With Silent Screams (The Hellequin Chronicles, Book 3)

  “I’m serious, Nate. I have a family. If this gets out.…”

  An image of Rean holding his dead son in his arms shot into my mind like a bullet. “It goes no further, I promise.”

  “Before I tell you who I found, you need to know that this is some serious shit you’ve uncovered. If you follow through with whatever plan you have, which I only assume will involve pissing these people off, you’re going to bring a hornets nest down on yourself.”

  “Won’t be the first time,” I said. “Nor the last, I imagine.”

  “Well, I warned you. There are four Barbary lions in North America. Only one lives on the East Coast. His name is Karl Steiner.”

  “Why does that name sound familiar?”

  “Because he’s the senior aide to Senator Charles Whitehorn.”

  “Ah, shit, how the hell did the ex-king of Shadow Falls manage to get a job as a senator, anyway?”

  “If you believe certain rumors in the city, it’s because he purchased the win from the good people of his constituency. A journalist started looking into his dealings a few years back, when he was first running. That journalist very quickly shelved the story and moved to another state.”

  “What do you know about this Karl Steiner guy?”

  “He’s ambitious, dangerous, and pretty much operates as Charles Whitehorn’s shadow. He’s not a man you want to get angry. He’s got a temper. Rumor had it, he once got his bodyguards to put some student in the hospital for bad-mouthing him in a bar. They waited until he left for the night and jumped him. There’s no concrete proof, just whispers. The kid wouldn’t press charges and refused to give details. Other than that there are also rumors that he’s killed people for his boss.”

  “Anything that isn’t rumor or conjecture?”

  “I’ve met him twice and I wanted a shower straight after both meetings. He’s not all there, and he’s certainly not above doing what it takes to get the job done. He’s also devoted to his boss. Utterly devoted.”

  “Any sort of relationship there that can be exploited?”

  “They’re not romantically involved, if that’s what you’re asking. Karl likes his women paid for. That much is well known.”

  “Any of them willing to talk?”

  “Publicly, not a hope in hell. In private, we’ve found a few things. He hates Galahad—they found it weird that he mentions someone from mythology.”

  “So, they’re not exactly clued in on Avalon. Karl can bitch and moan and they don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Any idea why the hate?”

  “Nope, he just hates him with a passion. Apparently he has a plan to get back at Galahad for some unknown slight. One girl told us it was all he would talk about for hours at a time. Also, he sees himself as taking over from Charles at some point. The phrase he used was a plan of succession. Apparently Karl’s the one who arranges everything. Charles just reaps whatever rewards come his way.”

  “Okay, so they’re both assholes. You sure Charles is not in charge of what’s happening here?”

  “That’s possible, but the more likely scenario is that Karl’s in charge of the operation, and letting his boss take the glory, so to speak. You think they’re trying to humiliate Galahad by killing people in his territory?”

  “If that’s the case, why make the bodies vanish? You’d nail the corpses to the walls of town hall, set them on fire, and sit down to wait for Galahad to turn up. No, this isn’t about humiliation, although it could be about revenge. If Karl hates him that much, he could be using these werelions to kill people for him.”

  “You think that’s what’s happening?”

  I nodded. “It sounds that way, although the why’s still elude me. I wonder how Karl will react when I tell him I know about his little pride in Maine?”

  “Badly, I’m going to guess.”

  “Do you know what Simon’s plan was? Because I haven’t spoken to him or Galahad in over thirty years, and it’s too much of a coincidence that people are dying in the same place he was killing.”

  “No idea, although I wouldn’t have thought the king of Shadow Falls would have been keen on telling me anything.”

  “Good point. Do you have any contact details for Karl?”

  “You’re going to call and tell him what? That you know what he’s up to? They have no idea who you are, and will send people after you until you’re dead or they are. We both know you’re not going down without a fight. You’re going to turn this town into a war zone.”

  “Will you please have some trust in me, Roberto? I’m not going to start a war, but I do need to confirm that he’s the one involved. And if he is, he can tell me who the lions in Maine are. It would make life a lot easier if I had their names. It means no more being hunted in the woods. I’d be the one with the advantage.”

  “What about your friend?”

  “What friend?” I asked innocently.

  “Caitlin Moore, she’s in town with you.”

  “She’s here to visit her dad.”

  “She came with you to this city so she can have a family reunion?”

  “People are being murdered in Stratford. I think she’d quite like to stop them. I told her she could come, I figured maybe some of her contacts might be of help if you didn’t come through.”

  “Thanks for that.”

  “Hey, I was asking a lot. And I’m thankful you came through with what I asked, but even so it pays to have a backup. But it doesn’t matter, you came through. And on the plus side, it also means I don’t have to ask her to do anything she might not want to.”

  “You’re okay asking me, though.”

  “I figured you could take it, Roberto. We’ve known each other a long time, and like you said earlier, I’ve never asked you for a favor before. After you dumped that crap back in Stratford on me, I figured you owed me. Where can I find Karl tonight?”

