50. Emmy

50

"If anyone finds out we're using a billion-dollar stealth prototype to look for a missing dog, they're gonna lose their shit," Storm said, dropping us closer to the trees.

They'd probably be pissed if they saw me with my feet on the dash too, but Storm seemed pretty chilled about the whole thing.

The helo was fitted out with a state-of-the-art thermal imaging system, and now we were flying back and forth over the Utah wilderness, trying to find Luna's dog before a bear ate him. Pale had headed back to the log house to direct the multi-jurisdictional shitshow; Dice had gone with him to deal with the reptiles, including the loose snake that had greeted the team when Spider got the door to the study-slash-herpetarium open; and Dan had gone to the hospital with Ryder, Luna, Kacie, and Michelle. Luna seemed fine, but Kacie had twisted an ankle on her cross-country run earlier.

Which left me with Tulsa and Knox, and I knew which of us was getting tossed out of the helicopter with a packet of beef jerky when we spotted the mutt.

"What's so special about this bird, anyway? Apart from it being so quiet?" I asked.

It wasn't your typical piece of military equipment, that was for sure. It was pale blue, for starters, and the sleek shape looked more corporate. Up close, the coating was slightly iridescent, definitely not your typical gloss paint, and there was a fake company logo painted on the front doors. A globe with RSC written across it. Earlier, Dusk had told Knox it stood for Really Secret Corporation, but RSC was also Pale's initials, so I suspected he'd put them on the team's new toy as a joke.

"I'll show you after we land."

The inside of the helo had plenty of bells and whistles, and if the firing buttons were anything to go by, there were some rather loud toys on board as well. I watched the central display screen for any dog-sized creature. There were a lot of deer up here.

"Bottom left," Knox said from the back. "Is that…?"

The display switched to a different mode, and it was a fox. Why wasn't it asleep? Weren't they nocturnal?

"Nope."

"We have half an hour of search time left," Storm said. "This baby's good on fuel, but she still has limits. Actually…" She pointed at the screen, top right. "There we go."

Damn, Rocky still had the deer carcass. Good going, little dude. On the minus side, now I had to persuade him to part with it.

"Does your snazzy toy have a winch?" I asked Storm.

"Yes, it's called Knox."

As I prepared to fast-rope out the side door, I noticed Tulsa had a pair of gloves on.

"Are you coming too?"

"Sure, I could use some entertainment."

And she got it. Rocky did not want to give up his prize, even for the whole packet of beef jerky, and in the end, I had to hack off part of a leg and bring it with us. He grumbled as I packed him, the bone, and several pieces of jerky into a duffel bag and signalled Knox to haul the mutt skywards.

Good thing I loved animals.

"Dinner?" Storm asked. "It's been a while."

"Can't. I have to speak to a girl about drugs."

We were back in Nevada, at the Cathouse, on a helipad surrounded by neatly trimmed bushes. And when I said bushes, I meant bushes. Storm had landed the helo neatly on an electronic dolly, and when it rolled away into a Grecian-style hangar, I saw the ornate mosaic beneath was patterned to look like a vulva. The Prince of Porn's presence hadn't been entirely erased.

Most of the Choir's toys were tucked away elsewhere, Storm said, and by "elsewhere" I assumed she meant Groom Lake because if you wanted to fly a spaceship or whatever, that was the place to keep it. And Storm lived to fly. She could hold her own in a gunfight, by all accounts, but she preferred to leave that to Jezebel, Tulsa, and Dice.

While Storm took care of the helo, Tulsa was coiling up the various ropes we'd used during the op, and Knox had taken Rocky to pee on the nearest patch of grass.

"Drugs?" Storm asked. "We have weed in the house. Probably a little speed too."

"Medical drugs, not recreational drugs. But I'll bum a cigarette."

Yeah, yeah, knew I shouldn't. And mostly I didn't. But every couple of months, whenever I'd had a particularly bad day, I gave in to temptation and sucked down a lungful of carcinogens. With the amount of wild shit I did, there was no way I'd live long enough for cancer to kill me.

"Can't. I quit." She sighed. "Again."

"How long this time?"

Tulsa answered for her. "Three weeks. She's in the ‘bitch' phase."

"Or maybe you just bring out the worst in me?"

"Smoke the damn cigarette, okay? Anything to cover up the smell of decomp."

We'd finally managed to wrestle the last bit of deer away from Rocky, and I'd tossed it out the window over Dixie National Forest. But the smell… That lingered. As soon as we got inside, my clothes were going in the bin.

