Ghost Soldiers (7 page)

“God…” Bailey whispered.

“I called on God, but He was not on the street that night.” Karl gave her a twisted smile. “The man introduced himself as Cade, Master of London. Told me I'd been chosen as his meal, but my spirit
amused
him. Because of it, he'd give me a gift for which I'd always thank him. It was there, in the shadows smelling of piss and lye, that he Turned me. Enslaved me. Made me another pawn in his battle for London. And pawn I was until I killed him years later.”

A long moment of quiet spun out like thread from a spool. The computers hummed, but that was all.

Bailey shook her head. “I don't know what to say.”

“Then say nothing.” Karl took one last look at the maps on her screens and then at the timestamp on the toolbar. Hours and hours to go until dawn, but he was done being trapped in here with her. He wanted the cool night air and the silence. He wanted to know if Cojocaru or his people lay in wait for him in the mountains, hunting the hunter.

He picked up the Barrett, slung it over his shoulder and lifted the case with Bailey's camera. He grabbed the handle of the double metal doors.

“Be careful, Karl,” Bailey said softly behind him. “I know I said it'd never happen, but if our infiltrator talked before they killed him…” Her gaze shifted to his rifle, and then she met his eyes again. “Neither of us can back out now.”

He nodded once. She appeared so young and absurd sitting in her long white coat, with her blue hair and piercings, her face so grim and her pulse fluttering in her throat. Then he stepped outside and shut the doors behind him.

The air had bite here in the mountains. The night was still, almost preternaturally quiet. No wind and no moon. Thousands of stars spread in the patches of sky he could see through the tall pines, beech and fir trees towering around the truck. The truck sat in a narrow, secluded clearing a hundred meters from the side of the road, up a gradual slope, with camouflage netting strung everywhere to hide the vehicle and antennas and satellite dish equipment from view. Even the tire tracks had been swept away. A tiny aerial drone was loaded into a mini-hydraulic catapult facing out over the road through a break in the trees. Such was their base camp.

He took one last look at the sky. Then he pulled back the bolt on the rifle and stepped into the shadows beneath leaves and needles to find the sniper's nest where he planned to kill a man tomorrow night, wondering if he weren't already expected.

Chapter Seven: The Noose, Ever Tighter

Maria Ricardi sat alone at her table at Dolce Vita Ristorante. She had her back against the wall so she could see anyone approaching through the main dining room. Vibrant artwork hung on the walls, though her gaze kept returning to a painting of two lovers locked in a kiss. The smells of fresh bread, olive oil and garlic lingered everywhere, and an Italian opera played softly over the speakers.

She lifted her glass of wine and sipped a Ruffino Aziano Chianti. Drinking with fangs could be a bitch. It was hard enough remembering to smile without flashing fang, now she had to focus on carefully wrapping her lips around the rim of the glass before drinking. Who said being a vampire was all fun and games and random evil?

Still, she felt pretty good—far better than last night, when Xiesha's scrying had failed—and if her dreams during the daylight had again been horrible, so what? They were dreams. Nothing more. In one dream, Karl had stood at the far end of a pier, watching her as dark ocean water churned around him. He'd started walking toward her, but a massive shadow wave had crested over him and slammed down with a roar so loud she thought her eardrums had burst and she couldn't even hear her own screams. Again, so what? Dreams meant nothing. She hadn't even thought of Karl once since sunset. All right, maybe she had a few times, but still, things were looking up.

She owed her high spirits to the meeting she'd just had with Davey Abello. The meeting had gone well.
Better
than well. Davey Abello was her newest capo, freshly upped from the ranks, a young guy with a face that reminded her of a summer squash with acne pits. He was over-muscled, wore tight shirts, but the guy had brains in abundance. He might've made his bones in the kidnapping and execution of a Lucatti enforcer during the war, but Abello'd had at least a year at MIT before he'd been bounced out for something stupid, running high-stakes poker games or sports betting or something. The best news? Abello had two associates working for him who were practically geese mass-producing the golden egg. These guys were straight geeks, hacker-cyberpunk-crackers or whatever they called themselves, who were more than a little enthralled at the money, the women and the straight gangster chic that came with rubbing elbows with wiseguys.

