Bite Back 05 - Angel Stakes (44 page)

My stomach churned.
Dante, no!

“Oooh. Looks like you’re feeling pretty hot, too.”

“Oh, man,” Bryant said, his voice low.

“Y’know, all that rough talk, it really gets me going,” Dante said. “Sort of scared and turned on at the same time.”

“You like it?”

“Yeah, baby. I like the thought of that stuck-up doll finding out what it’s really like for the rest of us. I guess I can’t ask the boss, but you said you’d tell me stuff, didn’t you? You said you were there, didn’t you? So tell me—”

“You keep—”

There was a burst of frantic music.

“I thought you turned it off,” Dante said.

“Shut up,” Bryant said. “That’s the boss’ cell. That don’t get switched off.”

Shit.

“He’s turning around,” Bob said.

“What’re you doing?” Dante’s voice had edged up. I could feel the fear rising in her.

Call it off, Dante. You have the code word. Gnarly. Say it. Say it. Say it.

“You wanted to party with the boss? This might be your lucky night. Gotta pull over and call. See what’s up.”

The Tahoe cruised back past us, bleak and ominous.

“Turn at the next block,” Reed told the driver. “Randall, turn if he can’t see you, and wait for him.”

Dante: “But you haven’t told me–”

Bryant: “I’ll make sure you’ll know everything you need when you meet him.”

The signal was getting fainter. Then there was nothing but static on the wire.

“Out of range. Turn now,” Reed said to the driver.

I’d had enough. “Shit. Close it—”

“I see him.” Randall’s voice.

“Wait,” Reed said. “Just a minute or two.”

We turned in the road. Car horns blared at us.

“We can’t hear what’s going on,” I said. “This is useless.”

“The bug keeps a record of the last fifteen minutes or so,” Reed said, “and we’ll be back in range soon.”

The loudspeakers hissed.

“He’s turning toward Angelino.” That was Yelena. Angelino Heights was the small area west of Sunset, bordered by the 101.

A new voice came on the walkie-talkie. “We’re on Bellvue. Get someone on Glendale and we’ve got him in a bottle.”

It was our two missing cars.

“I got Glendale,” car number one said.

“On Bellvue with the others,” Bob called out.

“Echo Park Avenue now.” Randall.

“Close in and take him now,” I said. “No way is Forsythe thinking of partying tonight. I don’t trust calls coming in that we can’t hear. It’s gotten too dangerous. Stop it now.”

The wolf was thrashing inside me.
Wrong. Wrong. Pack. Threat.

“No. One minute.” Reed put his hand up. He cranked up the volume on the wire. Still nothing but noise.

“Eyes on.” That was Randall. “He’s stopped on a side road near the parking lot.” He paused. “Maybe he’s getting some action. I’m driving around the block.”

“Where?” I shouted. “Randall, where’s the Tahoe?”

“Parking lot off the Avenue,” he replied. “Half a block west of Sunset.”

I tore the van door open.

One of the buildings just ahead was covered in murals. That was the junction with Echo Park Avenue.

The intersection was blocked by traffic.

The traffic lights were against us and the loudspeakers were still hissing.

We were in range. The wire had gone dead.

“Yelena!” I yelled at the walkie-talkie. “End it now.”

“On it.”

I ignored the shouts from the van behind me as I sprinted across the road.

Cars skidded and horns blared. I vaulted a sedan, landing on the sidewalk with my legs already pumping. People scattered in front of me and joined in the shouting.

How long had the wire been out of range?

Four minutes? Five? Too long.

That call Bryant had taken was bad news. I could feel it in my gut.

I’d said I would be there for her.

I hadn’t been.

I’d failed Tamanny, and now I’d failed Dante.

The side alley. Nearly empty parking lot. The Tahoe halfway along. Lights off. No movement.

The Kawasaki skidded in at the far end, ignoring the one-way sign, and came screaming down the road.

We got there at the same time.

Yelena dropped the motorcycle and launched herself at the mirrored window on the passenger side, her bulky boot crushing the glass.

I smashed the driver’s window with the HK.

All wasted effort.

