Fury of the Demon (Kara Gillian) (14 page)

Ryan frowned. “Why let Idris talk to you at all? Why not just call and say . . . that name?”

“I don’t know. There has to be more to it.” I started pacing again. “Whatever Katashi and his peeps are, stupid ain’t one of them. Maybe a combination of small components.” I shrugged. “Like, I’m pretty sure Idris really
did
want to talk to me. The captors placating their captive. And maybe they needed some time with me on the phone to build up to the whammy.” I gave a helpless shrug. “I’m grasping at straws, but they
had
to know there was a chance we’d trace the call. So why weren’t they concerned about that?”

“Either they want us to know where they are,” Ryan said, “or it doesn’t matter because they don’t think we can find them, even with a trace.”

I nodded, way too tired to get my brain to digest it properly. “That phone was most likely stolen. Can you find out when and where the last call was made on it? That might give us another clue.”

“Sure thing,” he said, then laid his hand on my arm. “There’s not much we can do tonight. Why don’t you go grab some sleep and get a fresh start in the morning.”

I started to protest, to tell him Idris was out there somewhere right now in Texas and we had to
do
something. Ryan’s hand tightened slightly on my arm as though anticipating my response, and it was enough to stop the resistance. I let out a long exhale, slumped a little. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll be a lot more useful once I’ve slept.” I rubbed my eyes. “I’m going to go curl up in bed, but I’ll listen to the recording a few times before I go to sleep. I can do that much.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

Zack handed the recorder to me. “I made a copy and erased the command word part. You don’t need to hear that again.”

I gave him a grateful smile. “Thanks. Y’all try not to blow the house up or anything while I sleep.”

Ryan gave a laugh. “Not making any promises on that one.”

I gave him a smile, then headed upstairs. I stopped by the living room, picked up the empty turd plate along with my note pad from atop the stack of Tracy’s journals, then stuck the plate in the dishwasher and trudged to the bedroom.

Fatigue held me firmly in its grip by the time I crawled into bed with the notepad and recorder. I wasn’t sure I’d make it through one listen, but I had to at least try. I owed Idris that much. I settled back in the pillows and started the recording.

“I care about you,”
Idris said,
“and I don’t want to see you or Lord Mzatal hurt.”

I squeezed my eyes shut against the fierce ache at the sound of his voice, familiar and dear.

“But if you find me, the shit’s going to hit the fan and people will get hurt.”

An image of him crystallized in my mind as I listened. Eager smile and keen blue-grey eyes beneath an unruly mop of blond curls. His words ran together like the distant rush of a river.

“You think you have everything figured out, then
whoosh!
the game changes.”

His voice cleared as though right by my ear.
“You don’t want to start a fire you can’t put out.”

You don’t want to start a fire you can’t put out.

The room was cold. Achingly so. I needed a fire to counter the chill that knifed straight to my core. Shouldn’t be so cold this time of year.
I could go turn up the heat,
I thought dimly, but when I got out of bed to do so the room was pitch dark and the
floor ice cold glass.

I wandered barefoot through darkness on an endless plain of smooth glass. Cold and black. Nothing. Forever. Step after frigid step.

“Dear one.” A voice.
His
voice. “Do not fret. It does not become you.”

“Lord Rhyzkahl?” I whispered, felt the darkness swallow the words. “Where are you?”

“I am here. I am always here.”

I looked down as a pale amber glow pierced the darkness. A beautiful filigree design of intricate fine lines glimmered on my upper chest with soft, breathtaking radiance. My throat tightened. “My lord? I do not understand.”

“Do you not, precious one?”

The glassy plain began to tilt. A voice like the hiss of sand flowing over stones whispered in my ear.

Rowan.

I cried out in shock as I lost my footing. “My lord!” Heart pounding, I flattened myself on the glass, braced with hands and feet to keep from sliding.

“Elinor. Elinor!” A different voice. Distant and desperate.

“Giovanni!” I called into the darkness. “I am lost! Help me!”

“Count, Elinor. Uno. Due. Tre. Quattro.
Count
.”

Rowan.

“Uno,” I said, then shrieked as the glass tilted more. Terror gripped me as I began to slide toward oblivion.

“Elinor!” he called. “Kara!”

Giovanni’s face swam in the darkness. Square jaw set with worry. Teasing smile gone. “Kara. Count.” His image distorted. Twisted. “Kara.”

“Due. Tre,” I said through gritted teeth. The glass leveled enough to stop my descent. “I’m here.
Kara
. Quattro. Cinque.”

Giovanni slipped away but other faces rose from the darkness to take his place.

