Prey (52 page)

“Does that include Elvez?”

“Oh yeah. He’s nice to everybody, y’know, but you can tell he isn’t sure what to make of him. Still, it isn’t like Noah has any other friends.”

At least that his work friends and other peripheral acquaintances knew of. He probably kept his lives separate, like a good boy.

He’d been watching Elvez and Noah throughout this conversation, but now he saw Noah grab for his cell phone like it was ringing, but he didn’t talk into it, he just looked at the screen, and his face went astonishingly blank. A text message? Roan guessed that whatever the message was, it didn’t make him happy, and he was struggling not to show it. If he was right, he expected Noah to make an excuse and leave, and it looked like that was exactly what he was doing. “Matt, I have to go.

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Thanks for your help, but stop it now. I don’t want to have to save your ass again.”

“Yes, Mom,” he said sarcastically, but he could hear the smile in his voice. “If this bastard killed Ash, nail him to the wall.”

“I intend to.” He flipped his phone shut and dropped it back in his pocket as Noah got up, leaving his coffee cup behind, and retrieved his bike. Roan’s binoculars were also the kind that folded up, so he was able to put those away and leave the bank just as Noah started pedaling north down the main drag. Roan figured he could follow on foot, he knew he had the stamina to run after him no matter how far he went, but then he’d be at the mercy of the traffic, and he’d be pretty conspicuous.

His bike was pretty conspicuous, in the sense that it was a motorcycle, and a very nice motorcycle at that, but it gave him the ability to be more mobile than a car in this traffic, especially while on the trail of a bike messenger. The trick was keeping far enough back that Noah—

whom he had to assume was a paranoid sort—wouldn’t suspect he was being followed.

He tried to guess where Noah was heading based on his general direction, but he was shocked by where he actually went: the Kinko’s where Reese Campbell was the manager. Wasn’t
that
a coincidence?

He parked the bike in an alley beside the dollar teriyaki place, hiding it behind the rather smelly Dumpster, and strolled into the Kinko’s (it wasn’t like either Reese or Noah knew who he was). The copy place was surprisingly busy, but he recognized Reese right away—Amy Campbell had a chatty MySpace page full of pictures of herself, her husband, and some of her friends (surprisingly, she didn’t mention her politics either)—

a bald man whose scalp had a sunburned, reddish tinge, and whose gut strained at his button-down white shirt. He was talking to Noah on the far side of the shop, a counter between them, their voices so hushed he couldn’t hear them over the noise of copying, faxing, and customers, but he could tell from their body postures that Noah was upset about something, and while Reese wasn’t happy either, he was trying to calm the boy down. He watched them from the corner of his eye as he pretended to be fascinated by the amount of paper colors available, and it suddenly occurred to him what might have upset Noah: Jordan had just been arrested. Could all three men be connected?

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through his mother, but Jordan was a nonstarter as far as they knew.

Maybe a little more digging into his background was necessary. But Roan was uncomfortable with the conspiracy he was starting to smell here. The reason why most killers worked solo—beyond the obvious fact that serial murderers usually killed as some grotesque parody of intimacy—was the same reason vast conspiracies rarely existed: the more people involved, the more likely someone was to talk or to fuck up. Yet if there was a group behind the killings, plotting, planning, perhaps sharing gunman duties, it might explain why the cops had absolutely zero to go on. They were looking for a single killer, but in fact there was a group that had managed to plan its hits pretty well. But the thing about groups was there was often a fragile dynamic, and it was more than possible that yanking one of the people out could cause the whole thing to collapse.

The best-case scenario was they were able to hold Jordan for a while, he wouldn’t lawyer up immediately, and he broke and sang like a drunken American Idol contestant, but Roan knew better than to count on best-case scenarios. If he could make a solid connection here between Jordan and Barlow, he could call up Murphy, apologize profusely for running his own investigation on an active case, and turn it all over to her. He honestly didn’t care that he’d get no credit at all, and might in fact get a lot of shit—he just wanted these fuckers stopped.

