Pros and Cons (6 page)

The first thing I noticed when I set foot inside Douglas's town house was the large suitcase sitting in the foyer.

“Going somewhere?” I asked him with an arch of my eyebrow as he closed the door behind us.

Douglas rubbed his hands together nervously. “I thought getting out of town for a little while might be a good idea.”

I couldn't blame him. However, the things I'd learned about Wayne Fowler made me think running away wasn't going to do a hell of a lot of good. He was not the kind of man to forgive and forget a blackmail attempt, and he had the money, power, and connections to pursue his quarry as long and as far as necessary.

“You tried to blackmail someone who's had witnesses under federal protection murdered,” I reminded him. “Getting out of town might delay things, but you'll be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life.”

He swallowed hard. “If you have a better idea, I'm all ears.”

“I'm still working on it,” I told him, though an inkling of a germ of an idea was beginning to take root. “If you tell me everything you know, and I pair that with everything I know from Heather, and everything I learned on my own, I might be able to work something out.”

Douglas was unnerved enough that my lukewarm assurances were enough to get him talking.

S
EVEN

I spent a good
two and a half to three hours interviewing Douglas, though to tell you the truth, nothing I learned from him was terribly useful as anything other than background information. Turned out he had glommed onto Heather when she started blackmailing a guy Douglas was already working some convoluted scam on. Douglas quickly saw a chance to make a big score without having to do a whole lot of work, since Heather had already done the hard part for him. Not only was he a blackmailer, but he was a
lazy
blackmailer.

If Douglas
hadn't
been so lazy, if he'd done more than the most cursory research into Heather's victims, he'd have avoided Wayne Fowler like the plague. I suppose the same could be said of Heather, although at least she'd met him personally. Some of the baddest bad guys out there have the most charming personalities—the better to lull their victims into a false sense of security.

By the time I left Douglas's town house, I knew there were only two ways to keep Fowler from coming after Heather and Douglas. The first and easiest way was to kill him, but I'm not a murderer, so that option was firmly off the table. The second way was to set him up for a long, hard fall. The kind that would put him in prison for the rest of his natural life. The setup, however, was going to be something of a bitch to pull off.

In theory, I could use Heather and Doug as bait to lure Fowler in. Set up some kind of a trap, where I could catch him on camera threatening their lives. Unfortunately, there were numerous problems with the idea. Fowler might not come after Heather and Doug himself. He had people for that kind of thing. And even if he did come in person, he might well shoot first and ask questions later. Catching Heather and Doug's murders on camera wouldn't do them a whole lot of good.

I left Douglas's house after securing his promise that he would give me a little time to work out a permanent solution to his problem before he went on the run. The promise of a con man isn't worth a whole lot, but I had to hope he saw that it was in his own best interests to let me handle things. Besides, in the end, I would probably only need one of them to serve as bait.

I stopped by Heather's to give her an update on the situation, and I assured her that I had a plan in the works to hoist Fowler with his own petard. I didn't mention how nebulous and uninspiring that “plan” was so far. Then I arranged a rendezvous with the member of Anderson's merry band I least wanted to spend any amount of time with.

Jack Gillespie is very possibly the most irritating person on the planet. A fact in which he takes great pride, I might add. He's a descendant of Loki, the Norse trickster god, and he thinks he's a laugh a minute. He isn't.

I trusted Jack about as far as I could throw him, and since my supernatural aim doesn't come with a side order of inhuman strength, that isn't very far. However, he is at least nominally one of the good guys, and his powers as a trickster could be key to putting Fowler away without endangering Heather and Doug.

I'd feared that persuading Jack to help me would require a lot of verbal fancy footwork, because he isn't what you'd call a natural altruist. However, when I called and told him I wanted to ask a favor, he asked only one question.

“Will it be fun?”

“Not to any normal person,” I said. Jack's idea of fun included pissing off out-of-control death-god descendants, which in my mind made him certifiably nuts.

