Mind Magic (17 page)

Without Rule this time. Without anyone. She was alone in the vast, rocky desolation. She stopped and looked up.

Not really alone, after all. High in the sullen sky, a dark shape spiraled down. A dragon. The black dragon, who’d carried her away in his talons the first time. He’d do that this time, too, and it would crack open her mind and spill out whatever sanity she’d collected in her thirty years of living, and it wasn’t right. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

Why?
she screamed at the sullen sky and the stooping dragon.

Get out of my head!
the sky screamed back.
Get out!

Rocks and sky disappeared, fading to black . . . the black of her closed eyelids. She felt the weight of the blanket drawn up over her body and the chill of the air on her face and understood that she’d been dreaming. Now she was awake. Mostly awake . . .

She felt something else.
Who are you?

Nothing. The voice, the sense of presence, had been a product of the dream, nothing more. She . . .

I’m going crazy.

Despair coated that thought. And it wasn’t hers. Not her despair. Not her thought, either.

FIFTEEN

“YOU
did what?” Rule stopped moving, phone in one hand, sock in the other.

“Mindspoke someone. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure I did. I was half asleep when it happened . . . well, at first I was all the way asleep. I had a nasty dream about hell, complete with rocks and demons. You weren’t there.”

Perversely, that made Rule smile. He shouldn’t have. His
nadia
had clearly had a nightmare, and he hadn’t been there to hold her. But he couldn’t help but appreciate the unsubtle message her subconscious had sent. “I wonder what your dream meant,” he murmured.

“I have no idea. The point is, in the dream the black dragon was swooping down to get me. I yelled at him and someone answered, told me to get out of their head. That woke me up, but I still felt . . . I don’t know how to put it. A connection, I guess. I asked who they were and I ‘heard’ their reply. It felt like mindspeech.”

“Are you saying ‘they’ because you don’t know which pronoun applies?” He finished pulling on his sock and slid his feet into his shoes.

“Of course. Mindspeech isn’t sexed. Whoever it was thought they were going crazy.”

“Understandable, especially if they’d never experienced mindspeech before.” In Rule’s experience, it was impossible to mistake mindspeech for his own thoughts. It was like the difference between imagining eating chocolate and actually biting into it. “What happened next?’

“I got a headache,” she said wryly.

Rule slid his wallet and a couple more things into the appropriate pockets. “Better now, I hope.”

“God bless ibuprofen. I hope whoever’s party I crashed isn’t still freaked out this morning. Maybe they persuaded themselves they were dreaming.”

“Very likely. You got a headache, but no hallucinations?”

“Nope.” She sounded cheerful about that. “I’m trying not to get all crazy optimistic, but I can’t help thinking that’s a good sign. Maybe my brain is getting itself sorted out.”

“We can hope.” Fully dressed now, Rule left the bedroom where he’d almost slept last night. Every time he’d dozed off, some part of his mind had reached for Lily. Every time, the resulting disorientation had woken him. “What’s on your schedule today?”

“Did Ruben tell you about those HSI guys who dropped by last night?”

“He did.”

“Did he tell you they left a couple photos with me? One of their man, taken from his ID badge. One of a girl—seventeen now, fifteen when the picture was taken. She’s supposed to be a terrorist.”

“Supposed to be?”

“Something’s fishy. I have no idea what. Ruben checked out my visitors, and they’re genuine HSI agents. Everything they told me is accurate—what little of it there was,” she added with disgust. “But they’re up to something. I’m going to see if I can find out what.”

Downstairs the doorbell chimed. Odd. It was early still, not yet eight. Couldn’t be anyone too alarming, though. The Wythe guards wouldn’t have let a potentially dangerous visitor reach the door. “How will you do that?”

“There’s a minister who’s supposed to know the homeless guys around here. I called him yesterday. Didn’t get him, but I left a message. I’m hoping he’ll go with me to talk to some of them. I want to know more about this undercover HSI guy. What’s on your schedule today? Did you get that meeting with Brownsley rescheduled?”

“We’re having some difficulty matching our schedules.” Primarily because Rule refused to commit to a day and time because he had to be free to go to Lily. He was behaving irrationally. He knew it, and couldn’t seem to care. “Today I’ll be working on Leidolf’s quarterly taxes.”

“I thought you had an accountant for that.”

“Her estimate is substantially different from what I’d anticipated. I need to go over her documentation.” Vaguely he noted that Deborah had answered the door. His own door was closed, so he didn’t hear her words clearly, but her voice sounded puzzled.

“I’m going to have a better day than you will.”

“Perhaps, although I’m fairly sure I won’t be shot at.” Curious, Rule moved toward the bedroom door and opened it a crack. Mike stood in the hall, listening intently. He met Rule’s inquiring glance with a small head shake.

“True, but unless I actually get hit, I’ll still have a better day than you. If you . . . I’ve got a call. Can you hold?”

“No need. I should go, too.”

“Okay. Love you.” She disconnected.

Rule slipped his phone into a pocket. With the door cracked, he could hear Deborah better. She told the visitor to wait here, please. A man replied in a deep, gruff voice that he couldn’t do that, ma’am, and where was Rule Turner?

Rule’s eyebrows lifted. He opened the door fully.

Ruben joined Deborah and whoever-it-was by the door. “What’s this about, Officer?”

Officer? Rule moved quickly and quietly to the head of the stairs. From here he could join them—or make an exit through the window opposite the stairs, which were at the back of the house. It would be an easy drop. He signaled for Mike to stay with him.

The officer asked Ruben to identify himself. Ruben did, including his position with the FBI, and repeated his question.

“I understand you have a guest staying with you, sir. Rule Turner.”

“That’s correct.”

“We need to speak with him.”

“Again, I’d like to know why.”

