Whisper of Shadows (The Diamond City Magic Novels) (12 page)

“My dad,” I began, and stopped as emotion boiled up in me. I felt so much and none of it good. “My dad wouldn’t know love if it drove over him in a tank.”

I was in the doorway when Dalton spoke again.

“He left because it was the only way to protect you back then.”

I turned slowly, my whole body flickering with electricity. “What do you know about it?”

“Your father held them off for a long time,” he said. “Long enough to build his power base so he could protect you when they decided to come at him again. Now they’re back. You’re in deep now and you don’t even know how far. All of you. You need him, Riley. He needs you, too. More than you know.”

“Who? Who’s coming after me?”

“The bastard who murdered your mother.”

“You aren’t going to tell me who that is, are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know how I know you’re lying?” I asked. “Your lips are moving. I’m done.”

“No, you’re not. You need me.” With that pronouncement, Dalton’s body blurred, and he stepped outside of his cage. He solidified again and gave himself a little shake.

I stared.

“Nice trick,” Leo said, but he sounded as shocked as I felt.

“Useful,” Jamie added.

Useful was right. I hated to even think it, but we
could
use him. As if he sensed my softening, he faced me, his silver gaze boring into mine. “I know it means little to you, but I swear on all that I hold holy, I will not betray you on this mission to rescue Clayton Price.”

I wondered what Dalton might hold holy. My lips twisted. “That’s it? After that you’ll go back to screwing me over?”

“Would you believe me if I said you could trust me beyond?”

“Not on a bet.”

“Then just so far and no more. I give you my word.”

Not that his word was worth anything. Still, we could use his skills. “If you try to hurt any of my family, and that includes Price, I will personally kill you. On that, you have
my
word.”

“Are you certain you want to trust him?” Jamie said beside me.

“I don’t trust him,” I said, my gaze pinned to Dalton’s. “But this is David versus Godzilla, and if we’re going to win this battle, we need all the help we can get. Walking through walls might be what we need to tip the scales in our direction. Plus Dalton is good at what he does.”

“So were Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin.”

“All the same,” I said, “he’ll be useful.”

I turned and walked away, wondering if I’d just pulled the pin from a grenade and stuck it in my pocket. Dalton would betray me, sooner or later. I just hoped I could save Price before the bomb went off.

Chapter 9

MEL RAISED AN eyebrow when Dalton followed us into the dining room.

“He can walk through walls,” Leo said in answer to her unspoken question.

I had to smile. I was willing to bet that Dalton hadn’t wanted that secret broadcast. Too bad for him.

“A useful talent,” Mel said, settling in at the head of the table.

The maids had set up a sideboard with platters of eggs, sausage, bacon, waffles, fruits and cheeses, plus coffee, tea, juice, and milk. Sometimes money was nice. Food magically appeared when you wanted it. My stomach growled. I filled a plate and grabbed a carafe of coffee to set by me on the table. I filled my cup three-quarters full, then poured in cream and stirred in a healthy dose of sugar. I drank the cupful and filled another before diving into my breakfast.

Mel had pointed Arnow and Dalton to the chairs beside her. No doubt she was planning on reading them. Jamie and Leo had bookended each of them, and I sat beside Leo while Taylor sat across from me. For a few minutes, all we did was eat.

“I spoke to several of my contacts,” Mel said suddenly.

I glanced up at her. “At the FBI?”

She nodded. “And other places.”

“Did they say what the hell they were doing breaking down your door?” Taylor asked.

“Just business,” Mel said, her expression shuttered. “I shouldn’t be consorting with known criminals. But they thanked me for bringing him out where they could get to him.”

That turned me to ice. Because of me, because of dinner with my family, Price had been less protected.

Mel leaned forward, her hands pressed flat against the table. “
None
of this is your fault,” she said.

“Touray wouldn’t have let this happen,” I said, guilt pressing hard on my lungs.

“But he did. He knew where you were going, did he not?” Before I could answer, she continued, driving her point home. “Unless Price stayed entirely out of sight and under the radar, he was going to be taken. It was only a matter of time. Everything I’ve learned about him convinces me he would not be content to hide, even if he knew the FBI was hunting him. Am I correct?”

I had to nod. That was true. Price was determined to live his life, not just exist. That meant doing dangerous things like going out in public. Meeting his girlfriend’s family. Mel wasn’t quite done.

“Do you blame yourself for Touray’s abduction?” she asked, sitting straight and lifting an auburn brow.

“No, of course not. I couldn’t keep him from running into the middle of that wreck, or Morrell from chasing us down.”

“But you were in the car. If not for you, he wouldn’t have been on that road at that time.”

