Whisper of Shadows (The Diamond City Magic Novels) (10 page)

I shook my head. “Not interested in fairy tales.”

“Sure you are. Here’s a good one. Once upon a time, a princess fell in love with a dark prince. One night, bad men took the dark prince and locked him away. The princess was heartbroken. She had no idea where to find him. Then a mysterious stranger shows up promising not only to guide the princess to her lover, but help her rescue him. In return, the princess helps the stranger locate her missing friends.”

She flashed me a sharp grin. “You don’t know where your boy toy is. The agents nulled him the moment they put him in the car. Standard operating procedure. But I know. I can take you there.”

“Fuck you,” I said. “I can find him myself.” I wished I sounded more certain. I could do things no other tracer could do, and my ghost mom had told me that no trace could ever really disappear for me—if I was as strong as she thought I was. If. But I didn’t know for sure. So while there was a possibility I could find Price without help, there was a decent chance I couldn’t. I also couldn’t afford to waste time looking.

Arnow snorted. “Right. How are you going to do that exactly?”

“I’ve got my ways. Anyhow, I wouldn’t trust you to take out my trash.”

“No? Think about this, then. These are the stats the public never gets to hear about. Nine out of every ten people interrogated under the Rice Act have ended up in jail, dead, or in a loony bin. Are you going to find your precious boyfriend before he’s toast? How long after you find him is it going to take you to break him out? I know where he’s being held and I’ve got clearance inside the facility. So make up your mind. Even trade. My services for yours, or you jump out and take your chances. Just remember, if you’re not going to help me, there’s no reason for me not to turn you over to Savannah Morrell and earn my brownie points. So either way, Price has close to a 100 percent chance of never seeing the light of day again.”

She flexed her fingers on the steering wheel before shooting me a dogged look. “So what’s it going to be?”

I didn’t have to think. I couldn’t risk Price’s life or sanity. “I’m in.” I paused. “But we free Price first and then Touray. Only then will I help you. If you betray me in the slightest, you’ll be on your own.”

Her jaw knotted. “That’s fair.” She hesitated. “I hope it’s not too late.”

I knew she was talking about the people she wanted me to find, but my mind flew to Price and the ugly statistics Arnow had quoted at me. I prayed we wouldn’t be too late for him.

Chapter 7

“WHERE IS HE?”

“Facility up in the mountains. Maybe an hour away, depending on roads and snow.”

So not far away. Relief made me slump in my seat. Here I had some resources. If Price had been taken far away, I would have had far less to work with. Then I remembered Gregg had said they might move him.

“Will they keep him there? Or take him somewhere else?”

“The local agents want a crack at him. It would be worth a commendation, if not a promotion. So they’ll work on him here, at least for a few days, or until the sharks up the food chain hear about the arrest. Then the bigwigs will move in and take over. Whether they decide to question Price locally or not is anybody’s guess.”

“So we should hurry.”

“Faster the better. Could be only hours before the news gets out.”

I sat and stewed about that for a few minutes. Anxiety made me want to fidget. Finally, I pulled out my phone and sent a text to Taylor to meet me at Mel’s, then sent a message to Mel to tell her we were coming. I didn’t mention Arnow. That would be better explained in person. I tabbed my phone off and stuck it back in my pocket.

The silence in the car ate at me. It was late enough that traffic wasn’t that heavy, but Arnow drove like a granny on her way to Sunday church. I mentioned this.

“Don’t want to call attention to ourselves,” she said, glancing in the rearview. I looked over my shoulder. Lights turned off in another direction. I faced back around.

Before the silence could settle again, I spoke. “Who are these people you want me to find, anyhow? What’s the story?”

“It’s going to take longer than a short car ride to explain.”

“Give me the nuts and bolts.”

She blew out a breath. “All right. The nutshell is this: I’ve discovered that there are two levels of Tyet organizations. Hell, there’s probably hundreds. But you know how there’s the internet and the dark web underneath that’s tons bigger and a lot more powerful? The Tyets are like that. There’s all the stuff we see day to day, the players in the papers and on the news, and then there’s a deeper, bigger, stronger, more dangerous level where the heavyweights play in secret.”

I frowned. I didn’t know what to think of what she was telling me. I hadn’t been expecting anything like it. Not that I knew what I’d been expecting, really, but this surprised me.

Seeing my frown and taking it for confusion, Arnow continued. “Think of the Tyets here in Diamond City and everywhere else as local clubs. Small fry, bush leagues, mom-and-pop organizations. That sort of thing. The deeper level is muscular with tentacles everywhere. They are far more organized and run everything. Not just one group, but hundreds. Maybe thousands. They have factions, too, but they run countries. They have the real power. I’ve been trying to tap into them for a few years now.”

