Shadow of the Templar Omnibus Read online

  Everything was silent. Too silent. Simon whipped his gun down the corridor, which was empty save for a chair and beside it, Mike, stretched unconscious on the floor with his right arm outflung towards the handprint scanner. Simon swore and darted for him, pressing his fingers to the pulse in Mike's neck. It was strong, if a little erratic. "Honda is down but alive, repeat, down but alive," he almost yelled into his phone. "Get those medical teams here on the double, Specs Two."

  "On it," Rich said. Simon dropped the link-up phone on the ground. Leaving Mike where he was, Simon slammed his own hand into the handprint reader. The heavy vault door hissed open and Simon burst into the display gallery, letting the barrel of his gun lead the way.

  Six bodies lay in tangles on the floor, in full SWAT riot gear, including their gas masks. Faint wisps of smoke still lingered in the corners of the room and eddied over the ceiling, and Simon hissed his next breath through his teeth. In the center of the room stood the glass display case, the alarm grid still in place around it; as Simon exploded into the room the slender figure suspended upside-down in mid-air over the case looked up — down — and said "Oh, damn."

  "You call this tedious?" Simon snapped, his gun trained on 'James Crown'. 'James' had lost the tuxedo somewhere, traded it for a skin-tight black catsuit and a pair of extremely formidable-looking technological goggles, all the better to be hanging from ceilings in. Despite the heavy mirrored rectangle of the goggles obscuring his eyes, it was undoubtedly him. The rope snaked about his right leg five or six times and stretched up to the ceiling, attached to some sort of huge suction cup. One gloved hand held the mate to that suction cup over 'James's head, with a burnt-out circle of glass still attached to it; the other hand was curled gently around a sparkling white diamond the approximate size and shape of a walnut, that had until just a moment ago been resting on the velvet bed in the now-empty display case. The Morning Star. "That was a rhetorical question, don't bother answering," Simon went on, suddenly flush with controlled excitement. "Freeze. FBI."

  "Yes, well, I thought it might break up the monotony — FBI!" One eyebrow rose from under the goggles. "And here I'd assumed you and your lovely date were private security. You're not with Art Theft."

  "Art Theft?" Simon spat, edging closer, gun still trained on 'James's face. "You really don't know what kind of shit you've stepped in here, do you, Jeremy Archer? Well, I'll tell you what, we're a charitable bunch at the Bureau, you put that rock down now and submit to arrest like a good Little Lord Fauntleroy and you'll only be looking at a year, maybe two, in a federal detention center. Keep your hands up. Down. Where I can see them."

  "Mm." 'James' — Jeremy — didn't move. The only thing that moved was the diamond, sparkling as it rolled lazily back and forth in his gloved fingers, and Simon had to force himself not to glance at the lure. "Might I suggest a counteroffer?"

  "I'm thinking no, actually. I don't know what kind of deal you made with Rupp, but it's not worth what that scumbag has in mind, and it's definitely not worth what we can do to you. Now drop the Star, Archer."

  Jeremy actually smiled. "Oh, do tell me what you can do to me, Adam. I'm all aquiver."

  "We can make it so that just the thought of ironic banter will have you curling up and crying like a baby, for one thing. And it's Simon, actually, as long as we're sharing."

  "But then what will I do for fun, Simon? Honestly."

  "Probably you'll be fending off all the large sweaty men who want you to call them 'daddy'. Put it down! Now!"

  "Oh, is that all?" The diamond rolled up slowly until Jeremy could palm it. Simon watched it travel out of the corner of his eye, braced for anything. "I've done that before. It's not as bad as you might think, particularly the 'sweaty' bits — catch."

  Jeremy brought both his hands up in a slow, lazy underhanded throw. The Morning Star lofted gently through the air towards Simon, who caught it left-handed, his right hand keeping the gun trained on Jeremy's face. "Good boy —" Simon started to say, and then Sandra was shaking him and saying his name over and over, and he was staring uncomprehendingly at the ceiling, with neither gun nor Morning Star in his hands.

  "What happened?" he said groggily, struggling up onto his elbows. "What — Archer! The diamond! Where?"

  "Gone, Templar," Sandra said, helping him sit up. "By the time I got down here you were out cold and he was gone. What happened?"

