“Lys knew, naturally enough. But I think both Mary and Martyn suspected, and I’m sure Byrne knew something was wrong—even if he didn’t know what.”
“Is that why you’ve taken his image?”
Stephan nodded. “I needed a new identity, and he fit the criteria. No immediate family, few friends. A loner who loved his work.”
“Did you kill him?”
Stephan’s smile held a hard edge. “I’d planned to, but my offices were right under where the bomber hit, and we were both caught in the rubble—him more than me. I doubt there’ll be much of him left to find—but I left some of Hanrahan’s personal effects, just to be sure.”
Gabriel nodded. If there was enough left to perform DNA tests, there might be problems—though it was nothing they hadn’t handled before. When the real Hanrahan had died in a boating accident, the Federation had altered the tests long before the coroner saw them.
“Tell me about the warning you got.”
Stephan rubbed his eyes. “The line trace said the caller was female, probably in her mid-thirties. She was calling from a phone booth in the Dandenongs.”
Odd. The four men who’d beaten him up had been hightailing it up there before Karl stopped them. Did that mean Sethanon had a hideout up there? “What did she say, exactly?”
“That the SIU building was about to be bombed. That I had five minutes to live.”
Reynolds said the bomb had gone off three minutes after Hanrahan received the call—obviously, the State boys questioning the driver of the bomb car had disrupted his plans. Gabriel frowned. “You had five minutes to live? Isn’t that a little strange? Why not say you had five minutes to evacuate the building?”
“I have no idea, and at the time, I was too busy trying to trace the call and check authenticity to worry about it. Plus, I was deep in the throes of another murder. One of the kites struck again tonight.”
Gabriel swore softly. “Who?”
“I don’t know. The bomb went off before confirmation came through.” Stephan shrugged. “We’re just damn lucky we got a warning, otherwise the SIU might well be crippled right now.”
Gabriel suspected luck had nothing to do with it. While he had no doubt that the aim of the bomb had been to cripple the SIU, he also had no doubt that someone out there didn’t want them to die. Or rather, didn’t want Stephan to die. That call had come direct to his office, after all. “Did she say anything else?”
“She told me the make and number of the car. I looked out the window, saw the car and ordered the evac.”
“Were you the reason the State boys investigated the car?”
“No. That was sheer chance. I had some of our own people headed up there, but they arrived far too late to prevent this tragedy.”
No one could blame the State boys for simply doing their job, though. It was just an unfortunate sequence of events. “I don’t suppose you recognized the voice?”
Stephan shook his head. “Voice scanning was in progress, but the system just didn’t have long enough before it all went to hell.”
Had the call come from the woman supposedly impersonating Lyssa? Or perhaps even Mary, using some form of voice modulator? Though why would either of them warn Stephan if they were involved with Sethanon or Kazdan? It didn’t make any sense. But, as he’d already noted repeatedly, nothing about this situation made any sense.
And with the computer network down, and who knew what information destroyed, any chance of a cross-check of the woman’s voice against Lyssa’s or Mary’s was gone. His only option now was checking whether either woman had left her safe house near the time of the warning. “Any idea who might be behind the bombing?”
“It’s probably Sethanon.”
It was a logical conclusion, given the bombing of Stephan’s place. And if Sethanon could get a shapeshifter into the labs to lock away Sam’s files, he could easily have arranged to have a car drive into the side of the building and explode. What didn’t make sense was the why. In the past, Sethanon’s methods tended to be a little more subtle. “I think he’s smart enough to realize that bombing the SIU will only make it stronger—past efforts to destroy us have certainly proven that.”
“What are you saying? That it could be any one of the hundreds of people who have a gripe against the SIU? None of them have gone this far for revenge before.”
“No. Personally, I think it’s Kazdan.”
Stephan opened an eye and regarded him steadily. “Why?”
He told Stephan of the conversation he’d overheard between Kazdan and the blond shapechanger. “I think Kazdan’s getting tired of the middle-management yoke. I think he wants more. I think he’s intending to use Sam to get it. And Eddie Wyatt is working for him, not Sethanon.”
