Personal Demon (28 page)

He opened the door and stepped into the dark room, his head up, nose working. I could make out a dinette table and chairs, a small fridge and microwave, a sofa and a bank of maybe a half-dozen lockers. A staff lounge for the guards.

Karl’s gaze moved to a closed door. Light shone under it.

“Stay right—” He bit the words off, chewed them over, then said, “Cover me.”

I followed, gun ready, as he stopped outside the door, head tilted to listen as his nostrils flared. He turned the handle, then threw open the door.

A figure sat on the toilet, and my first impulse was to back out, apologizing. Then I saw the blood.

The man was slumped against the back of the toilet, mouth open. Male and under forty were the only characteristics I noticed, and not because of the extent of his injuries, but because I couldn’t tear my gaze from those injuries long enough to notice anything else.

He’d been shot twice in the face, at close range. The first bullet had shattered his cheek. The second left his nose a mangled flap of gore, dripping blood.

I remembered the blinding flashlight beam and the shot. Had he seen death coming? Had he felt the bullet?

Had he suffered at all? I hoped not, but somewhere from within me came an altogether different wish, not that the man suffered horribly, but that maybe, just a little spark of something, a flare of chaos that I could—

I swallowed hard and rubbed my hands over my face.

“It must be—” I whispered. “One of the guards. Paige said—”

The man’s eyes opened. I fell back with a yelp.

Karl hauled me toward the door.

“What are you—?” I began. “He’s alive. We have to—”

My words came out shrill and jumbled. I fumbled for my phone, but my fingers were shaking so badly I dropped it. As I wrenched against Karl’s grasp, the man gave a low moan. My gaze flew to his.

His eyes were so blank and empty, I was certain that groan had been his last, that I hadn’t reacted fast enough, that I should have—

His lips parted, a bloody froth bubbled and I stared, transfixed.

“He’s gone, Hope.”

“Gone? Are you crazy?” I tried to pull away. “He’s alive. Can’t you see?”

I wrenched around, saw those blank eyes and knew Karl was right. Not a lick of chaos emanated from the man—no fear, no pain, just emptiness. But I kept struggling to get to him, because there was the off-chance I was wrong and I would not walk away. The impulse to help was still there, not yet buried under that lust for chaos, and I clung to it with everything I had.

Karl pulled me to the door. I could see him talking, but his words floated past unheard. Then came two that didn’t: Paige and Lucas.

I reached for my phone. “We have to call—”

He took the phone, stuffed it into my pocket and caught my hands when I went for it again.

“You won’t stop me from warning them, Karl. I won’t let—”

His grip went tight enough to hurt now, face coming down to mine.

“That guard is still bleeding, Hope. That means he was just shot, and whoever shot him was taking him out before going after Benicio—before heading into the house.”

“Which is why we have to warn—”

“And set off Paige’s cell phone? Yes, we have to warn them. But not that way.”

He scooped up my gun, which I hadn’t even realized I no longer held. When I reached for it, he held it just out of reach. His gaze searched mine then, without a word, he handed it back and we hurried from the building.

LUCAS: 8

I TOLD MYSELF
I was overreacting. Laughed as I imagined what I looked like, slinking through the shadows under cover of a blur spell.

Were the guards watching me from the darkness of the yard, struggling not to laugh? Or inside, at the monitor station, busily taping the footage to pass around a Cabal e-mail loop: look at the guy, he’s so paranoid he can’t even walk up to his dad’s front door without hiding under a spell.

No one could have broken into my father’s house.

Paige had joked earlier that I hated to use the word
impossible,
in case I was proven wrong. But this situation came as close to impossible as I could imagine.

The front gates couldn’t be operated without a signal from within the house, and anyone climbing the fence would set off an alarm, notifying two patrolling guards, the house guard and Troy. But
we’d
climbed the fence…and no one was rushing out to stop us.

I pushed back the thought in favor of the hope that I was making a monumental fool of myself.

My father was fine.

Even if someone breached the fence, he couldn’t get into the house. My father refused to employ illegal or supernatural security methods in the yard—he couldn’t risk having a drunken teen scale his fence and slam into a barrier spell. But with the house, he had no such compunctions.