Willard Bryant wasn’t going anywhere. He was slumped forward over the wheel, shocked eyes staring at me and a small, neat hole with dark edges in his forehead. The sort of hole you’d get from a .22 at close quarters.

The passenger seat was empty.

I backed up.

A belt on the ground.

Dante’s belt. Sliced open, and the bug, with its recording of the last fifteen minutes, had been torn out.

“Yelena! What cars did you pass coming in?”

Only a couple of minutes. There’s a chance they passed us on the way out.

“White Honda sedan,” she said, and closed her eyes for a second. “Red Ford compact.”

“And a blue VW sedan turning left. Go.”

She picked the Kawasaki up and raced back toward Sunset, past a startled Reed.

He jogged up and stood beside me, eyes taking in the Tahoe with the doors wide open, the body lying against the steering wheel. And the belt on the ground.

“Shit,” he said.

Shit didn’t cover it. We’d failed. We’d known what the dangers were and we’d gone on with the plan regardless.

I pointed at the belt—the one that no one outside of Major Crimes knew about. “That says someone in your department called Forsythe today.”

Even while I spoke, my wolf senses were reaching, reaching. Dante had been here, but there was no trail leading away, no hint in the complex and folded scents that she was close.

The command post van and the other cars arrived at the same time, with squealing tires and banging doors.

I ran to the van. It had a camera pointed out of the back, and the feed was being recorded. But there was no camera pointed to the front, so nothing on that intersection as we’d been approaching. No record of cars I might have missed.

The wolf snarled in frustration.

Reed was at my shoulder. I needed to keep it under control. I punched the side of the van, using the pain to help distract me.

“What?” he said.

“Yelena and I saw three cars that might have been involved,” I explained. “I was hoping to get more from the tapes.”

The wolf twisted and twisted inside. She wanted to burst out. To run. To hunt. To chase through the brutal noise and smells of the city and find that elusive fragment of scent that would lead me to Dante.

Breath whined in my throat.

I slumped against the van, fighting my wolf, fighting myself.

I should have gone with Yelena to search for the kidnappers’ car.

No.
I should have called it off the moment Bryant received that call. Stopped them on Sunset.

Better, I should never have let Dante talk me into this in the first place.

The cascade of bad decisions seemed to trigger a light in my head. Painfully bright. If it was too late to go running back to Sunset looking for cars that might be a mile away already, what could I do?

Calm. Look for clues.

Snatching Dante had to have been planned in a rush. Reed and Simpson had only put the operation in motion this morning. Surely the abductors had made some mistakes.

I was vaguely aware of Reed sending his colleagues out onto Sunset with the minimal information we had. It was a futile gesture, and we both knew it.

We walked back to the Tahoe. Numbness was setting in. My footsteps seemed to float.

“How did they know where…” Reed was speaking to himself.

I stuck my head in the Tahoe, careful not to touch anything. In the central console was a neat double slot for charging smartphones. It was empty. Both of Bryant’s cells were gone.

Reed leaned in from the other side, peering over Bryant’s body.

“If he kept a cellphone for talking to Forsythe permanently on—” I started.

“Yeah, you can hack the cell. Forsythe could probably hear everything that was said in here, and he was probably pulling a GPS signal from it as well.”

We stood back and looked at each other over the hood of the Tahoe.

“So he knows we’ve got a wire on Dante and we’re trying to get Bryant to talk. Bryant becomes a liability. He sends a team down here. Maybe the same hitman who did the judge. He knows we’re following closely. He’d have a car.” He paused and closed his eyes for a moment. “What’s wrong with this scene, Farrell? Why aren’t there two bodies?”

I didn’t answer. I was afraid I knew.

To Forsythe, Bryant was business. He worked for Forsythe and he’d stepped over the line. He paid the penalty. Just another transaction to Forsythe.

But Dante was personal.

As far as Forsythe would know, my appearance had started this investigation against him. He’d blame me for everything. And whoever was feeding him information from Major Crimes would have linked Dante to me.

To Forsythe, taking Dante was a way of getting back at me for ruining his sick life here in LA. Instead of sending a hitman down here, he’d sent a team. Probably two guys with the hitman—one to drive the car, one to snatch Dante while the hitman killed Bryant.

