by Jenn Stark
“You’ll notice this about people who are—like you,” Finn said. “And those like me, as well.” He looked at her hard. “But in the short term, if you see anyone like me, Dana, especially after today…I suggest you run.”
She gave him a grim smile. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.
“Put the cuff on.” Finn looked away from her as she slid the cuff over her shaking hand, pulling her sleeve down over it. She straightened as he glanced again toward the security cameras.
“They’re not back on yet,” he said. “But they will be shortly. Lester is rebooting the surveillance system. You’ll have another minute before it clears.”
“Great.” Dana wrapped her arms around herself tightly, her fingers finding the edge of the cuff. She pulled her hands away just as quickly, smoothing them down the front of her suit. “I thought you had a jammer,” she said.
“It was a temporary solution,” Finn said, looking away from her. “An apparent circuit failure. Anything more sophisticated would have caused an entirely different kind of alarm.”
“Uh-huh. And did they teach you that in Fallen angel school, or—” Dana’s buzzing phone cut off her retort, and she realized she’d let it fall to the couch again. She grabbed it and peered at the screen.
“It’s Max.”
“Good,” Finn gritted out. His body had started shaking, and he didn’t know why. He felt haggard, drained.
“Um, we should go.” Dana stuffed it into her pocket. “He’s got information on your friend Bartholomew. He’s found him.”
Finn dropped his hands slowly, then forced himself to look at her. “After tonight, I don’t expect to see you again,” he said again, not sure why he did. “You’ve got to take care of yourself, right? Use your strength. All of it.”
Dana nodded, but her face went carefully blank. “I’m good at taking care of myself.”
“I know.” He walked toward her, every step a struggle. He reached for her right hand, lifting it to expose her golden cuff. “This will protect you from harm from anyone like Bartholomew, though it’s probably better that you keep that information from your uncle.”
He curled both hands around the relic, his thumbs grazing two prominent glyphs. A curious sound seemed to rise within the room, a rushing hiss that filled all the empty spaces. She stared at him as if trying to memorize his every feature, but he could feel her fading away from him even as he stood not two inches away.
“Where are you going after tonight?” Dana asked, her sudden words surprising them both. “Where are you from?”
But Finn could only gaze at her, willing himself to hold it together. She glowed, a vessel made solely to hold a shaft of lightning that couldn’t quite break free. “I’ll go back where I belong,” he murmured, the sound flowing out through the room as a sensory experience much more than something merely spoken. But he couldn’t leave well enough alone—not yet, not now.
Maybe if he did one thing more with the unexpected energy that suffused his body in his guise as a Fallen, he could see her again. No matter where he was after all this was through. Maybe he could ensure that her light shone so brightly that it would pierce even the most eternal darkness.
He could do that, he thought. He would do that.
He reached for the bracelet on her wrist and held it tight. The space between them seemed charged with electricity, curving around him and the cuff he’d wrapped around her, his knuckles white against its smooth surface, gripping so fiercely that he feared he’d crush it.
“This is all I have to offer you,” he whispered. “You were made to shine.”
The power leapt up between them a final time, a current jolting on the razor edge of pain and pleasure. Something seemed to bloom inside Finn in response, a ragged, wild need—
And then it was gone, vanished.
Dana stumbled back a step, her eyes wild. “What the hell was that?” she managed, even as someone rapped powerfully on the door.
“Finn?” Her uncle’s voice was strained ever so slightly past the edge of politeness. “Dana, the door is jammed. Are you two all right?”
Finn gestured her toward the door, his own heart impossibly heavy. “Consider it a gift.”
Chapter Fourteen
Griffin Security main office
Post Office Plaza
Cleveland, Ohio
10:00 a.m., Dec. 24
“Max?” Dana called out, forcing her voice to sound strong, stable, and not at all as freaked out as every other part of her was. “Whaddya got for me?”
She entered the room as Max sat forward. He reached out to snag his most recent file directory printout, deftly missing the day’s sculpture-in-progress of take-out coffee cups, drink stirrers, and binder clips. Scanning the page again, he looked from it to something on his screen.
“Plenty.” Max spun around in his swivel chair as his office was breached. Then he stopped short, quickly rolling his chair back as he blinked from her to Finn. “Um…you okay, boss?”
Dana grimaced, not even wanting to know what she looked like. Because she felt like she’d just French-kissed a nuclear bomb.
If what Finn said was true, she was the great-grandsomething of angels. If what he’d done to her hadn’t been an epic hallucination, she had enough energy inside her to light up a Third World country. If what he’d explained to her wasn’t complete and utter bullshit, she had work to do. To find those who were like her, and then…
And then she didn’t know. But first she needed to secure her, well, family, for lack of a better word.
Family. For the first time in far too long, she liked the sound of that.
“I’m good,” she said, realizing that Max was still staring at her. “Finn, meet my technical security expert, Max Garrett. Max, I invited Finn to tag along for your report on this Bartholomew. He thinks he may know the guy.” She headed for the coffee machine, grateful that Max did make an effort to keep a path clear to that brilliant addition to the office, if only to keep it regularly stocked.
