Krijero walked into his little-used apartment and noted it was dustier than ever. Everything seemed to have a gray film on it, making his nose wrinkle in distaste. He needed to get a cleaning service in here, especially since he wasn’t home enough to keep it up himself. He really did live with Gelan and Wynhod for all intents and purposes.
He snorted at himself. He was not going to think about that right now.
Krijero headed into the small sleeping room, dumped the clean clothes he’d brought back from Gelan and Wynhod’s home onto his sleeping mat, and rummaged in drawers and the closet for fresh clothing. As usual, he pulled out only three changes of clothes. He knew he was being superstitious, but he couldn’t help it. Bringing his entire wardrobe over to Gelan and Wynhod’s home, as had been suggested this morning, begged for the worst to happen. The Imdiko thought that cruel fate would leap on him the moment he started accepting the stability of his relationship and knock him back down.
His stomach rumbled as he brought a tote stuffed with his three outfits into the main room. Krijero dropped the bag and automatically went into the tiny kitchen and opened the cooling unit. Of course there was no food in it. He was never home so he never ate here anymore. Once more he was reminded that he lived like a clanned man. He slammed the unit’s door.
Krijero was not the cook Gelan was. Heck, even Wynhod, who could burn water, was better at serving a meal. The Imdiko decided he would order something to be delivered as soon as he got to his lovers’ home.
“Better com Gelan and Wynhod to make sure they don’t pick something up on their way in,” he muttered to himself.
He went to his home com even though he kept his portable unit on a chain around his neck. The chain, a pretty length of metal links that was much stronger than it looked, had been a present from Gelan. He’d given it to Krijero after the Imdiko had dropped and broken his fifth com unit. Usually, Gelan or Wynhod took the necklace off Krijero at the end of the day and put it back on him first thing in the morning. Neither ever seemed to mind doing the little things that Krijero’s clumsiness made so difficult for him. His being warmed to think of it.
Right now, the portable com unit hid beneath the high neck of his loosely-fitting shirt. It was a welcome feeling against his skin.
Krijero hesitated for a moment. Comming Gelan and Wynhod while they were on a stakeout was against the precinct’s rules. Hoping the pair would stop off at the office before they headed home, he decided that would be the best place to leave a message.
“Home com, connect Gelan’s office desk frequency.”
A moment later, the Dramok’s recorded voice filled the room. “This is Investigator Gelan. I am away from my desk at this time. Please leave a detailed message as to why you are calling and I will get back to you as soon as possible.”
Krijero picked up his bag of clothes. “Hey, it’s me. I’m going to pick up your dinners, so don’t—”
His door announce went off, breaking into his message. Krijero turned and stared at the door in confusion. No one visited him here anymore, not even his parent clan when they happened to be in the area. They were well aware he spent most of his time at Gelan’s now.
Besides, he’d spoken to his mother only that morning from the office, and she’d been at home. She hadn’t said a word about coming to the territory.
“Who’s there?” he called.
No one answered. Frowning, Krijero went over to the door. “Hello?” When he still got no reply, Krijero told the door, “Open.”
The door slid obediently wide, revealing Enforcer Nobek Panow standing there with Dramok Dexel right behind him. Before Krijero could react, the Nobek swept in. Krijero was already falling to the floor before he realized Panow had punched him in the face.
Krijero never had a chance to defend himself. The Nobek jumped on him, pinning him to the floor while Dexel watched, guarding the now-closed door. Fists descended over and over, pounding Krijero’s face and skull, sending stomach-wrenching agony through his head. The Imdiko endured half a dozen blows before all went black and the pain mercifully vanished.
* * * *
Gelan and Wynhod stopped by the office to grab a few case files before going home for the night. Gelan noted the message alert blinking on his com and scowled. He was not in the mood at this late hour to deal with anything but dinner, a shower, and some sleep.
He told the mindless machine, “Whoever you are, leave me alone.”
Wynhod raised an eyebrow. “You’re not going to check that? It could be Krijero.”
