TWENTY-SEVEN
Downtown, Butch parked the Escalade in the underground parking garage of the Commodore and took the internal elevator all the way up the spine of the building. He had no fucking clue what he was going to walk into when he got to V’s place, but that was where the GPS signal was coming from, so that was where he was going.
In the pocket of his leather coat, he had all the keys to Vishous’s private space: the plastic swipe card to get into the parking garage; the silver one you used in the elevator to punch the top button; the copper job that got you past the dead bolts on the doors.
His heart beat hard as a little ding sounded and the elevator opened silently. All-access was taking on a whole new meaning tonight, and as he stepped out into the hall, he wanted a drink. Badly.
At the door, he took out the copper key, but used his knuckles first. A couple of times.
It was a good minute later when it dawned on him that there was no answer.
Fuck the knuckles. He pounded with his fist.
“Vishous,” he barked. “Answer the goddamn door or I’m coming in.”
One, Mississippi. Two, Mississippi—
“Fuck this.” He shoved the key into the lock and cranked it before throwing his shoulder into the solid metal door and shoving it wide.
Bursting into the place, he heard the alarm beeping quietly. Which meant V couldn’t be here. “What the hell . . . ?”
He put the code in, shut the thing off, and locked the dead bolt behind himself. No remnants of lit candlewicks . . . no scent of blood . . . nothing but cool, clean air.
He flipped on the light switch and blinked in the glare.
Yeah, wow . . . Lot of memories in here . . . him coming and crashing after the Omega had gotten into him and he’d left quarantine . . . V losing his ever-loving mind and jumping off the damn terrace . . .
He went over to the wall of “equipment.” A fuckload of other things had happened here, too. Some of which he couldn’t imagine.
As he went down the display of metal and leather, his shitkickers echoed up to the ceiling, and his mind all but bounced around his skull. Especially as he got to the far end: In the corner, a set of iron cuffs hung from the ceiling by thick chains.
You got someone on them, you could lift them up and dangle ’em like a side of beef.
Reaching out, he fingered one of them. No cushioning on the inside.
Spikes. Dull spikes that would grip the flesh like teeth.
Getting himself back with the program, he marched through the place, checking in all the nooks and crannies . . . and found a little tiny computer chip on the kitchen counter. It was the kind of thing that no one but V would know how to remove from a cell.
“Son of a bitch.”
So there was no way of knowing where—
When his phone went off, he checked the screen. Thank God. “Where the hell are you?”
V’s voice was tight. “I need you down here. Ninth and Broadway. Stat.”
“Fuck that—why is your GPS in your kitchen.”
“Because that’s where I was when I took it out of my phone.”
“What the hell, V.” Butch tightened his grip on his cell and wished there were an app that let you reach through a phone and bitch slap someone. “You can’t—”
“Get your ass down here to Ninth and Broadway—we’ve got problems.”
“You’re kidding me, right? You go untraceable and—”
“Someone else is killing lessers, cop. And if it’s who I think it is, we’ve got problems.”