City of Crows Books 1-3 Box Set

by Clara Coulson

  “Well…I agree with the last two words in that statement.”

  And away we go.

  Chapter Eighteen

  My trip to the fifth floor isn’t supposed to be a walk of shame.

  But since God loves to laugh at me…

  After I let Cooper out near the cafeteria, so he can grab some lunch, I arrive at the floor where I usually work. There’s no one marching through the halls, like I would expect this time of day, so I saunter down to Riker’s office unhindered. Only to find said office empty.

  The desk, which Ella has been helping the captain clean up for the past few weeks, has finally been cleared of the massive paper and folder stacks that used to decorate every available inch. To my surprise, I also spot Riker’s pain medication, the little orange bottle lined up with a stapler and a box of paper clips. I’m not sure how Ella’s been coaching the captain out of his depression, but Marcus was at least partially correct back at Jameson’s.

  The old Captain Riker is returning at last.

  I close the office door and backtrack down the hallway, wondering where the heck everyone is. Navarro didn’t mention there was a task meeting in a progress, but it’s possible Riker, or maybe Commissioner Bollinger, called one at the last minute.

  With that in mind, I turn the corner and head toward the opposite wing of the Criminal Investigations Division. As I’m passing the row of elevators again, the one on the far left dings, and the doors open when I’m right in front of the box.

  A shaggy-haired man in his early thirties stands inside, texting something on his phone. He hits send and looks up to see me staring at him. I’m staring at him because he’s definitely not DSI, dressed in ratty jeans, worn rubber snow boots, and a camo hunting coat that has seen better days.

  Blinking at me, like he wasn’t expecting any DSI agents to meet him on a floor of the DSI building, he stuffs his phone in a coat pocket and says, “Oh, hello there. I didn’t realize they’d send someone to greet me…”

  Confusion crosses his face, and his lips twist into a frown. He examines me closely, gaze lingering on the stark white bandages that poke out of my sleeves and collar, the bruising and swelling on my face and neck, the obvious lean to my posture, favoring the leg with the less serious bone fracture. I don’t know who this man is, but he figures out who I am in about six seconds. And then, so much color drains from his face that he’d probably turn invisible if he jumped into a snowdrift.

  “Christ,” he says. “Are you Cal Kinsey? The kidnap victim?”

  I almost cross my arms, but the motion jars a couple ribs, so I drop my hands to my sides. “Yeah, that’s me. Who the heck are you?”

  “Vincent Wallace.” He exits the elevator with slow, careful steps, like he’s afraid the lightest shift of air might blow me to pieces. “Representative of the United Lycanthrope Congress, Eighth District of Michigan—Aurora.”

  Every aching muscle in my body tenses simultaneously. “You’re a werewolf,” I reply, in a less than friendly manner.

  Wallace cringes. “Yes, I am. Which, I imagine, means you’d rather not interact with me right now.”

  “Sorry if that’s a bit prejudiced,” I say through clenched teeth.

  Wallace situates himself in the middle of the hallway, a somewhat comfortable distance away from me. He runs a hand through his messy hair before he speaks. “Look, I know sorry isn’t going to cut it, and that you probably have a thousand and one angry things you want to spit at me right now. And you have every right to say those things because, yes, monitoring Wolf dissidents in my district is my responsibility, and the fact that I didn’t pick up on McKinney’s virtual terrorist group operating under my nose makes me a pathetic failure. I understand. If you would like to scream at me, and possibly punch me in the face—after your hands heal—I readily invite you to do so, Detective Kinsey. At a time that is convenient for the both of us.”

  I stare at him, waiting for the punch line. Then I realize he’s serious. “Dude. Did you really just give me permission to beat you up?”

  “It’s the least I can do, after what you went through.” Wallace shrugs. “Your captain gave me a very thorough lecture regarding your injuries during our phone call earlier.” He purses his lips. “Good god, I can’t believe I didn’t notice a group of literal psychopaths working right next to me at community events.” A humorless laugh. “Guess I won’t be winning reelection, huh?”

