Текст книги "Dog Warrior"

Автор книги: Wen Spencer

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

"A fairly short segment of road," Max added.

Ukiah switched over to speakerphone and said, "According to the cult, there will be six nests in a hexagonal pattern. I've got street names for all six but none of the street numbers."

"So if we find the points that link all the street addresses into a hexagon—" Kyle started.

"—we'll be able to pinpoint the nests," Max finished .

***

Atticus had been building to a bitter rage for hours.

Much to his disgust, they'd spent the night with Zheng, sifting through the victims from the cremation site, building a profile. Kyle had been reduced to puppy love silliness with delight. The FBI agent, however, retreated behind her unreadable mask as they sifted through police reports and grisly photographs. Normally Atticus would have been only mildly annoyed by the two, but he found himself trying to fight off growing concern for Ukiah. He didn't want to care.

Nor was he happy with the shades of moral gray his team was drifting into by working with the Pack. With undercover work, the danger of sympathizing with the criminals ran high; having met the Ontongard, though, he was no longer sure that the Pack were the bad guys. He tried to keep in mind that their job in this mess was to find the drugs and get them off the street.

They pinpointed a surveying company in Watertown, Massachusetts, outside of Boston, as a possible den for the Ontongard. Three of the victims worked for the company, and from there, relationships spiraled outward. The police already suspected the company, citing "odd reactions to the news" and "seems mentally unbalanced" in reports of surviving employees. Even with Zheng's reassurance that the Pack would be able to tell the difference between humans and Ontongard, it felt wrong to turn the information over to them without first checking into it themselves.

But they'd run out of time.

They had missed the cult. Luckily, so had the Ontongard. After several cautious flybys, the coast guard pilot landed their Jayhawk helicopter on the cult's island refuge. The cult had left dangerous presents behind, and the Ontongard had tripped several. The boathouse in the small bay burned, a charred body occasionally visible among the flames. The walls of the living room were riddled with grapeshot, and dried blood flecked the floor. Too little blood. Something scurried on tiny feet among the overturned furniture and Atticus sensed small and vicious eyes watching him.

In the basement they found a windowless cell. Ukiah's scent was on the bare foam pad. The cult had provided only a litter box to use as a toilet. Of his brother, there was no sign whether he left the island alive or dead, alone or with others.

Agent Zheng lived up to her reputation, cold and distant and unreadable as a frozen lake. On the flight back to Cape Cod Coast Guard Air Station, the hopeful Coast Guard copilot proved immune to her chilly silence and grated on everyone's nerves with his attempts to break the ice. The moment they touched down, the FBI agent fled the helicopter.

"Zheng!" Atticus ducked under the still-whirling blades.

"Later, Atticus," she shouted without so much as looking over her shoulder.

He jogged to catch up with her. "We need to talk."

"Not now." She focused on getting to her rental SUV parked next to his Jaguar, walking in long, purposeful strides.

"Wait." He caught her arm and pulled her to a stop. "Talk to me."

"I can't." She turned her head away from him, covering her face with her hand. "I can't even look at you!"

It felt like she'd slapped him. She had seemed so accepting of his alien heritage. What had happened to change her mind—or had she always felt this way, and everything had been a lie to get his team to help her?

She took deep, cleansing breaths. "I need some time alone," she cried into her palm. "I'll talk to you later."

He drove back to Boston, barely holding his anger in check. Knowing him well, Ru waited until they were no longer trapped in the small confines of the Jaguar before talking.

"You're worried about your brother, aren't you?"

"No!" Atticus snapped as they stepped off the elevator. "I don't know where the little brat is, but I'm sure he's fine."

He slid the card key into the lock of Kyle's hotel room, pushed open the door—and there was Ukiah, sitting in the corner wing chair. Thrown off balance, Atticus lost control of his anger. "What are you doing here?"

"Atticus," Ukiah said, as if surprised to see Atticus in his own room.

"How the hell did you get here?" Atticus slammed shut the door behind him.

"I swam."

"From the island?"

"No, out in the bay someplace."

"How long have you been here?"

"About an hour."

Atticus glared at Kyle, who flinched under the look.

"I tried calling you, Atty, but you must have been out of the range of any cell tower."

"Out in the middle of the ocean, yes." Atticus took in the fact that Ukiah was dressed in his clothes. The room smelled of roasted meat and expensive cheese. A room service cart set for one was shoved into the corner, well-gnawed bones the only evidence of what the meal might have been. "You've made yourself at home. Why did you come here instead of to the Dog Warriors?"

