Authors: Dakota Banks
“J
ake was here the whole time,” Hound said. “He said he needed a couple of hours’ rest. He was sleeping in your room at the time you were in Camila’s apartment.”
“How can you be so sure?” Amaro asked.
“I don’t have a trusting nature. I pushed a piece of heavy furniture in front of the closed door. If he’d come out, I would have seen the furniture move.”
“He could have jumped over it, genius,” Amaro said.
“Shit.”
“Could he have run to D.C. and back?” Amaro said. They both looked at Maliha.
“I couldn’t have done that when I was Ageless. Not in two hours. It has to be some other Ageless who has taken an interest, protecting Mr. X. Or Mr. X is Ageless, and that was him in the room with me.”
“Then why did you say that the first thought that entered your mind was Jake?” Hound said.
Maliha started to get irritated. “I was surprised. Can we move on?”
She didn’t want to explain that she thought first of Jake because he’d offered to take over the assignment for her and in that instant, she’d thought that somehow he was doing just that.
“Looking at the practical side, that clone of Camila’s disc came in handy. I found that she had an account for backing up her files on a cloud service. I wiped them out. We’re sitting on that information about the good senator if we care to use it.”
“If it’s true, we’ll use it, but not until we have Yanmeng back.”
M
aliha sat at a small table in Kelly’s Pub later that night. She was on her second glass of orange juice. Hound was late. He’d wanted to talk with her in a private situation.
She was positioned so that she could see the front door and spot Hound when he came in. Ten minutes later, he entered, a fresh dusting of snow on his broad, uneven shoulders and his Indiana-Jones-style hat pulled down low over his face. The bar was full of students celebrating the end of the semester, but Hound stood head and shoulders above most of them. He acknowledged her with a quick upward nod of his head, and then went to the bar for a beer.
He sat down across from her and took a long swallow of beer. “Any booze in that O.J.?”
“No,” Maliha said. “One of us has to stay sober, and it looks like I’m it.”
“Hell, I’ve only had one, maybe two beers. Just to warm up. It’s cold outside.”
I’d say it was more to build up your courage.
“What did you want to tell me?”
“I’ve been thinking that when this is over, it’s time to go our separate ways,” Hound said.
“What? You argued against that when I suggested it. You said you’d spend the rest of your life looking for me if I disappeared.”
“Things have changed. First, you’re not the only one who has any say about it. The new democracy, remember?”
“Bullshit. This sounds more like a mutiny than a democracy.”
“Hear me out.” He took another swallow of beer. “Maliha, you’ve gone to pieces on this Yanmeng thing.” He grimaced. “Poor choice of words.”
“I have not—”
“Ah!” He held up one finger to stop her denial. His breath wafted across the table to her, and she was sure he’d had more than a couple of beers.
“My turn to talk,” he said. “You said you were thinking of splitting the team because we were in danger due to our association with you. We”—he gestured as though Amaro were with them at the table—“think we’re endangering you.”
She frowned at him. “I can take care of myself. I’ve managed to survive a few tough spots. Explain.”
“You’re usually aggressive and confident of success. Now your confidence is eroded, which I think has been the point all along—breaking you down until you mindlessly follow directions like a good little assassin. When you take action, something goes wrong. Yanmeng is involved and your judgment has gone to hell.”
“I swore to get him back and I will. If I don’t, that means I’m dead.”
“This is exactly what I’m talking about. Not everything is going to turn out your way because you said so. We come up against impossible circumstances sometimes and we lose our loved ones. You can’t accept that. All that conflict going on in you is spilling out into just about everything you do. It’s as clear to us as a mountain stream. You can’t work rationally when one of us is in danger.”
It was hard to hear, but Maliha knew he was striking close to the truth. She was treading on moral territory she’d rather not walk on, and she was forced to do it with the clock ticking on Yanmeng’s life. The result had been mistakes and missed opportunities, which compounded and made her feel even worse. The frustration over not being able to find Yanmeng and put an end to the nightmare was turning her into a blindfolded woman with a loaded gun.
I’m playing right into Mr. X’s hands.
A drunken man stumbled into their table. Hound rose from his seat. “Fuck off, jerk.”
