The Syndicate (Timewaves Book 1) (22 page)

The Ritz did not disappoint. As soon as we pulled to a stop in front of the entrance, I knew the hotel was every bit as opulent as I’d imagined. A bellhop wearing an adorable black and gold uniform, complete with top hat, held open the door of our vehicle. His twin did the same with the majestic doors leading inside. My eye was immediately drawn to the crystal chandelier hanging high above the lobby, sparkling brightly in a way no photograph could ever capture. Though I tried not to gape at my surroundings, I felt stuck in a perpetual state of awe.

Unlike me, Cyrus seemed entirely unaffected by the setting. In his defense, he’d probably been there before. Or maybe tracking down a rogue runner simply took precedence over gawking at the elegant surroundings. Whatever the reason, my boss strode purposefully across the marble floors, straight to the hotel’s reception desk. He spoke to the female standing behind it in fluent French. The woman seemed to melt a little when he fixed her with his piercing green gaze.

He showed the manipulated photograph of Lachlan Shepard to the receptionist.

“This is my son, Lachlan,” Cyrus told her, emphasizing the missing runner’s name in an attempt to garner sympathy. “I was told he’s staying here. Is it too much to ask for his room number?”

“It is against the hotel’s policies to give out personal information about our guests,” she told Cyrus regretfully. Leaning over, she rested her ample chest on the marble countertop. “But…I can see how concerned you are for your son.”

“Terribly concerned,” Cyrus insisted, also leaning in slightly. “My son is delicate, even a little unstable at times. He left home without his medication. His cousin and I have been so worried.”

My fictitious family is growing by the day,
I thought, realizing this meant I was to be Cyrus’s niece for the foreseeable future. The new hereditary ties would prove fortuitous, should Gaige’s legal troubles continue. Posing as our uncle would give Cyrus reason to involve himself in any future interrogations or proceedings.

If only I could choose my real parents so easily.

“I understand,” the woman said, nodding. “If you will wait one moment, I will check our records, Mr. Shepard.”

“Thank you,” Cyrus said, reaching across the divide to squeeze her hand.

The attendant walked to the other end of the counter and began flipping through a ledger. Cyrus tucked the picture of Lachlan back inside his leather portfolio.

“Laying it on thick,” I teased in a low voice.

Cyrus shrugged. “I may be old, Stassi, but I am not dead. I do know how to flirt, when necessary.”

My boss was unarguably good-looking for an older guy, but it was still an awkward exchange. Thankfully, the attendant returned a moment later with a brass key in one hand.

“Your son is indeed a guest here,” she told Cyrus, hazel eyes darting back and forth as if worried about being overhead. “He rented a suite and paid in advance for one month. It appears he is scheduled to remain for another week.”

One month? Odd. Lachlan’s syndicate knew he was missing because he hadn’t returned on time for work. Planning to stay after his leave ended didn’t make any sense, unless Lachlan never intended to go back.

The receptionist handed Cyrus the key. “Suite 1408. I can show you the way, if you like?”

“That is a kind offer, but I think it best for his cousin and I to check on him alone,” Cyrus began, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “We cannot be certain what state my son will be in, I would not want to expose you to anything untoward.”

Clearly disappointed that she wouldn’t be spending the next ten minutes chatting up my boss, the woman forced a smile. “Of course, Mr. Shepard. Just return the key when you are through.”

She pointed us towards the elevators. Cyrus and I set off in search of the missing runner.

The door to suite 1408 had a “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging from the handle when we arrived.

“Let me go in first, Stassi,” Cyrus said, holding up a hand to force me back. He passed me the portfolio. “Hold on to this for me, will you?”

I clutched the leather dossier to my chest and watched as my boss withdrew a very small, very 25
th
century revolver from inside his sport coat.

“Is that really necessary?” I whispered loudly and a tad frantically.

“I wasn’t kidding when I said Shepard might need medical attention. Bane has been worried about him for while now. He’d thought Lachlan’s hectic running schedule might be too much and had hoped the time off would be good for him. Then he learned that this wasn’t the guy’s first illicit jump. Shepard routinely free jumps, apparently. Too many of those can lead to an illness much worse than time sickness.”

“Like a crazy person kind of sickness?” I squeaked.

