Kitty Goes to War (Kitty Norville 8)

He just kept grinning, stringing me along.

“Come on. Just tell me.”

We reached our car before he said anything.

“We’re going on a stakeout.”

Chapter 10

“JESUS, THIS is just like old times,” Ben muttered.

He leaned back in the driver’s seat and tapped the top of the steering wheel.

“Old times” meant the days when Cormac loaded his Jeep with rifles and silver bullets and called Ben for backup when things got rough. I remembered Ben saying something about how he mostly drove the car on those treks. Kind of like he was doing now.

That thought didn’t soothe my nerves. I sat on the passenger side, watching through the windshield, ready for anything. We were parked in downtown Denver, waiting for Cormac’s phone call. He was on foot, staking out the Brown Palace Hotel, where Franklin was staying. The Brown Palace was the posh, fancy local hotel, and had been for the last hundred years or so. It was the stylish place to stay, and that he had a room there told us that Franklin cared about appearances.

Cormac wouldn’t tell us anything more of what he’d learned about Franklin. Just that my crazy caller, Charles, might have been on to something. But we needed evidence that it wasn’t all a big coincidence. Hence the stakeout.

“Has Cormac ever done this before?” I asked.

“Sure, he’s tailed lots of guys before.”

“No, I mean has he ever been so . . . vague? Tossing off Latin phrases, buying into conspiracy theories. Ever since he got out of prison he’s just seemed a little out of it.”

“You don’t think just getting out of prison might have something to do with that?”

“I suppose. But sometimes, he doesn’t even smell right.”

After a few silent moments, Ben said, “Yeah, I noticed that.”

“What’s happening to him?”

“I don’t know. As long as he keeps his nose clean and stays away from his guns, I’m not sure it matters.”

My phone rang—Cormac’s tone. I jumped and rushed to answer. “Yeah?”

“He’s on the move. I’m at the corner of Seventeenth and Glenarm.”

I relayed the info to Ben, who started the car and pulled into the street. We turned to the next block and found Cormac, who opened the back passenger side door before the car slowed completely to a stop, and Ben had pulled away from the curb before the door was finished closing. Real getaway pros, they were.

“He’s heading south on Broadway,” Cormac said.

“Got it. What are we looking for?”

“Black Hummer, you can’t miss it,” Cormac said.

“That’s excessive,” Ben said with a huff. “Help me keep an eye out, Kitty. And don’t be so obvious.”

I had started craning forward and twisting in my seat to look at the lanes of traffic on either side of us.

“I’m not very good at this cloak-and-dagger thing, you know.”

“You’re fine,” Cormac said from the backseat, sounding amused.

I glanced back. He’d put on his sunglasses, and I couldn’t tell where he was looking—out the windshield, I assumed, searching for Franklin’s black car. He seemed relaxed, and smelled like clean, cotton T-shirt and skin. He’d donned his familiar leather jacket, like a piece of armor.

“What exactly are we doing?” I said.