“Yet you think he gave up your name to Friar.”
Jasper smiled wryly. “I did say he’s my former agent. A couple of years ago, I caught him in a lie. Now, that wasn’t unusual—Hugo likes lying—but this was a stupid lie. It only netted him a couple grand, and for that he broke his word?” Jasper shook his head. “I severed our relationship.”
“My source says you retired a few years ago, or at least stopped taking jobs.”
“Ah. Yes. The loss of my agent played into my decision.”
“You’ve tried to find him recently?”
“And failed.”
“Do you have a photo of him?”
“No, he’s camera shy.”
“Describe him, then.”
“He’s, uh.…at least three hundred pounds and maybe an inch taller than me. That would make him six-three. He’s bald—lost the hair on top years ago and shaves the rest. The tattoo you know about. Brown eyes. His nose is kind of squashed—I think it got broken when he was in prison, but it might have happened earlier. I don’t know his age, but it’s not far from mine.”
“Has his weight changed much since you met him?”
“He’s always been heavy. Maybe fifty of those pounds were added over the last sixteen years.”
“That’s how long you’ve known him?”
Jasper nodded and looked at his watch again. “Listen, I…”
Rule heard Jasper’s phone vibrate. Lily probably didn’t, but she must have seen the way he jumped. “It’s him,” Jasper said. “Friar. That’s the phone he gave me.” He reached for one of the pockets in his vest.
“Wait a minute,” Lily said. “Could that have a GPS in it?”
Jasper shook his head. “I checked. Quiet. For God’s sake, everyone needs to be real quiet.”
“He won’t hear your conversation on the house mics.”
“I know. Shh.” Jasper thumbed the phone, held it to his mouth with his hand cupped over it, and whispered, “Yes.”
Rule heard a much-hated voice: “Are we playing a whisper game, Jasper?”
Jasper replied so softly Rule wondered how well Lily could hear him. “They’ve got some of their people watching me. One’s on my roof. You want them listening to us talk?”
Friar was amused. “And do you think this watcher could hear a phone conversation two floors beneath him over that music you play every night in your ongoing effort to baffle my listening devices?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“It’s an excess of caution, but never mind. It’s almost time for you and dear Adam to be reunited. You have twenty-five minutes to reach Hammond Middle School. Set your timer now. You are to call your brother in fifteen minutes—do be precise, you will be graded on this—and tell him to meet you there at eleven forty-five. He’s to leave his bodyguards at the hotel. Make sure he brings Seabourne. Say whatever you have to. Just make sure he brings Seabourne.”
“A middle school? You want to meet at—I don’t even know where that is!” Jasper’s eyes were wild, but he kept his voice to a whisper.
“Look it up. And don’t be late. Every minute you’re late, something unpleasant will happen to poor Adam.”
“Twenty-five minutes isn’t enough! And you have to let me talk to Adam first. I need proof—”
“Twenty-five minutes,” Friar repeated. And hung up.
Jasper looked up, his knuckles white on the phone he clutched in one hand. “The recordings. They’ve got over an hour to go. He won’t hear me leave the house. He’ll know. He’ll know, and—”
“Leave that to me,” Rule said, taking out his phone. “Chris is fairly tech savvy. I’m sure he can follow your instructions.”
“But how—”
“He’ll enter your house secretly through one of the windows and, under your direction, shut off your recordings and the timers on the lights. He’ll leave out the back where it’s dark so any watchers don’t see his face. Then he’ll vanish.” He set the timer on his phone, then tapped the screen again, calling Chris.
“You can vanish?” Jasper said, befuddled.
“Lupi don’t disappear,” Lily said. “It just seems like it. They’re good at concealment. Tell me what Friar said.”
Jasper did that while Rule gave Chris his instructions. Rule listened to see if Jasper altered anything or left it out—he didn’t, until he added that Hammond Middle School was close to the hotel, much closer than his house, so he had a few minutes. Not many, but a few. Rule disconnected and signaled to Scott: Bring Cullen here. Scott grimaced, no doubt anticipating more complaint. But Cullen wouldn’t bitch about this. He never did when the emergency was real.
“He didn’t tell me to bring the prototype,” Jasper was saying to Lily. “Does that mean he’s got it?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe…tell me something. If you still had the prototype, would you have brought it to this meeting if Friar told you to?”
“No. Not like this, with no guarantees. Too easy to kill me and Adam both and take the damn thing.”
“He probably knows that.”
Jasper scrubbed his face. “He does. Of course he does. I’ve been clear about that. I wish to hell I’d quit panicking. It plays hell with thinking. So the next question is, how do I leave here without being seen? There’s no time to leave the way I came in, so I’ll have to exit as someone else.”
“If you’re in the center of my men when I leave,” Rule said, “you won’t be clearly visible.”
“I need to get there ahead of you, and you’re supposed to leave your men here.”
“Friar knows I won’t do that. He wants something to hold over you—you didn’t do the impossible, so he won’t honor his end of the deal. Which he has no intention of doing anyway, but he wants you to keep thinking he will if you jump through his hoops just right.”
“Right. Right. That sounds like him. I still need to leave before you do.” He looked at Lily. “Do you have some makeup I could use?”
“Makeup? Uh—sorry, but I don’t think any amount of makeup will make you look like a woman. And I don’t have anything that would fit you.”
“No, I won’t cross-dress. But another shirt, yes, the more expensive the better, given where you’re staying. Not black. Black points up the resemblance between me and Rule. And mascara, shadow, lipstick, liner—I don’t suppose you have any glitter? No? What about cotton balls?”
“LILY was right,” Rule said from the doorway to the bathroom. “You don’t look like a woman. You do look different, but not like a woman.”
“Different but charming, yes?” Jasper met his eyes in the mirror and blew him a mocking kiss. “You don’t approve.”
“It’s disconcerting, like looking in the mirror and seeing someone else there. Was Chris able to shut down your recordings?”
“I think so. He seemed to follow instructions well.” Jasper’s voice was clear in spite of the scraps of washcloth he’d stuffed in his cheeks in lieu of cotton balls to change their contour. In six minutes he’d transformed himself—removed his shirt, gelled his hair into spikes, and applied liner, mascara, and shadow with a lavish hand. He was now brushing on blush. He met Rule’s eyes in the mirror again. “It’s my SFGS disguise.”
“Will this do?” Lily said, pushing past Rule and holding out a white cashmere scarf he’d given her recently.
“Perfect, if I had a shirt to—ah, you’ve got something.”
She handed him the silk shirt that had been draped over her arm. “Todd donated it to the cause.”
Todd liked color. The shirt was lime green with a paisley pattern picked out in royal blue. It was slightly too small, but Jasper dealt with it efficiently, rolling up the sleeves and leaving it unbuttoned. He draped the scarf around his neck, twitching it until it fell to his satisfaction.