It was probably the PAD come to shut me down.
The door swung open and a redheaded woman carrying a manila envelope stepped into my office. Tall, lean, and longlimbed, she moved like a fencer, light but sure-footed. You had a feeling that if lightning struck her, she’d lean out of the way and stab it through before it hit the ground. She wore khaki pants, a turtleneck, and a light leather vest. A leather glove hid her left hand. The long rapier on her sword belt and tall boots completed the outfit. I’d seen her before. Her name was Rene and the last time we’d met, she was running security for the Midnight Games, an illegal gladiatorial arena featuring things that went bump in the night.
Behind her two men brought up the rear. Both wore tactical vests and carried enough weapons to take on a small army and win. The man on the right was young, blond, and walked with a light spring in his step that telegraphed a seasoned martial artist. The man on the left was leaner, older, and darker, with a distinct military air and a small scar on his neck. The scar had ragged edges. Something had clawed his neck at some point, but he had lived to fight another day.
Rene’s dark gray eyes regarded me.
“I’m sorry, milady,” I said. “Athos, Porthos, and Aramis just left.”
“They said something about riding to England with d’Artagnan to retrieve some diamonds,” Andrea added.
“You two think you’re really funny,” Rene said.
“We have our moments,” I said. “Down, Grendel.”
The dog showed Rene his teeth, just in case she decided to try something funny, and lay down to gnaw on his gun.
Rene looked at Grendel. “What in the world is that?”
“That’s our mutant attack poodle,” I told her.
“Is he chewing on a gun?”
“It’s not a real gun,” Andrea said.
Rene sighed. “Of course not. That would be irresponsible of you, wouldn’t it?”
The older man on Rene’s left leaned to her. “This might be a bad idea.”
She waved him off.
The blond man on Rene’s right squinted at Andrea’s desk. “Is that a Hi-Point?”
Andrea turned beet red.
I leaned forward. “What can we do for the Midnight Games?”
“The Red Guard no longer works with the Midnight Games.” Rene carefully folded her long frame into my client chair. The two guys behind her remained standing. “In the aftermath of recent events, we had to answer a lot of questions and we chose to disengage from the venue.”
Translation: you ruined our fun and screwed me out of a job. “I thought you were an independent hire.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m Red Guard. Have been for the last twelve years.”
Twelve years in the Red Guard was nothing to sneeze at. “In that case, what can we do for the Guard?”
“We would like to hire you.”
Come again? “In what capacity?”
Rene folded her hands on her knee. “We’ve misplaced an item and we need it retrieved.”
“Do you know where the item is?”
She grimaced at me. “If we knew who had it, we wouldn’t need to hire you, would we?”
“So the item wasn’t misplaced, it was stolen.”
“Yes.”
Right. “Anything you say in this office is confidential, but not privileged, meaning it stays between us unless we’re hit with a subpoena. It would save all of us a lot of time if you just lay it out, so we can decide if we’ll take the job or not.”
Rene opened the envelope and shook the contents into her hand. A photograph slid into her palm. She placed it on the desk.
A man who looked to be in his early fifties stared back at me. Curly brown hair, going gray; a pleasant enough face, neither handsome nor ugly. Deep lines around the mouth. Sad eyes. He looked like he’d been gutted by life and managed to pull himself together, but some part of him hadn’t quite made it.
“Adam Kamen,” Rene said. “Thirty-eight years old. Brilliant engineer, genius applied-magic theorist. We were hired to guard him while he worked on a valuable project. Adam was financed by three separate investors.”
“How well?” I asked.
“Well enough to pay for an elite guard unit.”
That was some serious cash. Elite Red Guard units didn’t come cheap.
“We put Adam into a safe house in the middle of nowhere. The property was protected by two defensive wards: an innerperimeter spell that shielded the house and the workshop and a wider, outer-perimeter spell that protected a quarter-acre area with the house in its center. The house was watched by a crew of twelve people: four per eight-hour shift. I cherry-picked every one of the guards. All of them had passed background checks and showed long records of distinguished service.”
Rene leaned back. “Last night Adam and the prototype vanished. His absence and the mutilated body of one of the guards was discovered this morning during a shift change.”
Okay. “Mutilated how?”
The line of Rene’s mouth hardened. “You would have to see for yourself. I want you to find Adam and retrieve the device.”
Figured.
“Which of those two is top priority?
“Obviously my employers would prefer to recover both. The official line says the device has priority; personally, I want Adam saved.”
Once a bodyguard, always a bodyguard. Rene had been hired to guard Kamen, and she took her job personally.
Rene braided her long fingers on her knee. “Right now only four people besides the guards and those of us in this room are aware of this issue. Three of those four are Adam’s investors, and the fourth is my direct superior. It’s essential that no information is leaked. The damage to the Red Guard’s reputation would be catastrophic.”
Lovely. We would have to look for him without making any noise. My investigative technique mostly consisted of going through the list of interested parties and making as much noise as possible, until the culprit lost his patience and tried to shut me up.
Rene focused on me. “Being subtle is very important in this case.”
“We can do subtle,” I assured her.
“It’s our middle name,” Andrea added.
For some odd reason Rene didn’t look convinced.
I took out a pad of paper and a pen. “What was the nature of the device?”
Rene shook her head. “We weren’t privy to that information. To my knowledge, it was never successfully tested.”
Okay. “I need the inventor’s full name, address, family, and known associates.”
“His name is Adam Kamen. We know that he is thirty-eight, a widower. His wife had diabetes and was undergoing dialysis for kidney failure. Eventually, the disease killed her. Adam was severely traumatized by her death. His work is connected to that event, but I can’t tell you how. He spoke without an accent, he didn’t seem religious, and he expressed no strong political views.”
“How long have you had him?” Andrea wrote a note on her own pad.
“Ninety-six days. He had no visitors while in our custody. Beyond that, we know nothing: no address, no known relatives, no information about enemies or friends.” Rene picked up another piece of paper. “This is the latest image of the device in question.”
On the picture a metal cylinder stood level with a worktable, approximately three feet tall and probably a foot in diameter. Odd patterns covered the gray metal, some pale, almost white, some with a familiar yellow sheen of gold, others a dozen shades of silver and blue. They twisted and overlapped one another, some so elaborate it must’ve taken hours of work and jewelers’ tools to create them.