Her hand drifted to her large Louis Vuitton handbag, one of the few things she'd salvaged from her old apartment. Inside she had two envelopes. One was her cut of Abello's latest racket—nine thousand easy—and the other was the mandatory kick up to the lawyer fund that was split between all the crews. Another two grand. And that wasn't all. She was due for a big drop, something they couldn't do in public because several hundred thousand in hundred dollar bills couldn't exactly be hauled around in her handbag. Davey had grinned like a schoolboy when she'd cooed over how much his new racket had pulled in. All of it by billing each credit card number they'd boosted on a data breach exactly ninety-nine cents under the title Credit Evaluation Service Charge. Who paid attention to ninety-nine cent charges? Most people didn't even challenge it, and the money rolled on in, ninety-nine cents at a time, spread out over a couple million users.

The Internet and ID theft—that was the wave of the future. Forget the hardscrabble pimping. Forget dealing dope, with all the heavy prison sentences and having to deal with the erratic Columbians and the Mexican cartels. This was pure white collar, and damn did it pay.

Davey had finished up and left a half an hour ago, but her high spirits had remained as she'd lingered over her wine. Nothing to eat, though, and that had been a cruel torment. Italians made the best food in the world, and as a vampire she had no more use for it—no more
desire
for it. Another pleasure lost. She'd ordered
Cozzo alla Marinara
and
Fettuccine Primavera
to avoid offending the owner or starting strange rumors, but had ended up giving most of it to Abello, who ate like a horse with a fifty-pound tapeworm.

“Ms. Ricardi,” a man called, walking toward her table. Another man trailed along behind him.

She tensed, preparing for an attack. The guy wore an off-the-rack dark suit, still far enough away so his heartbeat was lost in the noise of all the other heartbeats and the music. He was lean, blond, with hard eyes flashing an intensity a few degrees too hot. His buddy was almost exactly the same size, but older, a gray-flecked beard and another Sears suit. Feds. Had to be. She relaxed a fraction.

The younger man pointed toward an empty chair at her table. “May we sit?”

“No.”

“Thank you,” he said, and both of them sat down across from her anyway. “I'm Agent Toller.” He swept a hand at his buddy with the beard. “This is Agent Jacobsen.”

She could smell their guns, oil, plastic and steel, their cologne intermingling in a rather disgusting way, sweat from Agent Jacobsen, and beneath it all, the ever-present scent of warm blood.

She smiled. “What, no ID flashing?”

Agent Toller reached inside his coat. She waved a dismissive hand, but he pulled out his FBI identification anyway and made sure she saw it. Agent Jacobsen didn't bother.

“Nice picture,” she said. “Who took it? The DMV?”

Agent Toller ignored the sally. “Ms. Ricardi, do you know why we're here?”

“My library fines. Look, gentlemen, I'll pay them as soon as I come into some money. I'm due for a check any day now.”

Agent Jacobsen frowned at her, disapproval making his face sag like wet newspaper. The corner of Agent Toller's mouth curled in a half smile leeched of all humor.

“You disappeared off the radar for a long time,” Agent Toller said. “We were concerned.”

“I was sleeping in a box full of dirt.”

Both of them stared at her. She gave an enigmatic smile. Closed mouth, of course.

Agent Toller glanced around the restaurant. “I expected you to be a little more cautious. Carmine Galante died eating in an Italian restaurant. Those trigger men walked right up and blew holes in him with a shotgun, and there he was, bleeding a river on the cement with a cigar still clamped in his teeth. Shame to have it happen to a pretty lady like you.”

“First of all, I gave up smoking. And if you want a history lesson…let me see…how about good old Agent John J. Connolly and the Winter Hill Gang? Hmm? Don't like that one? Let's review, shall we, since you like history so much. Your star Effa-Bee-Eye agent got his share of racketeering charges for his help tipping off those Irish mates and blowing FBI investigations out of the water. Great for morale, right?”

