Page 59 of Awry
Cayley laughs, sounding a little unhinged.“Those six teenagers you rescued wouldn’t … won’t say a word about it, even under extreme questioning.”
I narrow my eyes at that.I don’t like the idea of extreme questioning in the best of circumstances, and certainly not after how much those teens were put through in a short period of time.
Cayley doesn’t notice my pissiness.Or maybe she just ignores it.“One of my … contacts … checked in with me about a week after …”
This is the part I really don’t want to hear.Her hesitation to say it out loud tells me that without even a hint of knowing needed.
Cayley clears her throat, gaze downcast.Again.“That entire yakuza chapter was just … gone.The building burned hot and fast despite it being wet monsoon season.Not a trace of evidence left behind.Dozens of operatives, millions of dollars in stolen goods and contraband just … never recovered.”
I don’t say anything.
Although the three days after the extraction are hazy, I distinctly remember the frightened faces of the six teens.I remember that there were too many of them for me to hold onto at once.So after I … coaxed … the guards to open the cages, I tied us together with a mage-wrought spool of platinum thread — a brilliant and expensive bit of fabrication that could only be untied by the wielder, me.
I had simplyknownthat I would need the imbued thread after getting Coda’s emergency message.I’d been bumming around Tokyo aimlessly for three months before that call, picking up boring collection jobs and generally making a nuisance of myself by randomly fixing things better left unfixed.
I burned every favor I’d previously collected during my three months in the city getting to the teens, then getting them out.
The backlash from that kind of quick and dirty extraction is always severe.And Tokyo was no exception.Arguably even worse than dying under the claws of a berserker in front of Presh, mostly because of how I woke up.
Three days later.In a morgue.
In the process of being autopsied.
Muta … reacted badly, then got loose.I wasn’t in enough control of myself to rein him in.
Leaving everything behind — pretty much as I did this morning, except I had more things to abandon after three months of living in Tokyo — I somehow got to the airport and onto a flight to Vancouver.
I still had the spool of thread.I’d found it in a plastic bag along with my blood-soaked clothing, and needed to utilize its more … malignant properties … to get Muta under control.It took the death-god bushmaster months to forgive me for that little lure-and-lassoing trick.
As of right now, the Outcast MC— including Cayley— were just one of many packs who owed me a massive favor.Not that I bothered keeping track of which clubs and packs were specifically indebted to me.Coda kept a record of those sorts of connections, which I called on only when needed.
“How did you know to contact me?Or ask for me?”I finally ask.Because of all the people claiming to know my aunt and remember me over the last twenty-four hours, this more recent connection is even more disconcerting.
“I didn’t.I called home.Finally.The Outcast knew that Kiki was taken, along with five of her classmates.The school … all the kids were scholarship track at the same prep school … contacted me right away.But they’d been gone for at least twelve hours before anyone figured out they hadn’t checked in or been seen.They were kidnapped on a night off from school, and the school isn’t in Outcast territory.So there were …”
Cayley grimaces, still pissed about it all eighteen months later.“There were legal ramifications.Anyway, I tracked them on my own, as a … private citizen, using my … contacts.But I couldn’t get to them.I couldn’t …”
She swallows, shaking her head.“I was … I knew I was going to walk into that warehouse and probably make my sister watch them kill me or cage me as well.So I called home, to the club, just to … check-in?Say goodbye?Let someone who cared know where the fuck I was and what the fuck I was about to do?”
She looks at me finally, her gaze steady, but still with that mixture of anger and awe edged in her expression.“Rought picked up.He asked me to wait, just a little longer.And I guess … he found you, somehow?Or at least knew that you or someone like you existed.He texted that he’d called in a few favors, but he didn’t know if you’d get the message.If you’d come.”
“Apparently I did.”
This is the second time the name Rought — he of the imagined Adonis dick— has been mentioned in the last two hours.To Cayley, he’s an actual person, a member of Outcast MC.To Coda, he’s a skilled hacker— even if not as brilliant as Coda is.
“I … I don’t have the kind of resources needed to contact someone like you.And I … I’m pretty sure the club would be pissed at Rought for the level of favor he took on just to get a message to you.”
I don’t really have any answer for that.Favors are traded in equal value, and I might never collect on the one that the Outcast now owe me.
Cayley squares her shoulders.“I did try the Authority first.That’s their job.Their supposed … mandate.To protect us, our kind.”
My disbelief must show on my face, because Cayley laughs harshly and shakes her head.
“I had … I thought I had someone … a connection who would pull some strings.And he did.But … it wasn’t going to be quick enough.”
“He’s the one who gave you the after-report?”
She nods.“How is it that your reach was … that you could do, solo, what the Authority couldn’t even arrange in three days?”
