by Tina Gower
“What are you doing?” he whispers at me as we reach the elevator. “She’ll run and you’ll never get your answers.”
“I don’t need them. We have everything we need to get the lawsuit dropped and offer Ever After a reason for the data failure. We don’t have the paperwork to bring her in yet.” My eyes widen in a say-no-more-talk-I-have-a-plan face, hoping he won’t question it further. By leaving Pepper she’ll guide us right to the real culprit.
At the car I shove all my things in the backseat and buckle up in front, crouching behind the dash. “Are we in a good spot? Do you think she’ll see us?”
“I’d like to know what’s going on,” Becker mumbles. “Do I call it in?” He texts Lipski anyway. Although it’s only a few words, so I’m not sure how much detail he conveyed.
“I’d like to know who the first person she calls will be.”
Becker digs out his tablet. “Cell phone registered to Pepper Amore.” He taps on the name and scans her recent calls list.
“Is that legal?”
He shrugs. “Probable cause.” He swipes to a new screen. “No calls yet.”
“Give her time. She’s going to be tied up for hours with legal.” I fire up my laptop and start a rough search. “I didn’t pay attention before, but online she made a reference to a foundation.” I find the post. “Here.” Except there’s no mention of what foundation. So I do a quick web search of her name and ‘foundation.’ Too many extraneous results. She’s worked on several clients who have ‘foundation’ in their name and as programmer she’s mentioned on several of them. Changing it to ‘medical foundation’ it narrows it down.
There.
“All right, magical probable cause. Can we take a peek at her financials?”
Becker taps the screens until we’ve got her info glowing between us.
Becker grunts. “No big sums of cash in or out.” He lets me have the tablet and grips the steering wheel. “You should have let me bring her in. Now we’re going to have a hell of a time explaining this to the captain. You have a suspect, you bring them in. You don’t catch and release. Any charges we file against her won’t stick. The lawyers are going to have a heyday with procedure.”
I wonder what’s got Becker so worked up to speak so much of caution and procedure in one unprompted, unprepared sitting. Okay, there was the confusing monologue earlier about feelings, but it took him two days to work up to it.
I click on the medical bills in her name. None. Okay, right, they’d be in the future husband’s name and even if they eloped, their accounts would still be separate for the next few weeks. I search until I find some clue as to who the boyfriend might be. Dead end. Pun not intended.
All right. I search the foundation again. Who runs it? Pictures come up. Names and faces I don’t I recognize. Becker’s going to kill me. I set his tablet on the consul between us.
“It’s okay.” I console myself. “Yin didn’t want anyone arrested for this anyway. Maybe this will make it easier.”
“Except you’ll be lucky now if you can ever get her to cooperate once the lawyers get involved.”
“But now we know. She confessed.”
“Unless you got it on paper and digital and signed, it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Why didn’t you stop me?!”
He sits up in his seat. “I have no jurisdiction in this case. You’ve said from the beginning it wouldn’t require a police liaison. And then you went and demanded we be separated to HR. If we show up at the station with this mess in tow, how’s that going to look?”
“Then why did you come in and swing your handcuffs around?”
“Because you called me.”
I let out a frustrated breath and tug on my hair. “To tell me if she was lying, not to escalate the issue.”
“Whatever.” He presses himself into his seat and stares out the window in the direction of the building.
“If you weren’t so protective…”
“I’m protective for a reason.”
“What reason? Lipski said they caught the shade after you.”
“He wasn’t after me. He was after you. And we caught one of them.”
“One of them? Wait, he was after me? I thought you said you led him to me?”
“In custody he’s telling a different story. He’s part of the cell that attempted the net collapse a few weeks ago. He said they’ve become very interested in a certain actuary in Accidental Death.”
My eyes flutter in time with my heart. “Wh…what? But you caught his partner during a robbery in progress.”
Becker blows a huff of air from his nostrils and props his chin on his fist, staring out the window. “It was a robbery, but I was following them from a lead. From Liza.”
