The Diamond Dragon (Kip Keene Book 4) (6 page)

Wade Linus navigated to the root folder of his smartphone to edit the operating system’s files. He attempted to send another message, but the phone spit back the same reply.

TEXT MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED

“Damnit.” He put his face in his hands, staring at the warm glow of the streetlamps through his fingers. Some tech guru he was—he couldn’t even get a simple two-line text through to Keene. Almost half a day without any contact. The jet’s GPS signal had just disappeared into oblivion, like it’d been devoured by a black hole.

Problem was, Linus had a theory about the journal Keene
really
needed to hear.

Probably should give it up
, he thought,
maybe head back to Boston
. But that was too cold, now, after experiencing SoCal. And the chicks weren’t nearly as hot. Basically, on a metaphorical scale, the girls out here were like the first
Star Wars
trilogy. Life changing. And the chicks back home…second trilogy material.

Definitely not trying to go back to that.

Linus’ shoulders slumped further. Even the thought of babes couldn’t cheer him up. Keene and Strike were walking into disaster, and they were doing it blind. In between searching for Carmen all day, he’d done a little research on Tillus—none of it good, even for someone skeptical of internet conspiracy nonsense.

“Hey stalker.”

Linus jumped off the park bench with a start, dropping his phone. It bounced off the concrete, its case splintering. Caught between two simultaneous problems, Linus found himself wishing he was a supercomputer. That way he could multitask.

Instead of doing any task, he turned and started walking the other way.

“Really?” Carmen cut him off before he could hightail it across the beach. “You know I can kick your ass.”

“Sorry,” Linus said through a mouthful of his shirt collar, which for some reason he had chosen to start chewing on like some sort of schizoid dog. His mind was yelling instructions of the James Bond variety, but they were being translated into gibberish and then executed in sub-amateur fashion.

Linus made an awkward attempt to spin around her, but he tripped on her outstretched foot and landed flat against the pavement. Tears sprouted at the corner of his eyes.

“I kind of liked you before, but you’re losing points at an astonishing rate here.”

Linus squeezed the tears from his eyes and looked up. “You liked me?”

“Sure, nerd. I’m almost impressed you tracked me down. How’d you do it?”

“Hacked the security cams,” Linus said, getting on his knees. He felt his teeth with his tongue, checking for loose fillings. He glanced up. It felt like he was either praying or begging for forgiveness at an altar of endless legs. “Ran my facial recognition software through it.”

Legs that could kick his ass.
Focus, Linus. Don’t forget the stunt she pulled earlier.

“Big Brother, huh?” She offered him a hand, which he took. “Or skinny little hacker boy. One or the other.”

“I wasn’t following you.”

“Oh, you just accidentally found me on my evening run, which I switch up every day?”

“I mean, I was, but not—not in a creepy way.”

She gave him a smile. “Of course not. Here to apologize?”

Linus gave her a funny look and shook his head quickly. “You tried to rob us.” He was suddenly aware that he was out here alone, with only the ocean and the dying sunset around to watch. 

“I did,” she said with a small shrug. “That it? You could’ve called about that.”

“Face to face is better,” he said, his voice gaining a little conviction. “What were you doing?”

“Aww, the tech wizard likes human contact. The irony.” Then the smile disappeared in a flash, darkening her beautiful face. Linus felt his heart leap out of his chest and run away towards the sea, ready to drown itself. “But I was actually running over to your place.”

“You were?” A surge of euphoria ran through his body. Then his brow furrowed. “You still haven’t told me what you were doing in the cellar.”

“Your friends are in trouble,” Carmen said. “Serious trouble. I tried to warn them.”

Linus took a step back, getting a better look at the slender woman bathed in the warm glow of stars and streetlamps. Keene and Strike had been right to give him shit. Maybe he’d led a lion right into their den.

Carmen walked over to the park bench and knelt down to pick up the shattered phone. Despite his swirl of mixed emotions and general confusion, Linus felt his eyes drawn to the bottom of her body, where her sweatpants slid down.

Come on, Linus, focus here. This chick is gonna snap your neck if you don’t run
.

She slipped a small cable out of her pocket and jacked it into the bottom port. The cracked screen flashed. Then she unplugged the cord and tossed the device to Linus, who almost missed it in his stunned stupor.

“Cell traffic is down in Tillus. No shot at getting through,” Carmen said.

Linus glanced between his phone and the girl, unsure whether to be excited, terrified or embarrassed at his complete idiocy. Unable to decide, he settled on mouth agape silence.

She put her hands on her hips, her eyes narrowing. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“You want to save their asses? Or you just want to keep staring at mine?”

Linus flushed. Carmen didn’t miss a thing. But the question remained.

Who the hell was Carmen, exactly?

Strike took the stairs down to the vault three at a time, her short boots banging against the steps. Behind her, Sheriff Hendricks talked in a low murmur into his radio. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, and it sounded like he didn’t want her to.

She could’ve sworn she caught the phrase
prep the room
, but maybe that was just paranoia.

“Who you talking to?”

“No one important.” Hendricks said. The radio went silent. “In a hurry?” She could feel his gaze burning into her back. Nothing more than an unpleasant feeling, but he was too cagey.

“Sooner I get down, the sooner I can get up.” Strike strode into the open vault. “You always leave the goods out with an engraved invitation?”

“The people here know better than to steal. Only outsiders are a problem.”