“The SIU bomb certainly had Eddie’s style. And if Kazdan intends to use Sam in his plot, it suggests he knows more about these abilities she seems to have.”
Gabriel nodded. “It also suggests Sethanon knows. He arranged for Kazdan to be her partner, after all. Maybe he wanted to keep an eye on her.”
“That would suggest she’s somehow linked to Sethanon.”
It seemed that way, but gut instinct said she wasn’t involved with him. Not yet, anyway. “Sethanon wanted her watched but otherwise left alone. I think we need to find out why.”
“Where is she now?”
“With Karl.”
Stephan frowned. “He seemed a little tense the last time we met. Has he got family problems or something?”
He frowned, remembering the tension around Karl’s eyes. “Not that I know of.”
“Odd.” Stephan’s gaze drifted shut again. “He kept glancing at his watch and checking to see if his cell phone was on. When I asked what the matter was, he said his wife had gone to visit relatives in New South Wales and was due to call at six. He said he had to catch the call or she’d kill him.”
New South Wales. Not to Jan’s parents, who lived on a farm half an hour’s drive away from Karl’s, or even to Karl’s relatives, who lived in Queensland. New South Wales. The one place he knew for sure Karl had no relatives, living or dead. It had been a message—a warning—but it had been given to the wrong brother entirely.
Gabriel closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. Then he pulled out his cell phone and quickly dialed Karl’s number. The phone rang several times. Either no one was home or no one was in the position to answer it. He swore and shoved the phone back into his pocket.
“What’s wrong?” Stephan asked.
He stared at his brother bleakly. “I think I’ve just handed Sam over to the enemy.”
SAM STIRRED, VAGUELY AWARE OF MOVEMENT. Rough vibrations ran through the metal floor beneath her, bruising her back and rattling her teeth. Darkness encased her. She couldn’t see.
Old fears rose, threatening to overwhelm her. She swallowed and forced them back. Now was not the time to panic. Not until she knew what was going on, anyway. It was obvious she was no longer in bed at Karl’s place—not unless it had suddenly converted to a car.
Two men were speaking close by. One voice seemed familiar, though she couldn’t exactly place where she’d heard it before. Beyond that was music, though it was barely audible above the throaty roar of the engine. She frowned. It sounded like Ennuyer’s latest hit, “Silence.” Jack’s favorite tune.
Her heart began to beat a little faster. Maybe she’d done the right thing in following her instincts and hiding the disks at Karl’s.
She shifted slightly. Almost instantly, an ache sprang up her arms and settled into her shoulder blades. She tried to rub the sore spot, only to realize her hands were tied behind her back. The ropes were tight, chafing at her wrists. She shifted her feet. Also tied. Something rubbed across her face, making her nose itch—a cloth of some sort. She took a deep breath, and then blew it out. The black cloth puffed away from her face, momentarily giving her vision. She was in a van of some sort. Out the back window she glimpsed golden pines, and then the cloth settled back into pl
ace.
The vibrations through the floor stopped. Doors slammed shut, and then the door near her feet opened. Hands grabbed her roughly. Her immediate instinct was to fight, but until she knew exactly what was going on, it made more sense to play possum. She went limp, feigning unconsciousness.
Hands slipped under her shoulders, and suddenly she was free from the metal flooring. Gravel crunched and more doors opened.
“Any problems?”
Jack’s voice, coming from a doorway to her left. So, she’d been right. He wasn’t dead, and he was mixed up in whatever was going on. For a moment, it felt as if someone had stabbed her.
“No trouble whatsoever.” The slight hint of Irish brogue in the speaker’s tone was definitely familiar. She’d heard it before—on the phone, asking to speak to Jack.
“Take her down to the holding cells. We’ll let her sleep it off for a few hours.”
The man near her head grunted, and the two men moved off again. They carried her down a flight of stairs and into a room that smelled musty and old. But it was occupied. She could hear soft conversation to her right—female voices.