“A lead? As in you got Liza Hamilton to confess?” Liza had been a caretaker for oracles. But really she’d been one of the organizers for an anti-fate group with lofty goals to shut down the oracle net. Somehow she wormed her way in as a sensitive and managed to nearly succeed in getting one of her oracles, Jack Roberts, killed. Along with many others in a trap she’d set at a carnival.
“It’s more like what she didn’t say. After a while all the things she didn’t say added up to something. So I looked into it.”
I sigh. It explains his obsessing and neurotic behavior the last few days. He had more info from Liza than he’d previously told me. I’d thought it was just her empty threats mixed with his paranoia. “Why didn’t you tell me? We worked on Jack’s case together. I want to know when there are developments.” I grab his tablet again, swiping through the screens with a little more force than I needed. “Especially if they involve my safety.”
“I had it all under control.”
“Had? You mean have. According to you there’s still another shade on the loose.”
He presses his lips together, like he’s hesitant to tell me all of it. “We’ve been getting some intel from federal. We’ve got an agent on the case and he says they work in twos and threes. The shades. Multiple births are common for shades. Or they attach onto other singles who look close enough and get surgery to make the resemblance even closer. They are more comfortable as a group than single. They share an identity and work one job, going for jobs that are generous on hours and overtime opportunities. It’s easy when you can switch off with someone who looks exactly like you or close. These brothers are also involved in different cells in the three surrounding states. So it makes jurisdiction a little trickier.”
“Twos or threes? So there could be a third?”
“That’s what we don’t know. Jim, that’s our guy, he’s real keen on telling us we’ll never get all of him.” He lets out a short laugh. “They see themselves as parts of one whole.”
I smile at his amusement. “Well, I’m sure werewolves look strange to him. Or humans.”
“Yeah.” He gives me a look; his eyes sparkle.
That flutter returns, but this time in my stomach. Maybe now’s the time to bring up that conversation from before. Clarify some things. Set boundaries. Decide what a relationship between us might look like from this point forward.
I open my mouth to suggest it, when Becker’s tablet blinks like a strobe light.
His attention shifts to the device. “Looks like your girl’s making a call.”
“What’s the number?”
“I’m on it.” He taps a few commands. “Registered to a Harriet Albright Foundation.”
“Any specific names of who would have access to the number?”
“Nope.”
I punch the glove box. “Damn it.”
Becker stares at the spot I assaulted. I slink into the seat, ashamed I let my frustration manifest and junk his car. “Sorry.”
“It’s not the first time this car’s been punched at.” He glances back down at the screen. “We might be able to find out who’s financially backing that foundation with donations. Give me a second. And never tell anyone I did this for you because I’m in a federal database that I�
�m not supposed to have access to.” He types into a secure database, clicking through several screens until he gets to one. He reads it over a few times, then turns the tablet to face me. “Any of these names look familiar?”
Yeah, one name. Someone who just made a recent, very large anonymous donation to the foundation.
Nita Ricen, CEO of ForeverMatch.
Chapter 18
My conversation with Yin goes about as expected. Ever After sends their lawyers to deal with the mess and within two seconds it’s not my case anymore. Not my problem.
The police station is busy with no signs of slowing down. According to Becker, the later into the night it gets the crazier the people who come in—just like the night shift at a hospital. Phones ringing, police officers chatting by the coffee pot in the open kitchen, some scruffy guy yelling for his lawyer two cubicles over.
Becker brings me a coffee where I’m planted at his desk. I watch the clock roll over to five p.m. I’m officially free until eight a.m. tomorrow where I get to do this all over again. I even have an assigned case for tomorrow. Some guy who keeps getting regular high probability forecasts for an exotic animal attack, even though we’re no where near a jungle. The name on the file is shark attack guy from my last case. I sigh.
