Dog Warrior (27 page)

What the hell did he think he could do once he got back to Boston? While the cult had unknowingly supplied him with information on the Ontongard, their plans remained a mystery. He had no money, no shoes, and no weapons. The Pack would have moved dens, making finding them nearly impossible. And it seemed unlikely, now, that he'd even survive to reach land.

He tugged at the knots tying the buoy to the trap, but tension and time had rendered them impossible to untie. He chewed at the rope, hoping to fray it, but several minutes of gnawing produced no noticeable effect.

Nothing to be done but abandon the tiny haven of safety and swim on.

 

There were a surprising number of lobster traps in Boston Harbor.

Atlantic Ocean
Thursday, September 23, 2004

Later Ukiah would recall the boat bearing down on him, and the blare of horns. As it was, though, the Coast Guard officer seemed to appear in the water beside him like magic. He was far too weary to do anything once they hauled him into their boat but huddle around the mug of hot cocoa they gave him.

“We're taking you to Mass General Hospital.”

“N-n-no,” he forced out between chattering teeth. “No hospital.”

While hanging from lobster buoys, he had pieced together a plan. It was filled with things he had originally wanted to avoid, but facing death, they grew less unpleasant. Atticus was one of them.

“My brother—he's at the Boston Harbor Hotel.” The Pack had plucked the hotel name from Atticus's memory during his test. “D-d-drop me there.”

“We really should take you to the hospital. You're hypothermic.”

“I-I-I'm fine,” he told them. “P-p-please—hotel.”

In the end, they dropped him on the wharf in front of the hotel. He squelched his way into the lobby and stood dripping on the marble floor as he waited for the elevator. It was easy to find out which floor Atticus and Ru were on—running his hands over the buttons inside the elevator, he found the one
they'd pushed to get to their rooms. He went down the hall sniffing, smelling mostly the Atlantic Ocean soaked into his skin.

He found their rooms. Atticus wasn't there, but someone was moving around inside. Teeth chattering, he knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” Kyle called.

“U-U-Ukiah.”

“Step back from the door,” Kyle said.

Ukiah leaned against the far wall.

Kyle had his pistol in hand when he opened the door and scanned the hall. He relaxed once he saw they were alone. “Why are you wet?”

“I-I-I was swimming.”

Kyle sniffed at the north Atlantic stench. “You need to clean your pool.”

Ukiah laughed weakly.

“So, what do you want?”

“A sh-sh-shower and something to eat—f-f-find the cult—w-w-world peace.”

“You mean, like, use our shower?”

Ukiah nodded, sniffing.

Kyle paced back and forth, trying to decide what to do. Down the hall the elevator dinged, signaling its arrival. The sound decided it for Kyle. He reached out, caught Ukiah by the shirt, jerked him into the room, and slammed shut the door.

“Okay. Okay. Everything's cool.” Kyle motioned toward the adjoining room with a king-sized bed. “You can use Atticus's bathroom and I'll call room service.”

 

It felt weird to be using Atticus and Ru's bathroom, the counter strewn with toothbrushes and combs and deodorant, the hotel's shampoo ignored in favor of their own. It seemed like an invasion of their privacy. Out of habit he fumbled through his pants pockets as he stripped. The cult had
managed to strip him of his wallet yet again—the only things in his pocket were the gum wrappers and the pebble from Sanctuary Island. He dropped the gum wrappers into the trash, but the pebble slipped through his trembling fingers to land among Atticus's things, disappearing from sight.

Ukiah eyed the crowded counter. Where did it go? Under the toiletry bag? He lifted the corner of the bag and nearly knocked over a bottle of expensive aftershave. With a sigh, he abandoned it; he'd look for it once he stopped shivering.

 

Ukiah stood in the steaming hot water until he heard room service at the door. He stepped out of the bathroom, towel pinned around his hips, drying his hair, to find a stranger in the room with Kyle and the food.

The stranger glanced at Ukiah and made an exasperated noise. “Johnston's been telling me he didn't know when you were getting back.”