And there was no way Forsythe would be hanging around now. There were too many pointers to him. This abduction had been hugely risky. They’d gotten away with seconds to spare. If we’d caught them, we’d have a direct line to Forsythe.

He’d already started running. Had to have.

And catching him was the only way to be sure of getting Tamanny and Dante back safely.

Cellphone again. Billie. Again. I could see it was her call I’d ignored a few minutes before.

Bad feeling.

“Billie, can you take Forsythe? Wherever he is.”

“No! I’ve been trying to call you. He’s gone. Limousine stopped outside a store and he ran through it. He was gone by the time we got around the other side. He must have known he was being followed.”

Or guessed it. Or was paranoid enough to take precautions.

Think!

He had Tamanny. His team had just abducted Dante. If he wanted her dead, she’d be dead here. So he wanted something else.

I shuddered.

He had something planned. Something he wanted Dante for. Somewhere in his immediate reach. He wasn’t going to leave until it was done.

What? And where?

Around me, everyone just kept moving. Reed was busy calling it in. Gawkers were gathering. A squad car had turned up and a couple of uniforms started putting up a yellow tape perimeter.

The snarl of the Kawasaki told me Yelena had returned, but a glance showed me she didn’t have Dante.

Reed’s other colleagues were returning, dispirited. No one had seen anything suspicious in any cars that matched Yelena’s and my descriptions.

Time running out.

Reed might put out an APB for Forsythe, but there was nothing I could add to that. And I couldn’t just leave everything to the police. They moved too slowly. They had to respect the rules.

Reed would be full of questions if I was here much longer. I couldn’t afford to answer them and my House couldn’t afford to have me delayed by him.

One other route I can investigate.

Yelena knew what I was thinking.

I leaped up behind her on the Kawasaki.

The snarl as she gunned the engine drowned out the shouts from the police.

“Jacob! We’re coming to you now. Any movement?”

I had ducked behind Yelena’s back to call Jacob on the cell, one arm gripping her waist as she powered the Kawasaki through the traffic.

“Nothing, Ms. Farrell,” he said. “She had some deliveries, but she hasn’t been out—”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

“What deliveries?” I interrupted him.

“Ahh…just some couriers and stuff. I have them written down. Companies and license plates. They had to wait for the gate to open, so it was easy—”

He was eager, and if this had been a long-term surveillance, that kind of detail would be useful.

“Cars? Motorcycles?” I asked.

“Motorcycles.”

“Wearing full-face helmets?”

“Uh, yeah, a couple of them.”

“Jacob, this is important. Were the people who wore helmets out of your sight? Even for a second? Did they go inside?”

“No, Ms. Farrell,” he said quickly. “I can see the front door from here, and they just stood there and handed stuff over.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe we were in luck.

No.

“Yeah, the only time I couldn’t see the door clearly was when the dry cleaning van came.”

Shit!

She was gone. I knew it somehow. She’d slipped out in that van.

A minute later, Yelena had the tires smoking as we took the final corner.

Fay Daniels’ house was Spanish Colonial style. White stucco. Arched windows and doorways. Terracotta coarse-tiled roof. Balconies.

Ground floor lights shone through the windows.

Jacob, alerted by my call, ran across from his hiding place as we skidded to a halt outside.

I vaulted the wrought-iron gates and sprinted up the tiled driveway, with Yelena a few paces behind.

The house
felt
empty.

The door was locked of course, and I had no lock picks with me. I slammed my shoulder against it in frustration.

“Clear!” Yelena said.

She’d been carrying my HK all day. As I stood back, she fired six shots into the wooden door in a neat circle. As soon as she flicked the safety, I slammed my foot into the center of the damaged area, breaking through.

I reached through the hole and opened the locks.

The door swung wide.

No reaction from inside the house. No voices, no noise. Nothing.

Yelena passed me the HK and took out her own Sig Sauer.

We slipped through into the hallway.

Ritzy. Glossy wooden floors. Big open rooms. White leather furniture. Recessed lighting. Carpeted stairs.

Empty.

We checked the ground floor rooms, leapfrogging each other from corner to corner, a growing sense of despair blooming inside me. We’d been two steps behind Forsythe all the way. He’d had time to abduct Dante, warn his lawyer and escape his tail.