Lipski leans his hip against one side of Becker’s desk, his meat hooks for hands wrapped around a reusable insulated cup. “So you think this match actuary donated a lump of cash and directed the foundation to give it to the programmer to make a mess for the other love actuary because of some rivalry. I guess it would be a roundabout way to get away with it. Wow. Actuaries are intense little fuckers.”
Becker shrugs. “Yeah, but unless Pepper confesses that detail, there’s no way of knowing.”
I drop my head into my hands. “And if she did confess it, Yin and Ever After wouldn’t press charges because of the mistake they made with Pepper’s sister. They’d rather pay a settlement and not give Nita a reason to come after them again. They’re not interested in encouraging the rivalry. Yin wants nothing to do with it.” I look at both police officers. “What can we do?”
They both sip their coffees at the same time, staring at the floor, avoiding the question.
Lipski’s the first to look up and see the genuine concern in my eyes. “Oh shit, you’re actually asking. As in, not rhetorical or philosophical.”
Becker shakes his head, setting his cup next to me. “There’s nothing you can do, Kate. If they’re not pressing charges or they are…it’s not your decision. It’s not your job to pursue this any further.”
Lipski grunts. “Says the guy who never lets a case go.”
I twist in my seat to face Becker. “So they put up with Nita’s string pulling to make Yin’s life miserable? The bully gets away with everything?”
Becker scratches the back of his neck. “I don’t like it either, but it’s just how it is. In my experience people like her fuck up eventually and then they get caught.”
I don’t like it. I don’t want Nita to think she can continue to pull strings. It’s not certain that’s what she did, but the feeling won’t go away. Pepper didn’t do this unprovoked. I could see it in her eyes. She was willing to fall on the sword for Nita. All because she rescued her future husband from a medical crisis. And yeah, that was a huge deal. Someone didn’t die. Aside from the emotional trauma of the Ever After clients having lists with matches who’d died, but Ever After already sent out corrected cupid’s notes.
Plus one divorce due to Yin’s miscalculation and Nita couldn’t let that mistake go. That little morsel of knowledge was too sweet not to display. She wanted it amplified. She wanted Yin to be humiliated.
I’d done all that, risked my job, and nothing came of it. Nothing got fixed. No big pat on the back. Again. But at a certain point it became less about the glory and more about just finding out what happened and how they did it.
It took the lawsuit off the table, which was good, but didn’t put out the fire. All they can do is hope that Nita stops there and maybe she will. Maybe she’d had that one lapse in jealousy.
It made my stomach hurt thinking about it. I crossed my arms over my midsection.
Becker looks uncomfortable and mumbles something about a refill. He wanders from the cubical toward the coffee machine.
Lipski taps a manila envelope. “What’s this?”
I eye Becker’s match profile. “It’s nothing.”
He tears it open.
“What are you doing? That’s not yours.”
“You said it’s nothing.” He slides the first page out. Chuckles. “I’m doing Beck a favor.” He tosses the whole thing into the trash.
I glance down into the can and see the top line of the first page. Werewolves statistically have better matches with other werewolves.
That sinking feeling in my stomach turns to nausea. I lick my lips, wanting to read the rest of the page. I didn’t think I cared, but now? I should have read it. I should have prepared myself for not being good for Ian. I should have known.
On top of that, I’m fateless. How can I judge Nita for pulling strings to get what she wanted when that’s exactly what I’d be doing with Becker? Even if the work conflict were solved because we could prove ourselves a good team regardless of our personal status, I could die at any moment. I’d keep him from his destined soul mate. I’d be a distraction. An unknown variable in Becker’s equation. If I agreed to being open to a relationship with Becker, I’d be putting him in constant risk.
Lipski swipes the can away before I can read more. “Be right back.” But he bumps into Becker on his way out of the cubicle.
Becker nudges my shoulder. “Come on, Kate, I’ll take you home.”
Lipski doesn’t even make an inappropriate joke about us leaving together. I must be in really bad shape. Or he’s letting the issue go because he knows it would be horrible to encourage his partner to pursue me.