Gelan considered. Damn it, Wynhod was right. Maybe the Imdiko had done them the kindness of ordering dinner. He usually did when they had a late stakeout. He told Wynhod, “Fine. But if it’s Utta demanding another extra half-shift, I’m taking it out of your hide.”
Wynhod smirked. “You can try.”
The Dramok narrowed his gaze threateningly before speaking to the com. “Play message.”
Just as Wynhod had predicted, Krijero’s voice came from the device. “Hey, it’s me. I’m going to pick up your dinners, so don’t—”
A door announce went off in the background. It wasn’t the tone of Gelan’s, so the Imdiko had commed from his rarely-used apartment.
“Who’s there?”
When there was no answer, Wynhod snickered. “Don’t forget to turn the com off before you answer that, Krijero. If it’s another Nobek, I don’t want to know.”
The loud thud of Krijero’s uncertain tread told them the Imdiko had forgotten he was recording a message. His slightly distant voice called, “Hello?” Pause. “Open.”
Gelan laughed. “That’s my Imdiko.”
The pair’s grins faded at the next series of sounds. Thuds, Krijero’s pained cries, and the unmistakable sound of fists hitting flesh. Gelan’s heart seemed to jolt to a stop.
Wynhod’s fangs were out as he whipped about, apparently ready to race out of the precinct. “We have to get to him!”
“Wait!” The awful sounds of a beating had ended. Gelan bent close to the com, listening for all he was worth.
A familiar voice spoke. “Idiot. You’re not supposed to kill him yet. Benor wants to question him first.”
Another familiar voice. “He’ll be fine. Are you going to give him the sedative or bitch at me all night?”
“Make sure you check his pockets for a portable com and weapons.”
Shuffling noises. Then Nobek Panow spoke again. “He’s clean. Let’s go.”
“Where’s that maintenance shaft?”
“Kitchen. See the panel?”
“Got it.”
More sounds. Then silence wound out, cold and deathly.
Around his descended fangs, Gelan growled, “You know who that was, right?”
“Dexel and Panow. If they didn’t notice his portable com on that necklace, we can track him. Gelan, we’ve got to move now.”
Gelan shut off the sickeningly quiet message to hit his supervisor’s emergency frequency at home. “You get the undercover guys on it now. I’m calling Utta.”
“Gelan, what if Utta is a part of this?”
Gelan swallowed. The precinct had been compromised, just as Krijero had feared. Who knew how far up the chain of command Benor had bought? But every second they wondered and worried was a second closer that Krijero could die.
He told his partner, “We don’t have time to second guess who’s been paid off. We’ll have to drag everyone we need in and hope for the best.”
Wynhod nodded. Without another word he darted to his desk and com. Gelan had no idea who the Nobek spoke to because at that moment, Utta picked up his line.
Chapter 13
The emergency meeting took place in Undercover Ops’ command center. Every face in the room was grim. Criminal Psychology might have been the butt of most departments’ jokes, but the men that worked there were still part of the precinct. They were still family to the brotherhood of cops. Gelan knew Krijero’s safe return was everyone’s priority.
Nost pointed out a le
vel in the Prem Mountain Complex, the peak that made up the core of Benor Industries’ warehousing and shipping. The section he indicated was about a quarter from the top of the mountain, and the area in question a shipping facility.
The undercover head said, “Ops has confirmed a blanket security system protecting the entire complex where Dr. Krijero’s com is transmitting from. We’re not getting in without letting them know we’re coming.”
Utta’s face was dark with fury. He’d walked into headquarters cursing his head off and apologizing to Gelan and Wynhod over Krijero’s abduction, as if he himself was to blame. In a way, he was. Had he allowed Gelan to go after Benor early on, the Imdiko might not have been taken.
Utta had gotten some measure of control over himself during the meeting. His voice still shook with rage as he asked, “Is there any indication Benor himself is there?”
Nost shook his head. “A couple of shuttles have come in that are registered to his companies, but the landing bays are inside the complex itself. We don’t know who is in there.”