He was a happy drunk and didn’t react to Hound’s imposing presence. “Need to take a leak,” he said, and smiled.
Hound gave him a shove toward the men’s room. “The door with the stick figure of a man on it.”
“Thanks.” He moved off in that direction and Hound sat down.
“There’s another thing. There’s a worrisome pattern going here,” Hound said. “The first target was a bad guy. The second target was gray, where it was hard to tell whose life or goals took priority, the journalist’s or the senator’s. Not the kind of decision I’d like to make without a big spotlight to point the way.”
“Camila said the senator killed her sister. That’s a sizeable spotlight.”
“If it’s true. Her sister Angelita died in a car accident. So far I haven’t turned up anything suspicious about it. The whole thing might have been Camila’s imagination. The next target might be a good guy. What then?”
“I don’t know. You want me to let Yanmeng die? I don’t want to do it, but I might take Jake up on his offer to kill the target.”
“I didn’t know he’d offered. Ain’t love grand? What would you do if the kidnapped person wasn’t Yanmeng?”
“I . . . don’t know.”
“Shit, Maliha, we’re talking honestly here. If you’re not going to start telling the truth, then you already have broken up this team.”
“I’d refuse to do the killing. I’d try a bluff. Take a risk, something.”
“There it is. You’d risk a kidnapped stranger’s life so your moral compass doesn’t go haywire. In this case, you don’t feel you have freedom to act because one of us is involved. I rest my case.”
Maliha shifted her feet and noticed something new: a box on the floor, right next to her ankles.
“Hound, the drunk—he left a box.”
“Stay here!” Hound was up and running toward the men’s room, plowing a path through the crowd.
Stay here? Why should I? I’ll check the front.
Maliha started to rise and felt an insistent hand on her shoulder. Blood red fingernails walked down her arm and tapped the table.
“Sit down. Let your manservant do his job.”
A woman slipped into the seat Hound had just vacated. She was tall, blonde, young, with skin as pale as if she lived underground and had lost all of her coloring. Her lips matched the color of her fingernails, and Maliha noticed that those nails were filed to a point. Her coat was drawn tightly around her body, but Maliha could tell that body was both fit and curvaceous.
Viewing the woman’s aura, Maliha was shocked at its black intensity. She knew she had to be looking at one of the Ageless, a woman with more death and blood on her hands than Maliha could measure on her scale.
This woman had a good start on killing before she became a demon’s slave and hasn’t slacked off since. She is Mr. X or she is guarding Mr. X at her demon’s command.
The woman tossed her hair. “Did you get a good look?”
She can tell when her aura’s viewed! Never met anyone else sensitive to that except Yanmeng.
“Yes,” Maliha said.
“I thought it was about time we met face-to-face. Speaking of faces, you really should do something about that skin of yours.” She ran her fingers down her own perfect alabaster cheek. “I could give you some ideas on that.”
“I’m not here for a beauty consultation. Let Yanmeng go.”
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Do you remember Xietai?”
Maliha couldn’t figure out where the conversation was going. “Yes. He was a depraved snake.”
“That may be, but he was my depraved snake. I reward depravity with advanced training. That training is now wasted.”
That’s why Xietai put up such a strong fight. He was trained by one of the Ageless. A nasty one.
“I have one of his knives. I’d be happy to return it to you, right between your eyes.”
“I’ve heard so much about you, rogue, but up close you seem a bit unimpressive. I’ll take you on though, and make the best of it.”
Maliha blinked. “What?”
“You killed my top warrior. I expect you to take his place when Yanmeng’s dead. Ooh, did I say that last part aloud?”
Fear and rage fought inside Maliha. She kept her voice as calm as the eye of a hurricane. “Who are you?”
“Countess Elizabeth. ‘My Lady’ will do.” She stood and turned to leave.
Go!
Maliha rose from her seat, tugging on the grip of the whip sword wrapped around her waist as she did so. By the time she was standing, the two flexible blades were separated and whirling toward Elizabeth. They struck low, severing her legs below the knees. Blood spurted wildly. The crowd scrambled for the exits and the staff disappeared into a back room, heading for the loading door.
