Flames of Hope

by Cassandra L Shaw

  “Nice duplex. I do like the visit my members. Often it’s my best way to assess what they might need, to determine any ways the church might assist.”

  Jasmine set out the teapot, spooning the brand of black tea leaves she preferred into the pot and added the boiling water. “We don’t need any assistance. We’re not wealthy, but we manage. Our wishes are simply to become part of a Christian community.” Wow, talk about getting much better at this acting and layering on the bullshit. She set out three mugs, put milk and sugar on the table, poured in the hot water, and stood with her back against the sink. Her beast didn’t want to be any closer, so for a moment, to let it settle, for the tingles on the back of her neck to ease, she’d keep a little distance.

  Xylvar tapped the table with his finger. “You’re lucky to find us both in. We’re often out hunting stories.”

  The fake friendly smarm on the Father’s face was almost enough to make Jasmine call him out on it. What the hell did this man want? Deeming the tea steeped, and her beast easing, she carried the pot to the mugs and poured, then dug out a packet of unopened chocolate chip cookies, which she put on a plate.

  Xylvar picked one up and bit into it. “You been hiding these?”

  “I bought them for guests.” Actually, she’d bought them for herself the night Xylvar went to Boston, but hadn’t been in the mood to stuff her face on sugar and fat. As the night wore on, sitting alone had put her more in the mood to find a punching bag and gut it.

  She pushed the plate toward Father Morgan. “Please, help yourself.” The whole domestic thing almost felt natural. She took one herself and sat next to Xylvar, putting her hand over the one he kept tapping on the table.

  “This unit meets Todd’s needs?” It took her a second to clue onto who Todd was.

  Xylvar nodded. “The wheelchair-friendly setup and neighborhood were the key reasons we chose this duplex.”

  “I suppose that will be an important aspect of everything you do, including building your new home.”

  “True. But other than those aspects, the plan is up to Storm. I’ll live anywhere.”

  “As it should be. A woman needs to feel her house is home.”

  Jasmine shifted in her seat, getting uncomfortable with the way Xylvar stared into the Father’s eyes through the thick lenses the man wore. Man must be blinder than a mole. True, Xylvar wanted insight into the man, but the staring was becoming noticeable.

  “Tell me, what do you two do for entertainment?”

  Jasmine blinked at the odd question. “Normal couple stuff, I suppose. Halos, music, reading, spending time together.”

  “You both work from home. Do you spend time in the company of others often? Explore the region?”

  The hair on the back of Jasmine’s neck rose. She gave Xylvar’s hand the softest squeeze, in what she hoped conveyed the question seemed off to her. Normally such an everyday inquiry shouldn’t arouse suspicion, but these weren’t normal times, and Father Morgan hadn’t asked in quite a casual enough tone.

  “We travel around a lot seeking news stories. So, we end up seeing a lot of the region without deliberately exploring it.” Xylvar kept his voice smooth, polite, with an edge of what the hell business is it of yours?

  Father Morgan steepled his fingers on the table. “Yes, yes of course. One of our parish thought they saw you in Katoom yesterday talking to the local sheriff.”

  Her beast started to rise. She forced it down, endlessly grateful she had the ability to hide the silver it caused. Xylvar dropped his hands and bent his head so his hair covered his face, hiding the silver lines, the silvery scar, that would give him away as part Eli.

  “Oh, you mean Peter? Sure.” She made sure Father Morgan turned to her so Xylvar’s silver had time to fade. “He’s a great guy. Someone we often talk to for reports of happening around Katoom. It’s good to be on friendly terms with the local law. They often share interesting tidbits about a region.

  “Mmmm, Katoom is a hot spot for journalists at the moment.”

  “Well, with the two subspecies clans living side by side with humans in relative harmony, it makes for interesting an interesting area regarding interrelations.”

  “Perhaps. Our combined pasts have proved such interrelations don’t work. The area will hit a crisis, and the relationships implode.” He sounded like he couldn’t wait for the implosion.

