I gritted my teeth. Okay. Think, Maggie. My datapad was shut off and in a dumpster. Sure, Lizzie could track me to wherever we'd been when I'd switched it off via our housecomp, but after that, my trail would be gone.
Damon's datapad was still on, and Ajax didn't know I had it, so that was good. I just needed to make sure he didn't search my bag. Or find some way to hide the datapad somewhere within the truck.
Of course, the truck could have shielding, designed to block someone outside trying to track a high-value individual. Though, if it did, why would Ajax make me ditch my pad? We were still within the limits of downtown, heading toward the piers. Away from the hospital. If the truck itself had any Riley-installed tracking devices, I had to assume that had been disabled or messed with to send a false signal. Ajax was too calm to be worried about immediate pursuit. So the plan must have been for us to arrive at our destination—wherever the hell that might be—before any alarm bells started to ring. Either that or we’d change vehicles at some point and vanish from sight that way.
Because once an alert went out on Damon, I had no doubt that Mitch would move heaven and earth to track down his boss. San Francisco was as wired as any city these days with traffic cams and security feeds galore. It would be difficult to avoid detection for very long.
But not impossible, I realized when Ajax made a series of turns that made it clear we were heading to Dockside, where the surveillance system was minimal at best. Dockside was, however, one of the few places in the city that would be busy so early in the morning, as the various clubs and gambling rooms and other establishments finally kicked out their last patrons of the night. But I didn’t think I wanted to rely on the chance of boozed-up or drugged-up clubbers remembering a very boring black truck passing by.
Ajax threaded a path through the back blocks of Dockside, down streets where there were no lights other than his headlights to show our way, and past half-ruined buildings that not even the criminal side of the city seemed inclined to reclaim. When we emerged, it was into a back entrance of some sort of transport depot, where huge semitrailers were parked in front of a warehouse that had no signage to indicate who might own it.
I tried to commit a few of the license plates to memory but lost my train of thought when Ajax drove down the side of the warehouse and up a ramp into the open cargo trailer of a waiting semi. A series of clicks echoed through the truck, then a jolt as something locked into place below us. Some sort of restraint to hold us steady?
I swore under my breath. So that was how we were going to vanish. There was little chance the cameras had traced us through Dockside, and now there would be nothing to see at all as the truck took us to our destination.
"Clever," I said.
Ajax shot me a glance but didn't respond. He tapped the screen and said, "Ted, five minutes before we move."
"On it." Ted unstrapped himself.
"What's he—" I stopped as Ajax pressed his gun against my temple.
"Now, Maggie, you're just going to sit there and not try anything stupid."
I'd never had anyone pull a gun on me before. It was freaking terrifying. Every part of me froze while my pulse screamed into overdrive, terror beating through me.
"Good. Just like that," Ajax said.
His eyes flicked to the screen. Ted had peeled part of the blanket covering Damon back and had his left wrist in his hand. And a scalpel in the other.
That jerked me out of my stupor. "What the hell is he doing?" I demanded. I didn't move, still frozen by the steady pressure of the gun at my temple.
"Relax. He's just going to clip his chip."
"Clip his chip? What does that mean?" Damn it, there went my other backup plan. Damon's chip and its panic button. Clearly they meant to disable it. But that sounded crazy to me. Interface chips were woven into the nervous system, installed by very delicate surgery, and I had firsthand experience of how unpleasant it could be if one went haywire.
"Ted knows what he's doing," Ajax said.
Unless Ted was a world-class cyber-surgeon, I doubted that.
"You could cripple him. Or worse," I said. "Not smart."
The gun pressed harder. "No commentary from you. I’m smart enough to get this far. Just stay still and behave, and everything will be just fine."
The more he said the word "fine," the less I believed him. And the more I wanted to try to take him out. But I couldn’t. Not while Ted had a gun and Damon was helpless.
The traitorous bastard had me right where he wanted me.
I stared at the screen. Whatever Ted was doing, he did it fast. He finished, sprayed Damon's arm down with an antiseptic, covered his wrist with a surgical shield, and then fastened the blanket back over him. Damon didn't stir. Whatever I'd done to him, I'd done a good job. Maybe too good. Or had Ted drugged him, too?
My jaw clenched as I sat and focused on how I was going to make Ajax regret his choices rather than how terrified I felt.
The semi's engine roared to life, making the floor of the trailer vibrate, and then we began to move. Ajax had killed the engine and the headlights, so the only light came from the gray glow of the screen showing us what was happening behind us.
