell Brody genuinely did want to see her again.
His side twinged at that thought; the general had maintained that omitting elements of the truth was not the same as lying, but it still didn’t sit right with Kovalic. Not that he hadn’t lied plenty in his life—you might call it a core competency of his current occupation—but there was a difference between deception as part of the job and lying to get someone on your side. He’d argued to the general that they should tell Brody everything about his sister, but he’d been overruled.
Kovalic sighed. Splitting hairs, wasn’t he? They’d needed Brody’s help, and his sister had been the easiest way to get it. No use getting all conscientious about it now.
His comm buzzed and he answered it. The calm, collected voice of Three, otherwise known as Lieutenant Aaron Page, filtered into his ear; he looped in Tapper’s comm.
“There’s some sort of sentry set up here.” Page spoke in a quiet tone that hopefully wouldn’t draw too much attention to a man strolling down the street by himself. “Looks like a sign-countersign, but I wasn’t close enough to make it out.”
Tapper gave Kovalic a look of mock horror and covered his own mic. “You mean there’s something the boy wonder can’t do? This day’s proving full of surprises.”
Kovalic hushed him. “What’s your twenty, Three?”
“Found a vantage, and I’ve got eyes on. Looks like he’s heading to a … bar.”
“Can you get a read on it?”
“Not from here. I’ll send you my location—maybe you can cross reference it against the city grid.”
Kovalic and Tapper’s comms pinged in unison as the positioning tag show
ed up. He jutted his chin at Tapper, who nodded and started looking up the address.
“Orders?”
“Give him a nice long leash. We don’t want to spook him. Two and I are inbound.” He glanced at Tapper, who looked up from his comm and flashed him five fingers three times in quick succession. “ETA fifteen minutes.”
“Copy that. See you then.” Page clicked off.
Kovalic scratched his chin. Brody had made a beeline for this place, whatever it was, and he’d known how to get past the security that Page had decided to avoid. There was the chance, as Tapper had suggested, that the kid was trying to shake them, but something about it just didn’t seem right.
Nor did he think Brody was simply thirsty. Though the kid had smelled like alcohol back on Sabaea—and, to be honest, it hadn’t seemed like an isolated event—there were any number of places along Brody’s route that would have served the man a drink and wouldn’t have required knowing some sort of passphrase.
That left a third possibility: Brody was doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing, following a lead. In which case, it was their job to support him … and make sure he didn’t get himself killed in the process.
“What’d you find?”
Tapper was reading something on his comm. “Looks like the only place in that vicinity that matches the description is a watering hole called The Pig and Thistle.”
“Public records?”
“Gimme a second, gimme a second.” He cursed, stabbing at the device with his finger. “I hate these bleeding things. I thought we brought Three along to handle the paperwork.”
Kovalic suppressed a smile. Page might have been far faster when it came to digging up intel, but he was also far less entertaining to watch.
“Okay, here. Liquor license issued for a Liam MacKenzie, but that was a while back. Looks like his son may be the current proprietor.”
An old friend of one of the brothers Brody, perhaps? Or something more? The sentry was the key, and it definitely wasn’t the kind of thing the Illyricans went in for. No, it sounded more like … a gang?
“Do me a favor and run that location through the police logs. See if anything pops.”
Tapper rattled off a muted string of invective once again, as he pretty much did whenever he tried to finagle any technological device more complicated than an explosive charge. “Yeah, okay, there’s something here. Looks like the usual number of drunk-and-disorderlies for your average establishment of this type. Couple of brawls.” He sucked in a breath and raised his eyebrows. “Ooh, unlawful political rally. Doesn’t look like anybody was charged, but there was some definite anti-Imperium shit going down.”
Danzig had said something about a street gang connected to the Black Watch—the Tartans. That could explain the sentry. And from what they’d seen of Eamon Brody’s record, the man had not been a shrinking violet when it came to politically inspired violence. So maybe the kid was on the right track.
Didn’t mean he wasn’t about to get himself into a world of trouble. Kovalic quickened his pace and Tapper fell into step with him.
“So … closer to the ‘blithering idiot’ end of the spectrum, then?”
Kovalic grimaced. “For all of our sakes, let’s hope not.”
Eli’s head hurt. His mouth tasted like he’d been licking a rug and everything smelled like stale dampness. He moaned, but it came out muffled; it felt like somebody had tightly wrapped a towel around his head.
Upon second appraisal, this appeared to be because somebody had wrapped a towel around his head. Not a nice fluffy, freshly-laundered, smelling-of-spring towel either. More like an oh-crap-the-dog-threw-up-on-the-carpet-again towel. And here he’d been pretty sure that they didn’t allow dogs in the bar. So where exactly had they gotten the towel? And more importantly: what kind of dog was it? Maybe he could figure it out by taste.
That was a decision he immediately regretted.
This prompted an unfortunate cycle of events that involved Eli trying to spit out the towel, only to find that sucking in the air to do so ended up with the towel back into his mouth. And yet, his fuzzy brain kept trying anyway, convinced that somehow he’d get the best of the situation.
