Mortal Ties (23 page)

If he’d been disgusted today, he’d hidden it well. But he’d hidden everything well,
hadn’t he? Jasper had seen a certain intensity, but he had no idea what the man was
feeling intense about. Maybe Rule wasn’t the heedless tomcat he’d been made out to
be. Maybe he used to be, but had changed. Now and then people did.

The resemblance had startled Jasper. It had never seemed that strong in photos or
on TV, but when he looked into his brother’s eyes…and just why did Rule look so damn
young? He was six years older than Jasper, but he looked fifteen years younger. The
best surgeon in the world didn’t give you back young skin. Could it be a lupi thing?
Maybe in addition to being preternaturally strong and sexy, they didn’t age.

That was an unsettling thought. But what about this day wasn’t unsettling, grim, terrifying—

His phone buzzed. His heart jumped in his chest, loathing
and longing coupling promiscuously with fear, shame, and more—a veritable orgy of
feelings that had him snatching the phone up quickly, then hesitating. He didn’t recognize
the number, but Adam’s kidnapper never called from the same number twice. “Yes?”

“You did well, Jasper.” It was a warm voice, friendly, with just the right touch of
sympathy, the kind of voice that could coax a smile from a sullen child.

Fresh diarrhea was warm, too. And just about as welcome. This wasn’t the voice Jasper
longed for. “I’ll speak with Adam now.”

“Will you?” The amusement was light, not without that tracery of sympathy.

“That’s our deal. You want me to remain confident that you’ll honor your end, don’t
you? You want me to go on believing that Adam is alive and that I’ll get him back.”

“I do enjoy dealing with an intelligent man,” his nemesis said in an approving way.
“And yet I suspect that hope would work as well as certainty. Maybe better. It might
be helpful for me to find out.”

Fear broke out the razor blades and sawed at Jasper’s gut. “I’m not a very optimistic
person. I need certainty to keep me motivated. I’ll speak with Adam now, or I’ll speak
to Lily Yu.”

“The laborer is worthy of his hire, I suppose. The Bible is wrong about a great deal,”
he added, “but there are nuggets of wisdom among the debris. You’ve done as you were
told, and you will receive your agreed-upon pay…since Adam is in fact quite well,
though not particularly happy at the moment. First, however, I have instructions about
tonight.”

“Wait while I get a pen.” He did that, collecting his notebook at the same time, then
listened, jotting the pertinent facts down in his personal shorthand. Jasper had long
since established the habit of putting any notes about a job down in a form no one
could use against him in court.

“I’m surprised by your concern,” the warm voice said when Jasper questioned one point.
“Have you changed your
mind about Rule Turner now that you two have met? You told me you didn’t know much
about him, but what you did know, you didn’t like.”

“Oh,” he breathed, “but I dislike you so much more.”

“Do you not think it impolitic to say so?”

“Who can we be truly frank with, if not our enemies?”

A chuckle, rich with amusement. “Oh, Jasper, don’t fool yourself. You’re bought and
paid for. You’ll do as you’re told, and that’s hardly the behavior of an enemy, is
it?”

R
ULE
headed down the outdoor stairs, so baffled by emotion he barely noticed the closed-in
feeling piling on top of the rest. He was only too aware of how poorly he’d handled
himself in there, but at least he’d realized that and let Lily take the lead.

She’d done that efficiently, asking plenty of questions. Not the ones he’d wanted
answered, such as:
How did your mother die?
Or
Did she look like you? Like me?
Or
Did you ever think about contacting me?
No, she’d asked the ones that should have mattered…and would, once he pulled himself
together.

Time to make a start on that. At the base of the stairs, Rule began, “If Friar—”

“Let’s talk about it when we get to the car,” Lily said.

