Henderson got into a jet-black BMW and pulled out of the parking lot. Just before Nohar lowered the camera, the Mirador started up. It pulled out just as Henderson’s BMW reached the first statue lining the drive.
The Mirador never turned on its headlamps.
Nohar didn’t know what to make of what was going on, but he headed toward the intersection anyway, a heavy feeling in his gut. He reached the edge of the park just as Henderson’s BMW came to a stop at the intersection.
The Mirador didn’t.
It screeched past the BMW and angled itself across the BMW’s path. Nohar’s instincts told him that Henderson had to peel out in reverse, now.
Henderson didn’t have his instincts. Three humans erupted from the Mirador before it had come to a complete stop. Nohar had a horrid sense of dejá vù. They wore the same black paramilitary gear as the men who had attacked his cabin. Two of them carried Black Widows. The third was already smashing in the window of Henderson’s car.
Nohar whipped the Vind out of his holster before he heard Henderson scream.
Twenty meters separated him from the Mirador. He started running to clear the distance before the combat team knew he was there. The unarmed pink was dragging Henderson from behind the wheel, while the two gunmen were turning, realizing something was wrong.
Nohar’s nerves sang with the high-tension hum of genes primed for combat. The night snapped into monochrome clarity, and everything slowed to the rhythm of a ballet.
His pulse thudded in his ears as he ran, and he hesitated to aim, almost too long. He could smell the adrenaline of the men, and the fear of Henderson. The first gunman had started firing, the silencer thudding on his weapon, before Nohar got off his first shot.
He was halfway there, and the Vind spoke in a resonating explosion that shook Nohar’s jawbone. The shot landed in the gunman’s upper chest. The armor he wore didn’t slow the twelve millimeter slug much. Nohar saw blood as the man folded backward over the hood of the Mirador.
Gunman Two saw his partner go down and started firing as he tried to dive for cover behind the Mirador. At the same time, the third pink had pulled Henderson out the broken window and was raising his head at the sound of the gunshot.
Nohar was only five meters away when the Vind spoke again.
Glass exploded as the shot blew through the Mirador’s rear passenger window, through the Mirador’s rear window, and finally through the right shoulder of Gunman Number Two. He spilled to the ground behind the Mirador, his gun flying from his grasp.
The Mirador’s driver gunned the engine, jerking the car forward so Gunman One rolled off of the hood.
The guy with Henderson was reaching for a holster. By now everything was razor-sharp. The gene-engineered beast had taken over. Nohar’s instincts had overrun his thoughts by about five times, and he had taken the shot before he could think if it was worth the risk.
The bullet landed in the center of the pink’s face, spraying Henderson with blood and clumps of brain tissue. She scrambled away, her look of horror unmistakable.
The Mirador pulled out, aiming for him. Nohar ducked aside, but the car still clipped the side of his leg, knocking him spinning. He landed in a crouch as the Mirador turfed the lawn of the neighboring park in an effort to come around at him again.
Nohar leveled the Vind at the car and pumped five shots into the windshield. At least one hit the driver. The car stopped accelerating, slid by Nohar, and crashed into a light pole by the side of the road.
“What’s happening?” Henderson pleaded. She was looking down at the guy who’d dragged her out of the car. His face had been obliterated. In his hand he held a Baretta nine-millimeter halfway out of its holster.
Nohar ran to the BMW, reached in the broken window, and unlocked the car. It was still running.
He pulled Henderson into the car and got into the driver’s seat. It wasn’t until then he holstered his weapon. He put the BMW in drive and pulled away from the intersection. A navigation display rolled by the windshield, one corner flashing red, telling him that one of the windows had been broken.
He kept accelerating until he hit Wilshire, then he turned left, away from Beverly Hills.
“You killed them.” There was a hollow sound in Henderson’s voice. For a moment she sounded as emotionless as Elijah’s voicebox.
“Two of them,” Nohar corrected automatically. The Beast was still running his neurochemistry. He was holding on to the knife-edge of battle with ragged mental claws—he couldn’t let himself crash now, not when he was going a hundred klicks an hour down Wilshire Boulevard, not in Beverly Hills, not within a few miles of the commandos who had tried to take Henderson.
Henderson was looking down at her dress. It was another black one, with a slightly different cut. She was staring at the flecks of skull and brain that still adhered to it. “I never saw someone die before.”
Nohar didn’t have a response for that. He maneuvered the car left, to start heading for the Santa Monica Freeway. He felt as if every cop in Beverly Hills was about to appear behind him and start shooting.
Henderson turned to look at Nohar. “Are you going to kill me?”
“What a stu—” Nohar shook his head. “I just saved your life.”
She shook her head, and Nohar saw her fatalistic expression out of the corner of his eye. “You killed him.”
Nohar was about to say something about nuts with guns when he realized she was talking about Royd. “No,” Nohar said, “I didn’t.”
“The police came to the office, and it’s been on the news.”
Wonderful, let’s try and keep a low profile now; when half the city thinks you killed Royd. . . .
