Gentleman Takes a Chance (47 page)

"Tom . . . don't—" He was going to tell him not to eat the man, but didn't have time.

There was a voice from the open window. "Sir, you were doing . . . What—"

Tom opened the door and leapt out, while shifting—so that the effect was rather like a kernel of corn popping—bursting and exploding into a massive, much larger form, as it escaped the confines of its skin.

There was a strangled scream from the policeman, and Rafiel switched seats and closed the door and drove straight ahead. He was on Fairfax, he realized. The world's longest, straight thoroughfare. It was listed in the
Guinness Book of World Records
as such. He hoped it was long enough to allow Rafiel to still be on it whenever Tom caught up.

"Don't eat him," Rafiel yelled and rolled up the window, as he drove. He didn't know if Tom had heard him.

Perhaps ten blocks ahead, as Rafiel entered a definitely seedy area of abandoned warehouses and graffitied overpasses, he saw a shadow fall over the car. A shadow such as if a really large dragon body had flown overhead. And then, in front of a warehouse, Tom stood, extending his thumb in the universal gesture of the hitchhiker.

Rafiel stopped and unlocked the door. As Tom got in, he looked for signs of blood around his mouth or something. Trying to keep it light, he said, "You know, hitchhiking naked is a felony. And we don't even go into what eating a policeman might be. The force disapproves of it."

Tom stopped, in the middle of buckling his seatbelt. "I didn't eat him," he said. "He started screaming for mercy as soon as I was fully out of the car. I just flew away after that. I figure there's no way he's going to tell anyone what happened, and your license plate will never be mentioned."

"You sure?" Rafiel said.

"I'm sure. If I'd eaten him, you wouldn't look so tasty right about now."

Rafiel wasn't absolutely sure whether Tom was joking, but then again, he also wasn't willing to tempt fate. "Clothes are under the seat. We should put something on before we go to a drive-through," he said.

"And afterwards?" Tom said.

"Afterwards," Rafiel said, "we go get your damn boots."

When they got to the aquarium, Lei Lani was just ahead of them, opening the door on the restaurant side. Rafiel tried to remember whether they might have left it unlocked—whether they might—perhaps—have left via that entrance. He couldn't remember. Clearly, being concussed and dangling from a berserker dragon's jaws did something to the memory. But it didn't matter, he thought. After all, Dire might have left the door open, too.

She was in the process of opening the door as they came up behind her—wearing tracksuits and looking rather disheveled and, in Rafiel's case, limping, but seeming much more respectable than they'd been before. Tom, who had inhaled five burgers in the ten blocks here, even had a little color and seemed reasonably human. At least, Rafiel hoped so, because if he had looked tasty to Tom, then Lei must look positively tender.

Still, she turned and looked at them, seeming puzzled. "Oh, Officer Trall . . ." she said. "I . . . didn't expect to see you. I realized there was another report that I left behind."

Or perhaps another colleague to try to implicate. Or,
Rafiel thought, not quite sure why, but catching something shifty about her eyes, a look of discomfort.
Or perhaps you've decided it's too late to cover things up, and so are going to leave without a forwarding address.

He was fairly sure this last wasn't true. Not unless McKnight had been so clumsy in his prodding that she now knew, or suspected, that the police had found the lies about her background.
McKnight? Incompetent? What are the odds?
he thought, sarcastically, and barely suppressed a groan. A look at Tom revealed an expression so full of distress and a gaze desperately attempting to make several speeches, that Rafiel almost groaned again.

He wished he could mind-talk to Tom and inform him that, yes, yes, he had realized they needed to retrieve their things before Lei Lani found them. Meanwhile he would have to hope she didn't notice they were wearing identical stretch-shoes.

She didn't seem to. When he said, "I forgot my wallet," she merely gave him a wry look and said, "You seem to do that a lot."

Rafiel shrugged. "I drop it," he said. "I need bigger pockets or a briefcase or something. But then, if I had a briefcase, I'd probably leave it behind."

She smiled and didn't comment on that, and turned right, to go to the office. Rafiel turned the other way, towards the piranha room, his heart accelerating. The dire wolf would be there, right there, ready to jump out at him.

