Where was her damned easy button?
Who should she trust?
So many questions. And at the top of her wondering mind sat a desire to know what Grey would find as he searched through the files.
“We all log in our own journal entries on cases we work,” Grey explained, as he continued to open up and read files before closing them just as quickly. “If anyone had the weapon, it should be noted somewhere. I’m searching for keywords and agents that are associated with them.”
She looked around nervously, searching for a flicker of camera lights or movement in the shadows, afraid at any moment someone might see what they were up to. She’d not yet seen the prisons here, nor did she want to. Curiosity trumped fear, and learning about the weapon and its guards definitely tipped the scales. “Didn’t my mom have it for a time? She was on the team sent to bring it back to headquarters,” Sage offered. Her hand found its way to her heart, feeling the pendant just under her shirt.
“Last name?” Grey asked.
“Cynwrig.”
He tapped the keys, but when her mother’s name appeared on the screen, a passcode request popped up too. Grey entered in a few different codes, but each returned the same error, blocking them from access. He growled with frustration. He balled up his fists as if to pummel the computer into obedience. His arm trembled, but he did not strike. With a defeated sigh, he said, “No luck.”
“Do we know anyone else who was on the team?” Sage asked.
Grey tried a few more names; she didn’t recognize any of them. But each one he pulled up was locked in the same way as her mother’s. “Without admin level access, we’re not going to find much.”
Certain that hidden cameras were watching her every move, her first instinct was to give up and get the hell out of there, but this was their best shot at answers. And she did know someone who might have the kind of access they needed. Sage pulled out her phone and said a silent prayer she wasn’t making a horrible mistake.
“What are you doing?” Grey asked.
“Seeing if I can get us access.” She dialed Mark’s number and waited for the call to connect.
“Sage! It’s good to hear from you–” Mark began to say.
“No questions asked, please. I’m calling in a favor.” Sage hoped to convey with her tone the dire need she had for him to just comply. Over the years she had made similar requests, but they had been for trivial problems like needing a ride home after drinking too much at a party and avoiding the wrath of her mother. This request she knew would trump them all.
“Anything,” Mark replied, with a casual tone honed from years of practice.
She took a deep breath, holding it in for a moment before releasing it with her request. “I need your admin password for ASSET.”
“Nope.” His answer came with no hesitation.
“Seriously. I can’t tell you why,” she urged with whispered tones. Wondering what might work to convey the reality of her need without so much as saying it aloud. “You know me, Mark. I wouldn’t ask if I weren’t desperate.”
“There are things you should not see. Even with what you know now,” he answered.
“The time for keeping secrets is over. Your silence has placed me in the middle of danger. The wolves are closing in, and I need a bone to throw at them or I’ll be their next victim. I’m asking as your… your… daughter.”
“Honey, you’re are like my daughter in every way possible, but…I can’t…I’m trying to protect you.” He sounded as if he were sorry, at least, but it was still a denial.
“If only you knew how wrong you were,” Sage sighed. “Good bye then, Mark.” She hung up the phone before he could throw out more false promises with no truth. How could his silence protect her? That’s what had landed her in the middle of this mess in the first place. All he’d had to do was come clean when she was in Phoenix. He’d had so many opportunities, but let her walk away all the same.
“Why did you do that? You just put him on alert. They’ll be looking for someone accessing records now,” Grey all but yelled at her. He kept his voice low enough, but the accusation was still there.
“I thought…” Sage grumbled with disappointment, more at Mark than herself. It was a good plan. She had thought her connection to Mark was stronger than that. He’d always promised to come to her aid no matter what. More lies. It seemed all things associated with ASSET were lies. No wonder the whole of the magical population had a grudge. Mark was supposed to be better than the rest, but even he had proven false. “I’m not sorry,” she glared back at Grey, daring him to talk crap. She’d taken a shot, and she’d failed. But at least she’d been willing to try. If he wanted to be snarky, she’d give it back in spades. “We’ll just have to find another way to look at the records.”
Grey gritted his teeth and turned his attention back to the screen to continue his search. “We could look at the dates the weapon was here and see if anything else strange was reported or logged in.”
Sage watched over her shoulder as Grey moved through the files. Her phone buzzed in her hand, and when she looked down, she saw Mark calling her. No use in answering, though; he’d already said no. She rejected the call.
“I’m seeing something labeled Sponge,” Grey said excitedly.
“Do you people always use idiotic code words?” Sage tapped her phone against her thigh. Anticipation making her antsy. It didn’t matter what stupid name they called the weapon, as long as he was able to find out the information.
“Would you prefer it be called Weapon of Magical Destruction?” Grey retorted.
“I might. At least that sounds like something worth looking at.”
“Point made. But we don’t want it drawing that kind of attention, even among our own people. Ambiguity has its benefits.”
“Whatever you say. Just find it.”
“Every record with the label of sponge is locked.” He growled even louder this time and slammed his fist on the keyboard tray. Rejected again.
