Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [50]
But it had been over an hour since she had left the Fortress offices and still no sign of him. She went back to the dossiers, her eyes anxiously scanning the text while part of her attention was secured in the periphery of her vision, waiting for Gunn. There was nothing, nothing, nothing, so she returned to the beginning and started all over again.
Halfway through she caught herself wondering how Pete was faring. Digging out her phone, she punched in his speed-dial number. He answered at once. Nothing to report.
“I got the Fortress dossiers,” she said. “If you’re free, we ought to go over them together.”
“Right. Two pairs of eyes are better than one,” he said. “Meet you in twenty at the office.”
She severed the connection, read a little more, continuing to spin her wheels, and sighed. Still no sign of Gunn. She checked her watch. Shit, maybe she had been wrong about him. All at once, her attention shifted. She looked forward to meeting with Pete, hopeful he’d spot something she had missed. Besides, she hadn’t eaten a thing all day.
She was about to pack up the dossiers in preparation for heading back to the office when a familiar figure pushed through the doors of the building and came briskly down the stairs.
Pete McKinsey passed not ten feet from where she stood, frozen in dismay.
* * *
THATË POINTED with his chin. “What else is on your iPod?”
He held the iPod out and the kid took it, plugged Jack’s Monster earbuds in, and scrolled down.
“Don’t know any of this shit,” he said a little too loudly, as people will when they’re listening to music in their ears. Then, apparently finding a song he liked, he turned up the volume. His head began to nod rhythmically.
Jack watched him for a moment. He had to remind himself that the kid was only seventeen. He spoke American street slang almost perfectly; a first-rate mimic. He turned from this thought as Alli came out of the bathroom. She looked fairly comical with the bottoms of Thatë’s jeans turned up in oversized cuffs. The hoodie came down almost to her knees.
“Don’t laugh,” she warned.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Jack said.
She came and brought a chair over to sit beside him. Thatë’s eyes tracked her but he was too deep in the music to pay much attention.
“What’s with the Lost Boy?” she said.
“We’re in trouble, Alli. The Virginia State Police have a warrant out for your arrest and I have no doubt your uncle wants to get his hands on us as well. Thatë provided a safe haven where no one would think to look for us.”
“Any port in a storm.”
“This is more than a storm,” Jack said seriously.
Alli hitched her chair closer to him and lowered her voice even though it was impossible for Thatë to overhear them. “I don’t understand. Uncle Hank hired those men to guard me. Instead, they tried to kill me. I mean, what the fuck?”
“My thought exactly. That’s why I spirited you away, that’s why I don’t want you to turn yourself in. Nothing about this situation rings true and until I can understand what’s happening I don’t trust anyone, and that includes your Uncle Hank.”
“You don’t think he would—”
“At this point, I don’t know what to think. But the fact is I trust this young criminal-in-waiting more than I do anyone else.”
“Then we really are in trouble.”
Jack nodded.
“On the other hand, we can’t stay here forever.”
“I don’t plan to,” Jack said. He brought her up to date. He told her about the killings at Twilight, how he’d found physical evidence linking them to Billy Warren’s death. He showed her the octagonal badge and Thatë’s identical pendant.
“The writing on them is Albanian, the icon of an underground club whose business makes even Thatë nervous,” he concluded. “That’s where I’m hoping we’ll find some answers about who really killed Billy, and why.”
Thatë chose that moment to come out of his music-induced trance. “Very cool shit,” he said as he pulled out the earbuds. “Old-school roots, man. People put ’em down, but not me. The blues is where hip-hop came from, you know?” Then he grinned at Alli. “So,