Warlord Read online

  When they reached the front door, he drew a slim metallic needle from the interior pocket of his coat. Crouching, he inserted it into the lock set in the door’s round handle. The forcepick vibrated slightly between his fingers as it sent out a precisely shaped force field that filled the space intended for a key. The field rotated, tripping the primitive tumblers until the lock clicked open.

  Patiently Baran used the same procedure on the second lock, the one the computer called a deadbolt. Once it, too, clicked, he turned the knob and pushed the door open.

  Moving as one, he and the wolf vanished inside.

  Damn, she hated murders.

  Jane Colby got out of her SUV and slammed the door, aiming a brooding stare at the swaying strip of yellow plastic strung across the yard. She sometimes felt she’d spent her entire life staring at crime scene tape, waiting to find out how someone had died.

  Hunching deeper into her windbreaker against the April chill, she walked to the tape and studied the small home that stood some distance beyond it. Strobing blue light from the patrol cars parked along the street rolled across the house’s neat brick face, casting unnatural shadows between the azalea bushes. Beyond backlit lace curtains, the silhouettes of sheriff’s deputies milled around like guests at a morbid party.

  In the distance a dog barked in a frenzy at the K-9 team that searched for the killer. Jane could hear the cops’ radio chatter through the portable police scanner in the depths of her purse. Their voices sounded grimly subdued. She listened absently, hoping for that rising note of tension and adrenalin that would mean they’d found something.

  The hissing rumble of an approaching car drew her around. Stepping back out of the roadway, Jane threw up a hand to shield her eyes against the blaze of its oncoming headlights.

  God, she hoped it wasn’t family. She’d lost count of the times she’d watched people race toward a scene, eyes wild and tears streaming as police ran to stop them before they saw something they shouldn’t. Jane never failed to feel a twist of pity as she listened to the desperate, heartbreaking argument she’d heard over and over, “But it’s my…” Wife, husband, father, mother, brother, sister, daughter, son. The relationship changed, but the horror and suffering was always the same, whether it was a car accident, a fire, a fatal fall. Or a murder.

  But murders were the worst.

  Jane pitied the victims for the terror and agony of their last moments, but she also knew their suffering was over. It was the survivors who really bothered her, because their pain was only beginning. She’d interviewed enough of them to know it never really ended, even years afterward.

  But when the primer-flecked Trans Am simply slowed to a stop, she relaxed. Family always slammed on the brakes and jumped out running. The blond driver leaned across to roll down her passenger window and eye the patrol cars lining the street. “What’s going on?”

  Jane shrugged. “Evidently somebody’s been killed.”

  The woman’s interest took on an avid edge. “Yeah? What happened?”

  “They haven’t told me yet.”

  “You family?”

  “No, I’m a reporter for the Trib.”

  The blonde’s expression chilled, and Jane saw the silent judgment in her eyes. Vulture. “Guess I’ll read about it in the paper, then.”

  “Guess you will.”

  The Trans Am pulled off in a gust of exhaust, its taillights receding into the darkness.

  At least it hadn’t been family. Jane knew she’d have to talk to them eventually, but she liked to give survivors at least a few hours to adjust to the shock. Back in Atlanta she’d often been forced to interview them before the bodies had even cooled. Sometimes you got more that way because their defenses were down, but she’d always felt it was dirty journalism. People deserved a chance to process the massive shock of a murder without someone working them over for a quote.

  She’d even considered stopping the survivor interviews altogether now that she’d become the publisher of The Tayanita Tribune in the wake of her father’s fatal stroke. The Trib only came out three times a week, so any big crime was often old news by the time it made the paper anyway.

  The trouble was, without the emotional content from survivors, people read crime stories as a kind of horrific entertainment. Interviews gave families a chance to describe the person they’d loved, to transform him from another faceless victim to a person in the public mind. For Jane, that meant an opportunity to bring the tragedy of murder home to readers who had become numb to it.

  Which was why she was standing alone on a country road at midnight when she didn’t go to press for two more days.

