Mortal Ties (47 page)

T
HE
conference room at the FBI’s San Francisco office was small and crowded. The room
smelled of clan—Scott, Mike, and Alan were among those at the table—but also of stale
coffee, humans, and all the various scents they were so fond of. In addition to cologne,
aftershave, and shampoo, Rule smelled six different brands of deodorant. One of them
wasn’t working as well as it might.

His wolf did not like it here. It didn’t help that humans were forever closing doors.
It was a damn fetish with them. Rule told his wolf to settle, that they were hunting
Lily and everyone here was helping and he needed to focus, dammit.

“Stop that,” Madame Yu snapped.

Everyone looked up at her. The man who’d just come in—Agent Smith or something similarly
bland—stopped in midstride.

“Stop closing the door,” Madame Yu said. “The air is stale in here.”

“Sure,” Agent Smith said. “No problem.” He swung the door wide open. Everyone else
went back to studying their printouts.

Rule made a mental note to buy Madame Yu something
foolishly extravagant. He gave her a grateful nod and looked back at his own set of
lists.

The California Department of Public Safety had coughed up a list of the owners of
cars with license plates ending in LT250, along with their addresses of record and
driver’s license numbers. That was on a database. Upon being served with the warrant,
the bank had produced a list of every transaction in the last two days.
That
was a paper list. A very long paper list. It was a busy branch. Rule had gotten a
second list from the bank, too—also on paper, but much shorter. That one contained
only those transactions involving accounts that had been opened since the sidhe delegation
arrived two weeks ago.

They’d been able to eliminate those account holders quickly. No matches. Not even
any near misses.

Rule was operating on the assumption the elves had had help acquiring false identities,
bank accounts, and renting a condo or house or apartment under their fake IDs. That
help had probably come from Friar. They might have been in touch with him well ahead
of their arrival. It was also possible one or more of them had been here much longer
than two weeks. A few sidhe could cross between realms without a gate. Most of those
with that skill were lords, according to Cullen. Most, but not all. Arjenie’s father
was able to cross realms.

So they would check older accounts as well. Robert Friar had been recruited by
her
six years ago, so Rule eliminated accounts more than six years old. That still left
them with a very long list.

The data from DPS had been easy enough to import into the Bureau’s computers. They’d
tried scanning in the bank’s list, then importing the scanned data. It hadn’t worked.
Scanning introduced too many errors. So they were doing it the old-fashioned way,
comparing the two lists visually, looking for matches on the names, addresses, or
driver’s license numbers.

Cullen was still searching. His copter had refueled twice—and had been detained at
the airport the second
time. The pilot had to fly so low for Cullen to see the kind of detail he needed that
they were breaking some law or another. Rule had applied to Ruben for help, and the
airport had released pilot, copter, and Cullen. They were back up again.

Laban was still searching, too, on the ground. They hadn’t found any more traces of
elves. It was a big damn haystack.

If “LT250” wasn’t a partial license plate number, they were wasting an enormous amount
of time. Time Lily couldn’t afford. Dammit, dammit, dammit…carefully Rule relaxed
the hand he’d tightened into a fist atop his copy of the LT250 license plates. He
realized he’d scanned most of the current page on autopilot. He could have missed
something.

Damn it to hell. He didn’t want to look at lists. Man and wolf, he wanted to
act.

He made himself take a slow breath, rolled his shoulders to loosen them—and winced.
His wounded shoulder was not finished healing. Had he been able to sleep to speed
the process, it would be almost whole again, but—

“Found something,” Mike said.

Rule beat Bergman to Mike’s side, but only by a hair. She’d been closer, but still,
she was fast for a human. “Show me.”

“Here.” Mike pointed at a line halfway down one sheet, then at another sheet. “Abraham
Brown. Got it on both sheets. Driver’s license number matches, too.”

Jasper sat up eagerly. “What is it? What’s the address?”

“44191 West Crescent,” Bergman said. “Bill, check the map.”

Jasper slumped. “That’s damn near in the bay.”

“He’s right.” A dark-haired man—Bill, presumably—had jumped up to look at a large
map of the city pinned to one wall. “44191 would be right around here.” He tapped
on the map with one finger.

