Following Fabian

by Holley Trent

  “How did I end up being best friends with a hippie?”

  Maria tossed a swath of her thick, curly hair over her shoulder and shrugged again. “For that matter, how did I end up being best friends with the unapologetic owner of a collectible Hello Kitty shotgun? I think the universe works in mysterious ways.”

  Astrid chuckled drily. “That it does.”

  “So, will you talk to him?”

  “Maybe.” David was the man Astrid was less concerned with at the moment.

  She unfastened her seatbelt and stood slightly to sight Fabian in the back next to his brother. All the men leaned toward the aisle where the Were-bear Bryan crouched with his laptop computer. They were probably relaying strategy in the same way the girls did.

  Dana made her way up the aisle and sat next to Astrid.

  “Can’t stop thinking about it,” Dana said. “We need more bodies.”

  Maria harrumphed in acknowledgement.

  “Since the meeting, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Five Shrews has always been enough until now.”

  Astrid settled down into her seat again and draped her arms over the rests. She couldn’t let that perplexing acrobat distract her. “I don’t know. Five Shrews seems like a lot to me. Maybe what we actually need is auxiliary staff, and not more Shrews,” she said. “The five of us have some skill sets that can’t be duplicated, and so we’ll always do jobs that normal people can’t. But, if we hired on some regular investigators, they could take over the more mundane cases and free us up for the specialized stuff.”

  “I agree. You know, Patrick and I have discussed expanding the business. Doing it now would slow down our plans to build a house and…” Her hand went to the end of her neat ponytail, and she twirled it, staring absently at the seat in front of her. “And starting a family. We were going to really try in earnest after the situation with the Bears settled down.”

  “That’s good news!” Maria said. “More babies in our circle would be a blessing for all of us.”

  Dana’s eyebrows bobbed. “Doc has been studying all of our latest genome data and trying to isolate the mutations that would make conception improbable. She has Sarah’s to look at, but data from one Shrew isn’t enough. It may not make a difference if I get pregnant on my own, but if I can’t, it’d be great to have a second reference from another Shrew who’s managed it.”

  They sat quietly for a moment, letting the unsaid wish hang in the air. It was almost a plea for someone else to try and succeed.

  “I think you should trust your body,” Maria said solemnly. “Look what you’ve survived. What we’ve all survived.”

  “It’s hard to trust when you want something so much,” Dana said. “You’ll understand when you find someone who really does it for you. You’ll want to give him everything and create something together.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Maria said, and sank into her seat. She was quiet for a moment, then turned back to say, “Uh…you probably don’t want to hear this, but I think I left my gun back in Durham.”

  “Damn it.” Dana stood. “I’m going to go check the log and see what we packed that has the same caliber. I don’t know why I bother. You probably won’t even use it.”

  “The people I point it at will probably think the same thing. I’m just not a gun girl.”

  Dana groaned and eased back down the aisle. “You’re not going to be able to get close enough to everyone to strangle them, though.”

  “Fun trying sometimes.”

  Astrid grimaced at her friend’s morbid predilection, and followed Dana down the aisle. They came to a stop at the manly bottleneck near the rear. The Bears parted and let them through.

  Astrid slipped into the row in front of the Castillo brothers, studied both, and determined that her Castillo was the one at the window.

  Right. Mine. Not sure he agrees.

  She cleared her throat.

  He raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms over his chest. “¿Sí?”

  She looked at the watching men, who quickly averted their gazes and made themselves look busy.

  “Can I talk to you?”

  One dark blond brow crept up.

  “You understood me.”

  He nodded. “Sí.”

  Their gazes clashed for a long moment, and he just sat there staring as if he were waiting for her to talk. But, how could she?

  She held out a hand.

  He stared at it and looked at his brother, who elbowed him.

  Sighing, Fabian wrapped his fingers around hers.

  “Well, don’t do anything that repulses you.” It wasn’t like they’d shared a religious experience on the sofa that morning or anything.

  “I’m not repulsed.” He tightened his grip, and his forehead furrowed. “I just figured you’d want some space.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Just…intuition.”

  “You need to check your gut.”

  He made a non-committal noise. “Did you need something, or did you just want to chat? We were discussing strategy.”

  “Which is something I would have absolutely no experience with, right?”

  “I don’t mean it like that, only that Jacques is my problem.”

  She watched a lump travel down his throat and his nostrils flared.

  “Mine and Felipe’s,” he said.

  She wasn’t convinced.

  “So, we Shrews are just extra, huh? A means of transportation.”

  “You’re jumping to conclusions.”

  “That you’re building direct pathways to. All I’m doing is poking holes in your story like any good lawyer.”

  “What’s gotten into you?”

  She dropped his hand. “I could ask you the same thing.”

  His eyes narrowed as he made sense of her words, and she eased herself past Bryan and out into the aisle.

  Maybe that was all Fabian had wanted in the first place. A means to an end. Assistance reaping his revenge, and everything else was just noise.

  Well, fuck that. She wasn’t going to be just noise for a man ever again.