"I'm not sure where they are," Ukiah admitted. "And the Coast Guard—after they pulled me out of the water—were afraid I was hypothermic and wanted to take me to the hospital. When I told them you were here . . ."

"Useless fucks," Atticus said of the Coast Guard, to have found someone with an APB out on them and let them walk away.

"Are you okay?" Ru crossed the room to press a hand to Ukiah's forehead. "You're still a little cool."

"I'm fine." Ukiah took the mothering in good grace.

"You had us worried." Ru tousled his hair and Ukiah leaned against him, soaking in the affection. Atticus realized that the boy was emotionally raw after days of battering and isolation among his enemies; now with Ru, whom he counted as a friend, Ukiah sought solace.

Jealousy flared through Atticus. "You have a lot of nerve to come asking help from us after what you've done. The ambush at the beach house. Stealing the Pixie Dust."

Ukiah flinched as if struck. "I'm sorry about that." He stood up. "I'll pay you back for the food, and I'll swap you clothes once I get something else to wear."

"What are you going to do about Ping and the dens?" Kyle asked.

"What's this?" Atticus asked.

Ukiah stared at Atticus with his feral gaze that looked the whole way through him, and said nothing.

"We were pulling together information on the dens." Kyle held out a printout of an aerial photo, one building circled in red. "Using information your brother skimmed from the cult. We—he thinks they're holding Ping at an engineering firm in Waltham."

"You think you're going off, getting the Pack, and attacking this office building?"

"Ping will know where Ice has the Ae." Ukiah looked away but his pain was obvious. "And she's pregnant with my child."

"You're not going into an office building with those killers. If you think Ping is actually there, we'll call the FBI and the police and get an assault team set up."

"The Pack exists to fight the Ontongard. Why put humans at risk?"

"Because it's their world, their laws."

"The Gets will fight to the death—and then come back. They'll shatter down to mice to escape any prison cell. They'll infect any human who's jailed with them. You can kill them only with fire and poison, and human law doesn't allow that."

"So you conveniently leave humans in the dark so they can't ever deal with the problem themselves?"

That stumped Ukiah; he tried to brush past but Atticus caught hold of him. With the physical contact, Atticus's awareness of his brother expanded—the room service meal was the only reason Ukiah was still standing. The repeated attacks, the long, cold swim, the repeated dosing of various drugs, and perhaps even starvation in the barren cell on the island had him on the verge of collapse. If Ukiah went into the water in such bad shape, it was amazing he didn't drown.

"How are you going to find the Pack?" Atticus asked, his anger falling away to concern. "You'll probably drop over just outside the door."

"I'll make some phone calls." Ukiah tried to pull away.

Atticus tightened his hold; he couldn't let his feelings jeopardize his brother's life. "Don't be stupid. I'd rather work with you than argue with you."

The fight left Ukiah with a sigh that seemed born more from exhaustion than frustration. He leaned against Atticus. The smell of the ocean still clung to him, as if the water had seeped down to the bone. The tension between them temporarily resolved, the feeling of "this is right, this is good" resounding between them, echoes of an earlier happiness, when they were one. Atticus found himself holding his brother tightly, savoring the closeness like a starving man trying to make a morsel of food last.

It was then that Atticus realized that earlier, when Ukiah sought solace with Ru, it hadn't been Ukiah that he had been jealous of. What idiocy.

"You say that you think Ping is there," Ru said. "Why don't we scout the location, see what's there. The cult might have given you old information."

"It would be dangerous," Ukiah murmured into Atticus's shoulder.

"We are familiar with danger," Atticus said.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Waltham, Massachusetts

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Ukiah eyed the Ontongard den with faint dismay. It was a huge redbrick cube of an office building. Four floors tall, and equally wide, it sat behind a moat of access roads, a parking lot, and landscaping. Its tinted windows hid its secrets from anyone curious enough to cross the moat and try to spy in.

"We should be able to sense the Ontongard from here," Ukiah told Atticus as they studied the building. Their uneasy alliance was holding, although Atticus had driven from downtown to this beltway suburb with savage speed. Ukiah envied not only his skill at handling the sports car in the pounding traffic, but also the ease with which Atticus dealt with bewildering detours, unfamiliar road signage, and a toll road that required you to fling quarters into an open bin to pass. The DEA agents laid siege to the nest with practiced efficiency. After a cautious drive-by, Atticus pulled in near the front doors. Kyle parked across the parking lot in the Explorer, disassociated from the Jaguar, but connected by radio.

