Mortal Ties

TWENTY-ONE

“THAT didn’t go well,” she said, clicking her seat belt in place.

“It could have been worse.”

“I suppose.” It had helped some that it was so abundantly obvious that the guards Rule had assigned to Beth hadn’t been spying on her, reporting on her. If they had, Rule would have known about Sean Friar months ago.

Rule squeezed her hand. “At least she’s letting Murray stay in the apartment with her for now.”

“Not because she sees the need. Murray gave her puppy dog eyes, and she caved.” Lily hadn’t met Murray before, so he’d been almost as much of a surprise to her as he was to Beth, though for different reasons. She had this theory that lupi were genetically incapable of ugly. It made sense—the continuation of their species depended on them charming, seducing, and otherwise trying to impregnate as many women as possible.

Murray turned out to be the exception. Sort of. He was short and squat and looked like he’d grabbed his features at random from the bargain bin, yet somehow he was five feet, five inches of adorable. Maybe it was the so-ugly-they’re-cute deal some creatures had going, like that breed of dog that seemed to be made entirely out of wrinkles.

“Whatever works.”

“I guess.” Bergman’s agent had arrived just as they were leaving—Richard Snow, a studious-looking fellow with a competent manner. Cullen was already gone by then; he’d left with Marcus and Steve to check out Sean Friar’s house. Well, Marcus would check out the house. Cullen would let Marcus in, then wait outside with Steve, who would be keeping an eye out for trouble.

Lily drummed her fingers on her thigh. Nothing was adding up. Rule’s brother’s partner was missing, held hostage. Friar seemed to be involved. Lily’s sister’s not-a-boyfriend—who was also Friar’s brother—was missing. Fate unknown.

That had to be more than coincidence. Didn’t it?

“I see three possibilities,” she said abruptly. “One, Sean is genuinely missing—dead, injured, or held hostage by person or persons unknown for reasons unknown. Two, he’s dancing to his brother’s tune, and his absence is part of some plot. Three, he isn’t Mr. Reliability the way Beth thinks. He fell off the wagon and is on a binge or sleeping one off.”

“Alcoholism is an insidious disease,” Rule agreed in the mild way that meant he didn’t really agree. “But Beth has good people instincts.”

“She’s only known him for three months.”

Rule reached for her hand. “It didn’t take us three months.”

“We were different.” Oh, that sounded lame. “We had the mate bond.”

“Mmm. That did force us to pay attention. Perhaps Beth doesn’t need as much of a prod as we did.”

That made her grin in spite of herself. “The women in my family are pretty stubborn. The question is, where does Beth have her stubbornness dial turned? If it’s set to ‘Sean is my soul mate,’ she’d miss seeing all the signs that he isn’t.”

“How much of your attitude is professional skepticism, do you think? And how much is because you don’t want your sister involved in any way with Robert Friar’s brother?”

“I have no idea. But it’s way too much of a coincidence for Beth even to meet Friar’s brother, much less fall for him.”

“Friar is a patterner with too much power. He wouldn’t have needed his brother’s active cooperation to bring about a meeting.”

“But why?” Lily spread her hands. “What is he after? If he wants to grab Beth and use her against me, he doesn’t need this complicated setup. Why such complexity?”

“Ruben says patterners work in complex weavings. It’s the natural outgrowth of their Gift.”

Lily drummed her fingers again. When in doubt, look at outcomes. “What does this give him that he couldn’t get another way?”

“Hmm. Well, if the theft of the prototype hadn’t brought us to San Francisco, Beth’s cry for help when Sean disappeared would have.”

Was that it? Did Friar have some reason he needed them in San Francisco? Maybe he intended to blow the city up. She shivered. That sounded like something he’d try, but he had to have a reason. There were easier ways to kill her and Rule than by destroying a city. “Maybe he doesn’t need us here. Maybe he just wants us to not be at Clanhome.”

