Trace of Magic (5 page)

I could see a weaving of old trace. Most were Josh and Taylor, though it looked like she didn’t come in here all that often. I had a feeling the bedroom would tell a different story.

There were three new tracks overlaid on the old. I crouched and reached through the dimensional plane to touch them. I hissed and jerked erect.

“What is it?”

I didn’t hesitate to lie. Well, not so much lie as withhold some important truth. “There’s no trace of anyone but Josh, Taylor, and three others. One of them is a tinker,” I said, since he’d already figured that out.

The other two were haunters. Haunters were rare enough that most of them worked for one of the Tyet factions. If I told Price they’d been here, he’d be just as likely to protect them than not, and block me from finding Josh. But why the hell had they come after my almost brother-in-law in the first place? I couldn’t begin to imagine what had been worth sending a tinker and two haunters.

Tinkers weren’t as versatile or powerful in the world of magic as the main five abilities—tracer, traveller, maker, dreamer, and binder. But they could be nasty all the same. They, as their name implied, tinkered with things. They had the ability to make small things move. Not exactly teleportation, more like bending, breaking, mending, and so on. A lot of them were doctors. My bet is this one had been responsible for torturing Josh and making sure he didn’t bleed to death. His track said he was strong.

The haunters were another story. They were a little like dreamers, in that they could mess around in your mind. But mostly they picked up on emotions and could amplify them. They could find your nightmares and make you live them like they were real. They could trap you in a nightmare for a little while. The good thing was that their magic wore off faster than most. Haunters weren’t that powerful, but with two of them keeping a regular vigil, they could’ve driven Josh to insanity pretty damned quick.

“One tinker? The other two weren’t magic users?” Price asked.

“Not that I could tell,” I said, and the lie rolled off my tongue easily.

“And there was no one else?”

“That’s what I said.” It annoyed me that he seemed to doubt me. I know I was pretending to be a hack, but I wasn’t supposed to be that bad.

He nodded thoughtfully. “So they don’t have a second hostage. That’s good. If he can hold off talking, it will give us time to find him.”

Taylor could have been here. She could have walked right into it, and they’d have used her to make him tell them what they wanted to know. Then they’d have killed her.

I turned away so that Price wouldn’t see my reaction. A second later I felt his hand on my back. He turned me to face him.

“Are you okay?”

His dark sapphire eyes roamed over my face, and there was a gentleness to them that warmed the ice running through my veins. But it wasn’t about me. It was habit. He was a cop, and he was just reassuring the witness. Okay, I wasn’t a witness, but close enough.

I stepped away. “Taylor could have been here.”

He nodded understanding.

I heard the bathroom door open and went to find my sister. She stood in the hallway, arms wrapped around herself, and I could see her starting to shake. I took her to the kitchen. It was as much a disaster as the rest of the condo. She’d found the tea, coffee, and sugar and had made hot water. The teapot was insulated metal and hadn’t broken, and the French press was plastic. I cleaned off one of the barstools and sat her down, then poured her a cup of the sweet tea. She sipped it and then made a face at the syrupy taste.

“Drink it,” Price said, coming in behind me. He picked his way through the mess on the floor, opening cupboards and drawers, exploring. “You need the heat and the sugar or you’ll go into shock.”

To my surprise, Taylor drank without another protest.

He poured coffee into a cup that had lost its handle and spiked it with a heaping spoonful of sugar. “You too,” he said, holding the drink out.

“Thanks, dad,” I said with a grimace. Luckily I do like my coffee sweet and with cream, but I wasn’t going hunting in the refrigerator for any. Talk about insensitive. Instead, I sipped the bittersweet brew, glowering at Price all the while.
I
didn’t need him bossing me around.

I took my coffee and went to the front door and out into the hallway. I was betting the kidnappers had used a null to keep anyone from following. I was right. There was no incoming trail for the tinker and haunters and no track for Josh leaving. I had a feeling they’d used a better one than Nancy Jane Squires’s kidnappers. I doubted the trace would be coming back.

I picked my way uneasily through the living room, looking for any clues. The null wards were completely drained. I walked back down the hall past the kitchen, giving a little shake of my head at Price’s questioning look.

There hadn’t been any other women in Josh’s bedroom. Taylor was the only one. She’d been there today, no doubt looking for Josh. But she’d also been there repeatedly for a long time. I could have unraveled back years, but I didn’t need to. It was clear that though they’d broken up, she was still sleeping with him.