Strike shrugged and leaned against the plan metal viewing table in the center of the room. The place was more like a jail cell than a vault, with thick iron bars running from floor to ceiling. Its gate was wide-open, the bars pushed aside for the investigation. A single wall of security boxes lined the back.

“Not exactly Fort Knox.”

“It did quite all right until today.”

“Everything’s all right until it isn’t.” Strike strode over to the wall and ran her fingers to the only opening in the wall. She pushed aside Box 462’s door, feeling the raised numbers with her hands. The slot was empty.

“You know who owned it?”

“As you know, Agent Strike, the purpose of such a box is to keep the contents secure. And secret.”

Strike smirked and examined the rest of the room. She drummed a finger against one of the locked boxes. A hollow ringing noise responded. Strike tried another.

“These are all empty.”

“I doubt that very much, Agent Strike.”

“I’d like to take a look.”

“That’s not possible,” Sheriff Hendricks said with a steely glare. “Privacy.”

“Who has the keys?”

“The bank employees have access to the safety deposit boxes, as do the customers.”

“Seems a little unusual,” Strike said. “Being private and all.”

“For exigent circumstances. Such as today.”

“Whatever you say.”

Strike pointed towards the stairs, indicating that Sheriff Hendricks could lead the way out. One box, one specific number. Nothing else taken. No cash, no jewels. Maybe because there was nothing of value in this town except the contents of box 462.

Hopefully Keene would have better luck tracking down Mitchell. The sooner they got that damn talisman, the sooner they could run far away from Tillus. A hasty exit suited Strike just fine.

She reached the top of the stairs and soon she was staring out the ruined glass, from the teller’s vantage point. Strike tried to consider what was going through the woman’s mind as Mitchell demanded the box.

Probably just fear.

Strike watched the sheriff head into the lobby. A new man in a deputy’s uniform stood near the tape outline. She exited the counter and approached.

He flashed a quick smile.

Then he brought an aerosol can out from his shirt pocket. Strike heard a
whoosh
as something was sprayed into her eyes.

Then the world went dark.

“So,” Keene said, his mind searching for topics of discussion, but finding scarce few of interest, “you like your job?”

“It’s all right,” Duke said. His hands had disappeared inside the oversized blazer. That made Keene nervous. Strike’s instincts were wearing off on him.

Keene brushed his hands along the worn brick. The alley was no more than five feet wide, the walls so close together that Keene could reach out and touch them both at the same time with ease. He followed the blood, his neural implants picking up the faint bio matter trail.

It’d been a long shot, with the rain and twelve hours passing. With the standard issue neural implants he’d received back on his home planet of Apollus, 200,000 years ago, tracking Mitchell would have been an impossibility. But the USB firmware upgrades Fox had left behind before his time travelling exploits into the nineteenth century had dramatically improved the basic feature set. The new neural operation system—nOS 4.32—was pretty nifty.

And so, after fiddling around during the three months that he’d been catching sun and sleep in his beachside villa, he’d found out that his thermal sensor now included a scanning mechanism for biological matter.

He could even sort by type, DNA markers, species—anything, really.

Beat the standard language translation and vitals assessment modules.

Keene had selected blood from the holographic menu floating in the ether that only he could see, narrowing the search down to James Mitchell’s DNA. The blood droplets lit up on the ground with a green, radioactive glow.

“Just what lead are you following up on, anyway?” Duke said.

“We’re the FBI. We got satellites. Snowden, baby.”

“Oh.”

Keene rounded the corner of the alley, thinking
damn, that was easy
, cut past a diner and gas station, and after a light walk found himself on a residential street. Two story wooden houses, white picket fences, green grass in the yard. Anything a family could want.

Except people.

Or lights.

Even near midnight, not a single house light was on, making the glistening asphalt and dim glow of the moon foreboding. Menacing, like a wolf’s slobbery jowls.

“Everybody goes to sleep early, I guess,” Keene said.

“Curfew.”

Keene stopped in the middle of the wet road. Duke looked at the ground, refusing to elaborate. He had the expression of a child who had misbehaved and wished he could take back his misstep. His hands were grasping at something in his pocket, his eyes flitting back and forth.

“I’m real sorry, Mr. Keene, but—”

Keene punched the detective in the head, dropping him with a single blow. The young man crumpled to the asphalt, his head knocking against the slick surface. A gun skittered away, near a gutter covered in leaves.

Duke groaned as Keene raced towards the standard issue pistol. Keene noticed one of the house’s curtains swinging in the dark. But no lights came on.

He cocked the pistol and aimed it at Duke. “You can call me Keene, you know.”

Duke rubbed his head and tried to get up, but lost his balance. “You hit me so damn hard.”

“That’s what happens when you try to shoot someone.”

“I wasn’t going to shoot you,” Duke said. “Just scare you.”

“Or maybe you were getting rid of me.” Duke looked sullen and turned away. “Yeah, I know you’re holding people here. Get your cuffs out.”

“We’re doing important work, Mr. Keene. We’re guarding paradise.” The cuffs glinted in the dim light. “Until Cladius can save the world.”

“Who the hell is Cladius?”

Duke pursed his lips together and refused to answer.

“Fine. Get up.” Keene waved the gun, indicating that it was time to hurry. Duke complied. “Cuff yourself. Behind your back.”

“That’s kind of difficult.”

“Fine, one wrist. There you go.” Keene walked over and yanked the detective’s hands backwards. “Done.” The cuffs clicked shut.

“What are you going to do?

“We’re headed towards the house at the end of street.” Keene pointed the gun towards a residence that matched all the others. A carbon copy, except for one thing.