The Hell Yo - lanyon Josh. Страница 49

He took a long time to answer my knock. I began to fear I’d missed him, when I heard

the bolt slide.

The door swung open. I had a glimpse of a tidy and impersonal hotel suite. No printer,

no clothes strewn about, no booze, and no gun as far as I could see – which wasn’t that far.

Bob appeared to be packed and ready to go.

“Adrien!” Bob exclaimed with a distinct lack of pleasure. “What are you doing here?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“No.” I hadn’t wasted time on social niceties. Neither did Bob. “I don’t have time.” He

started to shut the door. I reached out to stop him.

I said, “Bob, we both know Gabe isn’t staying out in Malibu. They have him, don’t

they?”

“Be quiet,” he said fiercely and grabbed me by the front of my jacket, dragging me into

the hotel room. I didn’t resist; I wanted into that room.

The hotel door slammed shut. Bob let go of me, breathing hard. “You’re crazy,” he said.

“You’re going to get us both killed.”

Same old song, same old story. “Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll go away. Who or

what is Blade Sable?”

“I don’t know!”

“Bullshit. You have to have some idea.”

“Why the hell can’t you leave this alone? What the hell does it matter to you?”

Not a bad question, but moot.

I didn’t move, didn’t speak, just waited him out. Jake had pulled that trick on me a

couple of times, so I knew it was effective.

After forty seconds (which is a sizable stretch of silence when you’re mad enough to

throttle someone), Bob burst out, “Blade Sable was Gabe’s project. How many times do I have

to tell you? Gabe was doing his own –” He stopped.

“Gabe was doing his own thing,” I said. “And that isn’t how it works, is it? Gabe is the

front man. You write the books. It’s a partnership, but not an equal partnership, because you

do all the work, and Gabe gets all the glory.”

His face, already flushed with anger, turned a medic-alert shade of puce.

“What do you know? That’s the way we wanted it! We started out trying to write

together, but it worked better this way. I don’t want what you call “the glory.” I don’t want

to get out there and meet my public – our public. You saw those freaks. You think I want to

rub shoulders with that?”

“Okay, so it’s a real partnership. But Gabe decided he wanted to write this book, this

expose.”

“He’s always taken this stuff too seriously. The occult. He had to dabble – he had to

experiment.”

In other words, It’s his own damn fault.

I guessed, “But then he connected with Blade Sable.”

He ran his hands over his sparse hair. “He went to a party the last time we did LA. That

was a year ago in October. I remember because we were doing a lot of Halloween tie-ins for

Vertex of the Vampyres. Anyway, something happened. He saw something or overheard

something. Whatever it was, it terrified him. I’ve known him twenty years, but I’ve never

seen him like that.”

“You have no idea what?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know the details, because he never shared any. Though he

was scared, he kept poking, kept prying, kept trying to find out more. He thought it was

huge, that it reached all the way to City Hall and beyond. He thought there was a book in it.”

He added bitterly, “A book for him, not us.”

“Where was the party held?”

“I don’t know. In Los Angeles, I think.”

I took a random shot. “Pacific Palisades? By the ocean?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did he say who was at the party? Did he ever mention any names?”

“I told you, I don’t know the details.”

“Did he write the book?”

“I think so. He must have written a lot of it.”

“Was it on that disk that disappeared?”

“I think so.”

“He must have had a couple of backups.”

“I’m sure he did, but they wouldn’t be where I would find them. He didn’t want me to

know what he was doing.”

“The panic over the lost disk was because he was afraid this group or this person would

find out what he was writing? He was afraid of them.”

Bob nodded.

Then why the hell had Savant brought that disk with him? Why had he told these

people about it – because he must have told someone. I didn’t believe they saw it in a crystal

ball.

I turned my attention back to Friedlander. “What was the deal with that postcard?

Why did you try to convince me that Gabe was safe when he’s still missing?”

“They told me to. They told me to let it go. They said a postcard would be coming from

Gabe and that it would prove he was alive. They said if I didn’t play along, he would be dead,

and I’d be next. They said the police didn’t believe me, anyway, and it’s true. The police

didn’t believe me. Or at least they pretended not to.”

“Who told you all this?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see them. They called from a phone inside the hotel. They knew

my room. They knew everything.”

“When did they call you?”

“I don’t remember.”

I was tempted to prompt him, but I knew better. “Try,” I said.

He thought hard. “Last Wednesday, I think.”

“The day I came to see you?”

He looked confused, then nodded. “The first time, yes, that’s right. They said to call

you and tell you that it was all okay, Gabe was safe –”

I interrupted, “They said to call me? They mentioned me by name?”

“Yes. They said you were nosing around, that if you kept it up, they’d kill Gabe and

then me.”

I put that aside to consider later. “So what happens now?”

He couldn’t meet my eyes. I said, disbelieving, “You’re walking away from this?”

“What am I supposed to do? Getting myself killed won’t change anything. Gabe is

dead.”

“You don’t know that.”

He looked up then. Though he shook with anger, I understood that the anger was not

truly directed at me. “They couldn’t let him go. He knew too much.”

“You don’t even know what it is he knew – knows.”

“Whatever it was, it was too much.”

“So you’re going to pack up and fly out of here and…you think no one is going to

notice when bestselling author Gabriel Savant never shows again?”

“They won’t find him, and anyway, I have the postcard. The police are the ones who