Veiled Menace

by Deborah Blake

  Calling Moore a friend was something of an exaggeration. Or an outright lie. They’d first butted heads when Donata had possession of the Pentacle Pentimento and Clement Moore showed up on her doorstep to demand she hand it over to the Alliance. Their relationship had gone downhill from there.

  It had undoubtedly hit rock bottom when she’d threatened to arrest the team he’d sent to take the painting back by force. Or shoot them, depending on the results of a coin toss. But hell, she’d had a really bad day. Moore had probably forgiven her by now. Maybe.

  Either way, she had no doubt he would be happy to see her companion. If the Council was as concerned about the increased unrest among the Paranormal races as Celestina had said, getting a chance to interrogate one of the people responsible just might take Donata off Moore’s shit list. It wasn’t exactly a wine and flowers apology, but it would have to do.

  She had the limo driver pull into the underground garage at the building on Hudson Street that housed the Alliance offices for the region. If she wanted to keep a low profile, walking in the front door with a handcuffed prisoner wasn’t the best way to go about it.

  The armed attendant manning the gate into the interior came to attention when she flashed her badge and gave him Clement Moore’s name and a brief description of why she was there. They waited, car idling silently, as the guard checked in with someone upstairs. When he returned, he addressed her respectfully, pressing the button to lift the gate and waving them through.

  “Your driver can wait in the cafeteria on the first floor, Officer Santori,” the guard said crisply. “Mr. Moore requests that you and your guest join him in interrogation room three. That’s on level four B. Please use the elevator on the left—it is the only one that goes down.”

  Donata nodded and the driver put the car into gear and drove slowly into the depths of the garage, eventually parking them as close to the elevators as he could find a spot. Donata didn’t blame him; even with the bright florescent lights overhead, the place was creepy as all hell.

  Her prisoner looked positively yellow by the time the doors slid open before them. That might have been the lighting, but she doubted it. Most people who went into the lower levels of the Council building involuntarily didn’t come back out again. At least not under their own steam. Or with all their body parts in the places they’d started out.

  Donata shoved down a twinge of pity. The man had been about to lead a bunch of innocents to slaughter, and probably incite them to take a whole lot more along with them. He deserved whatever he got. She pushed him into the tiny metal space and depressed the button marked 4. The elevator shuddered to life, descending soundlessly into the bowels of the structure.

  At the lowest level, the doors slid open again, revealing two extremely large and well-armed men wearing Council black. An escort; how nice.

  She nodded at the men and the four of them headed down a featureless corridor. The flat gray carpet kept their feet from echoing, but there was still a cavernous feel to the space, as if one could walk forever and never find the end. A shiver ran down her spine as she guided her prize with one hand on his bicep. His face was impassive, but she could feel his body trembling.

  Donata reminded herself that at least this time, she wasn’t the one Moore was after. Thank the gods. But she’d still be happy when she was back out in the fresh air, with all her limbs attached.

  At the entrance to interrogation room three, one of the matched pair of security guards rapped a meaty fist against the door.

  “Come,” a voice said from inside.

  Once within the room, the men stepped to the sides of the doorway, living statues with really large guns. Donata walked up to the man who sat on the far end of the table that took up most of the room, dragging her reluctant companion with her.

  Clement Moore looked up from a thick file, his urbane and polished air looking out of place in what was clearly a kissing cousin to a dungeon.

  “Ah, Officer Santori. How delightful.” He stood up and bowed slightly. “And you’ve brought me a present. Isn’t that kind?” He pulled out a chair and Donata shoved the rabble-rouser into it, uncuffing his hands and recuffing them to the metal back of the chair in one smooth motion.

  “Anything for you, Mr. Moore,” Donata said, almost managing to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “I live to serve.”

  The small dapper man ignored her tone, as usual. “Indeed, so you do,” he said seriously. “As do we all.”

  Donata rolled her eyes. “I assume you got my message about this charmer,” she said, having called and spoken to Moore’s assistant on the drive over. “He was doing his best to inflame a bunch of gullible Paranormals over at my brother-in-law John Turner’s company. I thought you might like to have a little word with him about who put him up to it.” She gave the charmer in question a sharklike smile as she made her way around the table to sit down in a chair opposite him. He flinched.

  Moore slid smoothly back into his own seat. “Oh, yes, Officer Santori. I’m quite looking forward to it.” His pencil mustache quivered with suppressed excitement. “As it happens, we’ve been wanting to have a chat with this gentleman for some time now. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to have you deliver him so conveniently to my doorstep.”

  He actually rubbed his hands together with glee, the most emotion Donata had ever seen him show.

  Score! She might get off that list after all.

  Outwardly calm, she said, “Really? Isn’t that handy.” She gazed across at her mystery guest. “I don’t suppose you have a name for him, do you? I found ID on him that said Stuart Little, but it was an obvious fake.” She glared at the tall man. “I loved that book, you know. Next time, pick a phony name that isn’t from a children’s classic, will you?”