I shrugged one shoulder. None of my business.

There wasn’t much else to see in the room except the wreckage of Josh’s very neat life. If he survived whatever had happened to him, he was going to have a hell of a time putting it all back together.

Price propped himself in the doorway behind me. It felt like he was standing in the doorway of a jail cell and I was trapped inside.

“Got any idea what they wanted?”

I shook my head. “None.”

“Your sister says she doesn’t either.”

“You think she’s lying?” I asked without heat. He was a cop, after all, and witnesses did lie.

“Probably not. But I’ll bet she knows more than she thinks she does.”

I thought the same.

“I need to talk to her some more. But not here. She needs to go somewhere she feels safe, where she can open up.”

“Are you making this an official investigation?” I’ll admit I was surprised, though I’m not sure why. He was a good cop, when he wasn’t enforcing for Touray.

“Any reason I shouldn’t?”

I could hear the suspicion in his voice. “Not as far as I know,” I lied. “But you have this other case. The one that almost got us killed tonight. I didn’t get the feeling you wanted to be working on anything else.”

“I don’t. But I can see I’m not peeling you off this, so I might as well speed things up. I’m going to call in the crime-scene guys to see what they can find.”

I did my best to look like that was good news. They’d have a tracer, and he’d figure out pretty damned quick that there’d been two haunters here and that I’d lied about them. He wasn’t going to take that well. And if this did turn out to be one of his boss’s jobs or an ally’s, Price was not only going to stop helping, he was going to do everything he could to get me out of the way. Hell, even if an enemy gang was responsible, he could shut me down just to keep peace.

My jaw knotted. Let him try. I wasn’t going to be so easy to kill, and that’s what he’d have to do to keep me from finding Josh.

Chapter 5

I FOLLOWED PRICE back into the kitchen. Taylor was sitting at the island, clutching her cup, staring blindly at nothing. She was shivering. I took the cup out of her hand, and she jumped and yelped. It would have been funny if she wasn’t so scared. You’d think from the way she acted with Josh that my sister was weak. But she’s not. She’s made out of steel most of the time. She’s a pilot and has no fear. She flies charters out of Diamond City. She learned to fly in the service and flew a lot in Afghanistan, Iraq, and a few other places we weren’t supposed to be. She does not scare easy. Nothing knocks her off balance except Josh. He’s always been her own personal kryptonite.

“It’s okay,” I said. “We’re going to figure out what happened. I promise.” Well,
I
was, anyway.

Price started punching numbers into his cell, and after a couple of seconds, he gave Josh’s address to someone on the other end, saying something about a possible homicide. Taylor heard the words and shuddered; the tears that had momentarily stopped starting to flow again.

I put an arm around her, half expecting her to shake me off. Taylor didn’t go in for a lot of touching and feeling. Neither did I, for that matter. But she clearly needed it, because she leaned into me, pressing her face against my stomach.

“They should be here in a little while,” Price said as he hung up. “Depending on the roads and visibility.”

He’d want to wait for them. I went to where the linen closet had been emptied onto the floor and found a soft blanket. I put it around Taylor’s shoulders.

“When was the last time you heard from Josh?” Price asked gently, pouring more tea into her cup.

“Last night. We talked before bed,” she said in a hiccupy voice.

“Is that something you usually did?”

She nodded. “When I didn’t—” She broke off and looked at me, flushing.

“When you didn’t come over and spend the night,” I finished matter-of-factly.

“Things were getting better between us,” she said defensively. “He was talking about getting a place together.”

That was a step down. He’d talked about marriage before. He’d actually bought her a ring and started planning the wedding. Then he’d dumped her. I didn’t say it. Taylor didn’t need me chewing on her about that at the moment. Besides, maybe he
had
changed. I hadn’t seen him to know one way or another.

“Did he seem worried when you talked to him?” Price pursued. “Did he say or do anything unusual?”

Taylor started to shake her head and then stopped. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but he told me he loved me. He told me never to forget it, no matter what happened. I thought it meant he was starting to think about getting married again.” She bit her lip. “He knew something bad was going to happen to him, didn’t he?”

Price ignored the question. “Can you think of anything else that might have seemed unusual or different about his behavior or anything he might have said that would indicate who might have come after him?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I didn’t—” She covered her mouth with her hand.