  Jasmine glanced at Xylvar, saw he’d regained control of himself and was now staring intently at the Father’s eyes. “Katoom’s attempts to live in relative harmony were stymied for many decades, though the status quo shifted toward friendly terms when Kaid Sinclair and Zane Dahl took over their clans.”

  Father Morgan leaned back in his seat, regarding Jasmine and Xylvar with cold, unfriendly eyes. “Soldiers of war playing at peace.”

  Xylvar cocked his head at a slight angle. “Don’t you think soldiers ultimately want peace?”

  “Peace on their terms, perhaps, yes. But the fight will only continue.” Father Morgan got to his feet. “I’d like to see your article about Katoom when it is published.”

  “Certainly, if we sell it.”

  He gave them a toothy smile. Like a wolf thinking it had found prey. “I’m sure you will.” With the threat still hanging in the air, he walked to the door, lifted his hand in acknowledgement of their goodbyes, and let himself out.

  #

  As soon as the door closed, Xylvar could see the silver flickering like flames in Jaz’s eyes. Streaks of it passing her normal barriers, until silver coated her skin.

  Yeah, the not-so-good Father made their beasts wary. Predators reacted to predators. Xylvar wheeled over and made two coffees. He fucking hated tea.

  He put the cups on the table. “He suspects we’re not who we say we are.”

  “He suspects something,” she agreed. “Who can he suspect us of being? Katooms’s Eli clan has been very particular in setting up our fake personas’and lives. They covered everything. Because of my FBPI contract, there are no images of me in cyberspace. My personal links are all triple-encoded, and those who have access do not see my image or even an avatar. They see a butterfly instead. Yours is an even harder persona to crack in cyber world. I know, because I checked, to make sure I wasn’t committing professional or actual suicide by agreeing work undercover with you. Not even Barbados is worth dying for.”

  “I thought you hadn’t realized it was me until you arrived at the café.”

  “I didn’t. Kaid didn’t tell me anything about you. Just said I needed to meet you first. He gave no name just a description of your past work. And it’s not like I could put two and two together, since I didn’t know which of the armed forces you’d joined, let alone that you became an assassin. I checked you out after Kaid bribed me in the cabin.”

  She sipped her coffee, keeping hold of the mug. “But I’d already looked into you. Once we met at the café that day, I searched your name, but found very limited information. And what I found was because of my FBPI permissions. As an everyday citizen without governmental codes and cyber links to research, I would not have found you. Might have assumed you were dead.”

  “The man you knew is dead.”

  She ignored his self-hate jibe. “Father Morgan could be worried that we might write something about him in an article. He might not want to appear on cyber news.”

  “He could also be aware there’s something wrong with our fake relationship.”

  “His questions and comments were innocent enough. However, my sixth or seventh or tenth sense tells me he came here for some reason other than a friendly chat.”

  “Eli instincts, or your own personal touch of sympath?”

  “Maybe it’s a bit of both. My own personal combo of intuitions and paranoia has kept me alive as an FBPI agent.”

  Xylvar and Jasmine’s personal links buzzed simultaneously.

  Jasmine glanced at hers. “Shit.”

  Xylvar picked up his, blew out a breath. “Fuck me.”

  “Is yours
saying the cell we caught has no connection to any other cells. That once more we’re back at square one in our quest to find the missing Eli and Crea.”

  “Yep.”

  Her link buzzed again, she scowled, typed something, then waited for a message to land. “It’s from Rich. Four Crea, two couples, were taken from their homes last night. Tells me to stay in Katoom.”

  “How does he know? Who reported the kidnappings?”

  “One couple have a baby someone heard crying this morning. When they went to see what was wrong, they found the front door open and signs of a fight. They called the local sheriff, and he found drag marks at the back of their lawn. Part of the back fence is missing, and there are truck tire marks in the field behind, heading for the road.” She glanced back at the screen, biting her top lip. “Second couple have two female children, seven and twelve years old. The twelve-year-old got her sister out of the house and up into their treehouse, where they hid.”