Cyrus lifted his eyebrows and shrugged. “Just stay out here until I make sure it’s safe.”

I swallowed hard and took several steps back from the door, nodding my acquiescence.

Cyrus slipped the key into the lock and pushed open the door. Gun barrel first, he entered the room like a trained enforcer.

I chewed my thumbnail, anxiously waiting for my boss to give me the all-clear. The twenty seconds that followed felt more like twenty hours, though every moment without gunfire steadied my nerves just a little bit more.

“He’s not here.” Cyrus popped his head into the hallway, holstered his gun, and waved me inside the suite.

I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

Molly was right; being a runner is for the birds.

Suite 1408 was made up of one bedroom and a sitting area. A very modern, very out-of-place suitcase and matching duffel bag were sitting by the front door. Perfectly fluffed throw pillows were arranged strategically in the corners of the brocade sofas, and several Paris guidebooks were open on the coffee table. A wet bar in the main room boasted bottles of gin, vodka, and scotch.

The door to the adjoining bedroom was slightly ajar. Through the opening, I could see a queen-sized bed that was immaculately made. Given the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, I was guessing that Lachlan hadn’t slept in the room the night before. In fact, we had no way of knowing the last time he had.

“Why don’t you look through the closet? I’ll take the bathroom,” Cyrus said.

From an interior pocket of his coat, my boss produced two pairs of latex gloves and several vacu-seal bags similar to the artifact pouches. He handed me one pair of gloves and three of the bags.

Cyrus reached inside his coat again, this time withdrawing a rectangular tin the length of his palm. He removed the lid to reveal a white, waxy substance. I watched with fascination as my boss pressed the hotel room key into the wax.

“Did you just copy that key?” I asked.

“Technically, I made an impression of the key,” he replied with a wry smile. “The alchemists can make a duplicate from that. It’s a crude method of reproduction, but an extremely effective one. Now we can come back, if need be.” He pocketed the tin and the key. “Let’s do a thorough search this go-round, that way we can avoid a second trip.”

“Of course. But what exactly am I looking for again?” I asked, placing the portfolio on the coffee table so that I could pull on the gloves.

“Anything that might tell us where this guy is now or where he’s been.”

Following orders, I walked into the bedroom and found the closet. Period-appropriate men’s clothing hung from wooden hangers, the garments divided into shirts and pants, and arranged by color.

“Can you say ‘obsessive compulsive’?” I muttered, thumbing through the clothes.

I searched the pockets of everything, hoping for a receipt or ticket stub. The search yielded only a gum wrapper and a 1971 U.S. penny. Just to be safe, I placed both in a plastic pouch to show Cyrus.

Something about the clothing struck me as odd. It looked right for the period, and yet something was bothering me.

They’re not reproductions
, I realized. So Lachlan hadn’t brought the clothes with him. It was slightly surprising, since he wouldn’t have been able to borrow from our customs station without drawing unwanted questions. I wasn’t sure if this was a real clue or not, but made a mental note to inform Cyrus.

On the floor of the closet, I found a laundry bag with the Ritz logo embroidered on the front. Inside were three pairs of crumpled wool pants, a cream sweater vest, two white undershirts with sweat stains, and several pairs of men’s underwear.

“Oh, gross!” I exclaimed, dropping the bag as though it had teeth.

Alarmed, Cyrus rushed into the bedroom. “What? Did you find something?”

“Dirty unmentionables,” I groaned, pointing towards the laundry bag.

Cyrus narrowed his gaze, confused. It took him a minute, but realization finally dawned. “Oh, you mean underpants? Anything else?”

I showed him the gum wrapper and penny. “Do these mean anything to you?”

Cyrus shook his head, but he held out his hand for the items anyway.

“Have you checked all the pockets?” he asked.

“The clean ones.”

“What about the dirty ones?”

“Do I get hazard pay for this?” I asked.

Cyrus worked unsuccessfully to hide a smile.

“Let me know what you find.”

I picked up the first pair of pants and patted the pockets.

“Ah, gotcha,” I muttered when my fingers felt the small, hard lump in the right front pocket. Wedging my hand inside, I grasped the slim object and withdrew a camera similar to the one I owned.

Now we’re getting somewhere,
I thought, slipping the camera into one of the pouches.