Bergman gave Rule a sharp look. “You said she wasn’t near the water.”

Rule moved up to look at the map. The spot Bill had his finger on was very near the
bay. It was also west of the hotel. Not all that far from the area where Lily had
gone looking for Hugo, in fact.

“A lot of warehouses there,” Bill said. “Good place to stash a hostage. I can find
out if that address is a warehouse pretty quick.”

“All right. Yes. Do it.” Rule scrubbed a hand through his hair. Was the match a coincidence?
It could be. The list of plates ending in LT250 was long, and they were only guessing
it was a partial plate number.

Bill did not jump to do what Rule said. He hesitated, looking at his boss.

“It’s west, not east,” Bergman said. “Either your tip was bad, or we’re looking in
the wrong direction.”

Rule had told Bergman the truth—that Lily had contacted him through mindspeech, the
kind the dragons used, though he’d only received a few words. Much to his surprise,
she’d believed him. She had not, however, told her agents that. As far as they were
concerned, Rule had received a mysterious tip they were supposed to treat as golden.

“If this isn’t where they’re holding Lily,” he said slowly, “it could still be connected.
Maybe Friar used that identity himself before he gave it to one of the elves. It could
lead us to him, if not them. We have to check it out.”

She nodded. “Good point. Come on, Bill—you and I will check out Abraham Brown and
44191 West Crescent. The rest of you keep checking your lists.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, looking at his share of those lists with loathing. “We’ll keep
checking.”

T
HERE
was nothing but fire. Fire in the tiny flame flickering at the end of a candlewick.
Fire stretching from flame to flame, to the heart of flame.…fire, and Lily’s voice.

Am at 1132 North Bretton. There are two groups of sidhe who are both competing and
working together. The halfling has taken me and Sean Friar hostage. She will trade
me to
Robert Friar. She has two elves with her, capabilities unknown. Robert Friar is with
the other group, led by Benessarai. He has Adam King. Location unknown. Capabilities
unknown. I am at 1132—

Another voice sliced into her monologue, quick and cutting and as cold as the fire
was hot:
Not now! Send the ghost.

A door slammed shut.

Lily jolted. Blinked in disbelief.

“What?’ Drummond said urgently. “Did you connect? Did he hear you?”

Drummond had fully materialized again. When had he done that? She’d stopped seeing
anything but the candle flame some time ago…how long? The chamber music was long since
over. She heard Debussy now, the prelude to his
Afternoon of a Faun
, and she ached all over. She was exhausted. Limp and drained and exhausted. “I reached
him. He shut me out.”

Drummond’s scowl came quickly. “He wouldn’t do that. Maybe I don’t like him, but he’d
do anything to get to you. There’s no way he’d shut you out.”

“He…oh.” She realized she was speaking out loud and switched.
I wasn’t trying to reach Rule. I did manage that once, but it was so short and I couldn’t
tell if anything I sent got through. She wouldn’t let me have the
toltoi.
I needed the
toltoi
to contact Rule, so I was trying to reach Sam, the black dragon. And I did. And he
shut me out.
Lily blinked back tears of exhaustion. Not despair, no. It was just that she was
so tired. But she wouldn’t cry because the dragon had been her last hope and he wouldn’t
listen. Wouldn’t even listen to her.

Drummond came and crouched in front of her. “You can’t give up.”

“I’m not.” She heard how flat her voice sounded, though, and realized she’d forgotten
again and spoken out loud.

“Turns out all those assholes who said ‘where there’s life, there’s hope’ were right.
Because on this side of the line, you can’t do anything. Not one damn thing. You’re
still
on the other side of that line. You can do something. Even if it doesn’t work, you
can do something. You just have to keep doing something.”

Keep doing something. Yeah, sure, that sounded fine—but what?

She straightened, wincing at how sore her back was.
He told me to send the ghost. That would be you. I guess he doesn’t know as much as
he thinks he does. You can’t go to Rule. You can’t get more than a couple hundred
feet from me.

Drummond didn’t answer.

I can try to reach Rule again.
But even “talking” to Drummond felt draining. She’d about used up whatever resource
she drew on for mindspeech.

