Deadly Lover (35 page)

Kertu stepped toward her and held out his hand. She took it, his claws pressing lightly against her skin. She was ready for it, making it easier to keep her panic at bay.

“I’m honored, Lily Rowan.”

“Any friend of Jo’s,” she said. Then when he frowned she finished, “is a friend of mine. Glad to meet you.”

He released her hand and lifted his gaze to meet Jolaj’s eyes. “There are many rumors whispering through the people. There is talk the Council will recall the Searchers.” His gaze drifted to Lily then returned to Jolaj. “We love our people as ever we have, but...” Kertu dropped his chin to his chest.

Jolaj reached out and rested a hand on his shoulder. A gesture that drew the man’s attention back from his thoughts. “My friend, I too feel the weight of service to our people and the sacrifices we have made. If the time comes, every man must choose his own path.”

Lily watched the man study Jolaj, remembering what Zee had said. Where he leads they will follow. Jolaj might not want to be a leader, but Zee was right. He was the sort of man others looked to. The type of man who would know the right thing and do it, no matter how difficult. But if Kertu spoke for the others, these men were weary. Maybe Relerin was right. Maybe it was time for them to meet their own needs.

Lily had no idea what the answer was, she only knew she couldn’t be any part of it. Jolaj had options. He could find an Ormney mate and father Ormney children. She had no right to get in the way of that. She had known from the beginning he could never be hers. It made her heart ache to think of it, but she needed to find a way to let go without sacrificing her dignity.

Kertu acknowledged Jolaj’s words but his eyes still conveyed deference. If he chose to lead they would follow. One by one the men
slipped
away until only Kertu and Jolaj remained.

“Will you join us in the square?” Kertu watched Jolaj as if his response meant everything. The simple request carried the weight of a need for reassurance, a show of solidarity.

Jolaj squeezed Lily’s hand. “It is our practice to begin the day with physical conditioning. I will only be a short while.”

Lily squeezed his hand in return. “Go ahead. I have a few calls to make.”

He nodded and the two of them
slipped
toward
out-of-sync
and disappeared.

Lily stepped to the edge of the garden and looked over the railing to watch as they joined the others in the square for an early morning session of a martial arts type exercise. The men who’d come to meet Jolaj were there, but they were joined by many others. Men, women, and children wandered out of their homes and moved into a loose formation below.

She watched from the rooftop mesmerized by their movements, their sense of community, and the respect they all seemed to have for Jolaj. The longer she watched the more certain she became that she needed to let him go before the letting go became so hard it would break her heart.

When her multi-com signaled with a message from Bradley, tagged important and asking her to meet him, she considered leaving, walking out of The Zone without Jo. It would be a big step toward letting him go. But she couldn’t break her promise to him. And she’d promised not to go out alone. She took a deep breath and spoke in an even tone. “Jolaj, I need to go into town.” His movements flowed to a smooth stop as he looked up to where she stood. Damn his hearing was spooky.

Another tag on her link caught her attention, Brian.

“Hey, Bri,” she said. “Everything okay?”

“Fine.” The one-clipped word spoke volumes.

“Mom being difficult?”

“Not intentionally. She wants to take Rose’s body and go home.”

A fresh wave of pain and guilt rolled through her at the mention of Rose’s name. It wasn’t that she’d forgotten. She just hadn’t let herself think about it.

She heard Brian clear his throat. “But that’s not why I called. I have a list of staff and patients names, prioritized by date. The ones who were in the clinic on the days when our victims show on camera are at the top of the list. I’m sending it to your com now.”

Switching to data mode, she scanned the list of names as Jolaj came up the stairs, pulling clothes off on his way to the shower. To Brian, she said, “Have you given this to Sean yet?”

“Yeah. They’ll run the list for connects with the victims or EFE, but remember we’re also looking for something that ties back to you.”

“Simone Rawls—”

“She might have been a key part of the connection to you, but she ended up dead. Something more than her made the killer pick you. Made the killer mad enough to come after you when things didn’t go like he wanted.”

