by Elsa, Sandra
I returned to Harrison and pulled him after me, aware of the cluster of men staring after us. "First kill is the hardest you'll ever do," I told Harrison. "Technically it's not your first, but it was the first with intent. Only one of them was dead. I need you to snap out of it and send those men by the boardwalk a message. I've seen you blow out car tires so I know you can do precise, just spray them with sand."
He blinked, then spun and did what I requested. The men scattered and we hurried back to the Italian restaurant we'd been sitting outside earlier. None of the teenagers were anywhere to be seen and we became one more couple fleeing to the safety of the boardwalk in the wake of gunshots.
"A touch of illusion when we ditch these hats would be a good thing. At least two of them have followed us back this far."
"Yes…of course…" We stood by a trash can and shed the hats.
I concentrated on controlling my null field and Harrison applied illusion. "Did it work?" I asked him. We'd played around with this since the first time I’d managed to allow him to alter the appearance of the car, but it was still a touch and go kind of effort.
He gave me a grim smile and said, "Let's get inside, blondie. I don't know how long I can hold it."
Sirens began wailing and flashing lights flickered off the tall hotels as Hummers made their way onto the beach. I wondered how many of the thugs were still there. Most of the ones I took out should have been mobile enough to disappear. Harrison's would no doubt still be lying there, unless somebody carted them off. We walked up the stairs and into the darkened interior of the restaurant. The moment the hostess turned to show us to our seats I nodded at Harrison and he dropped the disguises. Sweat beaded on his brow and he looked at me with relief as his hair once again shone moon-spun gold.
The hostess paused, disconcerted, when she waved us into a booth, but after a quick glance around, she shook her head and seated us. We ate slowly and by the time we left, Harrison had recovered his composure. I had Harrison clothe himself in the illusion of jeans and a button-up shirt. I snatched a white wrap off the coat rack and threw it over my shoulders and we strolled back toward the Jonah Hotel. I watched for tails but it would seem we had come away clean. Note to self-- don't be so in love you get yourself in stupid situations again. Sex is good, a pulse is better.
There were two troopers at the front desk of the hotel and we wrapped our arms around each other’s waists and leaned our heads together as we ambled by them, headed for the elevators. A brief snatch of the conversation confirmed the troopers were searching for us. "They were seen entering this establishment earlier this afternoon. Try Bromer."
"Sir, I'm sorry we don't have anybody registered by any of those names."
I wondered if Jerry had registered us under his real name or if Trooper Ralston hadn't been paying enough attention to memorize the Terry Dunston name. We didn't bother to wait around to find out. Interesting, I hadn't noticed a tail as we selected a hotel. I wondered if it had been a Were in natural form because it hadn't been a car following us.
The elevator door opened as one of the troopers said, "Ma'am their vehicle is parked outside. They must be registered."
The frustrated clerk said, "I'm sorry, Sir. I'd help you if I could, but I only came on shift two hours ago and I can only tell you what I see on the computer."
The elevator doors slid closed and we sagged against the walls as we traveled to the top floor. "How do they know it was us?" Harrison asked.
"You're registered. Using your talent is like leaving behind DNA. I wouldn't have asked you to if I thought I could handle all of them on my own. Hopefully none of the wounded or dead were undercover detectives."
"What will we do?"
"Let them spin on it awhile, hope they figure out exactly what happened, then keep our appointment to use the range tomorrow and see what the fallout is."
Disbelief shone in his expression. "Just like that?"
"Running from the watch only makes you look guilty."
"We are guilty."
"We're allowed to defend ourselves. Only two dead and one of them wasn’t killed by either of us. I'd be willing to bet the troopers have been trying to take him down so they probably won't care a whole lot. All in all, a successful evening."
"And what if the man I killed was undercover?"
The elevator arrived at the top floor without being stopped to pick up other passengers. "That would be bad. But it's only a very slim chance. Somebody from the watch isn't likely to put himself where he might actually harm a civilian and those on the front line didn't have our best interests at heart. More likely if there was one, he would have been wielding a chain or a dagger."
"I bow to your knowledge and I'm going to spend the night convincing myself the dead man was scum."
"No you're not," I told him, rubbing my shoulder against his. "You're going to forget all about the beach and enjoy the first night of our honeymoon. No matter what I have to do to convince you to have fun."
His smile appeared for the first time since the beach. "That sounds promising, but I’m really on edge. Might take a lot of work to calm me down." The rumbling purr of his voice said he was already putting it behind him.
#
We met Terry for lunch the next day at a boardwalk café. We'd both donned sunglasses, but stopped at a tourist shack to buy baseball caps with appropriate touristy slogans. Terry spent the previous afternoon on the beach and managed to meet a woman. When he asked about our evening, we strolled away from the café to tell him about it before we showed up at the range and had to answer questions. We sat on a bench with our fries and he stared at us in dumbfounded disbelief. "I can't leave you two alone for five minutes."
"It's not like we planned it."
"So what do we do now?" His jaw hung even further when I told him we went to the range to practice. I explained my reasoning but he shook his head. "Can you just leave me out of it? For all I know Jordan has a warrant out for my arrest, I'd rather not get caught up in something I had nothing to do with."