She punched buttons while Max took another drag on his own coffee.
“What happened up at Lester’s?” he asked. “You were out of contact for hours.”
“I apparently was more tired than I thought I was.” Dana’s cheeks burned as she pulled her cup out of the machine. “I fell asleep.”
Max blinked. “You did what?” he started, but snapped his mouth shut when she glared at him. “Well, your mom called here since you didn’t respond to her directly,” he said. “She wants you to meet her for breakfast at eleven o’clock at the Renaissance.”
He grinned at Dana’s succinct curse.
“Of course she does,” Dana muttered. “That’s freaking perfect.” She glanced up at the clock, but there was nothing for it. Lester had just drugged her to the gills but thought she’d woken up without a single suspicion. If she stood up her mother, her mother would contact Lester, and Dana needed the return of her uncle’s attention like a hole in the head.
Better to keep playing the game.
And then, of course…
Dana grimaced, pushing her jumbled thoughts away. “Okay. I’ve got a change of clothes here, so let’s forget about that for the moment.” She flicked her gaze back to him. “You figure out who this Bartholomew is?”
“I think so,” Max said, wheeling back a little bit, apparently to put some additional distance between him and Finn. “The boys in blue have a low-level watch out for one Bartholomew Petolya, no indication why, but they started the surveillance right after the dude officially moved to town on November first. My contact at the police department says they know where he lives, and everyone’s been advised to keep an eye out on his comings and goings, but no one’s supposed to give him any trouble. Apparently they’re waiting for him to make the first move.”
“Anything to tie him to the attack on Lester on Halloween night?” Dana asked.
Max shook his head. “They were pretty sure he was already living somewhere in the city at that po
int, but they weren’t tailing him then.”
“What’s his current residence?” Finn sounded particularly intense, but Max was already backed up as far as he could go.
“Penthouse in the Summit Building, Warehouse District,” he said. “Coupla blocks from here, most expensive digs in the city. I double-checked my other sources on the name, and if Petolya is our man, we’ve got our hands full. He’s got mob connections all over the East Coast, plus a steady flow of recruits from both local venues and shipped in from Eastern Europe. Not a very nice group, from what I hear. Very low on the evolutionary scale. Petolya’s been pretty well established in Philly for the past thirty years or so, with his hands in everything from racketeering to antiquities dealing, but he’s apparently moving the operation to Cleveland.”
“Philly…” Dana frowned. “Why do I—”
“The car in the street,” Finn supplied. “Before we went to the cathedral.”
“Right.” She recalled the image perfectly. Had she always been able to do that? “Max, run a check on a Lexus sedan, maybe black, maybe dark gray, license plate number 074332. It was tailing me last night, and I’m curious if it’s connected to this Petolya guy.”
“Roger that.” Max made a note. “I also looked into whether the dude’s either sold any of these so-called antiquities to Lester or bought anything from him, but so far, no dice. Lester hasn’t sold any of his junk since we started working with him, and his acquisitions seem to be all on-site.” He flashed a grin. “Get it? Like, archaeological site?”
Dana rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t help smiling in response. “What else?”
“Not much. Sometimes he uses intermediaries, but unlike most of these guys, he enjoys keeping a hand in the work, so he’ll also meet with his business partners himself. Has a rep for brutal efficiency. Kind of a freak, from what I’m hearing, demons and occult stuff, that sort of thing.” He looked back at Dana. “You want me to tip the police about a possible connection to Lester’s attack?”
“Don’t,” Finn said from his corner. “I’ll take care of this.”
“But they already know something about the guy,” Dana countered. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t have a tail on him. And my dad worked for the police, back in the day. There might be information there we could use.”
Finn’s expression effectively dropped the room’s temperature by fifteen degrees. “I only need to know where Bartholomew is,” he said. “The rest is immaterial.”
“Right. And I’m sure he’s going to just be hanging out at his penthouse, waiting for you to show up,” Dana said drily. “You want to waste your time roaming through the city for him, though, be my guest.”
That shut Finn up for a second. Good.
It didn’t last long. “When can you have the information?” Finn asked.
“By the time I’m done with breakfast.” Dana turned back to Max. “Next question,” she said. “How hard would it be to break into every single server Lester has, even the ones we don’t technically have access to? If I wanted to get into Lester’s business down to the roots of his hair, how long would that take you?”
Max tilted his head, considering. “Rough guess, a couple of hours. Won’t know until I come across a firewall I didn’t put up, though.”
“Start hunting for one,” she said. “But first tell me about the files Lester pulled. What were they?”
Max snorted in disgust. “That, I don’t know. Here’s an example of one of them.” He moved his hands over the keys, and rows of data began filling the screen. “The data looks randomly generated, but I think it’s some kind of code. I’m running it through a pattern finder. I’ve got no idea how to sort it out, however, no clue what type of information we’re even looking at. And these are only a handful that he didn’t successfully delete. I suspect there are a bunch more that he did.”
“Could be client notes or product research,” Dana mused. Or a list of names and addresses.
“Could be Lester’s secret recipe for chicken wings.” Max lifted one shoulder, dropped it. “Whatever it is, he buried those files deep. I’m surprised he even found them again.”
