Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [65]
No, my first call was to Pacific Northwest Information, and then to a handful of other out-of-the-way reference-type institutions, none of which were very well known and two of which were not strictly legal. Then I spent another few minutes on the Internet, and before long, I had the Minion Cal’s real name and a potential phone number.
It was risky, yes. But I needed to talk to Ian.
The digits I dialed didn’t look familiar, and I didn’t recognize the area code. I could feel myself flushing as the line rang, rang, and wasn’t answered. I was nervous—intensely nervous—about trying to contact Ian. There was always the hypothetical possibility that I was putting him in danger, and I didn’t like the thought of that even slightly.
But I needed to ask him about Isabelle deJesus. And by God, I was gonna.
Voice mail picked up, without a personalized message—only the electronic robot-woman informing me that customer number 8862 was not available right now, and I was welcome to leave a message.
I did. I said, “Cal, I’m looking for my client. Have him call me at this number.” And then I hung up. I knew I was leaving my callback digits in the other phone’s memory, so now it was only a matter of time and luck.
Then, on a different phone—just in case the message to Cal didn’t work out and I had to junk it—I called Horace.
He answered on the first ring, with his typical flair.
“I don’t know this number,” he began, and without taking a breath he added, “and if I don’t know you, you shouldn’t know mine, either—so I’m going to assume this is someone entitled to the information. Now speak up fast and prove me right, or this conversation is over.”
“Jesus, Horace. Lighten up.”
“Raylene!” I heard an honest element of glee. “It’s you! Jesus, woman. I was starting to wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“Where you were. What you were up to. Did you know your voice-mail inbox is full? Well, it is.”
I tried not to smile too big, lest he hear it and infer that I was happy to talk to him. I said, “Since you’re one of the only people who ever calls me, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you’ve had something to tell me.”
“I might’ve made a call or two. Haven’t you been checking it?”
“No,” I admitted. “And you may as well trash that number. I don’t expect to be using it again anytime soon … or … well … ever. Just pretend it never happened. For the time being, you can reach me through this phone—as long as you don’t abuse the privilege.”
“Darling, is something wrong?” I heard real concern, but I knew better than to assume it was concern for me, personally. It was concern for how he was going to get his crazy white woman in touch with whatever property she wanted stolen.
“I’ve had to relocate somewhat unexpectedly.”
“Relocate?”
“Think of it as a reboot. I needed to get out of town for a bit. I might’ve attracted a little attention of the most unwanted variety.” I was taking a chance telling him that much, but I told myself that I wasn’t sharing anything he couldn’t guess.
He proved me right by making another logical leap. “That client. You put me off because you said you had a new client. Did he get you into trouble? If he did, you just let me know right now, and I personally will pay some very burly people to kick his ass.”
“It’s not his fault, Horace. It’s got something to do with his case, yeah, but he didn’t do anything, and if I thought for a moment that you could track him down or wound him, I’d have my hands on your throat within an hour,” I lied. Horace was in New York City. It’d take me at least four or five hours.
“Be that as it may, I don’t like this. You never accepted my new case—the rich white weirdo with indigenous myth-envy.”
“And I still can’t make you any promises, not right now. This case, from this guy,” I said, and only then did I realize I’d revealed Ian’s correct pronoun. Horace had assumed it, but I’d confirmed it. I wanted to kick myself, but there wasn’t time. “I can’t explain without