He was trying to work out how such a cabal might function as Noah finally left, and Reese turned and headed back into his office, looking sweaty and vaguely dyspeptic. It would make the most sense, efficiency-wise, if the duties were split: one to hack the New Horizons system and pick out the likely targets, another to scout and confirm targets (they had to have some knowledge of when these people were home, when they were alone, when their streets or apartment buildings weren’t so busy), another to drive, and the last to do the shooting. So a minimum of four people? Noah, Reese, Jordan, and… Barlow? The math tracked, but he wasn’t sure the people did. Who among them was a hacker? And who was the most likely triggerman?

He couldn’t follow Noah out instantly, so that pretty much meant he’d lost the tail, but not really. Matt—super-annoying puppy that he was—had given him Noah’s real, “secret” address. He had time to go home, trade the bike for the rental car, grab his laptop, and stakeout Sun Hill until Noah got home. And where he went after work might be a hell of a lot more illuminating than following him on his rounds through the city.

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He felt his cell vibrate in his pocket on the drive home, but there was no way to use a bike and talk on a cell at the same time (well, maybe with one of those hands-free models, but he wasn’t sure how that would fit on his head along with the helmet), so he just let it go, figuring they’d call back if it was important. When it started buzzing a second time less than a minute later, he pulled off into a gas station and answered the phone.

It was Paris. “I just got the weirdest call from Barlow,” he said. Did he sound slightly breathless? Roan thought he had before. He was okay, wasn’t he?

“Weird how?”

“He wanted to meet me as soon as possible. He said it was really important but he couldn’t talk about it over the phone. I agreed to meet him at the Road House at five-thirty. Isn’t that interesting timing?”

It definitely was. Was that who Reese had called? Had he gone back to his office after talking to Noah and called Tim? “Très suspicious. Was Jordan taken in?”

“Oh yeah. I told Eli what I’d found, and when the cops arrived, Eli gave them permission to search the shed since it’s his property. They found the gun, Jordan claimed he’d never seen it before and had no idea how it got there, but a routine run on his name turned up a bench warrant.

Seems he got a DUI in Fairview last year and never showed up in court.”

He paused briefly. “Did you just say
très suspicious?
Could you be more gay? Is that possible?”

He smirked, trying hard not to laugh. “Girlfriend, please.”

“You’re doing the snaps, aren’t you? You can’t say that without the snaps.” Paris let that hang for a moment, just long enough to signal a topic shift. “What do you think’s going on, Ro?”

“I think Reese, Noah, Barlow, and Jordan are all in on this. There’s enough concern about Jordan being taken in that I suspect he was vital to the next hit. Maybe that is the gun that’s been used in his tool kit, or they’re afraid a search of his home or car will turn up something incriminating.”

“Or he’ll talk.”

“All potential disasters.”

“How do you think they’re all connected?”

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Roan explained what he’d just seen, and what Matt had told him about Noah. Paris’s reaction to this was a succinct, “Well, shit.”

“I think we may have kicked over a hornet’s nest here.”

“So why do you think Tim needs to see Kevin so badly?”

That was a good question, and there were a couple of troubling possibilities. “It seems early to slot you into Jordan’s place.”

“Too bad. If they ask me if I want to kill someone, we could get them arrested on the spot.”

Roan rubbed his eyes, trying to work out the timing of staking out Noah and listening in on Paris and Barlow, and he knew almost immediately that he couldn’t do it. He had never been able to bilocate, and it was unlikely he’d learn to do it in the next couple of hours. “Yeah, but I doubt they’ll make it that easy for us. Listen, since I’m going to be tailing Noah, I’m gonna call Phil and see if he has an operative free that can shadow you tonight, okay?” Phil was the fellow private detective who ran a huge operation over in Springfield, and they occasionally helped each other out. Phil owed him, because the last gig they did together it was Par and him working as floaters at that conference Phil was providing security for. That’s where he’d got all the name tags for their appliances.

Par scoffed. “I don’t need a shadow. I can handle myself.”

“I know you can, but you’re meeting with a guy who may be in a super-group of serial killers. Even I wouldn’t go into a situation like that alone.”

“Bullshit.”

“Par, please, don’t do this now.”

