He replaced the little rasp in his toolkit, slipped it back into his pocket, then turned to me. “Let’s go.” The whole process had taken perhaps thirty seconds.
Professional hit man, making sure the gun can’t be traced to the two bullets in Farouche’s skull.But I didn’t comment aloud, and together we scrambled up the levee and made our way to the vehicles.
Ryan paced an anxious line in front of his car. Sonny leaned against it with his arms folded casually, though his fingers drummed a nervous staccato on his bicep. The back door of the car was open, and as we hurried up a woman I recognized from her picture as Angela Palatino stepped out.
I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there and start looking for Zack, but I knew I couldn’t nottake a few minutes to deal with her. I owed that much to Idris.
The tight grip she held on the top of the car door betrayed the level of her tension, and obvious signs of weeping marred her lovely face. I shot Sonny a questioning glance. Misery filled his expression, and then he briefly put his arms in a baby-holding position.
Baby?I thought, baffled, but then it clicked. Her daughter. Angela had no doubt asked Sonny where Amber was, and he’d been forced to tell her the brutal truth.
“Is Idris all right?” she asked, eyes flicking briefly past me as if expecting him to come over the levee at any moment.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, only lying a little. Idris was a mess the last time I saw him, but I knew Mzatal would call in every favor he had to makehim all right. “He went with one of our other operatives for debriefing,” I continued, lying a lotthis time, then shoved down my impatience to get out of there. “I’m very sorry about your daughter.”
Grief clouded her face. “Thank you.” I saw the questions forming in her eyes— Why did all this happen? Why was Idris’s cooperation so necessary? Why did my daughter have to die?—and I quickly spoke to forestall them, since I hadn’t the faintest fucking idea how to answer.
“Agent Kristoff is going to take you to the rest of your family,” I said, gesturing to Ryan. “I’m sorry, but there’s not much more I can tell you at the moment since the investigation is ongoing.”
“But I willget answers?” she asked.
“As soon as we have them,” I lied yet again. Her scrutiny remained on me for several more excruciating seconds, and I had the gut-twisting feeling she knew damn well I was feeding her a pile of bullshit. She finally gave a nod, sat back within the car, and closed the door, though I had the definite sense she wasn’t done with me or any of this. She’d merely given me a reprieve.
It was enough for now. I moved to Ryan. “Can you handle getting her to the safe house on your own?” I asked. “I need Sonny.”
Ryan gave me a nod. “Yeah. I got it.”
I glanced to Sonny. “You okay with that?”
He had a deer-in-headlights look about him, but he gave a nod of assent. “Sure. Whatever you need.” A tug of sympathy went through me. Sonny was suddenly in a different world with different rules—a world without Farouche and his influence—and it was clear he didn’t have the faintest clue of how to deal with it. Luckily, I had an idea.
Ryan leveled a stern look at me. “You be careful.”
“Always,” I said.
Sonny slid into the backseat of Zack’s car. Bryce stood by the open passenger door but didn’t get in, and it took me a second to realize he was holding it open for me. “I can drive,” I insisted.
“I know you can.” He smiled, but there was steel behind it. “But I’ll drive.”
My protest died away. He was acutely aware of my identity issues, and intuitive enough to recognize that Mzatal’s behavior and cold distance had left me even more distracted. No doubt he preferred not to be a passenger with a muddled-me driving. I met his eyes with silent gratitude and climbed in.
Bryce settled behind the wheel and cranked the ignition. “Where to, chief?”
“We’re looking for Zack.” Where the hell would a distraught demahnk go in the middle of the night? “Let’s try the Nature Center. There’s a valve there. Gotta start somewhere.”
As Bryce pulled out, I found my phone and called Zack. Voicemail picked up after half a dozen rings.
“Zack, it’s me,” I said. “We’re looking for you. Hang in there. I’ll keep calling.” I disconnected and glanced over to Bryce. “Well, it didn’t go straight to voicemail, which means he still has it on.”
“That’s good.” A frown puckered his mouth. “What the hell happenedwith Zack? All I know is that he somehow took out Rhyzkahl, then vanished.”
I did a mental head-smack. Of course Bryce was clueless. The exchange had been entirely in demon and he didn’t have the benefit of the universal grove translator.
“It’s really complicated,” I said with an apologetic wince. “You can’t breathe a word of this to Ryan.” Bryce gave me a nod, and I glanced in the back seat and got Sonny’s as well.
Of course now I had to figure out what to say. “You remember Ilana?” I asked Bryce. I knew Sonny would be clueless, but no way could I explain the whole demon realm dynamic right now.
When Bryce nodded, I continued. “She’s Mzatal’s demahnk advisor, his ptarl. And Zack is . . . was . . . Rhyzkahl’s ptarl. What you saw was him breaking that bond.” I paused for emphasis. “That’s never everbeen done before.”
Bryce maintained his bland expression, but there was a hint of holy shitin his eyes when he glanced my way. “That sounds pretty big. What happened to Zack?”
“I wish I knew,” I said. “But we have to find him. When he left he looked shattered.” And how long will Ryan remain stable without him?
Yet we didn’t find him at the Nature Center or the next two places we looked, and though I called his phone several times, it continued to ring then go to voicemail.
“One more try,” I said after a frustrating hour of searching and calling. “If he doesn’t pick up this time, I’ll have to enlist Ryan to trace Zack’s cell.” I reallydidn’t want to involve Ryan in the search, nor did I want to deal with whatever official channels would be necessary for such a thing, but we were running out of options.
“You gotta do what you gotta do,” Bryce noted with pragmatic calm.
Once again I called Zack and waited through five rings. But this time, it stopped ringing without going to voicemail, and my heart rate spiked. I couldn’t hear anything on the other end, but I knew Zack had answered. I willed calm into my voice. “Hey, Zack. I’m out looking for you, dude.”
Silence for a good ten seconds. “Kara,” he said, voice thick and hoarse. “I’m okay.”
“You’re such a liar. Where are you?”
“By the lake.” Each word came through as though a huge challenge to speak. “Park in the Worms and Perms lot,” he managed. “West about a hundred yards, then walk in toward the lake. I . . . can’t come to you.”
I looked over at Bryce. “We’re heading for the bait shop on Lakeshore Drive. You know the one?” He nodded and I returned my attention to Zack. “We’ll be there in five minutes, and no, I’m not hanging up.”
The line remained silent, and I had the distinct impression that Zack was gathering enough energy simply to speak. “What happened after I left?” he asked after about half a minute. “I know . . . the qaztahl are all gone, but I can’t sense like I should.”
I did my best to fill him in as we headed his way. The conversation remained fairly one-sided, but I had the sense it helped him simply to hear me talk. I caught him up on the various details, and did my best to ease his deep concern for Szerain/Ryan by relating my theory that he’d used the node to stabilize himself.
The car lurched as Bryce pulled into the empty rutted gravel lot of Bubba and Barb’s Worms and Perms, a mom and pop beauty salon and bait shop that had been a lake fixture for almost forty years. It had been rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina, but already had a dilapidated air about it. A single floodlight illuminated the shabby, faded blue building with BEAUTY SUPPLIES, LIVE BAIT and GET WORMS HERE painted on the side. I wasn’t too sure about the selling point of the last one, or the whole concept for that matter, but the place did a thriving business so what the hell did I know?