Prey (16 page)

Rainbow was sitting on a wicker chair on the far right side of the porch, working on her laptop, enjoying the early morning heat. She looked up as he came up the stairs, and she gave him a brilliant smile, which he returned, cranking up his charm. She had dark crescent moons under her eyes, suggesting she was sleep-deprived. “Paris! How good to see you.”

He heard the “without your damn boyfriend” in that, and he had to swallow a laugh. It was unfair of him to use the charm on Rainbow, but he really did think of himself as Roan’s “guy Friday.” What Ro couldn’t get by smarts or muscle, Paris could get by guile or charm. He couldn’t actually pay Ro back for saving his life, but maybe he could make a small contribution when possible. “Good morning to you too. I was wondering if Infected: Prey

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it was possible for me to get a private conference with someone.”

She put her laptop aside and stood up, and he pretended not to notice the hopeful gleam in her eyes. A “private conference” wasn’t just talking one on one with a “counselor” here; it was the first step in indoctrination, in joining this wondrous cult. And he bet Rainbow would have loved to get him in a private conference. “Oh really? That’s fantastic! I know you’re quite special, Paris, and we’d be honored to have you.”

Quite special? Oh yes, he was tiger strain—also known as the

“suicide cat.” No one knew why a tiger strain was worse than any of the others, but it was, and as far as he knew, he was the only living tiger in the tri-state area. What an honor; he felt like he should have a sash and perhaps a tiara, waving to bystanders from the back of a convertible. “I just have a request, if you’d indulge me.”

“If I can.”

“I want the consultation with Elijah.”

Her thrilled little smile faltered, cracked slightly, and she made strange motions with her hands, like they were fluttering birds trying to escape. Finally she just wrung them tightly together. “I… um, that’s perhaps not…”

“Oh, so Mr. Lehane wants to talk to me, does he?” Eli said, appearing at the door. He was wearing a button-down robin’s egg blue shirt, sleeves rolled up and buttons open at the collar, and loose khakis that were quite baggy at the knees and probably only held up by the thin alligator skin belt around his waist. Paris could understand: you were never quite prepared for the drastic weight loss the first transformation caused. That’s why some people trumpeted infection as a “weight loss miracle.”

Eli was lean anyway, so he couldn’t afford to lose too much more weight. He had the fake-bake tan that was probably airbrushed on him daily, giving him a healthy (if oddly artificial) glow, and neatly swept-back blondish-brown hair that looked effortlessly styled in a way that probably cost him about two hundred dollars. His eyes were a watery pale blue in a high cheekboned face that was a bit too severe to be classically handsome, but he was good-looking in an icy, slightly Eurotrash way. He claimed to be six feet tall on his Web site bio, but he was actually only five ten; Paris looked down at him easily, and in more ways than one.

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Although a wicked smile curved Eli’s bloodless lips, he never broke challenging eye contact with Paris even as he came out on the porch and said, “Why don’t you give us a minute, Rainbow?”

She hesitated, looking between them nervously. “A-are you sure, sir?

I’m not sure—”

“I’m fine, Rainbow. It’s okay.”

She seemed doubtful, but she did go inside the church, closing the door behind her so they had some privacy. Once she was gone, Eli said, with fake casualness, “So Roan sent you out, huh? Odd choice.”

“He didn’t send me out here, Eli, I came on my own. Thought I’d welcome you to the club. And give you a warning.”

Eli tried to raise an eyebrow at him, but he couldn’t quite do it. It was tricky. “A warning? You?” he snickered derisively. “It doesn’t work when you’re known to be the guy who hates confrontations.”

“Ah. See, that’s what I love: generalizations. They do give me such an edge. Here’s the thing, Eli: I do hate violence, as a general rule.

Physical.” He gave him a cold smile that never hit his eyes, and felt so false he was surprised it actually held. “But emotional violence, psychic violence? Love it. Bruises heal, bones set, but that kind of injury could last forever. When I wanted to hurt someone, I simply slept with their girlfriend, boyfriend, sister, brother, mother… hell, father even, possibly all, depending on the person and circumstances, and then I let them know about it. See, what you and other people seem to forget is I’m a completely manipulative bastard; there isn’t an angle that I can’t play. And I’m not going to let a good man go down for you.”