“You’re tailing Noah alone, aren’t you? He’s in the same super-group, if you’re right.”

“Yes, but he’s never going to know I’m tailing him.”

“Ideally.”

“Yes, and if I’m dumb enough to let him see me, I deserve what I get.” He sighed, aware that this discussion could go nowhere positive. “I don’t want to fight. You don’t send someone into the field alone, and that’s that. I’m not going into the field, I’m loitering on the sidelines. You’re going in, and you’re having backup.”

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Par let out an exasperated sigh, and Roan glanced at the traffic gliding by on the road. People honked as risky lane changes almost caused accidents, and that was always the first sign that rush hour was almost here. People’s driving got worse and worse as more cars got on the road, and he wasn’t sure how that worked, but it did. Maybe it was the auto corollary of people being stupider in larger groups than they were on their own.

“Is that why you went after your shooter all by yourself?”

Oh, he should have known Paris was going to trot that out. “I didn’t.

I called Gordo and Seb as backup. Ask them if you don’t believe me.”

“And not me?”

“You’re not police—you couldn’t have arrested this crackhead fucker.” As soon as that escaped his mouth, he regretted it, and rolled his eyes at his own stupidity.

“He was a crackhead?” Paris repeated in angry disbelief. “Jesus Christ, Roan! No wonder you weren’t going to tell me about it.”

“It wasn’t that big a deal, really. It sounds worse than it was.…”

“How badly did you get hurt?”

“You saw it for yourself, just some kidney punches.”

“Fuck you. That’s after you partially transformed and healed yourself. What happened before?”

“Nothing. The guy was high and inept, and he didn’t have his gun.

Ask Gordo if you don’t believe me.” Okay, that was a partial lie, but not by much. Sam didn’t crush any bones in his neck when he attempted to strangle him, and repeatedly head-butting him hadn’t done any harm to his hard head. He glanced at his watch, the cuff one that was covering his Leo tattoo. It just seemed like the best idea on a stakeout, just in case. “Look, meet me at home, we can argue there.”

“I don’t want to argue.”

“Neither do I! So what the hell’s this about?”

Again with the exasperated sigh, but at least it didn’t sound as angry this time. “Don’t shut me out, Ro. I’m getting the sense that you are, and I’m not sure what I’ve done to make you do that.”

Oh great, just what he needed: industrial-strength guilt. “God, Paris, 330

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it’s not you. I just… I don’t know how to handle this. Just be patient with me, okay?”

“I have been, hon, but I can only wait so long before I start to feel like a complete idiot.”

“You’re not. You’ve never been that.”

“My sisters will disagree with you,” he replied, a humorous tinge to his voice. But it faded away long before he added, “I’ll see you at home.”

He hung up after Paris did, wondering if he was fucking this up. He just wasn’t good with relationships; he was used to being on his own, doing things on his own, relying on no one but himself. It made things infinitely easier. Lonely, sure, but easier. He trusted Paris, he knew that he did and could, and yet it was still so hard for him to do so in a meaningful way. He was so accustomed to betrayal and disappointment, and he didn’t even think it was anyone’s fault; the human animal seemed built for betrayal, for the casual meting out of pain, and he almost expected it on some level, even though he never abided it when it happened. There was a difference between expectation and acceptance, and he was proud he hadn’t crossed that line.

He wished he was one of those guys who was good at anonymous, quickie sex, but even that required a level of trust he wasn’t comfortable handing out to just anyone. He probably should have been straight, as he figured he was an awful gay man, but that just wasn’t how he’d turned out.

Life was full of perversity like that.

ONCE he got home, he changed into another set of anonymous clothes—

he had gone into the Kinko’s, after all—and did another search on Noah Hammond, but it was much the same as before: he was so squeaky clean he could have been an honorary Mormon. A search on the address Matt provided him showed that that apartment had supposedly been rented out to a “John Smith.” Incredible. Was no one good at thinking up pseudonyms anymore?

Paris came home with some takeout Vietnamese food, and for a little while they just pretended that everything was okay, but there was an obvious awkwardness. While he was eating his curry, he decided to tell Infected: Prey