  As for the nagging awareness that a killer might be somewhere out here, too…

  She wasn’t going to think about that.

  Baran and Freika searched Jane’s house with speed, silence, and a ruthless efficiency that left nothing untouched—or visibly disturbed. Unfortunately, there was nothing to find. There was no trace of the Jumpkiller’s presence, not even his scent. Kalig Druas had not been here.

  Yet.

  The search did, however, tell Baran it wouldn’t be easy keeping him out once he did make his appearance. Every room had fragile glass windows that would take very little effort to break, assuming that the Xeran didn’t simply Jump inside. If they left Jane alone for even a moment, Druas could easily slaughter her before they even knew he was there. Which meant Baran and Freika would have to stay with her at all times, whether she liked it or not. And she wouldn’t.

  Unfortunately, she had no more choice than they did. Baran himself had another monster to kill back in his own time, but Temporal Enforcement had made it clear this one had priority. Never mind that General Jutka’s death would leave the Xeran forces in disarray and save the lives of thousands of Vardonese soldiers. TE wanted its mission taken care of first.

  He’d argued he could make the Jump after he’d assassinated Jutka, but the Enforcer hadn’t bought it. Once he saved Jane, the agent told him, TE would return Baran to the very moment he’d left his own time so he could kill whomever he chose. Since nobody ever argued successfully with Temporal Enforcement, that plan had trumped his.

  The whole thing was irritating. Baran was a Warlord, not a time traveler. He didn’t even work for Temporal Enforcement. But TE had found a three-hundred-year-old video recording of him during Druas’s rampage in this time. They’d decided if a Warlord had been in the twenty-first century, it was because TE itself had put him there, presumably to stop the Jumpkiller. So they’d drafted Baran to make sure he got back here to do whatever he was supposed to do. Otherwise, they all risked creating a catastrophic paradox, and nobody wanted that.

  He only wished he had a few more details about what was actually going to happen. Unfortunately, TE seemed to operate under the theory that once you got where you were supposed to be, you automatically did whatever you were supposed to do.

  With a grunt of impatience, Baran continued his inspection of Jane’s primitive kitchen. When he turned a round knob on her cooking unit, one of the flat metal spirals on top of it slowly began to heat. His computer implant sent him an image of a metal container sitting on the spiral, bubbling. Might be interesting to experiment. Once when the rations had run low, he’d cooked a treehopper over a captured Xer Tach Pack.

  You could do all sorts of things with a Xeran power pack, if you were creative enough.

  “Baran, it’s under the bed,” the wolf called from upstairs. “I see its eyes glowing.”

  “Leave it alone, Freika.” He turned the coil off with a snap of his wrist.

  “But I’m hungry!” A snarling feline yowl rose. “And do you hear the way it’s talking to me?”

  “Eating the target’s cat would not create the first impression we want.”

  “Just one bite?”

  “No. This is going to be difficult enough as it is without you snacking on her furry friends.”

  “How could anybody be friends with a cat?”

  “Well, f
or one thing,” Baran said, walking into the living area, “it’s soft, it purrs, and unlike some I could name, it doesn’t mouth off.”

  Despite the genetic engineering that gave Freika sentience—and the computer implant that made him a four-legged library—Baran’s partner still had a timber wolf’s personality and instincts. Though useful in combat, those characteristics could be maddening the rest of the time.

  “A nibble?”

  “No.” Deciding not to trust Freika’s questionable self-control, Baran bounded up the stairs.

  It seemed to be his week for saving Earth residents from predatory time travelers.

  Beyond the crime scene tape, a storm door creaked open and closed with a metallic bang. Jane turned as the detective in charge of the case stumbled down the steps. Good, she could get the details of this thing and go home.

  Before she could open her mouth, Tom Reynolds leaned over and heaved the contents of his stomach into the budding azalea bushes.

  Jane winced. “That’s so not a good sign,” she called. “What’s bad enough to make you toss your crullers, Tom?”