Ted aimed his gun back at Damon. The pressure from Ajax’s gun at my temple vanished. I flicked a glance sideways. Yep, the gun was still pointed at me, but he was holding it back against his body now, still looking unnaturally calm for a man in the process of kidnapping one of the wealthiest men in the country.
I wished I could share his chill.
Or had any idea what happened to him to make him do this. When I first met him, he'd seemed the perfect model of the happy-to-be-here Righteous employee, full of enthusiasm for his job. And now he was a full-fledged criminal.
It had to have something to do with the demon or at least whoever was sending the imps.
But still, why Ajax? Because he'd moved to security? Had he been contaminated somehow by one of the beta testers? Had he moved to security already under the influence of whoever it was?
Ugh. There were too many possibilities, and I didn't have enough information. Never my favorite situation.
Which meant I had no choice but to sit and wait until we arrived at our destination, where hopefully there'd be some more light shed on what they wanted.
And hopefully I could figure out how the hell to get us out of this when it was.
I kept track of the time showing on the dashboard. Ten minutes. Then twenty. Then thirty. Forty. Fifty. Maybe closer to an hour since we'd first left Righteous. Enough time for us to get quite some distance from the center of the city, if not out of it altogether at this time of day. But also long past the time that we should have arrived at St. Isidore. Hopefully that meant people were now looking for us.
The thought was a small comfort. But in the face of Ajax’s continued lack of concern, it was hard to believe this was going to end well for me or Damon.
All I could do was hope like hell that Mitch could zero in on Damon's datapad. I took care not to draw any attention to my purse. Cassandra's book was in there, too, and I didn't necessarily want Ajax and who—or what—he may be working with getting hold of that either. Though maybe that was a silly thing to worry about when clearly at least one of the people he was working with knew enough magic to summon imps.
I had no idea what direction we were headed. Whatever the restraints were that were locking the truck in place in the semi's trailer, it kept us very stable, leaving me with only a faint sense of movement from the vibration transmitted through the floor. There were a few turns that were sharper where I had a fleeting impression that we were going left or right, but as for overall direction, no. I didn't even have a reliable sense of speed. We weren't coming to a halt very often, which made me think that maybe we were outside the city now.
The semi came to another halt, and then, to my surprise, the engine noise stopped.
Ajax, who'd spent the trip in silence, raised his gun once more. "All right, we're here. Don't try anything stupid. Ted is going to unload Damon, and then you and I will get out and walk down the ramp. You will remain in front of me. You will keep your hands in the air. If Ted sees you do anything else, then your boyfriend will be a permanent ex.”
"He's not my boyfriend," I said automatically.
"Fuck buddy, then," Ajax said, eyes narrowing. "Either way, I'm guessing you don't want him dead." He prodded me with the gun. "Or maybe you do. Killing people seems to be part of your MO."
What? "Is this about Nat? I—"
The gun prodded harder. "Don't talk about her," he hissed in one of the first real displays of emotion I'd seen from him.
Was this about her? Some crazed revenge plot? Had he been in love with her? They'd only known each other a short time. But people could fall fast. I knew that myself.
That unfortunate fact was the reason they were able to use Damon against me now. I was sure it was me they wanted rather than him. If they needed him, they wouldn't keep threatening to shoot him. Which meant they only really needed him to keep me in line.
Light bloomed around us, which I assumed meant the semi's doors were now open.
Well, whatever the hell was happening, I was about to find out what came next.
I swallowed hard, fighting back the knot of terror in my stomach and the catch in my breath as I listened to the sounds of Ted taking the stretcher out of the truck. I wanted to turn and look but wasn't going to risk aggravating Ajax until I had to.
"Out," he ordered with another jab of the gun.
The light made me squint as I walked down the ramp from the back of the semi. I didn't dare lower my hands to shield my eyes, so I just blinked furiously, hoping I wouldn't trip and fall.
By the time my vision started to clear, I realized that actually the light wasn't that bright—just one lone floodlight shining from above the door of a large two-story house, making the early morning light brighter than the gray and gloomy sky warranted, but not by much. There were no other houses close by, the sweep of drive where we stood edged by gardens that dissolved into groves of trees. They didn't look like orchards, so maybe this was private property?
The thud of the semi's trailer doors closing drew my attention back toward the house itself.
Expensive from the size of it. The sort of Mediterranean stucco-and-arch mansion that wasn't that unusual for California. There was a shimmer of wards crawling over the walls, a darker oil slick sheen than I was used to. Exactly the sort of color I was starting to associate with demon magic.