Tessa. Jill. Zack. Mzatal. Ryan. Jekki. Eilahn.

People. My people.

My family.

I woke with a start, pulse stuttering as the fragments of the dream scattered. “People,” I gasped. “Family.” I scrabbled for the recorder, scanned through it, seeking the sentence. Found it, listened, then listened again.

“I care about you, and I don’t want to see you or Lord Mzatal hurt. But you find me, and the shit’s going to hit the fan and people will get hurt.”

“Fucking shit.” I played it one more time to hear the slight emphasis on “people.” I threw the covers off and ran down the hall, yanked the basement door open and flew halfway down the stairs before realizing I couldn’t see a goddamn thing. “Ryan!” I shouted as I ran back up the steps, flicked the switch at the top of the stairs then scrambled back down as fluorescent light filled the basement. “Ryan! Wake up!”

He jerked upright. “What? Shit!” He threw an arm over his eyes to shield them from the glare. “What’s wrong?”

“I need you to look something up.” I snatched his laptop from the end table and thrust it at him. “Idris said he didn’t want to see me or Mzatal hurt. Then he said if we looked for him, the shit would hit the fan and people would get hurt.
People
. Not just Mzatal and me. The first people who come to mind are his family.” I continued to hold the laptop out for him while I shifted impatiently from foot to foot like a pee-pee dance. “I need you to find out what you can about his family. Close members first. Then you need to do your FBI shit and get them into a safe house until this blows over.” I made a frustrated noise. “Damn it! Why didn’t I think of this earlier?”

“Whoa. Slow down.” He rubbed a hand across his eyes, tucked the sheet around his waist then took the computer from me and settled it on his lap. “Gimme a sec to catch up.”

I paced back and forth on the rug in front of the futon. “I know he has two older sisters. Both his parents are alive, and at least one grandmother. No idea about extended family.” This was the family who’d adopted him when he was fourteen, after the parents who’d adopted him when he was a baby had been killed in a car accident. Even though Idris had been with the Palatinos for less than a decade, I knew he’d fully embraced them as family, as real as any he might’ve been born to.

“I’m working on it, hotshot.” He flicked a glance up as he typed, then raked a more thorough gaze over me. “I like the new look.” A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.

I stopped my pacing, looked down, then rolled my eyes. I still had on what I’d worn to bed: pink tank top and blue panties. No bra. “Oh great. Nearly naked,” I groaned, though I couldn’t fully hide my own amusement.

“Yes, you are.” The smile lingered on his mouth, then he dropped his eyes to his screen.

“It’s not fair.” I plopped onto the futon to watch him type. “I’ve never seen
you
nearly naked.”

“I’m naked right now,” he told me, eyes still on the screen, though the skin around them crinkled in amusement, “but
I
have the sense to keep the sheet over me. It might be too much for you.”

“I can take anything you dish out,” I shot back, grinning. If the view from the waist up was any indication, I had no doubt he’d look good naked.

“I do love a challenge,” he murmured with a low chuckle, working the touch pad and clicking on stuff. “Here we go. Sister, Amber Palatino Gavin. Sister, Rose Palatino. Parents, Angela and Jerome Palatino. All in the Seattle area. Maternal grandmother, paternal grandfather living. Definitely extended family. Aunts, uncles, cousins.”

I nodded. “Let’s focus on the immediate family. Can you get them to a safe spot?”

He gave me a reassuring nod, then glanced at the clock on the end table. “Five-fifteen a.m. I need to connect with Zack. Is he up?”

“No clue,” I lied. I had every confidence he was awake since the demahnk slept about as infrequently as the lords did, but Ryan only knew Zack as human. “He’s usually up before me anyway. I’ll go make coffee and see if I can find him.”

Ryan gave an absent nod, already doing stuff on his laptop again.

I returned upstairs, looked out the back window and was unsurprised to see Zack nimbly climbing over the high wall of the new obstacle course, neck and neck with Eilahn in the predawn light. I turned back to the kitchen and got a pot of coffee going, and a few minutes later I heard a thump on the roof as Eilahn found her favorite spot, and the simultaneous creak of the back door as Zack entered.

“Hey, Zack.” I held out a towel and gave him the rundown of my morning revelations and suspicions while he wiped off a sheen of sweat and mud. “And now Ryan needs your help to arrange a safe house.”

“Good work,” he said with an approving nod. “I’ll go check with him.”

“Thanks.” I grimaced. “I want to be sure they’re safe.”

He gave me a reassuring smile. “We’ll do everything we can. I promise.” He tossed the towel neatly through the laundry room door and into the hamper, then headed down into the basement.

