Page 70 of Omega’s Fealty

The best I can hope for is that he picked up my scent on the balcony last night and he knows that I am alive. They say that for prime matches, mates can scent each other from a mile away when parted. Before all this happened, I would have said that was bullshit. Now, I think it’s true.

I’m up before the Monteverrans in the tiny little kitchen, dressed and ready to go before they’ve even had their coffee.

Around noon, they go out to the diner out on 41 looking for Sully based on the information I have given them.

They make me stay behind. I don’t argue. I’m too recognizable, even with the beard.

It’s not going to do Aurelio any good if I am arrested because some diner waitress recognizes me.

They don’t come back until late but when they do, Havel looks serious. He takes a seat on the arm of the couch across from me.

“Your broker was pulled out of the river below the rail bridge. Three days after the boat.” He says it the way he said the thing about the square. “One shot. Back of the head. No wallet, no phone, no car. The city has him as unidentified. Nobody has claimed him.”

“You’re sure it’s him?”

“There are people in any city who will show you a photograph for money.” He looks at me. “Tattoo of a tiger on his left arm. A burn scar on the left hand, here. That’s what you described?” He touches the web of his own thumb.

That’s Sully. He told me once that he got that off a car cigarette lighter when he was a kid.

I shouldn’t feel sorry for him. I’m sure he set me up. And he was dumb. He must have known that there was a risk that they would kill him if he suspected they would kill me. I guess the money was too good to say no.

“One guard,” Havel says putting his hands together between his knees. “And now one broker, and he is a John Doe. Reinhardt is very tidy.”

“He’s going to tidy me.”

“He believes he already has. That’s our advantage. We use you at the right time. Not too early.”

“The crew,” I say. “The ones who welded the box in. Sully said out-of-state guys, hired blind. Somebody paid them. Somebody bought a barge and a brand-new gangway. Money leaves a trail.”

“That is a cold one. We have already followed it.” He gets up.

“So, what’s the plan?”

“We are developing it.”

That is all I get for the next two days.

I finally get something out of Havel on the third night, and it happens because I have been sitting on a sofa for days while the man I married gets fitted for a wedding. I am going completely stir-crazy.

I suspect, too, that despite everything, he does not completely trust me. That’s fair. If I were him, I wouldn’t trust me either.

I corner him in the kitchen as he is getting ready to go out again. “We need to get him out before he goes to Washington.”

“No.”

“You’ve got a man inside. You know the building. You know the shifts, you know—”

“I know. I know. You keep saying that. This is what I know. There are forty men on those floors and I trained half of them.” Havel is at the counter with his back to me. “There is a camera in every room he sleeps in and one in the corridor outside it and one in the elevator.”

“So you’re going to let him walk down the aisle.”

“Yes.”

“And then what? Get married? You know that under your law that makes him Reinhardt’s. We just let that happen and let him get whisked back to Monteverra? We won’t be able to touch him once that happens.”

“We have a plan.”

“You need to tell me what it is because I can’t sit here another day.”