“Didn’t?” I prodded.

“I didn’t want to upset him. He was busy and things at work were really complicated. I didn’t want to give him any reason to—” She broke off again with a helpless wave of her hand.

I filled in the blanks. She had no idea why he’d broken off their engagement and didn’t want to do anything that would make him do it again. I sighed inwardly. This wasn’t Taylor. She was outspoken, assertive, and totally in control of her life. This woman—she was needy and pathetic.

She read my expression before I could mask it. “Don’t look at me that way,” she said sharply, almost sounding back to normal. “You’ve never been in love your entire life. You have no idea how it feels or what you’ll do to keep it.”

“He dumped you,” I said. “How is that love?”

“He had his reasons and he never dated anyone else. Whatever made him break off our engagement, it wasn’t about us,” she declared.

Except she was clearly afraid that it was. I kept my mouth shut.

“Could what happened here today be related to your breakup?” Price asked suddenly.

Both Taylor and I stared at him.

“It was six months ago,” she said warily.

“But you said he didn’t date anyone else and clearly you both are still very close. You have a key to his condo, right? How many ex-fiancées still have one of those?”

Taylor nodded. I was trying to wrap my head around the possibility that Josh had broken up with her to possibly protect her from whatever trouble he was in. It sounded like something out of a soap opera. It also sounded all too possible, given the current circumstances.

“Think back. Was he acting strange? Was there anything going on that seems suspicious now? Maybe something to do with his job? Or maybe he gambled?”

Taylor started to shake her head and then stiffened. “Wait. There
was
something. He seemed kind of nervous and sometimes I’d catch him up in the middle of the night in his office. I just thought it was work stress, or the wedding. But then he ended things and I thought that’s why he’d been so strange. He’d been trying to figure out how to break up with me.”

She looked at Price. “What’s going on?” There was a measure of hope mixed in with her fear. That maybe Josh hadn’t
wanted
to break things off, but that he’d had to. That maybe she and he could still have their lived-happily-ever-after future. If he turned up alive, of course.

“Wait a minute. You’re suggesting that this all started six months ago. But if he did end the engagement to protect Taylor, why would he keep seeing her?” I asked.

“Don’t sound so surprised. Maybe it wasn’t that easy to let go of me,” Taylor said with a glare.

I winced. I wasn’t being a very supportive sister. “Of course it wasn’t,” I said. “This makes better sense than him suddenly falling out of love.” Maybe it did, but it would have been a lot better for Josh if he had just fallen out of love. Now he was in serious trouble.

Price drummed his fingers on the countertop. “I need to do some digging,” he said.

“Looking for what?”

He looked at me. “I wouldn’t have to hunt if I knew what I was going to find,” he said like I was five years old. Asshole. “I want to check into his financials. Phone records. Talk to people where he works and do a general background check. It also wouldn’t hurt for you to do a trace on him. See where he’s been recently.”

I’d already thought the same thing. If I didn’t have to worry about getting Taylor home and taken care of, I’d probably be out doing it instead of letting him insult me. Not that I would be able to follow Josh and his captors. Their nulls prevented that. But I could track his backtrail and find out where he’d been for every second of every day since he was born. Not that I could ever let Price in on that particular talent.

“This storm is going to shut everything down for the next twenty-four hours or so,” he said. “But I can at least get an analyst to run down his dossier.”

The ding of the elevator in the hallway made all of us jump. Price palmed his Desert Eagle and pressed a finger over his lips to tell us both to be quiet. No shit, Sherlock. I grabbed Taylor and pulled her down behind the kitchen island, pulling my own gun as I did. Price went to stand against the wall, out of sight of the front door.

Whoever they were, they weren’t trying to be quiet. There was a rumble of low voices and the thud of feet. I counted four of people. Suddenly they went quiet, seeing the open door. They pushed inside, kicking aside debris.

“What the fuck?” said one and there were hisses at him to be quiet.

Before they could go farther, Price stepped out. “Diamond City PD. Drop your weapons.”

“FBI. Put your weapon down,” came one booming voice.

There was a tense moment, and then Price said quietly. “Show me your ID.”

There was a rustle of fabric.

“Now show us yours,” came the first voice, low and angry.

Another slide of fabric, and I felt the tension drop, but only a tiny bit.

“It’s all right,” Price called. “Come on out. They’re legit.”

