A dozen thoughts and memories tumbled around in his head. The past was supposed to be fixed, unalterable, but it was shifting on him. Finally he said, “It takes determination to argue with Isen.”
“The Rho thing doesn’t work on me.”
“Even so.” He started walking again. After half a block he said, “I want to get to know Jasper.”
“That would be good. We’ve got some heavy shit to get through first.”
Too damn true. “Speaking of which…” Rule stopped again and looked behind them. Scott and Cullen were half a block back. He gave the signal for them to approach.
“Jasper thought you’d be upset about Adam.”
He quirked a surprised brow at her. “I am, of course. Assuming that our assumption about his kidnapping is true.”
“Not that kind of upset. Upset because his lover is a man. Once he got past the shock of me figuring out what property had been taken from him, he watched you. He was waiting for you to go all ick on him.”
“How did you see that? I didn’t.”
“Not so much baggage. No,” she corrected herself. “Different baggage. Mine doesn’t involve Jasper.”
He felt better. Not good, but not as jumbled. He smiled to tell Lily that. “Why do you suppose he never contacted me?”
“He was raised by a bipolar mother who didn’t get adequate treatment for years. He grew up gay in a society that made him a target for every kind of hate and bullying. Chances are he has his own baggage, don’t you think?”
The rented BMW reached them quickly. Rule and Lily took the backseat; Cullen sat up front with Scott. Lily, he noticed, put her necklace back in her purse. Why didn’t she just keep it on? She had some kind of crazy tolerance for Drummond’s ghost that he couldn’t fathom and didn’t like.
“All right,” Rule said once they were moving. Short of planting a bug—which the guards had checked for—it was almost impossible to target a moving vehicle either electronically or magically. “I’d like to hear your impressions. How much of Jasper’s story was true, do you think?”
Lily shrugged. “All, some…impossible to say.” She reached for her laptop and popped it open.
“He smelled anxious and guilty,” Cullen put in, “but the anxiety could be about his lover. So could the guilt. Nothing gets the guilt gland pumping like thinking you’ve endangered someone you love.”
“That part I’d put money on,” Lily said. She was typing something on her laptop as she spoke. “The part he didn’t admit—that they’re threatening his partner to force him to do what they want. Not that I’m taking his word that it’s ‘they’ rather than ‘he’ or ‘she.’ ”
Rule hadn’t noticed Jasper’s use of the plural pronoun to refer to whoever had Adam, but now that Lily brought it up…“If Friar’s involved, ‘they’ is appropriate. Especially on this coast.” Friar’s East Coast lieutenant was in jail awaiting trial, having been refused bail as a flight risk. But his West Coast lieutenant was still free and active.
“Friar must be part of it,” Cullen said. “How would Machek know to mention him otherwise? The official story is that Robert Friar died when the mountain came down in September.”
Lily looked up. “But Machek didn’t mention Friar by name, did he? I did. He said something about us wanting to find the one behind the October attacks. I filled in the blank for him.”
Cullen looked over his shoulder at her, startled. “Son of a bitch. You’re right. Did he do that on purpose?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did you guess that he was talking about his partner, anyway?”
“That’s right, you didn’t see his file, did you?”
Rule, on the other hand, had pretty much memorized it. “Arjenie dug up a fair amount about Adam King,” he said. “He showed up in one of her databases because he and Jasper purchased the house together three years ago. King is an architect who was laid off during state cutbacks a couple of years ago. He’s put out his own shingle and is enjoying some success, but he works from home. He wasn’t there today. He might have left the house for any number of reasons, but there was only one takeout lunch at the table. Only one mug on the coffee table, too.”
Lily nodded, tapping away on her laptop. “Add to that Machek’s attitude. He wasn’t worried about getting arrested. He made the right noises, but he didn’t really care. What else would cause that kind of funneling of priorities? Odds were he was frantic about a person, not an object.”
“Okay,” Cullen said, “I can see that. What are you working on, anyway?”
“A request for a phone tap.”
Rule’s head jerked. “A tap? On Jasper? But if he isn’t reporting a kidnapping—”
She gave him a look he couldn’t read. “I’m not going to charge your brother with failure to disclose. That doesn’t mean I have to pretend Adam King’s really gone off for some downtime without his phone. First step is a tap on Jasper’s phones—at his store, his house, on his mobile. He could have a throwaway given him by his employer especially for contact, but we can’t do anything about that.”
Cullen grinned. “You’re sneaky. Isen would approve. Where are we going, anyway?”
Sometimes Cullen was unnervingly observant. Sometimes he failed to notice the proverbial brass band. “To the hotel,” Rule said. “Assuming Lily still wants to put off checking in with her local office?” She nodded, and Rule went on, “Tony Romano is at the hotel.”
“What, already?”
“Per Isen’s instructions, he didn’t go to Nokolai Clanhome. I’m to accept his submission on behalf of Nokolai.”
“Huh. What’s on the list after that?”
Lily raised her brows. “You have something else you need to do?”
“I could be working a Find spell for the prototype. Cynna stayed up damn near all night working up a more detailed pattern for it, and she gave me a copy of the pattern. Integrating that pattern into a spell takes longer than using it the way she would,” he added, “and I’ll need privacy for that.”
“Oh. Right. You should be able to work on your spell at the hotel. What comes next for me and Rule depends on what Romano tells us. Also on if we hear from Machek, or if Arjenie has learned more about that Hugo character you told me about. If she…shit, I forgot to turn my ringer back on.” She glanced at Rule as she reached in her purse. “Have you got someone who knows the city well, or should I supply someone like that? If we end up faking an exchange, that could be important.”
“There’s Murray, but I don’t like to pull him away from Beth.” Rule considered briefly. “Tony Romano knows San Francisco. He’s lived here for…what is it?”
She was frowning at her phone. “Beth called two more times, and there’s a text from her, too. She wants me to call. She put ‘urgent’ in all caps. It probably isn’t, but I’d better call.”
Rule knew what she meant. Beth wasn’t the fashion-obsessed airhead she liked to impersonate, but Lily’s family had a blind spot about her job. They tended to think it was a great deal more interruptible than it was.
Lily tapped the screen. Rule heard the phone ring, then: “Lily!”
“Beth?” Lily said. “What did you—”
“Thank God you called. He’s missing. The police don’t want to hear about it,” she said bitterly. “They gave me this bullshit about waiting forty-eight hours. They think he’s forgetful or drunk or just doesn’t want to see me, but Sean’s as dependable as sunrise. We had an appointment today at ten—a business appointment—but he wasn’t there, and that’s so not like him. And I can’t find anyone who’s seen him since our Bojuka class last night.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Sean. I thought I said that. Sean’s missing. Sean Friar.”
BETH’S tiny walk-up wasn’t far from Machek’s house geographically, but it was light-years away economically. The living room—which was also the dining room and kitchen—was colorful, cluttered, and cramped. After one glance inside, Rule had told Scott to wait in the hall. Lily wasn’t sure where the other guards were.