  "Don't remember — fuck, my head." Simon grabbed at his temples as his headache crashed in around him. "Let me think, I had my gun on him, he threw me the diamond... I said 'good boy'... some kind of white smoke shot from his right cuff after he got his hands up — that bastard gassed me!"

  "Probably the same stuff he used on Honda," Sandra said, squeezing Simon's shoulder. "Honda's up, too. Groggy, but up. Texas and his team are still out but they're breathing just fine."

  "That's something," Simon said, rubbing his temples. "How long has it been?"

  "About twenty minutes since you told Specs Two to call the meds and dropped your phone. I got here five minutes ago." Sandra hesitated, then said, "We lost him, Templar. Shadow's gone and so is the diamond."

  "Fuck. Where's my phone?"

  "I'll go get it." Sandra stood up and left the room, silent on her stocking feet. Simon sighed heavily and let his hand drop. It fell against something cool and velvety on the carpet next to him. He glanced down. The rose from Jeremy's buttonhole lay there, still surrounded by its froth of little white flowers — baby's breath, he remembered Johnny telling him — just an inch from where his fingers would have been laying when he was out. Simon picked up the flower and studied it, frowning a bit. "Here, Templar," Sandra said, crossing the room back to him, and quickly, before she could see it, Simon slid the rose into the inner pocket of his tuxedo jacket and took the phone from her.

  "People. We there?"

  "Specs here."

  "Specs Two here."

  "Honda here. Ow, motherfucker, ow."

  "Springheel's with me," Simon said. "I hear Texas is still out."

  "Yeah," Nate said. "Meds have him and Honda."

  "They can let me go any time," Mike said.

  "Or you can shut up and take it like a man, Honda," Simon said. "Listen up, people. Here's what's going to happen now. Honda, Texas and I are going to get checked over by the meds. No telling what that stuff he used on us was. The rest of you get changed if you need it and head for the saferoom. No one sleeps until we debrief. I'm going to need answers, people. If not tonight, then very, very soon."

  "Got it, Templar," Rich said. "I've got some answers. You're going to hate 'em."

  "I fucking hate answers I hate, Specs Two."

  "Answers," Simon said, slamming into the saferoom an hour later, Mike and Johnny in tow. He'd changed out of his tux and he felt a world better for it. "Someone make coffee?"

  "Duh. Coffee's up," Nate said, flapping a hand at the battered old coffeemaker wearing its nametag that said HELLO! MY NAME IS: MRS. SIMON DRAKE (?). "Johnny? You okay?"

  "Head hurts," Johnny said, dropping into his chair and going all loose-jointed. "Mouth tastes like cowshit."

  "And you'd know," Mike said, taking his own seat. Johnny flipped him off.

  "Children," Simon said, taking his place at the head of the table with a mug of coffee clutched firmly in both hands. "First things first: med thinks we're okay. Whatever that stuff was, it was just some kind of knockout gas. Johnny got one hell of a larger dose than the rest of us, but as you can see he's back to his usual loveable and talkative self."

  All around the table, people relaxed slightly. Sandra, looking much more comfortable in jeans and sweater with her hair down, picked absently at the remains of her manicure. "So what happened?"

  "That's what I want to know." Simon slapped one hand on the table. "We're going to take it in order. Nate. What happened with the cameras?"

  Nate took off his glasses and cleaned them on his sweater, fingers rubbing nervous circles on the lenses. It was Rich who spoke up. "I'll fi
eld that one, Simon. Same thing that happened to the alarm systems, and the elevator. You want the bad news first, or the bad news? I've also got some bad news."

  "Hm." Simon chugged down half his coffee and made a horrible face. "What the hell, let's have the bad news."

  "He sabotaged every single camera we put in yesterday, plus our links into the alarm system in the house, the elevator's alert system, and the alarm system around the display case."

  "You're kidding me. He did all that in twenty-four hours? Found all our cameras? All the wiring?"

  "He did. Now it's time for the bad news: you wanna know how he did it?"

  "Hit me."

  Rich shoved his glasses back up his nose with one finger. "He didn't even have to go into the house. He diddled the goddamned van."

  Silence reigned for a long moment. Then Mike slapped a hand to his face and groaned aloud. Simon rubbed his temples. "Explain that, Rich."