“Perhaps.” Rule tipped his head as if listening to his own thoughts. “But I can’t fit that in with the demand made by Adam King’s kidnapper.”

“Yeah.” If Friar wanted Cullen, kidnapping his own brother would be an odd way to go about getting him. She sighed. “I feel like I’m swimming in glue.”

“What if,” Rule said slowly, “he needs Cullen for some reason and wants to eliminate the two of us at the same time?”

Lily’s stomach tightened the way it did when something clicked. “And get his hands on the prototype? Because that’s part of it. There are simpler ways to get our attention, but…that feels right. Or like it’s on the right track, anyway.”

She reached for her phone. She was late in briefing Ruben—and she had a lot to tell him.

RULE had booked them into a posh downtown hotel. He hadn’t had time to research less expensive spots, and he’d stayed there before so he knew the Childer had decent security. Hardly impregnable, he said, but the hotel sometimes hosted visiting heads of state and others with security concerns and bodyguards, so they paid more attention to it than the average chain.

The guards who’d gone with them to Jasper’s house had followed in two vehicles. They waited for the first one to arrive before letting the attendant have their BMW so they could make an entrance worthy of a mafia don, surrounded by men with wary eyes. Lily didn’t argue with the necessity. Anyone setting up a hit would consider this point a prime opportunity. Once they were inside the danger went down considerably, due both to the Childer’s security and to the guard Scott had posted in the lobby. Gun oil had a distinctive scent. Rick would have known it if anyone in the lobby were armed.

The lobby was small, the antiques real, the carpet a magnificent Oriental. They were met by the manager, who handed them their keys personally and introduced them to the security chief, a burly man whose appearance matched his name—Connor Murphy. Murphy had a good handshake and a trace of a Find Gift. When he released Lily’s hand he said conversationally, “Twenty years with the SFPD.”

She nodded back, pleased. “Good to know.”

Rule introduced Scott and asked if Murphy would mind discussing security with him. That, of course, was why the manager had arranged the meeting, so Scott peeled off after sending two of the guards up ahead of them to make sure their floor was secure. And she and Rule rode up in the elevator alone. It was the most privacy they’d had since she’d sat on his lap last night.

Lily watched the number lights gradually change. It was a slow elevator. “I hate this.”

Rule cast her a glance, his brows pulled down over eyes gone anxious. “Lily—”

“I don’t expect you to fix things. I understand the need for guards. I just wanted to point out that I hate it. You said you booked us a suite?”

His eyes stayed on her face, searching for something. She wasn’t sure what. “Two bedrooms and a sitting room. Scott and three of the others will bunk in the second bedroom. Cullen will have to put up with the couch in the sitting room. The rest will be in a similar suite next to ours. They’ll be crowded, but the hotel brought in extra beds. There’s a door between the two suites.”

All of which made good sense from a security standpoint. You didn’t split your forces if you didn’t have to. Lily hadn’t had the FBI’s advanced training in protecting a witness or other targets, but she knew the basics. “Is there anything I should know about…”

“What?”

She sighed. “Drummond’s back.” When Rule glanced around—an automatic reaction, however useless—she nodded at the white mist hovering in one corner. “He’s behind you, up near the ceiling. All misty at the moment, so I guess he doesn’t have anything to say.”

Rule’s mouth thinned. “I don’t like the way he can pop in without me knowing. I know you’ll tell me, but I don’t like it.”

She nodded. “We’ve got little enough privacy these days, and knowing he can show up at any moment.…shit. I just thought of something.”

“Nothing pleasant, I take it.”

“Major creep-out. Drummond’s the only ghost I’ve ever seen, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been others hanging around, watching. And I never knew.”

The elevator eased to a halt, the doors sliding open. “You’re right,” Rule said. “That’s a major creep-out.”

Lily didn’t have to ask which door led to their suite. The pair of young men standing guard outside it tipped her off. She raised her eyebrows at the identity of one of them. “Joe, you were still in the lobby when we got on the elevator. How’d you get up here ahead of us?”