  Reynolds jerked upright, a flustered expression on his round face as he hurriedly wiped his mouth. “Tell me you didn’t take a picture of that, Colby.”

  She grinned and toyed suggestively with the digital camera that hung by a strap around her neck. “Would I do that to you?”

  “Not if you ever want another exclusive.” Reynolds started toward her, shooting a hunted look around the taped-off perimeter of the yard. “How about TV? Are those vultures from WDRT here?”

  “Nope,” Jane said. “I’m the only one circling at the moment. I figure it’ll take DRT another twenty minutes to get here from Deanville.”

  “That’s something, anyway.” Tom pulled a wadded napkin out of a pocket and wiped his mouth, aware of Jane’s sympathetic gaze. If he had to catch a reporter on this nightmare so soon, he could have done worse. She’d never misquoted him, and if he asked her to withhold something to avoid blowing a case, she did it.

  And God knew she was easy on the eyes. Jane’s long-legged walk was a pleasure to watch even at a crime scene, and he’d caught other cops telling her intriguing cleavage more than they should. Her face always made him think of magazine covers: high cheekbones, big brown eyes, and the kind of wide, sensual mouth a happily married man had no business fantasizing about. With all the dark hair tumbling in curls around her shoulders, she could have done shampoo commercials. Yet he’d never seen her use her looks. She didn’t even seem aware of them.

  The nasty taste in his mouth suddenly reminded Tom he must have the breath of a frat boy the morning after a kegger. He grimaced, shoving aside the memory of just why he’d lost control of his lunch. He really didn’t want to throw up again, especially not on Jane’s pretty boots.

  Observant brown eyes softened as she looked at him. “I’ve got a bottle of water in the SUV. Want it?”

  “Yeah.” He sighed and admitted, “Taste in my mouth ain’t helping my stomach any.”

  She nodded and walked to her red Explorer. Tom trailed behind to watch appreciatively as she opened the door and bent over, fishing around in the cooler she kept in the backseat. Jane’s heart-shaped ass in those snug jeans would draw any man’s eyes, married or not.

  She turned and handed him a bottle dripping with ice and condensation. “Thanks,” he said, twisting the cap off as he headed for the nearest ditch to take a swig and spit.

  Jane watched him sympathetically. Reynolds wore the standard Southern detective uniform of chinos, blue sports coat, and blue oxford cloth shirt, slightly frayed at the collar because he had to watch every dime of his salary. His tie featured Wile E. Coyote and a ketchup stain. Short and balding, he had a face like a bulldog, with a little too much lip and weary blue eyes.

  He was the best cop she’d ever known.

  She shook her head. “Tom, I’ve seen you eat barbecue after working a house where a guy had been dead three weeks. In July. What’s bad enough to make you abuse the azaleas?”

  The detective didn’t answer, his eyes shifting away from hers to scan the street. Since the nearest neighbors lived half a mile away, the only illumination came from the cars’ blue lights. Judging from the tension in his shoulders, he didn’t find the darkness reassuring. “Why are you here, Colby?” he asked finally. “You don’t go to press again until Monday. Call me tomorrow and I’ll fill you in.”

  “Can’t work a murder over the phone, Tom. Besides, when have you known me to miss a crime scene?”

  He sighed and hunched, his gaze now flicking warily across the trees that ringed the wooded lot. “This is not a good time to be conscientious, kiddo. I don’t like you out here all by yourself.”

  Jane gaped at him. Despite their long friendship, it was an unprecedented comment for him to make on the job. Police normally treated reporters little better than the vultures he’d called the WDRT crew. The last time a policeman had expressed concern over Jane’s safety, she’d been standing in the middle of I-85 watching a guy with a sniper rifle hold off thirty cops. The officer’s actual words had been a snarled, “Get your ass back, lady.”

  “Okay, what the hell is going on? I’ve never seen you this spooked.” She reached into her purse to dig out a notebook and pen.

  Tom shrugged and spat another mouthful of water into the ditch. “We have an unidentified female victim.”

