by Rachel Caine
She shook hands and met Stefan’s eyes, then indicated with a fast jerk of her head that he should follow her. Which he did, though not exactly willingly. She could almost hear the extra weight of dread in his footsteps.
She stopped at the fluttering yellow border. Behind her, Stefan took an audible breath and moved up to join her there.
Like all crime scenes, it looked oddly staged. Human brains just didn’t like to compute things like this and kept returning it as false; the blood looked black where it was drying on the concrete, a muddy crimson nearer to the head. The smears and drips on the glass behind retained a backlit red tint.
The body was simply that—a body. Rubber, slack, utterly devoid of any sense that it had ever moved at all. The dead bothered Katie for different reasons than they did most of her colleagues; it wasn’t the mess, or the smell. No, it was this pathetic sense of the body simply no longer being human. Of having been demoted to a colder, crueler status.
She cataloged the head wound, automatically figuring angles and trajectories and how far the shooter might have been when the bullet was fired. An inexact science without the caliber of bullet, but she thought she was pretty close.
Stefan hadn’t made a sound. He was staring at the dead man—boy, really—with lightless, fixed eyes, and his skin had a tinge of dirty ash beneath the natural golden brown. He’d jammed his hands in his jeans pockets.
“Is it what you saw?” she asked, although it was a foregone conclusion. He nodded jerkily, and for the briefest second there was fury in his eyes, incandescent and startling.
“You’re going to catch them,” he said, low in his throat. “Right? You’re going to catch them and make them pay for this.”
“This, among other things,” she said. “Let’s do what we can to keep the list from getting any longer.”
He nodded and closed his eyes. She waited, focused on him and nearly oblivious to the police milling around her, the radios crackling, the strobe lights flashing. His face was tense, and his eyes moved back and forth under the lids, as if searching….
He relaxed, after a full minute, and looked at her bleakly. “I’m not getting anything,” he said. “Maybe she’s asleep.”
He was, she saw, hoping rather than knowing for certain. It had to be Teal he was seeing, she thought suddenly. He’d described Lena Poole, so his visions were coming through the eyes of Teal Arnett. Teal was the one with innate psychic abilities.
“You let me know the second you feel anything coming from her, right?”
He nodded. She spun away from him, walked away from the circuslike chaos and dialed a number on her cell phone.
“Athena Academy, Rebecca Claussen speaking,” came the response after two short rings.
“It’s Katie Rush,” she said. “Our kidnapping’s gone up to kidnapping and murder.” As soon as she said it, she realized how it sounded, and hurried on to say, “It’s neither one of the girls. A gas station attendant who saw Teal trying to escape got shot.”
Rebecca muttered an obscenity that revealed a rich experience as a military wife, back in the day. Katie wholeheartedly agreed, although the FBI code of conduct didn’t include airing that aloud.
“The Arizona Highway Patrol is working to cordon off the area, but they don’t seem very confident that it’s going to work,” Katie said. “Any news on Sheila Prichard?”
“Well.” Rebecca’s voice went dry and cool. “Miss Prichard seems to be something more of a black box than we’d anticipated. Alex Forsythe has been here, and she’s already turning up some dramatic inconsistencies—nothing that a general background check would have turned up, but enough to be very worrisome. For instance, her name was not originally Sheila Prichard.”
Alex? Well, it made sense; Alex’s grandfather Charles had helped found the Athena Academy in the first place, and Alex was, of course, an alumnus. Though Alex was a coworker, in a sense—also in the FBI—her path didn’t cross Katie’s much. Her specialty was forensics, which Katie supposed could also include data mining. Katie stopped pacing, listening with all her concentration. “If Prichard wasn’t her original name, what was?”
“That, we don’t yet know. Alex is digging. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Tell Alex to call me directly,” Katie said. “I want to talk this over with her.”
“Will do. What’s your next step?”
Katie blew out a frustrated breath. “The thing I hate the most,” she said. “I wait.”