Maliha crouched over the figure on the floor. Elizabeth was losing a lot of blood. If she didn’t act soon, she might become unconscious before she could put her lower legs back in place and let them reattach.
I could kill her now. But would I ever find Yanmeng?
She put a knife to Elizabeth’s throat.
“Return Yanmeng or next time those blades will cut off your head, not your legs. You can forget about me becoming your warrior.” She heard a siren approaching in the distance. “Better hurry up and put your legs back on or you’ll have a lot of explaining to do to the paramedics.”
Maliha picked up the box on the floor at her feet and walked out of the now-empty pub.
Hound came jogging down the block. He was breathing hard—he didn’t have a lot of stamina due to the old injuries to his chest.
“The jerk who left the box is dead,” he said between breaths. “Somebody killed him a few blocks away before I got there.”
He glanced through the window of the pub and noticed that the celebrating crowds were missing. “Where’d everybody go? What’d I miss?”
Then he noticed that Maliha was coiling the whip sword back into its sheath around her waist.
“Let’s split up,” she said.
He nodded and took off into the night.
M
aliha took home the box from the pub. It contained Yanmeng’s hand, the one that was already missing fingers. Eliu identified a small deformity of his little finger that Yanmeng acquired in prison during the Chinese Revolution.
Eliu had made one attempt to convince the team to go to the police, something Yanmeng would never have wanted. When that didn’t work, she became withdrawn. She spent most of her time in a bedroom with the door closed, barely coming out to eat. No more treating them to fresh, hot meals as though they were her children.
She’s already suffered the loss of her only son. If Yanmeng doesn’t come back, she’ll be alone in the world. She has us, but doesn’t seem too keen on that idea right now.
Maliha was worried Eliu would give up and leave the condo, making her an easy kidnapping target if she went out on her own.
She thinks he’s going to die. I can see it in her face.
“It’s a very clean cut,” Jake said. “Surgical.”
Or a swing from Elizabeth’s sword.
“We should confirm the identity with a DNA test, even though Eliu seems sure. I can take care of that,” Jake said.
“A little late in the game for that,” Amaro said.
“Excuse me, I got in the game late,” Jake said, annoyed.
“Behave, children,” Hound said.
The note containing Maliha’s instructions for the next meeting was nothing but GPS coordinates and a time, 9
A.M
. It was signed with Elizabeth’s initial in a flowing script.
“I need information on someone who calls herself Countess Elizabeth. She’s Ageless, so the title could be real. This woman is either the puppeteer jerking my strings or she’s guarding the puppeteer.” She gave a quick summary of the events in the pub, leaving out Elizabeth’s plans to convert Maliha to her personal warrior.
She thinks I’ll go into the human trafficking business at her command. Been there, done that. No way I’ll do it again.
“I’ll put together her background,” Hound said.
“Where are we with the doctors in this building?” Maliha said. “You realize if nothing pans out we’re starting from scratch with all the doctors in the city. I don’t like those odds.”
“That I’ve made some progress on while you’ve been out drinking,” Amaro said. Hound shot him a warning look. “In all three wings of Harbor Point Towers, there are a total of seven hundred and forty-two units, minus any that have been cannibalized to enlarge other units. One hundred and fifty-eight docs in the house. Of those, one hundred and twenty-four check out clean.”
“I’m impressed! How did you get all that work done in such a short time?” Maliha said.
“I recruited some hacker buddies from the old days. They thought it was a fun diversion from the usual.”
“So we have thirty-four possibilities. How many are surgeons?”
“All but six.”
“Okay, Jake and Amaro, will you work this list? We need to eliminate these people as fast as possible.”
“That leaves you,” Hound said. “What are your plans?”
“I . . . I need a break,” Maliha said.
All three of them looked at her. “You’re not running off somewhere again, are you?” Amaro said.
“No. Can’t I just need a break?”
“Where will you be? In case we need to get in touch with you,” Amaro said.
“She’ll be in her haven, right, Maliha?” Jake said.
“Haven? What’s that?” Hound said.
Jake looked at Maliha. “They didn’t know?”
She sighed. “They do now.”
“Sorry. I thought . . .”
“I have another condo in this building,” Maliha said, to surprised looks. “I go there for privacy and I store some things there. No one’s been in it except Jake, and that was only once.”