They had to have decided to go as soon as it was obvious that the police were mounting an operation. As soon as Forsythe’s contact in the Major Crimes division had told him about the wire on Dante.

And running meant Fay Daniels was involved somehow. However it had started. What I was seeing was evidence of a planned and calculated decision.

The desk in the study had a mess of papers with an obvious gap where a laptop had sat. I glanced at a couple of pages. Industry contracts. Preparation papers for a civil case against me. There would be nothing incriminating here. The laptop—if we could ever track it down—that would be something else.

Yelena and I trotted upstairs, swinging around to cover possible attacks from the passages off the landing, but there was no one here.

Only the main bedroom had evidence of use. Clothes tossed on the bed. Closets left open. Half-empty cabinet in the bathroom.

She’d left. In a hurry, but not in a panic. She’d been confident she was far enough ahead of us.

The wolf was back, snarling.

Calm. Calm. Think your way through this.

“Airport?” Yelena said.

“Maybe,” I muttered.

We went downstairs and Yelena started rifling through the papers to see if there was anything that suggested a purchase or a destination.

I called Matt.

“Any alerts raised on tickets bought for Forsythe or Daniels?” I asked.

“Nothing in their names,” he said. “Forsythe’s company is always buying airline tickets, but everything today is for people who’ve traveled on company business before.”

Fake ID?

I had nothing to go on but instinct, and that was telling me Forsythe wasn’t going to try getting out of the country by impersonating someone else. And that he had some kind of unfinished business in LA; otherwise, why keep Dante alive?

I could
hope
he had unfinished business.

What about Daniels? Would she risk a fake ID at the airport?

No.
She had a better option.

I cut the call impatiently. I’d apologize to Matt later.

“Billie. Where are you?” I asked when I got through.

“Still downtown.”

“I’m at Daniels’ house. She bolted,” I said. “I need you—”

“I have no one but my Belles now, woman, and some of us are dead on our feet.”

I’d sent her on tasks she hadn’t been trained for, which had failed. She’d be a saint not to be angry about that, and she wasn’t, by a long way. And she was an alpha I was ordering around.

I was going to need to scale down my request and work on the tact.

“I’m sorry. Can I ask one more favor?”

“Ask,” she grunted.

“Santa Monica: check the plane at the airport and the yacht in the marina?”

“Yo.”

She cut the call the way I had on Matt.

It was unfair throwing this on the packs without warning. Werewolves lived in their communities. They had jobs and clients and human colleagues and responsibilities, and this kind of task tore through all that and messed it up. The best I could do was to spread it around all the packs.

Will they take orders from me?

What bargaining power did I have?

Paige.
The halfy at the ritual. She’d come from the Pasadena pack. She’d been the only halfy the LA Were had sent. Did helping her change give me enough credit with the Pasadena to overcome my dislocating the alpha’s shoulder?

Yelena interrupted my thoughts, handing me her cell.

“Tarez,” she said, looking worried. “Been trying to get through on yours. Urgent and relevant.”

If Tarez has his association with the LA Were confirmed, maybe he can get them to help.

“Yes?” I said abruptly into the cell.

“Amber, you’re on speaker. I have House Prowser here.”

Together? What did they want?

“Okay,” I said. “Look, before we talk, can you get some of the security teams reassigned to looking for Forsythe? He’s disappeared, and it’s critical—”

“We know about Forsythe. The Belles messaged me when they couldn’t get you. But I’m sorry, Amber, we can’t spare anyone, Athanate or Were.” I could hear a confusion of urgent voices in the background. “We have a situation. There was an attempt by Basilikos on the conference center, and unfortunately we couldn’t completely contain it. There’ll be a police investigation. So, we’re simultaneously guarding the delegates, moving them to another secure location and tracking down the remaining Basilikos before they try anything else.”

“Thank God you got the Were to the discussion table when you did,” Prowser said. “As I understand it, we couldn’t manage this without them.”

What’s important enough that the pair of them are calling me in the middle of that?

“Yes, and thank you,” Tarez said, and his voice slowed. “With Forsythe, it may be that what House Prowser has to say will help.”

