Lupi 09 - Mortal Ties

we—”
    “Lily,” Beth said, having detangled from her friend, and tugged Deirdre forward. “You
     know Deirdre, right? And Deirdre, this in Tony, whose last name I’ve forgotten—sorry.
     Tony, Deirdre Marks.”
    “My pleasure,” Tony said gravely.
    Deirdre’s eyes went big as she looked him up and down. “Wow. I mean…wow.”
    “Lily, I’ve told Deirdre most of it, but I couldn’t remember his name. You know—the
     sorry son of a bitch who tried to get me who I don’t really want to die, even if he
     is a sorry son of a bitch. I’ve forgotten his name.”
    Lily didn’t smile except inside, where relief broke out in a grin. “Robert. His name
     is Robert Clampett, but on the street he goes by Little Mo.”

TWENTY-FIVE

    T HREE-PLUS hours later, Little Mo had made it through surgery. The doctors put his chances at
     around fifty percent, but they’d go up if he made it through the night. Beth was at
     the hotel in a small but luxurious room on their floor. Her friend Deirdre had opted
     to stay there with her tonight, which sort of negated the don’t-put-your-friends-in-danger
     argument, but at least they were guarded.
    Murray was at Laban Clanhome. It was on a small ranch outside the city, much closer
     than Nokolai Clanhome—the ranch where the black dragon picked up his payment for overflying
     San Francisco once a week, in fact. This was one of the ways Laban had benefited from
     its association with Nokolai. The government paid them handsomely for providing Sam
     a cow or three. Housing Murray gave Laban another opportunity to regain face.
    Tony was somewhere in San Francisco, presumably looking for Hugo. Rule was back at
     the hotel, and Lily was headed there.
    “Did you eat?” Rule asked.
    “I ordered in for everyone. Bad enough I kept them late. Didn’t have to keep them
     hungry, too. You ate, too, right?”
    “It’s nine thirty-five.” Meaning of course he’d eaten. Rule never let himself get
     too hungry, and his metabolism insisted on plenty of fuel. “Pizza or hamburgers?”
    “Hamburgers.”
    “Extra pickles for yours.”
    She smiled. “Right. See you in ten.” She disconnected.
    “More like fifteen, in this traffic,” Scott said. He was driving. Lily sat up front
     with him; Mike and Todd were in the back. As squad leader, Scott probably should have
     been at the hotel, but she hadn’t argued when Rule wanted to send him and the others
     with her. She knew he trusted Scott the most. Rule had a real problem with the two
     of them splitting up when she might be targeted.
    But he’d needed to stay at the hospital until Murray could be moved, and Lily couldn’t
     wait there with him. In the hours since she dropped her sister off at the hotel she’d
     talked to her father, Ruben, Grandmother, and the agent monitoring the taps on Jasper
     Machek’s various phone lines. Nothing of note there. Next she’d sat in on the SFPD
     interview with the man who’d probably given Little Mo and the rest their orders—Robert
     “Peep” Holland. The nickname was a reference to his first arrest. At the downy age
     of fifteen he’d been booked as a Peeping Tom, but he’d probably been planning a robbery,
     judging by his subsequent career. After that, she’d needed to brief Bergman and her
     people, and that had turned into a brainstorming session.
    The interview with Peep had been brief and unproductive. Not Detective Jones’s fault.
     Peep had been around the block so many times he’d mapped out each crack in the sidewalk.
     He had no idea what they were talking about and he wanted his lawyer.
    The session with Bergman and her people had gone better. Lily had needed to tell them
     about Jasper Machek’s unofficially missing lover, the theft of the prototype, and
     Robert Friar’s possible connection to both. She followed that with a rundown on Robert
     Friar—what was known, what was suspected, how his Gifts worked. Of course, they should
     have known that already. Friar might be officiallypresumed dead, but there were “watch for” bulletins out on him all over the country.
     But unGifted cops sometimes glazed over about magical shit. They didn’t understand
     it, wanted it to go away, and so they tuned out.
    They would be treating the attack on Beth as an attempted kidnapping, and the disappearances
     of Sean Friar and Adam King as suspected kidnappings.
    Why kidnappings? That was the ten-thousand-dollar question, and they didn’t come up
     with any answers.