I snorted. “Morrell’s people herded us where they wanted us to go. They probably had several other traps laid in case we didn’t go the right way. Anyhow, whether I was there or not, he’d have gone to help the accident victims and been taken.”

“How is that different from Price?”

Because he’d been here for me and I should have protected him somehow. I wanted to say it, but Mel’s expression wouldn’t let me. She required honesty, and the truth was I was being ridiculous. Because whether he was driving across town or going to the hardware store, Price was going to be arrested. Now that we’d learned the FBI had been watching him since childhood, it clearly had only been a matter of time. I finally nodded when Mel’s gaze continued to skewer me and it dawned on me that we weren’t moving on with a rescue plan until I acknowledged the truth.

“Good,” she said. “Now that that is settled, we have one more thing to get out into the open.” Her gaze gathered in everybody at the table. “Be aware that aside from the possibility of death, the other likely consequences from this mission are that each of you will become fugitives. Your businesses may be forfeited, or at the very least, you won’t be able to return to them without getting arrested. Nor will you be able to freely associate with friends as they may become targets, or they may turn you in. Your lives, in a nutshell, will be turned inside out. If you are unwilling to accept that, you should go now. None of us will think less of you.” She looked at Taylor, Leo, Jamie, and me. Arnow was already committed on account of needing me, and Dalton’s life wouldn’t hardly change, unless he got killed. Something I would be willing to take care of for him.

“I’m in,” Leo said, not skipping a beat.

Jamie nodded. “Me, too.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, guilt pecking at me again. “You could lose everything for a man—”

“Shut up,” Taylor said. “We’re all helping. Get used to it.”

I shook my head. “The Rice Act—”

“Didn’t she tell you to shut up?” Jamie asked.

“But they could—”

“That’s enough,” Mel said with a quenching look at Leo as he threw his balled-up napkin at me. “We’ve all decided, then. Now, there’s a lot to do and little time. We need a plan and to get started implementing it. How are we going to rescue Price from the interrogation center?”

I basked in the warm and fuzzies for a moment, promising my eyes I would poke them out of my head if they let one tear fall. We all started tossing out questions and ideas. The discussion went this way and that as we came up with ideas and discarded them, hashing out the details of what we actually could do.

It was decided that Arnow and Mel would use their FBI credentials to get inside the building before the rest of us broke in.

“Can you get all the way in to where they’re holding Price?” I asked.

“I think so. My clearance should be enough.” She glanced at Arnow, who shrugged.

“Wolfe will be over the moon to have you—not only as a potential witness, but you’re the da Vinci of readers. He’ll be kissing my feet for bringing you in.”

“Once you’re inside, Jamie and I should be able to pinpoint your location. We’ll insert some metal into your shoes to make sure. That will help us find Price quickly,” Leo said. “That is, once you null out the building’s magic-dampening security,” he said to me.

“I’ll need to fetch some nulls from home,” I said, thinking of what I wanted to use.

Taylor scratched out notes on a pad of paper, creating a time line and a list of supplies.

“How do you plan to get inside the building?” Dalton asked. He’d mostly kept quiet up to this point, only offering opinions on the efficacy of various plans. “I can obtain explosives.”

Jamie nodded. “We might need them if we can’t open a hole in the wall. Depends on what it’s made of. Too much concrete and stone and Leo and I won’t be able to do much.”

I’d seen them do pretty miraculous things using their metal talents, not the least of which was helping me build my house out in the abandoned Karnickey Burrows. But I knew from past experiments that creating a hole in a wall was no easy task. Walls didn’t like holes, and they didn’t like alterations. There was a whole lot of physics and science about that that I didn’t bother to try to understand, but the upshot was that having backup explosives was smart.

“We’ll need a way to get up close without being seen,” I said. “A tunnel maybe. Think you two can find one?” I was proud of the way my voice didn’t shake, nor did I vomit up what I’d managed to eat. I had claustrophobia. Being underground was almost a fate worse than death. Yet it always seemed necessary, whether because I had to ride the subway, or because I needed a secret way into an FBI installation. Maybe I should get therapy to get over it. Repeated exposure sure wasn’t helping.

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Jamie said. “We’ve both done a lot of exploring in the area.”

Mel had produced a map and pinpointed the installation on it. I’d been startled.

“I thought that was a research facility for that big seed company—the one in the news last year for developing rice that needs a third of the water.”

“Marchont. That’s the cover. The FBI certainly doesn’t want to advertise itself. For certain considerations, Marchont allows the use of its name and record. Rest assured, however, it is an FBI compound.”

“There are some good possibilities in the area,” Jamie said and pointed out where he thought tunnels were.