  * * *

  The Montana backcountry might as well have been Siberia as far as Fabian was concerned. At the moment, though, the icy temperatures on the private ranch they’d gotten permission to track Jacques across were far less bothersome than having to witness the congregation in front of him. For Astrid to supposedly have such pronounced disgust of Agent Marsh, she was certainly standing intimately close to him.

  Maybe she doesn’t even notice.

  She did seem a bit distracted. She gnawed on her cuticles and fondled the butt of her firearm as she watched Agent Rodriguez talk.

  It was evident Astrid wasn’t really listening as much as watching the other woman’s lips move. She’d been like that since they’d landed. He didn’t understand this emotion—this jealousy. He’d never had space for it in his life before. It made him irrational, and he didn’t know how to digest it.

  He scraped his hair back from his face. Fuck.

  Marsh rested a hand on her shoulder, and when she didn’t immediately pull away, he found his feet moving toward her and his hand at her waist.

  His. How dare Marsh touch her?

  No. Not his. She couldn’t be his. Still…

  “¿Estás bien, dragón?”

  She looked up. “Huh?”

  Marsh’s hand remained on her shoulder, and the agent raised a daring eyebrow at him.

  “Dragon.” Rodriguez laughed. “Do I even want to know?”

  “Dragon sounds about right,” Marsh said.

  Fabian pulled Astrid closer, and Marsh had no choice but to drop his hand. “No puedes llamarla así. Ese nombre is mío.”

  Marsh turned to Rodriguez. “What’d he say?”

  “He said that’s his nickname for her and we can’t use it.”

  His Shrew. His dragon.

  His friend.

  Not that guy’s.

  Maybe there was a bit of if
I can’t have her, no one can mixed up in that, but Fabian couldn’t help feeling petty.

  “Huh.” Marsh tipped his chin up at Fabian.

  Try me, asshole.

  Astrid let out a breath. She nudged Fabian’s hand away from her waist, but when he pressed his palm to her back, she allowed it to remain there.

  “Let’s get back to the discussion at hand, shall we? Here comes Dana now. We’ve always worked under the scope of the law when it comes to human targets, but the ones in our world—”

  “Your world?” Marsh interjected.

  Astrid’s body tensed, and she drew in a long inhale that seemed to relax her. She settled back against Fabian’s hand, increasing their contact. “Yes. Our world. The world that mutants and freaks live in. Don’t be dense, David. You know exactly what I’m talking about or else you and Rodriguez wouldn’t be in contact with Dana.”

  Dana joined the huddle at exactly that moment. “I heard my name. What about me?”

  Astrid canted her head toward Marsh. “I was just explaining to Marsh that sometimes the rules don’t apply when we’re dealing with beings who aren’t quite human.”

  “Meaning what?” Rodriguez asked. “I know what you ladies do in theory because my agency contacts let me into the loop, but they didn’t explain that the rules of engagement would be different.”

  Astrid scoffed. “Let’s put it this way. The Joker wouldn’t stop raising hell just because Commissioner Gordon or some other cop asked him nicely. Someone outside of the system always had to bring him down.”

  “You Batgirl now?” Marsh grinned.

  Fabian wanted to knock that smile right off his face. How dare he tease her?

  “Something like that,” Astrid muttered. She pulled away from Fabian and shoved her hands into her coat pockets. “You talk to them, Dana,” she called back, and headed toward Maria at one of the rented SUVs.

  Fabian had taken one step in her direction to follow when Rodriguez drew him back. “Mr. Castillo, should I assume you’re a little spooky, too? Just how many of you people aren’t quite human?”

  He groaned.

  Mierda.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Felipe Senior didn’t like that FBI agent standing so close to his son. Dios, his poor son. When he’d last saw him—before the boys had been split up—he’d been a fine, strapping man. This Fabian was a shadow of his former self, and Senior would always believe that it was all his fault.

  He shouldn’t have run all those years ago. If he hadn’t run off with his grief, his boys wouldn’t have been taken away.

  And if he hadn’t been such a goddamned coward, he would have stolen them back, Jacques and his guards be damned. He should have gone down fighting, the way he was sure his Jacqueline had. He couldn’t fix the past, but he could make some other people’s future a hell of a lot more pleasant. The troupe members’ quality of life would increase exponentially when Jacques was gone.

  First things first, though, Senior needed to figure out a way to reveal himself to his sons and their escorts. He’d expected the Shrews, but the rest of them—this entourage of brain and muscle, he hadn’t expected. His boys were in good hands, or at least the junior Felipe was. He knew what he had in Sarah.

  But Fabian…

  A brunette with bangs stood at the fringe of the group, talking to another woman whom seemed far too relaxed with the scenario. Occasionally, the brunette casted glances toward Fabian that he didn’t return because he was pretending to listen to that agent. Senior could tell he was only pretending because he looked at the brunette whenever she wasn’t looking at him.

  The agent was so desperate for his attention, but Fabian couldn’t possibly give it. He’d never be able to, because he was absolutely besotted with someone else. It was easy to tell because Senior had once experienced such a thing himself.

