Deadly Desire (Riley Jenson Guardian #7)(23)

“Then why the hell are we bothering to protect him?”
“That's what I like about you, Sal. You're such a sweetheart.” Although she probably would have been, if it had been a dog I'd been wanting to protect. 
She snorted softly. “And you are a bitch. I'll send an address to your onboard. You going to be there to meet the team?”
“Ta. And no.” I glanced at my watch. I was already ten minutes late for my meal with Ben and I still had to get the kid to the safe house. “And I'll need a magi team at my current location. I had to laser a zombie to stop him getting the kid, but he's still alive.”
“Half a zombie isn't much threat to anyone.”
“When there's magic involved, I'm not taking a chance.”
She grunted. “I'll send Marg and her team.”
“Thanks, Sal.” I pocketed my phone and walked on through the warehouse. Joe was still hiding in the shadows of the large bin that seemed to be leaking an oily liquid everywhere. The zombie lay near his feet, lifeless but maybe not entirely dead. We wouldn't know for sure until the magi got here to take care of him.
Joe rose as I approached, and his relief was evident.
“You got her?” he asked, wiping oil-stained hands across his already grubby jeans.
“No, she escaped.” I stopped and crossed my arms. “You want to tell me why she was chasing you?”
“I don't know.” His gaze suddenly wouldn't meet mine as he brushed sweaty strands of hair away from his forehead.
“Fine.” I turned on my heels and walked away.
“Hey,” he said, voice confused. “Where you going?”
“If you can't be bothered telling me the truth, I can't be bothered helping you.”
“But she'll come after me again!”
“That's your problem, not mine.”
“Wait!”
I didn't. There was a pause, then footsteps as he ran after me. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I think I might have called her.”
I stopped and turned to look at him. Fear and defiance mingled in his eyes. “You called her?”
“Yeah. The first woman gave Kaz a business card, just in case something happened and she wasn't able to do the job.”
“And you stole the card?”
He looked indignant, but the quick flick of guilt in his eyes suggested I wasn't far off the mark. It seemed the old adage of honor among thieves didn't always apply around street kids. “No. Or at least, only once she'd done the job. Thought it might be handy to keep if the job turned out to be real and Kaz made a lot of money.”
Which she probably did, but she didn't live long enough to spend it. “So, after our little chat, you decided to ring the woman and tell her what, exactly?”
Again defiance sparked in his eyes. “That I'd seen her, like, and I wanted money or I'd go to the cops.”
“And did Mike know about this phone call?”
He snorted. “No. He would have asked for his cut, wouldn't he?”
“He saved your life by calling me, Joe. Next time, take that into consideration when you're thinking about cheating him.”
“It ain't cheating—”
“It is when he's keeping you all fed and safe, isn't it?”
“I guess so,” he muttered.
I smiled at his sullen expression. “So what did the woman say?”
“She agreed, like, and said she'd meet me at the cricket ground, near Vale street, at eleven. But that thing came after me before then.”
And why would he not have expected that? Honestly, anyone intent on a little blackmail ought to be prepared for the fact that the recipient of said blackmail wasn't going to be happy about it, and just might be inclined to react. But then, I guess Joe was still a kid and somewhat green to the foibles of others, even if he had lived on the streets and learned his lessons the hard way.“You said the first woman—does that mean the woman you talked to on the phone wasn't the same woman?”
He frowned. “I don't think it was, but that sort of thing is easy to fake, isn't it?”
It was, but I very much suspected it meant we had two different women involved in these murders. Joe obviously thought the same, given his choice of words.
“How did she find you?”
“I don't know. I was scouting possible marks and heard footsteps behind me. I look around and saw that thing coming toward me.”
“How did you know it was after you?”
“Well, there was only me and the marks in the café, and when I ran, it followed. So I kept running.”
So how did the zombie find him? The sorceress couldn't have gotten into the hospital in crow form, and even if she had been there somewhere in human form, how had she pinned his position so accurately? The only possible answer was magic. “Where's the card the first woman gave Kaz?”
