Jayne Castle: Canyons of Night

“I’ll get Officer Wills.”

“No, I don’t want him going up against a couple of hunter-talents. Just do what I said. One more thing. If this doesn’t work out well, get on the phone to Adam Winters, the boss of the Frequency City Guild. Got it? Tell him to call J&J. This is their problem.”

“Got it. But—”

He closed down the phone, not giving her a chance to argue.

Through the crack in the blind he watched her close her own phone. She dropped it into her purse as she went up the steps. She knocked briskly and hesitated a few seconds as though waiting. Then, frowning, she went back down the steps, got into the car, and started the engine. It was a good act, he thought. But he did not breathe deeply again until she was safely out of the drive.

He made his way back into the narrow hall. With great care he picked up the lifeless Sylvester doll and carried it into the bathroom. He set it facedown in the bathtub. He was reasonably confident that the device could not be activated without the key, but when it came to old Arcane legends, you could never be certain. With luck the tub would act as a shield in the unlikely event that the mechanism somehow switched on again.

He went back out into the hall, shut the bathroom door behind him, and then closed the bedroom door. He took the mag-rez out of the holster and checked the load.

Satisfied with his preparations, he got down on his knees and crawled into the living room. Taking care not to throw any shadows on the blinds, he climbed the narrow steps to the sleeping loft. When you hunted, you had to think like your prey. For some reason he had never understood, prey rarely looked up first. People initially prepared for danger from in front, from the side and, if they were very smart, from behind. But they usually checked out the situation overhead last.

He reached the sleeping loft and flattened himself on the floor. Rex vaulted up the steps to join him. A low wooden barrier surrounded the loft but Slade could see around the edge of the staircase opening. From that vantage point he had a clear view of the front door and a portion of the kitchen. He settled down, gun in hand, and prepared to wait.

“They’ll be coming back soon to retrieve Sylvester,” he said to Rex. “They won’t want to take a chance on anyone else getting to it first. These guys have to know that if the Bureau or Arcane or the Guilds get wind of that toy they’ll have more trouble on their hands than they can possibly handle.”

Rex growled a response. All four of his eyes were open.

Slade glanced at his watch. It would not be long. The killers probably had a way to deactivate the mechanism from a safe distance. It was the only explanation that worked.

Ghostly fingertips iced the back of his neck. Not the usual hunting vibes. More like the bad energy he’d picked up shortly before he’d gone into the lab on the island four months ago. His intuition was letting him know that something about the plan was about to go badly wrong. Nearby Rex muttered uneasily.

Charlotte .

Slade knew then beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was in danger. As if on cue, his cell phone rang. He grabbed it off his belt and looked at the screen. The incoming number was Charlotte’s. Of course it was. He went cold.

He contemplated the phone as if it were a snake. Everything in him was urging him to answer the call. It was the only way to make sure that Charlotte was all right. But the hunter in him knew better. It was too late. They had her.

The phone rang again.

You’re supposed to be dead, he reminded himself. They’re making sure. Stick to the plan .

The phone went silent. Slade put it quietly on the floor. He listened to the wind prowling through the trees that surrounded the cabin and forced himself to think.

Charlotte was still alive. The bastards had spotted her coming from the house and decided they couldn’t take any risks. They had grabbed her.

But they would not kill her until they got her into the house. He was sure of that. They would figure that they might need her for a hostage. When they knew for certain that he was dead they would probably try to stage a murder-suicide scene. It was all they had. Given his parapsych history no one in the Bureau or Arcane would be surprised to learn that he had gone crazy and killed his lover and himself.

Rex snarled silently. He was suddenly intent on the kitchen. A few seconds later Slade heard the footsteps on the porch. Three sets, not two. They had Charlotte with them.

The kitchen door opened. Slade watched two men move cautiously into the house, pushing Charlotte ahead of them. Her glasses were gone. Her mouth was covered with a strip of tape. Her hands were bound behind her back. She looked pissed.

“Move, bitch,” one of them said. He shoved her forward. She stumbled and went down on one knee.

The other man jerked her back to her feet.

Slade suppressed the rage that was setting fire to his blood. Emotion of any kind was not a good thing at a time like this. He would be of no use to Charlotte unless he stayed stone cold.

Her captors were dressed in windbreakers, trousers, and boots. One of the men had his hair pulled back into a ponytail. An earring glinted in the ear of the second man. They both wore billed caps, just as Devin and Nate had described.

Slade sincerely hoped the pair would not remove their caps. The bills would tend to block the upward view of the room. Ponytail had his mag-rez out. His gloved fingers were wrapped around Charlotte’s upper arm. The other man held a large, old-fashioned gold pocket watch in one fist. The face of the watch was pointed away from him. As if he’s aiming it, Slade thought.

“The body will be in the living room,” Ponytail said. “That damned doll should have wound down by now but don’t take any chances. Use the watch on it.”

“If you’re so worried about the doll, why don’t you turn it off?” Earring snapped. “I’ll handle the woman.”

Now this was interesting, Slade thought. There was a lot of jittery tension in the room and it wasn’t coming from Charlotte. She was scared as well as furious, but these vibes were different. Ponytail and Earring were nervous about the prospect of dealing with the Sylvester weapon.

“Shut up,” Ponytail said. “We’ve wasted enough time because of the woman. Make sure of that damned doll and double-check to be certain the cop is dead. Move . We need to dump the bodies before someone else comes nosing around.”

“Yeah, sure,” Earring muttered.

They weren’t even going to bother to set up a plausible murder-suicide scenario, Slade realized. Definitely not high-functioning thugs.

Down below the loft, Earring moved gingerly into the living room, careful to keep the watch aimed straight ahead. Two more steps brought him within range of the sleeping loft but Slade let him pass. Earring was not the one with the gun and for the moment, at least, he was completely focused on locating and deactivating the deadly toy.

“I don’t see the cop,” Earring called to his companion. He peeked cautiously down the hall. “Or the doll.”

“Check the bedroom and the bath,” Ponytail ordered. “The cop might have made it that far before he collapsed and the doll might have kept moving for a while before it shut down.”

Earring took a hesitant step into the hall. He was getting more nervous by the second. The pocket watch in his hand shook a little.

“Shit,” he said, backing quickly out of the hall. “This isn’t good. I can’t see the cop or the doll. The door of the bathroom and the bedroom are closed. I know they were open when we set up the doll.”

“Don’t panic.” Ponytail shoved Charlotte ahead of him and followed her out of the kitchen. “The cop probably staggered around before he collapsed. Maybe he made it into the bathroom or the bedroom. Check both rooms.”