“Well, don’t forget to sleep, man. You’re no good to me passed out over the keyboard.”

His snort came through the headset loud and clear. “As if.”

“G’night, man.”

“Hey! I am not done!”

I halted in the middle of shutting the window down. “What else do you have?”

Viljo’s image held up one finger, indicating for me to wait, and in another moment, more windows popped up on my monitor. “Miguel and Guy have both tried to sign onto the system in the last week. Unsuccessfully.”

“Are you sure?”

“Do you think I would make a mistake like that?” He frowned at me. Great, now I’d offended the little geek. “Both attempts were made within hours. They did not gain access because they failed the security checks. Things Miguel and Guy would not have forgotten. Someone is trying to get in.”

“You’ve had hack attempts before. Amateur stuff, you said.”

“Not like this. It gets weirder. I cannot get an IP address on it.”

We were rapidly descending into that realm of mumbo jumbo where I was definitely out of my element. “And that is . . . not normal?”

“No. All Internet presence has an IP address. You can mask it, or confuse it, but you still have one. This is just . . . vapor. A ghost in the machine.”

“So it’s someone better than you.”

He snorted. “There is no one better than me. I am telling you, something is fucked up here.”

“Well . . . batten down the hatches or whatever it is you do. I’ll let Ivan know.” And, as an afterthought, I asked, “Have you heard from the others?”

“Everyone has checked in except Sveta and the Knights Stuck-up-idus.”

Sveta was in Eastern Europe somewhere. At least, I thought she was. She was the only female champion I was aware of, and that is where my knowledge ended. “I’ll let Ivan know that, too. Get some sleep, Viljo.”

“You, too.”

Two tries to call Ivan resulted in a “Customer has gone beyond the service area” message, and I almost threw my cell across the room in frustration. Dammit. Of all times for the phone service to go down. Why couldn’t Miguel’s family live in a real city, instead of some hole in the mountains?

I did my usual house walk, checking for open locks and windows and rogue Ford Escorts, then crawled into bed beside Mira with a (manly) whimper and did my best to sleep. In my dreams, the Yeti was there, gnawing at my right leg like a starving terrier. It wasn’t the most pleasant of nights.

15

“Jess.”

“Jesse.”

“Jesse!” Although my head was buried under my pillow, Mira’s voice wouldn’t let me sleep in peace. Then, to make it worse, she started shaking my shoulder.

“Wha mrrmfh? G’way.” I swatted blindly at her, connecting with nothing.

“Wake up. Ivan’s on the phone.”

That at least penetrated the foggy haze in my head. I fumbled my hand free of the tangled sheets to take the cell phone and tried not to groan as every muscle in my body protested. It was official. I was way too old to be water-skiing across linoleum floors. “H’lo?”

“Dawson! I am to be waking you. Much to be apologizing.” A deep voice thundered in my ear, sounding totally unapologetic despite words to the contrary.

Oh hey . . . It was Ivan. Dimly, I knew Mira had told me that already. “Ivan. Um yeah, hi . . . Hang on, I gotta jump-start my brain.” Coffee—I could smell coffee. Like a zombie, I shuffled out into the hallway in only my plaid pajama pants, searching for the source of that divine smell. I don’t drink it often, but when I need it, I need it.

It didn’t take me long to realize that my right leg was still rather annoyed with me for last night’s escapades. It reinforced this message with a sharp pain every time I stepped down—not a good start to the day.

“I am not to be knowing what this ‘jump-starting’ means.” He didn’t wait to find out, either. “What news are you to be having from Grapevine?”

“Everyone has checked in but Sveta and the Order.”

“This is not to be surprising. Svetlana is to being difficult in the best of times. You will to be having Viljo contact her again, until she is to being responding.” Ivan sighed, and I could picture him running a hand through his snow-white hair. “And the priests . . . Well, they are to being warned, and this is the most we can do for them. At least, they are not alone.” There were never fewer than five of the Knights Stuck-up-idus, and I was inclined to agree with Ivan. Right now there was strength in numbers.

“I’ll pass the message on to Viljo.” Limp, step . . . limp, step . . . It was going to be a very long day at this rate. “I had him do some digging, too. He looked through Guy and Miguel’s phone records and found one number in common.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line, and for a moment, I thought I’d lost the connection. Finally, Ivan’s gravelly voice came again. “It could to be a coincidence. Archer declined a contract, so they were to be contacting Miguel instead.”

“It’s possible, yeah. And we don’t know just when Guy vanished. But it doesn’t look good.”

“Is Viljo to be having a name to go with this number?”

Shambling into the kitchen, I had my eyes on the prize—nice hot coffee, in the biggest mug I could find. No sugar, no cream, just as black as black gets—it was slap-you-in-the-face kinda coffee. The first sip touched my lips, and I almost disgraced myself by whimpering. “No. He’s working on it, but he says it may be a prepaid cell out of California somewhere. Could belong to anyone by now.”

“You Americans and your disposable society.” I could hear the growl in the old man’s voice, and my inner child flinched. I never wanted Ivan mad at me, at least not without a really good reason.

“Have faith in Viljo. If it’s there to be found, he’ll find it, and we can put a contract ban on whoever it is.” Rule number two: You only get one shot at redemption. If it fails, you’re done. No other champion will take up your cause. In the days before long-distance communications, it was easier for someone to try and pull a fast one. In these modern times, thanks to Ivan and the network he’d created, no one coughed without all the champions knowing—that is, usually.

“This number is to being from California. Who is this person you are to be aiding?”

“Nelson Kidd, baseball player. He’s always called me from the local hotel, though, so I don’t have his personal number to compare.” In the era of prepaid cellular phones, it certainly wasn’t impossible for someone in Arizona to have an out-of-state cell number. That thought made me frown as I savored my coffee. Was I being played? Had Guy and Miguel already tried to help Kidd out? No . . . Walter Brandt vouched for him, and he knew the rules. “I think he’s on the up-and-up.”

“He is what?”

“I think he is a legitimate client.”

“All the same, I will to be coming there next. I am preferring the contract be voided, if possible.”

My stomach knotted at the thought. True, contracts could be voided under certain circumstances, such as deception on the part of either party or violation of the terms. But it left me feeling clammy. When you start looking for loopholes, it’s too easy to hang yourself with one. That’s how most of the people who came to me wound up in a jam in the first place.

And on top of that . . . “I can’t back out, Ivan. I gave my word.” My honor was all I had, when you got down to the nitty-gritty. I couldn’t just go back on an oath.

Ivan cursed, using words and terms I didn’t want to understand. “You and this honor of yours. Sometimes, honor must be put aside!”

“And that’s usually when you need it the most.” Guess we were gonna find out what happened when Ivan’s unstoppable force met my immovable object. I always kinda wondered how that would turn out. Ivan’s gruff voice spat out a string of words that were definitely not complimentary. It was time to distract and evade. “Hey, Viljo had some other info, too.”