Kyle looked over his shoulder at Ukiah in surprise. “But this isn't—”

“Zip it, Johnston,” the stranger snapped. “Where the hell were you?”

Ukiah guessed that “the shower” wasn't the answer the stranger was looking for. “I was kidnapped by the Temple of New Reason.”

“Where is your partner?” the stranger asked.

Partner?
Ukiah froze.
What did he want with Max?

“Takahashi is with the Coast Guard,” Kyle said, making it obvious this man thought Ukiah was Atticus. “Out looking for . . . him. Hikaru will be back in a couple hours.”

He felt guilty now that he had misled the Coast Guard into thinking he had only suffered a boating accident. They'd taken his name but apparently not checked if anyone was looking for him.

The stranger looked at his watch. “Fine. Call me when he gets back.”

“Who the hell was that?” Ukiah asked after the door closed behind the stranger.

“Our boss. Sumpter. He came in with room service.”

Kyle had ordered stuffed rabbit with peppers, pea shoots, and onions, three types of strong-smelling cheeses he didn't recognize even after several years of Max's tutelage; a plate of pistachios, macadamia nuts, and almonds; and lastly, chocolate desserts. Protein, protein, protein with a shot of pure sugar.

Kyle fidgeted in silence as Ukiah ate, and finally fell into report mode, as if he wasn't comfortable with carrying the main bulk of the conversation. “I sent your clothes down to be washed. They said they wouldn't be ready to be picked up until tomorrow morning.” Realization dawned on him. “I guess I should get you something to wear until then.”

Finally given a task, Kyle ticked down the needed clothes, providing T-shirt, boxers, sweatpants, socks, and a pair of tennis shoes out of Atticus's luggage. None of the suitcases were unpacked, only canted open, ready to be zipped shut and taken at a moment's notice.

“Where
is
Atticus?” Ukiah asked around a mouthful of the rabbit.

“He and Ru are out searching for you. The coast guard is flying them to various islands where the cult might be hiding.”

Actually this worked well with his plans. Atticus didn't have Pack memory; he didn't know the dangers that the Ontongard represented to the world, so it was extremely unlikely he would help Ukiah raid one of their dens. Nor did Ukiah want to put his brother's “family” at risk, not when the Pack was available to help instead.

“Can I use the phone?” Ukiah didn't wait for permission, glancing at the instructions for getting an outside line and then dialing Indigo's number while Kyle was still trying to form an answer. Without a vehicle or money, his only hope of contacting the Pack was via whoever was guarding Indigo.
Unfortunately, her number dropped him straight into voice mail. “It's me, Ukiah.” He paused, not sure what else to say—he wasn't sure how long he'd be staying in Atticus's hotel room. “I got free of the cult and I'm safe. I'll call you back.”

“I don't know—” Kyle managed to get out as Ukiah pressed the reset button and dialed Max.

“Bennett.” Max answered the phone with a snarl worthy of the Pack.

“Max, it's me.”

“Ukiah! Where the hell are you now?”

Ukiah explained about his kidnapping and escape, which got an “Oh, Jesus, Ukiah, you didn't!” from Max and a “You just jumped off the boat?” from Kyle, who up to this point had been pretending not to listen.

“You're lucky you didn't drown,” Max snapped. “Who's there with you now?”

“Kyle,” Ukiah said. “He's one of Atticus's best friends. He knows everything. Max, I know where the Ontongard are holding Ping.”

“You want to rescue Ping? After what she and Core did?”

The curse of a perfect memory meant it took only one mention of his rape to shove Ukiah back to the night that Core drugged him with Invisible Red and shared him with Ping.

. . . candles lit the room to a soft glow. Ping knelt on the white satin sheets of the king-sized bed, dressed in a black robe so sheer it seemed to be only shadows. Core checked Ukiah just short of the bed, and Ping stretched with false casualness, the candles silhouetting her lithe form as she arched her back, lifting her breasts. To Ukiah's disgust, his body responded. He wanted to say no, but his mouth wouldn't shape the words. The breeding drug held his will captive, freeing his body to its artificial desires. He started to growl instead. Ping parted the gauze robe aside enough to reveal her sex, and it glittered with Invisible Red.