"I don't feel anything." Atticus's voice was flat with hostility.

"That's what I mean," Ukiah said. "Even if there were only one Get inside, at this distance, we should be able to tell."

"If no one's home, let's have a closer look." Still Ru waited for a slight nod from Atticus before getting out.

The foyer was a vast, two-story room with a bulky receptionist's desk. Two visitor's chairs sat close to the front doors, as if visitors were encouraged to leave.

The receptionist herself was another surprise: a pixie-small girl, thin and nearly sexless. Her hair was cut and styled into spikes, and dyed a vivid purple. A collection of gold loops dazzled in her ears, right eyebrow, and left nostril. She wore a silk tunic that matched her hair, black leggings, and cowboy boots.

Despite her outlandish appearance, when she answered the phone with "Good morning, Peter Caldwell and Associates," she sounded as smooth and polished as any receptionist Ukiah had ever heard.

"Is she one of them?" Ru whispered to Atticus.

"I don't think so," Atticus said. "My spider sense isn't tingling."

"She's human." Ukiah walked to the desk and his brother and Ru fell in beside him so that they made an impressive array as the receptionist finished taking a message and glanced up.

"May I help you?"

"I'm Agent Takahashi." Ru showed the girl his ID.

"Oh, shit," she said. "I knew this job was too good to be true."

"We have information that a kidnapped woman is being held here." Ru tucked his ID away before she could see that he was DEA, not FBI. "We need to search the premises for her."

"Don't you need a warrant for that?"

"Not in a kidnapping. Can you tell me how many people are currently in the building?"

"I'm not sure." She shrugged. "This is all of the building I usually see outside the john. People come and go—I'm not allowed to check ID or anything on them. They have new hires all the time, but after a few days they call in sick or . . . You know, this is a really creepy place to work. I knew something was wrong when they put meon front desk."

"What were you going to say about new hires?" Atticus asked.

"This is going to sound weird, but it's like attack of the pod people here. Bright and happy people turn into shuffling zombies in less than a week, or they just don't come back."

"You've never called the authorities?" Atticus sounded annoyed.

"Oh, yeah, like I'm a pillar of the community that the police are going to listen to about zombies from Mars."

"We're looking for this woman." Ukiah showed her Ping's photo.

"I haven't seen her." She eyed them. "Am I in trouble?"

"No, but we would like you to give us your name and address and then go home. Nor would it be wise for you to return. Your employers are dangerous men."

"Oh, I'd believe that of upper management. Most of Engineering and Accounting are okay. They're up on the second floor."

"No pod people?"

"Yeah, zombie-free zones. Just major geeks. Third floor is iffy. No one but pod people go up to the fourth floor. Past the elevator lobby, the doors are locked with card keys."

Her name was Sonya Barnes, and she gave her address in a town called Natick, which looked like Nat-ick to Ukiah but she pronounced it as Nay-ick and had to spell it for Atticus.

"I don't know if this means anything," Sonya said. "But there was a mass exodus a little while ago of the pod people."

"What time?"

"About two hours ago."

Had the cult attacked one of the dens, triggering the Ontongard to abandon the rest?

"If they're moving their . . ." Ukiah paused, as Ru and Atticus both glanced hard at Sonya to remind him that she was listening to their conversation. ". . . hideout, they might have taken Ping with them already."

"We'll see." Atticus frowned at the near slip.

The DEA agent walked Sonya to the door to prevent any other slips.

"Fourth floor?" Ukiah asked.

"Let's evacuate the civilians first." Atticus shook his head, his annoyance feeling like a coat of thorns. "Just in case we get in a shoot-out."

***

The elevator slid open to the scent of death and Ontongard. Ukiah growled softly as the familiar reek triggered generations of hate. He went to step off the elevator, but Atticus checked him.

"Wait," his brother commanded, pistol in hand. Ru held the door as Atticus cautiously checked the lobby beyond. "Okay. We're clear."

"Roger that," Kyle whispered from the nearly invisible earbud that Atticus was wearing.

There was a security door with a card-key lock.

"What's bugging you?" Atticus asked Ukiah as Ru produced a small electronic lock pick.

"There's something freshly dead up here." Ukiah wondered how Atticus could miss it.

Atticus sniffed deeply and then nodded slowly.

The door clunked open. Ukiah tracked death through the maze of offices and hallways. Atticus trailed behind, a bristling presence. In a small windowless supply room, they found Ping.