“Yeah, and she stabbed me for it, too,” Jake said.
“It’s on the forty-eighth floor, Suite 4876. It’s a secure place and the entrance is booby-trapped. If you manage to get as far as stepping inside the door, you’ll be killed. So don’t try it.”
“You have a hidden getaway right in this building,” Amaro said. “Amazing.”
“For privacy, not exactly for hiding,” Maliha said. She glared at Jake.
Suddenly she had a thought that gave her a chill. “What if Yanmeng is right here in this building? If I can have a secret condo, so could the doctor. These places are large enough for a complete medical suite if you only have one patient.”
“Holy cow,” Amaro said. There was silence for a minute.
“You don’t use your real name for the haven, do you?” Hound said.
“I haven’t used my real name in a long time. But I didn’t use Marsha Winters, the name I used to purchase this condo, either.”
“That’s what I thought,” Hound said. “The medical suite would be owned by someone not on our suspect list. A corporation, maybe.”
She could see that they were growing excited about the idea. “You have to promise me something. If you come up with any suspicious condos, you will not break into them. It would be fatal to enter my haven, and I have no doubt there would be nasty security anywhere Yanmeng is being held. Remember Countess Elizabeth is involved. I think we’re talking about more than crushed potato chips on the floor. You have to promise that you’ll back off and let me or Jake go in.”
They both nodded. “Yes, ma’am, we’ll call in the cavalry,” Hound said.
She left them working and headed for her haven. Jake followed her.
“Thanks for blabbing about my haven,” she said.
“I thought you were more open with your people.”
She looked at him skeptically. “Don’t you have a place you go for privacy besides your house? Do you tell everyone about it?”
“I do have places. It seems to come with the territory of having a long life. All this interacting with people. I’m not working with a team, so I haven’t told anyone. There hasn’t been a need.”
“How about me?”
“I have one spot in Belize and one near here. It’s an unused storage room in one of the museums. I’ll take you to both of them, if you want.”
“I have a second one, also,” Maliha said. “It’s an island in the Mediterranean.”
He nodded. “Lucius’s island. I know you inherited it.”
It sounded odd to hear Lucius’s name from his lips. They were at the door to her haven. Jake kissed her. “Want me to come in?”
“Then it wouldn’t be private.”
He left her in the hallway. She went in and lit some incense in a five-hundred-year-old burner from a Tibetan monastery. As the fragrant smoke spread throughout the room, she settled on the floor in a full lotus position. Her knees touched the floor and her spine aligned so that she could sit with minimal effort, enhancing the ability to sit perfectly still. Her hands rested loosely on her crossed knees. She leaned her head forward slightly, letting her tongue rest on the roof of her mouth. Shifting slightly, she nudged her body into a maximum comfort pose.
Closing her eyes, she concentrated on becoming aware of her breathing. Her thoughts gradually faded until all activity that was left was totally focused inward. She imagined slipping off her physical self and conscious mind and storing them in front of her, like coats on hangers. That left her subconscious mind and her life energy behind. It was similar to what she did when she experienced someone’s death experience, without the death experience to focus on. She became very still.
Maliha was in her haven to try to contact Yanmeng. If he was unconscious, she might be able to reach his subconscious. Distance was no barrier, because she was moving to another plane of existence to do it. Yanmeng had told her that the planes were twisted and connected by what he described as ladders but that she visualized as wormholes.
She formed an image of herself in her subconscious and launched it with a single powerful message:
Yanmeng!
Nothing happened. She was about to bring herself out of the meditation. Then she felt the faintest tug at her mind, and an image formed of Yanmeng. It wasn’t the same as the way she saw him. He was younger, more vital. She was seeing him the way he saw himself. The link faded.
Maliha donned her body and conscious mind and came out of her meditation. She was ecstatic. She’d made a connection with him, she was certain. He was alive, and best of all, he knew that she was looking for him.
She unrolled her futon and fell into a restful sleep. Three hours later she awoke feeling deeply refreshed, her mind and purpose clearer than they had been for days. The stress and doubts that had been assailing her were alleviated. Whatever was coming, she knew she could handle it.
Watch out, Elizabeth. I’m baaack!