“Here.” He reached down into his pocket and withdrew a business card.
The minute my fingers touched it, I felt the magic. It wasn't strong—more a faint residue that made my fingertips tingle than anything dark and nasty. Perhaps the magic was fading.
The card itself was black, with a single staked heart sitting in the middle of it. On the back was a phone number, and a set of times. Those times suggested—to me, at least—that it wasn't even a manned phone, but one that was simply checked remotely. Whoever these women were, they were playing a cautious game.
I wondered if the other murdered teenagers had held similar cards, although it would have been easy enough for the sorceress to direct her creature to destroy it. Maybe this one was still in one piece only because Joe had stolen it.
“She was probably using this to track you,” I said, waving the card lightly. “Which means we can't take it with us. Come on.”
I walked back to the zombie and dropped the card next to the top half of his body, then left the building with Joe in tow.
Once we were on the road, I started the onboard computer and got the address for the safe house.
“Why we going there?” Joe said, as I switched over to the nav-computer.
“We need to keep you safe. The sorceress will keep coming after you until she kills you.”
“But she can't find me now that I no longer have the card.”
“We can't know that. And she seems to have found Kaz all right without the card.” I frowned at the thought. Maybe the magic on the card somehow transferred to whoever was touching it, which meant both Joe and I would have to “disinfect” ourselves from its trace. 
“I guess.” His face suddenly brightened. “Will this place have a TV and a fridge and a bath?”
“Yes, and we want all three to be there after we've caught this bitch and you're able to leave.”
“I wouldn't steal—”
“Yeah,” I said blandly. “Tell it to someone who is going to believe you.”
He grinned and settled back in the seat, watching the road and probably contemplating his next thieving exploit. I got him to the safe house, and was relieved to see that Sal had lived up to her usual efficient ways and had gotten one of the night-shift guys. I handed over my charge, rang the Directorate to tell them my suspicions about the business card, then headed off to my dinner with Ben.
Of course, I was way late, so I grabbed a nice bottle of wine from a nearby shop then headed up to his office.
Nonpareil—the stripper business Ben managed—was situated on the first floor of a nondescript brick building in the middle of old North Melbourne. It was surrounded by factories that looked to be carrying the dirt of centuries on their facades, and the air was thick with the scent of oil, metal, and humans.
Not the nicest of places to visit, but I knew from experience that the inside more than made up for any outside ugliness.
I pushed open the glass door and stepped through. The air was warm and rich with the scent of vanilla and wolf, the latter stronger than the former. I couldn't help a happy sigh. There was nothing nicer than the musky scent of a man—whether or not the moon was on the rise. I climbed the stairs, one hand on the shiny gold railing and my feet sinking into plush red carpets.
The lobby was all gold drapery and overstuffed, lush-looking furniture. A large mahogany desk dominated the far end of the room. Behind it was a wolf whose skin gleamed a dark amber, and who aptly went by the stage name of Goldenrod. Of course, everyone working here had stage names. Ben's was Shadow.
He leaned back in his chair, and waved a finger at the bottle I was carrying. “And you think that is going to make up for Shadow missing his dinner?”
I grinned and undid a couple of buttons on my shirt, so that the swell of my breasts and the mauve edges of my bra were visible. “How about that?”
“Much better,” he said, voice low and throaty, sending a ripple of delight through me. He pressed a button on his desk, opening the door to his right. “He's in his office.”
“Thanks, Golden.”
“Definitely my pleasure,” he said, then laughed as I worked the hips just a little bit more. “If you ever get tired of the old man, you know where to come and play next.”
My grin grew, but I didn't answer as I walked through the coffee room and into the hallway beyond. Ben looked up as I entered his office, then leaned back in his chair and gave me an insolent grin. “Well, well, look what the dog dragged in.”
I sat on the corner of his desk and tried to ignore all the beautiful black skin his tank top exposed. “I brought wine.”
“What type?”
“Wolf Blass.” It was his favorite, not mine. I was more a Brown Brothers gal.