On the night of his rape, after Core had been called away, Ukiah had dragged himself off the sleeping Ping and showered away the drug's control. After tying up Ping, he fled the cult's commune, unaware that the Ontongard were zeroing in on it. The Gets must have found Ping as Ukiah had left her—bound and naked. They put the closest set of clothes on her: Core's black slacks and silk dress shirt, several sizes too large for her slight frame. To keep up her pants, the Gets had made the mistake of giving her a belt. One end of the belt was now tied to an overhead pipe, the buckle cinched tight around her slender neck. The slacks pooled on the floor under her dangling feet, while the shirt at least covered her body to her knees, preserving her dignity.

Ukiah stared at her, horrified, relieved, and ashamed of his relief. "Oh, God," he moaned; and stepped forward to take her down.

"No." Atticus caught him. "Don't disturb the crime scene."

"Poor thing," Ru whispered. "What do you think this mess on the wall means?"

After slicing her fingers on something sharp in her small prison, she had used the blood to paint her last message on the wall.

I misspoke and betrayed them all. Parity has fallen. God forgive me for what I must do.

Had she suspected why the Ontongard were keeping her untainted, or had she acted only to save herself from them? There were no answers on the blood-painted walls.

Above it was a word in the cult's phonetic spelling of an Ontongard word. Ukiah didn't recognize it until he sounded it out. Zaeta.But surely that couldn't be right.

No longer focused on the smell of death, other scents vied for his attention. He abandoned Ping to creep cautiously down another hall, following one smell in particular.

Atticus pulled him up short. "What is it?"

"Don't you use your nose?"

"Apparently not as much as you do," Atticus snapped.

"I can smell C-four. There may be a bomb up here."

"Did you hear that?" Atticus asked his teammates.

"I'll make sure the other floors are empty." Ru headed back to the elevator.

"Calling the bomb squad and signing off." Kyle's tinny voice came from Atticus's ear.

Atticus turned off his radio and then signaled Ukiah to continue. At the end of the hallway, though, Atticus suddenly caught hold of Ukiah's braid and dragged him backward. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, it's booby-trapped."

"It is?" Ukiah froze.

"The motion detector for the security system." Atticus pointed upward, not down at the floor where Ukiah had been focused. A cord dangled down off the corner unit. "We're not in its range, but we will be in a step or two."

"So how do we get around it?"

Atticus tugged on Ukiah's braid. "We don't. We leave it to experts."

"But . . ."

"Take it from your older, more experienced brother—don't play with bombs!" Atticus pulled him backward via the braid. "Come!"

Atticus didn't let go of his hair until they were on the elevator.

"The Ontongard normally don't bomb their own dens." Ukiah rubbed the back of his head where all the roots were complaining of his brother's rough treatment. "Things blowing up attracts more attention. Also, their means of communication is so loose, a returning Get is more likely to set it off than a human."

"Why did they leave in the first place?"

"If the cult attacked one of the other dens in the hexagon, then they would abandon all the rest except one."

Atticus swore. "Not the cult, the Pack. They went after a den in Watertown this morning while we went to the island."

The elevator door opened to the foyer. Through the tinted glass walls, as they walked toward the doors, they could see the police were arriving, several squad cars' worth.

"Let Ru do the talking." Atticus put a hand to Ukiah's shoulder as they walked out the door.

Ru had found some office workers, and he herded them across the parking lot to where the Jaguar and Explorer sat, screened by some low bushes. Atticus steered Ukiah toward the crowd. The police car passed Ru and pulled up to the building. Atticus ignored it, propelling Ukiah along.

"We got a call on a bomb threat," the officer called after Atticus.

"Yes, it's up on the fourth floor and it's booby-trapped!" Atticus shouted back, not stopping.

The policeman glanced at the building and then started after Atticus and Ukiah, leaving his cruiser behind, door open, lights flashing. "Were you the ones who called this in?"

Ukiah paused, only to have Atticus shove him forward.

"Yes! We found it!" Atticus kept walking.

"Hold on, I need to get your names, take your statement." The officer's hand was now riding his pistol grip.

"DEA! Agent Steele! And the number one rule of bombs, Officer, is clear the area."

As Kyle had the Explorer in the far reaches of the parking lot, they were now over two hundred feet from the building. The policeman paused, glancing back at the building and his cruiser in front of it.

"Don't you think this is a little excessive?" the policeman called.

The building exploded, floors flashing out like Chinese firecrackers, one after another. When the ground floor flared, the blast flipped the police cruiser like a toy. Atticus started to push Ukiah down and then they were both smacked to the ground hard; Atticus shielded him as the deafening noise, smoky heat, and flying glass blasted over them. Ukiah felt a dozen prickles of pain from Atticus as if they were his own.