There’s a predicted accident on the 81 and predicted delays on the 57. Becker turns the car in the opposite direction of my apartment out onto an old farm road. “It connects back to your apartment,” he mumbles. He must see my disbelief, because he half grins and says instead, “You’ll see.”
Eventually we end up on a road I recognize and only lost about fifteen minutes. We would have been held up for hours had we braved the traffic prediction. I cock an eyebrow at him. “Nice work.”
He waves two fingers from the steering wheel in salute. We drive in silence for a mile and then he shrugs. “I take this route at night sometimes. For the quiet.” His gaze lands on mine for a minute too long.
This is the moment I should stop this relationship from happening. This is where I should end it.
But the words pile up behind my tongue. My chest aches from the impending loss. He’ll eventually find his soulmate. I’m a distraction. This isn’t fair to him.
He glances at me again. Double-takes. “Are you okay?”
I shake my head. I’ll wait until we’re at my apartment. Then I’ll explain to him we can’t. We shouldn’t.
It might even be a relief to him. It makes things considerably less complicated emotionally. He won’t have to worry about betraying his pack. A vein in my head throbs. I press the area to relieve the tension.
We round a corner and there’s some debris in the road. He eases up on the gas. He cracks the window and nods as though the scent confirms something.
I sit up in the seat to get a better view, but at five thirty it’s already dark. “Can you see anything?”
“Smells like a garbage truck.” As he says it the traces of rotting food and musky mildew filter in through the vents. Along the side of road are bloated black plastic bags with rips along the sides where rubbish bulges out like exposed guts.
The road twists again and the stream of trash swells to a river. It covers the road and appears to have spilled out of a large dumpster, but as my eyes adjust to the dark Becker’s lights catch on the boxy hood of the large dump truck. Trash spills out from
the large open trailer where the garbage for the whole area is collected before it is driven to the landfill. It looks to have taken a turn too sharply and tipped on its side, puking its contents all over the road.
Becker grabs his phone, messing with it for a minute and then turns to me. “You got reception? This is a dead zone for me.”
I glance at mine. “Got nothing.”
Becker grips the wheel and shakes his head, not liking something about this setup, but not voicing it either. “We should turn around and go back until we have reception to get help.”
I squint to see into the dark cabin, except the shadow from our lights overcasts the whole area. “Whoa, is the driver…?”
“I don’t know,” he says, but he does know, because he sees something.
There’s a tube of fabric that looks like a bloody sleeve frozen in a reaching position out of the windshield.
Becker clicks on his radio. “I’ve got a possible code 30 on highway 81 three miles outside of town. North.” He waits a few minutes, but the channel is dead. “Do you copy?” Nothing. He clicks to another channel. “I’ve got an 11-83. Do you copy?” The channel cackles and hisses.
“What’s going on? Are we out of range?”
Becker snatches his radio and jerks the door open. “Stay in the car.”
The thunk of the car locks rings in my ears. I clutch the handle, worried for the driver of the truck. It takes a second for the chill of the night to creep into the car and replace the heater’s warmth. I check my phone again. No signal. I huff, frustrated, a wisp of fog blows from my mouth.
I try to roll down my window to ask Becker if he needs help, but the windows won’t go down with the car off. Becker walks around the side of the dump truck, bending low to inspect something there. I fidget with the controls and accessories until I realize he can hear me.
“Becker!” I yell. He stands and turns to me, alert. “Do you need—”
He jerks, as though something’s clotheslined him, falling backward, flat on his back. He struggles to get up, clawing at his neck.
The air leaves my lungs. I’m paralyzed. My brain unable to make sense of the scene. It has to be a shade. They set this up. We drove right into it, just like they’d planned. They’ve been watching us for weeks. They knew Becker used this route to avoid five o’clock traffic. They would find every weak point along the road and realize this was a dead zone.