Her next call was to the FBI local field office. She knew the Resident Special Agent in Charge, or Resident SAIC; she’d worked with him on a couple of assignments, not closely but enough to establish a professional rapport. He’d already received a call from her boss back home, who’d paved the way for any special requests.
Hers was simple. “I need a better car,” she said. It went without saying that any car issued by the FBI would be reliable and durable—and the sedan she’d been issued was serviceable—but she needed the federal equivalent of a rental upgrade. “This investigation keeps hopscotching, and I need something with networking ability.”
Within the hour, she had a freshly washed Lincoln, nondescript and scrupulously clean, with local Arizona plates and the necessary accessories, like an in-dash flasher and built-in siren, radio, GPS tracking uplinks. There were computer hookups, as well, and the whole car was a mobile Wi-Fi hot spot.
As an added bonus—and God only knew how it had happened, because no bureaucracy in the world, even the FBI, was about initiative—there was a laptop in the car, as well. A good one, loaded with everything she needed.
She thanked the agent who delivered it, and logged in on the laptop with her FBI identification codes. Surprisingly, the Wi-Fi connection was good even here. She began some digging in various databases, making and discarding search parameters as quickly as possible, chasing elusive bits of information and data through the system…
…and there it was. Alex Forsythe probably already had the trail, but Katie’s job was tracing people, and she was better at it than most. Besides, she needed to keep busy.
In the end, she discovered that Sheila Prichard’s original name was Sheila Richards Stanley. Which didn’t ring any bells, but Katie put it through the system anyway, and forgot to breathe when she read the information that popped up on the screen.
Sheila Richards Stanley, twenty-six years old, was the illegitimate daughter of East Coast drug kingpin Timmons Kent. Kent was as dirty and unprincipled as they came, even among drug lords…and from the looks of things, she was very much Daddy’s little girl, or had been up until a few years ago, when overnight, she’d cleaned up her act, changed her name and set about acquiring just the right credentials to apply to Athena Academy.
It was perfect, Katie had to admit. Having too much responsibility at the school would trigger a next-level personnel review, but her cover would have just passed the lowest-level scrutiny for the school—which was still far better than anything that would have been administered for the average government desk job.
Sheila Prichard was a plant. She’d been sent inside with a specific mission, and, mission accomplished, was gone.
Gone with two students.
Katie slapped down the lid of the laptop and went in search of Stefan. She found him perched on the back bumper of a Highway Patrol cruiser, sipping coffee with two female officers. A blonde and a redhead.
She felt an inexplicable surge of irritation. “How much of that stuff do you drink in a day?” she snapped.
Stefan looked at her in surprise, then at the coffee cup. “As much as possible,” he said. “Why? Is it a crime? Some kind of Breathalyzer test?”
Ought to be, she thought. “Time to go.”
He didn’t move. “Go where?”
“I’m going back to Glendale. Unless you’d rather stay here?”
He cut a quick glance right and left to the two female officers. They were young, competent and cute, and they were smiling at him. The redhead shrugged.
&
nbsp; “Sorry, Officers, duty calls,” he said and started to toss his coffee cup into the nearest trash can.
Duty?
“Freeze!” Katie snapped. “It’s a crime scene. The last thing they need is to sort through more trash.”
Stefan stopped in midgesture. “Oh. Sorry.”
“Just bring it with you. Say your goodbyes, and hurry up. I can’t wait for you.”
She was irrationally angry, and she knew it. She didn’t like waiting, although she was usually better at it than this. No, this was the fact that Sheila Prichard’s new identity opened up a huge field of new possibilities, unpleasant ones. As dangerous as kidnapping for ransom or drug abductions might be, political kidnappings were far, far worse. But why these two girls? Sure, someone with enough knowledge might be able to link the Athena Academy to AA. gov, and Athena Force. There were plenty of bad people in the world who might want to put a stop to the training of Athena women, or curtail their activities by using pressure.
But why these two girls?
