She very much doubted it would have been hard to find them even if there had been crowds streaming by the door, though. Tom looked like he'd been put through a shredder. There was blood on his face, his hair was a mess, and he looked like he was about to fall over of tiredness.
But he smiled when he saw her, and she couldn't help smiling back as she opened the door. For some reason, she expected him to be mad at her, for throwing him out—for thinking he'd gotten high. But he didn't look resentful at all. He sat in the passenger seat, while Keith took the backseat. And Tom strapped himself down with the seat belt, too, she noted.
"We have to call Rafiel and go get him," Tom said.
"We do?"
"Yes. He went home to change. His clothes were shredded sometime . . . around the time they captured him." He gave her a quick rundown of everything that had happened and Kyrie listened, eyebrows raised, trying not to show just how harrowing the account was. Particularly the torture.
When he was done she thought how strange he was that he should have endured all that torture and yet have roused himself to action when he thought Keith—and herself—were in trouble. She took a sidelong glance at Tom, who was dialing his cell phone. There was someone there, she thought. Someone salvageable despite whatever his upbringing and his unexpected shifter nature had done to him.
"Rafiel," Tom said into the phone. Followed by raised eyebrows and, "I see." Which was, in turn, followed by, "Sure."
"He wants to know where we're going to be. He says he'll meet us. He's looking up some data on missing people. He says there's a spike over the last two months. He wants to know what the chances are those people are shifters. Something in the family interviews might give it away, he said. And he definitely wants to figure out how many people were headed for the Athens or vicinity when they disappeared. So he says he'll meet us wherever we're going. And he asks which hotel."
Hotel. Kyrie had been thinking about this. There was an off chance the triad—or the beetles, whoever they were—would decide to call around to hotels for their names. But the hotels they would call around to—if they got around to that—would be in their price range. Not the Spurs and Lace.
"We thought it would be better to meet at a hotel," he said into the phone. "Particularly a large hotel. Lots of guests. No shape-shifter even one not quite in his right mind would want to have that kind of public revelation."
"Where are we going?" he said. "Rafiel says he'll meet us wherever."
"Tom . . . What do you think of your father?"
Tom's eyes widened. His face lost color—which she would have thought impossible before. "Why?" he asked.
"Because he's in town and he—"
"Hang on a second," Tom said into the phone. "I'll call you back in a couple of minutes." He hung up the phone and set it in his lap, then looked at Kyrie. "My father?" he said, not so much as though he were verifying her words, but as though he were in doubt that such a thing as a father existed.
"Your father came to town two days ago and he—"
"Oh, shit," Tom said. "You realize he's probably working for the triad?"
"He was," Kyrie said.
"And? What did he do? Where did he go?"
"He came to me."
Tom's hand clenched so hard on the phone that his knuckles shone white through the pale skin. His face remained impassive. "What did he ask you?"
"Many things. But most of all he seemed to be concerned with where you were, and I couldn't have helped him even if I wanted to."
Tom nodded. "And?"
"And I realized he was working for the triad and I was so shocked that I . . . I left."
"Good," Tom said, and picked up the phone again. "Now, where should we go to that Rafiel can meet us?"
"Tom," Kyrie said, speaking in a low voice because she felt as though Tom were something very unstable on the verge of an explosion. Should not be shaken, stirred, or even looked at cross-eyed, as far as she could tell. "Your father has a hotel room. At the Spurs and Lace."
She expected the silence, and it came, but then she expected a flip remark, and that didn't come. Instead, Tom's face seemed set in stone, his eyebrows slightly pulled together as if he were puzzled, his face expressionless, his eyes giving the impression of being so unreadable that they might as well have a blind pulled down in front of them.
"He said to call him if we needed anything."
"Kyrie," Tom said. It was a slow, even voice. "Are you out of your mind?"