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I t was almost one forty-five by the time I got back to the brothel. I flew up to a rooftop on the opposite side of the road, then shifted shape and found a position behind a billboard that provided shadowy cover yet allowed me to see what was going on down the street.
For the next fifteen minutes, nothing happened. Several clients came out, but none went in. Maybe midafternoon was a slow time.
At two - right on time - the lights in all the nearby buildings went out. And there wasn't a bad guy in sight. I cursed softly and briefly wondered if Cass had played me. But I'd felt no lie in her words or in her thoughts, so either she was better than a vampire at concealing lies, or the two men hadn't turned up for other reasons.
Which would be just my luck.
I continued to wait, silently hoping Jack could keep the power grid down for long enough.
At two-ten, a battered-looking brown station wagon cruised by slowly. It turned around at the end of the street then came back, pulling into a parking spot several doorways down from the brothel. Two men got out - one brown-haired, the other blond.
Cass hadn't lied.
I took out my phone and began taking pictures. The blond moved toward the brothel, but the brown-haired guy remained near the car, his gaze sweeping the surrounding buildings. Though I knew he wasn't likely to spot me in the shadows of the billboard, I still drew them closer around me. Better safe than sorry - especially when you had red hair.
When I looked back over the building's edge, the blond was just disappearing into the brothel and the wolf was leaning against the back of the car, his arms and feet crossed, the picture of casualness. Only his ever-alert expression and the tension evident in his body suggested otherwise. I took a final picture to make sure I got the plate number, then carefully moved backward. Once I'd pocketed my phone, I shifted shape again and circled around the block, coming at the brothel from the rear.
On closer inspection, the broken window I'd noticed earlier would barely provide enough room for a sparrow to get through, let alone a seagull.
I swore - which came out as a harsh squawk - then shifted shape. My T-shirt - or what was left of it - fell from my shoulders, and my jeans were looking decidedly worse for wear. I swore again as the wind swirled around me, freezing my skin and buffeting my body. The windowsills in this old building might have been deeper than usual, but that didn't mean they were any less precarious. I teetered for several seconds, trying to gain balance. Trying to ignore the old fears that rose in a rush every time I looked at the drop below me. Such fears were totally ridiculous, because my seagull shape now meant drops of any length no longer had the power to hurt me, but I guess some fears were just too ingrained to be easily erased.
I checked the window for wires and sensors, but couldn't see any, so I dug my fingernails under the sill and lifted it upward. Cass had been right about the locks - this one basically fell apart as the window slid open. I slipped inside, dropping to the floor softly, my senses alert for anything and anyone.
The first thing I spotted was the camera in the far corner, but it was pointed at the other wall and wasn't moving. Temporarily cutting the power had worked - at least in this case. I just had to hope they didn't have backups on the other systems.
The air was stale and smelled faintly of urine - but whether it was human or animal in origin, I couldn't say. Although the little pellets littering the floor suggested at least one possum had taken up residence. I wondered how they'd gotten in without triggering the security system. Obviously, the little buggers were smarter than me. The room itself held little else but empty shelving units that were thick with dust and webs. I shut the window -
just in case the power came back on at the wrong time - then padded forward, avoiding loose-looking floorboards and possum poop as much as possible.
Once at the door, I wrapped my fingers around the handle but didn't immediately open it. Instead, I switched my vision to infrared. A quick sweep of the rooms beyond the door revealed life in a room near the front of the building. That had to be the blond shifter - and given he was supposed to be a bird of some kind, it was worth the risk of stepping out. The wolf might have smelled me, but birds generally didn't have great olfactory senses. And these rooms, like the ones below, weren't very bright, which meant the shadows lay thick in the corners. With any luck, I could hide in those shadows.
I twisted the handle and opened the door, but just as I did, the shifter moved, his body heat showing him stepping through the doorway. I froze, half in and half out of the room, hoping the shadows were enough to conceal me.
He glanced my way, then stopped, and his sense of alertness increased twofold. He drew his gun and pressed a button on his lapel.
"Greg, we have an open door on one of the storerooms. I'm going to check it out."
Meaning he hadn't spotted me yet, but if I didn't do something real quick, he would. The shadows weren't strong enough to hold up under any sort of close scrutiny. Not when it was daylight, anyway.
But rather than step back, I hit him telepathically, slipping into his mind as silently and as efficiently as any vampire. I wrapped ghostly fingers around his control centers, stopping his movements and washing any awareness that something was wrong from his mind.
Then, knowing I didn't have much time before his partner started getting suspicious, I rummaged quickly through his thoughts. His name was James Cutter, and both he and the wolf worked for the Melbourne division of an organization known as Revanche. Cutter didn't know who owned or ran the organization, but the man they reported to was one Dillion Pavane. I searched for more information, but he didn't really have much. There were no offices located in Melbourne, as far as this man knew. They always met in bars, and never the same bars. He was paid in cash - another rarity in this day and age. He was also sick of the courier duties - which involved checking the various phones situated throughout the suburbs - and eager to make his first kill.
Meaning whoever was behind this organization didn't trust anybody.
I grabbed my phone and quickly typed in all the locations of the other phones, then placed the image of a closed door and a conviction that nothing was out of place other than a smashed window in his mind. With that done, I turned him around and released him.
For the barest of seconds, he paused, as if wondering what the hell he was doing, then the suggestions I'd put in his mind took hold, and he touched his lapel communicator again. "There's a smashed window in back storeroom number three," he said. "Nothing to worry about."
He paused, listening to the comment from the other end, then added, "How the fuck do I know how the door opened? Maybe the catch is broken, like everything else in this dump. The main thing is, no one can get in or out, except those damn possums."
Again he paused, then added, "Yeah, I erased the tape after I took the notes. Don't fucking worry."
He turned and walked away. I waited until the door slammed, then glanced down at the handle in my hand and snapped it off. When the men came back, they'd be expecting a broken door lock, so I'd better provide it.
As I turned around, the power came back on, cutting off any chance of investigating the other rooms. I just couldn't risk it when the whine of the camera beginning to rotate filled the dusty silence. And who knew what other security measures were in place that I hadn't yet spotted. Jack would be less than impressed if I inadvertently let them know we were onto them.
I quickly closed the door then shifted shape - half wondering as I did so whether I was going to have any remnants of clothing left by the time I got back to the car.
