Dragon Gate (9 page)

“Get your ass up to Boulder,” I said and gave him the address.

“Do I get to kill anyone?”

A man after my own heart. “I’m already one up on you.”

“Not fair.”

“It’s all right. There are plenty to go around.”

“I’m on my way.”

I hung up and jogged after Graham.

JONATHAN SHADE

“Here’s how this will work,” I said. Everyone was gathered in the kitchen. Brand had arrived fifteen minutes earlier. He, Graham, and Rayna sat at the table, while Kelly and I stood. Esther sat on the kitchen counter, looking bored. I pointed at Graham and Rayna. “You two will not go anywhere outside this house without one of us.”

“Okay,” Rayna said.

Graham shook his head. “I’m not willing to have my life completely disrupted.”

You’d think he’d have learned his lesson. “A bit of disruption is better than being dead.”

He glanced at Kelly then nodded. “I suppose.”

“When we’re in public, you will do exactly as we say. We’ll secure the rooms, and we’ll provide the best cover we can between vehicles and buildings. We’ll use a lot of back entrances, and we’ll vary our routes to any locations we go to more than once. In an ideal situation, we’d have a larger team, but we’ll simply have to make due.”

“Is it key time?” Esther asked.

I gave her a nod even though Rayna and Graham didn’t know she was there. I pulled out two typewriter keys with small rings attached.

“Slip these on your keychains. You will keep these with you at all times.”

I handed one key to Rayna and the other to Graham. They looked at the keys then at me with confusion on their faces.

“What are these for?” Graham asked.

“Turn around and look at the counter,” I said.

The turned and looked. Esther waved at them.

They looked back at me even more confused.

“What are we supposed to be looking at?” Rayna asked. “The microwave?”

They couldn’t see or hear Esther even with the keys, which meant they had zero magic. Good to know.

“Never mind. Just keep those keys with you.” If they couldn’t see her, there was no point telling them Esther was along for the ride. “Think of them as good-luck charms.”

“So these have some sort of protection spell on them?” Graham asked.

“Something like that.”

“I don’t trust magic.”

“I said it was something like that, not that it
was
that. There’s no magic involved. Let’s just say these are sort of an old-fashioned GPS locator.”

“If you say so,” Rayna said, and dug in her purse for her keychain.

Graham pulled out his keychain and added the typewriter key.

“We’re going to rotate protectors for you, so—”

“I don’t want to rotate protectors,” Graham said. “I want her with me.” He pointed at Kelly.

“I’m flattered,” Kelly said.

“You’ve already proven you can keep me safe, and if someone is going to be by my side, I’d prefer a beautiful woman over a couple of men.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Brand said. “But just so you know, she’s taken.”

I turned to Kelly. “You cool with that?”

She shrugged. “The bad guys already know me, so my presence alone might keep Graham safe.”

I considered that. She’d told me how she handled the situation, letting herself get stabbed so the attackers would think twice about facing off with her. If a sword through the chest didn’t kill her, what hope did they have? It was an effective scare tactic.

“They want to kill me first,” Graham said. “Especially now.”

“They might change their minds,” I said. “We’re not taking anything for granted.”

“If Kelly is with Graham, does that mean you’re with me?” Rayna asked.

“Brand and I can still alternate.”

“I feel safe with you,” she said.

I knew she’d be safer with Brand, but I was pleased by her comment anyway. I knew I needed to stay focused and not get emotionally attached. This was business and it was my job to keep her alive.

“All right. Brand will be backup.”

Graham looked at his watch. “We need to be at the hospice in thirty minutes for a presentation.”

“No worries,” I said. I was done talking anyway.

“I’ll have Bitterman bring the car around,” Rayna said and rose from her seat.

As she walked past me, she gave me a slight smile.

Esther grinned. “I think she likes you.”

I shot Esther a look and she frowned. I knew she was trying to make light of her jealousy, but I wasn’t here to try to get Rayna to like me, nor was I here to safeguard Esther’s feelings. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I couldn’t tell her she had nothing to worry about. To protect Rayna, I needed to make sure everything remained on a purely professional level. I figured that would be easy provided I didn’t allow myself to get to know her. Good luck with that one.

CHAPTER NINE

JONATHAN SHADE

The hospice felt different to me when we arrived that morning. There were quite a few cars in the parking lot, but we parked in the back to avoid any unnecessary exposure. Graham used his keycard to enter through a side door.

We made sure he and Rayna were covered, of course, even though there was no one in sight on the side of the building. As the Marshall Clan wasn’t using snipers, I wasn’t too worried about a long-distance shooter because an archer would have to be a lot closer.

Kelly took the lead through the door and cleared the hall while Brand and I kept Rayna and Graham between us.

We wanted to limit access to them, but Graham had to speak to a group of doctors about his wonder drug. We vetted the list of doctors as best we could on the ride over, and the nurses were supposed to be checking IDs, but the nurses had so many other duties, I wasn’t counting on it. We’d need to keep our eyes open for anything out of the ordinary. Kelly might recognize the Marshalls, but Brand and I had never seen them.

The key to being a protector in my view differs based on the situation. In some cases, you want to be seen because the mere sight of protectors can stop an assassin from making the attempt. In this case, we weren’t going to be able to blend in as doctors, so being seen might be advantageous. However, I felt the most important thing was to be close to the attacker should one present himself. Proximity can make a huge difference once an assassin commits to the attack. The closer we were to the people, the better in this instance. Of course, the farther away Graham and Rayna were from the attackers, the better.