But at this point, that wasn't a surprise. If this was about me, it was about magic. If it was about Damon, we'd be sitting tied in a room somewhere while a ransom demand was sent. Of course, I had no way of knowing that one hadn't been, but I was the one free and Damon was leverage. Our positions would be reversed if they were after his money.
The air was cold after the warmth of the truck, one of those unusually sullen and cool summer days that the bay air currents can blow across the city. I shivered. One of the things in Cassandra's book had been how to draw warmth from the air, but I couldn’t afford to waste the energy. I had a feeling I was going to need all the magic I could muster to get us both out of here.
Ted started pushing the stretcher toward the house.
"Follow them," Ajax said from behind me, and I walked forward, happy to be moving away from the truck and Damon's datapad safely stowed in my bag still in its cabin. Until the semi's engine rumbled to life. I twisted my head and saw it headed back down the drive.
Fuck.
"Walk," Ajax said, scowling and gesturing with the gun. I faced the house. If Mitch was tracking Damon's datapad, they'd at least have this location as somewhere it had stopped for a few minutes. They'd check it out. They had to, didn't they?
God, I hoped so.
The front door swung open as Ted approached, and he pushed the stretcher through and vanished from sight. I wasn't quite close enough behind to see what lay inside, and I slowed, my instincts crawling at the sight of the darkened doorway. Whatever was in there, they weren't using any lights.
Blinds were pulled closed over all the windows, with no hint of light behind them. So I’d be struggling to see when I stepped across the threshold. The perfect time for someone—or something—to attack.
Great.
Walk blind into what might very well be a demon's den or balk and get shot for my trouble. Not a great choice.
But apparently I'd reached the point where my body had accepted that fear was now normal and ascended into a sort of cool blankness focused on just getting through each next step. I reached the doorway and slowed my pace again, trying to give my eyes a chance to adjust.
It wasn't quite as dark as I'd feared. There were points of dim light flickering in the distance, though I wasn't sure what they were. The stench of rot and decay, the smell of imps, surrounded me, and for a moment, I had to fight off dizzy nausea. But again, that cool focus reasserted itself, and I swallowed hard and walked forward.
I'd expected to step into some sort of foyer, but instead, the house seemed to only have one large room. As though someone had knocked down as many of the interior walls as was possible while still keeping the second floor from collapsing. The pieces of walls that remained cast weird shadows, and I tried not to think what might lurk behind any of them.
No movement caught my attention, but that didn't mean we were alone. There was a staircase over to the right, but I couldn't see what it led to.
I followed Ted across the room, keeping an ear on what Ajax was doing. The front door closed with a final-sounding thud, and then footsteps echoed through the room, the floorboards and space making them too loud. I kept my eyes on Damon. There was nothing I could do if Ajax chose to shoot me in the back, but I might have a chance against a direct frontal attack.
Ted stopped halfway across the room. I kept walking, spine prickling. The wooden floor squeaked softly with every other step. Old. Hopefully not rotten. And thankfully, I could see no signs of circles painted onto the boards.
I knew circles could be used to amplify magic. But Cassandra's book hadn't given me any details on how. That was apparently above the skill level of magical newbies. I'd never seen Sara actually use a circle, though I knew she did. She never let me watch, but she'd certainly been happy for me to scrub the remains of any chalk or wax off the floor when she’d finished. I was happy there were none here. Whoever had brought me here didn’t need additional magical assistance.
I had almost reached the stretcher when Ajax said, "Stop."
I stopped. On the other side of the stretcher, Ted waited, hands clasped in front of his body, face arranged in the same sort of weirdly calm expression as Ajax’s.
A spike of fear broke through. This place stank of imps, and that smell was enough to scare any sane human. It was probably designed to scare sane humans.
Yet these two were acting like we were standing in the middle of the Riley Arts campus, where nothing could hurt them and the most likely source of danger was some tech geek on a hoverboard bowling them over.
I let my sight flip over to see Ted's aura, expecting it to have that same jittery quality as Damon's, but instead it was a heavy dark gray. Rather than glowing, it was a band of smoked darkness around him. His face, viewed through it, looked corpse white. And odd, as though he wasn’t quite real.
Right. Whatever was going on here, I didn't want Ted touching me. Something was definitely wrong with him. And he'd just cut Damon's wrist open. I almost stepped back but remembered Ajax.
My stomach rolled queasily. I swallowed. "Now what?"