He grimaced. If Friar was involved, he’d been about to say, it changed the possibilities
considerably…including the chance that someone was pointing a directional microphone
their way right now. That was unlikely but possible, and he should have thought of
it. “Point taken.” Then, to Scott: “Keep Chris and Alan here to keep an eye on Jasper.
The others will follow us to the hotel. Send Barnaby and
Joe ahead to check the car.” As he started down the sidewalk he asked Lily, “Is Drummond
around?”

“Not visibly.”

Which was supposed to mean he couldn’t listen in, but…“Would you mind putting on your
necklace?”

For answer she reached in her purse and pulled it out, closing her hand around the
stones. “It works when it’s in contact with my skin. Or it’s supposed to.”

She didn’t tell him it was understandable that he was shaken. She didn’t ask what
he thought of Jasper Machek or how he felt. She held the ghost-repelling necklace
in one hand and took his hand with the other one, then walked beside him in silence.
Bless her for that, as for so much else. He didn’t know what he felt or what he thought,
and he couldn’t afford to be shaken. Not if Friar had his finger in this pot.

They moved briskly down the street. Rule tried to empty his mind. It didn’t work.
He was still a jumble when they crossed the first street and Lily broke the silence.

“I liked Jasper.”

“I did, too.” He hadn’t expected to. He hadn’t expected…any of this. He wasn’t going
to be able to put it aside, was he? He wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the things
that ought to matter until he’d dealt with what, inexplicably, did. He stopped and
glanced back at Scott. “I need to walk a bit and clear my head. If the car’s clean,
have them drive it around the block until I signal.” He made the quick gesture that
told Scott to drop back several yards.

“You want me to take a hike?” Cullen asked.

“Or a ride. I’d rather you didn’t wander around where someone could grab you or attempt
to. Either stay with Scott or get in the car with the others.”

Rule resumed walking. Scott and Cullen fell behind. If he kept his voice low, they
wouldn’t hear more than the occasional word. And now that he had this much privacy,
he didn’t know what to say.

Lily didn’t prompt him. For once, she didn’t ask questions. She just kept pace with
him for another two blocks.
But now, for whatever reason, he could at least turn his attention away from the noise
in his head, listening to the city sounds…cars, voices from some of the houses they
passed, a dog in the last block, a cat in this one. The soft sound of Lily’s footsteps
beside him. Her hand was warm in his. He watched as a woman in workout clothes pushed
a jogging stroller along on the other side of the street. Its occupant looked sound
asleep. And he heard himself say, “It never occurred to me that she was dead.”

Lily stopped, so he did, too. She looked at him. “Oh, Rule.”

“It should have occurred to me. She’d be over eighty by now if she’d lived, so it
was an obvious possibility. But as long as I didn’t think of her…” He shoved his free
hand through his hair. “She wasn’t real. She wasn’t a person to me, yet as long as
I didn’t think about her, she was still alive somewhere.” Frustrated, he added, “I
don’t know why it matters.”

“Death cuts off possibilities. Even if they were possibilities you never meant to
act on, it feels different when they’re gone.”

Possibilities he never meant to act on, never thought he wanted. And now he ached
from their loss. “She wasn’t a mother to me, but she was a person. I’ll never know
that person. I never thought I’d want to.”

“She was bipolar.”

“What?” He stared. “I mean—I know what that is, of course, but how do you know that?”

“Isen told me last night. She was in treatment for it several times, on his dime.
I thought he should have told you years ago. He and I argued about that.”

A dozen thoughts and memories tumbled around in his head. The past was supposed to
be fixed, unalterable, but it was shifting on him. Finally he said, “It takes determination
to argue with Isen.”

“The Rho thing doesn’t work on me.”

“Even so.” He started walking again. After half a block he said, “I want to get to
know Jasper.”

“That would be good. We’ve got some heavy shit to get through first.”

Too damn true. “Speaking of which…” Rule stopped again and looked behind them. Scott
and Cullen were half a block back. He gave the signal for them to approach.

“Jasper thought you’d be upset about Adam.”