  “If you really want to find Karl he’ll be at a club on New York Avenue, about a ten-minute cab from here; it’s called Ray Ray’s. There are a lot of very rich people spending far too much money on stuff that doesn’t matter. Karl is there pretty much every other night. He’ll have at least five people with him, all human, but armed.”

  “Why human?”

  “Karl isn’t scared of humans. He knows he can kill one if they betray him. And there are very few in D.C. who aren’t human, and who would dare cross him.”

  “Anything else?”

  “You won’t get in unless you’re dressed for it. Having a pretty woman on your arm will help. That place is loud and crowded, but Karl will sit in the VIP area on the second floor, there’s a balcony overlooking the dance floor below.”

  “That it?”

  “Yeah, the guards carry silver bullets. I had the cops pull over a few the other week to check them out. They didn’t shout and scream about it, Nate. They didn’t even curse. They just nodded and agreed, because they knew that they were going to get out of whatever trouble they were in. These guys don’t rule Washington, but damn it, they certainly think they come close.”

  “Any ideas on how to get close to Karl without causing a fight?”

  “If you’re set on committing suicide, I’d say you have some weapons to sell. He seems to be dabbling in buying swords and daggers. No guns, just blades.”

  “Do you have this guy’s office bugged or something?”

  Roberto put on his automated response voice, “I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any bugs or bug-related paraphernalia that may or may not be in Charles Whitehorn’s office, car, and possibly home.”

  “Right, so why the interest in the guy?”

  “Because he’s bad news and this is my goddamn town. I put up with human crime, I’m not putting up with jumped-up little pricks thinking they can bully and corral people into doing their bidding because they have delusions of grandeur.”
>
  I waited for a second to see if he’d finished. “What did he do? To you, I mean.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Roberto, you’ve gone to a lot of effort for nothing. Both of these men were on your radar long before I turned up. So why have they caught the attention of a four-star general?”

  “My job is to keep an ear out for people who might upset the status quo and report back to Avalon. But on occasion, I make a special effort to look into people. And considering Charles’s association with that evil little bastard Simon, it didn’t take long for me to start searching for something. I would go to his office and let him see me; I wanted him to know that he couldn’t just get away with doing whatever he wanted. And then one day, my daughter was out with her friends and someone stopped them. They beat one of the boys in front of them and told my daughter that the next time her father made a nuisance of himself, they’d make her watch as they killed her family.”

  “Threatening your family, very classy.”

  “Yeah, well it worked. I stopped digging, at least in public. But I’m not about to let someone like them push me around, so we do everything covertly now. They think the message worked, and I know once they step out of line within Avalon law, I’ll have the lot of them executed. My wife doesn’t know I’m still keeping tabs—she’d probably leave me if she found out. But I can’t let that go, Nate. But neither can I risk my family. To suggest it’s been hard keeping up the lie is an understatement; every time my girl goes out I worry. But it’s not in me to quit.”

  “Your family will be safe. Karl Steiner and his friends, well probably not so much.”

  “You can’t kill the senior aide to a U.S. Senator, Nate, not without attracting a lot of attention to yourself.”

  “I’m not going to kill him, Roberto. I learned long ago that apart from some rare occasions, you can only truly kill a man once. But if you ruin everything he is, he gets to live with that shit over and over again for the rest of his very long life.”

  CHAPTER 19

  I finished on the phone with Roberto and immediately called Caitlin. “How’d it go with your dad?” I asked.

  “Next question,” she said without much enthusiasm.

  “Okay, so how’d you like to go to a club?”

  The sigh was not encouraging. “Are you serious? I though we were here to find out who made those werelions, not go dancing until the morning sun.”

  “Well, they’re sort of tied together.” I explained what Roberto had told me.

  “They threatened his family?” Caitlin said after listening silently to the new information I gave her, her voice oozing anger.

  “Feel like pissing off some really powerful and dangerous people?”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “Oh, now, where would the fun be if I told you that? But we need some clothes, and expensive ones, too. We’re also going to need somewhere to get changed.”

  “My dad’s house will be empty. He’ll be working all day and night and probably forever more.” Her tone suggested there was a lot more to her meeting with her dad than she was ready to discuss. I really hoped whatever issues she was having wasn’t going to spill over into the evening and cause problems.

  “You know the city better, where do you buy expensive clothes?”

  “Do you have a budget?”

  I removed my credit card from my wallet and was surprised to see there was no dust on it. “Nope, no limit at all.”

  “Then I know exactly where to go. Penn Quarter has the kind of places we need.”

  “Excellent, just don’t expect me to do any actual dancing while we’re there. Clubbing isn’t something I’m good at. I know, I’ve been inside nightclubs before.”

  “Is it the loud music? Does it hurt your sensitive hearing?”

  “You’re a very witty woman. When I was eighteen, clubbing literally meant hitting someone with a very large club.”

  Caitlin snorted with laughter. “Well, no clubs tonight.”

  “Well, let’s not count that out just yet. Maybe a good clubbing is exactly what the place needs.”