Another door creaked open, and she was thrown none too gently onto a mattress. The cloth over her head was pulled away, taking with it more than a few strands of hair. She bit back her yelp of pain and kept her eyes closed. The two men moved away, and the door slammed shut.
She waited several minutes before opening her eyes. Her prison was a redbrick room, maybe ten feet long by six feet wide. The door was metal, with a small barred opening in its middle. She looked behind her. There was another window on the back wall, probably a couple of feet in diameter. Big enough to crawl through, if it weren’t for the thick metal crossbars.
Sunlight streamed in, warming the chill from the air. She’d obviously been out for some time, because the sun seemed to be riding high in the sky. She swung her feet off the bed and stood. The red walls swam momentarily, and a bitter taste rose to the back of her throat. She swallowed and tried to ignore the churning in her stomach. Whatever drug they’d used to knock her out, it obviously didn’t agree with her system.
The rope around her ankles was thick and tight. If it weren’t for her boots, it would probably be cutting off her circulation. She blinked. Her boots? She was dressed—still wearing the same clothes that she’d worn last night. Had they re-dressed her, or had she never undressed? All she could remember was getting to the bedroom after Karl had bandaged her wounds. She had a vague memory of the softness of the mattress, but she couldn’t remember stripping or climbing into bed.
Had Karl drugged her drink? Had Jack been at the house all the time, simply waiting for Karl to do his dirty work? If that were true, then maybe the SIU bombing had saved Gabriel from being captured—or even killed. Or maybe he was the reason it had been bombed—to get him away from Karl. And her.
She shuffled to the window. There wasn’t much to see outside, just several feet of concrete and another wall, this one bluestone. A breeze whispered in, carrying with it the stench of rotting rubbish. Maybe her cell was near a dump of some kind.
She shuffled back to the door and peeked out. The main room was full of shadows. The two women were still talking in one of the cells to her right. To her left, a set of stairs curved around a wall and disappeared. No one stood watch.
She looked at the door lock. Key-coded. The decoder was still in her boot—she could feel the end of it digging into her ankle beneath the ropes. If she could somehow get it, she might be able to get out of the cell. Then all she had to do was find out what Jack was up to.
She shuffled back to the bed and sat down. Twisting her legs up beside her, she leaned sideways and reached with her fingertips for her boots. Her shoulders cracked, and pain slithered down her spine. She bit her lip and reached a little more, trying to get closer. No matter what she did, she couldn’t touch more than a fingertip to the top of her boot. There wasn’t a hope in hell of pulling anything out.
She cursed and slammed her feet back to the concrete. Then she stared at her boots for a moment. Why didn’t she just take them off?
If there was enough leeway in the rope to do a shuffle walk, surely there was enough leeway to kick off a boot. Raising her legs off the floor, she forced her left leg a little in front of the right. The rope rolled off the top of her boot and bit into her leg, sawing at her flesh. She ignored it and tried to catch her left heel with her other boot. After a few minutes, she managed to hook the heel and force the boot off her foot, though the effort left her whole body trembling.
She dropped her legs back to the floor, took a deep breath and blew it back out, lifting the sweaty strands of hair off her forehead. Then she took a look at the damage. The rope had dug deep into her leg, and red trails of blood were beginning to wind their way through the flower patterns in her socks. And rope burns hurt. It felt as if someone were holding a flame to her ankles, burning her flesh. But she had no time to sit and feel sorry for herself. First, she wanted to find out who else Jack was keeping locked up, and then she had to get the hell out of here.
She rose and shuffled over to her boot. The rope around her ankles was looser, though not enough to actually get it off. She crouched down, and felt around the inside edges of her boot until she found the decoder. She carefully pulled it out and shuffled back to the door.
The key-coder beeped after several seconds, and the door clicked open. She peered out. No one lurked in the shadows. She pushed the door open with her shoulder, and then she headed toward the cells at the far end of the room.
The talking stopped as she neared. She hesitated, listening. Inside the end cell, someone breathed heavily, short, sharp gasps that spoke of fear.