Gelan tried not to think of his Imdiko in the hands of a man who had been responsible for hundreds, perhaps thousands of deaths. “They must have figured out he was the one who fingered Benor.”
Utta gave him yet another hectic, apologetic look. “I doubt they’re sure of it, or he’d have been executed rather than abducted. Or maybe they’re hoping to find out how much the rest of us know.”
Nost said, “The question is, if we announce ourselves at their front door, will they let him live in hopes of using him as a hostage? Or will they kill him outright because they have nothing to lose?”
Wynhod’s growl filled the room, and several of the enforcers and snipers eased away from the livid Nobek. Gelan gripped his clanmate’s shoulder, though he felt animal with hatred too.
When Wynhod’s snarl quieted, Gelan told them, “I think they’ll go with the hostage scenario. Benor has a lot of funds in other systems outside of the Empire. If he can get out of here and go underground, he’ll be fine.”
“We don’t allow hostage takers to go free for any reason!” Wynhod’s shoulder shook beneath Gelan’s hand. “When Benor figures that out, it’s over for Krijero.”
“As long as he thinks he’s got a chance, we can stall with negotiations.”
Wynhod’s feral-bright gaze searched his Dramok’s face. “You’d better be sure of that. This is Krijero’s life we’re talking about.”
Utta weighed in. “Benor thinks he’s a god. He surrounds himself with people who feed his ego. He won’t believe he can’t get away with this.”
Nost looked at the schematics he had displayed of the warehouse complex. He ground his teeth in frustration. “If there was just some way of getting in without setting off those alarms. Everything but the very top of the mountain is covered though, and there’s no access there.”
Wynhod suddenly went still next to Gelan. The Dramok looked at his partner to see his eyes brighten with interest. “A blanket system, you said?”
“Right.”
“So besides the top, there would be gaps between the security sensor wall and the mountain in places where there are crevices. Are there any with a downward path that would get us close to an access point?”
Nost brought up the scan information. Almost immediately, Gelan saw a slender line breach in the defensive grid. It was a thin area between two vertical ridges, no more than a slight gap that went right to a crack within the mountainside. It was on the very same level that Krijero’s com transmitted from.
“Does that break in the rock go all the way into the interior?” Wynhod asked.
Nost barked an order at the computer and it showed a heat signature emitting from the point in question. On a night as cold as this, it was a dead giveaway. Gelan hardly dared to breathe in hope.
One of the snipers in the room snorted in disbelief. “You’d have to be able to defy gravity to get in that way.”
The tremble in Wynhod’s voice betrayed his emotions. “Enlarge break in field and heat signature, fifty percent.”
The vid zoomed in on the area, and a jolt of excitement ran through Gelan. He and Wynhod had climbed shit like that before.
“Difficult, but not impossible,” he announced.
Wynhod nodded. “I just need my gear.”
“Our gear. I’m going in with you.”
Utta held up his hands. “Hold on. You two can really climb down and get in there?”
Gelan was in a hurry to move now that he saw a possibility of pulling Krijero out alive. “Sir, if you’ll surround the place and use negotiations to distract Benor or whoever is holding Krijero, we could do it.”
Wynhod added, “I’m a Class 8 mountain climber, and Gelan is Class 6. It’s completely possible we could sneak in.”
Nost stared at the vid, concern clearly written all over his face. “I don’t know, Utta. There are some awfully narrow passages here and here.” He pointed out the trickier spots. “They’ll only have inches to spare without setting off the system.”
Gelan fairly danced in his need to get his gear and descend that mountain. “If we don’t, Benor could get away. Krijero could die.”
Wynhod was adamant. “We can do this.”
Nost and Utta looked at each other. Seconds slipped by, precious seconds that brought Gelan closer to losing the Imdiko he would gladly die for.
Nost blew out a breath. He told Utta, “That place is a fortress. It’s the only way in. It’s almost certainly Dr. Krijero’s only chance.”
Utta scowled, but his shoulders drooped in defeat. “All right. You two get your gear. The rest of us, hostage negotiation protocols. Sniper and enforcer captains, ready your teams.”
