Slade was suddenly free from the paralyzing energy of the automaton’s eyes. He could breathe easily again. His heart rate slowed.
Sylvester stared up at the ceiling, glass eyes rattling in their sockets as the doll tried to find a new focus. Rex snapped and snarled and tried to sink his teeth into the automaton’s wooden throat.
“Rex, that’s enough.” Slade got to his feet and went forward. “He’s not worth breaking a tooth.”
Rex backed away from the thrashing doll, still snarling. Slade moved closer and crouched, careful to keep out of range of the glass eyes. He rolled Sylvester facedown and began searching for an access panel. There had to be some way to de-rez the gadget.
He found the panel on the back under the robes. He got it open and surveyed the elegantly engineered clockwork mechanism inside. There was a small, old-fashioned metal key. He removed it carefully. The doll went still.
He was still in the narrow hall studying the clockwork Sylvester and working through possible scenarios when he heard Charlotte’s car roar down the driveway.
“Damn.” He grabbed his cell phone, saw the missed call, and punched in her number.
The shades were drawn across all of his windows but he stayed low so as not to risk casting any shadows as he made his way across the living room. Rex watched him from the hallway, sensing that the hunt was not yet over.
Slade hunkered down against the wall and peered through a crack in the blinds. He watched Charlotte bring her small vehicle to a halt in the drive.
She must have been clutching the phone because she answered immediately. At the same time she popped open the car door.
“Slade,” she gasped, rushing toward the front steps. “Are you okay? I got this awful feeling a few minutes ago.”
“I’m fine but I’ve got a situation here. I do not want you walking into it.”
“Oh, my God, what’s wrong?”
“Listen to me and do exactly as I say. I’m pretty sure someone is watching the house. You’re here now so we’ll have to make it look good. Knock on my front door. When you don’t get an answer, act like you’ve decided I’m not home. Get back in the car and drive into town. Go to the cafe. Have coffee. Remain where there are people around you. Don’t tell anyone what is going on. Wait until I call you and give you the all-clear. Got it?”
“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.
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.
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.
“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.”