  Clement Moore allowed a small smile to play over his thin lips. “I shouldn’t think that will be an issue, Officer Santori. Mr. Washington here won’t be needing any more names.” The smile suddenly turned deadly, revealing the pit viper under the elegant exterior. “I expect that after we’ve had our little discussion, Mr. Washington won’t be needing much of anything. He has been rather a bad boy, I’m afraid.”

  The man across the table turned white. “Look here,” he blustered. “I have influential friends. Friends in high places. You can’t do anything to me.”

  Moore shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid you’ve been sadly misled, my dear Mr. Washington. Your friends, whoever they are, have no influence in this room. And they have no influence with me.”

  He stood up, offering one hand to Donata. She ignored it, getting up on her own. She didn’t look at Washington. He wasn’t her problem anymore. At least until he turned up in her nightmares, which she was pretty sure he was going to do.

  “There is no need for you to stay for what comes next, Officer Santori,” Moore said politely. “It can get quite . . . unpleasant.” He gave another half bow in her direction. “You have done the Alliance Council a great service today. I assure you that we will not forget it.”

  You bet, Donata thought. I’ll keep that in mind the next time you want something from me that I don’t want to give you. I’m sure it will make a big difference.

  “That’s very nice,” she said out loud. “But I’ll be happy if you just tell me you don’t hold my brother-in-law in any way responsible for the rash actions of his employees. For that matter, I can assure you that he and I spoke to them quite forcefully, and I am certain none of them will be that foolish again.”

  Moore gazed at her thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose you would like to give me any of the names of those involved?” he said, his face placid.

  Donata shook her head. “No, I would not. I doubt many of these people would have done much more than talk, and I’m sure they’ve learned their lessons. I’d much rather you concentrated on the root of the problem.” She held her breath unobtrusively.

  He considered for
a moment, and then moved one shoulder a fraction of an inch. “Very well. There is no point in wasting our limited resources chasing down every Paranormal foolish enough to listen to the likes of him.” With economical ease of motion, he reached out and casually slammed Washington’s head into the table, hard. The tall man moaned and lay there.

  Donata schooled her expression to be as emotionless as Moore’s. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of making her flinch. The sadistic son of a bitch.

  “There is one more thing,” she said, turning her back on the man who was now bleeding slowly onto the metal surface of the tabletop.

  “I have some crucial information for you. It’s about the lost sixth race I mentioned before.” She talked faster, eager to get the words out before he could stop her. “The one Clive Farmingham said was pictured on the Pentimento, and that he believed posed a grave threat to both Paranormals and Humans. I’ve discovered their identity. And I am starting to think they may be involved somehow in the recent increase of Paranormal crime.”

  Clement Moore looked down his nose at her; no mean feat, considering she was at least three inches taller than him.

  “My dear Ms. Santori,” he drawled, removing her rank as he always did when she annoyed him. “I have told you before: there is no mysterious missing sixth race. There never has been. It is an old wives’ tale, used to scare small children into eating all their vegetables.” He shook his head at her willful insistence on what he clearly saw as an absurd impossibility.

  “I’ll tell you what. If you bring me some kind of proof that this race exists, I’ll be more than happy to sit down and discuss it with you.” Blandly, he added, “Do you have such proof, by any chance?”

  Donata ground her teeth together. “Not yet. But I’m working on it.”

  “Indeed,” he said, gesturing her toward the door and then walking through it with her. “But to quote your own words, it might be more useful if you concentrated on getting to the root of the problem.”

  He gazed into her eyes without blinking, making a cold chill run down her spine.

  “You are one of the few people who is both aware of this issue and in a position to gather more information in an official capacity.” A brief jerk of his head back in the direction they’d come from emphasized his point about the unofficial nature of his current involvement.

  “I’m just a Witness Retrieval Specialist,” Donata reminded him. “I don’t even work out in the field. I don’t see what help I can be.”

  Moore’s expression didn’t vary, but an aura of threat suddenly filled the hallway. “On the contrary, Officer Santori, I hear that you are getting out more and more of late. My congratulations, by the way, on your new position. Chief O’Malley is a very astute man.”

  He paused for effect, and then added deliberately, “However he does possess rather more knowledge than we are usually comfortable with in a Human. We’ve allowed the two of you a certain amount of . . . latitude, shall we say . . . since the situation seems to be working for our benefit. But if I were you, I would make a serious effort to track down the ringleaders of this movement. To demonstrate that we are correct in our current approach, as it were.”

  He smiled at Donata with feigned sadness. “I’m afraid that if we decide otherwise, it could prove quite unhealthy for your boss.”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  By the time John’s driver had dropped her back at the office building and she’d collected her bike and ridden it to the station through an intermittent icy rain, Donata was cold, wet, and pissed in about equal measures.

  In theory, it was the end of her shift. As she entered the precinct, she nodded to a few of the officers on their way out. None of them nodded back. She shivered in her damp leather jacket, feeling a chill in the air that had nothing to do with the weather. Damn, she must be further behind in her caseload than she thought.

