Out of the Black - Lee Doty [70]
"Father?" Ping asked.
"Sounds better than 'Master', doesn't it?" Dek gave a wry smile that quickly warmed, "...also more accurate. Issak has always been good to me. He raised me since I was about eight. He and Ivo are my fathers, Roy was my brother."
"What was the emergency?"
"No idea. Issak was very closed about it... even more than usual. But I could tell he was really bothered, maybe even scared... which says a lot."
"Why?"
"Because Savants, especially the old ones like Ivo and Issak, don't scare easy."
"Do I want to know how old they are?"
"Don't we all? I know that Issak was pretty definite that there had never been a King Arthur, but that's about it."
Ping sat back, too many questions. His mind felt numb with the implications, too many to map out, to understand. "I need to check in at the station..."
"I don't think that's a good idea." Alex said quickly. Both he and Rae were shaking their heads.
"Remember the library." Alex said. "If anyone finds out where we are, it's all over... those guys have eyes and ears everywhere."
"Who? Who has eyes and ears everywhere?"
"Our friends from the library." Dek said.
Ping had an unbidden vision of the five knife-wielding killers' last moments. Eyes and ears and lots of blood everywhere. He winced "And just who are 'they'?"
Alex and Rae exchanged glances, then looked to Dek for help.
"We don't know." The shark said at last. "It's not like the clans brand themselves with easily recognizable tattoos."
"Did Good Cop provide any enlightenment?" Ping said.
"He did a lot of screaming..." Rae trailed off, her expression darkening with memory.
Dek looked uncomfortable, angry- then finally sorrowful, "He was not cooperative, and far too dangerous to leave alive."
Ping had an irrational flash of pity for the sadistic Fed- it must have been terrible for him. Terrible that he didn't get to finish squashing him and Rae before torturing Alex to death. And now his 'nefarious plan' would go forever unexplained. He'd have to lay a wreath at Mussolini's tomb for Agent Garvey someday.
With a mental shrug, he moved on. "So, do we have any idea why 'they' killed Lutine?"
There was a pause. All heads shook.
"How did you get to the crime scene under the bridge so quickly? I'm assuming it was you the officers took a shot at." Ping asked Dek.
He nodded. "I was talking to Roy when it happened."
Tears in Rain
Dr. Ivo Lutine sits in the near quiet of the car. It's only near quiet because Roy is chattering excitedly. Kaspari doesn't come to Chicago often enough, so Roy's got a channel open with his brother, trying to make some free time together work.
Ivo had asked Roy to damp the car so he could have some silence in the back seat, but that's not part of Roy's plans. He'd engaged the noise damper, obedient little guy, but dialed it down so that Ivo can still make out the conversation.
In spite of the weighty matters that need to occupy his mind, Ivo smiles as he listens to his son work. Nearly every sentence in his conversation with his brother contains some manipulation, subtle and not, aimed at Ivo. Because Ivo loves him, because there's clearly some time this evening, because they never get to Chicago anymore, because family is important, and Roy doesn't need sleep and they've fought plenty of demons before and Ivo is just being paranoid... perhaps his brother could meet them at their hotel, yeah he'd try to float that by Ivo later... of course Ivo would be reasonable enough to allow that... on and on.
"Roy, perhaps the damper isn't fully engaged." Ivo shouts into the noise-canceling field between him and the front seat. Roy pretends not to hear, though they both know that he could hear even if the field was at maximum and Ivo whispered. "Roy!"
"You say something, dad?" Roy's shout comes through the damper at the level of a quiet conversation. After a few more seconds with his hand cupped dramatically at his ear, Roy switches off the damper