But the room was quiet and empty, except for the gurgling of the tanks and the sound the piranhas made swimming back and forth. Tom's clothes and boots were where he had left them, by the tank. Rafiel's were quite shredded, so he transferred his wallet and ID and cell phone from the shreds, then bundled them up.

He looked up to see Tom standing, holding his own clothes and the box for the cameras. "Here," he told Tom, thrusting his bloodied, shredded clothes at him. "Take this to the car, okay?"

He got raised eyebrows in response.

"I'm going to go ask Lei Lani for a date," Rafiel said.

"What?" Tom's voice came out louder than the half whisper in which they'd been speaking, like a small outburst of sudden indignation. "Excuse me?"

"Shhh." Rafiel said, gesturing down with his hand. "It's not what you think," he said, in a whisper.

"Isn't it? This is a heck of a time to work on your social life, Rafiel," Tom said, but he lowered his voice to a whisper as well.

"It's not my social life," Rafiel said. "It's . . . you know how . . ." He concentrated on listening for the slightest sound. His hearing was more acute than normal human, but he heard nothing. Not close enough for Lei Lani to hear. And yet, he didn't feel comfortable. He sighed. "Come to the car."

Tom shrugged and followed him to the car. Rafiel threw his shredded clothes in the back. Tom sat on the passenger side and started changing. Rafiel, his gaze sweeping the parking lot to make sure they were quite alone, explained. "I've been worried," he said. "About the camera and how all this was going to work."

Tom frowned at him. "Duh. Whoever it is brings a date there, and then the computer sounds the alarm, and then—duh—we catch her. Or him."

"No," Rafiel said, very patiently. He loved Tom like the brother he'd never had. Truly, he did. But elaborate plans were not the man's main strength. His greatest act of heroism had been on the spur of the moment. Most of what Tom did seemed to be on the spur of the moment. "Yeah, we will have footage of whatever happens. It's even possible we'll know who it is, and what they're doing. If they're shifters, we could go and kill them in cold blood, and stop the deaths. Of course, then we'll have Dire on our tails, but that's something else again. But . . . Tom, the poor sap who is brought here will die. There is no way we can get to him in time."

"Oh," Tom said. "Unless we're expecting it?"

"How can we be expecting it, if it's a stranger?" he said. "By the time the camera beeps, they'll already be in the aquarium. There is nothing we can do. Except collect the remains."

Tom frowned. "Damn. I hadn't thought that through. I don't think it's going to be that easy to sit there, waiting, you know, while . . . some poor sap . . . Damn, Rafiel, I don't even think I can do it. I mean, I know he'd probably die anyway, whether this is part of our trap or not. But I don't want to be . . . I'd feel like an accomplice."

"No, it wouldn't work," Rafiel said. "Which is why I'm going in there and ask Lei Lani for a date."

Tom frowned at him. "Because you think she's the murderer?"

Rafiel shrugged. "Not exactly. But I think there is a good chance she might be. I think it's quite possible she's a shark shifter. Which might or might not mean anything. I've also found she's never attended the University of Hawaii, at least not under this name." He shrugged. "All of it might have other, innocent explanations, and if this were a normal investigation, where I could share my suspicions with my colleagues, it wouldn't be the time for a desperate gamble. But it isn't a casual investigation—it's a life-and-death one. And . . . other people will die. Plus, Dire seems to have settled on me as the sacrificial victim for him to execute."

"Dire will just be furious," Tom said, "if we go after Lani and she's a shifter."

"I think Dire is furious now. There is one thing I know we can't do, Tom, and that's face Dire, the triads and the aquarium murderer all at the same time. For the last week I've walked on eggshells, afraid one or the other of those are about to give us away. I can't go on like that. Let's start taking the enemies down one at a time. The aquarium murderer, at least until further notice, is not more powerful than us, so let's take that one on first. Then we'll figure out some way to get Dire. And then the triads . . ." He shrugged. "Perhaps they'll just go away."

"Fat chance," Tom said.

Rafiel shrugged again. "One at a time. So, I'm going in and asking Ms. Lani out."

"But . . . like that?" Tom asked. "You are all bruised, have two big gashes on the back of your neck, and you probably broke your ankle."