“You said Turner could see me.”

Yeah, some. But you can’t get to him, so how does that—

The walls quit playing Debussy. Alycithin’s lilting voice replaced the music. “Lily,
I regret that I must interrupt your mediation. I have heard from Robert Friar. It
is time to make the exchange.”

T
HEY
came for Lily with a gun, the SIG Sauer Al had seen earlier. The elf in jeans carried
it. Al wanted to punch him so bad his clenched fists were shaking.

“I wish we had had longer to talk,” the halfling said in her beautiful voice. She
held an object very familiar to Al—a set of police-issue restraints. “I enjoyed your
company. Please put your hands behind your back so I may secure them.”

“What have you done to Sean?”

The other elf—who looked barely strong enough to carry a large sack of dog food—was
toting Sean Friar back into the bedroom they’d just left.

“Only a sleep spell. He will be fine.”

She didn’t deserve this. Lily Yu was bright and brave and resourceful. She was a good
cop. One of the best, and he had the years on the job to know what the best looked
like. She was what he had been…once.

“Put your hands behind your back, please, Lily.”

“Are you out of drugged darts?”

“Robert Friar does not want you drugged.”

“I guess it would take all the fun out of it for him if I weren’t conscious and shaking
with fear. Where are we going?”

The halfling was getting impatient. “To Robert Friar.”

Even before Al killed the bitch who’d killed his Sarah, he’d lost some of that shine.
The job took it out of you, and he’d gotten hard, cynical, willing to cut corners.
Then he lost Sarah, and he went crazy. Maybe he was still crazy, because he couldn’t
regret killing Martha Billings. Not exactly. But he hadn’t given the law a chance.
He’d decided his need to kill was bigger and more important than anything else. The
law hadn’t failed him. He’d failed it. After that, he’d made one bad decision after
another.

Lily shook her head. “I mean where in the city. If he is in the city. Will this be
a long ride or a short one? How much time do I have left?”

She was still trying to get information. He couldn’t see what good that information
would do her, but she was doing
something.
She hadn’t given up.

“It should take twenty minutes or less to get there. He is in an old warehouse not
far from where I captured you. If you do not put your hands behind you back now, I
will force you. It would be more dignified to comply.”

“I guess I’m not in a dignified mood.”

Sarah hadn’t deserved to die. Neither did Lily Yu, but Al was even more helpless this
time. Condemned to watch it happen. Unable to do anything to stop it. He wanted to
bang his head against the wall, but his head would go through the goddamn wall.

Alycithin nodded and said something in her language to the jeans-wearing elf. She
handed him the restraints.

Yu tried. She had some moves, too, but the halfling—Al had never seen anything like
her. She moved as fast as those damn lupi, and she had the whole package—speed, training,
strength. It was over pretty quick, ending with Yu on
her stomach on the floor, the halfling straddling her, and the other elf fastening
the restraints.

He circled the pair of them, useless and furious and willing to do anything. Anything
at all, if only there was something he could do.

The black dragon thought there was.

Send the ghost, he’d told her. Well, Al was the only ghost she had. The dragon had
to mean him. He circled the two living people as Alycithin pulled Lily to her feet,
unable to stop moving. Maybe the dragon was right. Dragons mostly were, when it came
to the woo-woo stuff. Maybe there was something Al could do and he was too stupid
to see it. Maybe he was as big a failure as a ghost as he had been as a cop and as
a husband. If he—

His ankle brushed against something.

He jumped back. Astonished was way too small a word for what he felt. He hadn’t touched
anything since he died. He could sort of feel walls and floors and people, but it
wasn’t like touching them. It wasn’t the same at all.

Thin and taut, a glowing cord stretched away from Yu, angling slightly down.

That? That’s what he’d felt, the damn cord that ran between her and Turner? It was
thinner than ever, as if it had been stretched way out. Tentatively he approached.

Lily’s gaze darted to him. The halfling was behind her, marching her forward. “You
will not be noticed,” Alycithin said. “Do not tire yourself calling out or attempting
to draw attention in other ways. Dinalaran, the door, please.”