I was turning out the pockets in the third pair of trousers when I heard soft, rhythmic knocking from the other side of the bedroom.

I poked my head through an opening in the closet doors and saw my boss rapping his knuckles lightly around the frame of a seemingly random door on the far side of the bed. Cyrus reached for the knob and gave it a tentative twist. The door opened noiselessly.

“What’s in there?” I asked.

Cyrus gave a short laugh. “Another door. I assume it leads to the neighboring suite. No knob, though.” He repeated the knocking pattern on the second door. “Definitely open space on the other side,” he murmured, more to himself than me. Closing the first door, Cyrus gave me his undivided attention. “Find anything?”

“I did—Lachlan’s camera.” I held up the pouch with the camera inside.

Three long, sharp bangs followed by a muffled, “Housekeeping”, from the front door of the suite made us both freeze.

“We’ll go through the saved pictures back at the townhouse. Anything else?”

Since we were now running short on time, I turned the pants that I was still holding upside down and shook them. Several coins fell to the carpet in a series of soft thuds. Then, four ticket stubs floated free from their fabric prison. Squatting, I read the information on each one aloud. My heart pounded harder and harder with every mangled French word that crossed my lips.

I looked up and met Cyrus’s intense gaze, knowing even before I voiced my next thought that my boss had already reached the same conclusion.

“These stubs are all for shows where the Night Gentleman struck. Lachlan is the killer.”

“DOES THAT HURT?
It looks like it hurts,” I asked Gaige, squinting up at him from my perch on the sitting room sofa to better appraise the damage to his face. “Who knew a group of erudite men was capable of inflicting so much physical damage?”

This was the first I’d seen of Gaige since we’d parted ways that morning. When he’d sauntered down the stairs to join me in waiting for Ines to arrive, so that we could head over to Gertrude Stein’s party, I’d been more than a little shocked. My partner’s day of boxing with three of the century’s most celebrated authors had left him with one very impressive black eye.

Fingers outstretched, I reached towards his face as if my touch would sooth the shiner. Why? I couldn’t say. Maybe it was that mothering nature Molly liked to tease me about.

Gaige swatted my hand away before I made contact. I wasn’t sure whether it was because his ego was bruised from getting beat up by a group of intellectuals, or that he was proud of the manly badge and didn’t want to feel babied. Either way, he waved off my concern over the dark bruising.

“My eye isn’t important right now,” Gaige grumbled irritably, though a small, satisfied smile skimmed across his lips when he touched the discolored skin over his cheekbone. He dropped down beside me on the couch.

“How did it go down at the police station?” I asked. “Since you’re here, I’m guessing it was okay?”

Gaige grimaced. He held up his hand and wiggled it back and forth to indicate so-so.

“That good, huh?”

“You should have seen that inspector’s face just before the line-up, when I handed him the travel documents. Oh, man, Stass.
Priceless
. He turned bright red and his eyes bugged out of his face. It was awesome.”

Gaige’s colorful description brought to mind the dancer from the night before. The way she’d looked as she knelt dying on stage right in front of us. I felt the blood drain from my face and my stomach started doing backflips. It was still unfathomable that I’d sat fifteen feet away as a woman was murdered.

Though I’d been focusing on the mission all day, distracting myself and keeping busy, every once in a while the scene would pop back into my head like glimpses of a nightmare. My partner’s offhand remark brought it all rushing back.

Immediately realizing his mistake, Gaige backpedaled.

“Damn, Stass, I’m
so
sorry. I don’t know why I said that. I wasn’t thinking, I’m such a donk.” He slung an arm around my shoulder and squeezed. All traces of humor were gone when he continued. “Last night was awful.” He shook his head, as if to dislodge the memory from his brain. “I still just…I’ve never seen someone die before.”

“Me neither. I’ll need therapy when we get home,” I tried to joke.

I couldn’t think about those poor dancers. Every time I did, it felt like I was the one gasping for breath. I kept hearing the words of the maniac in my head.

“Are you not amused? I know I am.”

How could someone be so cruel?

Gaige rewarded my efforts to lighten the mood with a quip of his own. “Me, too. Maybe we can go halfsies on a couple of sessions. You know, like a two-for-one deal. It’ll be like couples’ counseling…except, not.”