Somebody knew. Somebody knew about the abilities the girls were displaying, and that opened up whole unpleasant vistas of possibilities.
Katie got in the car and started it up. It felt good to be behind the wheel again, in control of her destination. Stefan got in on the passenger side without another word. She dialed her cell phone again as she accelerated out of the parking lot and onto the highway access road. This car was a huge improvement, no doubt about it…sleek, smooth-driving, powerful.
“Kayla? It’s Katie. Have you got access to Sheila Prichard’s apartment yet?”
“Warrant’s in process,” Kayla said. She sounded tired, but still focused. “I haven’t got access yet, but I was pulling it together. Look, I can meet you there. Alex Forsythe is here with me, too. Is it okay if she—”
“Yes, absolutely, tell her hi for me,” Katie said. “Address?”
She didn’t need a notepad; her memory was more than sharp enough for streets and numbers. When she hung up, Stefan, who was looking out the window, said, “Who’s Sheila Prichard?”
She debated telling him, but it was too soon; the jury was still out on Stefan Blackman and his true relationship to the crimes. “Someone who may have information about the kidnapping.”
He let that sit in silence for a few seconds, then asked, “You keep saying kidnapping. Some of the other cops called it an abduction. What’s the difference between an abduction and a kidnapping?”
It was a good question, one she’d asked herself early in her FBI training. “Kidnappers generally interact with the authorities or the families. They want something. Kidnapping is just a way to get what they want. That doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous and brutal, but at least they’re more logical.”
“And abductions?”
“Abductors already have what they want,” she said and hooked a U-turn to get back on the freeway, heading back toward Phoenix. “And they don’t need to interact with anybody but the victim.”
“Interact,” he echoed faintly, and looked out the window again. “You’re not talking about conversation, are you?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “Mostly, no. By the time they go far enough to risk prison like that, they’re not usually satisfied with talk.”
He was silent for a few seconds. “These guys haven’t interacted with the families or the authorities.”
“No.”
“So you calling them kidnappers—”
“Wishful thinking,” she said. “I’d like to think of them as kidnappers right now. Kidnappers have a standard operating procedure, a framework, and they do things in a logical manner. I can deal with kidnappers.”
“Do I even want to know what you’ve seen?”
“You really don’t,” she said, and meant it. She liked that he was so shaken over a single dead body; that meant he had a soul. So many men she dealt with, week in and week out, had no souls left, or if they did, they were so irredeemably sick that it no longer mattered. That didn’t just go for the villains, of course; the burnout rate in law enforcement was shocking. “Tell me about what you do.”
“What I do?” He sounded shocked.
“Trust me, I’d rather not talk about my work.” She was tired, she realized, tired and sick at heart, and a little scared, too. This situation was big, and she was working without her usual support. Granted, she had Stefan Blackman, but she wasn’t exactly sure how to categorize that. Advantage? Burden? Annoyance? In any case, he wasn’t trained in law enforcement, and they were on the trail of some very unpleasant people. Another good reason to be certain to turf the man when she picked up solid real-world leads.
“Most days, I do street magic in Venice Beach,” he said. “You understand what that is?”
“Somewhere between David Blaine and three-card monty?”
For answer, he flipped his hand, and instantly a playing card appeared, held lightly between two elegant, relaxed fingers. “Depends on how you do it,” he said. “Street magic is more fun than stage magic, at least for me. Up close and personal. You have to be better with your hands for it to work.”
The playing card—it was the queen of hearts, she noticed—disappeared in the same graceful gesture. “You always carry cards up your sleeve to crime scenes, Mr. Blackman?”
“Stefan,” he said, “and I don’t keep them up my sleeve.”
His voice had changed back to its more usual tones, she noticed—low, gentle, underlaid with some sly and private amusement. Very sexy.
Like the hands. Which he knew, of course. She had the feeling he knew exactly his effect on women.
“So, do street magicians have a union? Dental plan?”
