Devil's Gate (NUMA Files 9)

In a last desperate act he pushed a fish tank off a shelf toward Kurt. It crashed to ground and exploded, sending glass, water, fish, and a flood of tiny blue pebbles across the floor.

Somewhere in the tank, Kurt guessed, there were piranhas or some other kind of tropical fish, but he didn’t care at the moment. He jumped back. Avoiding the main impact, he looked up in time to see Ion making another break for the front door. This time, Kurt lowered the boom, clotheslining the elusive little man and body-slamming him to the floor.

Dazed and defeated, Ion looked up, surrounded by blue gravel and flapping fish.

“This could have been so much easier,” Kurt said, grabbing him by the lapels and yanking him to his feet.

“I’m not going to give you anything,” Ion said.

“You don’t even know what I want,” Kurt replied.

“You want Andras,” Ion said. “I know you’re looking for him.”

Maybe that’s why he’d been so resistant.

“He’ll kill me if I talk to you,” Ion explained.

“Not if I kill him first,” Kurt said.

“You’ll never kill him,” Ion said. “He’s always been ahead of you.”

“You’d better hope you’re wrong about that,” Kurt said. “Because you are going t

o tell me where he is.”

“Whatever you do to me, it won’t be worse than what Andras will do,” Ion said.

Kurt realized that was probably true. A handicap of being a decent human meant that, barring the worst circumstances, he wouldn’t stoop to the darkest levels of inhumanity. And that meant people like Ion would always be more afraid of someone like Andras than they would be of him.

Glancing at a bleeding abrasion on Joe’s arm that matched the claw pattern of the leopard, Kurt suddenly had an idea. There had to be something in this “Rare and Exotic” pet store that was a little less evolved.

He grabbed Ion by the neck and dragged him across the floor.

“Where shall we put you?” he mumbled, stopping in front of one cage after another. “The monkeys are too smart for you. The sloth might mess you up, but we don’t have all night.”

With Ion looking at him as if he were crazy, Kurt dragged him up to the Komodo dragon’s enclosure. The giant lizard had not moved a muscle despite the commotion.

“Now, this guy might do,” Kurt said, putting his hand on the door and working the double-levered latch.

“What?” Ion shouted. “Are you crazy?”

As Kurt managed to get the door open, the lizard’s tongue flicked out and sampled the air. A single eye opened, but it didn’t move.

Ion tried to squirm out of Kurt’s grasp, but Kurt grabbed a collar off of the shelf beside him. It had a long stick attached to it. It looked like some kind of animal control device that allowed the keeper to either push or pull the animal as needed, especially designed to keep a dangerous mouth away from a trainer.

In his own way, Ion had a dangerous mouth, but Kurt needed it to open.

He pulled the collar over Ion’s head and onto his neck and shoved him forward with the pole, pressing Ion up against the open door.

“I don’t know if this is the right choice,” Joe said.

Kurt looked back at him.

“I mean, the dragon,” Joe said.

“No on the dragon?” Kurt asked.

“Something about their bite,” Joe said. “It’s poisonous. But not like a cobra. They bite and then leave their victim to die. It takes days.”