The Bloodline Cipher (20 page)

Patch sighed. ‘If the viewfinder was home-cinema-sized I might've spotted him.'

‘If it was home-cinema-sized
and
if he'd been wearing a short skirt,' Motti corrected him.

Street took out a phone from his pocket. Then the
camera swung off him, favouring Heidel and Bree as their taxi turned the corner and out of sight.

Patch sighed. ‘For
that
he nearly kills us.'

‘Maybe he's got a big heist in the offing,' Jonah reasoned. ‘Might've thought you'd been following him for weeks …'

‘Maybe.' Motti flicked off the TV. ‘What the hell was he was doing there at the auction house, anyway?'

‘Checking out his former boss the same way we were?' Con suggested. ‘If Coldhardt knew that the auction would be a draw for Heidel, Street would too.'

Jonah agreed. ‘And when your old boss comes back from the dead and starts pulling jobs, you're going to be curious …'

‘Not to mention head-buggered,' Patch added.

Motti threw a cushion at him. ‘Who the hell would
ever
mention “head-buggered” 'cept you, dumb freak?'

Tye hugged herself as the swapping of insults, clues and ideas went on. Private thoughts aside, she felt a weird mix of unease and excitement, discussing this stuff without even telling Coldhardt what they'd found. It felt wrong, but kind of a rush; like finding out your parents kept a secret diary, and sneaking a read before they could –

‘You're back.'

–
catch you
.

Pale and grave as a vampire, Coldhardt was watching them from the doorway, his stony glare sweeping over each of them in turn.

‘It appears we have things to discuss,' he said.

Tye, Con, Motti and Patch sat beside Jonah on the sofas, like they had done a thousand times before. Only now the atmosphere wasn't so much the kind you could cut with a knife, but one you might smash to bits with a sledgehammer. As the post-dawn skies began to blush blue through the windows of the hangout, Jonah found he had to keep pinching himself – to be sure he wasn't hallucinating.

It was the sight of Coldhardt, here in the hangout.

In the usual chic austerity of the hub the boss seemed completely at home, the big spider in his brushed-steel web. But there in the TV room, watching the Heidel footage on a squashy sofa in a sea of beer cans and sweet wrappers, he was more of a fish out of water. In a whole year, Jonah had never known him come here once. It was a special space for his ‘children' alone, and now suddenly it was as if Dad had come to visit the playhouse. None of them knew quite how to react.

He wished Tye would catch his eye. How angry could she be with him? Maybe she was just tired …

God knows
I
am
, he thought, scratching at his sore neck.

‘This is totally freaking me out,' Patch whispered.

‘Gee, really, Cyclops?' Motti glowered at him. ‘We're taking it all in our stride.'

Con sighed. ‘We should have told Coldhardt what we'd found straight away.'

‘And let the old bastard keep us in the dark?' Motti shook his head. ‘No way. Not this time.'

‘You will tell him that, yes?'

‘Watch me.'

Patch scoffed quietly. ‘I'm watching your trousers turn brown, mate.'

Jonah wondered why Coldhardt hadn't blown his top at them, railed and raged at them for going through Heidel's stuff without him. Perhaps because he had seen the photographs from the briefcase, and the files lying open. A window had been opened on to his past, and he was still staring into it, right now, watching Heidel large as life on the huge TV screen.

‘Would anyone like coffee?'

Maya's voice rang out from the top of the staircase, and everyone jumped about half a mile.

‘Sod the coffee, I need a man's drink after a scare like that,' said Patch weakly.

Motti snorted. ‘Maybe Red will go fix you some Sunny D.'

‘What's going on?' asked Maya, running lightly down the stairs. ‘Jonah?'

Jonah pointed to the TV room and held a finger to his lips. He heard the traffic noise cut out suddenly as if the tape had been stopped, braced himself for Coldhardt to reappear. But then the long, timeless moment passed and the noises resumed as the old man
started to watch the footage over again.

‘How many more times?' Tye muttered, curled up with her eyes closed in the corner of the sofa.

‘You found proof, didn't you?' Maya asked slowly. ‘Proof that Heidel's who he says he is.'