  When Castillo men fell, they fell hard, whether it was from a tightrope or trapeze, or in love.

  That boy was in love, and he was going to screw it up. Senior could taste it. A father could tell.

  “All right, señorita, why don’t you go get some coffee or something?”

  And like magic—or maybe God had finally heard one of Senior’s prayers after so many years—the agent held up an index finger and mouthed, “Be right back.” She headed toward the huge SUV she shared with her partner, and Senior made his move.

  He approached the group from the rear, carefully eased between the two Mr. Tolvajs.

  Good boys. Senior had always hoped they’d find a way out. They’d been kinder than the rest and were sweet to the old ladies.

  He skirted around a shapely blonde and the tall Native American man warming her in his embrace. He gave their cluster of gun-toting associates a wide berth, girded his spirit, and passed through his elder son.

  Felipe turned and looked around, panic evident in his eyes.

  Senior’s son knew that feeling—recognized it. He and Fabian had most certainly passed through each other on enough occasions for him not to.

  “¿Qué pasó?” Fabian asked, striding toward his brother.

  Senior capitalized on Fabian’s rare moment of separation from the clump of Shrews and agents and passed through him, too.

  Now Fabian did it—turned in a circle, looking all around, but seeing his brother hadn’t moved.

  They stared at each other and scanned the crowd around them.

  That’s right, boys. You know there’s someone else here.

  Felipe bobbed his head toward another large vehicle parked near the group, and whispered, “El camión.”

  Fabian nodded.

  They walked at a leisurely amble toward the SUV, and walked around to the passenger side. Felipe opened the door, but the boys didn’t get in.

  Fabian cleared his throat. “Papá?”

  Senior would have cried if he could, but invisible men had no tears. He’d have to shed them later, but he couldn’t believe his boys had held out hope. Maybe they’d seen the signs he’d left for them and had known he was still around…sometimes. He couldn’t bear to be around them all the time and not be able to touch them, talk to them. He’d always have to pull back, and make plans to return again, hoping he’d finally be able to take down Jacques, but he’d never been able to do it on his own. He’d been fooling himself for thinking he could do such a thing in the first place.

  Phasing back into skin and bone was a difficult feat, and was becoming more and more so with each passing day. He feared that now that all the Castillo men had reunited, he’d only have a short time to embrace them.

  Maybe this was his penance for being such a shit father. He was invisible to them for so long, now that he wanted them to see him, they wouldn’t be able to.

  He blew out a breath and opened his eyes to his sons taking steps back from him.

  “…no es possible,” Fabian said.

  “It’s possible. This is what happens when you forget you’re a man and not air. You don’t change very much when you don’t spend much time in your own skin.”

  Senior heard the gun hammer cock before he heard the newcomer sneaking up on him. He turned, slowly, with his hands up, and Dana’s dark eyes went round.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Your informant. Felipe Castillo.”

  She brought the gun up to his chest level and cocked her head to the side.

  She probably wouldn’t shoot him, but he understood the rationale of her threat.

  “The senior Felipe Castillo. I am their father. As you can see, they are as surprised as you are.”

  “You can’t be their father, unless Spanish men start having children when they’re eight.”

  “I was a lot older than eight. Listen, you’ll understand because you’re like me, sí? You don’t follow all the rules of biology and physics. You exist the way you do because something happened to you that caused your body to defy nature’s laws. I was born this way, as were my boys, but the thing about being the embodiment of air is that sometimes you cont
rol it, and sometimes it controls you. I controlled it for a long time, and then I lost my grip. I didn’t want to be grounded in this reality, and so I let the wind control me. This is the price I pay for it. I age just like you when I have my feet on the ground, but when I hide…”

  “You don’t age,” she finished.

  He nodded. “Same is true for them, but I imagine they don’t spend so much time being blown around like me.”

  She lowered the gun, slowly, never taking her attention off him. “You…you want to kill Jacques, don’t you? That’s what my gut says.”

  “I am sure there are a lot of people who wish for the same thing. I will get my revenge on him, but the safety of the remaining troupe members is most important. The children, there are so many. So many more than when I was walking the tightrope with Jacqueline. None of us would have wanted our children with us. We would have passed them off. Hidden them away.” And he laughed, and it sounded dry. Hysterical.

  What good had hiding his boys had done him? Jacques had found them anyway. Hell, he’d probably followed him and waited for Senior to get far enough away so he could swoop in at just the right time to spirit them off.

  Felipe set a tentative hand on his father’s shoulder and squeezed. His hand felt so firm and solid, and Senior could only hope he felt nearly as present as his son.

  Dana lowered her gun and tucked it into the holster inside her duster. “You did the right thing, calling us.”

  “I wanted to do it alone, but convincing people one at a time whenever I could catch up to the troupe wasn’t enough. They’d defect, and Jacques would replace them within a blink of the eye.”

  “It’s like fighting a hydra,” Felipe said, and he translated the past few exchanges for Fabian.

  “Ah,” Fabian said, nodding. “Cut off one head, and two more grow back in its place,” he said in Spanish.