IT was more like three hours before the wyvern dipped down and another fifteen minutes or so before they landed. Jack sat quietly while Kaldar got out, changed clothes, and gave some final instructions to Gaston. Finally, a thump resonated through the cabin as Gaston’s fist pounded on the wood and wicker. “Up, ladies. He’s gone. I’m going to get some water and mix catalyst feed for the wyvern. Piss, stretch your legs, do whatever you need to do. And stay the hell away from the boundary. We’re really close.”
Jack looked at George. They were close to the boundary. They hadn’t been in the Broken for almost three years, not since the last time they went to visit Grandma, and they hadn’t been in California ever.
The light of the early morning glowed ahead, sifting through the front windshield of the cabin. Jack leaped over the crate, pushed the wicker door open, and stopped. A few steps ahead, the ground plunged down in a sheer cliff, and beyond it, a vast ocean spread to the horizon, blue and pale silver. A wind gust shot from under the cliff and hit him in the face. A thousand scents exploded all around Jack: the smell of pine resin and eucalyptus; the fragrance of small blue flowers, hiding between the crags; the distant stench of seagulls screaming overhead; salt; wet sand; ocean water, clean and slightly bitter; seaweed; and, as an afterthought, a faint aroma of smoked fish flavoring the breeze.
For a second, Jack couldn’t process it all, then he jumped, arms open wide like wings, and dashed down the near-vertical slope to the waves below.
THREE
THE Rose Cliff Rehabilitation Center could only be described as posh, Kaldar reflected, walking through the glass door into a foyer. Huge windows painted the cream and pale peach walls with rectangles of golden sunlight. The floor was brown marble tile, polished to a mirror sheen, and as he walked across it to a marble counter, his steps sent tiny echoes through the vestibule. Normally, he preferred shoes that made no sound, but the set of Broken clothes had to be obtained quickly, and he didn’t have a lot of choices. Now he felt like a shod horse: clack, clack, clack.
The mirrored wall behind the receptionist presented him with his reflection: he wore a dark gray suit, a white shirt so crisp he was half-afraid the folded collar might nick his neck and draw blood, and the cursed black shoes. His dark hair was slicked back from his face. He’d shaved, trimmed his eyebrows, and dabbed cologne on his skin. He smelled expensive, he made noise as he walked, and he projected enough confidence to win a dozen sieges.
The blond receptionist behind the counter smiled at him. “May I help you, sir?”
“My name is Jonathan Berman.” He held out his business card. She took it and studied it for a second. Silver foil cursive crossed the dark blue card printed on the best stock money could buy. It read: SHIFTING THE PARADIGM. Below it his name was printed, followed by a phony Los Angeles address.
“Good morning, Mr. Berman.”
Kaldar nodded. Amazing how the Broken worked: all those forms of identification, but hand someone a business card, and they forget to ask you for your driver’s license. He’d had business cards in twenty different names, one for each region of the country. Each communicated something different. This one said money, confidence, and success, and, judging by her even wider smile, this fact wasn’t lost on the receptionist.
“How may I help you, Mr. Berman?”
“I’m here to see Alex Callahan.”
The receptionist glanced at her computer screen. Her fingers with very long nails colored canary yellow flew over the keyboard. “Mr. Callahan was admitted three days ago. Normally, we recommend that our guests refrain from distractions during the first two weeks of treatment.”
Kaldar leaned on the counter and gave her a knowing smile. “What’s your name?”
“Bethany.”
“Well, Bethany, Alex is my cousin. I understand he came in with his parents.”
That was a wild stab in the dark, but who else would make a deal with the Hand, then blow all of that hard-earned cash on a rehab for an addict? That kind of love came only from parents. If Alex had a woman, she was either an addict like him or penniless like him.
“His father, actually,” Bethany said.
Kaldar felt the first hint of excitement. He was right; there was a family, and they were in this theft up to their eyeballs. Alex was probably too far gone to care, but they cared. They had something to lose. That meant he could lean on them.
Everyone had a lever . . .
While his mind processed and calculated, his lips were moving. “Just between you and me, did Alex’s father strike you as a man who can simply drop forty thousand dollars on this marble counter and walk away?”
“I can’t say.” The receptionist leaned back, but he read the answer in her eyes. “It’s not proper.”
“Who will know?” Kaldar leaned closer and made a show of glancing around. “I don’t see anyone, do you?” His voice dropped into a conspiratorial, intimate half whisper. “So just between you and me, he looked like a man who hunts for spare change in his couch.”
Bethany blinked, big eyes opened wide.
“You have to ask yourself, Bethany, where does a man like that get this kind of money. He borrows it, of course. No bank would give him a loan, so he has to turn to family.” Kaldar smiled magnanimously.
Understanding crept into Bethany’s eyes. “Oh.”
“All I want is to make sure that I’ve made a correct investment in Alex’s future. I’d like to speak to him and let him tell me if he is treated well and that his needs are being seen to. I promise I carry no contraband.” He raised his hands palms out. “You may search me if you’d like.”
He slipped just enough suggestion into that last phrase to make Bethany blush a little. “That won’t be necessary.” She pointed to the right, where a group of blocky leather chairs and couches surrounded a glass cube of a table. “Please wait here.”
Kaldar turned on his heel and clacked his way across the floor to the leather chairs. A hollowed-out wooden dish, shaped almost precisely like a canoe, sat on the table. The canoe held three spheres about the size of a large grapefruit made of smoky glass shot through with veins of gold. Odd decoration. He pictured himself swiping a sphere, its comforting weight heavy in his hand. In a pinch, he could use it to shatter the windowpane and give himself a head start if he had to leave in a hurry.
Two men emerged from the side hallway. One was middle-aged and blond, going gray, with the slick, clean look of someone accustomed to dealing with people of money and making a good living from it. The other was Alex Callahan. Tall, lanky, with longish hair on the crossroads of dishwater blond and faded red, Callahan walked oddly, as if he didn’t fully trust the ground to support his weight. His cheekbones looked sharp enough to cut, his cheeks caved into his face, and his neck, left bare by the collar of a too-big T-shirt, stuck out, thin, long, and bony. A mean, arrogant sneer bent his lips. His eyes radiated a manic energy and contempt. It was the look that said, “You think I’m shit because I’m a junkie, but guess what? I am better than you.”
Kaldar had seen that same look on the faces of spoiled addicts before. This wasn’t a desperate soul in need of help debasing himself for a fix. This was a man surfing the edge of violence, who saw himself as a victim and the rest of the world as owing him.
Callahan was too far gone. Threats wouldn’t work. He simply didn’t care about himself or his family.
“Cousin!” Kaldar grinned at Alex.
Callahan didn’t miss a beat. “Didn’t expect to see you here, cousin.”
The older handler held out his hand. “I’m Dr. Leem. I want to assure you that Alex is being well looked after. Isn’t that right, Alex?”
“Sure,” Callahan said.
“Let’s sit down?” Leem suggested.
They took their places on the leather furniture, and Leem launched into a long overview of the facilities. Kaldar pretended to listen, watching Callahan. Callahan watched him back. The file back in Louisiana said he was twenty-eight; he looked forty-eight. His foot tapped the floor; he picked on the skin around his nails; he rolled his mouth into different variations of his sneer, which was probably semipermanent. He’d been in the facility for over forty-eight hours. They had detoxed him. Alex Callahan was sober, and he hated it.