Mortal Ties (22 page)

“We should get to it, shouldn’t we?” But instead of launching into explanation, he
leaned forward, head down, rubbing his hands together as if they ached. “I want,”
he began. Stopped, and muttered, “No, I’m making this too complicated. Keep it simple.”
He drew a ragged breath and raised his head. “This would have been easier if you’d
brought Cynna Weaver. She could have found…they took something of mine, you see. Something
I want back. But you wouldn’t bring your Finder, so I have to ask for my side of the
deal first. After that, I’ll tell you everything. Do whatever you ask.”

Rule’s lips twisted. “We’re supposed to give you what you want and trust that you’ll
honor your end of the deal afterward?”

“I’m afraid so.” He glanced at Lily. “You did insist on bringing the authorities along,
in the person of your fiancée. Once I’m all officially confessed, I may not be free
to retrieve what’s mine.”

“Speaking of which—” Lily began.

“No. We won’t speak of it. Not at all.”

Very softly she asked, “Where’s Adam?”

His eyes widened. Just for a second, so briefly she would have missed it if she hadn’t
been watching closely. “Out of town.”

“They’ve got him, don’t they? Whoever ‘they’ may be, they’ve got your partner, Adam
King.”

J
ASPER
Machek shook his head. “You’re wrong.”

Lily studied him. He had good control, but he didn’t do stone-face as well as his
brother. He couldn’t keep the fear out of his eyes…eyes so much like Rule’s, except
for the crow’s-feet, the subtle toughening of skin that comes with age. “Easy enough
to prove. A phone call would do the trick.”

“I don’t have to prove anything.”

“You might want to rethink that. Kidnapping’s a felony. Failure to disclose a felony
is a felony.”

“There’s nothing to disclose. Adam likes to get away from everything sometimes, doesn’t
even take his cell phone. I won’t tell you where he is because, well, I don’t want
him to know about this. Any of this.”

“I suspect he’ll notice when you go to jail.”

“I’m hoping you won’t arrest me.” He rubbed both hands along his thighs and essayed
a smile, directing it at Cullen. “That would be in part up to you, I imagine. If you
get your item back—with damages,” he added quickly. “Payment for the, uh, insult and
inconvenience—maybe you won’t feel the need to press charges.”

Cullen responded to that with a scornful curl of his lip.

Machek just smiled. “Money’s useful. Think about it.”

He didn’t really care, Lily thought. Staying out of jail wasn’t what mattered at the
moment. Later it might, but not now. “Okay,” she said, mildly. “We won’t talk about
Adam. How long has your stolen whatever-it-is been missing?’

“You’ve got things switched.” He leaned back in his chair, crossing one leg at the
knee. He had long legs, much like his brother’s, to go with a similar build—tall and
lean, with wide shoulders and slim hips. He was lighter than Rule, though—less muscular,
with elbows and shoulder blades and knees providing an emphatic punctuation where
bone met bone. He slid a glance Rule’s way. “I won’t discuss my stolen property, but
I love to talk about Adam. That would be a distraction, though, wouldn’t it? A waste
of time, and I have a deadline. I have to give them what they want or they’ll destroy
my property.”

“And you don’t have the prototype anymore. Or so you told Rule.”

“We should make that deal before I say more.”

“My boss will have to approve any deal I make. At this point you haven’t given me
much reason to push him for any kind of deal.”

He frowned. Fidgeted with his hands—long fingers, a little longer than Rule’s—rubbing
them on his legs again. “I need to stay free until my property is recovered. After
that I can talk about all kinds of things, and we can renegotiate. If you can agree—or
get your boss to agree—to that much, we have a deal.”

“The timing of an arrest is up to me. I can agree to delay it until you have your
property back.”

“Good.” His breath gusted out. “That’s good. We have a deal.”

“You need the prototype to get your property back, but you told Rule you don’t have
it anymore.”

“That’s right.”

“Who took it? How? Where were you?”

He shook his head. “I’ll answer all that gladly, but not yet.”

“We can’t recover it if you won’t tell us anything.”

“Oh, I don’t expect you to. I had to tell them the prototype was missing. These aren’t
people you can lie to.”

“They?”

“Their identities will be up for discussion later, not now. Fortunately, they agreed
to a substitution. Instead of the prototype, they’ll take the man who made it.”

Cullen barked out a laugh. “First you steal from me, then you want me to exchange
myself for your lover? With balls that big, I don’t see how you get your jeans zipped
in the morning.”

“It’s a wonder,” Machek said agreeably. “But I thought…I may be all wrong about this,
but I thought this wasn’t entirely up to you. If Rule orders you to do something,
you have to do it, don’t you?”

Rule’s eyebrows lifted. “And you thought I’d exchange Cullen for what you insist is
an object, not a person?”

“Well…” He spread his hands. “I thought you’d come up with a way to make the exchange,
then reclaim him. I leave it to you to figure out how to do that. As to why you’d
go to all that trouble—”

“And a certain amount of risk,” Rule said dryly.

“And risk,” Machek agreed. “Judging by your actions in Washington in October, I’d
say you’re willing to risk quite a lot to protect others. But perhaps there has to
be some self-interest involved, too. Something of importance to you or your people,
such as the man you claim was behind the attacks in October. You’d want to find him
if you could.”

“Robert Friar?” Lily said sharply. “You know where he is?’

“Not precisely. Not his exact location. But he’s in California, and I have information
that may lead you to him.”

“Is he behind all this? Did he hire you?”