  She looked up from her notebook. “Who lives at this address? That should narrow things down.”

  “Maybe, but she doesn’t exactly look like herself at the moment. We know she’s a Caucasian blonde, but that’s about it.”

  Jane grimaced. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  The detective’s eyes went bleak and flat. “Believe me, it’s not.” Something in his tone sent a wave of icy prickles washing over her skin.

  Whatever had happened in that house, it wasn’t a typical Tayanita County murder.

  Two

  Roaring case of the creeps or not, Jane reminded herself she had a job to do. She shook off her unease, cleared her throat, and asked, “Cause of death?”

  “Haven’t done an autopsy yet.”

  Sometimes she thought it would be easier mining diamonds with her fingernails than getting details out of a cop. “Tom, don’t go technical on me. Gun, knife, fists, what?”

  “That’s for the coroner to decide.” He took another swig of his water.

  “Like that ever stopped you before. Look, here’s a clue—if there’s a small round hole on one side and a big ragged hole on the other, that means she was shot.”

  “Smartass. She wasn’t shot.”

  “Okay, so what was she? Or do we play Twenty Questions until I guess right?”

  “Why not? The rest of us are.” Giving his shoulders an uneasy roll, Tom admitted, “Looks like some kind of knife. Sharp.” His lips thinned. “Real sharp.”

  “Sharp as in box cutter, or sharp as in steak knife?” Box cutters were the preferred weapon in certain nasty quarters because the blade was short enough for legal carry in South Carolina. In domestics gone bad, though, spur-of-the-moment killers tended to grab whatever they found lying around the kitchen.

  Wearily he pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Butcher knife, maybe. Autopsy’ll tell us more.”

  “So assuming your victim is the homeowner, how airtight is her significant other’s alibi?” If a woman was murdered in the rest of the country, her husband, boyfriend, or ex-was usually the one who did it. In Tayanita County those odds were a virtual certainty.

  “We’re looking for him.” His voice dropped into a harried growl. “And praying like hell he did it.”

  Jane straightened, reporter instincts immediately roaring into full cry. “This isn’t your standard redneck soap opera, is it?” she asked slowly. “This isn’t even I-caught-her-with-my-brother overkill. Twenty or thirty piddling stab wounds wouldn’t make Tom Reynolds heave his Ho-Hos. What’s inside that house?”


  “The worst I’ve ever seen.” He started scanning the street again, blue eyes brooding. “Tell you one thing, though. We’d damn well better catch this son of a bitch. Quick. He enjoyed himself a little too much.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “No comment.”

  She watched him a moment and tried again. “What’d he do to her, Tom?”

  “Nothing anybody wants to read about over their Wheaties.” He sighed. “Look, I’ll have more for you by the time you go to press. Go home.” His mouth tightened. “And lock your doors.”

  Sometimes asking stupid questions was part of the job. “You saying women in this town have a reason to be worried?”

  Something in his expression made it all too easy to imagine what was inside that house. “Jane, everybody in this town has a reason to be worried.”

  Baran banished Freika from the bedroom and sent him down- stairs to keep watch. Jane’s cat, thoroughly traumatized, did not stir from its hiding place even after the wolf was gone. When Baran crouched to look under the bed, the poor little beast hissed at him with such frazzled hostility he decided to leave it alone.

  With a sigh, he rose to his feet, then paused when a flash of red caught his eye. A length of crimson silk lay spread across the bed’s tumbled white coverings. Curious, he picked it up. The fabric seemed to wrap around his hand, soft and sensuous against his weapon-calloused skin. Shaking out its folds, he realized it was evidently intended to drape like a scarf over interesting feminine curves.

  Negligee, his computer whispered in his mind, then added synonyms. Nightgown, lingerie, sleepwear.

  Negligee. Even the word sounded sensuous. But as he appraised the gown’s whisper-thin folds, Baran realized how small the woman who wore it must be. The top of her head would barely reach his shoulder.

  He frowned. If Druas ever got his hands on her, she’d have no chance at all.