Patch brought her up to speed on all they had been through and all they had gained. ‘Coldhardt didn't say much, just flicked through the stuff from the case and went in to watch the footage we got. Now we're just waiting for him to come out and give us a bollocking.'

Maya looked puzzled. ‘For bringing him what he wanted?'

‘For sticking our noses in,' said Motti. ‘For acting like we're more than just his personal slaves.'

‘But you are much more than that.' Maya looked at them. ‘You are his family. The course he is set upon may involve him leaving you for many years; naturally you want to be sure of what he is getting into.' She paused. ‘You do not wish him to walk into a trap.'

‘And we do not wish to find ourselves unemployed,' said Con. ‘Very good, Maya. When put like that, our case sounds quite reasonable, no?'

‘That mushy crap might work if Coldhardt weren't so big on living up to his name,' Motti rumbled.

‘Then maybe it's time we broke the ice.' Jonah stood up. ‘Maya's making coffee. I'm going to ask Coldhardt if he wants one. Seems only fair, since he paid for the coffee bar.'

Turning his back on their frowns and surprised looks, and before he could change his mind, Jonah walked quickly and quietly over to the TV room. He hovered in the doorway, opened his mouth to speak,
to break the silence so that –

‘It could be him,' Coldhardt said softly as he watched, in a voice half wondering, half afraid; a voice surely not meant for others to overhear. ‘It really could be him.'

And Jonah realised:
That's why he hasn't lost his rag with us. We're the last things on his mind right now
.

We don't matter
.

He left Coldhardt mumbling on the sofa and rejoined the others. It felt as though he was kicking his heart a little further on with every step.

‘I don't think the boss wants a coffee,' Jonah said.

Con was pointing past him discreetly, mouthing: ‘Behind you.'

Jonah turned to find Coldhardt suddenly recovered and standing in the doorway of the TV room, watching them. Maya left them to it, heading for the countertop.

‘I'll summon you all when I need you,' said Coldhardt stiffly. He turned to Heidel's belongings on the tabletop and the suitcase beside it. ‘Box up these and take them to the gate. They will be couriered for fingerprint matching and DNA analysis later this morning. Motti, the audio data …?'

Motti practically jumped to attention. ‘The MacBook's there by the phone. The recording's all loaded up, just hit play.'

Coldhardt nodded vaguely. Then he turned, collected the laptop and left the hangout.

‘No, really, it was no trouble,' Tye called after him – very quietly.

‘We were well-paid, weren't we?' said Con, making out she wasn't bothered.

Tye shot her a look. ‘And who's going to pay you when he's gone?'

‘He ain't gone yet,' said Motti.

‘Only 'cause he got off on you kissing his arse so nicely,' Patch retorted. He put on a camp American accent: “Recording's all loaded up, big boy, just hit play!”'

‘How about I hit a dumb mutant buttwipe?'

‘Ow!'

But Jonah was only half-listening. He could still hear Coldhardt's voice, so grave and frail. ‘
It could be him. It really could be him
…'

Heidel's belongings were soon crated up and dumped by the main gates. Then, after grabbing some cereal while the others trooped off to bed, Jonah decided to catch up on some sleep himself. Maya was impatient to get on with cracking the cipher and needed his computer, so he let her take over his bedroom while he crashed in one of the guest rooms.

Good cover story
, he thought, as he had to pass Tye's room to get to them.

And as he did so, Jonah knocked on her door.

She opened it in her dressing gown. Her skin hid bruises well but he could see indigo-black smudges on the skin around her collarbone. She looked tired. ‘Hey,' she said.

Jonah smiled. ‘Nice opening gambit. I just wanted to check we were friends?'

Tye gave a smile that looked like it tasted bitter.
‘What else could we be?'

‘I don't know … These last days, ever since I first heard about that bloody grimoire …' He shrugged, itched the lump on his neck. ‘Nothing seems right.'

‘Maybe after tonight it'll seem straighter. One way or another.'

The two of them stood there. Jonah wondered if Tye was waiting for him to say what surely had to be on both their minds.

‘Can I come in and lie down with you?'