Agent Jacobsen scratched a fingernail on the tablecloth, back and forth, back and forth, digging at it. His jaw muscles bunched, and his eyes were hard and bright.

Agent Toller actually winked. “The only thing I can say is, ‘So many laws argue so many sins.'”

She wasn't fooled. As if she'd never seen the classic good-cop, bad-cop act. One would think the routine would get old.

“That sounds like something fancy.” She shrugged. “I'm an accountant. You want to impress me with smarts, do a few consolidations or show me your accounting for derivatives and hedging. Talk about sexy.”

“We know you did your father's books.”

“I can fill out a mean 1099, let me tell you.”

Another smile. “We think it was a little more complex than that.”

“I don't know what you're talking about, gentlemen. If some mistake has been made, then bring in the forensic accountants—oh, but get yourselves some warrants first.”

“I smell RICO,” Agent Jacobsen said. His voice grated on her nerves immediately—simultaneously rough and higher pitched than she expected.

“I smell bad aftershave. So what?”

“You could go away for a long time,” Agent Toller warned. “We've been hearing some things about the…disagreements…certain Ricardis had with Stefano Lucatti and his people.”

“Seems to me Stefano's dead. Died in a fire. Perhaps you should take the hint.” Unwise to provoke cops and Feds, in fact, it was generally prohibited to even swear at them, but she'd made a career out of skating the line.

And look where that got me
. She ran a tongue over the tip of one fang. Fuck.

Agent Jacobsen leaned toward her. “I don't appreciate your attitude.”

“I don't appreciate being harassed, agents. I don't get out often, and I'd like a little alone time, thanks.” She glanced at Agent Toller's suit jacket. The butt of his pistol in a shoulder holster was barely visible where his jacket had opened. “I'm also scared of guns.”

Agent Toller ignored her comment again. “We hear a lot of things from all around. Like maybe certain Kingmakers aren't happy about you picking up your father's banner.”

She reached for her purse, deliberately not thinking about the money-stuffed envelopes inside. It would look very bad if they noticed. They hadn't witnessed the handoff, otherwise they wouldn't be having this conversation at all. “I think it's time I left. I don't like you talking about my father.”

Agent Toller caught her hand. She stopped pushing back her chair and looked at him. He must've seen something in her eyes, because he let her go so fast she'd have thought her skin had burned his fingers. God, had her eyes gone all glowy or something? She'd been working on suppressing that in public. Karl hadn't been kidding when he'd told her she wasn't ready to go gallivanting back among the living. Of course she'd ignored him, but maybe that had been another mistake.

“Look, Ms. Ricardi, I don't want to find your body floating in the Bay.”

“Don't worry. You won't find my body.” She'd seen vampires die. She wouldn't exactly make a mark, not even a stain on the carpet.

He must have assumed she referred to mafia body disposal because he nodded as if he understood what she meant. “All right, have it your way. But we came here to offer you a deal. Work with us. We can protect you.”

“You've got to be kidding.”

“Not at all. Your line of work, everybody ends up dead or strung out on eighty-year RICO charges. Think about it.”

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act had flayed the crime syndicates alive. A RICO charge was far from an idle threat, and certainly wasn't something to fuck around with. But flipping?
That
was a fucking insult.

“You've mistaken me for somebody else. Do some research. Women don't play in the bad-boy league.”

Agent Toller's eyebrows lifted, but he barreled on as if she hadn't spoken. “We've even had bosses work with us to avoid dying in prison. Doing hard time isn't romantic. A beautiful woman like you would be a hot commodity on the inside.”

She didn't answer.

“We want to help you.”

“I don't think so.”

“Here's my card.” Agent Toller held out a business card. She glanced at it but didn't take it, and he set it down near her wineglass.

“I don't suppose you guys are going to pick up the tab?” She fluttered her eyelashes. Now it was their turn not to answer. She smirked, reached in her purse—a risky move with the cash envelopes inside—pulled out a hundred from her wallet and tossed it on the table. She stood to go.

“You'll be seeing us around,” Agent Jacobsen said.

“Don't count on it.”

She walked away, feeling their eyes on her back. John Passerini had been right. The noose was drawing tighter.