"You smoke?" Knox asked from behind me, Rocky's claws skittering over the tiled vulva as he strained at the piece of paracord we were using as a leash. Their next stop would be the veterinarian for a check-up. Shani had offered to pick them up.

"You didn't hear that part." I shook my head when Storm offered me a nicotine patch, then nodded towards the helicopter. "And you still haven't told me what's so special about that thing."

She took a small widget from her pocket—it looked like an oversized key fob—and pressed a button. The helicopter disappeared. Not disappeared, disappeared. It was still there, but it just appeared to be a distortion of the hangar behind.

"Well, fuck."

"And you didn't see that part," she told Knox.

"How does it work?" I asked. "That's some real James Bond shit."

"I do the flying, not the science. But it's coated in a radar-absorbent metamaterial that changes colour to match the environment in real time. Plus the infrared signature looks like a flock of birds."

Another press of the button, and the helicopter reappeared. Huh. Guess there were advantages to working for the government after all. And still a lot of drawbacks, which was why I didn't.

We headed for the house. Pale was handling the situation in Utah, not that there was much to handle. We hadn't even broken into the house in the forest. The door had been unlocked. Hebert was still alive. And we'd accidentally solved three missing persons cases instead of one. All the Beaver County Sheriff had to do was smile at the press conference and take the credit, and everyone would be happy. Well, maybe not Michelle. Or Carole-Ann Murray.

When Slater broke the news about Hebert, Carole-Ann had burst into tears. At some point during the night, she'd confessed that the breakup had been partly her fault, and after Hebert began contributing financially to his son's welfare, they'd resurrected a tentative friendship. Slater was escorting her and Marcus to Utah, and Dan was finding them somewhere to stay.

And Luna? Luna was doing okay. If there was one word to describe her, it was "resilient." As soon as she'd finished answering questions, she'd be on her way back to Vegas with Ryder, and I needed to get her finances straightened out before she arrived.

Which meant pressuring Elene to give back the stolen money, hard if necessary. But I also wasn't about to let a kid die just because his aunt was a thief and the healthcare system sucked.

"Can I borrow some clothes?" I asked Storm. "And a shower?"

"Sure, take whatever you need from my closet. I need to go Febreeze the bird."

I scrubbed myself from top to toe twice with Storm's coconut-scented shower gel and dressed in a pair of freshly laundered yoga pants and a slouchy top, but when I walked into the kitchen, Marcel still wrinkled his nose and said, "What's that smell?"

"Me and the dog were playing tug of war with a dead deer."

"Urgh. Why didn't you just let the dog win?"

"Is there any coffee?"

"Of course. We have an excellent Jamaican java at the moment, or there's a nice fruity arabica from Caldas. Or if you want a stronger hit, you could try the Vietnamese robusta."

"Definitely the robusta. Thanks, Marcel."

I took the coffee out to a quiet corner of the main courtyard along with a trio of macarons and a slice of chocolate cake. This was why women joined the Choir, wasn't it? Nothing to do with Pale's winning personality or the cutting-edge accessories; it was Marcel's cooking.

After a sip of very good coffee, I scrolled through my phone to the number I needed.

"Hey, Artemis. It's Emmy Black. Long time, no speak."

Artemis Sacker was the eldest daughter of David Sacker, CEO of Bio-D Pharmaceuticals. David was a bit of a dick, but in the past couple of years, he'd mellowed, and as part of that mellowing, he'd branched out into philanthropy. Now Bio-D had a hardship relief programme that funded drugs for people who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford them. Twenty-year-old Artemis combined selling make-up with running the programme, aided by her sister, Isolde, and their fifth stepmother, who had surprised everyone by staying married to David for longer than ten minutes.

"Ohmigosh, hi. How are you? Are you calling about the party?"

"What party?"

"The Egyptian Extravaganza?" The what? "I thought that maybe the date on the invite was wrong, seeing as it's only two weeks before the Halloween party."

What Halloween party?

"I'm gonna have to get back to you on that. Did Bradley send the invite for the Egyptian thing?"

I'd been expecting a Halloween party—no way would Bradley let a sort-of-holiday pass without a celebration—but an Egyptian thing?

"No, Tia." Who would only have done it at Bradley's direction. "Like, an hour ago."

"I don't know anything about it."

"The invite says it's a celebration of archaeological discovery and also a pop princess's future happiness. I'm not totally sure how the two of those fit together, but Isolde's already planning our costumes."

I sank onto the left side of a pair of giant stone testicles. Luna had just been kidnapped because a dude thought she was Cleopatra, and now Bradley wanted to celebrate that? Yikes. I desperately needed to book him in for some sensitivity training, or murder him, and I really didn't have time in my schedule for the latter option.