She smiled but looked away again. ‘I know what your “lie downs” are like. I want to, but I really am killer tired …'

‘Me too. We could
really
just lie down and –'

‘I need a little time right now, 'K?'

Jonah shrugged. ‘And a little space? Fine. You got it.' He stomped away down the corridor.
That was sensitive, you doofus
, he told himself. He paused, turned back round – in time to hear the quiet click of Tye's door closing.

He lay on the unmade bed in the first room he came to, turning and fidgeting till sleep reluctantly came and tugged him under.

Jonah woke feeling like crap and looking about as good. The rest of the day passed slowly and fitfully.

He played video games with Patch. Patch kept winning, so he went to the gym to work out. Con was there, beating the hell out of a punchbag. He didn't fancy taking her on in that kind of mood, and so left her to it and took a walk to the main gates. The crates were gone.

‘Great,' he muttered. He wondered how long the results would take, how much cash Coldhardt would splash to speed things along.

He walked around the grounds, brooding till he bored himself to death. Coming back to the hangout he found Motti was back from checking out the security systems at the safe house; checks Motti had made himself in the absence of orders from Coldhardt. He still saw it as his responsibility.

‘That Sorin was smarter than he looked,' Motti explained. ‘Took out the whole system and every bug in the place with something … Some kind of EMP, maybe, I dunno.'

‘Electromagnetic pulse?' Jonah frowned. ‘I thought that knocked out all electronics in the area? The retina and fingerprint scanners, the entry coder, they were all still working.'

‘He put down enough juice to cripple the main chip and blow every bug in the building – and then somehow he reset the external barriers.' Motti shook his head in grudging admiration. ‘Perfect for an ambush. Those scanners were set to welcome any eyeball, any thumb and any seven-digit code – so you wouldn't be tipped off anything was wrong till you got inside.'

Jonah nodded. ‘So the NO guys didn't break in, they just
strolled
in.'

‘Shame Sorin bought it,' said Motti. ‘Who knew? The guy was a talent. Won't ever make his name now.'

‘Was there any …' Jonah shrugged, ‘any mess from the killing left behind in the safe house?'

Motti looked at him levelly. ‘What do you think?'

The hangout slowly filled up again. Con came
back, put on some music. Patch returned to his computer games. Motti went off to his bedroom studio to mess around with some tracks, and Tye was still keeping to herself.

Let her stew
, thought Jonah, and slouched off to see how Maya was doing. Because it was his bedroom, he didn't think to knock – and so walked in and found her asleep on his bed. She was curled up in just her black vest top and knickers, her red hair spilling over the pillow. Must have been too trashed to go looking for the guest rooms – or maybe she just couldn't sleep away from her precious cipher files.

His gaze lingered a few seconds. He noticed again the dark tip of the tattoo beneath her collarbone, the welt on her neck like a red star above it. From skinny thigh to pencil-ankles, Maya's skin was smothered in the same grey-brown freckles that dusted her elfin face.

This is when Tye comes in and decides I'm a total perv
, he thought. Quickly he took a jacket and laid it over Maya's lower half. Then he checked his computer for any progress on decrypting the manuscript.

No character matches. No words thrown up by the translators. All that processing power, and for what? He noted the pile of screwed-up paper around the bin had grown larger too.

Did Coldhardt even need them to crack the Bloodline Cipher now? All this work they were doing seemed more for Maya's benefit than the boss's.

Pretty soon Coldhardt would be choosing between his regular life as it was now and the services of Nomen Oblitum. Jonah felt a tightness in his stomach; the same pains he got as a kid, when he'd overhear his
foster parents discussing him, talking about sending him back. He shut his eyes, still feeling so tired. But Maya was lying in his bed, like a cuckoo.

Since he had nowhere else to go, Jonah returned to the guest room and lay on the unmade bed, waiting for the call from Coldhardt.

He went on waiting.

Shadows stole in, as the light through the window ebbed to grey.

When Jonah woke again, it was close to six the next morning. And the phone started trilling just a half-hour later.

He listened to it, a sick feeling building in his stomach.

Time to go
, he thought.