He was probably locking the barn door after the fact, but they didn’t have any idea why Sean Friar was missing. In the absence of data, Rule preferred to add a belt to the suspenders. If the belt proved unnecessary, good.
After that he talked to Scott about a contingency he wanted covered—if they did end up faking a trade of Cullen for Adam, he didn’t want some sniper doing away with Cullen before they could act. Then he called Isen and brought him up-to-date, learning in turn that Lily’s crime-scene people had come and gone and that Benedict and Arjenie would be stuck in D.C. for a while. Some of the sidhe delegation were staying holed up in their suite due to an unspecified indisposition, and the administration wanted Arjenie around when they emerged.
That struck Rule as suspicious. Elves’ ability to heal varied, but it seemed unlikely they’d caught a bug. Perhaps “indisposition” was diplomatic code for “we’re sick of talking to you.” Still, he called Benedict and, after some discussion, they agreed on a plan.
Then he called an old acquaintance who had lived in San Francisco a long time and had contacts in some less-than-legal venues. He might know about this Hugo they wanted to find.
He didn’t, but he promised to ask around. Just as Rule disconnected, Cullen arrived with Marcus and Steve. They hadn’t found a body or signs of a fight, so Rule called Beth to let her know, then directed Cullen to the small conference room he’d booked on the second floor, where he could work on his Find spell. Marcus and Steve would remain Cullen’s personal guards, so they went with him.
At last Rule was able to pour himself a cup of coffee from one of the insulated carafes room service had delivered and sit beside Lily, who was just getting off the phone. Good coffee, he noted, savoring the aroma. “What do I need to know?”
She glanced at her notebook. “This part is secondhand. An individual calling himself Ahab contacted Leo Romano on December second.”
“Just after the demo Cullen gave for the T-Corp people.”
She nodded. “Ahab is a male with a voice described as a ‘resonant tenor.’ Accent and diction suggest a native Californian, educated, no perceptible ethnicity. Contact was by phone only, with Ahab calling Leo from a series of numbers—probably throwaways, but we’ll check. Ahab claimed to work for a large multinational corporation, though he refused to say which one.”
Ahab certainly could be Friar. Rule looked at Tony. “You know quite a lot, considering you never spoke to this Ahab.”
“I thought you’d want to know things like that, so I asked my father once I was Rho.”
“Good thinking.”
“I don’t think fast,” Tony said with a hint of humor, “but I do think.”
“I’ll speak with Leo to confirm, of course,” Lily said. “Ah…I’ll skip some of the details to get to the interesting part. Payment was in cash, with the first installment left at the Golden Gate Park on December twenty-first. Tony persuaded his father that it would be good to know more about their mysterious Ahab, so they’d staked out the drop hours before it occurred. Successfully.” She flashed him a grin. “A Laban guard saw the drop made and followed the woman who did it to her car—an older model Toyota, license number 2LBZ112. Which is registered,” she finished smugly, “to a Ms. Carrie Ann Rucker. Special Agent Bergman is sending someone out now to pick her up for questioning.”
BETH hit send and leaned back with a sigh of relief. It was not her best work, but it was what the client wanted, and it was finished. Which was something of a miracle considering she didn’t really give a damn, not with Sean missing, but working was better than pacing. So she’d worked.
When she wasn’t Googling Humans First, that is. And the October massacres and Robert Friar and sociopaths. She hadn’t expected to find anything about this war the lupi thought they were fighting, and she’d been right about that. She’d turned up plenty about the Azá and their attempt to open a hellgate a year ago last November, but very little about the goddess they were said to worship. The one Lily called the Great Bitch. Who they didn’t name because she was attracted to her name. Who was apparently behind everything—Harlowe and the staff he’d used on Beth. The demons who’d killed so many at the Humans First rallies. The sniper who’d shot Lily last September and the plastic explosives planted at Nokolai Clanhome that they’d found barely in time.
There was a good chance she was behind Sean’s disappearance, too. Lily said Robert Friar was her agent and acolyte. Beth didn’t know why Robert would kidnap his own brother, but she didn’t have to understand to think he was involved.
Kidnap, Beth repeated silently, giving the word a mental underline. Sean had been kidnapped, not killed. He was alive. She believed that fiercely, knowing she was being irrational and not caring. He was alive, and they’d find him.
On the rational side, they did know now that he wasn’t lying dead or dying in his house. That was something, she told herself as she powered down her laptop.
Not enough, shouted the anger simmering inside her. Not nearly enough, and if Lily had only told her more about what was going on—at least that Sean’s brother was still alive! If Lily had told her that, she would have warned Sean, and he’d have been on his guard, and maybe he wouldn’t be missing now.
She hadn’t wanted to know.
Grimly Beth acknowledged that truth. She’d avoided learning more about all the bad things that had happened in the past year. She hadn’t wanted to know how scary things really were for her sister and for anyone connected to her. How dangerous it had become to be lupi or Gifted, and how many people purely hated them. How much crap was out there masquerading as fact, and how many people believed it. She really hadn’t wanted to know there was an Old One auditioning for the role of Baddest Megalomaniac I-Will-Take-Over-The-World Villain Ever. She hadn’t wanted to know, so she hadn’t asked Lily the questions that were now burning up her brain. After she’d been enspelled by Harlowe, held prisoner by a gang, and nearly killed, she’d just wanted her life back, wanted to choose her own course, not get sent careening off on some crazy trajectory like a badly struck cue ball.
No. Lily was the cue ball. Beth was just one of the random balls sent crashing around the pool table, hoping to find a safe pocket to hide in. That’s what San Francisco was supposed to be—her safe pocket.
Beth snorted in disgust. She’d played ostrich, and that was on her. Lily still should have told her way more than she had. Now Beth was pissed. And scared. Scared for Sean and scared for herself, and there didn’t seem to be anything she could do. Beth shoved away from her desk and grabbed her sneakers. “Murray!”
He appeared in her doorway. “Yo.”
She glanced up at him, annoyed. That probably had more to do with his presence than his word choice, but still, he was here and she didn’t like it. “No one actually says ‘yo.’ ”
“I do.”
Murray had such pretty eyes. They reminded her of the half-starved puppy she’d snuck into her room when she was eight. She’d named him Samson. Lily hadn’t told on her. Even Susan had kept mum, but there was no way to keep a puppy a secret, and their mother thought dogs were dirty and full of germs. Beth had cried and cried when Samson’s new owners came to take him away. “Are you an army wannabe or something?”