“Awesome lupi superpowers.”

“He took the stairs,” Rule said dryly.

Which actually was awesome lupi superpowers. The elevator might be slow, but he still had to have run up all ten floors. He wasn’t winded. “Barnaby’s in the stairwell,” Joe went on. “Steve and Todd are in your suite with Mike and the new Rho and his witness. Man.” He shook his head. “That must be why you wanted Mike to hold down the fort here.”

Lily glanced at Rule, puzzled. Mike knew how to sweep for bugs. That’s the reason Rule had sent him to the hotel. “Is there something I should know?”

“Tony is a physically impressive young man,” Rule said blandly. “Shall we go meet him?”

He clearly wasn’t going to say more at the moment, so she nodded. The other guard—Todd—let them in.

It was a typical hotel entry. Short hall, bathroom to the left, closet to the right, but it opened onto a not-so-typical sitting room. Lily hoped the antiques weren’t real. Lupi could be hard on their surroundings at times. There was plenty of room and seating available for the five men waiting there. One of them rose from the plush red couch the moment he saw them—and made the room and everyone else shrink.

Tony Romano was huge. Mike was a big guy, and Tony topped him by at least half a foot, making him maybe six-ten. And every inch of him was beautifully proportioned, like a larger-than-life-size statue of some god or ancient hero. He had the dark hair and olive complexion his name suggested and a face saved from outright prettiness by a strong nose. He was also absurdly young, or looked young. That didn’t mean much with a lupus, but something about him made her think his apparent age wasn’t that far off from his calendar age. Maybe it was his eyes—big, brown, and innocent. And a little dull, as if not much went on in that beautifully shaped head.

The gorgeous young behemoth looked at Rule gravely. “Laban would speak with Nokolai.”

“V’eius ven,” Rule said. “Nokolai receives Laban.”

Tony flushed. “V’eius ven,” he repeated, and reached for the hem of his polo shirt and pulled it off over his head, tossing it on the floor. When his hands went to the snap on his jeans, Lily’s eyebrows rose. Sure enough, he chucked them off, too.

Turned out he’d come to the meeting commando-style. And he was proportional everywhere.

He sank to his knees, then prostrated himself fully on the floor. His buttocks were a work of art. Michelangelo’s David would weep with envy. He spoke slowly and gravely, his voice slightly muffled by the carpet. “Laban subiciit Nokolai, plene et simpliciter.”

Rule’s eyebrows flew up. “Tony—it is acceptable to Nokolai to renew our previous pledges—”

The dark head moved once in a negative. “Plene et simpliciter.”

“As you will, then. Nokolai accipit Laban subiiciuntur.”

Tony sighed deeply as if relieved it was done and rose to his feet in one smooth motion. “Thank you. Fred?” He glanced to his right, and Lily finally noticed the other man new to her—a short, dark guy with a thick mustache. Both his hair and the mustache were grizzled more gray than black.

Fred sighed. “I witnessed my Rho’s submission plene et simpliciter and will so state to any who ask.” He bent and retrieved the discarded jeans. “Here.”

“Thank you,” Tony said again. He stood on one leg to begin pulling his jeans back on.

“What just happened?” Lily asked. “I know he submitted, but something about it surprised you.”

“Laban submitted plene et simplicite—that means fully and completely, nothing held back. Such language is unusual. It’s sometimes used when one clan defeats another in battle, but even then there are often terms applied to the submission.”

“Like how long it will last?”

“Among others, yes. Tony, this is my Chosen, Lily Yu. Lily, this is Tony Romano.”

He was back on both feet now and zipping his jeans. “Miss Yu.” He gave her a nod, but his attention returned to Rule immediately. “I submitted fully. It was the right thing to do. Laban lost honor through my father’s actions. I needed to acknowledge that wrong. He meant well, but he was wrong.” His brows drew down. “I told him so, but he doesn’t listen to me.”