Even the Cabal vaults—which contained not only a fortune in bearer bonds, but all the powerful spells and supernatural secrets accumulated in centuries of Cabal-hood—were not as carefully guarded as this house. My father was more valuable to the Cabal than any bond or spell. Lives had been sacrificed to provide the highest security the supernatural world knew.

There was only one door, which had to be opened by the guard within. Once inside, the visitor found himself in a completely secured concrete box. To get into the house proper required another door to be opened, which could only be done by my father or Troy.

There was another way through the front door. Should my father be in the yard or on the beach, he’d hardly want to knock at his own door, so a retinal scanner allowed him access. It was also set to recognize one other person: me. As for why I might need to get inside without him, he never said, only that I’d find out if the need arose.

After motioning for Paige to stay back, I stepped in front of the camera and waited. If, by chance, the perimeter security was malfunctioning, and all was well inside, the guard would spot me and open the door.

I counted sixty long seconds. Paige stayed where she was, asking nothing.

I activated the scanner.

A whir as the lock electronically opened. I cracked open the door and cast a sensing spell, checking for signs of life. It came back negative.

The room within looked like any vestibule. Even the guard’s desk was decorative teak, with the LCD

security screens inset in frames.

The guard sat in his chair, head on his arms, which were folded on the desk, as if he’d fallen asleep. Only the spilled take-out coffee cup told me otherwise. Paige brushed past me, her fingers going to the man’s neck.

“Dead,” she said. “But what…?”

She let the sentence trail off, knowing I’d be asking the question already. There was no blood or other sign of trauma. He seemed simply to have laid his head down and gone to sleep.

Paige bent to sniff the spilled coffee, and I knew her conclusion before she voiced it.

“Poison.”

That made no sense. None of it did. But questions flew from my head as I turned and saw the interior door propped open with a pen. As I stared at that crude instrument, brain insisting I make sense of it, Paige pointed to a pencil by the main door. Half a pencil, the other half presumably outside, after it failed its purpose in keeping the heavy door—

The interior door was open. The guard dead. My father inside.

It took all I had not to throw open that door and run in. I cast another sensing spell, then slid through the interior door. I heard her cast a cover spell, and quickly did the same, annoyed that I’d lacked the forethought to do it without prompting.

The cover spell let us stay hidden, as long as we remained still. I looked around the living room. There was nothing that I couldn’t scan in an instant and say “yes, that belongs there.”

Paige tapped my arm and motioned toward the kitchen, meaning she’d check in there. While part of me wanted to keep her close, another part knew that if my father was in danger, every moment was critical.

It didn’t take long to search the house. It was only a couple of thousand square feet, my father being the sole inhabitant and not inclined to entertain. Paige met me next door to my father’s bedroom suite, in a small room where Troy slept. To get to my father’s, an intruder had to pass through here, adding an extra layer of security.

Paige cast a privacy spell, though I now doubted the precaution was necessary. We’d cast sensing spells and if someone was here, even hidden or unconscious, we’d know it.

“If Troy realized someone broke in, and he got your dad out, they’d call so we wouldn’t walk in on a killer.

If they took your dad, they’d leave Troy behind.” Dismay touched with guilt crossed her face. “Troy…”

“No,” I said. “Yes, it may be a logical explanation—Troy kills the guards with poisoned coffee and kidnaps my father—but no. Not Troy.”

“Maybe not willingly,” she said slowly. “But if he was blackmailed. Or someone in his family was threatened…”

“He doesn’t have any family. No long-term girlfriends. No children. No vices that he could be blackmailed with. He is, in short, the perfect bodyguard.”

As I defended him I wondered how much it was rooted in affection, rather than conviction.

“I cannot believe he’d do it,” I said. “But, in light of no other obvious explanations…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Is there anyplace else your dad could be? On the property? I know there’s no basement, but—”

My head jerked up. “The panic room.”

LUCAS: 9

“I CANNOT BELIEVE I FORGOT—”
I strode into my father’s bedroom. “It’s accessed through the bedroom. Where, I don’t know. But surely it’s equipped with a method of communicating with the outside world.