Another key to consider was whether or not the attacker was willing to die to kill the client. To be perfectly honest, if someone is willing to die to kill a target, there’s not a whole lot you can do. He won’t seem nervous because he’s already determined he’s going to die. As such, when he makes his move, he isn’t worried about how he’s going to get away. He knows he’s not. That was one of my biggest worries with the Marshall Clan. I was afraid they’d be willing to die to kill Graham and Rayna. If that were the case, we stood a very good chance of losing them.

“I realize you want to protect us,” Graham said, “but when we get to the room, you really need to stay out of the way. I have to be able to show the doctors what we’re doing, and they need to be able to see.”

I watched a janitor clean up some water with a mop and bucket. Was he supposed to be here? We didn’t have time to vet the staff.

“Did you hear me?” Graham asked.

“Yeah, we’ll do our best.”

When we arrived at the nurses’ station, there were twenty doctors waiting for the presentation.

A quick scan of their faces didn’t set off any alarms in my head. I knew Kelly was checking them out too, and she glanced back at me to give me a quick head shake. None of them were from the Marshall Clan.

Good.

“Welcome,” Graham said to the doctors. “I’m afraid the room will be a bit cramped with so many of us here, but let’s give it a shot. Is Sherri here?”

The nurse manning the station pointed to a door. “She’s in the room, Dr. Noble.”

I nodded to Kelly, and she entered the room first. After a few moments, she reappeared. “We’re good,” she said.

“Excellent,” Graham said. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll follow me.” He followed Kelly into the room, and we all filed inside behind him.

It was a good-sized room with a bed in the center of the floor. A few chairs sat off to the sides. A sliding glass door would have given us a nice view of the back lawn, but it would also give an easy shot to an assassin outside, so I knew Kelly had closed the blinds. They still wavered. The bed sat in front of a cabinet, which was mostly obscured by a green curtain. I wasn’t sure why they’d put a curtain in front of the cabinet, but I figured they had a reason.

Brand and Rayna stood against the wall beside the glass door. I stood in front of Rayna, and Kelly stuck to Graham’s side.

A middle-aged woman with close-cropped hair and glasses sat in the bedside chair. An old man wearing an oxygen tube and a gown sat in the bed. He fiddled with the prongs from the tube at his nose. Red marks around his nostrils told me he’d been on oxygen awhile and that he couldn’t stop pulling at the tubes, which were hooked under his chin and around his ears.

The doctors crowded around the bed but tried to keep a respectable distance.

“This is Carl Farmer,” Graham said, placing a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “He’s suffering from Alzheimer’s, but COPD is the bigger issue. Alas, we can’t do anything about that.”

Graham gestured to the woman wearing glasses.

“This is Sherri Mason. She’s a speech therapist who worked with Mr. Farmer before he left the hospital and came here. Sherri, I’ll turn this over to you for now.”

I looked at the headboard and noticed it had a hole in it at the base. There were oxygen tubes hooked to metal prongs. It looked to me that if Mr. Farmer were to lay back, the top of his head would be inside that hole in the headboard. I wondered about that, but Sherri was speaking, and I found myself listening to her as I kept my eyes on the doctors.

“Mr. Farmer,” Sherri said. “Do you remember me?”

“You’re my—” He closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again. “Daughter?”

“No.”

He shook his head, frustrated. He pointed at her and shook his finger then frowned and spoke with conviction. “They need to let him go. It wasn’t his fault.”

“Okay, Mr. Farmer. It’s all right. I’d like you to play a game with me.” She took out a pocket watch. “In the next sixty seconds, I’d like you to name as many animals as you can. Okay?”

“Okay, but he had nothing to do with it.”

She looked at the watch. “I understand that. It’s animal time. Are you ready? Name them starting . . . now.”

Mr. Farmer frowned. “Cat. Elephant.” He blinked. Seconds ticked by. “Skunk.” More seconds ticked by. “Person?” It seemed like an eternity passed away before he added, “Cat.” Hesitation. “Fox.”

“Time,” Sherri said. “Very good.”

She went through a few more tests, and the doctors all nodded. They passed around a chart and nodded some more.

Graham held up a little white pill. “This is Didracomine. It only takes one.” He handed it to Mr. Farmer along with a glass of water. “Medicine time.”

Mr. Farmer obediently swallowed the pill.

“Now lie back.”

Mr. Farmer stretched out on the bed. His head went into the hole, so from my vantage point, it looked like the top of his head was cut off.

The curtains behind the bed rustled a bit.

A draft? Air conditioning? I moved toward it.

Graham blocked my path. “Where are you going?” he whispered.

“There’s a slight space between the bed and the wall. Something moved back there.”

“Kelly already checked back there,” he whispered.

“Then it won’t matter if I look too.”

He tried to grab me, but I pushed past him. None of the doctors noticed our exchange. They were busy looking at the chart or watching Mr. Farmer.

I stepped over to the wall and pulled the curtain aside a bit.

A man knelt behind the bed with most of his body inside the cabinet, but he wasn’t exactly a man. His lips flared back, and his forked tongue jammed into Mr. Farmer’s head. He softly slurped and I saw white pus dripping from his lips. His eyes turned toward me, and I felt like I’d stepped into a nightmare.

A hand settled on my shoulder, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“It’s okay,” Graham whispered. “Nondisclosure agreement.” He pulled me away from the curtain.

I turned to look at him as if he’d flipped out, but like Mr. Farmer, I couldn’t find the words. I opened my mouth, closed it, blinked. Just as I was about to finally say something, Mr. Farmer sat up.

“Is my family here?” he asked.

“Well, hello, Mr. Farmer.”

“Hi, Sherri. Is my wife here? Where’s Dana?”

“She’s in the waiting room. I’ll get her in a minute.”