Dog Warrior (29 page)

“You killed your earbud.” Kyle reported, motioning to his own ear rather than touching Atticus.

Atticus found the remains dangling from his shoulder, a thin coat of his dead blood on it. Gingerly he explored his ear—a piece had blown off but it had found its way back. Unfortunately the earbud couldn't similarly repair itself.

“I've been trying to tell you,” Kyle continued. “They blew the other four dens too.”

Atticus glanced at the office workers being grilled by police about their missing employers. If his team hadn't evacuated the building for the expected gunfight, all seventy-some employees would have been in their offices when the bomb went off. The midafternoon time might have been chosen to ensure maximum kill. “Do they have any idea of a body count yet?”

“I called in bomb threats on all the addresses we had when you found this bomb.”

“Good work!” Atticus gripped Kyle's shoulder.

Kyle grinned shyly at the praise, and then confessed, “Well, your brother stressed the symmetry of the dens, so I figured if they'd blow this one, they'd do the rest too.”

Kyle had trusted a virtual stranger, someone he'd seen only twice and had every reason to mistrust, because he was Atticus's brother. Atticus supposed that was the nature of family, but he found it faintly alarming. In the old adage of blood and water, why did thickness make the fluid more trustworthy? Was Ukiah someone who could be trusted? Atticus had wanted to take the den with a SWAT team, but the plain truth was that the machines of justice moved slowly. Everyone in the six buildings would have been killed while they decided
how
to deal with perps who had already fled the scene. Would Ukiah's conviction that Ping was being held in the office building have been good enough to warrant a search? In the end, Atticus suspected, the law officers involved would have weighed their decision on the fact that Ukiah was his brother.

Atticus saw Agent Zheng stopped at the police barrier by a uniformed policeman. She showed her ID to pass it; another person of questionable reliability gaining automatic trust in the brotherhood of law officers. There had been a thawing of Zheng's arctic north; dismay registered as she saw the extent of the destruction to the office building. She spotted him and something passed through her eyes at the moment of recognition, a flicker of excitement then extinguished by something she saw in his face.

What was that all about? Did he communicate something to her without knowing?

She glanced past him and summer came to the arctic.

From behind him, Atticus
felt
an answering warm outbreak.

Ukiah—of course.

The two threaded through the crowd as if they were alone in a forest, the people around them no more interesting than trees. Ukiah took Zheng's hand, looked into her eyes, and a calmness washed over him.

“That explains much,” Ru murmured in his ear.

Atticus glared at his partner.

Ru only laughed at him. “I've never seen a straight woman resist you so completely—but she's got her own little honeypot.”

Ukiah's love was a deep current dragging Atticus along to places he didn't want to go. Beauty, they said, was in the eye of the beholder. Tainted by Ukiah's love, Atticus suddenly could see Zheng's glacial demeanor as Indigo's beautiful calm—serenity that all the world's madness didn't invade. A refuge.

For his brother, at least, this was the true thing, a love to die for. Did Indigo feel the same? Ukiah would give Indigo access to the Pack. It was easier to imagine her using his brother than her falling in love with him. Her strong self-control eliminated the obvious attraction: Ukiah's lean, well-defined body and handsome face. He was wolf silent with all-seeing feral eyes—what would they talk about?

“Distract Ukiah away from Indigo.”

Ru looked at the two, isolated in a universe of their own making. “How?”

“I want five minutes alone with her. Think of it as a challenge.”

Ru scoffed at the idea. “You owe me.”

Atticus watched as Ru got Ukiah's attention by touching the bare skin of his wrist. With a smile and a nod toward the Explorer, Ru suggested that Ukiah change his torn and bloody shirt and get something to eat. Ukiah wavered, the suggestion of food fighting with his desire to be with Indigo.

With a glance toward Atticus, Indigo let go of Ukiah's hand. “Go on; I want to talk to Atticus.”

They watched as Ru got Ukiah to the well-stocked Explorer before Indigo turned to Atticus.

“What is it you want?”

Uh-oh, busted.

“I want to know—do you love my brother, or are you just using him?” When she didn't react, he added, “I can promise you, one law officer to another, that anything you say to me won't be repeated.”

“Normally I would say, one law officer to another, that it's none of your business.”

“He's my brother.”

“That's between you and him,” Zheng said in her calm, unreadable way. “But your brother asked me to marry him. Last week I told him I had to think about it. This week I've been praying that I would have a chance to tell him yes.” She gave him her Mona Lisa smile. “That makes you my brother-in-law. I'm telling you because that's between you and me.”

She was marrying his brother? “What the hell do you see in him?”

“Only people who don't know him ask that question.”

“I don't know my brother.”

“Obviously.” She considered him with a level look not unlike Ukiah's. “I can outthink, outshoot, outfight, plain out–brass ball most men. But men have this unwritten rule: The only women who are allowed to be stronger than them are their mothers. If you don't do the mothering routine, then they call you a grade-A bitch. With most men you can see it in their eyes as they try out the labels: hot babe, possible mother, bitch.”

No, we don't have issues, do we?
“And Ukiah doesn't.”

“When I first met Ukiah, he looked at me, and saw
me.
Not the babe, the mother, or the bitch, just me. And I was hooked. The more I got to know him, the more I wanted him. He's the gentlest, most compassionate, wisest man I have ever met.”

“Ukiah?” Those were three words that Atticus wouldn't ever have thought to apply to his brother; nor were they words that described Atticus either.

“If you spent any time getting to know him, you would see that for yourself.” She said it as if it were a challenge.
I double-dare you.

“How did you end up spending time with him?”