  “Brave kid. Did the girl get a description?”

  “She saw her parents unconscious and being carried out to the truck, and used her personal link to take a video halo of a whole thing.” She pressed on the link and turned the screen so the Xylvar could watch with her.

  They watched the video, and suddenly Jasmine pointed to the screen. “Him.” She zoomed in for a closer view of the man she’d pointed to. “Got him! That’s one of the guys who drives food hampers around to the poor.”

  Xylvar gave a slow, single nod. “And he’s our link to Father Morgan.”

  26

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The next day, Jasmine wore skin-tight pants made of super-stretchy fabric. They looked like the sort of clothes a professional sex worker would wear, but they’d also give her freedom of movement if she needed to fight or run.

  As the weather cyber-page predicted, the day remained cool, with the added dreary bonus of light, drizzly showers, so she paired her pants with a warm, loose, easy to move in top.

  In the living room, Xylvar ran his eyes over the outfit while she shrugged on a long overshirt and grabbed the bag holding her stains, enhancers, and red wig.

  Xylvar nodded at her. “I’ve been over the van as best I could, no new trackers, but neither have our neighbors returned.”

  Xylvar, with Jasmine watching for a tail, headed for the local mall. Jasmine hurried into the public bathroom. In the corner, with the mirror nearest the far wall, she dumped out her bag’s contents and hurriedly adjusted her enhancers and put on her red wig.

  The woman in the mirror, though familiar, was also foreign. Yep, CeeCee May had arrived.

  Xylvar pulled into the parking area of a small suburban strip mall. She jumped out, quickly pilfering the magnetic strips advertising a local florist from another parked van. A run around their van, and she’d placed them on their own vehicle.

  Xylvar drove off, pulling next to the curb several doors down from the warehouse. Hopefully the real florist wouldn’t drive past.

  Jasmine got out of the van.

  “Protect those wires. And keep an eye out for that delivery driver.”

  She rolled her shoulders, cracked her neck. “Got it”

  Once inside, Jasmine took an order form and grabbed a trolley, put four hampers and coolers on it, and started to fill them. She thought she’d seen the scarred driver on Mondays, so hoped he would turn up today. A van pulled in, gathered the boxes, and drove off. Time passed and she started to think she’d been wrong. Feeling disgruntled, she started filling her last load of hampers, looking up as a van pulled up at the loading bay. At last Scarface had arrived. The driver stepped out. Jasmine tapped her earpiece, signaling Xylvar the man they hunted had arrived.

  She gave the driver, who eyed her warily, a friendly smile as she casually strode towards his delivery van while he started to load it. Next to the van, she bent pretending to scratch inside her boot with one hand, while she attached a tracking device into the wheel arch with the other. She walked on past, then back into the warehouse.

  Ten minutes later, as Jasmine clocked off, Jen turned up and slipped a piece of paper into Jasmine’s hand. “Meeting Friday night. Talk more later.”

  Jasmine gave her a friendly smile. “Wonderful, I’d love to chat.”

  At the end of her shift, Jasmine caught a taxi to the local mall, stripping off the wig and scrubbing her face clean in the bathroom before catching a taxi to the large mall two suburbs away, where Xylvar would collect her after following Scarface for a while.

  #

  The scarred driver of the van wove through the suburban streets, stopping at various houses. At each stop, he opened the back door of the van, removed a hamper and a cooler, and carried them to the house, swapping the boxes over for empty ones.

  Xylvar watched the process, noted that on one delivery the driver seemed to check the contents, and the empty returns were checked, too. He grinned. Helping the poor, the perfect way to exchange messages without leaving so much as a cyber stain.

  A note tucked inside, burned after reading, would leave little if any trace. Nothing to recover, nothing to link those involved. Someone in their fold knew cyber messages, even deleted, even those run through destruct software, could still be accessed through the deep back door of cyberspace.

  Not many even knew such stains existed.