I set to work cleaning the kitchen in an effort to channel my angst and worry. Unfortunately, Zack and Ryan kept the kitchen fairly spotless, and the three minutes it took to empty the dishwasher and wipe down the counters didn’t do much to ease my mood.

I pulled an egg carton from the fridge then fumbled it, barely hearing the squish-crunch of eggs meeting the floor as a truly horrible thought occurred to me. “Zack! Ryan!” Ignoring the mess, I ran for the steps and bounded down. “Check to see if any of his family are missing. One of his sisters? A cousin?”

Both Ryan and Zack turned to look at me, faces grim.

“Oh shit,” I breathed. “Who?”

“His sister Amber and his mom,” Ryan said. “They both went missing a few weeks ago.”

It fit all too well. I sank to sit on the futon as dread clenched at my gut. “Pull a pic of Amber,” I said dully. “I bet she’s our vic from the trailer.”

Tears of fury stung my eyes as I mercilessly whisked the surviving eggs. A photo of a smiling Amber in her wedding dress confirmed her as the murder victim. Poor Idris. No wonder he was cooperating. Sister tortured and killed, and no telling what they threatened to do with his mom, if she was even still alive. And Idris was the kind of guy who’d do everything he could to protect anyone—even a perfect stranger. This surely ripped his heart out.

Ryan came upstairs but didn’t wisecrack about the ferocity of my egg-murder, which told me his news wasn’t particularly good. I dumped the eggs into a pan on the stove. “Anything?”

“Not really. They were abducted from a mall parking lot in broad daylight,” he told me, voice flat. He pulled two mugs down from the cabinet, filled both with coffee. “They had lunch with some ladies from their church, left the restaurant, but never made it to their car.” Impotent fury swept over his face. “Security cameras malfunctioned, so no vid, and no witnesses have come forward.”

I jabbed at the congealing eggs and let out a number of curses.

“You asked about the last call made on the phone Idris used,” Ryan said as he dumped cream and sugar into one of the mugs, left the other black, then brought them both to the table and sat. “It was from the Austin area about two hours earlier.”

I scraped eggs as I did my best to cling to the sliver of hope that offered. “They stole a cell phone in Austin and headed northwest. Called, then turned off the phone and probably ditched it for good measure.” I sighed. “Not much help. Thanks for checking though.” But then I frowned. “I keep coming back to Tsuneo being in this area. That
means
something. Maybe Idris was here with him, and they’re moving him somewhere else?”

Ryan grimaced. “‘Northwest of Austin’ covers a lot of ground. We need another lead.”

He was right, damn it. The location clue had felt like a big victory but was virtually useless by itself.

I removed the eggs from the heat, clicked the burner off and mentally shifted gears. “Give me your opinion on something.” I pulled two plates from the cabinet and divided the eggs onto them. “If you were holding Idris against his will and wanted his cooperation—having already killed his sister—would you also kill the mother?”

He remained silent for a moment then shook his head. “Makes more sense to keep her as insurance. A hostage.”

Thin relief went through me. I placed the pan in the sink, nodded. “My thought as well. So, the good news is that she’s probably not dead.” I set one of the plates and a fork in front of Ryan. “The bad news is they almost certainly have Idris’s cooperation.” I grabbed my plate and a fork and thunked down into the chair across from him, mood suddenly bleak over our lack of progress. “Now I know why Idris told me to stop looking for him.”

“You like him a lot,” he observed.

I squirted ketchup onto my eggs, ignored Ryan’s wince as I did so. “He’s like a kid brother. A seriously talented and really great kid brother.”

“I’m sorry. This must suck for you.” He forked some eggs into his mouth, gave me an approving nod.

“It does.” I offered him a slight smile. “You’d like him too.” I paused to eat. “Mzatal loves him,” I said after a few minutes. “Like a son.”

Ryan leveled a deeply skeptical look at me. “Mzatal? Like a son?”

“Yeah.” I started to dump sugar into my coffee, then remembered Ryan had already fixed it the way I liked it. “Crazy, I know, but he really does. Mzatal hasn’t stopped looking for Idris since he was taken.” I took a long sip of coffee, then lowered the mug and gave an evil smile. “And Mzatal
slammed
Jesral after he and Asshole sent Idris to Earth. It was fucking beautiful.”

Ryan let out a bark of laughter. “I bet.” He scooped up the last of the eggs. “Thanks for breakfast.”

“Anytime.” I finished my own then stood and cleared the plates. “Should I call Pellini and let him know we have an ID?”

“Yes, and tell him we’ll send over details shortly.”

