by W. J. May
The fighting continued as Molly and Julian slowly pushed back their chairs and silently filed to the door. Devon looked at Rae with sympathetic eyes before he followed them.
Casting a look at her screaming family, Rae got up and joined them out the door.
The cold night air bit into their faces, and they stuck in a close huddle as they filed back across the lawn.
“Well, for a first family dinner that wasn’t so bad,” Molly said, trying to sound cheery. “Honestly, you should see my family go at it sometimes.”
Julian squeezed Rae’s shoulder. “They’ll cool down and get over it. It’s what families do.”
“They both love you,” Devon finished, lacing his arm around her waist and pulling her into his side. “They love you and they’re worried. That’s all.”
Just like your dad. Strangely enough, Rae wasn’t that concerned with the fight. They did love her, and they were worried about her, she knew that. What was lingering in her mind was the last thing her mother had shouted before they slipped out the door.
If you want to blame someone, blame Jennifer.
She was right. If it weren’t for Jennifer’s involvement, none of this would have ever happened. Cromfield would have been without a spy, and Rae could have grown up with at least one of her parents intact. She would not be under constant suspicion from the rest of the tatù community, and needless to say, this would not have been her first family dinner.
Yes, Jennifer was to blame. And while Carter assured Rae that he had forces on the ground, searching day and night, Rae knew they wouldn’t find her.
She was too smart. Too quick. Too deadly. To catch a person like Jennifer, you’d need someone equally ruthless. Someone who could get inside the mind of a killer. Maybe someone who was a bit unhinged themselves.
The moment Rae’s friends left her alone in her room, she leaned back against the door and pulled out her cell phone. She stared at it for a long time.
There was someone she needed to text.
Chapter 5
The next morning, Rae, Devon, Molly, and Julian were speeding down the interstate towards London in Julian’s sports car. They’d left before the rest of the school had risen, hoping to get to the city before seven forty-five in the morning, which, according to Julian, was the approximate time of London’s second precinct police shift change. How he knew this—no one asked. Instead, they piled into his Jaguar and hit the road with the sole purpose of breaking into the secret home of a murderous sociopath.
It was just like old times. Sort of.
“I still don’t understand why we couldn’t have gone during the afternoon shift change,” Molly complained for the millionth time. “I feel like I had just shut my eyes when Mr. Bedside Manner over there,” she shot a scathing look at Devon, “started pounding on my door.”
Devon flashed her a grin. “What was I supposed to do? Julian texted me that he’d just drawn the scorched remains of your alarm clock.”
“Oh Molls, you didn’t execute, aka electra-cute, another one, did you?” Rae asked with mock concern. “That’s the sixth one this month!”
“So kill me,” Molly grumbled, crossing her arms petulantly across her chest as she slouched down in the seat to get a little shut-eye. “It’s not my fault your crazy family kept me awake until one in the morning. I couldn’t sleep when we got back. I was worried they might try and kill each other.”
Rae turned to stare out at the road. Molly was right. The ‘family dinner’ had turned into a fighting shouting match. “It did get a little crazy.”
“At least now we know where Rae gets it,” Devon said with a smile as he glanced in the rearview mirror at her and winked. “The crazy, I mean.”
“Hey!” She clapped his shoulder with a mild shock in her hand and smirked as he jumped and lurched the car suddenly from the movement of his hands on the steering wheel.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to shock the driver?” Julian said suddenly, sounding annoyed.
Devon glanced at him and pretended to rub his shoulder, sending Rae a rueful grin. “I’m good. With last night and now. Family can be a pain when they just don’t get it.”
“At least I’m not the one with a secret girlfriend,” Rae teased Julian, suddenly feeling giddy from Devon’s sweet comment.
Julian scoffed and turned to face her, the corners of his lips turning upward. “And it’s only as of—what—last week that your boyfriend’s no longer a secret, and in all actuality, he still technically is a secret. So, I wouldn’t go boasting about that just yet. Look what happened last night.”
Devon wound his arm back behind his chair and took her hand. “I would. Whatever it takes.”
Ahhh, sweet and sexy. He was a deadly combination to love.
Julian chuckled. “Right. Especially with both of you living back at Guilder right under the nose of your—”
Devon cut him off with a sharp look, and a faint blush tinted the top of Julian’s high cheekbones. Rae stared back and forth between the two.
“Right under the nose of your…what?” she demanded, although she had a sneaking suspicion she already knew who they were talking about. “Your father? Did he say something—”
“Look, we’re here,” Julian interjected neatly, pulling into a shady-looking alley.
“Not a moment too soon,” Devon added under his breath. He jumped out of the car, using the extra speed of his tatù, and Julian was quick to follow. The girls, however, stayed in the car, casting dubious looks at their surroundings.
“This is where Jennifer made her safe house?” Molly said doubtfully. The place was littered with mold and deceased cigarette butts, and from the sounds of it, someone was vomiting back behind a dumpster. Not even a homeless animal would hang around here. “Is it even safe to leave Julian’s car here?”