Eli was still eying him with humor, but something unsettled was starting to creep into his expression. Paris was being honest, and Eli must have recognized that, also being a manipulative bastard. They were evil twins and all, at least in spirit. “What’s that supposed to mean? Is that some kind of threat?”

“That wasn’t, no. But this is: tonight, turn yourself over to the cops.

Tell them you’re infected and in the high part of the cycle, and you have no cage. They’ll have to put you up in a cell as a public service, and you’ll be safe for the night. Oh sure, they may question whether you have an alibi for yesterday and the day before, but even if you did nosh on all those people, we both know you’ll be down in Florida golfing with O.J. within Infected: Prey

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the week. You’re too rich and too well-armed with lawyers to go down for any crime but white collar; you have a pass. You’re good. And it’s better than the alternative.”

Eli looked deliberately bored and hostile, crossing his arms over his chest. His pupils were a bit too wide, suggesting that he too was high on painkillers. “Oh, here’s the threat. I was starting to nod off.”

Paris walked toward him slowly, staring him down, putting his size advantage to good use. “Roan and I will come back here about five-ish, and you’d better be gone, Eli, or we’re coming to take you home with us.

See, my idea is, you share my cage with me.”

He looked like he was about to make a smart-ass remark, probably based on sexuality, when the reality of what he was saying—and who was saying it—sunk in. He tried to beat back the horror in his eyes, but the drugs were slowing his reaction time. “You—you can’t be serious. That’s murder.”

“No, it’s not. It’s law of the jungle, survival of the fittest. Do you think your cat can beat a tiger?” A rhetorical question: the tiger strain was the most deadly, and the tiger itself was the most deadly of the cats. Now he was so close to Eli he was invading his space; he couldn’t just reach out and touch him, he could pick his fucking pocket. Eli was forced to look up to keep eye contact, and he was fighting his own body posture so he didn’t seem like he was cringing. “Perhaps I’m overestimating the appetite of a tiger, but I can’t imagine there’d be much of you left, and once we dump the assorted kitty parts left over, there’s a very good chance that the cops will simply assume you were an unrestrained cat who got bested by another and won’t even attempt a DNA match. You’ll probably become a legend, a mystical figure—dropping off the face of the earth like Aimee Semple McPherson. You’ll probably convince them you really were the second coming of Jesus or whoever the fuck it is you’re claiming to be.

You’d become more in death than you ever were in life. Which is a bit of a pisser, but at least you won’t be here to enjoy it.”

Eli had paled, even beneath his spray-on tan. It took him a moment to find his voice. “Y-you’d never do that. It’s still premeditated—”

“No, it’s not; legally, it’s not even manslaughter, because neither of us are technically men once transformed. You know cops don’t care if one cat kills another. It’ll come down to Roan’s word, and do you really think they’ll disbelieve him if he says I broke out of my cage in tiger form and 94

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got into yours? Face it, Eli, you’re fucked. If you don’t want me crapping you out for the next week and a half, then turn yourself over to the cops and take your lumps like an actual human being for once.” He was staring down at Eli, his chest almost touching his, with Eli backed against the wall. He had nowhere to go, and Paris had such a size and experience advantage that even if Eli attempted to shove him back it wouldn’t do any good; he’d never succeed. “Where’s your faith, Eli? Don’t you think the best cat’ll win?”

Eli took a last hopeless jab at dignity. He looked him square in the eye, setting his jaw, and said, “You couldn’t live with that.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised at what I could live with.” If it was Eli or Roan, Eli just didn’t have a chance, no matter what he had to do. Just to have a dramatic exit, Paris growled, but it didn’t come off how he anticipated. Namely, there were still some lingering aftereffects of the cat; the growl that came out of his throat wasn’t even remotely human. It was deeper than even Roan’s growl, not so much inhuman as monstrous, something that vibrated through his bones and seemed to rattle his brain.

Eli’s eyes almost popped out of his face; he was just as startled as Paris was, too much to even attempt to hide the fear. Paris was freaked too, but the drugs made him so lethargic it never got through.

