Lupi 09 - Mortal Ties

purse. Why didn’t
     she just keep it on? She had some kind of crazy tolerance for Drummond’s ghost that
     he couldn’t fathom and didn’t like.
    “All right,” Rule said once they were moving. Short of planting a bug—which the guards
     had checked for—it was almost impossible to target a moving vehicle either electronically
     or magically. “I’d like to hear your impressions. How much of Jasper’s story was true,
     do you think?”
    Lily shrugged. “All, some…impossible to say.” She reached for her laptop and popped
     it open.
    “He smelled anxious and guilty,” Cullen put in, “but the anxiety could be about his
     lover. So could the guilt. Nothing gets the guilt gland pumping like thinking you’ve
     endangered someone you love.”
    “That part I’d put money on,” Lily said. She was typing something on her laptop as
     she spoke. “The part he didn’t admit—that they’re threatening his partner to force
     him to do what they want. Not that I’m taking his word that it’s ‘they’ rather than
     ‘he’ or ‘she.’ ”
    Rule hadn’t noticed Jasper’s use of the plural pronoun to refer to whoever had Adam,
     but now that Lily brought it up…“If Friar’s involved, ‘they’ is appropriate. Especially
     on this coast.” Friar’s East Coast lieutenant was in jail awaiting trial, having been
     refused bail as a flight risk. But his West Coast lieutenant was still free and active.
    “Friar must be part of it,” Cullen said. “How would Machek know to mention him otherwise?
     The official story is that Robert Friar died when the mountain came down in September.”
    Lily looked up. “But Machek didn’t mention Friar by name, did he? I did. He said something
     about us wanting to find the one behind the October attacks. I filled in the blank
     for him.”
    Cullen looked over his shoulder at her, startled. “Son of a bitch. You’re right. Did
     he do that on purpose?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “How did you guess that he was talking about his partner, anyway?”
    “That’s right, you didn’t see his file, did you?”
    Rule, on the other hand, had pretty much memorized it. “Arjenie dug up a fair amount
     about Adam King,” he said. “He showed up in one of her databases because he and Jasper
     purchased the house together three years ago. King is an architect who was laid off
     during state cutbacks a couple of years ago. He’s put out his own shingle and is enjoying
     some success, but he works from home. He wasn’t there today. He might have left the
     house for any number of reasons, but there was only one takeout lunch at the table.
     Only one mug on the coffee table, too.”
    Lily nodded, tapping away on her laptop. “Add to that Machek’s attitude. He wasn’t
     worried about getting arrested. He made the right noises, but he didn’t really care.What else would cause that kind of funneling of priorities? Odds were he was frantic
     about a person, not an object.”
    “Okay,” Cullen said, “I can see that. What are you working on, anyway?”
    “A request for a phone tap.”
    Rule’s head jerked. “A tap? On Jasper? But if he isn’t reporting a kidnapping—”
    She gave him a look he couldn’t read. “I’m not going to charge your brother with failure
     to disclose. That doesn’t mean I have to pretend Adam King’s really gone off for some
     downtime without his phone. First step is a tap on Jasper’s phones—at his store, his
     house, on his mobile. He could have a throwaway given him by his employer especially
     for contact, but we can’t do anything about that.”
    Cullen grinned. “You’re sneaky. Isen would approve. Where are we going, anyway?”
    Sometimes Cullen was unnervingly observant. Sometimes he failed to notice the proverbial
     brass band. “To the hotel,” Rule said. “Assuming Lily still wants to put off checking
     in with her local office?” She nodded, and Rule went on, “Tony Romano is at the hotel.”
    “What, already?”
    “Per Isen’s instructions, he didn’t go to Nokolai Clanhome. I’m to accept his submission
     on behalf of Nokolai.”
    “Huh. What’s on the list after that?”
    Lily raised her brows. “You have something else you need to do?”
    “I could be working a Find spell for the prototype. Cynna stayed up damn near all
     night working up a more detailed pattern for it, and she gave me a copy of the pattern.
     Integrating that pattern into a spell takes longer than using it the way she