  But to see if this was their method of message-passing, Xylvar would have to scan every box, every cold pack, even the individual contents of the hampers. An impossible task unless a government department became involved. Which was a damn good way to scare off the current people involved, allowing the trail to go cold, only to reappear in another area.

  It would fix nothing, only change the venue.

  Xylvar drove off to pick up Jaz from the mall. The tracking device attached to the delivery van, programmed to leave a light green line on his link’s tracking map, would keep them apprised of the van’s whereabouts.

  Before he arrived at the mall, he pulled over and removed the stolen magnets, tossing them onto the passenger seat. Once at the mall, he hit the grocery loading bay and waited while Jasmine loaded groceries into the van. The epitome of the married couple. Normal, barring the man in the wheelchair, and the bag holding the wig, and the number of knives the “wife” hid in her clothing.

  Jasmine picked up the magnets, slid into the passenger seat, leaned over, and kissed his cheek the way a real wife might do. “Anything worth following up?”

  “A couple dozen hamper deliveries, but who knows what else is handed over with each box? Though I have an address we’ll set up some sort of surveillance for.”

  “You think that’s how they’re passing messages?” She pulled a slip of paper out of her bra. “I’ve got a different number and code to use to secure an invite for another meeting on Friday night. Jen will have more details later. We have to organize for a chat.”

  “Contact her, meet for a coffee. And yes, I do. Think about it, a tiny slip of paper like that disappears so easily. It can be burned, shredded, or even eaten if they have to.”

  “Old school, but effective…if nobody blabs.”

  “People always blab. But like the scum caught at the hot springs, there are levels, and the lower ranks aren’t told anything more than what they need to know.”

  They pulled into the drive to find Vanessa and James, who’d been absent for several days, once more hurrying to pack things into their vehicle. They scowled at Jaz and gave Xylvar a wary look.

  As Jaz collected the grocery bags, Xylvar saw a blue car drive down the street. “Nice to see our friendly blues are still on our tail.”

  Jaz turned and shook her head. “Hate to think we were no longer interesting. All this because the woman thought she knew CeeCee from somewhere. She could know her from a hundred places.”

  “True, but I think she’s more observant than most, could see the similarity to Storm. And both Storm and CeeCee have appeared recently.”

  Inside their own duplex, Jaz put the bags she’d carried
inside down. Xylvar lifted the bags in his lap onto the table, then edged to the window, adjusting the blind for a clearer view outside.

  Their neighbors filled their vehicle’s trunk, then James slid into the driver’s seat. Vanessa ran out, clutching some sort of blaster, got into their car, and they drove off.

  “Curious.”

  Jaz laughed. “Understatement of the year. I’m going to bet drugs.”

  “Still feels connected to us.”

  “We haven’t discovered anything damning enough yet to make people run.”

  #

  Jasmine stood staring out the window long after Vanessa and James’s vehicle disappeared. She mentally tried to link the few likely players together, but other than the scarred man, this fishing expedition had yielded no proof of anyone being linked to the Pures.

  And they couldn’t reel him in and hand him over, since they needed him out there, doing foul deeds, to net a greater catch.

  Sometimes the fry had to be allowed to swim free so they could be followed to the school, where the Eli and Crea could hook the bigger prey.

  Xylvar went to and returned from the spare bedroom with something in his hand. He handed it to Jasmine. “I want you to go outside and drop something that rolls toward their front door, so you have to go after it. Then, when you’re next to the door, slip this under it.”

  She inspected a small spool with an end half the size of pen top shaped like a lizard’s head. “Okay, so it’s a vid viewer. What are we looking for?”

  “The wire is a series of tiny rollers. I’ll be able to remotely snake it under the door and throughout the duplex, see what might be inside. They disappear suddenly, then return and fill their trunk with what to me looked like a pile of electronics. They’ve left stuff behind, and I want to know what.”

  “Floor’s eye view.”

  “Unfortunately. However, any vid viewers mounted inside should miss its movement.”

  “You think they have some inside too? Be a bit excessive.”