Chapter Thirty-Six
As he reached the sidewalk, his Maserati rolled up to the curb and the passenger door swung open.
“Hurry. I just shook off the tail that has been on us for the last thirty minutes,” Nial said from the driver’s seat.
Roman got in and shut the door. Kate was settling into the back seat as he pulled on his seat belt. She gave him a strained smile.
“The Pro Libertatis don’t have Winter and Garrett,” Roman said as Nial pulled away again, accelerating hard but smoothly through the gears.
“Then who does?” Sebastian’s voice issued from the overhead phone speaker.
“Leave that for now,” Nial said sharply. “Time is running out. We’re on hour twenty-two for Winter and ten for Garrett. We need to move, not theorize. Roman, spill it.”
Roman jumped. “How did you know?”
“Your heart.”
Roman grabbed at his chest, becoming aware only then that his heart was galloping like a mad thing, independent of any will of his own. “They tried their leverage. They brought out a big gun.”
“The mayor?” Nial guessed.
“Good guess. Except he and I knew each other from before. The Great War.”
Nial turned on to the on ramp for the El Camino Parkway and accelerated again. “They have leverage over him?”
“I think so. He denied it – he spouted Libertatis policy with utter conviction, but right at the end he reminded me about Cuvilly during the war.”
“Translation?” Kate asked from the back seat.
“Tiny village near Somme,” Sebastian said, his voice very clear.
Roman nodded.
“You were in that battle?” Nial asked.
“I was in a lot of them,” Roman replied. “But I nearly didn’t make the Somme. My brigade were all but wiped out because we were hiding out in Cuvilly in the days leading up to the battle, recovering and regaining strength. One of the villagers who wanted to make good with the local Nazis turned us in.”
“Who?” Nial pressed.
“The name doesn’t matter. It’s not relevant.” Roman pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, trying to contain the growing sense of doom and fury building in him. “It was the local lawyer,” he said.
“MacDonald,” Kate breathed.
“Sebastian!” Nial said shortly.
“I can be there inside fifteen minutes,” Sebastian replied.
“He won’t use his hotel. It’ll be something more private that gives him more control.”
“They’ve been in L.A. for weeks,” Kate said. “He could have rented anything by now.”
“Not without a paper trail,” Sebastian said.
“We’ll be in the hills in twenty minutes,” Nial warned.
“It could be Van Iuys or East L.A. or bloody Tacoma,” Roman said.
“It’s not going to be East L.A., because the cut-off led there. It’ll be away from there,” Kate pointed out. “And MacDonald will keep them in the city because he has to look like he’s doing business as usual. He can’t leave town the minute Garrett disappears. It will connect him to the disappearance. So they’re here somewhere.” Her hand curled over Roman’s shoulder and squeezed. Roman gripped her fingers.
“This is taking too long. Sebastian, get ready. Kate, do you have your cellphone?” Nial asked.
“Yes.”
“Phone MacDonald and ask him…if you can have a copy of the original contract you signed with Garrett. Say some inconsistencies have been questioned. Something. Anything.”
“You want to trace his cellphone?”
“Yes.”
“I can do better than that.”
“I need fifty seconds,” Sebastian warned.
There was a single electronic warble as Kate dialled.
“Mr. MacDonald, it’s Kate Lindenstream. Yes, good evening to you, too. No, no I’m not looking for Garrett at all. He’s the last person on earth I’d want to talk to right now.” The disgust and anger in her tone made Roman turn in his seat to look at her.
Kate was focused on a spot on the back on his seat, listening hard to MacDonald.
“Because I found out this morning that he got me into bed to find out about some stupid stone thing I might have picked up in Turkey last year, is why,” she said, fury dripping from every stiff word. “Which is why I’m calling you?”
Roman could hear the alarm in MacDonald’s voice even from his seat. He would be counselling now about client attorney privilege and that Kate needed to hang up now and get her own lawyer…
“I don’t care about that crap,” Kate said furiously. “I just want my pound of flesh from that arrogant asshole. I have a lawyer. I have a very good lawyer. And now I have a meeting. Tomorrow at nine a.m. at The Standard. He is going to pay. Restitutuion, damages, and punitive damages. He has made me the laughing stock of Hollywood and no one gets away with that.”
Another pause.
“Ten o’clock then.”
Another pause.
“Then when, MacDonald? I can meet you anytime. State your time and location, and we will be there.”
More squawking from the phone. Roman felt the fifty seconds tick off on his mental clock and reached back to tap her knee. Kate nodded.
“Thank you, MacDonald. I’ll see you.” She hung up.
“Sebastian?” Nial said into the phone pick-up.
“Got it,” he said, sounding very smug.
* * * * *
The cramped 1915 bungalow in Redondo Beach squatted amongst its more stately neighbours, looking downtrodden, but the rental on the prime location beach house was scary.