“Yeah, okay. Maybe.” Lily scanned the list again and one name popped for her. “Perry.”

“Perry?”

“No. It can’t be.” Lily tried to pull up her recollections of Timothy Perry. He didn’t seem insane enough to be their guy. “Timothy Perry is a Regeneration Tech. I’ve seen him at the Med Center a couple of times. He lived down the street from us when we were kids.”

“Tissue regeneration would make sense. The victims were having scars removed. Snow’s given me an address on him uptown. It is probably just a coincidence, that clinic has gone through more staff than a temp service, but I’ll ask Sean to have his people prioritize him.”

“Okay. You’re staying at the hotel with Mom, right?”

He made a pained affirmative sound.

“We’ll pick you up for breakfast in an hour. We have a quick stop on the way.”

“See you then,” he said, then closed the link.

Lily watched as Jolaj dried from his shower and pulled on his clothes. He was so there for her it made her insides ache. Nothing this good could last. “We need to go by the Federal Building to see Bradley then we’re meeting Brian for breakfast.”

His lips tightened at the mention of Bradley’s name, but he nodded.

Lily prayed today would be the day they uncovered the killer’s identity because every day her life was spinning more and more out of her control. She didn’t know how much longer she could survive it.

They made it to the Federal Building in twenty minutes. If she could deal with Bradley quickly, they could make their breakfast plans with Brian. Lily and Jolaj stepped into the elevator and requested a lift to Liaison Rubiero’s location.

The elevator surged downward, Lily’s stomach flipped. It wasn’t a physical response to the barely discernible movement of the elevator, but years of training and experience manifest in the discomfort. Like an early warning system shouting
danger
.

Her hyper alertness must have tipped off Jolaj. He stood a little taller, bristling with energy. “What is it, Lily?”

“We’re supposed to meet him in the Ormney Affairs office and that’s up, not down.”

Together they watched the numbers plummet. When the elevator doors slid open Lily had her hand on the grip of her pulse pistol. She stepped into a small anti-room, scanning for hazards. Jolaj
slipped
and the elevator doors slid closed behind her. He
slipped
back into
sync
across the room.

There was only one other way out, a single set of doors with a palm pad and voice activation unit. A small ID plate that read “authorized persons only” provided the only hint of where the doors might lead.

Even if the whole thing hadn’t already felt very, very wrong, the multi-com lying on the floor directly in front of the doors would have tagged the scene with the unmistakable danger flag. She lifted her own multi-com to call for back-up and saw that the she had no signal.

She met Jolaj’s eyes. “Jammed.”

His gaze jerked to the small security cams mounted near the ceiling, standard in all the building corridors. “The building keyed to the location of Bradley’s com-link when we were in the elevator?”

“Yeah.” Lily understood Jolaj’s line of thought immediately and eyed the security cams suspiciously. “If this area was being jammed his com locator should have been jammed too...unless someone stepping into the room triggered the jam.”

“Or if someone watching engaged the jamming mechanism.”

Her eyes tracked back to the multi-com lying on the floor, but every molecule in her body screamed trap. Jolaj had seen the com too, but neither of them had made a move toward it. First things first, she thought, they needed an exit strategy. She backed up, pressing her body against the elevator doors, knowing her proximity would activate the call feature.

She drew her pistol and held it low as she approached the multi-com. She crouched down and studied the unit before picking it up. Definitely Bradley’s unit. A tiny smudge of blood disappeared under the closed doors.

 She looked back to Jolaj and then the elevator. The indicator showed the lift remained at lobby level as if she’d never called for it. Lily reached out and pressed her fingertips against the smudge of blood. Her fingers came away with a sticky red residue. “It’s still tacky,” she said. “Not fresh, but not dry.”

“Lily?” Jolaj’s voice came from right behind her. He’d moved to stand closer.

If her senses were right and this was a trap, the blood trail leading under the doors had to be meant to lead her through, but how? And even if she could, should she? She looked back to the unresponsive elevator. Did she have a choice?

Lily pocketed the multi-com and pushed to her feet. She looked to Jolaj. “You should go for help.”

