Cool Hand (19 page)

“What about those flipper shoes? They’re not going to run in them.”

“Velcro straps. Running shoes underneath. Get ready to run.”

One of the clowns thumped a drum. Loud enough to muffle the sound of a small pistol. This might be a classic, by-the-book attempt at a hit. How long had they had to put it together? Would they have managed to coordinate backup? What would their plan be once they decided we’d spotted them?

They were good. One of them played a flute and was leading them like a piper. All part of the performance. They’d probably keep it up as long as they couldn’t be sure we’d spotted them. Then the piper started to dance a jig that was as good as a trot, and he was
definitely
leading them our way.

I pushed us toward a library that had the look of an old adobe fort in a Western. That was leading us away from the students; I didn’t want any innocents caught up in this. Unfortunately, it was also making it more dangerous for us. I had no idea what the layout was at the far end of the park and we had no time to research it.

With a couple of half-glances, I timed it. The clowns moved clear of the last clump of students. Their faces all turned toward us, like eerie mechanical dolls. We were out of time.

“Run,” I said.

We skidded around corners of surreal buildings designed by a giant using melted Lego building blocks. Every color from plum to sand and pink.

The clowns had stripped off their flipper shoes and they were quick. A gang of running clowns? Yes, they were attracting attention, naturally, and just as naturally, people were laughing, assuming it was a student prank.

Tullah and I sprinted past a large police administration building. Tempting, but we couldn’t afford the attention.

Straight ahead was the sort of building we needed.

We crossed the double lanes of Lomas Boulevard, ignoring the blaring horns and cursing drivers, and into the University of New Mexico Hospital. Through the emergency entrance, where the ambulances pulled up. Well, it was an emergency.

And we got lucky. There must have been an accident and the place was full of police and firemen.

A security guard emerged as we ran in. I pointed back at the clowns just entering the building.

“They’ve got guns!” I yelled.

I was gambling on the clowns not wanting to start shooting at bystanders.

There was a horrible moment when I wondered if I’d miscalculated.

Too late now. We were on the stairs when the clowns collided with security and police. People started shouting.

We dropped our pace and marched through the building.

“Slow down.” I grabbed Tullah’s arm before we emerged into the main entrance area.

Too late.

Not all our pursuers had piled into the hospital behind us. A guy came trotting in the front doors. He was carrying a backpack, plenty big enough for a clown suit. He was also trying for casual, talking on his cell, but his head jerked a little and our eyes met.

Damn clumsy, but he knew I’d made him.

There were emergency stairs right by us. We ran up.

Any hospital is a maze, but the key to getting away from someone was knowing your way around. We didn’t. We couldn’t rely on all his friends being caught up with security. Everything pointed to this being a professional job, and that meant there would be one or maybe two small teams close by as backup.

In a couple of minutes he might have friends spread through the building.

Time for desperate tactics. There was no one else on the emergency stairs at the moment. That was as much as I could wish for.

“Keep running up the stairs—as much noise as you can make.”

“Okay, Boss,”
came back through Kaothos.

I flattened myself against a wall on one of the landings.

He came running up them, focused on chasing the noise in the stairwell. Straight into my roundhouse. I wasn’t holding back; I couldn’t afford that luxury. Unlucky clown. The kick launched him backwards.

“Come back down now,” I called up after Tullah, and trotted down to see how badly he was hurt.

I’d broken his breastbone and ribcage. As he’d fallen, he’d smashed his head on the steps, but Athanate were tough and I could feel a pulse.

Tullah came up as I stripped his jacket off.

I took mine off and gave it to Tullah.

“Swap with your hoodie. Hair inside and collar up. Sunglasses back on. Go find the courtesy wheelchair in the lobby and bring it to the foot of the stairs.
Go!
”

A last, queasy look at the man and she obeyed, bundling the sweatshirt inside its hood so it looked like a bag. We couldn’t leave him here. I wasn’t sure how thoroughly the medical staff might check him before his friends came and took him away, but I didn’t want to be the person blamed for letting the rest of the world know about the Athanate before we were ready.