  "As nearly as I can figure, he did it yesterday when we were all inside setting up. Nobody was out keeping an eye on the van. I figure he broke in, spliced into the cables to the recording devices, set up the cameras to rebroadcast old loops when he told them to, and made our link into the alarm system talk happily to itself in a mirror instead of actually watching the house. And that's just what I've found so far. God knows what else he did in there. I have the van isolated in motor pool. Nate and I'll take it apart tomorrow."

  "He fucking played us!" Mike burst out.

  Simon ignored him. "So the camera flicker —"

  "He was telling the equipment in the van to stop broadcasting live and start replaying old footage. No wonder we could still see Mike and Johnny's team moving around normally when they were already out."

  "Christ!"

  "Oh, it gets way better." Rich's lips drew away from his teeth. It was almost a grin if Simon didn't look at his eyes. "He left us a present. After he knocked you out and split, he did something to make the recorders electrocute themselves. We lost all the recorded footage and a couple hundred thousand dollars' worth of electronic equipment is so much slag."

  Simon shut his eyes and chugged off the rest of his coffee. Nate got up, fetched the pot, and refilled his mug without a word. "Okay," Simon finally said, his voice forcibly calm. "Next time we do this? Somebody babysits the van. You said there was some bad news, too, Rich?"

  "Yeah. Tracer? Was working fine. He had some kind of device jamming ordinary radio transmissions, I think he had it on him. It's a good thing our link-up was using cellular tech or he'd have been jamming us, too."

  "Who the hell does this guy think he is, James fucking Bond?" Simon exploded. "How'd you find out?"

  "Tracer winked back in half an hour ago. I sent a field agent out to track it, and he came up with an abandoned tuxedo stuffed in a Goodwill box. Tracer still attached and beeping happily."

  "Well, hell. At least we have the clothes to do evil lab shit to." Simon chewed on his thumbnail for a moment, then dismissed it. "Next. Do we know what he did to the elevator?"

  "Jammed a screwdriver into the card slot. Crude, but highly effective," Nate said. He sighed and put his glasses back on, which was Rich's cue to take off his own and scrub them so hard the lenses creaked in their frames.

  "Jesus, that's almost a relief. I was afraid he'd rewired it to be some kind of, of laser-powered killer toaster, I don't know. Okay. Next. Mike?"

  "The last group had left about five minutes before he hit," Mike said, getting up to grab his own coffee. "I swear to God, Simon, I didn't even see him. I think he hit me from above or something."

  "Yeah," Simon said slowly, staring into his mug. "He had some kind of suction cup things."

  "Yeah," Mike echoed. "Anyway, one moment I'm looking down the hall, there's this weird medicine-y smell like hospitals, and I wake up half an hour later with Sandra all up in my face, not that I'm complaining." Slinging himself back into his chair, Mike took a deep pull on his coffee and eyed Sandra through the rising steam. "Girl is fine in that little gold number."

  Simon snorted. "We're aware, Mike."

  "Pity I had to return it," Sandra said.

  "Next," said Simon. "Johnny?"

  "Door opens five minutes too early for the next tour group. I look up and there's this guy in a black leotard thing and goggles, looks like some action-movie villain, he's got Mike's hand slapped up to the reader. Minute he does that he tosses this smoking can into the room and slaps his arm across his face —" Johnny demonstrated, holding his forearm up. "— and so we all go for our masks, get 'em up fast. Don't remember anything after that."

  "Holy shit," Mike said, staring at Johnny. "That shit of his gets absorbed through the skin or something?"

  "Actually," Nate broke in, "no, it's..." He tapered off, aware that everyone was staring at him.

  "Go on," Simon prompted, fighting for calm.

  "I took a look at Johnny's mask while Rich was driving the van back." Nate hauled out a black gasmask and put it on the table, wrenching the air canister loose and holding it up. "See this puncture, here?" He tapped the bottom of the canister, where something silvery glinted on the black surface. "It was covered with some kind of wax."

  "Wait, he..."

  "He boobytrapped the gasmasks, too," Rich broke in, seething. "Probably at the same time he did everything else. They were in the van, Simon, along with everything else, and he shot some of that junk into every single one."