Sage’s phone buzzed for the second time, and she wondered how long would it be before Mark alerted Ava about their call.
“You going to get that?” Grey growled. “It’s distracting.”
She sighed and made to put the phone on silent, noticing a text from Mark. Where there should have been words was just a string of three letters and three numbers with an exclamation mark at the end. Her eyes lit up recognizing it for what it was. “Password,” she whispered, and held the phone up for Grey.
“Guess he would do anything for his daughter.” Grey tapped in the password and opened the file labeled Miranda Cynwrig.
“You were right; she had it. And she says in the hands of a Terra, it’s is little more than a tear drop in size, garnet-colored, and easily mistaken for a dirty old pebble. They let a dwarf by the name of Hukkel hold it.”
Sage leaned over his shoulder to read the entry herself.
Reported to the Las Vegas office for testing and cataloging of the item marked as Sponge. Dwarven weapons master Hukkel inspected the rock, which was no larger than a pebble. In agent hands, it looked dirty and unimportant. However, once in the hands of the Dwarf, the stone glowed orange as if it burned with an inner fire. He logged it in for testing.
The record was date stamped and then followed by another entry.
Weapons master Hukkel has suddenly taken ill. His records have noted the stone absorbs magic from anything it touches without activation. It glows in the presence of magic, intensifying as the absorbed magic is pulled into the stone. Three days layover in Las Vegas has been extended to a full week due to recommended further testing for usage and range. Testing is being carried out by in-house staff of the Las Vegas office. Records request have been forwarded from the Phoenix office where the Sponge was located. My team have been given leave to enjoy the city while we wait for further orders.
Each entry was shorter, and Sage recognized the frustration her mother must have felt.
Las Vegas has us held indefinitely,
on the basis of further testing. Weapons master Hukkel is now reported as removed from duty. I have requested to be assigned guard watch over the weapon, and been denied. Complaints filed with superiors. I await new orders.
That was the last entry with her mother’s name on it. Possibly her mother’s last words. Miranda had never left Las Vegas. Her death was no doubt the fallout from this further testing. “She talked to Mark. Made complaints, or whatever she called it. He should have told me that.” Sage was growing more and more annoyed with the confusion. For every answer she ended up with another question.
“He did tell you. In a way.” Grey gave her a side-eye glare. “That’s all I have from her. She and her team were never received in Germany.”
“Why has there not been an uproar over the seed being missing, then, if they never reached their destination? And what about Hukkel? What the hell does ‘removed from duty’ mean?”
“News to me. I was told he’d gone to Germany with the team.” Grey looked just as annoyed as she. “He was a good man.”
“But no one ever left, did they?” Sage didn’t need the answer. It was obvious.
“That’s my guess. The weapon is still here. Which is why there was a raid on our facility.” Grey replied.
“Wouldn’t the leaders of the other offices then be putting pressure on Ava?” Sage tried to work through the threads of truth weaving all around her. Loose strands still lay frayed. Misinformation, lies, stories that sound valid on the surface thinly covered the truth. But it didn’t quite add up.
The expression on Grey’s face matched her own. Probably coming to a similar conclusion, only slower. The wheels were turning in his Neanderthal brain. It looked painful… thinking. “Have you seen how stressed she is?”
“True.” If that were the case, Sage felt sorry for being so snippy with the head of the Las Vegas office.
“She’s not the type to go blabbing her deepest thoughts and fears to anyone,” Grey continued. “If she’s trying to sort through all the lies herself, with the big wigs breathing down her neck, it would certainly explain the vein threatening to pop in her forehead.” He snorted.
Sage thought back to her previous phone conversation with Mark. He’d sounded so strange, speaking as if expecting someone to be listening in on the conversation. Talking in code. “Mark too has been unusually reserved.”
“He gave you the password, didn’t he? After he warned you there were things you might not want to see.”
It all made sense. And she had seen more than she wanted. Knowing that the seed was dangerous in the wrong hands she prayed that the pebble hidden in the necklace around her neck was nothing more than it seemed. But desire did not create truth. Denial wouldn’t make it any less real. Sage knew exactly what it was without needing further confirmation. If her mother had felt it was being mishandled, Miranda would have done anything she could to send it away to the safest place she could think of. She’d trusted Mark with her most precious possession: Sage. So, why wouldn’t she have trusted him with the weapon? That was why his office was raided. And why Mark had not bothered to push Sage to stay and work for him, when he had always wanted her to remain close. The trail would end with Miranda’s death. Even if someone followed her back to the Phoenix office, the weapon would not be there. He’d sent the weapon to Sage, right under everyone’s nose, disguised as the knickknack of a former employee. She was the secret keeper now, and no one could learn the truth.
“So what now?” Sage asked nervously, her hand seeking the chain around her neck again, feeling its weight more now than before.
“There are other records pertaining to Sponge in here, but those appear to be locked by Ava herself. And I doubt she’s in a sharing mood. We’re just going to have to do as we were instructed and go talk to the vampires.”