I put the guy’s jacket on and ran through his pockets and backpack.

Comm system, wallet, cellphone, sunglasses, key ring. Black ski mask and gloves. The clown disguise. And a freaking taser.

Crap. Snatch job rather than a hit.

Tullah came back with the wheelchair. I carried the guy down and arranged him in the chair with his sunglasses on and the ski mask folded back like a hat, hiding the blood on his head.

Then we wheeled him through the lobby and outside, as slowly and innocently as we could manage.

We left him looking as if he was snoozing in the sun, his cell turned on in his pocket. His friends would find him in minutes. It had slowed us down a little, but both sides of the Athanate struggle agreed on one thing: humans finding out about us accidentally did no one any good.

Tullah and I took the first cab that pulled up.

Our pictures were on the hospital security cameras. That couldn’t be helped. But other than running through the security, we hadn’t actually done anything wrong in the main areas. The section of stairwell where I’d kicked the guy didn’t have cameras, and he wasn’t going to press charges when he recovered.

When the cabbie turned into Lomas a minute later, I had him pull over.

“Sorry, changed our minds,” I said and handed him a twenty.

With Tullah nervously looking around, I led her through the campus toward the Duck Pond.

Athanate marques were formed of two elements: the scent and the telergy. Running away from the clowns, there’d been no chance to smell anything. The telergy part was never more than a sensation of presence, and between my paranoia and the tingle from Mary’s bracelet, I wasn’t sure what I’d felt.

I could hardly believe what my nose had been telling me about the guy I’d knocked out. I needed confirmation.

I was glad I hadn’t killed him, for Tullah’s sake. It wouldn’t have been the first time she’d seen dead bodies up close; her parents had killed a platoon of Nagas who’d attacked the Kwan. And she’d been the one to choose to come on this road trip with me, but I had a horrible premonition she’d have her fill of dead bodies soon. I was a magnet for conflict.

I was listening to their comm system, and I heard when they found the guy in the wheelchair and realized their comms were compromised. Someone said a code and they switched frequencies. I tossed the system in the trash.

As we were walking back across the park, I let my wolf nose inhale the rich broth of smells. They’d found some way, like we had, of reducing the Athanate scent, but not eliminating it. And it told me I’d been right in the stairwell; I knew the marque from before.

But it wasn’t House Romero, or Matlal, or any Basilikos.

It was the Warders.

The voice that answered David’s phone was very definitely not David. It was female, smooth, and
ever so
polite.

“Umm. Could I speak to David…or Pia, please?” I mumbled, trying to catch up. Had David suddenly got hold of a girlfriend? Damn. What if he was trying to find someone to become kin and I’d just gotten him in trouble?

“I can certainly see if Mr. Thaler or Ms. Shirazi is available. Who should I say is calling, please?”

Ah, yes. He was at the Kingslund Group, working in the office. I guessed some of us had to.

“It’s Amber Farrell.”

“Oh, Ms. Farrell, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize. You’re on the list, of course. I’ll put you right through. I do believe Mr. Thaler and Ms. Shirazi are in a meeting together.”

David must have put the fear of God into the staff; she actually sounded nervous that she hadn’t known it was me. How would she? Did he play them recordings of me yelling at people?

“Amber?”

“Mr. Thaler.” I laughed.

“Don’t start on that. Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I don’t only call you when the sky’s falling on my head.”

“Hmm. Hold on.” There were some clicks and the echoey sound of being put on speaker. “Right. That’s got the encryption running and we’re on conference now. Pia’s here too. Any news on Diana? Can we do anything?”

“Nothing on Diana yet. And yes, you can. Tell me, what’s the story on the Warders?”

“Skylur expelled them from Panethus territory and revoked their status as a non-aligned House,” Pia said. “The New York headquarters has been closed and Alice is there taking oaths from those that wanted to apply to join Altau. I guess the remainder can apply to Basilikos Houses or try and find some free territory elsewhere in the world and hold it.”

“Okay. In the Assembly, there was something about the Warders building new laboratory facilities in New Mexico, wasn’t there?”