  The glaring contrast between this man and McKinney strikes me so hard in the gut that all my budding anger dissipates in an instant. Of course. Not all werewolves are violent nutcases. You know that, Cal.

  Wolves are known for being more aggressive than humans, as a consequence of their altered biology, but they aren’t incapable of reason, and they certainly aren’t incapable of being nice when the situation calls for it. They have families and friends, like everyone else.

  I say, “I’m not going to hit you, Wallace. Or scream at you.”

  Wallace picks up on the fact I’ve calmed down, his enhanced Wolf eyes scrutinizing my now relaxed posture. “Oh? Are you sure? Wouldn’t blame you.”

  “I’m sure.” I offer him my hand.

  “Ah. Well, then…” He gives a quick shake, trying not to hurt me. “It’s nice to meet you, I guess. Though I wish it was under much better circumstances.” He pinches the bridge of his nose and starts pacing back and forth across the hall. “When that Captain Delarosa visited me a few days ago, I thought this was a case about one Wolf who had some kind of drug deal go wrong. Then I got word McKinney’s crew attacked DSI and kidnapped people. The next thing I knew, I had the ICM, DSI, and the mayor’s office breathing down my neck.”

  “Did they think you were involved with McKinney?”

  “I’m the local rep, so I’m assumed a guilty party in every significant Wolf crime that takes place in Aurora. Until proven otherwise.” A bitter smile cuts into his stubbly cheeks. “That’s the downside of being a prominent member of a not-quite-stable government formed less than a decade ago. No one trusts us not to revert to the old, warring pack mentality at the drop of a hat.”

  “Man, that…sucks.” Now I kind of feel bad for this guy. If I got painted with a black mark every time a human being committed a crime, I’d be a nervous, depressed wreck—oh. I guess that explains his disheveled appearance.

  “It does suck.” He rubs his chin, contemplative. “But that’s what I signed up for. Somebody had to bite the silver bullet.” Tugging his phone out of his pocket again, he checks the time. “I best be getting on to the meeting. Are you coming as well?”

  “Didn’t know there was a meeting. I was about to go check the task room—looking for my captain.”

  “You weren’t invited?” He maneuvers around me and starts walking backward in the direction of the task room. “I thought you’d be the star of the meeting.”

  “Yeah, no. I’m supposed to go home and rest for a week.”

  “Oh, right.” He gestures to my bandages, and my face, and pretty much all of me. “Human. Slow healing. Forget that sometimes.”

  Not as slow as you might think, buddy.

  “Born Wolf?” I ask him.

  “Indeed.” He points a thumb over his shoulder. “You coming?”

  “Yeah, of course.” I shuffle after him down the hall, chewing on the idea of giving my statement about the kidnapping—about Liam—to a roomful of people. It would have been hard enough to sit in that chair in front of Riker’s desk and recount four days of torture to only my captain and teammates. I’m honestly not sure I can tell the whole story without breaking out into tears, and sobs, and maybe even some hyperventilating.

  Crying in public is not my favorite activity.

  But, if I manage to fill in any crucial holes in the case…I guess the embarrassment will be worth it.

  Wallace, a few paces ahead of me, reaches the task room door first and knocks. I limp to a stop behind him as the door is squeaking open to reveal Ramirez on the other side. Ah. Delarosa’s team must h
ave been taken off the Jameson case after Liam’s body was found—which explains why Delarosa didn’t come to my get well shindig yesterday. He was off grieving. His teammates, who did show up, didn’t look so hot either (though I didn’t say anything about it at the time). Losses always hit captains the hardest, I think, remembering Riker’s behavior in the wake of Bishop’s death.

  Ramirez looks from Wallace to me and does a double take. “Kinsey?” he hisses. “What the hell are you doing here? You’re supposed to be lying half dead in a hospital bed.”

  “Thanks for your concern,” I say flatly. “But I’ve been discharged from the infirmary.”

  “Really?” Ramirez gawps at my bruised face, disbelieving, then shakes his head. “Well, discharged or not, I hope you don’t think you’re heading back into the field anytime soon.”