There was a pause in which the officer spoke quietly to someone else—another man. Probably a second cop. The two kept their voices so low Rule couldn’t make out all their words, but what he caught suggested they were trying to decide how much to tell someone who was much higher than they on the law enforcement scale, though not part of their own hierarchy. Finally he said, “We have a warrant for his arrest.”

Well. That presented him with an interesting question. Rule’s heartbeat zoomed straight up into racing mode. His mouth went dry. He’d spent time in a cell once. It was worse than an elevator. Much worse. He glanced at the window.

Ruben was delaying, giving him time by asking the officers for their identification. Rule breathed in, breathed out, doing what he could to slow his heartbeat, to control the physical aspects of fear, so he could think. The first thing he thought of was Lily. If he allowed himself to be arrested, he’d be locked up for an indefinite period of time. Probably not too long. This was Monday, so it shouldn’t be hard to arrange bail, assuming the charges were such that bail was an option. But for some period of time, long or short, he wouldn’t be free to go to Lily if she needed him.

He waited for the panic to hit. It didn’t.

Oh, he feared being locked up, no doubt about it. Most lupi disliked small, enclosed spaces, and Rule had to admit his own discomfort was above average. But that was about him, not Lily. The lack of panic was a relief, but it was sure as hell confusing. He shoved the confusion aside for now and considered his options: stay and get arrested, or go on the run. He had so little information upon which to base a decision . . .

“I need to see the arrest warrant, also,” Ruben said.

. . . but there were very few circumstances in which it was better to be on the run from the cops. Rule sighed, pulled out his phone, and called up the number for the attorney Nokolai used here in the capital. As the phone rang, he started down the stairs. “So do I. I’m sure my lawyer will, too.”

*   *   *

“THEY
what?” Lily blurted out.

Ruben repeated it. “Arrested him for distribution of child pornography.”

“That’s insane.”

“To anyone who knows him, yes.”

“Or anyone who knows anything about the lupi.” When it came to sexual predators who targeted children, lupi thought “dead” solved the problem really well.

“True. Not that the Justice Department will take our word for it.”

They wouldn’t. Of course they wouldn’t.

Who had done this? Who had set Rule up to be charged with a crime so vile? One that might eventually be disproven—would be disproven, she corrected herself. But the taint to his name would linger. Even when he’d been legally cleared, people would remember that he’d been charged. Lily’s hands clenched. “Give me a minute.”

“All right.”

“I am really, really angry.” Blind with fury. She’d heard the words lots of times and thought she knew what they meant, but until this moment she’d never felt them.

“Lily.” Someone touched her arm. “Breathe.”

It was José. He sat up front with Carson, who was driving. He’d twisted around so he could touch her, get her attention. She almost punched him.

The call that had interrupted her conversation with Rule had been from Father Don. She was on the way to meet him now, at the wildlife preserve. Carson was driving; José rode shotgun. She sat in back with Charles, who’d lifted his head and looked worried. She had to get a grip, stay in control. Lupi needed their leaders to be in control. So she did like he said and breathed in and out slowly, until the red tide began to retreat. Not entirely, but enough.

“I’m putting you on speaker,” she told Ruben. “José and Carson are with me, and they’re listening anyway.” Might as well be sure they heard clearly.

“All right. They also had a search warrant, which allowed them to seize his laptop. I trust there’s nothing on it they shouldn’t see.”

He meant Shadow Unit business. “Of course not, unless someone else put it there. We’d better assume that’s possible.” Lily rubbed her forehead. She knew damn little about computer security. Rule’s laptop was supposed to be protected, but good hackers could get into most anything. “Dammit, I don’t want to be here.”

“You wouldn’t be able to do anything if you were here. He chose to allow the arrest, Lily. I gave him time to get away if he’d wanted. Instead, when he came downstairs, he was already on the phone to an attorney.”

“Do you know who?”

“Miriam Stockard.”

“Ah.” That made her feel somewhat better. Lily knew from personal experience that Miriam Stockard was every bit as good as her reputation, and prosecutors all along the East Coast hated her. Prosecutors on the West Coast weren’t too fond of her, either. “Good. That’s good. I thought she didn’t take cases involving any kind of child abuse.” Kiddie porn sure fell into that category.

“She won’t represent someone accused of harming a child if she believes they’re guilty. Rule gave her his word he was innocent of these charges. Apparently that convinced her.”

Stockard must know more about lupi than Lily had suspected. “She’s top drawer. She’ll see that he gets a bail hearing promptly. Maybe even get the charges dismissed. There can’t be anything to them.”

“He thought it might be related to his Facebook account being hacked yesterday.”

“I didn’t know about that. What happened?”

“I don’t know the details, but apparently someone posted objectionable photos. He spoke with a reporter or two about it yesterday, I believe. Over the phone, not in person. I didn’t see any mention of it on the news last night.”

Neither had she, and Rule hadn’t mentioned it. They’d talked twice on the phone and texted several times, and he hadn’t told her that his Facebook page had been hacked. He must have considered it unimportant. It sounded like the media had agreed, but still, he should have told her. Lily rubbed her head some more. She couldn’t yell at him about it until he was free. “There has to be more to it than that. They wouldn’t arrest him based on a Facebook hack.”

“I agree. The arrest was odd in one respect. He was picked up by local police, not federal marshals.”

“Maybe the local cops were tasked with the arrest because they thought marshals might tip you off. It’s a federal crime. You’re a big-deal fed.”

“If they were sufficiently ignorant to suspect that, we should have an easier time disproving whatever frame they’ve arranged. I’ve no connection to the marshals or to CEOS.”

CEOS was part of the Justice Department. “They’ve got that Unit—HTIU, right? High Technology Investigative Unit? They investigate child pornography on the Internet. You don’t have any contacts there?”