“And there’s no difference in the file lengths? So we’re talking exactly the same data?”
“Apparently. I’m trying to find other links between the files, maybe find a pattern that way. He’s been doing this for a while, though. The first file showed up in late September, 2001.”
“Right after nine-eleven,” Dana murmured.
“Yup.” He turned his attention back to Dana. “Then he faithfully added another new file every six months or so after that. Last update was late September, but that most recent file was accessed again in early November. And now, poof. As far as Lester believes, both the original 2001 file and all the backups are gone.”
Dana shifted her gaze to Finn. “You think this is the same information he’s going to give you?” she asked. “Would he have made that many copies of it?”
“It’s possible,” he said. “When did Lester start removing his files from the system?”
“Three days ago,” Max said. “December twenty-first.”
Finn grimaced. “So it all began on solstice. He said he received information then. In a dream.”
Dana and Max exchanged a look. “Solstice,” she repeated.
“On solstice, it’s easier for extrasensory communication to take place. It’s possible that someone reached out to advise Lester to destroy any duplicate files.” Finn frowned, studying the screen behind Max.
“Wait a minute.” Max looked particularly appropriate with his wide eyes and startled expression, since he was standing directly in front of a wall full of UFO headlines and posters. “You mean like telepathy or something? Like Lester had a vision or something to dump a bunch of files, and boom, he did it?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“So now what?” Max asked, his voice hushed with excitement.
“So now we’ve got my uncle listening to instructions he got in a fucking dream.” Dana growled, chucking her coffee cup into the recycling bin. “Sadly, that’s not the most insane thing I’ve heard today. Okay, I’ve got to get changed. Show Finn all the files you’ve uncovered, Max, as well as everything you’ve got on this Bartholomew Petolya, and check on that car.” She moved toward her private office, swiping her key again to gain entrance. “I’ll be back as soon as possible.”
Finn stared after Dana, then slowly turned his head to meet Max’s gaze. The young man blinked rapidly, his gaze darting around, clearly wishing the office was a little bigger.
“Where do you want to start?” Max asked.
“First, there’s something you forgot to mention to Dana,” Finn said. “Something worrying you beyond your immediate focus on the files and your search on Bartholomew.”
Max blinked. “What do you mean?” he asked, shaking his head as if to clear it. “I told you everything—”
“What happened last night after the party, Max?” Finn asked quietly. “Did you receive a call from Dana?”
Max nodded, frowning. “I had work to do, so I clocked in here. I sent the night-shift guy home. Shocked the hell out of me when I got the distress call. I thought she’d long since gotten home. When she didn’t follow up, I called the dispatcher over at the precinct house and waited.” He frowned. “It kind of took a long time before I heard the sirens.” He bit his lower lip. “Too long. They waited ten minutes—I’d forgotten that, because once she texted me later, I knew she was safe. Then she asked me to do a search on Bartholomew, and everything else sort of went poof.”
“Who would have been the officers assigned to the call?” Finn asked.
“I—I don’t know. We haven’t gotten a call about it yet to debrief, so I don’t know who showed up.” Max glanced toward Dana’s office. “That’s kind of odd too. If the cruiser didn’t actually find Dana, they should have called here to make sure it wasn’t a false alarm.” His eyes widened, and he straightened in his chair. “I can’t beli
eve I didn’t think about that before. Why didn’t they call?”
“What’s your reputation with the police?”
“Solid,” Max said. “And normally, they’re super protective of Dana because of her dad. She knows all the beat cops and most of the older detectives and admin types. They take care of her.”
“What about after the assault on Lester on Halloween?” Finn asked. “Did they take care of her then?”
Max sighed, rolling his shoulders. “Well, she was out of it for a few days, so Lester handled the report. They couldn’t find her attackers. And yeah, they stopped looking pretty quickly, you ask me. But Lester was certain it was a case of some trigger-happy thug startled by Dana pulling her own gun. Thank God she wasn’t hurt worse.”
“Her assailant blew apart her shinbone. I think she was hurt badly enough,” Finn commented, and Max squinted at him.
“No, he didn’t,” he said. “The bullet went straight through muscle. Lester framed the X-rays for Dana’s office.” He chuckled without humor. “How else do you think she recovered so fast? She was up on her feet again within a week, walking around and bitching up a blue streak about it. Her calf looked like Swiss cheese, but Lester had a crack team on her, and she hung in there. I definitely don’t think she’s a hundred percent, but you’ll never get her to admit it.”
Finn blew out a sharp breath, and Max suddenly straightened, the pressure Finn had been exerting on his mind releasing. He blinked and looked around, clearly confused. “Um…what just happened?”
“She walked on her injured leg within one week?” Finn pressed him. “And you all thought that was reasonable?”
“What? Oh yeah. But she did. The docs had somehow got the extent of her injuries wrong, and her pain tolerance is insane, and—” Max halted as Finn held up a hand, glaring at the door to Dana’s office.
“Give me a minute,” he said.
Finn covered the few feet to Dana’s office without pausing, placing his hand over the keycard unit and disarming it.