Nohar shook his head. “You work for a law firm. You think the cops are always right? They never jump to conclusions when a morey’s involved?”
Nohar looked across at Henderson and saw her eyes glisten. He turned away. His own tear ducts weren’t engineered to be triggered emotionally. Like facial expression, it was something the gene-techs often left out when they were building their warriors. He couldn’t stand to see moreaus cry. It brought back a memory of something he didn’t want to relive. Especially now, when he had a lot of other problems he needed to deal with, in the present.
“He was the best man I ever knew. He was putting me through law school—” She sniffed, wrinkling her muzzle, and looked at Nohar accusingly. “You didn’t kill him, like they said?”
“No,” Nohar said flatly.
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because I saved you?”
She looked out the front windshield. The reflection of the headsup brought out odd highlights in her fur, making it look like slightly tarnished copper. “What from?” She was staring at the gore on her dress again.
“From the same guys who killed your boss.”
“Who are they? What’s going on?”
“I’m trying to answer both.” Nohar pulled the BMW on to the Santa Monica Freeway. As soon as he merged with the nighttime traffic, he began to relax a little. He also began to feel the crushing aftereffects of what he’d just gone through. They sat in silence as the BMW carried them into the heart of downtown Los Angeles.
“I want to go home.” Henderson’s voice sounded weak.
“Not a good idea.”
She turned to look at him, but Nohar kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead. “They’re probably watching your place.”
“They?”
“They’re heavily armed and know what they’re doing.” Nohar looked down at the dash of the BMW. “We’ve got to ditch this car—”
“What?”
“Tracking devices. Too small for us to find.”
“This is insane.”
“Do you have a change of clothes in this car?” She looked at him, his green-stained shirt and torn pants, and said, “For you???
?
“No. You.”
“Maybe in the trunk.”
Nohar pulled the BMW into the first parking garage he came to. He parked the car in a spot as far from the entrance as he could. He stepped out and stripped off his shoulder holster and his shirt. “Find something to change into. We can get lost on the subway.”
• • •
In a few hours, Nohar found himself and Henderson at an all-night Mexican diner on the fringes of East LA. The moreys here were of South or Central American stock, mostly rodents of various types, with the occasional Brazilian oddity.
He and Henderson stood out even without the way they were dressed. Henderson wore a blue sweater, faded and with grease stains, over a pair of ragged cutoff jeans that looked as if they had never really fit. Nohar still wore his suit pants, and the stained shirt which he now wore billowing open so he could hide the holster, somewhat, underneath it. It didn’t really work, but they hadn’t run into any cops, and no one else bothered them about it.
Nohar had blown most of his remaining cash on dinner. He hadn’t eaten in a long time, and his body was screaming for food. He ordered three carnivore burritos—mostly raw ground meat wrapped in a warm tortilla.
Henderson just had a glass of water, which she spent most of her time staring into.
“I should go to the police.”
Nohar bit into his burrito and nodded. “That may be an option for you. Not me.”
“Why not?”
“Ask the cops who tried to blow me away.” Between bites, Nohar told Henderson what had happened, from Royd’s visit, until he had come gunning down her assailants.
“These guys figured I’d head for Royd, and set themselves up for me. They were watching for me when I entered the house, then called in the Beverly cops—probably with some story about moreau terrorism, something to push their buttons—prime them to shoot at anything.”
“But why?” Henderson shook her head. “Charles Royd was a good man. Why would someone do this to him?”
Nohar shook his head. Henderson seemed awfully naive for someone who worked in the legal profession. “I doubt they were pissed at him personally. They were trying to get information.” Nohar picked up a burrito. “Something they didn’t expect me to know, something they didn’t get.”
“How do you know that?”
“If they thought I had what they wanted, they wouldn’t have tried to barbecue me. If they’d gotten what they wanted from Royd, they wouldn’t come after you.” Nohar shook his head slowly. He felt a nagging frustration because he couldn’t put a finger on exactly what was happening. “This all stemmed from Royd trying to hire me. This all has some connection to a missing crossbreed named Manuel.”
Henderson looked up and said, “What has that got to do with anything?”
“That’s the only connection I have with Royd. His anonymous client insisted that he hire me to find this Manuel. He apparently worked at—”
“The Compton Bendsheim Clinic.” Henderson finished for him. She was staring at him, and he smelled something like terror coming off of her. “No, this can’t be Manuel—Oh, God,” Henderson buried her face in her hands.
Nohar bent over and placed a hand on Henderson’s shoulder. She was shaking.
He heard her whisper, “It’s all my fault. God, I didn’t know he was hiring you . . . !”
“You’re Royd’s client?”
She shook her head and stood up. “No. No. But it’s all my fault. Christ, do you think they’ve killed Manuel, too?”
Nohar just stared at her, trying to read her shifting emotions, fear, anger, agitation, confusion—a lot of the latter mirroring his own. “If you didn’t—”
“I have to call someone. God, I hope she’s all right.” She ran off to the front of the restaurant, where a public comm stood.
Maybe the Bad Guys were looking for the same thing he was, the identity of Royd’s client. Nohar watched Henderson at the comm. She obviously knew about Manuel.