He quirked a surprised brow at her. “I am, of course. Assuming that our assumption
about his kidnapping is true.”

“Not that kind of upset. Upset because his lover is a man. Once he got past the shock
of me figuring out what property had been taken from him, he watched you. He was waiting
for you to go all ick on him.”

“How did you see that? I didn’t.”

“Not so much baggage. No,” she corrected herself. “Different baggage. Mine doesn’t
involve Jasper.”

He felt better. Not good, but not as jumbled. He smiled to tell Lily that. “Why do
you suppose he never contacted me?”

“He was raised by a bipolar mother who didn’t get adequate treatment for years. He
grew up gay in a society that made him a target for every kind of hate and bullying.
Chances are he has his own baggage, don’t you think?”

The rented BMW reached them quickly. Rule and Lily took the backseat; Cullen sat up
front with Scott. Lily, he noticed, put her necklace back in her purse. Why didn’t
she just keep it on? She had some kind of crazy tolerance for Drummond’s ghost that
he couldn’t fathom and didn’t like.

“All right,” Rule said once they were moving. Short of planting a bug—which the guards
had checked for—it was almost impossible to target a moving vehicle either electronically
or magically. “I’d like to hear your impressions. How much of Jasper’s story was true,
do you think?”

Lily shrugged. “All, some…impossible to say.” She reached for her laptop and popped
it open.

“He smelled anxious and guilty,” Cullen put in, “but the anxiety could be about his
lover. So could the guilt. Nothing gets the guilt gland pumping like thinking you’ve
endangered someone you love.”

“That part I’d put money on,” Lily said. She was typing something on her laptop as
she spoke. “The part he didn’t admit—that they’re threatening his partner to force
him to do what they want. Not that I’m taking his word that it’s ‘they’ rather than
‘he’ or ‘she.’ ”

Rule hadn’t noticed Jasper’s use of the plural pronoun to refer to whoever had Adam,
but now that Lily brought it up…“If Friar’s involved, ‘they’ is appropriate. Especially
on this coast.” Friar’s East Coast lieutenant was in jail awaiting trial, having been
refused bail as a flight risk. But his West Coast lieutenant was still free and active.

“Friar must be part of it,” Cullen said. “How would Machek know to mention him otherwise?
The official story is that Robert Friar died when the mountain came down in September.”

Lily looked up. “But Machek didn’t mention Friar by name, did he? I did. He said something
about us wanting to find the one behind the October attacks. I filled in the blank
for him.”

Cullen looked over his shoulder at her, startled. “Son of a bitch. You’re right. Did
he do that on purpose?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did you guess that he was talking about his partner, anyway?”

“That’s right, you didn’t see his file, did you?”

Rule, on the other hand, had pretty much memorized it. “Arjenie dug up a fair amount
about Adam King,” he said. “He showed up in one of her databases because he and Jasper
purchased the house together three years ago. King is an architect who was laid off
during state cutbacks a couple of years ago. He’s put out his own shingle and is enjoying
some success, but he works from home. He wasn’t there today. He might have left the
house for any number of reasons, but there was only one takeout lunch at the table.
Only one mug on the coffee table, too.”

Lily nodded, tapping away on her laptop. “Add to that Machek’s attitude. He wasn’t
worried about getting arrested. He made the right noises, but he didn’t really care.
What else would cause that kind of funneling of priorities? Odds were he was frantic
about a person, not an object.”

“Okay,” Cullen said, “I can see that. What are you working on, anyway?”

“A request for a phone tap.”

Rule’s head jerked. “A tap? On Jasper? But if he isn’t reporting a kidnapping—”

She gave him a look he couldn’t read. “I’m not going to charge your brother with failure
to disclose. That doesn’t mean I have to pretend Adam King’s really gone off for some
downtime without his phone. First step is a tap on Jasper’s phones—at his store, his
house, on his mobile. He could have a throwaway given him by his employer especially
for contact, but we can’t do anything about that.”