Yet the sad exterior and dried up lawn let the house go unnoticed among the glitzy do-overs towering around it, which must have appealed to MacDonald’s need for privacy.
Nial parked the Maserati four houses away, in front of a three story condo block where it didn’t look at all out of place between an antique Aston Martin and a Tessler.
“You should stay in the car,” Roman told Kate.
“Fuck that.” She climbed out.
Sebastian eased over the front fence of the house in front of them. “I got here five minutes ago and scouted around. I think we may have a minor problem.”
Nial raised a brow in query.
“I think the guys guarding the house are SEALs or ex-SEALS and there are at least ten of them.”
Nial snorted. “Overkill.”
“Who are these people?” Roman demanded.
“Doesn’t matter for now,” Nial said sharply. “For now, our aim is simple. Find Garrett and Winter. Kate—”
“Don’t even think about it,” she said.
“They’re SEALs.”
“Don’t care. I’ll hang back behind Roman, if that will make you happy, but I’m not sitting here in the car and letting my imagination go into nuclear meltdown.”
“You understand that you’re the only one vulnerable to bullets and blades in there?” he replied.
She rolled her eyes.
“Very well.”
“Shit, Nial,” Roman said. “You cave too easily.”
“I’ve been married longer than you.” He gave a small smile. “I know when it’s a lost cause. Besides, Winter would take one of my testicles, if she found out I stopped Kate from coming in and that is a judge and jury I have no intention of facing.” He rolled up the sleeves of the shirt he was wearing. “Everyone ready?”
Sebastian handed Nial a long knife in a scabbard, which he took and held down at his side so that passers-by wouldn’t notice it so easily.
“Let’s go.”
* * * * *
Kate hung back as she had promised she would do, a step or two behind Roman, as he split apart from everyone else and eased around the back of the neighbourhood block, looking for the back entrance to the house. They jog-trotted down the lane at the back of the houses, looking for a gate or drive leading to the backyard of their house.
A hundred yards down the dark lane, a shadow rose up as Roman ran past and grabbed him from behind.
Roman staggered back, his arms reaching up toward his neck. Kate realized the figure had a choke hold on him. She jumped on the man’s back. It wasn’t an impossible leap and adrenaline made the jump even easier. She landed high and wrapped her legs around him. It was ridiculously easy to whip her own arm under the guy’s chin, jam it against his throat until she felt the adam’s apple give way, then lock her wrist with her other hand and haul on it. She let her body weight fall backwards, which put even more pressure on her arm.
The guy instantly began to choke and gasp. He let Roman go and scrabbled at her arms, trying to wrench her loose. But she had locked herself in tight and the more he swung about and staggered, the more pressure he put on his own windpipe.
He ran backwards and at the last second, she realized he was going to ram himself into a fence to try and dislodge her. She straightened up her back, taking the impact across her whole back and ass. It didn’t hurt as much as she thought it would. And it didn’t dislodge her.
It was the guy’s last effort. He slowly sank down to the ground as his strength ran out.
“Stay on him,” Roman murmured. “He could be faking it.”
“Yep,” she replied. She tightened her grip, waiting it out. “Test him.”
Roman pulled out his knife, picked up the guy’s hand and drove the point into his thumb. It wasn’t a hard jab, but hard enough that he should have twitched.
He didn’t move.
“You can let him go now.”
She unlocked her arms and Roman helped her to her feet. She pushed at the comatose man. “The bastard!” she hissed. “We could have been two kids out sneaking a cigarette! He didn’t even try to identify us!”
Roman pulled her around to face him. “Where in hell did you learn how to put a choke hold on a grown man?”
She blinked. “On TV.”
Roman scrubbed at his hair. “We’re running out of time. C’mon.”
“Shouldn’t we take away his stuff?” Kate asked. “So he can’t warn the others?”
Roman hesitated, then leaned over the sleeping guard. “I suppose you learned that out of a book?”
“Red Zone,” she replied. “Spy thriller. My third movie.”
“Of course,” he sighed, patting down the guard. He yanked a wire from under the guard’s nylon windbreaker and unhooked it from his ear.
Kate squatted down next to the guard and dug through his pockets.
“What are you doing?”
“Take his weapons.”
“We’re doing this silently. Last thing Nial wants is a neighbourhood shoot out on Redondo Beach.”
“Last thing we want is a pissed off ex SEAL with a headache coming up behind us with his guns blazing.” She shrugged. “You know guns. You can disable them and toss them as we go.” She handed over a stubby gun she found in an ankle holster and a knife in a flat holster that had been tucked into the man’s trousers. “That one, you can keep.”
“Thanks,” Roman said dryly and lifted her to her feet. “Enough. Time is wasting. The others will be waiting for us.” He hesitated. “I’m not sure having you stay behind me is the best place for you.”