The sound had been indescribably loud, and the silence afterward was shocking.

Atticus scrambled to the police officer while Ukiah's body was inclined to stay put—it seemed safer that way. The policeman got up, swearing, clearly no worse for the experience.

"Obviously," Atticus said, "it wasn't excessive enough."

***

The golden afternoon blurred with the arrival of fire trucks and police cars and various government agencies. Atticus tried to keep a hand on Ukiah at all times while fending off offers to take them both to the hospital. True, he had slivers of glass embedded in his back, making him feel as grouchy as a porcupine, but Ukiah withdrew alarmingly into himself. With another man, Atticus would have taken this as an attempt at duplicity, but he could feel his brother's endurance was thread thin and fraying.

He made his way toward the Explorer, pulling Ukiah along with him. Kyle was still holed up in the SUV, eyeing the crowd with dismay.

"You killed your earbud." Kyle reported, motioning to his own ear rather than touching Atticus.

Atticus found the remains dangling from his shoulder, a thin coat of his dead blood on it. Gingerly he explored his ear—a piece had blown off but it had found its way back. Unfortunately the earbud couldn't similarly repair itself.

"I've been trying to tell you," Kyle continued. "They blew the other four dens too."

Atticus glanced at the office workers being grilled by police about their missing employers. If his team hadn't evacuated the building for the expected gunfight, all seventy-some employees would have been in their offices when the bomb went off. The midafternoon time might have been chosen to ensure maximum kill. "Do they have any idea of a body count yet?"

"I called in bomb threats on all the addresses we had when you found this bomb."

"Good work!" Atticus gripped Kyle's shoulder.

Kyle grinned shyly at the praise, and then confessed, "Well, your brother stressed the symmetry of the dens, so I figured if they'd blow this one, they'd do the rest too."

Kyle had trusted a virtual stranger, someone he'd seen only twice and had every reason to mistrust, because he was Atticus's brother. Atticus supposed that was the nature of family, but he found it faintly alarming. In the old adage of blood and water, why did thickness make the fluid more trustworthy? Was Ukiah someone who could be trusted? Atticus had wanted to take the den with a SWAT team, but the plain truth was that the machines of justice moved slowly. Everyone in the six buildings would have been killed while they decided how to deal with perps who had already fled the scene. Would Ukiah's conviction that Ping was being held in the office building have been good enough to warrant a search? In the end, Atticus suspected, the law officers involved would have weighed their decision on the fact that Ukiah was his brother.

Atticus saw Agent Zheng stopped at the police barrier by a uniformed policeman. She showed her ID to pass it; another person of questionable reliability gaining automatic trust in the brotherhood of law officers. There had been a thawing of Zheng's arctic north; dismay registered as she saw the extent of the destruction to the office building. She spotted him and something passed through her eyes at the moment of recognition, a flicker of excitement then extinguished by something she saw in his face.

What was that all about? Did he communicate something to her without knowing?

She glanced past him and summer came to the arctic.

From behind him, Atticus feltan answering warm outbreak.

Ukiah—of course.

The two threaded through the crowd as if they were alone in a forest, the people around them no more interesting than trees. Ukiah took Zheng's hand, looked into her eyes, and a calmness washed over him.

"That explains much," Ru murmured in his ear.

Atticus glared at his partner.

Ru only laughed at him. "I've never seen a straight woman resist you so completely—but she's got her own little honeypot."

Ukiah's love was a deep current dragging Atticus along to places he didn't want to go. Beauty, they said, was in the eye of the beholder. Tainted by Ukiah's love, Atticus suddenly could see Zheng's glacial demeanor as Indigo's beautiful calm—serenity that all the world's madness didn't invade. A refuge.

For his brother, at least, this was the true thing, a love to die for. Did Indigo feel the same? Ukiah would give Indigo access to the Pack. It was easier to imagine her using his brother than her falling in love with him. Her strong self-control eliminated the obvious attraction: Ukiah's lean, well-defined body and handsome face. He was wolf silent with all-seeing feral eyes—what would they talk about?

"Distract Ukiah away from Indigo."

Ru looked at the two, isolated in a universe of their own making. "How?"

"I want five minutes alone with her. Think of it as a challenge."

Ru scoffed at the idea. "You owe me."

Atticus watched as Ru got Ukiah's attention by touching the bare skin of his wrist. With a smile and a nod toward the Explorer, Ru suggested that Ukiah change his torn and bloody shirt and get something to eat. Ukiah wavered, the suggestion of food fighting with his desire to be with Indigo.