He should have been able to call for help.”

I walked around the walls, lifting paintings, mirrors, anything that could conceal a panel. Or would it be as small as a latch? I crouched at the dressing table and began examining the underside.

“Um, the door can’t be in here,” Paige said.

I turned sharply, irritated in spite of myself. “It is. He said it was accessed through the bedroom.”

“The bedroom? Or the bedroom suite? Because there’s no way there’s a hidden room behind any of these walls, Lucas.”

Two sides were exterior walls, the third ran the length of the adjoining bath and the fourth was the length of Troy’s sleeping quarters. Not enough space for a panic closet, much less a room.

I cursed. Thinking before I acted. That had never been a problem before.

Paige was already in the bathroom, mentally taking measurements. She pulled open the door to the walk-in closet. A flick of the light and “Yes! Here, the east wall. Behind it is the kitchen, but there’s plenty of room—”

She stopped, looking down. A sharp inhalation, then she disappeared into the closet, moving fast. I hurried to the doorway.

The closet was in disarray. Someone had haphazardly yanked clothing off hangers, dumped shoes on the floor.

I remembered what Hope had said. A voice, asking how to get into “the room.” The panic room.

Paige was pushing aside hangers, frantically hunting for the door. A stifled gasp. She lifted fingers smeared with blood. There, on the sleeve of a gray suit coat, was a bloody handprint. And at Paige’s feet, a stain on the carpet. More blood smears crossed to the door and likely continued outside, where the dark wood in the bedroom and black marble in the bath had hidden the traces.

Finally, I found the trigger—several buttons recessed into the rear of the lower clothing rod. Those buttons would need to be pressed in sequence. An access code. Perfectly logical—why have a panic room if anyone can get in—but how would
I
get in? My father was inside, too injured to call for help, and I was stuck out here, pressing the damned buttons—

Call the Cabal.

I was lifting my phone when the rack moved with a hydraulic whoosh. Paige stumbled back out of the way.

Before I could get around the door to see within, I heard my father’s voice, starting a spell.

“Papá!”

I swung around the door and pulled up short. He stood there, his shirt front covered with blood. His lips moved, but I could hear nothing, could only see the blood.

Damn it, move! Help him! He needs first aid, an ambulance…

I couldn’t budge, brain insisting this was impossible. Paige rushed past me and past my father. I opened my mouth to call her back, then saw a body lying in a pool of blood. Troy.

As she dropped beside him, I strode to my father, finding my voice at last.

“Are you okay? There’s blood—”

“It’s Troy’s. I’m fine.”

I saw my cell phone still in my hand and lifted it. “Have you called—?”

He took it from me, fingers flying over the keypad. I knelt beside Paige. Troy had been shot in the chest and was unconscious. Blood soaked his shirt. There were more bloodied clothes on the floor, where my father must have tried to stanch the flow.

Paige was ripping off Troy’s shirt. I leaned in to help.

I could see the shot now, an exit wound just below his heart. There was so much blood…

My father bent beside Paige. “What can I do?”

She asked him to bring cold cloths.

A minute later, he returned with wet towels. “The ambulance should be here in five minutes. This damned room…”

“Built before the cellular age,” I murmured as I cleaned the blood from Troy’s chest, looking for other injuries. “And never tested for reception later, because it had a land line. But a land line can be cut.”

He nodded. “When the guards didn’t call the office for their hourly check-in, the security office would have been alerted. It always seemed that would be fast enough…”

Unless you had a man dying on the floor, and the gunman possibly right outside the door.

My father mopped Troy’s brow, then looked at Paige. “Is he as bad as—?”

He stopped and shook his head, realizing he didn’t want an answer. Troy was too pale. His breathing was too shallow. As skilled as Paige and I were at first aid, this was beyond us.

“He was talking to someone,” my father said after a moment. “I was in my room. I couldn’t make out who he was talking to, but nothing seemed to be wrong, and I thought it was you, that I’d misunderstood and you were already on your way when you phoned. I was heading to the door when Troy walked in. That startled me—he didn’t knock first. I think he knew something was wrong and was trying to warn me, but as he walked through that door—”