Zack grinned. “No confrontation? Is that even allowed?”
“Well, if not,” I said, “I plan on being a bad girl.”
Jill gave a snort. “So what else is new?”
I ran a thumb over the mark on my forearm. “Jill, if I give you some general locations, can you look in your database and see if there’ve been any deaths there in the last, say, forty years or so?”
“I think so,” she said. “The records department supposedly just finished putting the last fifty years of reords online.”
I gave her the locations that Rhyzkahl had looked up on my computer. “Look for deaths that would have occurred right before the summoning of Szerain, or within a year or so.”
Ryan narrowed his eyes. “You think that they might have tried to open this gate-thing once before?”
“Right,” I said. I didn’t look up at him, since I wasn’t sure I could keep my face totally neutral. “Szerain was up to something, and I think that he needed an easier way to be summoned.” But would that have been enough to get him punished? There had to be more to his crime than that.
Out of nowhere the memory of my dream swam up. For an instant I could smell the dust of the place on my tongue, feel the stone against my feet.
.…smooth marble cool against my cheek as I struggled for breath, the taste of blood thick in my mouth…
“Kara. Kara?”
I blinked and jerked my gaze up to Ryan. What the hell just happened? That wasn’t part of the dream.
“You okay?” he asked. “You just went pale.”
I forced a smile. “I’m fine. Just hungry, most likely. We should go grab a bite to eat soon.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” he said.
Jill cleared her throat on the phone. “You were right, Kara. Three deaths. All looked to be natural.”
“And I’ll bet anything that all three were linked somehow to one of the summoners,” I said. “Then that summoner was killed by Rhyzkahl in the summoning-of-Szerain that went wrong, and so now Tracy’s picking up where he or she left off.” I fought the urge to slide a look toward Ryan. I wonder how Tracy would react if he knew that Ryan was Szerain. I bit back an inappropriate giggle. With as many oaths and secrets and whatnot going on around Ryan, I had no doubt that Tracy was completely clueless as to that little detail.
My phone beeped to indicate another call was coming in—one with an out-of-state area code. Something about the number tickled at my memory, but I couldn’t immediately pin it down. “Lemme get this call, Jill. If it’s a telemarketer I’ll just hang up on them.”
I took it off speakerphone and clicked on the new call. “Detective Gillian,” I answered.
“Kara? It’s Roman.”
Something about the tone of his voice sent a warning zing through my body. “Hiya, Roman. What’s up?” I replied, keeping my own tone light.
“There’s a man here with a gun pointed at my head,” he said, and now I could hear the slight shake in his voice. “He says if you don’t come to the…the gate he’s going to shoot me.”
I couldn’t breathe for several seconds. When I finally could I said, “It’s going to be all right, Roman. Let me talk to him, please.”
Ryan’s eyes narrowed. I upped the volume on the phone and motioned him closer so that he could listen in.
“Hello, Kara,” Tracy said after a few seconds. “I figured you needed some incentive to move you along.”
“You’re a cocksucker. Where is this gate? I haven’t been able to pinpoint it.”
“That’s because you’re being stubborn and resisting it, but it doesn’t matter now. Come to three five two Garden Street. Oh, and the usual ‘no weapons’ and ‘come alone’ rules apply. I have a zhurn helping keep a lookout. If it catches a whiff of any of your FBI friends—or any other cops for that matter—your ex here will get splattered, and the cops will get torn apart.” He said it easily, with a laugh in his voice. “Speaking of, I’m intrigued by the fact that there’s been no traffic on the PD radio about a shooting victim at my house. I know I didn’t miss. How’d you manage to cover that one up?”
“She was wearing a vest,” I managed through the white-hot rage sweeping through me. He had no clue she was a demon. He meant to kill her.
“Ah, smart of her. Anyway, your ex here is not wearing a vest. So please do get your ass down here. I have shit to do. You have half an hour.” And with that he hung up.
I slowly lowered the phone. “Guess we’re going to have a confrontation after all.”
Chapter 23
The first confrontation turned out to be an argument with Ryan about whether I should go there alone or not. Obviously, Ryan was in the “or not” camp. So was I, to be honest, but at the same time I didn’t want to risk anyone else getting hurt or killed.
“Yes, it’s a hostage situation,” I finally said after he tried to convince me to call in the SWAT team. “But I’m not about to risk other cops if there really is a zhurn acting as lookout and guard. Plus, the fact that our suspect is a cop is going to raise all sorts of issues.” I checked my watch. Ten minutes left. We were parked about a block away from the address Roman had given us. I’d retrieved my ballistic vest from the trunk and put it on beneath my shirt and coat. I also wore the wire and earpiece.
“You don’t sound sure about the zhurn,” Zack said, frowning. He wasn’t any happier about our limited options or our time frame. But I had no doubt Tracy would pull the trigger. He’d killed plenty of others already.
“I’m not, but only because of Kehlirik. If Tracy summoned a reyza, would he be able to summon a zhurn as well? That’s two major summonings—tough for anybody to do, even if done on two different days.” Plus it was several days after the full moon. The summoning of Kehlirik would have already been insanely difficult.
“Tough, but not impossible,” Ryan pointed out.
“Right. And Tracy’s a smart guy. It’s quite possible he has the chops to do it, so I’d rather act on the assumption that there is another demon in play. Or something else he hasn’t told us about.”
Ryan’s mouth tightened. “Fine. No SWAT, but Zack and I are going to be watching the perimeter and listening in.”
I took a deep breath, trying to settle the churning of my gut. “He needs me alive. And as long as I’m wearing the cuff, he can’t use me to activate the gate. That’s our big advantage. I’ll go in, get him to release Roman, and then fuck up his world.”
“I hate this plan,” he muttered.
I forced a grin. “I would expect no less.” I glanced at my watch. “Okay, we’re not going to get any readier. Let’s get this shit over with.”
Garden Street was anything but garden-y. It was probably intended to be a high-tech industrial park, but whoever had built it failed to consider the fact that Beaulac’s industry tended more to tourism and general suburbia. Sprawling warehouses had been built, but the expected flock of high-tech industry failed to materialize. Now it housed run-of-the-mill businesses such as a carpet store and a plumbing supply place. Although most of the warehouses actually had tenants, I had a feeling the owners found it necessary to drop the rent far below what they’d initially expected to get.
The warehouse I was going to was not one of the occupied ones. It looked like it had been at one time—there was a faded patch on the front façade that looked as if a sign had once been there. But when we drove by to see if we could make any sort of security assessment, we couldn’t see any lights beyond the glass doors in front. And there were no cars parked anywhere nearby.
Ryan stopped the car a few hundred yards away from my destination. I half-expected him to come up with another argument against me walking in there, but thankfully he simply gave me an encouraging smile and silently handed me the mike and earpiece.