“He saved my life,” Indigo said, and explained no more, except to add, “Believe me, there is nothing sexier than having a man save your life and then never mention it.”

“So it is the hot monkey sex?”

She actually laughed and then sobered. “Sometimes it's like dating the Dalai Lama in the body of a young god. There might be a lot he doesn't know about the world, but his soul is old and patient.”

“If he's so great, why didn't you say yes?”

She looked away to hide the sorrow in her eyes. “For reasons that seemed so trivial when the cult killed him and took his body.”

It made him uncomfortable that he understood too well the terror that held. Of all the people who were trusting Ukiah just because he was Atticus's brother, the one he worried about most was himself. Atticus's world was too fragile to entrust it to a stranger with dangerous connections—FBI fiancée or not.

“I'm glad he went to you for help,” Indigo said. “If he'd been here with the Pack, he'd have been arrested.”

“He didn't want my help.”

“Yes, he did; otherwise he wouldn't have come to you.” Indigo reached out and took his hand. At the point of contact, Atticus felt Ukiah on her, but then lost the sense of his brother under his own touch—they were too identical for Atticus to keep separate. “And he needs you.”

Atticus pulled his hand free. “I think you're confusing me with someone who gives a damn.”

“Oh, this isn't the same man who no more than three
minutes ago was asking if my intentions were honorable or not?”

Sometimes keeping silent was the only safe answer.

“He's about to collapse. You're hurt too. If we're to stop these monsters, I can't take time to care for him, and if I leave him alone, the Pack will take him.”

“So? He's a Dog Warrior.”

“And so are you.”

He glared at her, unsure of the truth. Was he?

Her eyes were gray as gunmetal. “He has a clean record, but if he'd come here today with the Pack, he'd have been arrested instead of praised. Please take care of him tonight.”

All things considered, she was a good match for his brother in her ability to stare a person down.

“He can come with us. We've got an extra bed back at the hotel.”

She rewarded him with a smile, and put away her steel-gray weapons. “Thank you.”

 

Atticus decided they couldn't wait for food until they returned to the hotel. Changing shirts, they stopped at the first place at hand, a seafood place called Naked Fish on Totten Pond Road. Done in a décor of mustard yellow and splashes of purple, it featured Cuban cooking. The place was crowded with a wait for tables, but Ru—with the judicious use of a ten-dollar bill—got them seated immediately. Atticus didn't bother looking at the menu, knowing Ru would order for him. Ukiah scanned the menu with tired bewilderment while Kyle directed pouting glares at him. Obviously Kyle had also seen Indigo with Ukiah and wasn't taking the loss of his dream girl gracefully.

Ru looked up as the waiter appeared with a basket of rolls to take drink orders. “We know what we want. I'll take the crispy calamari salad, and they'll both take the
empanadas criollas de carne, gambas al ajillo,
the
valenciana
paella, and side orders of the plantains.”

“They have plantains?” Atticus picked up the menu to scan it.

“What are plantains?” Ukiah asked.

“You'll like them,” Ru reassured him, and ordered clam chowder and steak for Kyle. He finished with, “Two root beers, a Coke, and an iced tea.”

The waiter eyed Atticus, who was clearly in pain, Ukiah on the verge of collapse, and Kyle pouting and then looked back to Ru. “Ooookay. I'll go get that order right in and bring your drinks, but we're really backed up. It's going to be a while.”

Ukiah surrendered the menu. “What did you order us?”

“A beef turnover; shrimp; and a rice dish with shrimp, scallops . . . chicken and sausage and probably some stuff I've forgotten. Atty loves it; you should like it too.”

Ukiah sighed, leaning his head against the wall behind him, eyes closed. “We don't have time for this.”

“You're not up to anything but this,” Atticus snapped.

After a long delay, Ukiah grunted, acknowledging it. He considered his bloodstained fingers. “I should wash. I have Ping's blood on my hands.”

“I'll go with you—I need to go,” Ru lied, probably guessing that in his condition, Ukiah would have a difficult time finding his way through the restaurant to the bathroom and back.

Atticus took advantage of their absence to fix Kyle with his gaze. “Kyle, I'm sorry about Indigo—but we've talked about this before.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Someday I'll meet the girl of my dreams. Just got to keep looking. Blah blah blah.” Kyle seized one of the hot buns and angrily tore small pieces from it. “It's not fair. The hot chicks are always already taken or they never even look at me. All you have to do—all your brother has to do—is walk into a room and they watch you.”

Kyle jerked his head toward Ukiah, following Ru to the bathroom. Indeed, every woman who noticed his passing
continued to, follow him with her eyes. Atticus had always been somewhat aware of the attention he received, but this time, being separate from the focus, he saw how profound the effect was. Ukiah seemed completely oblivious.

“You know it's nothing we can control. You just have to deal with it.”

“Doesn't mean I have to like it.” Kyle sighed. “You don't know how lucky you are to have Ru.”

Across the room, Ru paused at the bathroom door and glanced back to the table. When their eyes met, Ru smiled.

“No,” Atticus said. “I know exactly how lucky I am.”

 

“If Ping is dead,” Ukiah said once he and Ru returned to the table, “we're back to square one in finding the Ae.”

“What about this word that Ping wrote onto the wall?” Ru asked.

Ukiah shrugged. “I think it's
zaeta,
which roughly means ‘transmitter,' but that wouldn't make sense. She must have gotten the word wrong.”

“Why?” Atticus asked.

“The
zaeta
works on a quantum level to achieve instant communication between star systems. It was developed by a race that had achieved three colonies in nearby star systems.”