When Henderson got a connection and started nodding, Nohar stood up and started walking to the comm. It was a good bet that the person Henderson was talking to was Royd’s client. The pieces began fitting together. Henderson knew Manuel, his family, friends, or maybe his wife. When Manuel turns up missing, Henderson introduces those loved ones to Royd—everyone blithely ignorant of “them,” the commando goons that Manuel had stirred up.
That still left the questions of what exactly Manuel had gotten involved in, and why Royd’s client had insisted on hiring Nohar, and remaining anonymous.
“No,” Henderson was saying, “something Manuel must have been involved in. They tried to kidnap me less than an hour ago, but he—”
She got quiet when Nohar stepped up next to her at the comm. The party on the other end began to say, “Sara?”
Then she got quiet as well.
Nohar looked at the screen, not quite believing. Now he knew why Royd’s client had asked for him, and why she had required anonymity.
“Maria,” Nohar whispered. All the breath had gone out of his body, as if he’d just taken a blow to the kidneys.
“Raj,” she replied, using a nickname no one had used for nearly seventeen years. She hadn’t changed, she had the exact same Jaguar face he remembered. Nohar began to realize why Manuel had looked familiar.
Maria had been on the cusp of Nohar’s memory ever since he had seen Henderson crying. No matter how much time had passed, moreau tears always reminded him of Maria Limón. He always thought of her the way she’d been the second-to-last time he had ever seen her. It was on a battered comm screen like this.
Then she’d been at a public phone, streetlights behind her. Nohar could still remember a shimmer where the lights reflected off the black fur under her whiskers. He remembered the look of accusation in her golden eyes. He could still remember how the unnatural white of the streetlight refracted through a tear caught between the hook of her claw and the pad on her index finger—causing rainbow arcs across the screen.
He didn’t remember the words. But he remembered the pain. He remembered her leaving. And he remembered the last time he’d been happy in a relationship with his own kind.
That had been seventeen years ago. But seeing her face again made it feel as if she had left him yesterday.
Seeing the curve of her black-furred cheek he could see echoes of Manuel’s unhappy scowl. As he looked at her, a dread certainty began growing in the pit of Nohar’s stomach.
He stared at Maria’s face on the comm and could barely bring his voice above a whisper. “How old is Manuel?”
Maria looked pained. Her voice was tinny through the comm’s speakers, as if she was talking down through all the years that separated them. “I’m so sorry, Raj.”
“God damn!” Nohar yelled. The voice tore through his throat as if it was barbed and tore the flesh away as it escaped. Nohar slammed a fist into the wall next to the comm. It went through the drywall like it was air, and there was the sound of protesting metal as his hand struck a support. He felt the skin spilt open, and as he pulled his hand away, blood spilled from his knuckles, splattering on the ground.
The whole restaurant was staring at them now. A crop of beady little rat eyes and, close by, the smell of fear. The manager came forward, started to say, “Hey—” then either noticed Nohar’s gun or his size, and backed off.
Henderson was backing away, too. “What’s wrong?”
Nohar backed away from the wall, looking at his bleeding hand. “What’s wrong?” He started laughing. “What’s wrong!” Once he started laughing, he couldn’t stop. It was like a stuttering roar that shook his whole body, belting out the frustration of not just the last few days, but the last decade, the last seventeen years.
He stood there gasping for breath, clasping his bleeding hand, and said, “He’s my son.” He stared at Maria’s image through blurred
eyes and said, “He’s my fucking son!”
Chapter 9
“You should come here,” Maria said. “I shouldn’t say all this over the comm.”
“Okay,” Henderson told her. She was staring at Nohar wide eyed, with a barely concealed fear. He was leaning against the wounded wall, his whole body tensed, claws extending and retracting, tearing at the drywall.
Can’t say it over the comm, he thought. You left me over the fucking comm.
Something was torn apart inside him. Somehow this was a worse blow than any pink bastard with a gun could deliver. Nothing he had felt in the past few days could compare with the wound this made inside him.
He kept telling himself that nothing had changed. He was the same person who had walked into the restaurant, and it was the same world outside it. But something drastic had changed. When he had come in here, he was alone by choice, someone who had decided to have no close connections whatever void it left inside him. Now, he was someone who had a family, had a connection to someone, and who had had it stolen from him.
It was as if all the emptiness of the last seventeen years was focused on that single moment. Compared to that, the fact that someone tried to burn down his house and kill him seemed minor.
“We’d better go.” Henderson put a hand on his arm.
Nohar shrugged away from the touch, but he looked around the restaurant. People had shied away from the comm, and rats were standing up to move away from their tables. The manger had retreated to the back somewhere—probably calling the cops.
Nohar pushed past Henderson and headed for the door.
• • •
Maria Limón lived deeper in East LA, in a neighborhood of Hispanic moreaus. The place was better than Compton, the buildings newer. Here they’d actually rebuilt after the riots.
Most of the street signs were in Spanish, which left Nohar lost. Henderson, however, seemed to know where she was going.