Eric Lustbader - Blood Trust

“Right. Two pairs of eyes are better than one,” he said. “Meet you in twenty at the office.”

She severed the connection, read a little more, continuing to spin her wheels, and sighed. Still no sign of Gunn. She checked her watch. Shit, maybe she had been wrong about him. All at once, her attention shifted. She looked forward to meeting with Pete, hopeful he’d spot something she had missed. Besides, she hadn’t eaten a thing all day.

She was about to pack up the dossiers in preparation for heading back to the office when a familiar figure pushed through the doors of the building and came briskly down the stairs.

Pete McKinsey passed not ten feet from where she stood, frozen in dismay.

THATË POINTED with his chin. “What else is on your iPod?”

He held the iPod out and the kid took it, plugged Jack’s Monster earbuds in, and scrolled down.

“Don’t know any of this shit,” he said a little too loudly, as people will when they’re listening to music in their ears. Then, apparently finding a song he liked, he turned up the volume. His head began to nod rhythmically.

Jack watched him for a moment. He had to remind himself that the kid was only seventeen. He spoke American street slang almost perfectly; a first-rate mimic. He turned from this thought as Alli came out of the bathroom. She looked fairly comical with the bottoms of Thatë’s jeans turned up in oversized cuffs. The hoodie came down almost to her knees.

“Don’t laugh,” she warned.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Jack said.

She came and brought a chair over to sit beside him. Thatë’s eyes tracked her but he was too deep in the music to pay much attention.

“What’s with the Lost Boy?” she said.

“We’re in trouble, Alli. The Virginia State Police have a warrant out for your arrest and I have no doubt your uncle wants to get his hands on us as well. Thatë provided a safe haven where no one would think to look for us.”

“Any port in a storm.”

“This is more than a storm,” Jack said seriously.

Alli hitched her chair closer to him and lowered her voice even though it was impossible for Thatë to overhear them. “I don’t understand. Uncle Hank hired those men to guard me. Instead, they tried to kill me. I mean, what the fuck?”

“My thought exactly. That’s why I spirited you away, that’s why I don’t want you to turn yourself in. Nothing about this situation rings true and until I can understand what’s happening I don’t trust anyone, and that includes your Uncle Hank.”

“You don’t think he would—”

“At this point, I don’t know what to think. But the fact is I trust this young criminal-in-waiting more than I do anyone else.”

“Then we really are in trouble.”

Jack nodded.

“On the other hand, we can’t stay here forever.”

“I don’t plan to,” Jack said. He brought her up to date. He told her about the killings at Twilight, how he’d found physical evidence linking them to Billy Warren’s death. He showed her the octagonal badge and Thatë’s identical pendant.

“The writing on them is Albanian, the icon of an underground club whose business makes even Thatë nervous,” he concluded. “That’s where I’m hoping we’ll find some answers about who really killed Billy, and why.”

Thatë chose that moment to come out of his music-induced trance. “Very cool shit,” he said as he pulled out the earbuds. “Old-school roots, man. People put ’em down, but not me. The blues is where hip-hop came from, you know?” Then he grinned at Alli. “So, vajzë e bukur, how you doin’?”

Alli glanced at Jack, who said, “He thinks you’re beautiful.”

She bared her teeth at the kid.

ACCORDING TO Thatë, the Stem was located in Chinatown.

“Best cover in the city,” he said when he saw the look on his companions’ faces. “Tons of tourists, no one looks out of place, hey?”

The moment they turned onto H Street NW, Alli felt an odd thrill of déjà vu. As they passed Fifth Street, heading toward Fourth, she saw the big square sign of the restaurant toward which Thatë was leading them, and she gasped.

“What is it?” Jack said, bringing the three of them up short.

Alli shook her head. “I saw a take-out menu from this restaurant, First Won Ton, in Uncle Hank’s study.”

“His house is a long way from Chinatown,” Jack said.

Alli nodded. “I thought it curious myself.”

Jack turned to the kid. “The Stem?”

“In the basement, below the restaurant.”

Turning back to Alli, Jack said, “How well do you remember the menu? Was there anything written on it, anything circled, the way people do when they order?”

Alli concentrated. One of the things she’d been training toward at Fearington was full-memory recall of conversations and crime scenes. Clearly, her uncle’s study fit into neither category, but the item was so odd, so out of place that she had spent a moment staring at it. In fact, there was something that was circled.

“Spicy fragrant duck with cherries.”

Jack looked at the kid. “Mean anything to you?”

Thatë shook his head.

“Okay,” Jack said, “let’s move in.”

The restaurant, like many in Chinatown, was below street level. A flight of crumbling concrete stairs, dark with grease and city grime, led down to a glass door. A window to the right was filled with roasted ducks hanging by their necks on a series of metal hooks, mahogany-colored and glistening with fat. Below, metal trays held slabs of red-skinned spare ribs, ready for the fire.

Jack had thought about this foray long and hard; mainly whether or not he should take Alli. However, several factors were at play, all of them limiting his options. For one thing, he was reluctant to leave her behind in a strange house in a very bad neighborhood. Thatë was dealing in drugs. People like that were always targets of rivals or enemies. For another, he didn’t believe that Alli would allow him to leave her behind. Besides, she had proved herself in combat. He had to stop thinking of her as the introverted little girl he’d first met, incapable of taking care of herself. In the last year alone, she had grown by leaps and bounds. She needed to be taken seriously.

None of this, whether fact or rationalization, or some combination of the two, caused him to be any less concerned about her safety, but, for better or for worse, this was how it had to play out.

Inside, the restaurant was long and narrow, its Formica tables filled with Chinese families and a smattering of tourists busily consulting their travel guides for tips on what to order. No one paid them any attention, including the slim Chinese woman behind the cash register, who was drinking tea and sucking at her teeth. Waiters, exuding a cold frenzy, came and went between tables, laden with huge trays mounded with enormous dishes or piled high with platters of the dregs of murky, gelatinous substances.

“This way.” Thatë led them through the restaurant, into a narrow corridor that ended at the door to the toilet. Just before it, on the right, was a steep stairway that descended into the dank gloom of a subbasement.

The kid held out his hand and Jack gave him back his octagonal pendant, which he hung around his neck.

“You have the pin?” he said when Jack reached the head of the stairs.

Jack opened his hand. The pin he’d taken from Mathis, Twilight’s dead manager, gleamed dully in the center of his palm.

Thatë nodded. “You’ll have to show it.” As he began to descend, Jack reached forward and spun him around. “Don’t fuck with me, you understand?”

Thatë stared unblinkingly at him for a long, tense moment. Then he nodded curtly and continued his descent. His voice floated up from the semidarkness. “Keep the girl close to you at all times.”