If not, well, she’d had a breakthrough, hadn’t she? She was a little better than totally sucky now.
She might be able to reach Rule again. Without the toltoi she wasn’t confident she could, but she might. But she couldn’t hold the connection long enough to be sure he “heard” the address, much less who held her, what their capabilities were, what part Robert Friar played, or why the elves wanted the prototype. With Sam, all she had to do was get the merest whisper of a message to him and he’d do the heavy lifting. At minimum, he could pass what she told him to Rule. At maximum…she didn’t know what Sam’s maximum was, and she wouldn’t find out today. He wouldn’t exert himself that much. But all he really had to do was tell Rule where she was. And Rule would take it from there.
Lily looked into the candle flame.
FORTY
THE conference room at the FBI’s San Francisco office was small and crowded. The room smelled of clan—Scott, Mike, and Alan were among those at the table—but also of stale coffee, humans, and all the various scents they were so fond of. In addition to cologne, aftershave, and shampoo, Rule smelled six different brands of deodorant. One of them wasn’t working as well as it might.
His wolf did not like it here. It didn’t help that humans were forever closing doors. It was a damn fetish with them. Rule told his wolf to settle, that they were hunting Lily and everyone here was helping and he needed to focus, dammit.
“Stop that,” Madame Yu snapped.
Everyone looked up at her. The man who’d just come in—Agent Smith or something similarly bland—stopped in midstride.
“Stop closing the door,” Madame Yu said. “The air is stale in here.”
“Sure,” Agent Smith said. “No problem.” He swung the door wide open. Everyone else went back to studying their printouts.
Rule made a mental note to buy Madame Yu something foolishly extravagant. He gave her a grateful nod and looked back at his own set of lists.
The California Department of Public Safety had coughed up a list of the owners of cars with license plates ending in LT250, along with their addresses of record and driver’s license numbers. That was on a database. Upon being served with the warrant, the bank had produced a list of every transaction in the last two days. That was a paper list. A very long paper list. It was a busy branch. Rule had gotten a second list from the bank, too—also on paper, but much shorter. That one contained only those transactions involving accounts that had been opened since the sidhe delegation arrived two weeks ago.
They’d been able to eliminate those account holders quickly. No matches. Not even any near misses.
Rule was operating on the assumption the elves had had help acquiring false identities, bank accounts, and renting a condo or house or apartment under their fake IDs. That help had probably come from Friar. They might have been in touch with him well ahead of their arrival. It was also possible one or more of them had been here much longer than two weeks. A few sidhe could cross between realms without a gate. Most of those with that skill were lords, according to Cullen. Most, but not all. Arjenie’s father was able to cross realms.
So they would check older accounts as well. Robert Friar had been recruited by her six years ago, so Rule eliminated accounts more than six years old. That still left them with a very long list.
The data from DPS had been easy enough to import into the Bureau’s computers. They’d tried scanning in the bank’s list, then importing the scanned data. It hadn’t worked. Scanning introduced too many errors. So they were doing it the old-fashioned way, comparing the two lists visually, looking for matches on the names, addresses, or driver’s license numbers.
Cullen was still searching. His copter had refueled twice—and had been detained at the airport the second time. The pilot had to fly so low for Cullen to see the kind of detail he needed that they were breaking some law or another. Rule had applied to Ruben for help, and the airport had released pilot, copter, and Cullen. They were back up again.
Laban was still searching, too, on the ground. They hadn’t found any more traces of elves. It was a big damn haystack.
If “LT250” wasn’t a partial license plate number, they were wasting an enormous amount of time. Time Lily couldn’t afford. Dammit, dammit, dammit…carefully Rule relaxed the hand he’d tightened into a fist atop his copy of the LT250 license plates. He realized he’d scanned most of the current page on autopilot. He could have missed something.
Damn it to hell. He didn’t want to look at lists. Man and wolf, he wanted to act.
He made himself take a slow breath, rolled his shoulders to loosen them—and winced. His wounded shoulder was not finished healing. Had he been able to sleep to speed the process, it would be almost whole again, but—
“Found something,” Mike said.
Rule beat Bergman to Mike’s side, but only by a hair. She’d been closer, but still, she was fast for a human. “Show me.”
“Here.” Mike pointed at a line halfway down one sheet, then at another sheet. “Abraham Brown. Got it on both sheets. Driver’s license number matches, too.”
Jasper sat up eagerly. “What is it? What’s the address?”
“44191 West Crescent,” Bergman said. “Bill, check the map.”
Jasper slumped. “That’s damn near in the bay.”
“He’s right.” A dark-haired man—Bill, presumably—had jumped up to look at a large map of the city pinned to one wall. “44191 would be right around here.” He tapped on the map with one finger.
Bergman gave Rule a sharp look. “You said she wasn’t near the water.”
Rule moved up to look at the map. The spot Bill had his finger on was very near the bay. It was also west of the hotel. Not all that far from the area where Lily had gone looking for Hugo, in fact.
“A lot of warehouses there,” Bill said. “Good place to stash a hostage. I can find out if that address is a warehouse pretty quick.”
“All right. Yes. Do it.” Rule scrubbed a hand through his hair. Was the match a coincidence? It could be. The list of plates ending in LT250 was long, and they were only guessing it was a partial plate number.
Bill did not jump to do what Rule said. He hesitated, looking at his boss.
“It’s west, not east,” Bergman said. “Either your tip was bad, or we’re looking in the wrong direction.”
Rule had told Bergman the truth—that Lily had contacted him through mindspeech, the kind the dragons used, though he’d only received a few words. Much to his surprise, she’d believed him. She had not, however, told her agents that. As far as they were concerned, Rule had received a mysterious tip they were supposed to treat as golden.
“If this isn’t where they’re holding Lily,” he said slowly, “it could still be connected. Maybe Friar used that identity himself before he gave it to one of the elves. It could lead us to him, if not them. We have to check it out.”
She nodded. “Good point. Come on, Bill—you and I will check out Abraham Brown and 44191 West Crescent. The rest of you keep checking your lists.”
“Oh, yes,” he said, looking at his share of those lists with loathing. “We’ll keep checking.”
THERE was nothing but fire. Fire in the tiny flame flickering at the end of a candlewick. Fire stretching from flame to flame, to the heart of flame.…fire, and Lily’s voice.