He turned and walked away, confident that Eli had gotten the message. Yes, he could buy and sell the lot of them, he could sue them into indentured servitude, but even Eli wasn’t willing to face off with a tiger.

Man, talk about a ball-less wonder. Some evil twin he was.

Halfway down the front walk he turned to see Eli glowering at him, but when Paris caught his eye, it seemed to startle Eli out of his hateful reverie. What, was he afraid of him now that he remembered what strain he was? Pussy. “You didn’t think I was just a pretty face, did you?” He tossed his car keys up in the air and, without looking, snatched them out of the air as they came down, a sudden movement that made Eli twitch nervously. Paris gave him a big, insincere smile, and turned away for good.

Some people just needed to learn the hard way that there were limits to his good graces.

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12

Destroy Everything You Touch

ROAN woke up rather suddenly out of a nightmare. Even though he could barely remember what it was about, his heart thudded heavily in his chest, and he was glad to be awake. He was also glad that he seemed to have a subconscious “eject” button, one that told him to wake up when dreams started really turning south. He had no idea when he’d acquired it, he was just happy to have it.

He sensed warmth beside him and looked over to see Paris sprawled on the other side of the bed, so deeply asleep it looked like he was barely breathing at all (those were the drugs for you). Sunlight was bleeding through the edges of the curtains, a plague of light, but the air conditioner was on and it was almost chilly.

As he got up, he noticed Paris had written something at the bottom of the legal pad on the nightstand:
Don’t worry about Eli.
Really? Why not? He wanted to shake him awake and ask him what he’d done, but it wasn’t like Paris had gone out and killed him, so it wasn’t that urgent. But Roan was curious: what had he done?

He hopped in the shower and went downstairs to get some

breakfast—okay, now it was technically lunch—before knuckling down to work.

Although Sikorski was one of the few higher-ups who would talk to him on a regular basis, he had other friends in the police department, including one who let him peek at files he maybe shouldn’t have had access to. While he was searching DeSilvo’s personnel records, he also started searching the database for all the names Rainbow had given him, as well as for Eli’s name. John Hatch had nothing on his record but a DUI and a speeding ticket, both of which gave his address as that of a subdivision in Harrison Park; Andrew Freeman had a juvenile record that included vandalism, assault, misdemeanor pot possession, and resisting arrest; but Timothy Nelson was the real troublesome one. Although his 96

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record was clean here, there was a notation in his file: sex offender.

Apparently he had been convicted of molesting one of his friend’s sons—

twelve at the time—with an Alford plea (which was a guilt-free way of pleading guilty; it meant you were not guilty, but were pleading guilty because a jury or judge would most likely find you guilty), but for some reason he only did four-and-a-half years before being released and moving from Maryland to here. There was no information pertaining to whether he’d finished counseling or had simply cut a deal with the prosecutors for the plea, just that “sex offender” notation. It meant either that he had been red-flagged by the Feds or Maryland police as a high risk, or that someone on the staff had a bug up their ass about all sex offenders. He lived alone about a mile away from the church, suggesting that his wife must not have believed his Alford plea, divorced him, and left with the kids.

Roan made a mental list in his head, the ones he would visit in order: Timothy Nelson (of course), John Hatch, and then Andrew Freeman if those two were dead ends (all Freeman’s troubles were juvenile ones; his adult record was clean).

DeSilvo, meanwhile, was a bit of a troubled man himself.

Allegations of thefts from busts dogged him over the years, and he had been investigated by Internal Affairs a couple years back, although they found no evidence to substantiate the charges. It wasn’t above felons to make unsubstantiated allegations against cops, that pretty much came with the territory, but all this smoke? There must have been fire somewhere.

Roan was now positive that sawed-off shotgun he had was ill-gotten booty, a methhead’s prize. Yet this didn’t actually explain anything. So he was mildly dirty—so what?

DeSilvo’s first partner, Curtis McAvoy, died eight years ago in an off-duty car crash. His partner until early retirement was Mitchell Henstridge, a man ten years his junior, a man who—oddly enough—had taken a lot of medical leave in the last couple of years. There was no reason given, and he’d recently left the force. There was a reference in his file to the Family and Medical Leave Act, so presumably all that medical leave he took wasn’t necessarily for him. He too had been investigated by IA, and came up clean.