"She was in marketing," I told him, puzzled.
    Pause before he replied. "I think he's figured out the secrets of the universe but he's not telling us. Apparently he was expecting her to be in marketing. I'm not sure what marketing is, I think I'll go look that up, I'll talk to you later."
    "Okay, let me know what Felix says. I may swing by the office later."
    It wasn't fifteen minutes before the phone rang again.
    "Hello again," I answered.
    "It's me again."
    "So where is he?"
    "Copley Plaza Hotel. Room 2517. Under his own name."
    "Oh my god," I groaned.
    "How fast do you think you can get there?"
    "Visibly or invisibly? A few minutes." God, I hate this shit.
    "Where you going?" Phoenix asked as I headed for the door.
    "Copley Plaza. A guy's probably going to get killed in a few minutes."
    "Well all right, let's roll!" he bounced out of his chair.
    "Prepare to get shot at. Lucky, you coming?"
    "Don't you think I'll make you a little obvious?"
    "Like I'm not fuckin' obvious?" Hi, I'm the glowing, flying woman. And there went my language again.
    "Why are we saving this guy and who the hell is he?"
    "He's the guy who bribed Dr. Lanigan and we're saving him so maybe he can tell us who hired him."
    "They're not gonna kill him!"
    "Javelin is going to kill him," I reminded her over my shoulder as I left the room, caught a brief glimpse into the kitchen of Chandler and Dawn playing Go.
    None of us were in even what slight costume we usually affect, not even Phoenix, which served to disguise them slightly. He caught a ride with Lucky.
    I got there first. The room number was in the upper half of the building; I hit the roof doors at full speed and dove down the stairwell as alarms began going off around me. This floor, this hall. Two men were walking toward the door; they hadn't noticed me yet, though they quickened their pace as the alarms started. Both of them drew guns and kicked the door in. They didn't look like cops, nor did they have that Javelin look to them, but they definitely looked like trouble. The two laid down a few covering rounds before making a move to cautiously enter the room.
    Dammit.
    I brought my shields up, slammed on the speed and knocked them both out of the way, slewed to a dangerous halt on the far side of the room. A woman in a blood-soaked hotel uniform stood against the other wall, dropping the phone in her hand as she reached for something on the table. On the bed between us was, I presumed, Mr. Dan. What was left of him. Knife or a razor, maybe. The woman had that look I was growing too familiar with, her face contorted with emotions never expressed by a sane mind. She picked up a pad of paper from the table, yanked the top sheet off and did a rolling dive, a knife in her other hand. Smooth, clean, professional. She was out of my line of sight, in the bathroom.
    The two guys looked at me and panicked. I suppressed an urge to gag at the messy remains on the bed and moved to my right, blocking their line of fire as I opened the bathroom door and reached in toward her with my mind. She dropped and rolled, avoiding my grip. Guns went off behind me.
    Note to self: stopping 44 Magnum bullets at point blank range is really hard. One of them burned my shoulder. After that, they both came to their senses and started running. The woman jumped forward, flushed the toilet with whatever evidence she was trying to conceal, spun to face me with that hideous possessed snarl, and dove at me with the knife ready to strike.
    I snapped a telekinetic field around her. Normal human—well, sort of—she didn't have any chance of breaking free, though she struggled fiercely and for a moment I feared that she was going into an epileptic fit before the rictus of her expression relaxed into a small, fierce smile.
    "Too late," she said softly.
    I ignored that and looked around the wreckage of the room. The phone dangled on the ground. The rest of the pad of paper lay where it had fallen on the floor. Now that I had more time, I could appreciate the way Dan had been dealt with; far worse than the daemon sacrifices we had seen back in January. She must have actually cut his vocal cords without killing him while she went about the rest of her business, so that no one had heard him.
    Sick bastard. I hope we get him soon.
    I gathered up the rest of the paper—you never know, the old soft pencil trick might work. Somewhere farther down the hall, people were shouting.

[Perspective switch: Lucky and Phoenix Talon]

    I heard yelling from out in the corridor.
    "Go check the other rooms!" someone shouted.
    I could move out, or wait and try to explain the corpse in the room with me. Out the window it was, I decided. I brought the woman with me.
    "The window's open, she must have come in through the window!" someone yelled.
    This was getting annoying, to put it mildly. I headed straight up, landed on the roof again. The woman was still obviously affected by what Javelin had given her, I couldn't just leave her or god knew what she would do. There was a police helicopter approaching, and a black van from which a SWAT team poured in smart order. The chopper hovered around the floor we had been on, and I could hear bits of radio chatter as they swung a spotlight against the windows, looking into rooms. Several men with what certainly looked like automatic weapons leaned out. God only knew what the others were doing.
    I cocooned the Javelin drone head to foot in a fire hose and decided to call the day a loss.

[Perspective switch: Lucky and Phoenix Talon]

    I heard a window break, and a spatter of gunfire from below. Must be Lucky. I sighed and called our beleaguered liaison.
    "Winters. This can't be good," she answered resignedly.
    "Well, I have the woman who did it."
    "That's great. Um, there's a SWAT team at that location...."
    "Yeah, I can see it pulling up. Look, this woman is going to need medical attention, Javelin dosed her. I didn't think it would be a good idea for me to drop her off personally at the hospital."

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