“I won’t leave without you.”

She bit her lip. “I knew you’d say that.”

His hands clenched at his sides as if he were working to keep them off of her. The thought made her chest tighten painfully. It was going to be hell when he eventually did leave her.

“You know, going for back-up is a really good idea.”

He nodded. “Precisely why we should both go.”

“I could try to hack the elevator,” she said. “But it would take time. If Bradley or someone else is hurt they might not have time. I have to get through these doors, now.”

“I can
slip
—”

“No!” Lily reached out and grabbed his arm as if the simple restraint could stop him. “You have no idea what’s on the other side and this is obviously a trap.”

“Obviously.”

She studied the closed doors. “If I was meant to go through, shouldn’t it have been left open?”

Jolaj stepped closer to the door tag and hand plate. “Bradley’s offices are in this building and it was Bradley, or someone using his com, to call you here.”

“Yeah.”

“Perhaps he gave you the clearance you need.”

“One way to find out.” She laid her palm on the pad and felt the warm surge of the DNA scan. The narrow display flashed:
Rose Rubiero – Authorization Confirmed
.

The doors slid open with a swooshing pop and a heavy grinding noise. They were at least ten centimeters thick, the exterior surfaces coated in taf-steel, and fitted with a waterproof seal.

“It’s a storm shelter,” Lily said.” Lots of the buildings constructed after the hurricanes of the first part of the century have them.”

“It makes sense the staff and families of the Ormney Affairs Office would have access authorization.”

“Of course. And Rose and I share the same DNA.”

Jolaj stepped through the doors.

Light filled the wide corridor that led to another similar set of doors ten meters down the corridor. A trail of narrow bloody smudges urged her to move forward. Lily looked back to the elevator. There should have been stair access to this level, but she didn’t see any sign of it. There would no doubt be an emergency ladder built into the elevator shaft.

Damn, damn, damn. She didn’t like her options. Taking a deep breath she stepped over the threshold and listened to the sound of the door closing behind her.

For thirty full seconds the only sound was the pulsing thrum of her heartbeat in her ears and the deliberate even whisper of their breathing. There were no vents in the small space and the sensors would be set to ensure it was safe before opening the interior doors. Flooding precautions. She stood to the side holding her pulse pistol in a two-handed grip, waiting.

Another pop signaled the seal to the shelter had been released and the doors slid open letting in another whoosh of air. She didn’t hesitate this time. She crossed the threshold doing a visual sweep of the next corridor. She could see smudges of blood trailing along the corridor, too regular, not to be intentional.

Lily stepped out of the airlock, hyper-aware of the smudges of blood down the center of the corridor. Jolaj followed her and the doors behind them slid shut and sealed with a sucking noise. Lily’s pulse revved and her muscles tightened as a surge of adrenalin dumped into her bloodstream. The walls shimmered and flexed, the belly of a malevolent monster had swallowed them down for its next meal.

She used her pulse pistol to take out the vid-cams mounted high along the hallway walls then moved up beside the first door. The blood trail led to a door farther up, but she wasn’t moving forward without clearing the room that would end up at their backs. She hugged the wall on one side of the door and Jolaj took the other. With a clear verbal command— “Door 005, open”—the lock and seal popped. She pushed it open with the tow of her boot and slid inside. Neatly stacked supplies filled the inside.

“Storage,” she said on a release of breath.

Together, she and Jolaj moved down the corridor, clearing each room methodically until they reached the door marked with a smudge of blood. When Lily gave the voice command the door slid open to reveal a near-empty room. Metal shackles had been bolted to the ceiling. The shackles hung low, about waist height. A metal table sat nearby with a small box positioned at the center of the table. Together they hovered at the doorway. She didn’t know what she’d expected to find but this wasn’t it. A shiver of unease slipped along her already too tight muscles and made her skin crawl.

More vid-cams were mounted high above a vid-wall. Lily lifted her pistol to aim for the cameras but stopped when the display activated. The picture that flashed into life sucked the air from her lungs. Her heart pounded wildly in her chest. “Oh god, Sara...”