11.
I needed some air. I sat in the front seat of Todd’s van, sideways, legs dangling out the open door as I huddled over his burner phone. I’d have one shot at approaching Santiago and setting up a meet. If I got it wrong, he’d dive underground, too deep to follow.
“It’s like submarine warfare,” I muttered.
Caitlin leaned against the side of the van. She stretched, languid, one hand raised like she was beckoning to the cold and starless sky.
“How’s that?”
“We’re prowling around each other, aiming for a direct shot. When we de-roached one of their dealers, and I had my run-in with that lawyer from Weishaupt and Associates, Smith…that was the opening salvo. We know the Network exists. They know that we know. The outstanding question now is, how much do they know about us?”
“You’re straddling two worlds these days, pet. Do you mean how much do they know about our court, or how much do they know about your criminal friends?”
“Both,” I said. “Look, I think we can agree that Melanie wasn’t targeted because of that article she was trying to write. There’s no chance the Network murdered over a dozen people—with their own product, no less—to knock off a teenager who wants to be an investigative journalist. The most Melanie could have possibly uncovered was…well, Todd. And that’s as far as the cops would have gotten, too.”
Caitlin nodded, taking that in as she got on my wavelength. “Not remotely worth the risk or the cost. Which suggests the real target was Emma.”
“Exactly. Kill a family member to send a message. But here’s the kicker: Emma works for your court—”
“Our court,” Caitlin corrected.
“—and she has a seat on the New Commission. So who were these people trying to attack? The infernal underworld? The criminal underworld? Both? And what’s the message supposed to be, anyway? Remember what Santiago said to Todd: they wanted it to look like an accident. This whole scheme, it seems solid from a distance, but the second you start poking at it the entire thing falls apart. There’s something we’re missing here. Something we’re not supposed to see.”
And under it all, the taunts of the King of Worms kept drifting back to me. I eyed the phone again and clicked the custom app Todd used to communicate with his boss. I tapped in his password—geronimo—and a message.
Job’s done, just like you told me to do it, I wrote. I want my money.
Three minutes later, a response pinged in. One word. Patience.
Fuck your patience, I wrote back. I need that money. I kicked over a hornet’s nest, cops everywhere. I want to get out of town for a while.
Cops looking at you? came the reply.
I had to be careful here and put just enough pressure on Santiago to push him into a face-to-face meeting. If I pushed too hard, he might cut his losses and run.
No, I typed. I’m careful. Careful enough that I want to split town before they do start looking. And it’s in your best interest to help me do it. If I go down, you go down.
Are you threatening me, Todd?
I felt that tinge of wrongness again. Yes—as Todd I was absolutely threatening him. And I shouldn’t have been able to. The Network was careful, obsessive, neurotic about protecting itself. Not long ago we’d pulled a bottom-tier dealer from Albuquerque off the street, a guy who knew less than nothing; he’d been implanted with a geas-roach just to be safe. Todd had been commissioned to commit mass murder for hire, and they’d left him free as a bird. It didn’t make sense.
No, I replied, choosing every word carefully. I’m just saying, I gotta get paid. Tonight. Help me out, I’ll disappear, and neither of us has anything to worry about.
If I were in Santiago’s shoes, I’d be thinking of ways to make Todd disappear for good right about now. Minutes drifted by in the dark, just listening to the occasional car rumbling by, and I started to worry I’d overplayed my hand. Then the app let out a happy ping.
Container Park, 11 tonight. Be at the benches closest to the soundstage. Don’t be late.
“He took the bait.” I showed Caitlin the screen. The message history slowly erased itself, line by line. “He’s either coming to give Todd his money, or he’s coming to kill him. I figure it’s even odds.”
“Todd won’t be able to make it,” Emma told us. She came out the side door alone. Her hands had the pink sheen of blood after a vigorous bout of scrubbing, the stains faded but not quite clean.
“Have a good time?” Caitlin asked.
“I did, as a matter of fact. You could have stayed and joined in, you know.”
“You needed to vent some frustration. Next time we’ll share.” She glanced my way. “So, shall we arrange a welcoming party for our new Network friend? Santiago should have all the answers we want, and then some.”
Sure. It was the natural next move. The obvious next move.
And then I saw it.
“They weren’t after Melanie,” I said. “Whether she lived or died, it didn’t matter. It was the attempt that mattered. They weren’t sending Emma a message. They weren’t sending a message at all.”
Emma put her ruddy hands on her hips, frowning. “Could have fooled me.”
“Fooling us. That was the point. Look, do we all agree that none of this makes any damn sense? For starters, regardless of who they wanted dead, why would the Network use a tainted batch of their own designer drug to kill people? We know they have assassins, they have magic—spiking a batch of ink at a house party isn’t just pointlessly risky, it’s going to undercut their business. So I asked myself—what does using poisoned ink accomplish?”
