Extinction Machine

Chapter Thirteen

Camden Court Apartments, Camden and Lombard Streets

Baltimore, Maryland

Sunday, October 20, 6:09 a.m.

Really bad time for the phone to ring.

The naked woman in my bed picked my phone up and, without looking at it, threw it across the room.

“Wrong number,” she said. The phone landed under the dresser and rang through to voice mail.

I peered at the lady from between eyelids that had been welded shut a moment before. What was left of my brain was still deep in a dream that was a sweaty replay of the party last night. The dream wasn’t specific because my brain was too deeply pickled for that. Instead there were flash images. The slideshow started off with an R-rating for content. The guys from Echo Team serenading Rudy Sanchez with a song from Mamma Mia!, with a few significant modifications of the lyrics. Our version of the lyrics would have been too extreme for the letters page of Penthouse magazine.

We didn’t go as low as hiring hookers, but there were strippers.

Lots of strippers.

Rudy had asked for something small and tasteful, but let’s face it, he asked the wrong guy. Me. No way was I sending my best friend down the aisle with anything less than a blowout of epic proportions. Creating an international incident was a real likelihood at one point, no joke. I believe the police were involved for some of it, but I’m pretty sure we wound up cuffing some of them to the toilets in the ladies’ room.

It was that kind of a party.

For what it’s worth, even though I may have kissed several people—and I pray that most or all of them were women—I did manage to go home with the woman I came with.

Violin.

A luscious Italian shooter-for-hire who had a psychotic mother who frequently wanted me dead. Violin had warrants on her from several countries that had extradition agreements with the U.S. She also had a set of curves that made me not care about any of that, and more importantly, she was one of “my” people. That’s a small group of folks who I trust completely. Violin and I had history, we’d been through fire together, which meant that if anyone ever took a run at her they’d have to go through me. That would get very expensive in ways most people don’t want to pay.

Were we a couple?

Not really. Not in any way you could write a romance novel about.

When she was in this part of the world, and if neither of us was otherwise involved, we tended to attack each other in hot and creative ways. There were no strings, no obligations, and that was an arrangement that worked just fine for both of us.

Violin lay sprawled in a tangle of sheets in my Baltimore apartment. I think she’d gone back to sleep before the phone stopped ringing. She had pale skin with just the slightest hint of a Mediterranean olive in her complexion. No trace of a tan or even the ghost of a tan line—she’s definitely not the beach type. Round where it mattered, but lean and strong. Really, really strong. Some might say freakishly so, but she didn’t look it. She lay on her stomach, her face turned toward me, eyes closed, emitting a soft, purring snore. My middle-aged marmalade tabby, Cobbler, was snugged up against her, almost nose to nose with her, and they breathed with exactly the same feline rhythm.

The phone began ringing again.

My cell.

And then the house landline.

My dog, Ghost, started barking on the other side of the bedroom door.

Balls.

“Don’t,” mumbled Violin as I started to get up. It was somewhere between a plea and a threat.

“It’s probably my office.”

“Let someone else save the world for once. It’s Sunday, you’re hungover and more importantly I’m hungover. If you don’t let me go back to sleep I’ll kneecap you.” She said all this without opening her eyes, her voice a soft mumble of credible threat.

“I’ll risk it,” I said.

“Your funeral.”

I sat up and the motion set the room to spinning. Violin wasn’t joking about a hangover. I remember swearing to God while on my knees that I would never—ever—drink again if He’d just let me stop throwing up. Next time I was in church I was going to have to take a look at the fine print on that contract.

Right now, though, I watched the room do a tilt-a-whirl around the bed.

“Oh God,” I mumbled.

Both phones stopped ringing right before they would have gone to voice mail.

“Thank you, Jesus.”

And started up again.

I lunged for the cell phone, missed it by ten feet and crawled like a sick tree sloth across the carpet, grabbed the cell, pushed the little green button.

“What?” I snarled belligerently.

“Good morning, Captain Ledger,” said Mr. Church.

“Ah … shit.”

“Although it pains me to interrupt your Sunday morning meditations, I would appreciate your attention on a matter of some importance.”

Church hadn’t been at the bachelor party. I’d invited him but even though he didn’t say so I believe he would rather have been eaten by rats. Partly because, let’s face it, a bachelor party wasn’t his scene, and partly because Circe was his daughter. A precious few people on earth knew that fact, and I don’t want to know what Church would do to someone who let that fact leak. I’m a scary guy, but Church scares the kind of people who scare me.

“I’m off today,” I said with bad grace. “The duty officer is—”

“Joe,” said Church, “you need to get into the office now.”

Church never calls me Joe. Never.

I sat bolt upright.

“What’s happening?”

“Are you alone?” he asked.

I looked at Violin. She’d caught the urgency in my voice and propped herself up on one elbow. Alert and cautious. Cobbler crouched on the sheets next to her with wide, wary eyes.

“No,” I said.

“Then call me from your car. I’ll expect to hear from you in two minutes.”

He hung up.

I’ve been working for Church for a couple of years now, I’d seen him in the middle of some of the most terrible catastrophes this country has faced. Stuff that doesn’t make the newspapers, which is why my fellow Americans can still sleep at night. I’ve seen Church in situations where everyone and everything is falling apart and he’s always as cool as a cucumber.

But now there was something in his voice. Raw emotion held down by his iron control.

Fear.

Or maybe … panic.