Ryan returned to the basement to finish his report. I retrieved my phone, thumbed through the address book to Pellini’s name, and pressed call. It rang half a dozen times before he picked up.

“Pellini,” he rasped in a sleep-clouded voice.

“Hey, it’s Gillian. Wake up.”

I heard some mumbling and scuffling, then, “Yeah. I’m here. You got something?”

“An ID on our vic,” I told him. “Garner and Kristoff will be shooting the details your way shortly.”

“This just come down? Who is she?”

“Found out in the last half hour. Her name’s Amber Palatino Gavin from Seattle.”

“It’s a solid ID?”

“Unfortunately, yeah.”

“Unfortunately?” he asked, puzzled.

“Turns out she’s the sister of a friend of mine. A guy I’m trying to find.”

He blew out his breath. “Coincidence?”

I hesitated, unsure how much to tell him or how to frame it in a way that didn’t sound weird.

“Kara? You don’t think it’s a coincidence, do you?” He sounded tense, but his tone held none of its usual belligerence or mocking. “Look, anything you can tell me is more than I got now. Maybe we can meet to talk about it? I’ll buy you a beer. Or lunch.” His words tumbled over themselves. “There’s this Italian place that’s pretty good and not expensive. I mean, like a business lunch. Work.” He spoke the last in a rush as if to be absolutely certain I knew it wasn’t a date-type thing.

Good god, an offer of a
date
from Pellini would put me right over the edge.

“Um, my schedule’s pretty packed right now,” I demurred. “Here’s the info I have.” I gave him a rundown of the basics with Idris, that he was missing, family name, vitals, told him we’d stumbled across the ID on Amber while researching Idris’s family. Everything I told him was true, but guilt nagged. I knew a lot more that I wasn’t telling him, but I couldn’t do so without delving into demons and lords and general weirdness.

He listened, asked a few questions. When it was time to hang up, he didn’t. “Maybe when your schedule clears up we can get a beer?”

“Uh,” I said in a brilliant delaying tactic. “Sure. We’ll talk about it then.” I disengaged quickly and hung up, more than a little weirded out by his persistence. Was it because I was in better shape now, or was the reason more sinister? Then again, his desire to be friendly could just as easily be completely benign. Last year, after a particularly ugly incident, Ryan had influenced both Pellini and Boudreaux to lighten up and not be such assholes to me, and since then the two had been far less hostile. Perhaps Ryan’s little tweak had started a chain reaction of don’t-be-a-dick.

I was drying the last of the breakfast dishes when Ryan emerged from the basement, dressed for work, empty coffee cup in hand. “We’ve sent the info on to Pellini and Boudreaux.”

“Thanks. Pellini will be glad to get it,” I said then scrunched my face. “He wanted me to meet him for lunch.”

Ryan let out a snort of laughter. “Lunch with
Pellini
? That’s a first.”

“He wanted to talk about the case, but I gave him the non-demon facts over the phone. There’s not all that much.” I shrugged, frowned. “He’s acting a little weird, though he’s not being a total asstard the way he used to.”

“Maybe he’s a pod person,” he suggested as he poured more coffee into his cup. “Anyway, I’ll be downstairs for a while if you need me. We’re working on the safe house and the Farouche info, then have a meeting at nine.”

I nodded. “I’m going to listen to Idris’s call a few more times. He may have used that emphasis technique somewhere else. Right now it’s our only source of clues.”

“I’ll let you know if we come up with anything else,” he said and then departed down the basement stairs.

I grabbed the recorder and a set of headphones then settled on the sofa, this time listening for nuances in emphasis and timing. On the third time through, I stopped it at the end, ran it back about ten seconds. Listened to it again. And again.

Tell Mzatal I still have his ring, and I haven’t forgotten gheztak ru eehn. So leave me be. You don’t want to start a fire you can’t put out.

Start a fire.

Except he hesitated for the barest instant before and after “start,” mumbled the “a” and hesitated again after “fire.”

There were two options. Either my imagination was working overtime, or Idris had told me who had him:
StarFire
.

 • • • 

Ryan dashed up from the basement, laptop in hand, when I hollered. “You have something new?”

“I think so.” I played the end of the recording, but to my disappointment he simply responded with a puzzled look. “
Listen
to it,” I urged and played it again. “Start a fire. StarFire.” I scowled at his dubious expression. “I know it’s a little crazy but I hear
it now. I can’t
not
hear it.”

To his credit, Ryan didn’t shoot me down in flames. “Play it one more time.” I did so, and this time he rewarded me with a slow nod. “It’s possible,” he admitted. “If that’s for real, Idris is one clever guy. That’s a hard thing to pull off.”