I tucked my gun back into my coat pocket and rose slowly. Taylor did the same. She grasped my hand tightly.

Three men and a woman stood in a semicircle inside the door. The men were your basic clean-cut high-and-tight soldier types with bad suits and wrinkled trench coats. The woman had long blond hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail. It emphasized the sharp ridges of her face and her slightly upturned eyes. She looked like she she’d eaten a rotten egg. She glanced around speculatively, ignoring the pissing contest among the four men.

“Where is Joshua Reist?” She asked, her gaze stabbing first at Price, then at me, and settling finally on Taylor. “You’re Taylor Hollis, correct? Where is your boyfriend?”

“I don’t know,” Taylor said coldly, her chin rising as she let go of my hand.

My gut clenched. If they knew Taylor’s name, then they’d been watching Josh for a while.

“Miss Hollis, if you know what’s good for you, you won’t try hiding him.”

“She isn’t hiding him,” I said. “And what business is it of yours?”

There was something about the female agent that set my teeth on edge. She was predatory, in a sly, secretive way. I didn’t trust her at all. I got the impression she didn’t care much about the people she protected; she just wanted to get the bad guys. The victims were only interesting because they made it possible for her to attack.

The woman reached into an inside pocket and pulled out a folded paper. “We have a warrant for his arrest.”

“What for?” Price asked.

She eyed him coolly, tucking the paper away. “That’s FBI business. Now produce Mr. Reist.”

I had to wonder if she was even the slightest bit curious about the mess in the condo or why we were there. If so, she wasn’t asking. She also didn’t seem a whole lot interested in interagency cooperation. Not that I could blame her, really, since most cops were corrupt, Price being one of them. All the same, maybe someone should tell her she could catch more flies with sugar than salt.

“He’s not here,” Price said.

“I see,” she said, sounding like she didn’t believe him. “Where is he?”

“No idea. There appears to have been a struggle.”

She glanced at two of her men. “Martin and Josephson, go take a look.”

Two of the agents strode down the hall. It was all of ten seconds later that one returned. “You’re going to want to see this,” he said to the woman.

She looked at the three of us. “Stay put,” she said. “Watch them, Cranford,” she told the last of the agents and strode down the hall. She was wearing a tailored dress and high heels, which looked soaking wet. They looked expensive, too. No wonder she was pissed.

Price had holstered his gun and now came to stand with Taylor and me.

“Don’t say a word to them,” he said beneath his breath. Fury lit his sapphire eyes. I didn’t blame him. The agents were treating us like suspects.

On the other hand, he was an enforcer for the Tyet. Maybe he was really saying:
Don’t talk or else
. None of the Tyet factions wanted the FBI in their business, and they considered everything and everyone in Diamond City their business. I drew slow breath and blew it out. I should have stayed in bed this morning.

“Hey. Keep quiet,” Cranford said. He had a bull neck and a round head, and his hair bristled from his head like a porcupine.

“We’ll talk if we damned well please,” Price snarled.

That caught Cranford up short. He wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. We weren’t suspects really, and Price was a cop. I suppressed the urge to clap.

The woman agent came striding back into the kitchen. “What’s going on here?” she demanded, leveling a steely-eyed glare at Price. “Where’s Reist?”

“That is the question of the hour, isn’t it?” he drawled, clearly deciding that he wasn’t going to be any more polite or helpful than she was.

“He’s missing?”

“Can’t say.”

She swore. “Is that his blood? Is he dead?”

“No idea.”

Her face flushed. “What are you doing here?” She demanded, her frustration practically crackling through the air.

“I called him,” Taylor said, sounding impressively haughty and collected. You wouldn’t know that five minutes ago she’d been a puddle of anguish. “I found the condo in shambles and the blood.”

The agent looked at me. “Who are you?”

“Innocent bystander,” I said.

The corners of her mouth twisted downward. “Is that so?” she said. “The way I see it, you’re a witness. I might have to take you into protective custody. It could be weeks or months before we get to the bottom of this. The accommodations will not be all that comfortable.”

“Not your jurisdiction,” Price countered, folding his arms over his chest. “It’s a possible homicide or kidnapping. Maybe a missing person. FBI has no business here.”

“We have business with Reist,” she declared.

“You can take it up with him once we find him. Until then, it’s my case.” He smiled in a most unfriendly way, like a hyena to a wildebeest. “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”