Machek slid her a glance as opaque as Rule at his most closed down. “I won’t answer
questions until I have my property back.”

He meant it. Lily was convinced of that. How much of the rest did he mean? He’d stepped
around certain statements meticulously, as a man might who preferred to speak truth,
but was constrained from real honesty. Or as a clever and expert liar might. He didn’t
claim to know where Friar was. He didn’t say Friar was behind this. He implied the
possibility, but he wouldn’t say who had kidnapped his partner. He wouldn’t admit
King had been taken.

If Lily weren’t here, he might have told Rule that much of the truth, instead of talking
about “property.” Even with Lily here he might have taken that risk if they’d brought
Cynna along, hoping she could find King before his captors realized the FBI was involved.
Instead, they’d brought Cullen.
How convenient,
he’d said. “How is the exchange—” Her phone chimed the opening to “Boy” by Ra Ra
Riot…Beth’s ring tone. Lily grimaced and reached into her purse to turn the ringer
off. “How will the exchange be handled?”

“I don’t know. I’ll get a call sometime today or tonight with the details.”

Rule spoke. “You had us meet you here at your home. I take it this mysterious
they
know you’re talking to us. What do they think you’re telling us?”

His eyes flashed with what might be amusement. “Why, right now I’m telling you that
I’m acting as a go-between for the real thief, who is now willing to sell it back
to you in order to avoid those violent types who attacked him and tried—unsuccessfully—to
steal it from him last night.”

Lily’s eyebrows lifted. “They assumed I wouldn’t see through that and arrest you?”

“They expressed confidence in my ability to talk you out of that until you had the
prototype back. To keep you busy, I’m to feed you misinformation about the attempted
snatch so you’ll look in the wrong places until it’s time for the exchange. Then I
lure Seabourne to the place named.”

“Just Cullen?” Lily asked.

He shrugged. “I’m to bring him alone if I can, but they accept that you might not
agree to that. Once we’re all in
place, ah…” He cast Cullen an apologetic look. “Seabourne will be incapacitated with
wolfbane.”

Rule said, “Do you know how, exactly, they plan to do that? It’s not as easy to do
as it might seem, given your success with the stuff on Big Sister.”

“They didn’t say. I assumed they’d burn it, but assumptions aren’t the best guide.
Should I try to find out when they call?”

Rule shook his head. “Too easy to make them suspicious. They’ll expect you to be focused
on getting King…on getting your property back, not on what they do with Cullen.”

“They know I’ve some concern about his welfare. That’s how I pried out of them that
they’d be using wolfbane. They assured me he’d be treated gently, that he’s no use
to them dead.”

Cullen snorted his opinion of that.

“Don’t get fancy,” Lily said to Machek. “Find out anything you can about the location
and means of the proposed exchange, but don’t go beyond that.” She looked at Rule,
wondering where he wanted this to go. He met her gaze, but his was shuttered, telling
her nothing.

When in doubt, ask questions. Lily did, coming back to the same ones in multiple ways,
until Machek politely suggested she could either arrest him or leave, but he hoped
they’d agree to the exchange. And at last Rule spoke again.

“We can’t agree to anything without more information,” he said, standing. “When you
know the where, when, and how for this proposed exchange, call me and we’ll discuss
it.”

“I have your number,” Machek said calmly, rising like a good host whose guests were
departing.

He hid differently than Rule did, Lily thought. He used lightheartedness for a shield.
“And mine,” she added, taking out one of her cards and setting it on the cluttered
coffee table. “Just in case.”

T
HEY
were gone. At last they were gone. Thank God.

Jasper closed the door and scrubbed his face with both hands as if he could erase
some of the lies he’d told. No point in dwelling on it. He’d done what he had to do.

No, that was lying to himself, a sin at least as bad as lying to others and often
far more destructive. He’d chosen to put Adam’s life above these strangers’ welfare.
However terrible a choice it might be, it had been his to make, and he had to admit
that. If one of those strangers was his half brother, did that matter?

Not enough, he thought as he headed back to the couch where he’d snatched a few hours
of sleep last night. He’d cleared away the pillow and blanket before Rule Turner and
his entourage arrived. It was the first time they’d been put away since that bastard
took Adam. Funny how his innate tidiness had fled ever since he got that phone call.
He’d been deliberately leaving clutter around as if that would create a homing beacon
for his messy partner. Adam would laugh when he saw…

God, he hoped Adam would still be able to laugh.

He sank onto the couch and picked up the card that
Rule’s fiancée had left. Lily Yu. He turned it over as if he might find a clue on
its blank back. She sure didn’t look like an FBI agent…she had the serious part down,
but she was so little. Pretty, too, though somehow that word didn’t seem to fit. Flowers
were pretty. She was…compact, he decided. As if something much larger had been crammed
into a deceptively small size.

Odd choice for his brother to make. He couldn’t picture Lily Yu putting up with a
partner’s roving eye, but what did he know? Nothing, really, about the lady, and not
much more about the man who shared half Jasper’s genetic inheritance. No more than
however many zillion others who occasionally read a gossip mag. Jasper didn’t pick
them up ordinarily, but he’d been curious. Now and then he’d toyed with the idea of
meeting Rule Turner. Like when his mom was dying and he learned how much Isen Turner
had paid for over the years. Or when he first came out. He’d come boiling out of the
damn closet, pissed at the world, and that had seemed like a great target for his
anger—the overwhelmingly hetero half brother who was sure to be disgusted.