“Considering they’re the only people who know how to make the drug,” Caitlin mused, “it tells us that they’re the ones responsible. Breaking their usual patterns of stealth and sticking their necks out for no good reason. Which…tells us that being seen was entirely the point.”
I pointed at her. “Bingo. Now, Todd said that Melanie was the target. Problem number one, and this is a biggie: Melanie doesn’t do drugs. Let’s not kid ourselves, it’s not like she never gets in trouble, she’s a typical teenager—”
“Lucifer save us all,” Emma muttered, rolling her eyes to the night sky.
“—but ‘trouble,’ for Melanie, means staying out after curfew or sneaking a beer when she can get away with it. Anyone who knows anything about her knows she wouldn’t take ink. So not only is it a stupid way of killing anybody, spiking the batch was a spectacularly stupid way of trying to kill her.”
Caitlin moved closer to me. Hovering, eyes narrowed, catlike. She was prowling along in the wake of my thoughts and overtaking me fast.
“And the Network isn’t stupid,” she said. “Thus we can surmise that their goal was to put Melanie in a dangerous situation—as you said, it didn’t matter if she actually died or not, only that she was threatened—and put their stamp on it so we’d know exactly who to pursue.”
Emma glanced back at the side door. “Not just them. Todd.”
“Todd,” I said. “He knew that Melanie was the target. But why would Santiago even need to tell him that? Why tell him that the drugs were poisoned at all? Not a huge loss if he went to the party and died there with everybody else.”
“So he would tell us,” Caitlin said.
“Exactly. Which is also why he didn’t have a roach inside of him, when as far as we know, all of the Network’s flunkies get one. Because the extraction process has a fifty-fifty chance of killing the patient, and they needed him to talk to us.” I held up the burner phone. “We followed the trail of clues, asked all the right questions, and ended up right where they wanted us.”
“It’s a trap,” Emma said. “But…why me? I’m a ranking member of the Court of Jade Tears and I have a seat on the New Commission—which group are they targeting?”
“Most likely both,” Caitlin told her. “You’re an intelligence asset. If you fell into enemy hands, anything they could wring out of you would be valuable.”
I had to smile. “There’s one more layer to this thing. We know the Network isn’t stupid. Can we assume they know that we aren’t, either? We followed the clues, then we realized the whole thing was a house of cards and took it apart with one good poke. They’re counting on that.”
“This is feeling like a game of speed chess,” Caitlin said. “I approve. So, they never really expected to fool us. We were supposed to realize that this is a trap. And they’re expecting us to act accordingly, in the mistaken belief that we’re a step ahead of them.”
“Let’s say we figured out everything except that last part. We know it’s a setup, we know we were supposed to figure it out, but we don’t know that’s actually the key to whatever surprise they’re planning to spring on us. How would we react? What would our next move be?”
Emma paced the driveway, slow, hands clasped behind her back.
“The one thing we need most right now,” she said, “is information. The Network thrives in the shadows, and we can’t fight them until we drag them into the light. So we’d still show up at the ‘meeting,’ one way or another, hoping to capture at least one of their people for interrogation.”
“And since they went after your daughter?” I asked.
“I’d be the one to show up,” Emma said. “If I offered myself up as a target—assuming that they’ll want to capture me, not kill me—it would be the easiest way to spot their people. Surround me with covert operatives, and when the Network moves in to grab me, our people move in to grab them.”
“A counter-ambush,” Caitlin said. “But now we have a problem: if we were supposed to work out their scheme, and they’re expecting us to respond in the most likely manner…what’s the point? If they want to abduct Emma, they’ve just made their job that much harder.”
“That’s because she’s not the target,” I said. “I am.”
Emma stopped pacing. They both looked my way.
“Emma’s going to need backup, watching from a safe distance. You asked whether they’re targeting your court—”
“Our court,” Caitlin said.
“—or the Commission. Doesn’t matter, because there’s only one other person with a foot in both worlds. Me. No matter which side I’m repping, if Emma decided to play the bait, I’d be there to watch over her. See, the King of Worms overplayed his hand. He wanted to pitch me on his ‘game,’ this death match with his wannabe disciple. But he slipped when he said the guy’s a big deal in the Network, and that he’d already started making his move.”
“That’s what this is all about,” Caitlin said. “This entire scheme, from start to finish, was intended to draw you out and distract you. While we’re watching Emma, expecting that she’s the target, they’ll be coming for you instead.”
“Exactly. So we get a line of sight and backup on both of us. We can surround Emma with obvious muscle, so it looks like we took the bait, while everybody else keeps their eyes on me. When they pounce, we pounce.”
“One problem,” Emma said. “This man who’s trying to impress the king…he’s been ordered to murder you, yes?”
“Well, I’m hoping he’ll want to snatch me and kill me someplace less public.” I jammed my hands in my pockets and stared up at the onyx sky. “Hoping. If I’m wrong, this could get messy. We may have to improvise.”