"No problem. I'll just tell them you have a hot date."
After lunch, we made our way to the watch precinct. Ralston and Gerrill were waiting by the steps. Gerrill managed to keep his weapon holstered as they strode over to the car. I took that to be a good sign.
"Good afternoon, Mr Kendrel; Mrs. Kendrel. We weren't sure you'd show up today," Trooper Ralston's voice was nothing but southern hospitality.
"We had an appointment, didn’t we?" I asked him, wondering how long it would take him to get around to asking about the beach.
"You brought your weapons?"
"Only two. Terry had a date. He decided learning to protect himself wasn't that important."
"Did you bring your nine-millimeter?"
My weapons were registered and the ballistic pattern etched forever in a database at watch HQ. "I suppose you checked ballistics?" I opened my jacket and let him stretch forward to draw my nine from its holster.
He held it between thumb and index finger, the fact that he didn't bother with a glove told me there wasn't too much to worry about. "Yes ma'am and your husband has a distinct magical signature, although Sergeant Kallas claims neither of you can possibly have magic as you have no auras. Would you care to explain what happened last night?" Trooper Gerrill held a plastic evidence bag and Ralston deposited my weapon in it.
"We wandered off the beaten trail watching the ocean, not the beach. By the time I made an off-hand comment about the kids smoking things they shouldn't, we had a much larger audience than I’d been aware of. I've never been an easy target."
He nodded his head as though what I said was what he expected to hear. "And then you went to eat dinner?"
"We were hungry. One of the watch trailed us to the restaurant?"
"Yes, but he lost you inside. Of course he didn't see you well on the beach and the description he gave after you dropped the hats didn't match your actual descriptions."
"Only one detective? Or did he have a par
tner? Two people followed us that far."
"Only one was ours. I'm going to guess you used illusion? If you lost our man, you probably lost the other as well."
"We did."
"And you didn't think it might be a good idea to stick around and answer questions last night?"
"Nope. Figured we'd let you boys calm down a little and read it for what it was. I've done my time answering questions when nobody wants to believe me. I'm on my honeymoon. I wasn't spending the night here in your precinct building no matter how homey it may be. I assume since this is a calm discussion the dead men were not somebody anybody cared about."
"No. Our man hung back. He would have helped you if it'd been needed, but you seemed to have it under control so he maintained his cover."
I looked him in the eye and shook my head. "No, he didn't. I’ll claim his kill, but one of the gunshot victims wasn't mine. The wound was through and through but the deceased was Were. Somewhere out there on that beach somebody will find a silver bullet."
He gave a wry grimace. "Hopefully it's in the water. Please follow me." He led us around to the back of the building, through a basement door and down a set of steps.
The slightly grungy man with shoulder length brown hair in need of washing, and dark circles under his eyes sat at a desk drumming his fingers in an impatient rhythm. He stared as we emerged from the stairwell. Then stood and came out from behind his desk. "Mr. and Mrs. Kendrel?" He extended his hand.
I shook it. "Frankie. Guess we owe you our thanks?"
"Detective Allen, and I was kinda thinking it was the other way around."
"I wasn't prepared to deal with a Were,” I said. “Most of those I know struggle to be so polite I don't often carry silver except on my blades."
"I'd been looking for a way to get rid of him for months. Figured last night's melee was as good a chance as I was going to get without blowing my cover. Everybody was watching the two of you; I was just one more gun in the crowd."
"Well then, all’s well that ends well?"
"How many did you shoot last night?"
"Four. All of them alive enough they may have run or hopped off."
"One did. I knew I should have stayed there, damn it. But I didn't want anybody sneaking up on my mystery civilians."
"Did the men Harrison took out, survive the night?"
"One dead at the scene. Three in intensive care. Probably won't walk again, but they'll live."
Harrison squeezed me tight. I knew their fate had bothered him. Detective Allen noted the motion. "First kill?"
"Second," I told him, "but the first wasn't intentional."
"You just have to let it go," he said to Harrison. "What you did last night was a good thing. It protected yourself and your wife and the man you killed is a known drug dealer wanted for questioning in the disappearance of several tourists."
"Disappearance?"
"Probably what would have happened to you last night if you hadn't been more than capable of defending yourselves. I wouldn't have been able to help you much, even if I’d been willing to blow my cover." He nodded at my cast. "How long ago did you break your leg?"
I raised my head and closed my eyes, counting backwards. How long ago had it been? "Two weeks?" I looked at Harrison. Not nearly as long as it seemed.
He nodded agreement with my estimation.
"Bad break?" The detective pursued his line of questioning.
"Couple of screws holding my ankle together."
"Nowhere near long enough to lose the cast. You might want to ask the doctors if they can make it less noticeable. More than one of those who ran away last night took note of it. We're authorized to assign a protection detail to you if you feel you need it."
"We'll see what the doc can do for me. If I can lose the cast we should be all right. Nobody saw us that well in the dark and they shouldn't have access to the mage registry."