  “Ramirez, I might be a bit stupid, but I’m not delusional. I’m just here to tell you guys the whole kidnapping story, for which I assume you are missing key facts that only I can provide. After I fill you in, I’m heading straight home. To rest. And relax. Blah. Blah. Blah.” I raise my right hand. “Promise.”

  The captain eyes me suspiciously. “Navarro say you could?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hm.” He thinks on it for a second and sighs. “All right. But it’s a circus in here. So, prepare yourself.” His attention hops to Wallace. “You too. Lot of angry people wanting answers about this so-called Wolf terrorist group.”

  Wallace dons a resigned smile. He wasn’t expecting anything better.

  Ramirez opens the door fully, revealing a task room more crowded than I’ve ever seen it. All the chairs at the table are filled, and there are people lined up against the walls, not a free space among them. Riker sits at the head of the table, the conference phone in front of him; he must be planning to bring someone on the line. My team is seated to Riker’s right, with Ramirez’s squad opposite them.

  As Wallace and I stride into the room, three dozen heads turn to check us out. The Wolf is almost completely ignored as every shocked gaze sticks to my face, gasps rippling across the room in a domino effect of recognition.

  Riker drops a pen he was holding and stands up so fast it must hurt his damaged leg. “Cal, what do you thin—?”

  Ramirez raises his hand. “It’s fine, Captain. I vetted him. He’s just here to talk.”

  Riker clenches his fists, then relents. “Very well. You want to discuss the kidnapping, I assume?”

  I nod.

  Harmony Burgess pushes her chair back and rises. “You can have my seat, Kinsey.”

  “Oh, no,” I say. “You don’t need to—”

  “Cal!” she snaps. “Sit down. You look like a century-old zombie. And I refuse to be held responsible if your limbs start falling off while you’re in the middle of story time.”

  Half the people in the room snort. The other half outright laugh.

  “Thanks, Harmony. Your supportive comments are always appreciated.” I hobble over to her chair and plop down. A little too hard. My breath comes out with an oomph as my ribs protest.

  “My point exactly.” Harmony rolls her eyes and backs up to the wall, squeezing in between two lower-level detectives.

  Ramirez reclaims his own chair next to me. “She’s got you there, Kinsey. You really are in rough—”

  “Enough,” Riker says, hands pressed against the table. He casts a look over my head, at the werewolf still loitering near the door. “I assume you’re Mr. Wallace?”

  “Yes, Captain,” Wallace replies.

  “Good.” Riker surveys the room. “Everyone’s here then. Plus one extra.” I lift both my hands in a What can you do? gesture, which Riker blatantly ignores. He continues with, “We’ve got a lot of material to cover in this meeting, and not a lot of time to cover it. There’s another snowstorm blowing in tonight, and I want boots on the ground as long as possible before the conditions get too severe to work in. Which is why I pushed this meeting up two hours on the schedule. Sorry for the late notice.” He finally retakes his seat, and then he gestures to me. “Now, let’s get this show on the road.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  By the time I finish my account of the kidnapping and my time in the torture shack, four people have left the room, sick to their stomachs, eight are openly crying, and the rest are staring silently at random places on the floor, as if someone ripped their souls out through their mouths. The worst part of it all is that I didn’t even discuss the nitty-gritty details, like how many times McKinney jabbed me with the cattle prod, or the fact that Liam was crying when he died. The mere fact that I have to count with my nail-less fingers as I list off the torture methods McKinney used against me (including the threat to chop off those fingers) is enough to drop the yokes of guilt atop everyone’s shoulders.

  As I’m wrapping up my last few sentences—about Lassiter dropping me off at the lobby—I try to think of a way to make everyone feel better. But I feel like I failed, too, letting Liam get killed on my watch. So how can I convince others to discard their guilt when I can’t even convince myself that my damnable pride didn’t result in the murder of an innocent man? If you’d only excused yourself from the case after you nearly crashed your truck…

  Ramirez nudges my arm with his elbow and offers me something under the table: a box of tissues. Because yes, I’m one of the eight people crying. I grab two tissues from the box and quickly dab at my wet face. Then I drop my hand to the table and crumple the soiled tissues in my fist. Clearing my throat, I close my retelling of the worst four days of my life thus far by saying, “I assume you all know the rest of my story, since most of you smothered me with candy and flowers in the infirmary yesterday.”