After three or four rounds of this particularly engaging game, he discovered that he wasn’t alone in the room. There appeared to be three or four other people around based on the sounds of conversation. The towel muffled his hearing, but they talked over each other enough for him to distinguish different tones. At least one of them was a woman, he thought. Or perhaps a young man. Or maybe a man who’d just sucked the helium out of a balloon to disguise his voice. Clever.
It was at that point he realized that his line of cogent thought had made a break for it. He chalked part of it up to the whisky he’d had at the bar and then, after some careful, focused consideration, blamed the rest of it on whatever the hell that woman had put into his drink.
He’d never been drugged before—definitely not by a woman. Part of him thought maybe he ought to be flattered by the attention, but the part of his brain that was quite reasonably panicking over the situation poured cold water on that.
The voices ceased overlapping—arguing?—long enough for him to make out the woman’s voice saying something. “… any more part of this.”
“Tough,” said a man, “you brought him in.”
Eli’s slowly returning faculties were coherent enough to piece together that these were the people who’d grabbed him and not, say, fellow tied-up towel-draped abductees.
A moment later he wished he hadn’t thought of being tied up, since the sudden realization that he was indeed bound to something—a hard chair, from the testimony of his numb rear end—had made his nose start to itch rather furiously. To be fair, he would have noticed it earlier had he any feeling in his hands or feet.
The panic started to rise in his chest like vomit—or maybe that was vomit—and he quickly tried to push it back down. Panic wasn’t going to help him and throwing up on the towel, gross as it already was, was an equally unappealing option. He tried to reassure himself: Fielding and the others are supposed to have my back. They’ll track me down.
The thought of Fielding made him breathe easier. The man was clearly a pro at this sort of thing. All Eli had to do was hold on until Fielding charged in, guns blazing, and rescued him.
Only he hadn’t told Fielding where he was going. He’d skipped the meet and followed his own brilliant intuition down to the Pig and Thistle. Which meant the Commonwealth team had no idea where he was at this exact moment.
The bile started rising in his throat again. This isn’t helping.
He had to stay calm. Fielding. What would Fielding do? As a game, it was far more entertaining than spit-the-disgusting-towel-out-of-your-mouth.
That was job one, actually: get them to take the bloody thing off his head. He cleared his throat loudly, which didn’t seem to get any reaction from the voices, who had returned to arguing. He tried for the polite approach.
“Uh, excuse me?” Unfortunately, it came out rather muffled and ended with the towel back in his mouth. Frustrated, he took as deep a breath as the towel would allow him and went for volume.
“OI!”
The argument ceased and Eli had a very distinct feeling of several pairs of eyes swiveling toward him, which quickly bled into a self-conscious feeling of helplessness. “Uh, can somebody take this goddamn thing off?”
There was a murmured discussion from the voices and some movement next to him, followed by blessed fresh air as someone whisked the towel off his head. He blinked rapidly, as he found himself squinting into an array of bright lights that someone had pointed in his direction. It also had the added effect of obscuring the other people in the room, who were shielded by the glare.
Well, I guess they’re not going to make it easy for me. He had to conclude that his abductors were part of the Tartans, since he’d been drugged in a bar known to be affiliated with them and in plain sight of a hundred people or so. Didn’t
really seem likely that the authorities would have gone that route.
Eli wrinkled his nose. The person who had removed the towel was standing behind him now, out of his view. Then again, he didn’t need his eyes for that, since the scent that wafted down toward him was plenty familiar.
“You know, you didn’t have to drug me to get me back to your place, sweetheart. Although, this is a bit kinky for my tastes.”
The red-haired girl from the Pig and Thistle, Gwen, slid into his field of view, her arms crossed over her chest. She was dressed the same as she had been at the bar, leading Eli to surmise that he hadn’t been out for too long. They must have hit him with something concentrated to drop him that fast. Maybe his body was already filtering it out.
And that was the wrong metabolic process to start thinking of. Now his nose itched and he had to take a piss too … all of which was difficult to do while tied to a chair. He eyed the woman, who was watching him with a guarded expression.
“I don’t suppose you’d give my nose a scratch?” he asked hopefully.
“You said you were looking for Eamon Brody,” said Gwen, ignoring his request.
Eli blinked and a memory rose to his mind: something about her had changed when he’d mentioned Eamon. Like she’d known him. Or of him, at least. Given his circumstances, it seemed like maybe they weren’t on the best of terms.
“Yesssss?” he said slowly.
“What do you know about him?”
Eli shrugged—or he tried to anyway, coming dangerously close to tipping his chair over. “Well, actually, quite a bit. Let’s see. His favorite color’s blue, he’s got a birthmark on his back that kind of looks like a duck if you squint …” he was rambling, he realized, but he found that he just couldn’t stop; it was like someone had pulled a string. What the hell did she dose me with? “He couldn’t hit a baseball if his life depended on it, and once when he was a kid he gave himself a concussion when he tried to steal—”
He was still talking when the woman backhanded him across the face. It wasn’t a light slap, either, like the kind you might give to somebody who seemed a little bit out of it. This was a full-on shut-the-hell-up-or-you’ll-get-worse-when-your-father-comes-home slap. Then again, he’d had worse—it was more the shock of her hitting him that made him decide to stop talking than anything else.