And that was why, despite his many flaws, I loved Gaige like the brother I never wanted.

“Now that they have the travel documents, are the police done harassing you?” I asked, needing to change the subject. Any more talk of the previous night’s tragedy would make it too difficult to play the part of a whimsical socialite that night.

“Yeah, about that,” Gaige started, his quick change in mood making me nervous. “I have good news and bad news.”

“Start with the good,” I decided.

“The man who was approached by the Night Gentleman did not pick me out of the line-up.”

“That’s amazing news. Isn’t that all that matters?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, no,” my partner replied. “He also didn’t say it
wasn’t
me. Since the Night Gentleman was wearing both a mask and top hat, which is part of why the witness believed he was with the show, the man didn’t see enough to say with certainty whether or not it was any of us. So, basically, all his failure to identify me accomplished was preventing the inspector from locking me up today.”

“Shant,” I swore. “You said you gave the inspector the travel documents, right? Do you think he’s going to check on them? We’re going to be screwed if he does. Delivering forged papers looks worse than if you hadn’t given the police anything at all.”

“I know, right? And I don’t
think
the inspector is going to check,” Gaige hedged. “I
know
he is. He told me as much himself.”

“What would—”

“Ready, my dears?” Ines’s voice suddenly trilled from the foyer, effectively cutting me off. She strode into the living room, the ever-present cloud of smoke trailing her like a shadow. “Jacque is outside.”

“Where’s Cyrus?” Gaige asked. “Does he not want to join us for this little shindig?”

Ines furrowed her brow, most likely confused by the word “shindig”. She must have puzzled out the meaning on her own, though, because she didn’t ask for clarification.

“Cyrus has other matters to attend to this evening. I am sure he will explain it all to you in the morning. For now, I can say my people have encountered a small wrinkle. The name on the card you received, Stassi, he does not appear to exist. We have found no mention of a Mitchell T. Baylarian in our records. Cyrus believes your historians will have better luck.” She sniffed, as if offended that the syndicate’s people, with their advanced technology, would be able to locate a man the alchemists could not. “Now, are you both ready? We are already running behind schedule.”

“Whose fault is that?” I mumbled under my breath.

Disregarding my comment, Ines spun and walked purposefully back to the front door, obviously expecting Gaige and me to follow. We both stood and obeyed her silent command.

I opened my mouth, prepared to resume the conversation from before Ines’s interruption. Gaige caught my eye and shook his head ever so slightly. His meaning was clear: let’s not discuss this in front of Ines. His expression, on the other hand, made it impossible to tell why he didn’t want to. Did not trust the alchemist? Or was he simply not in the mood for the flippant attitude that seemed to accompany anything remotely serious with her?

Personally, I found Ines irritating but harmless.

Either way, there was no more talk of death and psychopaths on the ride over to Gertrude Stein’s home. Instead, Gaige gave us a blow-by-blow account of his day in the boxing ring. With his dramatic retelling, it sounded like he’d gone ten rounds with the 2405 Heavyweight Champion, Marcus Maximus, instead of dodging a couple of punches from writers. Or not dodging them, in his case. Nonetheless, I was glad to see him in good spirits. As traumatized as I was over my police interrogation, it was nothing compared to what Gaige had been through.

Judging by the lack of cars and people outside of Stein’s house, our trio was among the last to arrive for the night’s festivities. Leave it to Ines to feel as though a grand entrance was in order.

Gaige and I followed our guide through the tall front gate and across the courtyard beyond it. The cobblestoned patio had a small fountain in the middle, and paths trailed off into the darkness in either direction. From photographs, I knew that carefully tended gardens lay in the shadows beyond.

Ines paused at the front door to 27 rue de Fleurus and took a deep breath. When she turned to face us, a feigned brightness shone from her expression.

“Lock it up,” Gaige said, pointing at me.

“You lock it up,” I replied with a smile, mentally preparing myself for the pivotal night ahead.

Ines raised one eyebrow, looking at Gaige and me like we were weirdos. “This little act that the two of you perform, it is very odd,” she said.

Gaige shrugged. “Maybe. But it works. Why mess with success?”

“It had better,” Ines replied crisply. “Tonight, there is no room for error.”

And with those words of encouragement, she pushed the door open and entered without knocking.