  Those words lighten the mood by an infinitesimal amount, but it’s enough to win a few smiles.

  Riker allows a moment of silence, for Liam’s sake, and then he picks up where I left off. “Okay, so I see three important mysteries remaining. First, why did McKinney join forces with Slate and Halliburton, even though he didn’t trust the ICM to make good on the arrangement? What was so important about this summoning that McKinney was willing to risk the life of his own lieutenant to ensure it happened? Second, who is the ‘owl man,’ per Cal’s words, and why did he involve himself in McKinney’s affairs to save Cal’s life? What stake does he have in the Jameson murders or the associated summoning attempt? Third, who and where is McKinney’s injured collaborator, the one who escaped from the construction site?” Riker taps his pen on the sheet of notes he made while I was talking, and then looks up at the roomful of agents expectantly. “Anyone?”

  Vincent Wallace, who slumped to the floor in horror sometime during my statement, speaks up. “The ME called me on my way over here and said her preliminary findings indicated the man who burned to death at the construction site was likely Asian.”

  “Zhang,” I say. “Which means Donahue is the one who got away.”

  Wallace shakily rises and tugs out his phone. “If you like, I can spread the word to the Wolf community to be on the lookout for Donahue. He might try to find refuge at someone’s home.”

  Ella, at Riker’s right hand, replies, “Can we be sure that the other members of the community will turn him in?”

  Wallace’s expression sours. “Not all the Wolves in Aurora are members of McKinney’s crew, Detective Dean. While McKinney has never expressed any terroristic tendencies until now—openly, at least—he’s been running with the same people for several years. A group of about twenty, the bulk of which are currently in the holding cells in your basement.” He clicks his tongue in a reproving manner. “I imagine the few that got away have skipped town already.”

  Amy scratches at the small blue cast on her arm (she must’ve ditched the sling) and speaks up. “You didn’t find it odd that McKinney had a gang?”

  “I didn’t find it odd that McKinney had a pack,” Wallace retorts. “Even though we have the Republic now, many Wolves do like to emulate the old traditions, including the formation of pac
k-sized community groups. The majority of these groups act as volunteer organizations, focused on helping Wolf families in need. A smaller number parade around like biker gangs—they look tough on the outside, but all they do is ride motorcycles and get drunk on the weekends. Very few of these groups have shown any violent tendencies. And even fewer have had significant criminal activity since the second election cycle put the Labor Party in power.”

  Wallace begins scrolling through the contacts in his phone. “My point is, Detective, that I had no reason to suspect McKinney was anything but another alpha male type with some groupies. He never demonstrated any anti-ICM sentiments publicly. I’ve seen him probably ten times in the past six months, at rallies, at the community center, at birthday parties. If you hadn’t found his corpse at the construction site, I’m not sure I would have believed your claim that he was an insane, anti-human psychopath, willing to torture innocents.”

  “Is that so?” Riker rests his chin on his hands. “To me, that says McKinney and his cohorts were making a concentrated effort to hide their illicit activities, whatever they were. If Martinez hadn’t bitten the dust at the bar and grill, McKinney wouldn’t have shown his hand until this mysterious summoning went down. And perhaps not even then, since he was distancing his own name from the scheme by using Martinez as his proxy.” The captain mulls over the possibilities. “Amy, can you and Agent Sheehan discuss the emails you found at Slate’s townhouse? I heard you finished reviewing them.”

  “Sure, boss.” Amy sits up straight, that army posture again, and nods at analyst Clarissa Sheehan, a couple seats farther down the table. Sheehan leafs through several papers in a manila folder and pulls out what looks like a printed list. She passes the paper to the person next to her, Desmond, who then dangles it over Amy’s head, far too high for her to reach.