“Yes,” Pia said doubtfully. “I didn’t think those facilities were ready, and with the House expelled and Matlal’s funding exposed, I can’t imagine the project is still running.”

“Maybe. Thing is, there are Warders here in Albuquerque. We haven’t had the slightest sniff of Romero, but half a dozen Warders just tried to snatch us. They have to have been well embedded to pick up that we were searching for Diana.”

They went quiet on their end for a couple of seconds.

“This should be passed on to Naryn,” Pia said finally.

“I know. Let’s hold it for a day and see what happens. As soon as we tell Naryn, he’ll start trying to get me back. I can’t dodge another direct order for long.”

They had me give a brief description of what had happened. That darkened the mood all around. I went through the guy’s wallet and gave them his name and address in New York according to the ID. If it wasn’t fake, maybe Bian could deduce something from that.

The cash I would send as an anonymous donation to the VA Medical Center out near the Albuquerque airport.

“You’re too exposed, Amber.” David was sounding worried. “We were expecting Romero, and for them to be disorganized. This is way too prepared. What if they’d used a sniper instead of a snatch squad?”

I couldn’t think of any arguments. It’d always been a gamble coming down here and looking for a clue that the pair of us could usefully pursue. This mission needed more. It needed a force big enough to track down Romero and confront them, and big enough to fight off Warders at the same time.

The fact that I needed Diana back for my own reasons didn’t change the facts.

“I worked out that puzzle, though,” David said.

“Huh?”

“The picture you sent me. Just emailed it back to you. Looks like a river system? It’s a partial street map of an area of Albuquerque called the Scandia Peak Enclave. It’s right at the eastern edge, up against the slopes of Scandia Mountain. Don’t have a house number, but I’m guessing you go to the end of the road where it’s marked VAN.”

“Thanks, David. That’s something I guess we can do.”

“Let’s do it now,” Tullah suggested. “It’ll get us away from any Warders who are out looking for us in the center of town.”

“Yeah.” I felt depressed. Ending the conversation with David and Pia by trying to sound cheerful only made me feel worse.

It wasn’t just the adrenaline rush leaving me. We were sitting here in Albuquerque unable to do one of the main things we’d come down for. I hated that. We had a necklace that was supposed to be helping with Olivia, but which had us both baffled. Now we had an address to find Larry’s kin, and that was something. But while we were doing that, Jen would be getting ready to go out to Haven, where Naryn waited, and there was nothing I could do about it, no comfort I could give her, none of the protection that she deserved.

I had to stop this brooding and focus on the next task, or risk screwing that up as well.

I let Tullah drive, and soon we were heading east on Central Avenue.

Larry’s kin had been a faceless mass in my mind, and that might change this afternoon. I didn’t know their names; I didn’t even know how many of them there were. All I had was a bone-deep sense of Athanate obligation, through Larry, to them. I had to start thinking of them as people and individuals right now. They probably wouldn’t know what had happened to Larry, so my first task was going to be the painful one of telling them he was dead.

What then?

They might not want to be part of House Farrell. They might not want to move to Denver. And if they did move, what would they do? I couldn’t support them all. What skills did they have? Would they still want to be kin, and if they did, would my House want them as kin?

I didn’t even know if they’d all be in one place.

Tullah turned north and we started to skirt the border between the city and the Scandia foothills.

Another day. One more day to contact Larry’s kin, sort out what they wanted to do, and then I’d have to call Naryn and explain that Albuquerque had been taken by the Warders.

He’d call me back to Denver. I’d have to leave it to Altau to find Diana when they could.

Meanwhile, my Athanate side would start to demand Blood. Without Diana, they’d have to lock me up for everyone’s safety. I especially wouldn’t be trusted with my kin.

Maybe Kaothos could knock me out long-term and they’d put me on some kind of IV drip until other people sorted it all out.

It was no comfort that this expedition hadn’t gone as badly as it might have. We’d managed to get in and out without screwing with the Were, or getting tangled with the Adepts.

But no Diana.

Can’t get any worse,
I thought.