She grinned. “Don’t like having someone on your six?”
He gave what sounded like a growl. “You make too many movies. Let’s go.”
* * * * *
Garrett heard it long before anyone else in the room and just barely managed to school his face to neutral. The sound of a body hitting a floor was quite distinct. It had come from above them. No one else in the room reacted, which meant it had been soft enough that human ears couldn’t hear it.
The three that had been working him over as punishment for ruining the chair and moving himself over to the sofa were talking in the corner of the room, their voices soft enough that he could only hear sibilants and the odd consonants – not enough to string together to form a coherent conversation.
They had arrived toward sunset, after leaving them alone for nearly six hours. Despite the windowless basement room, Garrett was still attuned to sunrise and sunset, and his internal clock was far more accurate than a human’s, so he knew where the sun was in the day sky when they stepped into the room and found him leaning against the sofa and Winter curled up, sleeping naturally, with her body fully restored and her head on the arm. The alarm and panic that had ensued had been almost funny.
It had taken five of their biggest men to lift him, the chair and the chains off the ground and the five of them hadn’t had the coordination necessary to fit the chair back onto the base.
In the end one of them got the bright idea to unlock the chains, unravel them and release him from the chair. While four of them had held him down, two more had fixed the chair and tied Winter into it.
Then they had beaten Garrett.
As beatings went, he’d had worse. Before Scotland had been won, the English had beaten him more than once. The English had been vicious about it and he had not been able to heal the way he could now. Now, the pain was momentary and it was an inconvenience, but that was all.
As soon as he heard the body drop to the floor above, he knew he would take a dozen such beatings, if it meant keeping five, ten or a dozen of them occupied while whoever it was worked their way through to them.
He lifted himself up into a sitting position, which caused a stir of concern, as the two who had been left to watch over him surged to hold him down.
“I don’t think so,” Garrett said. It was too easy. They weren’t expecting it. He grabbed both their heads and smashed them together. They dropped like stones to the floor as he pulled his legs out of the way.
The other three turned, alerted, as Garrett tugged the Berretta 9mm out of the thigh holster. “I’m betting you want to avoid gunfire at all costs,” he said, raising the gun to point at them. “But I don’t and in this room, the only people vulnerable to bullets are you three.” He grinned. “Shouldn’t’ve worn your sidearms into this room, huh?”
They raised their hands.
“Good move,” Garrett agreed. “Release her.” He waved toward Winter.
They didn’t move. So Garrett carefully put a bullet in the shoulder of the one closest to him. “I grew up with a broadsword in my hand,” he told them, “but I got really good with a handgun, too. Hand-eye coordination transfers over nicely.”
As the wounded guard crumpled, clasping his shoulder, the other two hurried over to the chair and untied the leather straps binding Winter.
She moved to the wounded guard and bent over him, touching his forehead. He fell back onto the floor and lay still. “He’ll be out for a few hours,” she told Garrett.
“Handy talent, that.”
“It has its uses.” She stepped over to him and rested her hand on his shoulder.
“What are you doing?”
“Shh…”
“I heal, Winter.”
“Shh…”
He could feel it, whatever it was. He’d not noticed until now the growing uneasiness in him, that presaged the need to feed, but abruptly, it was not there and the absence of it was remarkable. He could take a deep breath, as if he had been afraid to breathe deeply before in case something popped or exploded. Tension that he hadn’t been aware of building inside him had simply vanished.
“How did you know?” he asked.
“I live with a vampire,” she said with a small smile. “And I have to feed once a month myself.” Her smile broadened a little more. “But that’s a secret between you, me and my husbands, okay?” She stepped back. “The effect won’t last long. It’s like taking Tylenol. It just masks the problem. But it will give you a few hours.” She tilted her head toward the door. “I heard a noise outside the room a few seconds ago. Is that what prompted you to act?”
“Yes.” He got to his feet, carefully keeping the gun on the two standing in the corner. “Any second now. The only problem is, I can’t tell who is going to come through the door.”
“Friendlies or enemies?”
“Right.”
Winter nodded toward the guards. “Put them in front of the door. We can stand behind them.”
Garrett glanced at her. “You don’t match your delicate appearance, do you?”
She smiled and the smile held a touch of wickedness. “Married to the two reprobates I’m married to? If I’d had any delicate tendencies at all, I lost them on the honeymoon.”
The soft shuffles were closer now. Garrett held up his finger for silence and motioned the guards forward. They stepped forward stoically, their arms crossed. Garrett got behind them and roughly pushed them until they were a few feet away from the door. It would make them appear more of a threat when the door opened.
Then he crouched down against the wall behind them.
Winter stood against the wall right by the door, where it would swing open and hide her.
Garrett shook his head and waved her over to him.
She frowned.
He waved her over again. She shrugged, moved over and hunched up next to him on the floor, moving silently and quickly.
