The Price of Disrespect (Gray Spear Society Book 6) (28 page)

"I've run into some unusual security. I need a minute to deal with it."

Tawni covered her phone with her hand and walked over to Wesley. "Could you use your gift to help with the interrogation?"

"I don't want to," he said.

"I bet you could get the truth out of those men really quick. You just have to show them the light."

"That would work."

She furrowed her brow. "So why don't you?"

"I told you," he said. "I don't want to. I used my gift too much lately. I promised I wouldn't."

She turned to Aaron. He just shrugged as if it were out of his control. The rest of the team looked annoyed and remained quiet.

"Those men are in terrible pain," Tawni said.

"I know," Wesley said. "It's fine."

"Fine? What does that mean? Are you having fun?"

"There's no reason for me to participate. Aaron is doing a great job."

"That's not the point," she said. "Members of a team contribute whether it's necessary or not."

He snorted. "Before I fixed your mind, how many times did you contribute to a team?"

The question stopped her cold. His glistening blue eyes just looked at her, waiting for a response. It was impossible to lie to those eyes, and the truth was too embarrassing to speak. She grunted and walked away.

She pressed her phone against her ear. "Bethany, what's going on?"

"This will take some time," Bethany said. "Tell Aaron it's a good lead."

"Bye." Tawni put away her phone and turned to Aaron. "The number is a hit."

"Jim." Aaron faced the black man. "Tell me something else, or I'll find another place to use the sander." He revved up the sander until it made a loud whine.

"Pablo told you everything!" Jim said.

"I don't believe you." Aaron brought the sander close to his ear.

"The Nonsectarians have a lot of juice in the company. Somebody big is backing them."

"I guessed that much. Who is it?"

"I don't know!" Jim cried.

Aaron stared at him for a long moment. A strange darkness seemed to gather around Aaron. He drew a black Berretta pistol with a suppressor and fired twice, hitting Jim and Pablo in the foreheads. They instantly died.

Aaron faced his team. "Let's go home and get some sleep. We'll reconvene tomorrow as soon as the twins have anything to report."

Everybody gathered up the tools and the folding table. The corpses were left hanging.

"What about the dead bodies, sir?" Tawni asked. "Shouldn't we bury them?"

Aaron shook his head. "It's springtime. Hungry critters need to feed after a long winter."

She winced.

* * *

Nancy's voice woke up Aaron from a sound sleep. "Sir," she said, "there is trouble downstairs in the lobby. Hotel security is harassing Kamal. They want to see his hotel key, but he doesn't have one."

He opened his eyes and looked up at the tiled ceiling of his bedroom. Her disembodied voice had come from speakers above. He remembered it was Nancy's shift in the security booth.

Sluggishly, his mind clicked into gear. He had gone to sleep at four in the morning, and the clock showed 7:30. He was tired.

"Where is Jack?" he said to the ceiling.

"In the kitchen eating breakfast."

"Tell him to put on a business suit."

"Yes, sir," Nancy said.

Aaron rolled over and grabbed his phone from his nightstand. He called the hotel manager's office.

"Hello, this is Mr. Rosenblum."

"This is Mr. Berrycloth," Aaron said in a gravelly voice.

"Oh! What can I do for you, sir?"

"One of my men is in the lobby. Dark skin, medium height, thin. Your security is giving him a hard time. Tell them to stop immediately. He needs to go about his business."

"How do you know this, sir?" Rosenblum said.

"Just take care of it. I also want to meet you and the entire hotel security staff in a half-hour. The doorman, too. Attendance is mandatory."

"Yes, sir."

Aaron closed his phone. He flopped back onto his bed.
If it's not one thing, it's another,
he thought.

* * *

Aaron stood at the front of a hotel conference room. Ten men and two women were seated including Mr. Rosenblum. Aaron recognized a few faces but most were unfamiliar to him. He didn't spend much time among the hotel staff. Jack stood in the corner, wearing a black business suit and a black cowboy hat.