“Hello?” she whispered. “Detective Samantha Ryan, State Police.” She was suspended, but that wasn’t a point these women needed to know right now.
A white face appeared at the barred window to her right. “You’re here to rescue us?”
She snorted. Some rescue. She was tied up tighter than a turkey on Christmas day. “Not exactly. Step back, ma’am.”
She turned around and placed the decoder on the lock. The door clicked in response. She pushed the door open and shuffled in. The two women inside looked at her for a moment, then they shared a glance. It wasn’t hard to see the disappointment in their eyes. Neither was tied, which wasn’t a good sign. At the very least, it meant Jack was very, very sure of his security.
“Officer, you seem to be in worse trouble than we are,” the woman with the white face said.
“For the moment, I’d have to agree.” She held out her tied hands. “I don’t suppose one of you ladies could get these ropes off?”
The older of the two stepped forward. She had long brown hair swept into a ponytail and held by a red and purple scarf. Her loose-fitting pants were also purple, while her sweater was vibrant white. Karl’s wife. She had to be, because there was no other explanation for his betrayal of Gabriel. Even in the brief time she’d seen them together, it was obvious they shared a deep friendship. At least now she understood the anguish she’d seen in Karl’s eyes. To save his wife, he had to kill a friendship he held dear.
The other woman in the cell was someone she knew. “Lyssa,” she said, surprised. “How the hell did you get here? I thought Stephan was sending you to stay with his old man?”
Surprise flitted through Lyssa’s blue eyes, followed quickly by pain. She took a deep breath, and then released it in a sigh that was somehow mournful. “I have not seen Stephan for at least six months. Nor have I met you, Officer.”
“But … I saw you, yesterday.” She hesitated. Gabriel had said some shifters were multi-shifters. The Lyssa she’d seen with Stephan was definitely a shifter. She was getting no such reading from this woman, whom Gabriel had said was a changer. This talent of hers seemed to be very selective about who it did, and didn’t, pick up.
“That wasn’t me, Officer.”
“Obviously not, if you’re here.”
The ropes
finally came off. She rubbed her wrists, then shook her legs to get the circulation going properly again. Big mistake. The rope burns began to ache with renewed vigor.
“Those wounds need tending,” Karl’s wife commented. “They’ll get infected, otherwise.”
Right now, infection was the least of her worries. “Has Jack been down here? Has he said anything to you two?”
Both women shook their heads. “We’re fed through the slot in the door three times a day,” Lyssa said. “They escort us to the showers once a day, and they bring in a box-load of books and magazines every week. But it is always the same two men, and neither will answer any of our questions.”
So Jack had no obvious intention of harming them. He just wanted them out of the way. She glanced at Karl’s wife—Jan, if she remembered correctly. “How long have you been here?”
“Just a day.”
Snatching her had to have been a last-minute plan—maybe a result of Sam unexpectedly finding the disks. And if Jack knew Gabriel was close to Karl, it would be an easy enough guess that, sooner or later, he would take her there.
She looked at Lyssa. “They haven’t said anything to you, in the six months you’ve been here?”
“No.” Lyssa hesitated, her hand drifting down to her stomach. It was only then that Sam noticed the telltale rounding. “I fear my child will be born with Stephan never knowing.”
She obviously didn’t know about the shapeshifter taking her place—and didn’t know that that shifter was also pregnant. Nor was it really the time to tell her. “Believe me, I fully intend to get us all out of this before that ever happens.”
But first, she had to find out what Jack was up to. She bent down and picked up the ropes. “I’m going to have to lock you back in for now. Jack obviously has no intention of harming either of you, and until I know what he’s up to, and where exactly we are, I don’t want to do anything that may jeopardize that situation.”
The two women nodded. She spun and walked out of their cell, carefully locking the door again. Then she made her way back to her own cell. Retrieving her boot, she slipped it on, then shoved the decoder back. The ropes she flung under the bed, just in case she needed them later. Then she sat on the bed and waited.