  Finding the right clothes for the job wasn’t all that difficult. For me it consisted of a nice dark suit, a light blue shirt, and some black shoes, and for Caitlin…well, I have no idea. I’m pretty certain I dozed off at one point while she wandered the store in search of an outfit. But when we’d finally picked up everything we needed and gone back to her dad’s house to change, it was beginning to get late.

  “Look, for you Ray Ray’s is just a sharp-dressed suit,” Caitlin said as she opened the front door and switched off the alarm next to the staircase. “For me, I have to look like I just stepped out of a model shoot. And that’s not exactly something I’m used to.”

  The clock on the wall said it was 8 p.m. “Shouldn’t we be going soon?”

  “We’ve got plenty of time, Nate. If this guy really is the big shot he thinks he is, he’ll want to make an entrance in front of as many people as possible. Just walk in, no line. He’ll enjoy that. Did you leave your daggers here?”

  I moved my jacket to show the thin belt of silver blades against my back. “Okay, I’ll go find the kitchen and eat something.”

  Caitlin pointing toward the rear of the house. “Kitchen’s down there.”

  I found the room easily enough and grabbed a bottle of juice from the huge fridge that I was pretty certain was larger than some people’s entire kitchens. The whole place was immaculate, and I was concerned that if I actually did eat anything and crumbs fell onto the floor, that a maid would burst out of hiding with a broom and start shouting at me. So, I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and went in search of somewhere to sit and wait.

  The main living room had a huge TV on the wall and a leather couch pointed at it, next to a recliner chair that really was as comfortable as it appeared. Several remotes were arranged in size order on a side table next to the chair. I thought about touching one, but decided against it. I didn’t want to put them in the wrong order or out of alignment and cause someone to have a meltdown.

  Fortunately I didn’t have to wait in silence for long, as Caitlin appeared after a few minutes. She looked utterly stunning in a green top and blue mini-skirt that showed off her athletic legs. A pair of sexy four-inch heels helped to complete the picture.

  “Wow,” I said. “You look incredible.”

  Caitlin ran her fingers through her now-curly hair. “Yeah, I scrub up okay. And this should be good enough to get us in.”

  “Remind me again why you don’t have a boyfriend?”

  “I never said I didn’t have a boyfriend,” she said with a coy smile.

  “Then allow me to tell you that he is one lucky bastard and I hope you remind him of that on a regular basis.”

  “I remember telling you that your flattery and charm will get you nowhere.”

  “At one point, you also told me you were going to shoot me.”

  “The night is young, Mister Garrett, the night is young.”

  I stood up and straightened my jacket, tossing the apple core into a nearby bin. “Your dad is a neat freak.”

  “Yeah, he likes everything in an ordered way. He can be a little OCD about it.” She glanced at the remote controls. “And sometimes he can be a lot. He’s usually doing it when he’s nervous. Probably work stuff.”

  I held out my arm. “So, are you ready? I really wish I’d brought my Audi; it would have completed the picture.”

  “Oh, I think we can do better than that.”

  Caitlin took my arm and we walked through the huge house into the garage.

  “How does a federal judge afford all of this?”

  “Ah, my grandparents were loaded. And I mean, loaded. They left me and my dad pretty much everything, so I got to grow up in a beautiful house in Wisconsin. We lived there after Mom left until I went to college
. And then Dad sold up and moved here.” She walked over to a car that was covered with a drape, pulling it away to reveal a dark-red Mustang Boss 429.

  “Holy crap, I haven’t seen one of those in years,” I said with more than a little bit of excitement.

  “I think it’ll make enough of a entrance to turn heads. Might even help get us in.” She grabbed a pair of keys from a well-organized key rack and threw them over to me.

  A few seconds later the car’s engine was roaring with joy as a smile broke my face. Caitlin took a garage door opener from her tiny purse and clicked it open as she got into the car next to me.

  “Do you feel all manly?” she asked.

  “I’m so goddamn manly, you better make sure you don’t get pregnant just by being in my proximity.”

  Caitlin’s laughter echoed into the night as we drove out of the house and off toward a destination that I doubted was going to be anywhere near as pleasant as the journey.

  Going out to a place where crowds of drunken people congregate would not make it onto any list of things I like to do. When you get so many people in the same place with lowered inhibitions and increased levels of self-importance, you tend you get trouble. Something I was hoping to avoid, at least to begin with. I didn’t want Karl spooked and running off before I’d had the chance to talk to him.

  We drove past the huge line, which snaked around the corner of the building, turning more than a few heads as the roar of the engine, and Caitlin’s presence, stole their attention.

  I parked the car in the lot opposite the club and climbed out.

  “You think that did the trick?” I asked.

  “One way to find out,” Caitlin said as she sauntered around the car and placed her hand in mine, almost hugging my arm as we began to walk toward Ray Ray’s. “Need to make this look good. You’re meant to be a rich playboy who’s here on business, and I’m your paid date for the evening, remember that.”

  I smiled. “I think I can make that role work.”

  The pair of us walked straight up to the bouncer on the door and stood in front of him, as if waiting for the door to be opened.