“He’ll have to now, won’t he?” Rule said.

“It will take time for him to learn how to do that. Isen didn’t let my father change his heir back to my brother before passing the mantle. He must have wanted me to be Rho. Why me instead of James?”

“He didn’t tell me. It may be that he trusts you more than he does James.”

The young man thought that over, then nodded. “James thought Father’s scheme to sell information was clever. I thought it was wrong. Maybe Isen guessed that. Or maybe Fred is right. Fred thinks that Isen preferred me because I would be easy to manipulate because I’m not very smart.”

“Tony!” the short man exclaimed. “I didn’t say—”

“No.” For the first time he smiled, a singularly sweet expression turned briefly on his counselor. “You didn’t call me stupid. You never do. But I am slow in my thinking. I’m an odd choice for Rho. My father never meant me to be Rho. I was his way of telling James to shape up. But now I am Rho, and so I submitted plene et simplicit. Now Isen won’t feel he has to manipulate me because he has all the control, and we can be comfortable together.”

A single sharp crack of laughter burst from Rule. “And so you prove that thinking slowly is not the same as being stupid. You may have just gotten the best of my father, Tony, and there are very few who can say that.”

Lily was confused. Her expression must have shown that, because Rule turned to her with a half smile. “This makes Isen more fully involved in Laban’s welfare, you see. Increasing his authority increases his responsibility to them.”

“Isen is sneaky,” Tony said, “and very clever, so it would do me no good to try to outthink him. He is also very much a Rho. He will deal honorably with us.”

Fred didn’t seem as sure of that as his new Rho. He sighed faintly. Lily thought Tony was right, though. Isen was both clever and sneaky, but he was also as dominant as they came…the lupi version of dominant, that is, which was as much about taking care of those in your charge as it was about taking charge.

“Who did you name Lu Nuncio for Laban?” Rule asked.

“My cousin Charlie.”

Rule’s eyebrows rose. “I’d expected you to name your father.”

Tony’s sigh was long and windy. “So did he. He’d be a safe choice, but he was Rho too long to make a good Lu Nuncio, and he doesn’t listen to me. Charlie is very dominant and thinks he’d make a better Rho than I will, but he listens. He’s not jumpy the way James is. He won’t try to kill me. Not right away, anyway. He’ll give me a chance.”

“You have much to do within your clan,” Rule said. “I stand ready to help, if I can.”

“Thank you. First, though, I must do as Isen said. He wants me to help you investigate the theft. How can I help?”

“For now, by answering some questions,” Lily said.

“Okay,” he said, but barely glanced at her before looking back at Rule with doubt writ large on his face.

“Lily is in charge of the investigation,” Rule said. “She’s an FBI agent.”

“I think I knew that, but I’d forgotten.” For the first time he really looked at her…and kept looking for a disconcertingly long time. Finally he nodded. “I’m not used to women being in charge. I know they are sometimes, but not in the clans, and I don’t see many women on my job.”

“What do you do?”

“Underwater and hyperbaric welding.”

“Ah…that’s a very specialized skill.”

“I like it. I’m good at it, too, and the pay’s good, but I won’t be able to do it anymore. There’s a lot of travel involved.”

Rule spoke. “Tony works for an underwater fabrication and repair firm. They work on ships, drilling platforms, and underwater installations of all kinds. He’s been all over the world.”

Lily exchanged a glance with Rule. There was more to this slow-speaking new Rho than met the eye. “I need to ask you some questions. Do you have a problem with a woman having authority?” she asked Tony.

He thought that over a moment. “I don’t think so. I’ll need to study on it awhile, I expect, since I’m not used to it. If your questions are about who paid my father to betray Nokolai, I know some things that may help.”

“Good. Have a seat,” she said, gesturing at the round table and chairs near the window. She glanced at Rule. “Maybe we could have a few less bodies in the room…and some coffee?”