“The entrance has to be somewhere that our vehicles won’t get discovered, and that will leave us escape routes off the mountain,” I said.

“I want to be able to land a ’copter up there,” Taylor added. At my glance, she explained. “It’s a faster escape and we can get a lot farther away without anyone tracking us.”

I shook my head. “They’ll hear and see us up there and get suspicious.”

“I’ve got this covered,” Taylor said. “Don’t worry.”

I hesitated and glanced at Mel. She was watching me, waiting for me to decide what I wanted. She’d been doing that since we started planning, I realized. For better or worse, they’d all let me take charge. I thought of Touray.
My monkeys, my circus
. Dear God, I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t good enough for them to count on me. Was I? I took a slow breath and let it out, a heavy weight settling on me. Until recently—until Price had come into my life—I’d mostly worked alone, responsible only for myself. I’d liked it that way because the only one I ever could hurt was myself. Everybody’s got to grow up. Like it or not, Price and Touray had no one else but me to help them. Me and my family and Arnow and Dalton. Together we could do this. We were talented, strong, and smart.

I nodded at Taylor. “We’ll need to camouflage all the vehicles,” I said, my voice turning slightly gruff with emotion.

“We’ll handle that for the wheels,” Leo said. “Have you got the helicopter covered?” he asked Taylor.

“Five by five,” she said, military-speak for
perfection
.

We kept talking, hashing out as many variables as we could. Jamie and Leo would take the morning to locate a passage for us. Luckily, the entire mountain was riddled with old mine shafts and caves, and they had the ability to increase the size of passages, and even sometimes make new ones, using their metal work. It all depended on the flaws in the rock they were working with, the amount of metal permeating the area, and how much time they had.

In the meantime, Dalton would gather his supplies. Taylor and I would fetch nulls from my place and go to her hangar for a helicopter. Once Jamie and Leo had a location, they’d send us the coordinates. Mel and Arnow would arrange to see Price.

“You’re sure they’ll let you?” I asked.

“Your mom is a rock star,” Arnow said. “No one would turn down her services. Not even with her connection to Price,” she added, correctly reading my doubt.

“What about our bodyguard teams?” Taylor said in the lull that followed. “Could we use them?”

Dammit. I’d forgotten to call Mason and tell him I was okay.

“More of us won’t be useful,” Dalton said. “Not for a stealth incursion.”

“We’re hardly going to be stealthy,” Taylor argued. “Once Riley sucks the magic out of the place and Leo and Jamie start doing their thing, the FBI will be coming after us. They’re going to have a lot of security personnel.”

“He’s right,” I said, hating to agree with Dalton. “Too many of us driving up into the area might put them on alert. If all goes well, Jamie and Leo will be able to lock the place down and trap everybody where they are. That will limit how many people we’ll run into. Since they ought to be able to disable FBI weaponry, we’ll have the advantage there.”

After a moment, Taylor nodded. “Maybe we can have the bodyguards set up some kind of diversion.”

“How?”

“If the agents at the facility call for reinforcements from Diamond City, we want to delay them as much as possible. Maybe Mason and Pia can come up with a plan.”

“Good idea. Call them,” I said.

Taylor stepped out of the room, while the rest of us continued our discussion. She returned about ten minutes later.

“They’ll take care of it,” she reported.

“What will they do?” asked Jamie.

She shrugged. “They’re working on a plan. They said to tell us all good luck.”

“Did they know anything about Touray?” I asked.

“Nothing more than that Savannah Morrell has him. They’ve been trying to figure out a way to get him back, but it sounds like things are in chaos with both Touray and Price gone. They said—” She broke off.

“What?”

“They said if you want to take the wheel of the organization, they’d back you.”

I goggled. “Me?”

Taylor shrugged. “I guess Touray’s generals are having a pissing match. Pia and Mason figure Morrell or another organization might take a run at Touray’s business at any moment.” She hesitated. “People would die.”

I rubbed a hand over my head. Me? Run a fucking Tyet? The idea would have been belly-busting funny if it hadn’t been about to come true. I’d have said it was my worst nightmare, but even I hadn’t dreamed up something that insane. “Christ.”

“One thing at a time,” Mel said crisply. “First we go after Price. Once we retrieve him, he can step up into his brother’s place.”

She didn’t say what would happen if we didn’t get him back, or if he was in no shape to take on the job. I didn’t let myself wander down that horrific road either. He was going to be fine. Period. Over and out.

IT WAS FOUR IN the morning before Mel chased us all off to sleep. She held me back as the others departed—Jamie, Leo, Arnow, and Dalton out the front door, Taylor up the stairs.