Rafiel shrugged. "So, I tell her I got in a fight in the course of duty. You know there is little that a woman loves better than a hero."

Tom stared at him for a long time, then sighed and shook his head. "The worst part, Mr. Hero, is that you'll probably pull it off."

Rafiel gave him a feline grin. "Of course I will."

Kyrie looked from one to the other of the men, her mouth half open, as though all the words had escaped her and weren't coming back. Rafiel looked like he'd been put into an industrial threshing machine. His forehead was scratched, his arm showed blood through the shirt. He was walking as if he had—at the very least—a seriously bruised ankle.

Tom looked hungry. In fact, despite the fact that he'd announced to her, up front, that he'd already eaten, and even though his story made it clear he'd had something like ten hamburgers, he looked starved, and sniffed the air as if trying to inhale calories through sniffing in stray particles of cooking meat.

And yet, both of them looked as happy, as full of themselves as boys who had pulled off a really good prank. It had to be one of those male things, because she couldn't begin to imagine what was going through their minds. "And you went back?" she said. "For the boots and the ID?"

"And the clothes," Rafiel said, enthusiastically. "My clothes. Well, the shreds of them."

"I see," Kyrie said.

"It wasn't a big deal," Tom said, as his head swivelled to follow a gyro platter carried by Keith. "Dire wasn't there when we went back."

Yes, of course, that made it all right, Kyrie thought, as she sighed and despaired of explaining to these overgrown boys that, after all, Dante Dire had the power of messing with their minds. He might have made it seem that there was no one there. He might have jumped them from a dark corner. He might still be waiting to—She couldn't say any of it, certainly not in the diner, although the three of them were occupying the corner booth, under the picture of the dragon slayer, and there were no other occupied booths in this part of the diner.

Keith stopped by and dropped a plate entirely filled with gyro shavings and souvlaki in front of Tom, who looked up at him, surprised, "How did you know?"

Keith shrugged. "Meat-seeking behavior," he said. "I've come to know it." He looked from Rafiel to Tom. "What have you two been doing with yourselves?" he asked. And then paused, and bent over towards the table, his hands on the formica. "It isn't about Summer Avenir, right? I mean . . . is there some big fight going on that you guys haven't told me about?"

Kyrie sighed and shifted further into the booth. "Come. You can hear about it."

But Keith shook his head, and looked around at the tables. "Nah. Conan went to take a nap, he said, and that would leave the tables unattended."

Kyrie frowned. This sudden reluctance to run away with the shifter circus was not like Keith at all. A look at the young man showed her dark circles around his eyes and a general impression of being less than healthy. "Huh," she said.

"It's nothing, okay?" Keith said. He shrugged. "It's just that, you know, you guys always said that being a shifter was no picnic, that there was stuff . . . but you know, for me, it was all about fighting and . . . well, it was like being a superhero."

"Yeah, so you told us," Tom said.

"Only, then . . . Summer turned out to be the granddaughter of the newspaper owner, and to have been after cryptozoology stuff, and she endangered you and got herself killed . . . and now I know it's not . . . "—he looked at them, intently—"I assume it wasn't one of you. I wouldn't have come back if I thought it had been one of you."

"No," Kyrie said, shocked. "No. It's . . . one of the people we're fighting."

"People!" Keith said. "Somehow, no, I don't think it's people."

Kyrie felt shocked as if she'd been punched. "What about us?"

Keith sighed. "I want to say of course you're people . . ." he said. "I want to say it . . . but . . ." He looked away. "It would help if Tom didn't look like he could happily take a chunk out of a passing diner."

Tom, finger-deep in gyro meat, looked up. "Hey!"

"No . . . I know you're not like that," Keith said. "And of course you can trust me, and all. But . . . these . . . creatures, like the ones we fought against before . . . It's not like a computer game, and it's not like a comic, and it's not like being superheroes."

"We never said . . ."

"I know you didn't. But I'm an idiot, okay . . . and I thought . . ." He shrugged. "I thought a whole lot of stupid things. But it's not fun anymore. It's serious. And the things you guys fight, they're really serious too. I take it the . . . creature you're fighting is the one who was in here the other day talking about how I was just a transitive or something and—"

"Ephemeral," Tom said. "Because you live less than we do, and he—"