“Is that safe? We know they were attacked… and retaliated.” Sage didn’t want to say it out loud, but the word trap echoed loudly in her mind.
Grey shrugged. “We have to follow the leads if we want to find the truth.”
TWENTY-SIX
Sage hardly had time to send off a text message to Mark to say thanks before they were back on Grey’s bike heading to Devon. He’d reported that Quarn had provided him some reading material that looked promising. Information was the key. On that they had all agreed; but the information Sage had she couldn’t reveal, especially not to the others like Sylvia and Nyx. They seemed just as likely to turn on her as help if they knew the truth of where this weapon was.
They found Devon sitting in his office, his nose buried in the books he’d borrowed, scanning each page quickly before moving on to the next.
“ASSET definitely had it,” Grey said the moment they came through the door. “And Ava has sent us to treat with the vampires, which tells me she thinks they know more about what happened to it than we do.”
“Sage can stay with me; we have lots of reading to do.” Devon tilted his head toward the small stack on his desk.
“I’m going with Grey,” Sage answered back proudly. “My first official assignment.”
“You’re not ready for this,” Devon argued. “Ava should have known better than to send the both of you. What is she playing at?”
“She’s either trying to get rid of her two biggest troublemakers, or…” Grey let the words hang in the air for a moment as he watched Sage’s eyes widen fearfully. “She knows the vampires are not stupid enough to attack us under a white flag.”
Devon set his book aside and stood. His jaw set tight, he had the look of a man who wanted to counsel them against going but knew it would do no good. “Ava isn’t new to the game, I’ll give you that. But recent events are unprecedented. A full-scale attack on an ASSET building; darklings turned and sent inside to attack. Nothing went missing, did it?”
Grey shrugged. “I don’t know. We just concentrated on the weapon and where it might have gone.”
“Vampires are smarter than that. They had to know ASSET was more than capable of defending itself. What were they hoping to gain by attacking?”
“Information about our defenses?” Grey offered.
Sage knew they were looking for the weapon, but then she realized they had attacked the main floor, where the agents were, not where any of the archives might be. “Is there a link between the vampire who turns someone dark and the darkling?”
Both Devon and Grey stared dumbstruck at Sage.
“We believe so. Why?” Devon asked.
“Revenge?” She hadn’t really pieced it together, but offered her thoughts just the same. “Maybe they know the identity of the person who used the stone on them, and sent their army in looking to kill that one person.”
“Why attack Phoenix, then?” Devon scrutinized Sage’s face as if trying to see through her defenses.
“Some of the agents who didn’t make it back came from the Phoenix office too. It’s a long shot, sure, but if they were out for simple revenge, they might be looking to attack where they think their enemy feels safest?”
“I’m not entirely convinced it would be that simple,” Devon said, scratching the stubble at his chin thoughtfully. “But wars have been started because of lesser insults.”
“If the clans think we have the stone still, and know how powerful it is, why risk riling us up?” Grey added, with his usual arrogance.
“Because if they’ve realized, as we have, that the stone cannot be used by a Terra, then it would have to be from someone tied to the organization. Someone who might hide under the safety net of being in the building,” Sage continued, relaying the thoughts as they came to her.
“All the more reason we need to take this mission. Talk to the vampires who were hit and see if they might give us something to go on.” Grey nodded toward the door.
Though the glass pane, the gorgeous crimson and ochre stripes of the sunset were fading into the dusky colors of twilight. Time for the vampires to come out of hiding.
“Yeah, and don’t worry about me.” Sage stood her grou
nd, crossing her arms in front of her, making a good show of determination even though fear had begun to creep up her spine. No backing out; she’d never hear the end of it. “I’ll be fine. I have Grey here as my meat shield!”
“Already picking out pet names. You two do make a cute couple!” Devon’s face remained as flat as his tone, but his words were sharply chosen.
Grey laughed as if Devon had just told the funniest joke.
“If he’s your meat shield, what does that make you?” Devon asked.
Sage opened her mouth to refute his insinuation, but embarrassment held her voice in check when she realized the joke was on her. All she could do was wait until they settled down. She chewed her cheek, keeping her head high in hopes of appearing above their childish remarks.
“She’s a damn newbie. That’s what she is,” Grey replied, wiping away the tears of laughter.
Devon whipped a finger at him. “Well, then, you make sure you have her back, you hear me… Meat Shield?”
Grey smirked. “I know my job.”
“We’ll be fine.” Sage gritted her teeth, trying hard not to appear bothered by their taunting. “I can take care of myself.”
“Famous last words.” Devon’s expression darkened. She’d walked right into a trap. Damn her pride. He was her trainer. He knew exactly how capable, or not, she was of defending herself. “Have you ever been up against a vampire?”
“Zack didn’t seem all that tough.” She shrugged in the hopes of downplaying her initial mistake.
Grey continued to laugh. “Zack dropped her little ass on the ground with one blow to the head.”
A Weapon Of Magical Destruction Page 20