"Costumes? Great. I'm actually calling about another matter."

"Oh?"

"I have a candidate for the Sacker Foundation's hardship fund."

Ten minutes later, one problem was sorted, and I fired off a message to Bradley.

Me

Egyptian Extravaganza? WTF?

Then it was time to find Elene. It would be easy to come down hard on her, but at the same time, I admired her efforts. She'd worked out what she needed to do, and she'd done it. It was actually a pretty good plan. She'd just been a little naive as to how things would pan out.

I found her by the pool, dangling her legs into the water as she stared at the sky. If she thought the electronic tag wasn't waterproof, she was shit out of luck.

"Enjoying your last few hours of freedom?"

She jumped, then twisted to face me.

"Relax, I'm joking. But we do need to resolve the situation. And by ‘resolve the situation,' I mean you need to give Luna's money back."

"But—"

"We're not going to leave your nephew high and dry. The cost of his treatment will be covered by the Sacker Foundation. It's the philanthropic arm of the pharmaceutical company that's developing the drugs for his condition."

"So…so we don't have to pay?"

"No, it's all taken care of. Misho will get whatever he needs, and the foundation will also cover your sister's living costs while she's here."

Elene stared at the water. "I don't know what to say."

"A thank you would suffice."

"Thank you. A million times thank you. Will I be able to see Mariam before I go home? Just once?"

"A friend of a friend pulled some strings. You'll be getting a tourist visa, so you can stick around for now, but you have to go back to Georgia before it expires. If you don't, I'll be the one who gets the pleasure of hunting you down, and trust me, you really don't want that to happen."

"I'll go home, I swear."

"Good. Now, let's transfer that money back to its rightful owner."

Well, kind of. Technically, most of it should have gone to Luna's company, but that would have put it under her mom's control. Instead, I had Elene send it to a new account Caro had helpfully set up with Luna as the sole signatory. We'd deal with any tax implications later. Hill had wasted a hundred grand, give or take, and Elene had spent a few thousand more, but she'd also had the sense to stash the cash in an interest-bearing account, so some of the loss had been made good. It was the best outcome we could have hoped for, realistically.

An hour later, Elene was detagged and on her way to the small apartment her sister was staying in. It was only a one-bed place, so she'd have to sleep on the couch, but all in all, she'd got a decent deal. And she'd left just in time. Ryder was on his way from Utah with Luna in the second helicopter piloted by Dusk, and she didn't need the stress of dealing with Elene.

The dog was back with a clean bill of health, and the money was where it should be, and those were the only things Luna needed to care about.

Dinner ended up being takeout with Storm and Dusk. Tulsa was nowhere to be seen, but Pale showed up just before midnight and helped himself to a taco.

"You get the money back?" he asked.

I nodded. "Yup."

"How's the girl doing?"

"Which one?"

"The singer."

"She's cosied up with her emotional-support SEAL, and she's doing better than I expected. She was more worried about the dog being missing than anything else."

Pale sniffed the air. "A dead deer, huh?"

"Shut the fuck up."

He just laughed. "I gotta get some sleep."

"Getting old?"

"That and I have to fly to Miramar first thing in the morning." He took a bite of taco, then cursed as half the filling fell out. "You should come."

"To Miramar? Why would I want to go to Miramar? I have enough eye candy on my own team."

"I'm going to see a woman about a job, but I don't think she'll take it. She might say yes to an offer from you, though."

"Oh?" Finding candidates for the Special Projects team was always a challenge, and in special forces, men vastly outnumbered the women. In recent years, Pale had stolen most of the unicorns for his own posse. "She's a Marine?"

"Yes, but not for long. She's about to be released from the brig."

Okay, this was getting interesting.

"What did she do?"

"Rearranged a PFC's genitals."

"And what did he do?"

"Behaved inappropriately with a woman outside a bar."

"Justified?"

"There was an argument she should have stopped after the first punch. Even then, she'd probably have gotten away with it if the PFC hadn't been a congressman's son."

"I see. And you want her for the Choir?"

"I think she'd be a good fit, but I also think she'll tell me to go to hell if I suggest she works for Uncle Sam again. Congressman Bartell really screwed her over."

"Bartell? Isn't he the sleaze on the armed services committee?"

"That's him."

So, reading between the lines, Bartell had raised his son in his own image and then put pressure on the USMC to cover up the boy's transgressions. Nice.

"What's her name?"

"Bront? Daines."

"Never heard of her." I rolled what was left of my dinner up in the wrapper and scored a three-pointer in the trash can. "But I guess I'd better get an early night too."