A Favor For An Enemy

While he's writing, there's a ring on the suite phone. When he answers, it's Kate, and she sounds a little worried. "What's wrong, Katie?" he asks. "More trouble with the opening?"

"No, not that," she says, sounding upset. "I'd rather it was that."

His feelers rise, and he knows something bad is coming. "What do you need?"

"It's not me." She takes a deep breath. "It's Max."

Shit. The name is enough to bring back a lot of memories he would like to leave behind him. Kate's twin has always hated him, and the feeling has been mutual. They only cooperated once, and that was for something so important and so dangerous they felt they had ****. Kate's always told him their issues are because the two of them are too similar. "Why would Max need something from me?"

"Call Max and ask," Kate says. "There are things we don't talk about."

"And why are you sending this along?" His chest is tight with something, maybe anger? "You know Max and I don't like each other."

"Lover, believe me, I am intimately aware of the way the two of you feel about each other," Kate laughs. "Even if you two aren't."

"What the Hell does that mean?" he demands, but Kate doesn't explain.

"Call Max," she says again, and hangs up. He takes a few minutes to breath, and to decide whether he will, even though he knows if Kate asks him to, he'll call.

Fuck it, he decides, and dials Max's private number, the same one they used so many years ago.

"I wondered if you'd call," Max says, the silken needle of the voice taking him back immediately to the night they solved Kate and Max's biggest problem. "I thought you might be too busy murdering people."

He keeps most of his anger out of his reply. "Still lurking in the shadows judging people for their sins?"

"Someone has to punish the wicked, Nickolas," Max purrs. "I wouldn't call you into something unless I absolutely had to. My sister's endless fascination with you is still a mystery to me."

"And I don't understand why she still lets you creep around her life like some sort of tempermental raven." Aden realizes his foot is tapping up and down, a staccato pattern of nerves. " Unless it's really life or ****, I have no interest in being anywhere near you again."

"It is," Max says. "We need to meet face to face."

That's really bad. If Max wants to do this in person, it must be something there can't be any kind of record of. And, with Max, that means it's illegal and highly dangerous. Crap. "When and where?"

The phone hangs up, and there's a knock on the door. "Sonofabitch," Aden curses, rising and going to the door. When he looks through the peephole, it's Max. Androgynous, feminine without being female, tough and self-possessed. Black hair cropped very short, almost into a crewcut. A severe gray business suit, and those ragged tennis shoes Max is always wearing. He swings the door open, reluctantly.

As Max pushes past and into the suite, Aden frowns, closing and locking the door. "You wanna explain what the Hell is going on?"

"I knew if Kate asked you to call me, you'd call me." Max shrugs, strolling around the suite, touching things, picking up their personal items. One of Tommy's lipsticks, a perfume bottle, the Gideon bible on the desk, each one is lifted, turned over, sniffed, touched. When Max starts to open the hall closet, Aden's had enough. He steps in front and blocks the door with his foot.

"You have thirty seconds to make me want to help you," he growls.

Max looks up at him, almost a full foot of height difference between them. "I also knew if I asked Kate to call you, she would. So, obviously, I knew we'd be talking very soon. I drove over and waited for your call downstairs."

"You ever get told you're annoying when you play mind games?"

"They're not games, Nickolas," Max says, pulling a handkerchief from a pocket and carefully wiping off one of the chairs. "And it's easy to predict the behavior of most people once you know what motivates them."

"Ten seconds left," Aden warns, squeezing his hands into fists.

Max holds up a hand, waving him silent. "I've discovered one of the people in the Department is a serial killer. He targets children."

Aden unclenches his hands. "You wouldn't say he was unless you had proof. So why come to me?"

"Because this city's government is even more corrupt than Atlanta was." Max carefully picks at a nail, head shaking. "The only way this man is stopped is by radical action."

"That's what you said about your father."

Max nods, then leans back in the chair, fingers steepled in front as if deep in prayer. "The same chain of reasoning applies here as well."

Aden sits across from Max. "Run it for me."

Max nods again. "Kenneth Bryson, Chief of Police."

Aden whistles, impressed. "You're sure?"

Max frowns. "We already established I wouldn't be here if I wasn't. The press has been playing up the disappearance of seven young girls, aged 8 to 12, from the Barlow Heights projects on the Southside. The bodies have been recovered after anywhere from six to ten days from their kidnap. The autopsies show the victims were alive up to a day before the dump."

Aden feels the worm of cold fury rising. "Timeline?"

Max actually looks upset. "Another girl disappeared this morning. We need to find out where she is before Bryson finishes her off."

They lock eyes. Without speaking, they both know they're going to do this. Aden stands, and walks to the closet, picks up his go bag. "I assume you're already ready to go," he asks Max. "What are our leads?"

"I've done surveillance the last three nights on Bryson's movements." Max sniffs one of Tommy's perfume bottles when it's possible Aden isn't looking, checks the label, makes a mental note of the scent. "Three probable locations for the girl. Bryson's wife is out of town, and they have a Colonial with several extra bedrooms and an extensive basement. Good for storing the girl until wife comes home, but it leaves a lot of forensic evidence there. Bryson may be smarter than that."

"You mean you don't know?" Aden's tone is sarcastic, and Max lets it pass.

"Lack of data. Never met the man face to face." Another look around the suite, logging things. "Second place is a property uptown that's been empty for a while. An old house, used to belong to Bryson's elderly mother. She died of 'breathing complications' a few months before the abductions started. I like the symmetry of Bryson going back to Mommy's house to kill, but it's still closely connected to him."

"Not everyone has parental issues, Max."

Max chuckles at that, genuinely amused. "Name me someone who doesn't."

Aden ignores it. "You always save the best for last. Get on with it."

Max sighs. "A storage unit in the West River industrial area. Lousy for privacy, except it stays open 24 hours a day and the renters have their own keys to get in and out. And it's rented under a false name. Temperature controlled as well. It's big enough a killer could store a LOT of tools in there."

"Fine," Aden grunts. "Let's get this done so I can get you out of my life as soon as possible." He scribbles a quick note to Tommy to let her know he's out for a while, and will call when he can. "You know, it kind of pisses me off that you assume I will help you with this kind of thing."

"I did know you'd say yes once you heard the issue," Max murmurs. "You, of all the people I've met, are the easiest to predict."

"Yeah?" Aden says, turning toward the door, then suddenly whirling in place, raising his palm up in a perfect strike to Max's solar plexus. With all the air gone, Max falls to the carpet, gagging. Aden bends down, hooks a hand under Max's arm, hauls the coughing and **** figure up again. "You predict that?" he asks, ice cold.

Max wheezes, shudders. "I'd have to admit I didn't." A few deep breaths later, the two of them head out to go find a missing girl and stop a serial killer.