“The fringe benefits are mostly—” He never finished whatever quip he’d been working on. He stopped dead, and when she looked over, his eyes were open, fixed and staring, and they were—once again—empty of presence. He was somewhere else, seeing something other than the road disappearing under the wheels of the car.
She didn’t disturb him with questions. This didn’t look like as violent a vision—or seizure—as the last one. He was gone a while, and signaled his return with a deep-inhaled breath. He lowered his head for a few seconds.
“Take your time,” she said. “It’s okay.”
“Nothing specific this time,” he said. “I think they must have knocked her out when she tried to escape, back at the gas station. She seemed confused, just waking up. That was the impression I got, anyway. She’s alive, and so’s the other girl.”
“Lena,” Katie supplied quietly. “Her name is Lena Poole, the one with blond streaked hair.”
He nodded. “And the one who’s showing me this?”
“Teal Arnett. She’s seventeen.”
“She seems—” He searched for words. “Good. Smart. Strong.”
She was Athena Academy, Katie thought. Of course she was. But it was nice that he recognized it. It proved him to be slightly less of a jerk than most men she’d ever known. “How’s she holding up?”
“Pretty well,” he said. “I can’t communicate with her exactly, but I get the feeling that she’s thinking. Always thinking.” He paused. “Did you speak to her family?”
“Yes, but just briefly. Hers and Lena’s family, both.”
“Do you think—do you think we can get these girls back safely?”
Katie recognized the tension along her shoulders and down her back, and tried to relax it. “I don’t know,” she said. “But I made a promise, and I intend to keep it. Now, show me a card trick.”
Sheila Prichard’s apartment complex was utterly nondescript; drug kingpins’ children grew up surrounded by excessive wealth and a minimum of good taste, so the conservative boxy setting—conventional square two-story structures surrounded by parking lots—came as a surprise. Katie checked the address carefully, but no, this was it. A standard medium-rent place, nothing special in any way. Prichard ’s unit was toward the back, facing an empty lot overgrown with dry, desiccated weeds from last year’s gro
wing season.
Kayla Ryan, looking as tired as she’d sounded, stood near the stairs, and with her were two others, instantly recognizable to Katie. She felt her face relax into a welcoming smile. “Alex,” she said, and stepped forward to give—and receive—a big hug. Alex looked as dramatic and gorgeous as ever, though she’d tied her thick red hair back into a ponytail for convenience. No makeup, but then, she didn’t need it. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“You knew I had to come,” Alex said. “After all—” She didn’t need to finish. Katie just nodded in acceptance. Standing behind her, arms folded, was Justin Cohen, Alex’s fiancé. He smiled slightly at Katie, professional to professional. There was a large black tackle box, unmarked, sitting by his feet. Tools of Alex’s trade, without a doubt. Both Alex and Justin were, like Katie, FBI, though none of them worked in the same area—Katie out of the Kansas City office, Alex out of Washington, Justin out of Quantico, in the basement, with the rest of the Behavioral Science Unit. But there was a shared culture between them, if nothing else, and genuine respect.
“It’s so good to see you, Katie,” Alex said and pulled back to frown at her. “Did I just feel you flinch? And by the way, are you bringing civilians with you on investigations these days?”
Katie stepped back. Trust Alex to dive right to the heart of things. “I had some trouble early this morning during a takedown,” she said. “I’m fine, just some bruising, no big thing. This is Stefan Blackman. He’s—it’s complicated. Let’s just say I’d like him to stick with me for a while.” She was well aware that could be taken a multitude of ways, and Justin and Alex, at least, took it the most serious way, as a potential threat to safety. Their looks at Stefan were decidedly not friendly.
Kayla looked grim, too. She said, “You were at the abduction scene earlier today. You wanted to talk to a cop.”
Stefan’s dark eyes darted busily from one of them to the other, clearly curious. Clearly not realizing what kind of potential peril he was in. “I did talk to one. More than one, actually.”
“Uh-huh. How did that go?” Kayla’s tone was dry. Stefan gave her a wide, luminous smile.