She peered at the splintered door frame, smashed into the room and hanging drunkenly on a wedge of drywall. "Direct as usual, Shaw."
"It's faster to break them down than try to pick the locks," Rennie rumbled, anger pushing him to nearly growling. He didn't like that Ukiah had been locked up, or the silent reports from the Dogs upstairs on what they were discovering.
Ukiah realized then what their combined presence—Indigo and the Dog Warriors—meant. She'd brought them as backup. "You're working together?"
"We weren't sure what we'd be walking into," Rennie said, but meant, what Indigo would be walking into alone.
Ukiah flashed over his conversation with Max that morning. No, what he'd told his partner hadn't been too reassuring. He hadn't explained being rescued by his brother; to be truthful, though, he wasn't completely sure how safe he'd been with Atticus. "How did you find me?"
"We used the GPS on the cell phone you're using," Indigo explained. "Who is Hikaru Takahashi?"
"He's my brother's lover."
"What?" she cried as the Pack went still around him.
"I have an older brother. His name is Atticus Steele. He's the one who rescued me out of the trunk."
"Why did he lock you in the basement?" Her voice held the suspicious anger echoed by the Dog Warriors.
" And why is the upstairs dusted with Invisible Red?" Rennie added.
"I think . . . I think he's a drug dealer."
Into the following silence, Indigo's phone rang. She answered it with a brusque, "Special Agent Zheng." She listened to the thin voice coming through the cell phone, her brow gathering into annoyance. "Okay, I'll be there shortly.
"The two male cultists wounded in the shoot-out just died," Indigo told them. "I need to go deal with that. Here." She handed Ukiah his wallet and then a hotel room key card. "I'm at the Residence Inn in Framingham; I've got it stocked with food."
The cult had left his photo ID and Evans City Library card, but taken his cash and credit cards. One of Max's ATM/Visa cards, however, had been tucked into his wallet.
"My gun . . . and cell phone?"
"The cult kept your gun," she said. "We've reported it stolen. We found only pieces of your cell phone, but that's probably just as well—the cult used your cell phone to track you."
He flashed to the undercarriage of the rental truck, the flashlight lying flattened beside him on the road, and shuddered with recalled pain. "Keep yourself safe."
"Let me remind you that I haven't been shot or killed once this year," she said, without adding that he had. In fact, he'd lost count of how many times. She reached up, pulled him down to her, and kissed him, full of fearful passion. "Don't," she whispered huskily afterward, their foreheads still lightly touching, "do that again."
"I won't," he promised, even though he had no clue how to prevent it from happening again. He'd promise her anything to make her happy.
"Good." She released him then.
As Ukiah walked Indigo to her car, Rennie gave silent orders to Murray and Stein, who gave her an unrequested—and perhaps unwanted—protective shadow.
"I'll see you at the hotel."
He nodded rather than lie, then watched her drive away, trying to keep down feelings that he was betraying her. The phone call had distracted her from Atticus. Also she probably thought the drugs his brother was dealing with were of the more mundane type, not Invisible Red. Like one creature, the Pack's mind stayed firmly on Atticus, with a growing determination that he'd be tested in accordance to Pack law, and if found wanting, destroyed. Ukiah didn't want to get her involved, forcing her into impossible choices.
"Atticus is coming back soon," he told Rennie as her taillights vanished. "He left to buy Invisible Red off of the Iron Horses."
"After that massive dose of Invisible Red the cult gave you three days ago, your resistance to it is still low. We'll have to make sure you don't get exposed to any more."
Ukiah winced, memories of his rape while under the influence of the drug cuttingly sharp. "I can hang back until you've got the drug off him. But I want to be there when you test him."
"And if he doesn't pass?"
What will you do if we have to destroy him?was what Rennie was asking.
"I think he'll pass," Ukiah said. "He was part of Magic Boy. He seems even more human than I am. He loves Ru."
"But if he doesn't pass?"
Ukiah shied away from the question and instead tried to find more evidence that his brother was worthy of living. He suspected that, if nothing else, Atticus was a far more complicated person than he was. Atticus seemed to think in multiple layers, and while the surface level had been damning, there had been occasional glimpses at something deeper and truer beneath. Unfortunately, Atticus seemed mostly annoyed at Ukiah, as if he disdained his existence.
"Cub?"
"I know he's flawed, but if he's worse than I think . . ." He didn't want to say it. It was a cold and heartless thing to think of destroying his own flesh and blood, but if Atticus was hiding a heart as barren of emotions as the Ontongard's, then Ukiah couldn't allow himself to be trapped by the word "brother." "We'll do whatever is needed."
Rennie nodded, keeping his thoughts to himself.
Atticus arrived a short time later, broadcasting his concern for Ukiah. In typical Pack fashion, Rennie made sure Atticus had no Invisible Red on him prior to their reunion by knocking him into the ocean. It was a bitter thing to feel Atticus's concern for him wash away with the salt water.
His brother stood now in the surf, face closed and emotions so tightly controlled that there was no clue what he was feeling. How did Atticus learn that, isolated as he was from his own kind? Was it that he merely didn't allow himself to feel?
"What do you want?" Atticus shouted over the surf.
"It's Pack law, Atticus." Ukiah wanted Atticus to understand more than he had when the Pack tested him. "You need to be tested, to see if you're human—or monster."
"Tested?"
"We need to know what kind of person you truly are."
"Go to hell."
On Rennie's silent signal, the Dogs swept in. Atticus was a better fighter than Ukiah; it took four of the Dogs to drag him out of the water, struggling in their grip. Once they got him to the land, the fight went out of Atticus, and he knelt in the sand where they forced him to, panting, eyeing Ukiah darkly.
In that moment, Ukiah would have given almost anything to change history. If only he'd found Atticus at some other time, gotten to know his secret heart without this violence.
Rennie's lieutenant, the Cheyenne warrior Bear Shadow, came down the sand dune, pulling Ru along by the arm. Ru's face was carefully neutral; the man guarded his inner thoughts as closely as Atticus did. Ukiah noticed that Ru rubbed his right hand, as if Bear had disarmed him with force.
" I don't want him hurt," Ukiah silently told Bear.
" He'll witness everything." Bear meant that he could testify against Ukiah, if the Pack killed Atticus.
" I don't care." Ukiah took Ru's arm and pulled him out of Bear's hold. " Either Atticus loves him, or, if Atticus is a heartless monster, then it was Ru who decided to rescue me out of the trunk."
" Ah." Bear nodded slowly. " He won't be hurt then."
Ukiah kept hold of Ru's arm, just in case the Pack forgot.
Hellena stepped forward, caught hold of Atticus's head, and held him still, cocking his head back to look up at her.
"Take a deep breath." She locked eyes with Atticus.
"Fuck you," Atticus hissed, trying to twist out of her hold.