The idea that there were deeper and bigger Tyet groups made sense. It also made my blood run cold. Weren’t the ordinary Tyet factions bad enough? Arnow had called them mom-and-pop organizations. Next thing you’d know, they’d be sponsoring Little Leagues and bowling teams. The Savannah Morrell Killers against the Gregg Touray Kneebreakers. I swallowed a giggle. I was losing it. I needed sleep. Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to get it.

“You’re doing this on your own?” It made sense, I supposed. The FBI was as corrupt as any organization in Diamond City. She wouldn’t know who she could trust, and worse, who she couldn’t. The Lone Ranger thing would be safer. Plus she might not be able to get official permission. “Being in bed with Savannah Morrell gives you credibility for getting in, I take it.”

She nodded. “Something like that. But yeah, I’m off the reservation. The FBI doesn’t know I’m working on this, which is why I can’t call in backup. Savannah would slit my throat if she knew. She doesn’t mess with the deepwater Tyets.”

I had a hard time picturing anything that would scare Savannah Morrell. I wonder if Price and Touray knew about these so-called deepwater Tyets. Of course they did. How could they not, in their line of work? Arnow kept speaking, and I turned my attention back to her.

“I put together a team for a mission. Five of us. It was supposed to be recon at an industrial complex. The next thing I knew, three of them disappeared. I’ve got to find them, without letting anybody know my fingerprints are on this.”

I smiled without any humor. That gave me a lot of power over Arnow. It also showed how committed she was to her team. I had to respect her for that. A little.

“Who took them?”

She shook her head. “I wish I knew.”

“I hope you’ve got more details than that.”

Her hand tightened on the steering wheel. “There’d been a string of ritual murders. The local LEOs focused on nailing the killer, but I was sure it was bigger than one person. I thought it had something to do with the Consortium.”

“Consortium? What’s that?”

“One of the deepwater Tyet groups. It does a lot of business in the US, Canada, and has interests in a lot of other places.”

“I take it you decided to investigate these murders?” I asked.

“Unofficially. My team is civilian, so it’s been totally off the books.”

“Civilian? That’s not cheap.”

“They have their reasons for working for me,” she said.

“Everybody has to eat,” I pointed out.

On the other hand, if you’d lived in Diamond City for at least two years, you qualified for the diamond dole. It was enough to cover most of your basic living costs, with emphasis on
basic
. That and a job made sure you could afford to live in the city and work, which was the whole point. The wealthy needed employees. Of course, wages were higher in Diamond City than anywhere else, so the diamond dole often served as a bonus.

“They get paid.”

Something in the way Arnow said it caught me up short. Then I put two and two together. “Bounty. They get some kind of a bounty on what they do for you.”

She shrugged. “It works out. Bad guys get stopped and the team stays happy. Since we’re off the books, we can’t report what we confiscate anyhow.”

“I expect there’s a lot of money to be made.”

She nodded. “It’s good incentive.”

“So what happened?”

“I did a little digging in our systems about the murders. Next thing I know, there’s nothing there anymore. Everything gets wiped clean. Big-time cover up, like the murders never happened. Even the other investigators weren’t saying anything.” She waved a hand dismissively. “Anyway, I decided to check out the crime scenes. See what we could find. Ran into trouble at the third one.

“The place was an old machine shop. Big. Several buildings. Since we came to the investigation secondhand, we didn’t know exactly where the murder site was. We split up to search. Me and Kelsey found the killing room. The walls were covered with arcane symbols painted in blood. Other than that, the room was empty—except for a ping-pong table.”

That startled me. “A what?”

Arnow snorted. “Not what I was expecting either. On the table were two paddles and three balls. Each of those sat in a pool of fresh blood. The names of my other three team members were written on each. There was also a note. It said, ‘Welcome to the game. Take up your paddle and play.’ Kelsey and I searched the rest of the place and it was empty, no trace of foul play. I had the three blood pools checked. They came from my people.” Her voice dropped into a rasp. “I have to find them.”

“You think they are still alive?”

Arnow hesitated. “I’m hoping you can tell me for sure.”

I didn’t like her. In fact, I hated her. But I was feeling a little sorry for her, or at least for her team members who’d gotten captured. I knew more than I wanted about being a prisoner of the Tyet. I sighed and put out my hand. “Give them to me.”

“Give you what?”

“The ping-pong balls, or whatever else you’re carrying around that has their trace on it.”

She eyed me sideways, then reached into the inside pocket of her coat and pulled out a plastic baggie containing three rust-colored plastic balls. She handed them to me.

I didn’t read the names. Instead, I opened myself to the trace. Nothing. Not even the gray of dead trace. I handed her back the bag. “They were nulled when they touched these. I need something else.” If necessary, I’d try to dig harder to see past the nulling. See if my mother was right that I could, but not here, not with Arnow watching me.

“I’ve got more in the trunk.” She tucked the balls back inside her coat.

“You think they are still alive, don’t you?”