  Trudging through the hallway to her office, she decided she’d better stay late and catch up. Maybe some of the guys on second shift would have ordered in some Chinese from down the street that she could persuade them to share. Something told her she wasn’t going to be getting home any time soon.

  As she slung her dripping coat over the coat rack she rarely bothered to use, she saw an ominous sheet of paper lying squarely in the middle of her desk.

  Crap. Crap. Crap.

  In the Chief’s bold handwriting, it said, “Report to my office immediately.”

  He used a simple color-coded system for memos of every kind: white was routine, yellow was pay attention, orange was deal with this right away, and red was urgent. The piece of paper on her desk was an ominous spot of crimson in the midst of the piles of white paperwork.

  Odin’s buttocks.

  She tried to figure out how much work she’d missed recently in the course of dealing with Peter and issues like the one this afternoon. It didn’t seem like that much, and she usually made up the time by staying late or coming in early the next day, but clearly she’d screwed up. A red memo meant she was really in for it.

  Well, no point in keeping him waiting any longer than she had already; it was going to be bad enough explaining where she’d been for most of the day. She popped into the bathroom down the hall to neaten up before going downstairs. The image in the mirror did not inspire confidence.

  Her long hair was damp and straggling out of its braid, and still bore the faint imprint of her helmet. She quickly undid her braid, ran a comb through it, and pulled it back again, but there was nothing she could do about the rings under her eyes or the sallowness of her usually tanned complexion. In short, she looked like shit.

  Great. Just great. Not that the Chief cared what she looked like, as long as she was reasonably neat and not bleeding on his carpet, but she would have felt better walking into the lion’s den in slightly more impressive form.

  She paused in front of his half-open door and took a deep breath before knocking twice. What was the worst that could happen? He’d fire her. Then she’d take that job with the lawyer her mother wanted her to work for, and everyone would be happy. Everyone but her, that is.

  Man, she really hoped he wasn’t going to fire her.

  “Enter!” the Chief barked in his usual gruff tones.

  He was sitting behind his desk, jacket off and shirtsleeves rolled up, a half-empty cup of coffee at one elbow and a stack of files in front of him. His short graying hair was standing up as though he’d been running his hands through it, and his tie was askew. To Donata’s experienced eye, it looked like he’d had a long, hard day.

  Oh, goody.

  “Close the door and have a seat, Santori,” he said, not lifting his head from the papers he was reading. “I’ll be right with you.”

  Donata did as she was told, perching on the edge of the hard wooden seat as though poised to get up and run. If he started a sentence with “You’re—” maybe she could be out the door before he could get the “fired” part out of his mouth.

  Her boss raised his head at last and gave her an annoyed look. “For god’s sake, Santori, sit in the damned chair. I’m not going to bite you.”

  She slid her butt back an inch. “Um, sure thing. Sorry, sir.” The red paper in her hands hardly trembled at all. “I apologize for not being here sooner, but I was out of the building. I came down as soon as I got the note you left.”

  He waved one meaty hand at her negligently. “Whatever. You’re here now.” He gazed across his desk at her, a grim expression pulling down the corners of his mouth and deepening the lines that age and a long career had carved on his face.

  He put both hands on the desk as if to brace himself. “We have a problem, Santori. A big problem.”

  Donata flushed. “Look, I know I’ve been out of the office a lot lately, but I swear, I’m not falling behind on my work.” She paused, then added honestly, “Well, no more than usual, anyway.” There was no such t
hing as a cop who was caught up on paperwork. “I’ll work extra hours to make up for it, I promise.” Silently, she sent a prayer up to her matron goddess, Hecate. Please, don’t let him fire me.

  The Chief gave her a baffled stare. “What the hell are you babbling about, Santori? I don’t give a crap what hours you work. You always get the job done; that’s all I care about.” He shook his head. “This has nothing to do with your job performance.”

  Donata’s bones felt like jelly. Relief washed through her, leaving her weak. And confused.

  “Then what’s the problem?” she asked. She held up the note from her desk. “It must be important if you used the red paper.”

  He rolled his eyes, exasperated. “Of course it’s important, Santori. That’s the damned point.” He pulled a small stack of files out of the towering jungle on his desk and put them in front of her. “Do you know what these are?”

  If they weren’t complaints from the other officers about her lack of promptness, she had no idea.

  “No, sir.” There were maybe five or six manila folders in the pile; they could have been anything. The only mark to distinguish them from all the others on the desk was a green slip of paper that was sticking out of each one—no doubt part of the Chief’s mysterious filing system.

  “These are the cases from last year that I put aside as ‘odd,’” he explained. “The ones that made me decide to give you your extra duties.”

  “Oh, the incidents you thought might have Paranormal involvement.” She got it now, but she still had no idea of where he was going with it.

  He pulled out another stack, about three times the size of the first. “These are the cases that have come up in the last six months, since you started looking into the weird stuff for me.” He placed the piles neatly next to one another in the middle of the desk.

  Donata stared at them. “That’s quite an increase.” She furrowed her brow. “Is it just because I have a better chance of figuring out what is really a Paranormal case than you did?”