Golden wallpaper covered the conference room walls. A black and gold hexagonal pattern was woven into the carpet. Brass lighting fixtures added to the sense that Aaron was inside a gold vault. He had no experience as an interior designer and limited artistic sensibilities, but even he could tell the décor went a little overboard.

"Thank you for coming on such short notice," Aaron said. "Only a few of you have met me, but I think most of you have heard my name. I'm Mr. Berrycloth. I own this hotel."

That statement got everybody's attention. The ownership of the Rosemont Tower Hotel was a subject of wide speculation.

Aaron continued, "We had a little trouble in the lobby earlier. I want to make sure it doesn't happen again."

He gave everybody in the room a sheet of paper. Each sheet showed pictures of every member the Chicago cell. There were no names or other identifying clues.

"These people work for me," he said. "You may see them walking through the hotel occasionally. Your instructions are simple. Leave them alone. Don't ask them questions. Most importantly, don't try to follow them. Do you understand?"

He looked around the room. A man in the back raised his hand.

"Yes?" Aaron pointed at him.

"What are they doing here?"

"They're not criminals and that's all you need to know. If you stay out of my business and don't bother my special employees, all of you can expect a nice Christmas bonus. On the other hand, if we have another incident like this morning, those responsible will be shown the door immediately. Now give me the sheets back."

Aaron went around and collected all the printouts. He counted to confirm he hadn't missed one.

"Your staff works in this hotel?" another man said. "Where?"

Aaron glared at him. "You're fired. Go."

"What?"

"If you're not out of the building in ten minutes, you'll be arrested for trespassing on my private property."

The man looked around but nobody spoke up for him. Muttering to himself, he left the conference room.

"There is always an idiot." Aaron shook his head. "Also, if you discover something in the hotel that doesn't seem right, call this number." He handed out gray business cards that just showed a phone number. "Call the police
after
you call me. I want to be the first to hear about a serious problem, not the last. Timely information will earn you a reward."

He sipped from a mug of coffee. It was lukewarm and bitter, but he needed the caffeine.

"Finally, this is Mr. Black." He pointed at Jack in the corner. "He has a particular interest in the security of this hotel. Don't be surprised if he shows up in odd places at odd times. He's like the house detective. Are there any questions?
Intelligent
questions?"

A woman raised her hand. "I have one. I noticed all the windows look like bulletproof glass, but nobody can tell me why. Even Mr. Rosenblum doesn't know."

"I like to feel very safe. Call it a fetish."

She frowned.

Aaron took a thick roll of hundred dollar bills out of his pocket and handed it to Mr. Rosenblum. "Divide this up and give everybody an equal amount. It's a token of my appreciation for being good employees who don't ask annoying questions. Thank you. Let's go, Mr. Black."

Aaron and Jack walked out the door.

* * *

Tawni looked at herself in the bathroom mirror of her hotel room. Her own face seemed strange to her. The last few days had changed her in subtle but visible ways. Some of the anger was gone from her eyes. Her expression was calmer than she had ever seen it. Most peculiar of all, the brown color of her skin seemed darker and richer than before.

Silver rings decorated her eyebrows, three in each. She had always thought they made her look cool, but now they struck her as silly. They would attract attention, and in her business, she didn't want any attention.

My business,
she thought.
When did it become my business?

At some point, she had accepted her role as a
legionnaire
. The Gray Spear Society had become her people. She didn't even know when it had happened. She also didn't know why she had fought against it.

She gently removed the rings from her eyebrows. As each one came out, she felt a slight sting. She didn't know what to do with them, so she threw them in the garbage. They were useless junk, relics of a Tawni that was gone forever.

She left the bathroom and got dressed. It promised to be another brutally long day.

Twenty minutes later, she arrived in the entry chamber of headquarters. Jack was in the security booth, and he wore a stylish black cowboy hat. She wasn't a fan of the Western look, but he managed to pull it off.

He smiled at her with genuine warmth. "Good morning."

"Good morning," she said. "Do you know when we're having our meeting?"

"You have just enough time for a quick breakfast."

