Ilona Andrews - Wildfire

I got up off the bed. The thought of putting on my blood-smeared dress turned my stomach. No, thanks. He had to have some clothes around here.

I searched the room. The glass curve of the shower extended a few feet past the shower itself, and behind it was closet space. Shelves supported stacks of neatly folded T-shirts and sweatpants, and a rod held a couple dozen hangers, offering everything from shirts to ridiculously expensive suits, precisely organized and quickly available. Military habits were hard to break.

I grabbed a T-shirt. It came to mid-thigh on me. I stole a pair of sweatpants. Predictably, they were a little tight on my hips and way too long. I rolled them up. Good enough. I kicked the remnants of my dress, my bra, and my underwear into a pile on the floor. I really liked that bra, but there was no way I would be walking out of his place with my bra in my hands. With luck, nobody would see me, but I didn’t want to take chances.

I slid my feet into my beat-up sneakers and padded out the door and down the staircase to the second floor. Bug sat in his chair, absorbed in the glow of nine computer screens arranged in three by three formation on his wall.

He blinked at me. Bug always looked like he’d lost his sandwich and needed desperately to find it, because he was on the verge of hunger jitters. Before Rogan enticed him to come to work for him, Bug had been in bad shape. The swarm the military pulled out of the arcane realm and bound to him was supposed to have killed him in eighteen months. Only volunteers became swarmers, usually for a big payday. Bug never shared why he did it or what he spent the money on. Somehow he survived past his time. When I met him, he lived in an abandoned building, which he had booby-trapped. Skinny, dirty, paranoid, trading surveillance for an occasional hit of equzol, a military-issue drug and the only thing that would “quiet” the swarm according to him, Bug had one foot in his grave. Napoleon, a bastard son of a French bulldog and some adventurous mixed breed, was the only thing that kept him grounded.

Rogan had plucked him out of his hidey-hole. Now Bug had filled out, his dark brown hair was neatly cut and clean, and he wore decent clothes. He seemed calmer. His paranoia had receded. He could carry on a conversation without twitching. Napoleon, also clean and a good deal plumper, snored by his feet on a little couch, upholstered with red fabric and Île-de-France motif.

“You’re leaving?” Bug asked.

“Yes.”

“Don’t leave,” Bug said.

“I’ve got to go.”

“What do I tell him when he comes back?”

Did Rogan tell him to keep an eye on me? “Tell him whatever you want, Bug.”

I crossed the floor, turned the corner, and descended the staircase. The lights were on. Half a dozen of Rogan’s ex-soldiers, four men and two women, carried on a quiet conversation. It died when they saw me.

I recognized Nguyen Hanh, an Asian woman who worked as Rogan’s head mechanic, and Michael Rivera, Rogan’s second-in-command. About mid-thirties and Latino, Rivera had a great smile. He usually smiled after he shot someone.

“Are you leaving?” Rivera asked.

“Yes.” Kill me, somebody.

“Why?” Nguyen asked.

“Because I’m going home.”

“But the Major isn’t back yet,” Rivera pointed out.

“I realize that.”

“You can’t leave. He said he would be right back, and we’re supposed to keep you safe while he’s gone. If you leave, we can’t keep you safe,” Rivera said.

“You can still keep me safe. I’m going to my house across the street.” I pointed through the wide open double door at the warehouse. “You never close these doors anyway, so you can watch me walk twenty yards to my house.”

“He’ll be in a bad mood if you leave,” a dark-haired man said.

Rivera looked at him for a second, then turned back to me, smiling up a storm. “Maybe you could wait for him?”

“No, I really can’t.”

I walked straight at Rivera. He stepped aside, I marched through the doors and headed toward the warehouse.

“It’s because of the Sherwood woman,” another male voice said behind me.

“Of course it is,” Nguyen said. “I said when she first showed up she’d be trouble.”

I crossed the street, punched the code into the lock, entered the office, and locked the door behind me. I had had one hell of a day. I had left my phone in my car, my gun in Rogan’s car, and I had no underwear. Walking around without underwear felt odd. Being without my phone was even more odd. There was probably some sort of deep conclusion to be derived from the fact that losing my phone disturbed me more than losing my underwear.

This wasn’t me. I always had my phone and my gun. And underwear.

I eased the interior door open. The warehouse was quiet. A lonely light glowed at the very end of the hallway in the kitchen. With four teenagers in the house, someone was always raiding the fridge during the night, and we usually left the light fixture over the table on for the midnight snackers. Tonight I heard no voices.

It was a few minutes past eleven, and on a school night everyone would be in bed by then, but we’d decided to keep everyone in until the trials. Where were they?

I tiptoed down the hallway, took a right, cleared another short hallway, and peeked out at the Hut of Evil, a small building within the building where Bern reigned supreme with all his equipment. Faint voices floated down to me.

“. . . right . . . he’s on top of the building . . .”

“Got it.”

Right. Team Baylor was making the world safe from alien zombies one cyber shot at a time. At another time, I would get right in there and join them, but tonight wasn’t that night.

I leaned a little more and caught a glimpse of Bern. He wasn’t wearing his gaming headset. His face, illuminated by the glow of the monitor, looked haggard, the eyebrows furrowed. He was focused on whatever was in front of him at the cost of all else. Probably going through the contents of Rynda’s computer, looking for the file the kidnappers wanted.

I turned around and padded into the kitchen. When he found something, he would tell me.

My cell phone lay on the kitchen table, illuminated by the lamp like a lure. Cornelius must’ve brought it in. Ha! I picked it up. One thing recovered.

A missed call. I flicked the icon and listened to the voice mail.

“This is Fullerton at Scroll, Inc. Please call me at your earliest convenience, no matter the hour.”

All the muscles in my stomach tensed into a tight hard ball. It was past eleven. He said as soon as possible. I called the number.

He picked up on the first ring. “Hello, Ms. Baylor.”

“Hello, Mr. Fullerton.”

“The analysis of your DNA is completed. Your familial relationships are verified, and you are clear for trials.”

I exhaled.

“We’ve received two requests for your basic profile. Under the circumstances of the impending trials, I felt I had to notify you as soon as possible.”

“Let me guess, House Tremaine?”

“That’s one of them.”

“Denied.” Victoria wouldn’t be getting her claws on any of my information.

“Noted.”

“Is the second from House Rogan?” What do you know? Rogan did care about the genetic match after all.

“No. House Shaffer.”

“House Shaffer?” Of the three truthseeker Houses in the US, House Tremaine was the most feared, because my evil grandmother did business with the brutality of an axe murderer. House Lin had the most members. House Shaffer was the middle of the road and I knew very little about it.

“Yes. Should I deny or accept the request?”

“Why would they be asking about my genetic profile?”

“There are numerous reasons,” Fullerton said carefully.