"In the interest of Mr. Kendrel's safety we contacted the registry, to make sure the signature would be unavailable if anybody else went looking for it."
I rolled my eyes and leaned back against Harrison. "There's a conversation I wouldn't want to be part of. It's probably all my fault too."
Harrison kissed my neck, back on familiar ground, dealing with his father. "It is all your fault." I could hear the smile in his voice. "If you weren't so beautiful, I never would have been tempted out of District Seven."
"Hah! You'd been tempted out long before I came along."
"Well, I wouldn't have stayed."
"Did the registry reassure the unfortunate who got to place that call, that the matter would be dealt with?"
"In no uncertain terms, apparently. The head of the registry conferenced the call, I believe the president’s words were something along the lines of ‘that bitch had better not get my son killed.’ It's all the gossip upstairs. But apparently he's handling his end of making sure you're untraceable."
I laughed. "No way. That's at least three times in two weeks he's lost it. I feel honored to be the source of his frustration."
"He asked if we needed his help cleaning up the mess we have down here, which is a tempting offer, we could certainly use more unknown people. I transferred here from District Three-Twenty-Four a couple months back, that's the only reason I've survived undercover. We have a small precinct, for what used to be a quiet district. The members of the watch are pretty well-known by everybody."
"Are we about through here? I really did want to hit the range before my doctor's appointment this afternoon."
"You already had an appointment?"
"I have sand in it, or something god-awful itchy and I wanted to be able to swim. Made the appointment as soon as we got here."
"Well that's fortunate timing, but since some of the men you used for target practice may be in orthopedics you might want to use illusion, or whatever you did last night to slip away from me."
"Good thought, Detective."
"Where are you staying? In case anybody needs to get hold of you?"
I hesitated and glanced back at Harrison, then leaned forward and wrote my old phone number on a slip of paper. "I'm not likely to answer immediately but I’ll get a message at this number."
"Good enough," he said. "Will you be staying in our district long?"
"That's debatable. We certainly weren't planning to get in a muddle straight out and we really didn't want President Drover to know where we went. If he was called last night, he probably already sent someone to tail us around. If his man drove straight through he'd be here already, so we might as well stay now…unless anybody from last night's party starts looking at us. If the newsnet gets hold of the fact we're here we'll have to leave. Probably won't take the thugs long to figure out that the president's son is a talented mage and I'm betting you don't have many mages here who could do anything close to what Harrison did last night."
"You'd win that bet. We have Trooper Gerrill and Sergeant Kallas but as far as we know, none of the civilians have a lick of magic. At least, neither Gerrill or Kallas has been able to detect them."
"So there are a lot of factors that enter into whether or not we remain. I'm staying at least long enough to swim in the ocean. But there are other destinations for a honeymoon." I turned to where Trooper Ralston waited patiently by the door. "Are we still on for the range?"
"Captain detailed us to stay with you as long as you desire our company."
"So who's watching the road?"
"Captain figures after last night's fun and games it will probably be awhile before they decide to move anything again. They're probably trying to figure out who we brought in to take them down."
"Well let's go shoot some targets."
Detective Allen offered his hand again. "Have a good day, Frankie; Mr. Kendrel."
I returned his firm handshake. "Pleasure meeting you, Detective."
He stretched back in his chair, placed his feet on his desk, and closed his eyes as Harrison and I followed Trooper Ralston out of the basement.
Gerrill met us at the top of the stairs. "When can I expect my weapon back?"
"They'll be through with it before we're done at the range, Ma'am."
"You keep Ma'amming me and we're not going to get along, Trooper. Name's Frankie, or you can call me Mrs. Kendrel. Just because you're a young punk doesn't mean you have to act like I'm over the hill."
"Just being polite, Ma'--" My frown changed his words. "Mrs. Kendrel. Wouldn't ever imply you were over the hill."
We spent the next couple hours on the range. Harrison had been doing all right practicing during our stops on the trip here. He improved considerably with a controlled environment and targets so he could easily see how well, or poorly he had shot. Trooper Gerrill signed out a forty-five for me to use. He fired on the lane next to the one I occupied and eagerly compared targets every time we reloaded. He was good. I was better. A fact which seemed to strengthen his politeness.
"I'm guessing you meant to just wing all those men last night?"
"I try not to kill. Can't always be avoided though."
"You're pretty awesome, Frankie."
"So I've been told."
Harrison put his weapon down, slid his hearing protection back to dangle on his neck and joined the conversation, wrapping his arms around me, leaning his chin on my shoulder. "Mostly by me. You should see the weapons she has back at our house."
I grinned at him. "Everybody thinks I'm awesome. Everybody but your father anyway."
Trooper Ralston joined us, unable to hide his interest as I mentioned Harrison's father.
Harrison returned my grin. "He thinks you're awesome too. You just frustrate him because not only can he not control you, but all the people that fall at your feet, like me and Mom, and your dad, slink out of his control as well. If he could control you, he'd think you were the perfect daughter-in-law."
"Even if I do lead his son into firefights on the beach?"
"We were walking side by side. Nobody led anybody anywhere."