The side door buzzed and she left the chamber. She went straight to the kitchen. It was crowded with people who were also trying to cram in a breakfast. Smythe was frying bacon on a skillet while Odelia buttered toast. Norbert was cooking hard-boiled eggs. Wesley was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with bagels instead of bread.

Tawni didn't have the energy for anything elaborate. She poured herself a bowl of cereal with milk.

She sat near Wesley. Her feelings about the boy were mixed. Sometimes he could be a sweet and vulnerable kid. At other times he was as cold as an old school gangster, and his gift was frighteningly powerful.

"You were pretty chill last night," she said. "I guess you've seen stuff like that before."

He nodded. "My parents interrogated people when they really needed to. I've watched Atalanta do it. Aaron is gentle compared to her. And Yvonne—" He grimaced. "—only needs a minute to break a man."

She had a hard time seeing Aaron as gentle, but she was learning not to argue with the Voice of Truth.

"What does Yvonne do?"

"Her gift is the ability to digest her enemies," he said. "Roots grow out of her palms and into their flesh. Can you imagine being eaten from the inside out? She can do it very slowly if she wants. A nibble of liver here and a nibble of brain there."

Tawni was horrified. "That's awful!"

"The Lord's Executioner. She doesn't just kill her enemies. She defiles them." Wesley took a bite from his bagel sandwich. "But I don't mind her. She's the nicest person on the team."

"I haven't seen your protection team lately."

"They were in the woods with us last night."

"I didn't see any sign of them," she said.

"Aaron noticed."

Tawni was uncomfortable with this revelation. She decided to focus on her bowl of cereal. She didn't want to be caught half-way through her meal when the meeting started. She didn't expect Aaron would wait for her to finish eating.

Everybody else sat and ate with equal determination.

When the time came, the whole group migrated to the conference room. Aaron and the twins were already there. Bethany and Leanna looked exhausted, and Tawni wondered if they had worked straight through the night.

"Let's begin," Aaron said. "Bethany, the meeting is yours."

Bethany yawned. "Thank you, sir. We disassembled the control module and found the chip that generates the carrier wave. An analysis of the microcode produced this."

She held up a sheet of paper. It showed a complex equation with some symbols Tawni didn't recognize. Bethany placed the sheet in the middle of the table.

"What is that?" Tawni said.

Wesley took the sheet and stared at the formula. He appeared confused.

"The universe is mathematical in nature," Bethany said. "The bones of reality are made of equations. Really, there is nothing else."

"What about emotions?" Tawni was proud of herself for that quick comeback.

"Everything has an equation. The formula for love is one of the most important of all."

"Really?"

"May I continue with my presentation, ma'am?" Bethany said.

Tawni saw irritated expressions around the table, and her face grew warm. "Go ahead."

Wesley took a pen from a cup in the center of the table. He began to doodle on the sheet.

"The bedrock of existence is a particular mathematical system," Bethany said. "Leanna and I have devoted ourselves to learning that system. There are other possible systems. Most are inert, but a few are toxic. They corrode and corrupt reality like acid. The formula on that paper comes from one of those forbidden systems."

"What does that mean for us?" Aaron said.

"An enemy of God must be responsible. There is no way a human could've produced that formula on his own. It would've killed him."

"That formula alone is proof?"

"Yes, sir." Bethany nodded. "I'm certain of it. We saw something like this before when we analyzed General Doolittle's implant."

Aaron looked at the other members of his team. "It sounds like we have our marching orders. We must find and kill the Nonsectarians."

"All of them?" Tawni said.

"Every last one. Our mission is to destroy God's enemies."

"What if there are a lot of them, sir?"

"
Every
last one," he said.

She didn't doubt he meant it. Still, he was talking about mass murder. Even after everything she had seen, she had reservations about this plan.

Wesley was hard at work on the paper. He didn't seem to be paying attention to the conversation.

"Do you have anything else?" Aaron said. "What about that extension number we extracted last night?"

"We ran into a surprising amount of security when we traced that number," Bethany said. "Clear Path has a very sophisticated internal system. Eventually, we got an address. It's two miles north of downtown, near the river."