With a glance toward Atticus, Indigo let go of Ukiah's hand. "Go on; I want to talk to Atticus."

They watched as Ru got Ukiah to the well-stocked Explorer before Indigo turned to Atticus.

"What is it you want?"

Uh-oh, busted.

"I want to know—do you love my brother, or are you just using him?" When she didn't react, he added, "I can promise you, one law officer to another, that anything you say to me won't be repeated."

"Normally I would say, one law officer to another, that it's none of your business."

"He's my brother."

"That's between you and him," Zheng said in her calm, unreadable way. "But your brother asked me to marry him. Last week I told him I had to think about it. This week I've been praying that I would have a chance to tell him yes." She gave him her Mona Lisa smile. "That makes you my brother-in-law. I'm telling you because that's between you and me."

She was marrying his brother? "What the hell do you see in him?"

"Only people who don't know him ask that question."

"I don't know my brother."

"Obviously." She considered him with a level look not unlike Ukiah's. "I can outthink, outshoot, outfight, plain out-brass ball most men. But men have this unwritten rule: The only women who are allowed to be stronger than them are their mothers. If you don't do the mothering routine, then they call you a grade-A bitch. With most men you can see it in their eyes as they try out the labels: hot babe, possible mother, bitch."

No, we don't have issues, do we?"And Ukiah doesn't."

"When I first met Ukiah, he looked at me, and saw me.Not the babe, the mother, or the bitch, just me. And I was hooked. The more I got to know him, the more I wanted him. He's the gentlest, most compassionate, wisest man I have ever met."

"Ukiah?" Those were three words that Atticus wouldn't ever have thought to apply to his brother; nor were they words that described Atticus either.

"If you spent any time getting to know him, you would see that for yourself." She said it as if it were a challenge. I double-dare you.

"How did you end up spending time with him?"

"He saved my life," Indigo said, and explained no more, except to add, "Believe me, there is nothing sexier than having a man save your life and then never mention it."

"So it is the hot monkey sex?"

She actually laughed and then sobered. "Sometimes it's like dating the Dalai Lama in the body of a young god. There might be a lot he doesn't know about the world, but his soul is old and patient."

"If he's so great, why didn't you say yes?"

She looked away to hide the sorrow in her eyes. "For reasons that seemed so trivial when the cult killed him and took his body."

It made him uncomfortable that he understood too well the terror that held. Of all the people who were trusting Ukiah just because he was Atticus's brother, the one he worried about most was himself. Atticus's world was too fragile to entrust it to a stranger with dangerous connections—FBI fiancйe or not.

"I'm glad he went to you for help," Indigo said. "If he'd been here with the Pack, he'd have been arrested."

"He didn't want my help."

"Yes, he did; otherwise he wouldn't have come to you." Indigo reached out and took his hand. At the point of contact, Atticus felt Ukiah on her, but then lost the sense of his brother under his own touch—they were too identical for Atticus to keep separate. "And he needs you."

Atticus pulled his hand free. "I think you're confusing me with someone who gives a damn."

"Oh, this isn't the same man who no more than three minutes ago was asking if my intentions were honorable or not?"

Sometimes keeping silent was the only safe answer.

"He's about to collapse. You're hurt too. If we're to stop these monsters, I can't take time to care for him, and if I leave him alone, the Pack will take him."

"So? He's a Dog Warrior."

"And so are you." "

He glared at her, unsure of the truth. Was he?

Her eyes were gray as gunmetal. "He has a clean record, but if he'd come here today with the Pack, he'd have been arrested instead of praised. Please take care of him tonight."

All things considered, she was a good match for his brother in her ability to stare a person down.

"He can come with us. We've got an extra bed back at the hotel."

She rewarded him with a smile, and put away her steel-gray weapons. "Thank you."

***

Atticus decided they couldn't wait for food until they returned to the hotel. Changing shirts, they stopped at the first place at hand, a seafood place called Naked Fish on Totten Pond Road. Done in a decor of mustard yellow and splashes of purple, it featured Cuban cooking. The place was crowded with a wait for tables, but Ru—with the judicious use of a ten-dollar bill—got them seated immediately. Atticus didn't bother looking at the menu, knowing Ru would order for him. Ukiah scanned the menu with tired bewilderment while Kyle directed pouting glares at him. Obviously Kyle had also seen Indigo with Ukiah and wasn't taking the loss of his dream girl gracefully.