  Simon's knuckles were white on his coffee mug. "So he threw in some kind of worthless special-effects smoke bomb —"

  "— and Johnny and his team all went for their masks and gassed themselves for him, yeah," Rich finished, overriding Simon. Johnny made a faint disbelieving noise and slumped over, burying his face in his arms.

  "Jesus," Simon said. "Jesus. I want this motherfucker. Preferably being some tattooed scumbag's bitch in McCreary, but I'll settle for dead, you know, if I have to."

  "Can we make him our bitch instead?" Nate said, shoving his floppy bangs out of his eyes. "I want him in prison, sure, but... Templar, you have got to see the stuff he did to the van. He's good."

  "'Good'," Rich spat. "He's a fucking supervillain. I want him dead."

  "Professional jealousy?" Sandra asked, acidly. Rich glared at her. Nate choked on a particularly ill-timed laugh.

  "Children," Simon said, slamming his mug to the table. Coffee slopped over the sides and Simon jerked his hand back, sucking on his burned knuckles. "My turn now. So I get in there and he's gone in over the alarm net. He is, no lie, hanging from the ceiling by a rope. I figure I've got him dead to rights, he's hanging upside down all trapped in a harness, there's nowhere he can go, I've got my gun on him and he's got both hands full." Simon picked up the now-less-full mug and threw off half the contents, burning his tongue too. "So I tell him to put the diamond down and he tosses it to me all easy, but that brings up his hands to point at my face, and he shoots me with the same gas he got Mike with. He's got some kind of tube mechanism strapped here —" Simon tapped the inside of his right wrist "— under his watchband, I think, and it shoots the stuff in a thin stream. I went out like a light, and when I came to, he was gone with the diamond."

  "That's where I come in," Sandra said. Chips and flakes of gold nail polish glinted on the table around her hands. "I was running the perimeter as best I could, but it was just me in Versace versus a bunch of panicking civilians. I didn't see him leave the grounds. No surprise there. So when the meds showed up I led them to Mike and Johnny, and that's where I found Simon."

  They all fell silent. Mike fiddled with his coffee mug. Johnny grunted into the circle of his arms. Rich put his glasses back on and blinked several times; just like clockwork Nate pulled his off five seconds later and started to clean them again.

  "Okay," Simon said softly. "Okay. I think that gives me enough to work with for now. Nate, run that air canister down to the lab before you head home. Rich, you and Nate strip that van down to spare parts tomorrow, give me something written I can pacify upst
airs with. Sandra, work with profiling, get me a good sketch and an outline of his tics and speech patterns. Mike, you take Johnny home with you tonight and keep an eye on him, just in case. Johnny, you feel even the least bit weird, go yelping to med. The both of you sleep in late tomorrow, then come in prepared to stay overnight. I don't have to tell you kids this is a fiasco." He paused. No one said anything. "Right. You all go home. Now. Get some sleep. I'm going to file the preliminary report and then I am going to stare at the far wall and hate this smart, smart bastard. Got me?"

  "Got you, Templar," Mike said, shoving back his chair and standing up. "Think we're going to get thrown off the case?"

  "Don't know. It all depends. We'll be pulled back to work on the Rupp angle, probably." Simon drained his coffee mug dry and slumped in his chair. "All of you piss off. See you tomorrow."

  In ones and twos they left, quiet and dead tired. Finally it was just Simon, sprawled out in his chair, legs kicked out in front of him. Once it was quiet, once he was sure they were all gone, Simon reached into the pocket of his bomber jacket and pulled out a small red rose corsage, now a bit the worse for wear. The rosebud was beginning to open, fooled by the warmth of his body.

  "Jeremy Archer," he breathed, spinning the rose in his fingers. Baby's breath flicked off the corsage, falling to dot the front of his jeans. "Jeremy Archer, you unbelievable idiot, if you only knew what kind of shit you just bought yourself..."

  Closing his eyes Simon held the rose to his face and breathed in that sweet scent, and the faint smirk he'd seen on Jeremy Archer's face rose like a specter in his mind.

  Part Two: Compromise

  [tuesday]

  It was almost eleven in the morning by the time Simon slammed open the door to the saferoom. He barely had time to throw up his hand before a hurtling paperweight smacked into it, accompanied by a yelp of "Shit! Sorry, Templar!" from Mike. Mike promptly punched Johnny's shoulder. "Asshole, you were supposed to catch that!"