“Understandable,” Cornelius said. “Likewise, if I discover that you in any way caused Nari’s death, I’ll take the appropriate actions.”
This wasn’t the world of normal people. Yet somehow I kept getting stuck in it.
“For the record, I don’t consent to being killed,” I said.
They both looked at me.
“Just getting it out there in case there are any questions later.”
A careful knock sounded and Bug bounced into the room. One of my mother’s friends had a cairn terrier called Magnus. Cairn terriers were bred to catch vermin among the cairns of the Scottish Highlands, and Magnus was physically unable to sit still. He dashed about the back yard, he ran on walks, he chased toys, and if you blew bubbles, he turned into a bolt of black furry lightning until he murdered every single one. Moving was his job and he devoted himself to it.
Bug was Magnus in human form. He was always moving, typing, talking, tracking . . . Even though he often sat for most of the day, he wasn’t sedentary. He was never without a purpose or a task, and I had a feeling that if only he could stop doing all of his things and eat a sandwich once in a while, he would put on the twenty-five pounds his skinny frame was missing.
Bug was a swarmer. The U.S. Air Force had bound him to something they’d pulled out of the arcane realm. They called it a swarm because they had no better name for it. The swarm had no physical form. It lived within Bug somehow, which let him split his attention, process information faster, and made him into a superior surveillance expert. Most swarmers died within two years of being bound, but Bug had somehow survived and, until recently, lived in hiding, detesting all authority, especially the military variety. I’d occasionally bought his services with Equzol, a military-grade drug designed to even him out. Then Rogan had lured him from his hiding place with promises of Equzol, advanced computer equipment, and whatever else was part of the devil deal they struck.
Being lured into Rogan’s clutches agreed with Bug. His skin had lost its sallow tint, and while his eyes still brimmed with nervous energy, he wasn’t twitching or freaking out.
Bug dropped onto the couch and placed a laptop in front of him on the table. “Hey, Nevada.”
“Hey.”
A plump dog that was mostly French bulldog and part something unidentifiable sauntered into the room and rubbed its face on my pants leg.
“Hi, Napoleon.” I reached down and patted his head. Bug’s dog rambled over to Rogan and unceremoniously flopped on his feet. Rogan reached down without really looking, on autopilot, picked Napoleon up and put him on the couch next to him. The French bulldog sighed contently, wedged his butt deeper into the couch, and closed his eyes.
Rogan leaned back. “In the fall, Ms. Baylor and I were involved in apprehending Adam Pierce.”
“I know,” Cornelius said. “That’s how we met.”
Bug pulled a tablet out of his sweatshirt and began messing with it. A screen slid from the wall on the side.
“Adam Pierce didn’t act alone,” Rogan said. “Someone loaded him like a gun, aimed, and pulled the trigger.”
“Who?” Cornelius asked.
“We don’t know,” Bug said.
“We became aware of the conspiracy surrounding Pierce when we learned he was moving about the city undetected,” I said. “He didn’t just have a single mage cloaking him. There was an entire team shielding him. We know that an animator Prime was involved.”
In my head I flashed back to running across a parking lot as Rogan fought a whirlwind of metal and pipes that tried to crush him. We never did find out who the animator was.
“Pierce used a teenager to do some of his dirty work,” Rogan explained. “His name is Gavin Waller. Gavin’s mother is my cousin. I found out that she was part of whatever cabal was pulling Adam’s strings.”
That was news to me. So Rogan’s own cousin had betrayed him. Would he care? Would it even matter to him? He hadn’t seemed to have taken any interest in Kelly Waller or her son, until Adam Pierce made Gavin a part of his murder-and-arson spree.
“Whoever was behind Adam is well funded and powerful,” Rogan continued. “Fortunately for me, they overlooked a weak spot in their armor.”
Bug tapped the keys on the laptop. The screen ignited, showing a woman in a skin-tight black dress kneeling on a tall chair, her arms bent at the elbow, her forearms resting on the chair’s back so she could stick her butt out. A high-heeled shoe hung from the index finger of her left hand. She was looking straight at the camera with light grey eyes, her makeup fresh and flawless. Her strawberry-blond hair framed her face in a perfectly straight shimmering curtain. Her expression was vapid. She was biting her lower lip.
Ugh.
“Harper Larvo,” I murmured.
“Who is she?” Cornelius asked.
“A socialite,” I said. “She was involved with the people behind Adam Pierce.”
“I put her under surveillance,” Rogan said.
“We bugged her apartment, her phone, her cell, and her car,” Bug said. “We bugged all the shit.”
“A month ago Harper began an affair with Jaroslav Fenley,” Rogan said.
Cornelius leaned forward. Jaroslav had worked with Nari. He was one of the three other lawyers murdered with her.
“Then, last Friday we got this.” Rogan nodded at Bug, who reached over the top of the laptop and pressed a key.
“It’s happening,” Harper’s voice said. “They’re going to hand it over. They don’t want it leading back to them, so they’re looking for security for the meeting now.”
“We need the time and place,” an older female voice said.
A muscle jerked in Rogan’s face.
“I’m tired. Can I just be done? He’s boring and he smells. The BO is through the roof.”
“Do you need me to remind you who’s holding your leash?”
“Fine. I’ll call you when I get it.”
“The other woman on the tape is Kelly Waller,” Rogan said. His blue eyes were glacier-cold. He cared about Kelly Waller’s betrayal. He cared very much. If I were Kelly Waller, I’d make arrangements to run away to another continent.
Bug grimaced. “She used a burner phone. If she wasn’t clutching Sassy at the time, we wouldn’t have caught it.”
“Sassy?” I asked.
“Her foo-foo poodle,” Bug said.
“You bugged her dog?”
Bug drew back, outraged. “I bugged her collar! What, you think I’m a complete fart muffin? She shouldn’t have that dog anyway. She treats her like shit. She doesn’t deserve Sassy.” Bug tapped the keys. “We combed the net and the usual places a dimwit—”
Mad Rogan glanced at him.
“—a man who doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing might look for private security. We found Fenley’s job and we took the contract.”
“We?” I asked.
“I own a private security company,” Rogan said.
Of course.
“Fenley indicated that they were meeting with another party to exchange some data,” Rogan said.
“At Hotel Sha Sha,” Cornelius guessed.
Rogan nodded. “The timing and location weren’t ideal, but I took the risk. If my cousin wants this data, I want it more.”
He took the risk and his people had died. He blamed himself. It didn’t reflect in his face, but I saw it in his eyes for a brief moment, before they went back to their icy blue. The last time we talked, I was almost completely convinced that he was a sociopath. He seemed invulnerable, as if nothing could bother him. This did.
Bug pushed a key on the keyboard. I braced myself.
A woman in her mid-thirties wearing grey pants, a black shirt, and an odd-looking bulletproof vest appeared on the large screen. A thin strip of metal and plastic adhered to the left side of her forehead, disappearing under her dark hair, pulled back from her face. She touched it and the view shifted slightly. She was looking into a mirror.
“Stop screwing with it,” Bug’s voice said.
“It’s distracting.” Her voice carried traces of Louisiana. “I don’t like distracting.”