Tempting Evil

"And that is?"

"A microdot," Rhoan said. "Latest in storage media, and incredibly resilient."

Jack nodded. "The desk has a small hole drilled into it. The disk was placed into a container fitted into the hole."

"So Gautier just strolled in afterward and collected the container?" I asked, even as Jack dropped the close-up and sped up the film.

Brown did the dirty with the woman several more times, then both of them left. Nothing happened for a while, then Gautier wandered in, checking the office and walking past the desk in the process. He collected the container from the desk in a smooth, slick movement that would have been easy to miss, then left.

"So when Gautier sprung me and Qui

"We think so."

"What made you suspect this was happening?" Liander asked. He was sitting on the arm of the sofa, behind Rhoan's chair.

"The fact that we could find no moles in the Directorate other than Gautier." He hesitated. "The only A.D. hiding secrets was Alan Brown, so we took the risk of reading him. You know he's being blackmailed?"

I nodded. Rhoan had told me that much ages ago.

"Gautier's behind it. Every Directorate decision is being relayed through Gautier to Deshon Starr. That madman knows what we're going to do before we even implement it."

"Which is why his cartel has managed to stay two steps ahead of the Directorate for so long."

Jack nodded again. "Of course, we then had to find out how Gautier was passing the information, which meant watching his every move, not only within the Directorate, but on missions as well. Four nights after the incident we just watched, Gautier strolled into Brown's office, this time before Brown arrived with Jones, and even though he wasn't actually on watch that night. That's when we finally realized what was going on."

"And she retrieved the disk?"

"Yes. And undoubtedly passed on a detailed report of all the going-ons in the Directorate for the coming week."

"So how is Brown getting the information to Gautier? He couldn't risk being seen with him at the Directorate."

"No. But Brown likes the greyhounds, and is severely in debt to the bookies. Gautier meets him there every Wednesday night."

"Wednesday being the day the board generally meets," I muttered. They were organized, no doubt about that. But then, this mob had been operating for well over fifty years—though Starr's takeover had only been relatively recent.

"Have you pulled in the prostitute?" Rhoan asked, leaning back in his chair. "Questioned her?"

"No, though we did follow her. Brown drops her off in Fitzroy Street, St. Kilda. Five minutes after he's left, a limousine picks the woman up and drives her to a large house in Toorak."

"To another client?" Liander asked.

"No. She lives there."

I raised my eyebrows. "She's one hell of a prostitute if she can afford to live in Toorak."

Jack smiled. "She's not a prostitute at all." He pressed another button, and the woman's picture reappeared. "She actually goes by the name of Dia Jones, and she does psychic readings for the rich and famous."

Surprise rippled through me. I mightn't read newspapers or watch the news much, but even I'd heard of Dia Jones. The woman's predictions were supposed to be deadly accurate and, last I'd heard, the waiting list to see her was over a year long. "Why in hell would a woman like that play prostitute for Deshon Starr?"

"If she is one of the clones, as Misha said, she may have no choice," Rhoan pointed out, then glanced at Jack. "And through her, Starr has a lot of access to the rich and famous, and possibly a lot of influence."

Jack nodded. "The house she lives in is owned by one of Starr's companies, and every weekend she goes to Starr's estate in Macedon. She's there the entire week before the full moon, and apparently there's also a lot of influential people in attendance at that time, too."

I remembered the estate I'd seen in one of the lab-made creature's mind right before I'd killed him. That house had been large and surrounded by acres and acres of lush gardens. Only what roamed its grounds were not things of nature, but creatures who evolution had little to do with—black ghosts who possessed little in the way of recognizable human features, blue things with rainbow wings and deadly claws. Demons and monsters and God knows what else. How did Deshon explain away his horrors?

"So," Liander asked. "This woman has wolf in her?"

"We don't know, but given all the cloning experiments at that time seemed to have involved werewolf genes, it wouldn't be beyond reason to think so."

"Then why Macedon? Isn't that a bit far out of the city to be ru

"In this day and age, no. Starr never actually leaves his estate, which is why we have never been able to pin any of his cartel's crimes on him."

"That and the fact the minds of his people are burned away before we can fully question them," Rhoan muttered.

"Sounds a nice type," Liander commented dryly.

"Oh, he's a charmer." Rhoan gave me a dark glance. "Which is why I don't want Riley in on this."

"Hey, I'm not the one who's pla

"I'm not the one walking into this situation sans experience—"

"Enough," Jack said. "I need you both on this mission, and that's the end of it."

He pressed another button on the keyboard, and several more pictures came up, these taken at night and on the streets. They featured the same woman, only this time her pallid looks had given way to brown hair and soft makeup. In each picture she was talking to a different woman, and most of them were prostitutes if the clothing—or lack thereof—was anything to go by.

"A week before each full moon," Jack continued, "Dia apparently hits the streets for three nights on a recruitment drive. Last month, she signed up thirty women, though not all of them were prostitutes. She gives them cards, tells them to show up at a legitimate job-placement business the next day, where, after a background and physical check has been done, they're offered extremely large sums of money to provide sexual services for Starr's men during the full moon phase. We gather some do stay beyond that two week period, but most are returned unharmed to the streets the day after the full moon."

"Unharmed physically or mentally?" I asked.

Jack gave me one of his pleased-with-a-student smiles. "Physically, they're fine. But someone has shuffled through their memories, taking away the finer details."

"Meaning even if they were abused or hurt in the period they were there, they wouldn't remember it," Rhoan stated. "What about Starr? How does he pick his lovers?"

"From his security force." Jack hesitated. "We have someone in his estate already, and he's managed to uncover details about the firm Starr uses. That's how you're going in."

Rhoan frowned. "Who have you got in there? Gautier would have passed on Directorate photos, so Starr would recognize anyone we tried to get in there."

"But he doesn't know Kade. Starr has a passion for horses—he apparently doesn't ride them himself, just loves watching them run around with naked women on them."

"I betting the women aren't just riding them," Rhoan muttered. "From what I've heard, Starr loves watching others get it off. And the more dangerous the situation, the more he enjoys it."

Some people kept dogs as pets. Starr kept horses and lab-made nightmares, and, from the sound of it, combined the two interests sexually. It said an awful lot about the man. Or rather, his weirdness.

"Are the other horses shifters? Or just Kade?"

"Just Kade."

Then poor Kade. Having naked women riding around on his back was going to be mighty frustrating for the poor fellow.