She stroked herself there, and lifted her damp, glittering fingers to him. “Come to me.”

Ukiah's legs started to move, carrying him to her, while he could only snarl in helpless anger. A moment later, he felt Core's nude body beside him . . .

Ukiah pushed the memory away. “Yes, I want to rescue her.”

He had had lots of time to think, out in the ocean. He hated her for using him, and that the child she carried could destroy his ties with the ones he loved most—Indigo and the Pack. But he didn't hate her enough to wish what the Ontongard planned for her. “She was part of the cult's inner circle. She knows all their secrets. She'll know where Ice has the Ae, and what his plans for ‘the Cleansing' are.”

“You're not thinking of doing this alone?” Max asked.

“I'm taking the Pack—once I find them.”

“Good,” Max said. “So where's this den?”

“I just have a street name, no number: Totten Pond Road.”

Kyle sat down at his computer and started to type as Ukiah spelled it out to Max. “That's in Waltham.”

“A fairly short segment of road,” Max added.

Ukiah switched over to speakerphone and said, “According to the cult, there will be six nests in a hexagonal pattern. I've got street names for all six but none of the street numbers.”

“So if we find the points that link all the street addresses into a hexagon—” Kyle started.

“—we'll be able to pinpoint the nests,” Max finished.

 

Atticus had been building to a bitter rage for hours.

Much to his disgust, they'd spent the night with Zheng, sifting through the victims from the cremation site, building a profile. Kyle had been reduced to puppy love silliness with delight. The FBI agent, however, retreated behind her unreadable mask as they sifted through police reports and grisly photographs. Normally Atticus would have been only mildly annoyed by the two, but he found himself trying to fight off growing concern for Ukiah. He didn't want to care.

Nor was he happy with the shades of moral gray his team was drifting into by working with the Pack. With undercover work, the danger of sympathizing with the criminals ran high; having met the Ontongard, though, he was no longer sure that the Pack were the bad guys. He tried to keep in mind that their job in this mess was to find the drugs and get them off the street.

They pinpointed a surveying company in Watertown, Massachusetts, outside of Boston, as a possible den for the Ontongard. Three of the victims worked for the company, and from there, relationships spiraled outward. The police already suspected the company, citing “odd reactions to the news” and “seems mentally unbalanced” in reports of surviving employees. Even with Zheng's reassurance that the Pack would be able to tell the difference between humans and Ontongard, it felt wrong to turn the information over to them without first checking into it themselves.

But they'd run out of time.

They had missed the cult. Luckily, so had the Ontongard. After several cautious flybys, the coast guard pilot landed their Jayhawk helicopter on the cult's island refuge. The cult had left dangerous presents behind, and the Ontongard had tripped several. The boathouse in the small bay burned, a charred body occasionally visible among the flames. The walls of the living room were riddled with grapeshot, and dried blood flecked the floor. Too little blood. Something scurried on tiny feet among the overturned furniture and Atticus sensed small and vicious eyes watching him.

In the basement they found a windowless cell. Ukiah's scent was on the bare foam pad. The cult had provided only a litter box to use as a toilet. Of his brother, there was no sign whether he left the island alive or dead, alone or with others.

Agent Zheng lived up to her reputation, cold and distant and unreadable as a frozen lake. On the flight back to Cape Cod Coast Guard Air Station, the hopeful Coast Guard copilot proved immune to her chilly silence and grated on
everyone's nerves with his attempts to break the ice. The moment they touched down, the FBI agent fled the helicopter.

“Zheng!” Atticus ducked under the still-whirling blades.

“Later, Atticus,” she shouted without so much as looking over her shoulder.

He jogged to catch up with her. “We need to talk.”

“Not now.” She focused on getting to her rental SUV parked next to his Jaguar, walking in long, purposeful strides.

“Wait.” He caught her arm and pulled her to a stop. “Talk to me.”

“I can't.” She turned her head away from him, covering her face with her hand. “I can't even look at you!”