It was still outside the room and the tension wound up inside him again, but this time it was because he knew the door was about to bust open.
Three shots fired, drilling right through the simple plasterboard wall, a foot away from the doorframe and almost exactly where Winter had been standing. She shivered where she sat next to him, but didn’t say a word.
Then the door was rammed open, the wood around the lock splintering and flying apart as the lock was forced out of the lock plate. The door waivered open until someone on the other side either kicked it or shouldered it aside.
Two bodies streaked through the open door, almost too fast for even Garrett’s enhanced vision to see. They leapt at the two guards, driving them down to the floor, where they came to a halt. Roman and Nial, their hands around each throat, thumbs against the carotids, sending the guards to sleep.
Garrett got slowly to his feet and helped Winter to hers. “The cavalry has arrived,” he observed dryly.
“About time,” she replied tartly. “I’m hungry.”
“About time?” Sebastian demanding, coming into the room. “We’ve fought off Navy bloody SEALs for you, I’ll have you know. That’s not a job just anyone could pull off.”
But Winter was already in his arms before he’d finished protesting, her face against his chest and her arms winding around his neck.
Garrett waited patiently for Roman to finish his work.
“Micheil.” Kate’s soft voice sent a tremor from the base of his skull rippling all the way down to the end of his tail bone.
Garrett turned, feeling like he was moving through treacle.
“You really are here,” he said. “What the hell, Kate…”
“I came to get you back.” Her voice was hoarse and her eyes were tear filled. “We came to get you back.”
Roman stepped around to face them both. He was breathing heavily, the price a vampire paid for moving at top speed like that. He would have to feed, soon, too. But for now he was looking at Garrett with an expression that seemed half-angry, half…
Garrett abruptly started to shake, deep in his core. “This isn’t a game, Roman. Ye can’t pick up and wander off when ye feel like it over and over. I’m done lettin’ ye think that’s okay. I don’t think Kate would ever let ye do it. She’s got more grit than me.”
Kate smiled. “No I don’t, but my life is a lot shorter, so I can’t screw around with my time like you two. But I don’t think it’s an issue anymore. Roman?” She looked up at him.
Roman was watching him. “Kate told me why she calls you Micheil.”
Garrett frowned. “Never could come right out and say it, could you?”
“What? That I love you?” Roman sighed. “Of course I do. I’ve been a fucking idiot for two hundred years and I’ve been tied up in knots for these last ten weeks, because I’ve fallen in love with Kate just as badly. Between the two you I haven’t known which way to turn. I love you, Calum Micheil Garrett of the mighty Bruce Clan. Always have, always will. It just took me a while to settle to the fact.”
Garrett felt something loosen and relax inside him, similar to the release of tension Winter had created when she had masked his need to feed. “A while to settle to it? Six hundred years? And you call me impatient.” He shook his head.
Roman kissed him and Garrett let himself drown in the kiss. He didn’t give a damn about who might be witnessing it.
The loud gunshot and the blow to his back were simultaneous. He was punched forward by the blow, rammed into Roman’s chest. Large calibre, his over-taxed mind calculated, to deliver such force.
But before he could even straighten himself up, there was another two shots, both quiet retorts muffled by a silencer.
Then silence.
Roman pushed him to his feet and Garrett turned around.
“Sweet Mary Mother of God,” Garrett breathed.
Heavy footsteps sounded outside the door and Sebastian and Nial pushed back into the room. Garrett hadn’t been aware of them leaving. They had slipped out discreetly, giving them privacy.
The guard Winter had put to sleep still lay peacefully in the corner. But the two guards Garrett had overcome and Nial and Roman had choked to unconsciousness now lay dead on the floor. Each had a neat bullet hole in the centre of their foreheads. One of them was holding a stubby little Smith & Wesson revolver. His trouser leg was rucked up, revealing an ankle holster. He had clearly roused enough from the temporary lapse of consciousness to pull his gun and shoot Garrett in the back.
Kate stood where Garrett had been standing, her legs spread. She was lowering her arm. In her hand was a Glock with a silencer attached. She was staring at the guards.
“What the hell?” Sebastian said, looking at her.
“Where did you get the gun?” Nial demanded.
“I took it off the guard we ran into, out the back,” Kate said, her voice remote and dreamy.
“And you just happen to be a crack shot?” Sebastian asked.
“Just lucky, I suppose,” she said, her voice still distant.
“She was an archery champion,” Garrett said. “In high school.”
Nial glanced at him. “We don’t have time. Sebastian, clean the gun off and leave it here. We need to be gone. And we need to finish the last of this business. You take Roman and Garrett. I’ll take Kate and Winter. I’ll meet you there.”
Sebastian lifted Kate’s hand and gently plucked the gun from it.
“Meet us where?” Garrett asked, lost.