“If they were going to be killed, I wouldn’t have gotten balls on the table. I’d have gotten their heads.” She shook her head. “I’m supposed to play the game. Whatever it is.” The vulnerability in the way she said it floored me. Arnow was made of steel wrapped in Teflon with a core of liquid nitrogen. She plowed forward with all the confidence of a runaway train. Only now she’d gotten in over her head, and she knew it.

I didn’t say anything more. A headache throbbed in my forehead, like someone swinging a pickax against the inside of my skull.

We were only a couple miles from Mel’s house. Something had been niggling at me all night. Several somethings, actually.

“Why did the FBI come after Price? They must have known he had a talent for a while now. Why go after him now? Why him and not his brother?”

Arnow made a face. “I’m not sure. Dante’s running the op—Dante Wolfe. He’s senior agent in charge of the Diamond City territory. A couple months back, when I reported I’d had a couple run-ins with you and your boy, he asked a lot of questions, wanted updates on Price as the case progressed, wanted to know if I’d seen any evidence of his talent.”

“But Price doesn’t even know he has a talent or what it is.” Touray had said Price didn’t know, and I believed him. I needed to believe him, otherwise Price had lied to me, and that possibility hurt too much to contemplate. “Why did Wolfe think he’d be using a talent?”

She shot me another of those sidelong glances, her eyes narrowed like she was debating something. Then she hitched one shoulder in a shrug.

“Stop me if you’ve heard this. When your boyfriend was three years old, he was kidnapped.”

She glanced at me, and I nodded for her to continue. “At least, that was the assumption at the time. His parents never reported it. Word got to the streets, however, and the city boiled. People feared an all-out Tyet war. At that time, his father served as a senior lieutenant of the Clavage syndicate. They were at the height of their considerable power. Taking Easton Touray’s kid occurred at a crucial time. A deal was going down between Clavage and Sandoval Corp. Together, the two would have dominated Diamond City. Maybe all of Colorado. Easton Touray was the architect. With his son missing, he wasn’t going to be there to hold it together. The Bureau figured at the time that the kidnappers were maybe using the boy as leverage to queer the deal. They’d string Touray along, get him out of the way, and then Price would turn up dead.”

“But he didn’t,” I said, my stomach clenching with pointless fear. This had happened before I was born. Maybe even before Arnow was born.

“No, he didn’t. The deal did fall apart and pretty quick, Clavage and Sandoval went head-to-head. Nobody could figure out who took the boy—was it someone on the inside trying to block the merger? Or was it someone on the outside? Was it someone who hated Easton Touray? There was no end to suspects.

“The FBI figured Touray knew, though he didn’t say anything. He left Clavage and within a year put together his own business. It was a turning point. He was out for blood and his methods were brutal and merciless. Within five years, he’d wiped out both the Sandoval Corp. and the Clavage syndicate.”

“What about Price? How did they find him? What does all this have to do with his talent?”

“The FBI put every team they had into the field, hoping to prevent all-out war. It would have been Armageddon. Then word comes that your boy was home. No explanations how. At that point, since everything calmed down, none of the FBI big shots cared much what had happened to him. They were just relieved to get out relatively unscathed. A couple stubborn agents disagreed. They figured that just because Easton Touray got his kid back, that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to get revenge in a big way. They wanted to know who’d taken Price and how, and how he’d been retrieved. They believed the future of Diamond City depended on figuring it out.

“It took them over a year to piece together what must have happened. At the time of the kidnapping, Easton Touray and your boyfriend’s mother, Oriana Price, had been divorced a number of years. It was Easton’s second marriage. His first wife, Gregg Touray’s mother, died of trauma after a ski acccident.

“After the divorce, Oriana Price continued living under her former husband’s protection with a generous allowance. Up until her son disappeared. It turns out she vanished at the same time.”

I remained silent and tense. The story was riveting. There was so much about Price I didn’t know. He never talked about his parents. I knew that Easton Touray had died a few years back. That had been all over the news. But Price’s mother? I’d never heard anything about her.

“The agents on the case figured that someone inside the Clavage organization helped to kidnap the two, most likely Irvin Borender, Kyung Kim, or Aldo DeLacerda. They each had access and motive. Possibly they worked together. The agents believed that mother and son were spirited out of the country into Belize.”

I frowned. “Why Belize?”

“When Agents Davy and Ellison couldn’t find any evidence in the US, they started looking around the world. The searched for just about anything, especially anything referencing magic and/or a three-year-old boy. They had a couple techs doing nothing but running down leads. Finally they hit paydirt in Belize. It seems that locals found an unconscious white boy beneath a tree on the edge of the worst disaster in Belize’s history. Half the mountain had been scoured down to bedrock. Several villages simply got scraped off. All the debris washed down into the river below and created a new dam. It’s so big they didn’t take it down. No one saw how the disaster happened because of a massive storm that moved in at the same time.