“He’s super smart,” I said. “And that’s why I believe it’s a real clue.”

“StarFire, huh?” He opened his laptop on the kitchen table and sat. “I was actually on my way to show you what I came up with on Farouche. Basically, he’s a fucking saint. Gives tons to charity, bought new computers for every public school in St. Long Parish, even arranged for bulletproof vests for the Sheriff’s department K-9 units.”

“He got vests for the dogs?” I blinked in disbelief. “Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack,” he said as he scrolled to another page. “Married twice. Two kids, boy and a girl, with the first wife. They divorced seventeen years ago,” he winced, “two years after their five-year-old daughter was abducted in broad daylight from in front of her school. Never found.”

“Shit,” I breathed. “I remember that. It was a couple of years after my dad died, and all the schools and parents were freaking out about security.” I gave a wry grimace. “A few days later I missed the bus home because I was out behind the gym trying pot for the first time. Tessa thought I’d been kidnapped too, and ripped me up one side and down the other. Grounded me for a month.”

Ryan snorted. “Once a troublemaker, always a troublemaker.”

I punched him lightly on his shoulder. “I’ve upgraded to a higher class of troublemaking. What else do you have on Farouche?”

He continued to skim the page. “He remarried about a year later, had two more kids.” He blew out a breath. “And the second wife, Claire, passed away from ovarian cancer about three years back.”

I fought down a shiver. My mother had died of that same cancer when I was eight. But to lose a child
and
a wife? This guy had been through hell twice.

“The feds have sniffed around a time or two with regards to some vaguely questionable dealings,” Ryan continued, “but it’s never reached the level of a full-blown investigation. And nothing’s ever turned up that was unusual for a businessman with multiple holdings. His employees love him. He’s generous with benefits, pays fairly. No one has ever filed a complaint against him.” He clicked on another screen. “Big supporter of the arts, too. Paid for a new roof for Beaulac Little Theater, and even invested in some zombie movie over in St. Edwards Parish.”

I peered at the image on the screen: A sharply dressed man with steely grey hair, a hard and steady gaze, and an air of confidence that remained palpable even in a still photo. “Mzatal
insisted
that this guy fucked with Paul’s head,” I said. “What’s the deal?”

Ryan lifted his shoulders in a helpless shrug. “No idea,” he confessed. “StarFire’s the company he’s most known for, but he’s CEO of a number of corporations. I checked them all: The Child Find League, Farouche Technologies, RiseHigh, Esoteric Enhancement Enterprises, Sapphire Star Resorts, and several others. By all accounts, clean as a whistle, with a polished halo as well.”

“Wait.” I held up my hand while I forced my brain into overdrive. “RiseHigh LLC.” My pulse quickened. “That’s who bought the Garden Street industrial park.”

He gave me a long look, then swung his attention back to his laptop, started clicking and typing away. “Huh. That’s damn interesting.”

“Spill it, fed-boy,” I ordered.

“Looks like RiseHigh LLC began inquiries about the purchase of the complex about a week after you were first summoned to the demon realm. The sale was finalized about three weeks later.”

“It’s all connected,” I murmured. “I’m betting he bought the whole place to keep that warehouse—and that node—safe and secure.”

Ryan’s brow creased as his eyes skimmed the info on his screen. “I agree it’s one hell of a coincidence, but it looks like he really does intend to build the Claire Farouche Cancer Center there once the permits and paperwork and plans are in order.”

“It’s a big place,” I said, considering. “Wouldn’t be hard at all to have a cancer center there and still keep the node protected.” I felt an almost physical jolt as a puzzle piece snapped into place. “Cancer. Claire,” I breathed. “Fucking shitballs. Not only is Thatcher’s name in one of Tracy’s journals, but there’s also a page in there with all sorts of sketches of tree-things and random stuff written in the margins—and ‘Claire’s cancer’ is one of them.”

Ryan pushed back from the table, peered at me. “You think Tracy was working with Farouche in some way?” he asked. “Or maybe stalking him? Farouche is a big enough public figure to attract a whack-job, and Tracy was definitely that.”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly, trying to see the whole picture. “On the one hand I have every indication that Farouche is a saint who’s been through some horrible shit.” Ryan nodded agreement, and I went on, “Then on the other hand I have Mzatal and Paul who tell me that Farouche is an evil dude who kidnaps people and uses fear to gain their compliance. And on
another
hand, I have whack-job Tracy with some sort of interest in him, and on yet another hand I have the intriguing fact that Farouche bought an industrial park that happens to contain a valve node.”

“You do know that’s four hands,” Ryan pointed out.