Did Agent Zheng know what his brother meant by "a breeder?" How safe was it to discuss what little Atticus knew with her? He'd always kept his differences hidden from everyone but Ru and Kyle, afraid of some dangerous fallout if the wrong person discovered how inhuman he was. Afraid that someone would see him as a monster. Afraid because it was often hard for him not to think of himself as one.
Suddenly he saw the Pack's "test" in a new light. Was that why they were testing him? Were they also afraid of being monsters?
Apparently, Ru had started out following the same line of thought, but diverged off in another direction. "What are we going to do about Zheng?"
"Call Kyle. Tell him to dig into her records. I want to know everything about her. I want to know how she knows all this shit about me."
Ru picked up the car phone, pausing before he dialed. "You okay?"
"I didn't think I would want to go back to being just a werewolf."
***
Agent Zheng had a room on the first floor of the hotel in the back. They found ready parking and dashed to the covered entrance; she opened the door with her card key. Ten steps and they were in her room, totally unseen by any other guest. He couldn't have picked a better room himself.
The hotel was maid-neat but still tainted with Zheng's scent. She hung up her black trench coat, asking, "Coffee? Root beer?"
"You have root beer?" Atticus found it surprising. Not many people stocked root beer, much less thought to offer it.
"I've been here a couple of days." Zheng ripped open a package of gourmet coffee and poured it into the filter of a coffeemaker. "I like this hotel chain, since it will do food shopping for you. No matter what time you get back to your room, there's decent food. No candy bar or pizza dinners."
"There are advantages to working with a team," Atticus said.
Zheng tilted her head, acknowledging this. "Do you want that root beer or not?"
"Yes, thank you."
The root beer was even IBC in the dark glass bottles. She had the refrigerator stocked well enough to feed a small army. How long did she expect to stay? She unloaded carrots, dip, blocks of cheese, a deli bag of sliced roast beef, buns, lettuce, brown mustard, and a massive bag of seedless grapes.
"I've got more than enough. Help yourself," Zheng said.
Out of habit, Ru dallied while Atticus sampled the fare, although it was unlikely that an FBI agent would drug the food. Finding it innocent, Atticus considered the woman herself. She gazed at him levelly over her cup of freshly brewed coffee, eyes a gunmetal gray. Judging by their vaguely Asian shape, she was at least partially Chinese. Her composed gaze went beyond normal law-officer stoic to something nearly Buddhist in its level of calm.
He had a million questions he wanted to ask her, starting with, "How do you know all this?" But in the world of drug dealing, admitting to ignorance rarely got you information and always put you in a weaker position. How much could he trust this woman—and perhaps as important, how much did she trust him? He was, according to her, the child of the enemy. Did she hold that against him? When his team invited someone into their hotel room, they always had the place bugged. Was this a trap? Had she offered them food to throw them off balance and admit to hidden cameras exactly what he was?
"You're completely right about the advantages of working with a team," Agent Zheng said. "That's why I propose we combine forces."
"Work together?"
"I'm not a fool; it would be suicide for me to continue searching for the cult in an unfamiliar area by myself. But my options are limited."
"And we look like handy fodder."
Agent Zheng gave a slight exhale that could have been a sigh. "I would rather you didn't confirm my opinion that all male federal agents are egotistical jerks. I would be far more disappointed than you could imagine."
And what the hell did that mean? Judging by the darkening of Ru's face, it could be taken as a pass.
"I have to consider the welfare of my team first," Atticus said. "I know nothing about you." Yet. "Far as I know, you're a maverick who rushes into dangerous positions without an ounce of precaution." He stepped close to stress that he was a nearly a foot taller than her. "Some would say you're a fool to bring two strangers to her hotel room."
"You're Atticus Steele. No middle name. You were found abandoned as an infant in 1973. You joined the military in 1988 with what must have been a forged birth certificate and served for six years. In 1994, you were given an honorable discharge, and you applied to the University of Maryland . . ."
"Okay, so you did your homework, but that doesn't make us—"
". . . where you met your current lover, Hikaru Takahashi." Zheng played her hole card. "You two have been together for ten years and own a T Street row house in Washington that you've been renovating over the last five years. I'm told that you just refinished the floors and they're beautiful."
Atticus's opinion of her went from annoying to terrifying.
"Did you do a full background check on us?" Ru snapped.
"I was discreet," Zheng said. "But yes. You originally came on my radar screen as drug dealers. It wasn't until this morning that I learned you were actually undercover agents."
Atticus relaxed slightly. "I'm impressed. The agency provides us with fairly fireproof backgrounds so perps can run their own checks and we still come up clean."
"I have my resources," Zheng said.
Atticus glanced to Ru, who didn't look happy but nodded his agreement. "Okay. So you're good, and you're way ahead of us on this." And most likely the only way she'd catch them up to speed would be by their agreeing to work with her. Of course, agreeing wasn't the same as trusting. In some ways, it would be just another undercover assignment. "We're in."
Zheng accepted the announcement with a serene nod. Putting down her coffee cup, she took a folder out of her briefcase. "We have an ex-cultist working with us in Pittsburgh. Her cult name was Socket. She's a Boston-area heiress whom the cult recruited specifically to gain access to her fortune. Her total worth is ten million dollars, which is in a trust she can't touch—but it gives her a yearly income of a hundred thousand dollars. As one of their cash cows, the cult didn't subject Socket to the most brutal of their brainwashing techniques, but that also means she wasn't part of their inner circle."
"So, unlike Ascii, who will tell the FBI nothing, Socket spilled her guts, but there's not much there?"
"Exactly," Zheng said. "This is the only photo we have of Ice, current leader of the cult." It seemed to have been taken from a bank surveillance camera. In the grainy black-and-white photo, the tall, lean blond male was partially obscured by a potted plant. "Socket worked with us to create composite sketches of him and the other known surviving cultists."
Twenty laser printouts of pencil drawings followed. The cult favored military-short haircuts, and accepted a wide range of ethnic groups. Of the twenty, five were women and the rest men. All were identified only by single computer terms: Ice, Firewall, Mouse, Ether, Diskette, Ram.
"What do we know about this Ice?" Atticus asked.
Zheng consulted her PDA. "He's approximately six-one, a hundred and eighty pounds, blond with blue eyes, in his early twenties, and has black tribal tattoos on his back. He's skilled in martial arts and served as the cult's weapons trainer. While they didn't discuss it openly with Socket, she got the impression that he also taught the cult how to forge driver's licenses, pick locks, and steal cars. He was the cult's tactician for ambushes on the Ontongard Gets. The founder, William Harris, was the one with the vision—Ice was the one who made it happen."