“Sounds like it's right up my alley, then,” he said, ever predictable. He probably wasn't going to like it when he found out my plan involved
avoiding
mortal danger instead of plunging headfirst into it.

Because Jack couldn't wait until we were actually together to start being annoying, he declared that we would meet to discuss the situation at a combination bar and arcade in downtown D.C. I could have avoided the place if I'd been willing to go back to the mansion, but I feared the chances of Anderson catching me there at this hour were too strong. I, of course, had never been to a combination bar and arcade, but I was able to conjure up a pretty vivid—and, it turned out, depressingly accurate—mental picture of what it would be like.

My first impression when I walked in the door was that the space was far too small for its intended purpose. The bar took up a significant chunk of wall space on one side of the room, and the game cabinets against the other walls were crammed in there so close I wondered if people bumped into each other while playing. My second impression was that if you were going to set up a space where you'd be blasting music while various video games bleep, bing, and honk, you'd be better off not choosing a place with interior brick walls and a tile ceiling. The brick was pretty, but the sound echoed and reverberated through the place with headache-inducing volume. Of course, normal people didn't go to arcades for quiet conversation, so maybe it hadn't been a bad choice after all.

It wasn't hard to spot Jack, who had beaten me there. He was hunched over a flashing, blinging pinball machine, hitting the flippers hard and fast, putting his whole body into the effort. It was an impressive display of dexterity, considering he was holding a bottle of beer by its neck in the fingers of his right hand. He didn't look up as I approached, though I was sure he knew I was there.

“You're going to tilt the machine if you're not careful,” I said. The ambient noise was loud enough that I practically had to shout. It was going to be a long evening, if the start of it was any indication.

Jack gave me a sidelong glance. “Oh, ye of little faith,” he said, taking a moment to swig from his bottle of beer. The pinball took that opportunity to roll through the gap between his flippers. I hoped that meant the game was over and we could go somewhere quieter to talk, but I should have known better. The machine flashed a “game over” message, but that quickly blinked out and was replaced with “free ball.”

“Here, hold this,” Jack said, thrusting his beer bottle into my hand. Then he pulled back the plunger and sent his “free ball” into play.

I considered pouring the remains of his beer over his head, but he'd probably find that funny. And the bartender would probably get stuck cleaning it up.

“Really, Jack?” I said instead. “We have more money than everyone else in this place combined, and you're too cheap to just feed a few quarters into the machine?” In a lot of ways, Jack is the most powerful of all of Anderson's
Liberi
. Not because he could cheat a pinball machine, but because of the impressive variety of skills he'd revealed over the short time I'd known him. I was pretty sure he could use his powers in more ways than I had yet seen.

“I'd have had to start back at zero if I did that,” he answered, not looking at me this time.

Don't let him draw you in,
I reminded myself. Arguing with Jack was a pointless endeavor. I bit my tongue and reminded myself to slip a big tip to the bartender when we left to make up for whatever Jack stole.

“So,” Jack said, his eyes still on the ball as it careened wildly. “You said on the phone you needed some help setting up a sting. What can I do for you?”

Silly me. I'd thought Jack would stop playing so we could talk.

He didn't turn his attention from the pinball machine once as I told him all about Heather and Doug and their ill-fated blackmail attempts. His lips twitched a couple of times—I suspected he found the idea of Doug running a scam on Heather, who was running a scam on Fowler, amusing—but that was the only indication that he heard a word I said.

He kept right on playing after I'd finished telling him the whole story, saying not a word. I hoped his mind might twist the same way mine had, because I was pretty sure he'd like any plan better if
he
was the one who came up with it. I waited a good minute or two in hopes that he might be thinking things over, but it became quickly obvious that he wanted to force me to do all the talking. Like maybe contributing something to the conversation himself would be too much trouble.

I get that he's descended from a trickster god, but is it
really
necessary for him to be so annoying
all
the time?

I let out a sigh of resignation. “Well?” I prompted, trying to hide my annoyance because I knew he'd enjoy it. “Do you have any brilliant ideas for how I can get Fowler locked away for good without risking getting Heather or Doug killed?”

