Lupi 09 - Mortal Ties

sit beside Lily, who was
     just getting off the phone. Good coffee, he noted, savoring the aroma. “What do I
     need to know?”
    She glanced at her notebook. “This part is secondhand. An individual calling himself
     Ahab contacted Leo Romano on December second.”
    “Just after the demo Cullen gave for the T-Corp people.”
    She nodded. “Ahab is a male with a voice described as a ‘resonant tenor.’ Accent and
     diction suggest a native Californian, educated, no perceptible ethnicity. Contact
     was by phone only, with Ahab calling Leo from a series of numbers—probably throwaways,
     but we’ll check. Ahab claimed to work for a large multinational corporation, though
     he refused to say which one.”
    Ahab certainly could be Friar. Rule looked at Tony. “You know quite a lot, considering
     you never spoke to this Ahab.”
    “I thought you’d want to know things like that, so I asked my father once I was Rho.”
    “Good thinking.”
    “I don’t think fast,” Tony said with a hint of humor, “but I do think.”
    “I’ll speak with Leo to confirm, of course,” Lily said. “Ah…I’ll skip some of the
     details to get to the interesting part. Payment was in cash, with the first installment
     left at the Golden Gate Park on December twenty-first. Tony persuaded his father that
     it would be good to know more about their mysterious Ahab, so they’d staked out the
     drop hours before it occurred. Successfully.” She flashed him a grin. “A Laban guard
     saw the drop made and followed the woman who did it to her car—an older model Toyota,
     license number 2LBZ112. Which is registered,” she finished smugly, “to a Ms. Carrie
     Ann Rucker. Special Agent Bergman is sending someone out now to pick her up for questioning.”
    B ETH hit
send
and leaned back with a sigh of relief. It was not her best work, but it was what
     the client wanted, and itwas finished. Which was something of a miracle considering she didn’t really give
     a damn, not with Sean missing, but working was better than pacing. So she’d worked.
    When she wasn’t Googling Humans First, that is. And the October massacres and Robert
     Friar and sociopaths. She hadn’t expected to find anything about this war the lupi
     thought they were fighting, and she’d been right about that. She’d turned up plenty
     about the Azá and their attempt to open a hellgate a year ago last November, but very
     little about the goddess they were said to worship. The one Lily called the Great
     Bitch. Who they didn’t name because
she
was attracted to her name. Who was apparently behind everything—Harlowe and the staff
     he’d used on Beth. The demons who’d killed so many at the Humans First rallies. The
     sniper who’d shot Lily last September and the plastic explosives planted at Nokolai
     Clanhome that they’d found barely in time.
    There was a good chance
she
was behind Sean’s disappearance, too. Lily said Robert Friar was
her
agent and acolyte. Beth didn’t know why Robert would kidnap his own brother, but
     she didn’t have to understand to think he was involved.
    Kidnap
, Beth repeated silently, giving the word a mental underline. Sean had been kidnapped,
     not killed. He was alive. She believed that fiercely, knowing she was being irrational
     and not caring. He was alive, and they’d find him.
    On the rational side, they did know now that he wasn’t lying dead or dying in his
     house. That was something, she told herself as she powered down her laptop.
    Not enough,
shouted the anger simmering inside her. Not nearly enough, and if Lily had only told
     her more about what was going on—at least that Sean’s brother was still alive! If
     Lily had told her that, she would have warned Sean, and he’d have been on his guard,
     and maybe he wouldn’t be missing now.
    She hadn’t wanted to know.
    Grimly Beth acknowledged that truth. She’d avoided learning more about all the bad
     things that had happened inthe past year. She hadn’t wanted to know how scary things really were for her sister
     and for anyone connected to her. How dangerous it had become to be lupi or Gifted,
     and how many people purely hated them. How much crap was out there masquerading as
     fact, and how many people believed it. She really hadn’t wanted to know there was
     an Old One auditioning for the role of Baddest Megalomaniac I-Will-Take-Over-The-World
     Villain Ever. She hadn’t wanted to know, so she hadn’t asked Lily the questions that
     were