Everyone hurried out, though they made way for Gelan and Wynhod to race past them to get to their shuttle.
* * * *
Krijero curled in a ball, moaning in the most pain he’d felt in his entire life. Every inch of his body hurt in some way or another. Throbbing, burning, screaming pain all over. They’d been beating and cutting him for hours now. The worst of it was knowing they were nowhere near done with him.
Dramok Benor sat in a hover chair several feet away. He wore the charming smile from the still pic Krijero had committed to memory. So professional. So reasonable with his demands. His friendly, sensible manner never wavered as he asked questions and had his men torture Krijero.
Enforcer Panow was one of those men, along with half a dozen other Nobeks. Investigator Dexel stood next to Benor, his wide face smirking right now, though he did have a tendency to wince when Krijero screamed. The Imdiko guessed he hurt the traitor cop’s ears. He wished he could take some pleasure in causing any of them discomfort, but he was too far gone in his own misery.
They were in a large storage room where firearms components filled the racks of shelving. It was bitterly cold in the room, so cold that Krijero kept expecting to see vapor from his whimpering breaths. Or maybe he was going into shock. No one else seemed to be cold.
They’d pounded his face so hard that one eye had swollen shut. The Nobeks in charge of his torture had left the other eye alone so that he could still see. When Krijero could get past the pain to think, he surmised he’d been given that questionable mercy so he could watch the next round of hell coming. That and look at Benor’s charming, reasonable face as the man asked unanswerable questions.
Benor leaned forward. “Dr. Krijero, I really am not pleased with your lack of cooperation. This could all end if you’d just give me the information I need. Who led you to me as the man behind Frenzy?”
Krijero shuddered. He knew that sometimes madness could be cloaked in the most sane of personalities, but Benor was not crazy. He simply didn’t care about anyone but himself. All that mattered to Dramok Benor was Dramok Benor, and he had no problem erasing people and things that got in the way of what he wanted. Krijero had most definitely gotten in the way, and he knew he wouldn’t leave alive.
After the last round of cutting and bea
ting, Krijero’s breaths sobbed in and out. He lay absolutely still, begging the vicious pain filling his body to ease. They’d given him a drug that sensitized his body to hyper-awareness, making every nerve ending more responsive to stimuli. No wonder the men who’d been involved in Delir and Frenzy often chose to take themselves out rather than be killed by Benor’s people. Krijero didn’t think his sanity could take much more of the torture.
When he didn’t answer Benor’s question, the Dramok shook his head in seeming disappointment. He acted very much the CEO dealing with a lapsed manager. “Last chance before we continue on, Doctor. You have cost me a great deal of revenue, not to mention sleep. I know you’ve talked to someone within my organization.”
“No,” Krijero finally managed to say. Just that one word was monumental effort.
“Don’t lie to me, Imdiko. Panow placed a tap on your computer when we discovered you were the psych who helped with the Delir case. Your recent searches have focused specifically on my dealings.”
His computer had been tapped? Krijero blinked. That would make some sense. The criminal psychology department wasn’t regarded as high-risk as Investigations or Undercover Ops. Getting a frequency dump from his computer would have been easy compared to getting past the firewalls of Gelan or Wynhod’s.
Benor’s smile was unshakeable. “It’s easy enough to figure out. That you decided to take a close look at me means someone talked to you. Not enough to give you hard evidence about my undertakings, but enough to have law enforcement in other territories become suspicious. I don’t like that. Disloyalty is my pet peeve, as I’m sure you’ve figured out, and I need to know who the person is that set you on me.”
All Krijero cared about at this point was delaying another round of fresh pain. It would come, but postponing it had just become his greatest goal in life. He gasped out, “No one told me about you. I just followed the clues. If you traced my research, you know I looked at two other arms manufacturers first. I got to you through process of elimination.”
Benor scowled, the first crack in his impervious attitude. “My standing in the community has been unassailable. You should have discounted me immediately.”
Clan and Conviction (Clan Beginnings) Page 32