He waited a little while longer to answer, bouncing the ball repeatedly off of the same bumper, making the same high-pitched dinging noise over and over again until I wanted to do something much more violent with the beer bottle I was holding than simply pouring it over his head. Then, as if he hadn't been focused on the game with such intensity for the past fifteen minutes or so, he took his hands off the buttons and stood up straight, letting the ball roll through and ending his game.

“Why ask for ideas when you already have a plan?” he inquired with one of his cocky smirks.

So much for my attempt to make him think the plan was his idea. I was just going to have to hope he thought it would be fun anyway.
Here goes nothing,
I thought, resisting the urge to cross my fingers.

“My first thought was to use Heather and Doug as bait and try to lure Fowler into doing something incriminating that I could catch on video.”

Jack snorted and rolled his eyes. “Oh, brilliant!” he said. “Because this Fowler guy is likely to come after Tweedledum and Tweedledumber personally. It's not like he might, you know, send one of his hit-man buddies to take care of the problem for him.”

I gritted my teeth. “I said that was my first thought. Generally, when someone tells you something was their first thought, it means they came up with something better.”

“Then maybe they should have skipped right to the something-better part. Just sayin'.”

I was letting him get to me, and I knew better. Although if I somehow, miraculously,
didn't
let him get to me, odds were he'd just try harder, so maybe giving in early and often was the key to maintaining my sanity.

“Did you know your ears get red when you're pissed off?” Jack asked, really enjoying himself at my expense.

“Fascinating. My heart rate and blood pressure go up, too. And I start fantasizing about slow and painful ways to kill people. So, now that we've got all that out of the way, how would you like to play the role of Wayne Fowler in the sting I just described?”

One of Jack's gifts from his divine ancestor is the ability to shape-shift. I'd seen him turn into a huge black hellhound, a fluffy white poodle, and a perfect doppelgänger of Konstantin. I doubted he would have any trouble duplicating Fowler.

“Hmm,” Jack said, rubbing his chin as he mulled it over. “Not bad. Saves you from having to persuade Fowler to show up in person. And reduces the chances of anyone getting killed.”

“We can also be sure you'll say something incriminating enough to put Fowler away.”

Jack looked doubtful. “Might be hard to get him put away on words alone. Would you mind if Doug got roughed up a bit? If I physically attack him, it'll be much more convincing to a jury. You can spring out of hiding to save the day before it gets ugly. And don't worry, I won't touch your paying client.”

I stared at him long and hard. His logic made perfect sense, but with Jack, I always had the sense that there were layers upon layers of motives. Was it really necessary to use violence, or was Jack merely making the suggestion because he thought it would be more entertaining and dramatic?

“You don't want to set up this elaborate sting and then have him convince a jury he didn't really
mean
it when he threatened to dismember your client,” Jack wheedled when I hesitated.

Dammit, he was right. We had to catch Fowler in action, not just talking.

“Fine,” I agreed grudgingly. “Just remember, he's human and breakable.”

“I'll be very gentle with him,” Jack promised with an earnestness I'd have been a fool to believe. “I'll have to pay Fowler a quick visit so I can impersonate him.”

I decided not to think about just what kind of mischief Jack might get into during this visit. What I didn't know couldn't hurt me, right? Besides, I had other things to worry about.

“And
I'm
going to have to persuade Doug and Heather to show up for a meeting with a guy they're sure wants to kill them.” I had a feeling that was going to be a daunting challenge. Especially when my plan ultimately required they reveal to the police that they'd been attempting to blackmail Fowler. I wondered if I could leave that part out somehow when I explained what I wanted them to do.

“Remind them they might wake up dead someday if they don't put Fowler away,” Jack said. “From what you've told me, neither one of them is as smart as they think they are, so you might be able to convince them they could get immunity in return for testifying against him. The authorities already have a hard-on for the guy, so it might sound believable.”