“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.