He didn’t sound convinced. Absolutely the opposite.

She spoke. “I promised to make inquiries about human trafficking back in my domain.”

“Yes, I remember, your House was involved with putting a similar criminal in jail.”

“Quite. To cut the story short, my House has been able to acquire the means to break the encryption these criminals use to conduct their business. We’ve found the ones in Detroit are part of the same network as Forsythe.” She stopped. “I’m sorry, House Farrell. I feel I don’t know enough, but I know what they’re planning and I have to show you.”

Oh, God, what had she discovered?

“What?”

“Forsythe has been running what they call the Southwest Division.” She hesitated. “I’m sending a copy of their website we’re looking at to your cell.”

Both Yelena and I had House Altau’s new encrypted cellphones. In addition to the improved security, they had all the cool apps that allowed you to use the cell like a teleconference machine.

I switched her to speaker and triggered the screen view.

It showed part of a business website with a latest news announcement for the ‘Christmas event’. An auction.

People, damn them. People.

The auction had been pushed back to tonight, in order to accommodate two special late additions.

There was ice in my belly.

‘Item one – featured in recent SoCal news. Note: this item is strictly for export only.’
Tamanny.

“But Forsythe’s running,” Yelena said, looking over my shoulder. “He needs to get out of the country. What’s he doing holding an auction?”

“In the language of these animals,” Prowser said, “that export label means only bids from people with the capability of smuggling her out of the country secretly would be allowed. My sources suspect, Diakon Vylkove, that Forsythe will accompany the buyer out of the country in whatever clandestine manner they’ve devised.”

“Dante?” I asked, my stomach churning with anger and fear.

“Nothing. We assume she’s the second addition.”

Breathe. Breathe.

The wolf and the Athanate wanted out.

I will let you out when the time comes. I promise.

First I had to get Dante and Tamanny back. To do that, I had to find Forsythe. Time was running out. I couldn’t afford to go berserk.

Yelena’s hand was on my shoulder. The touch of her eukori flowed through me.

“How do we find out where?” My voice sounded odd; distant. Almost calm.

“What about House Prowser’s sources?” Yelena suggested.

“You can’t manage this, Amber.” Tarez was speaking carefully, as if aware of the effort it took for me to stay calm. “You don’t have the resources to attack a trafficking network.”

“I’ll find the resources to take down the one part I want,” I said. “
Where?
”

“The location is never revealed on the website,” Prowser said. “Interested parties arrive in Los Angeles, where they are collected and taken to the location. A different one every time. Only trusted bidders and their guards are allowed. My sources would not able to manage this.”

That probably meant the ‘sources’ were dead or horrifically injured. They’d been part of this network; I couldn’t find it in me to sympathize, whatever had happened to them.

Prowser was still speaking: “However, I spoke to Diakon Huang, as I said I would. He has moved with alacrity. He claims he will know where shortly.”

How? How?

Huang might know of a client of Forsythe’s who was from the Empire. He might be able to track that client and know they were in LA, and it was a reasonable assumption that the client would be here for the auction. But how would Huang get someone inside that group? Or had he had someone in the group all along?

Not important at the moment. The timeframe was. Even if he told us where it was now, how long would it take to get there? What if I was too late?

“When will he tell us?”

Another silence before Tarez spoke. “We don’t know. Also, there may be a cost. I haven’t been able to contact Huang since he made this claim, but I know he’s extremely frustrated with the lack of progress in his primary mission. He’ll want something back.”

His primary mission? Finding Kaothos.

“We can’t help on that,” I said. “Surely, given what’s happening, he’s not using—”

“Again, I don’t know, Amber.” Tarez cut me short. “I do know that you can’t do this alone. Look, I’ve been discussing the situation with Naryn, and this has led to him taking responsibility for revealing what we know of the trafficking network to Agent Ingram.”

Prowser had to have been brought in as well—she was listening to this without surprise.

Emergence had just taken a lurching step forward. A huge step.

“Ingram is about to arrive at LAX,” Tarez said. “You must see it makes sense involving them: this FBI project team wasn’t set up to hunt down paranormals. It was set up to discover and apprehend covert criminal organizations. This trafficking network is exactly that.”