“He’ll see ahead if it’s going to be stolen, I hope.” Rae popped the seat forward to get out, she didn’t want to admit it looked pretty scummy. Too bad she couldn’t make things invisible besides herself with that new ink. It sure would come in handy now. She looked around, feeling a bit wary before exiting the car. “Come on. Let’s get this over with. We can’t let the guys go in there alone. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Jennifer’s here. We can catch her and slap the cuffs on her.”
“We don’t even have cuffs.” Molly sighed and pushed the car seat forward to get out of the back on her side. “Good thing I didn’t wear my nice shoes…”
They cautiously followed Devon and Julian into the smelly building. They stayed near the walls, just not close enough to touch them. Molly’s sounds of disgust would give Jenn ample time to let her know they were coming.
Devon kicked in the door. He and Julian moved inside the room with skilled precision. They moved as a team and Rae could see why Carter kept the two of them working together, they knew how to back each other up and move as one, without even having to communicate.
Not surprising, no one came into the hall to check the noise or why a door to another apartment had been kicked in. Molly and Rae walked into the apartment at the same time and got stuck for a moment in the doorway. Rae turned sideways so Molly could get through and she covered the rear. She needed to start focusing on the job at hand, not act like the silly girlfriend along for the ride. She had skills and she knew how to use them.
Except Jennifer’s safe house was more like a dingy one-room studio. There was a mattress shoved into one corner, no blankets or pillows, and a broken mini-fridge shoved into the other.
Rae sighed, clearly disappointed. “What a complete waste of time.” She could catalogue everything inside the room in a single sweep.
Devon moved to the dirty kitchen counter and programmed in a code on the cracked microwave. A secret door sprang free beside him.
“You have got to be kidding me!” Molly exclaimed, eyes wide as she followed Julian into the darkness.
Devon motioned for Rae to follow and he glanced behind him to make sure no one was about. Satisfied, he followed her in. Molly’s
little electrical spark on her finger lit the passageway enough to take the blackness away. They moved silently, and once out of the small dark hallway they crouched, ready to react if Jennifer was there waiting for them.
Rae had to admit, she was impressed with Jennifer’s hidden room and microwave connection.
But not nearly as impressed as she was when she emerged on the other side of the hallway.
Once they confirmed the coast was clear and Jennifer was nowhere to be found, Rae looked around. The apartment they were standing in now bore no resemblance to the one they’d just come from. In fact, it looked like it could have been on the cover of one of those interior design magazines. The rooms were bright and cheery, livened with tasteful splashes of color that matched the vibrant paintings on the walls. There were two suede sofas perched upon an expensive-looking Persian, a walk-in closet that made Molly’s eyes water, and a plasma television that took up almost the entire wall upon which it was mounted.
“Throw pillows?” Rae murmured incredulously, picking one up to examine it. “Since when does Jennifer Jones like throw pillows?”
“Spread out,” Devon commanded, ever the soldier. He ran through the rooms with Julian to confirm it was, in fact, empty. “Jenn’s not here. Be sure to check everywhere: behind paintings, taped up beneath the bed, in the throw pillows, weaknesses on the floor. Everywhere.” He turned to Rae and nodded seriously. “If those files are here, we’re going to find them.”
While Molly disappeared into the bathroom and the boys started prying up the floorboards in the foyer, Rae hurried down the hall to search the bedroom. Again, there was little inside that spoke to her of Jennifer. The comforter on the bed was a delicate shade of lilac, edged nicely between the sculpted frame, and there was a rocking chair in the corner draped with an actual quilt.
“What the hell?” she breathed, rubbing the edge of it between her fingers. Leave it to Devon to hear her.
“What’s up, Rae?” he called a second later. “You find something?”
She dropped the quilt. “No, not yet.”
Mentally kicking herself, she dropped her backpack in the middle of the floor and began the search. Now was no time to be asking herself existential questions about her ex-mentor. There may have been a time when the peculiarities of Jennifer Jones were of great interest to Rae, but that time ended about the time Jenn threw a car at her mom. Now, Rae was only concerned with finding her. Catching Jennifer, and finding the man who turned her against the PC agency and her friends in the first place.
And to do that, she needed to find those files.
If only wishing made it so.
The four of them searched the apartment for almost two hours—tearing the place apart as they wracked their brains for places to look. Molly found a hidden compartment of disguises and wigs, but no files. The boys stumbled on a lethal-looking weapons collection, which Rae helped herself to a few things. However, the files remained elusive.
Rae found something herself. But it wasn’t something she was planning to share with the rest of the group.
She had stumbled into it by accident—literally tripping and throwing out her hands to steady herself as she ransacked a linen closet. When she knocked aside the balsa wood lining, she’d spotted the corner of a small wooden chest. Frowning to herself, she tugged it free and laid it on the floor to examine it more closely. It was the size of a small ottoman and was designed to look almost like some sort of toy chest. Rae’s heart skipped a beat as she broke the lock between her fingers and pried open the lid.
What she saw stopped her dead in her tracks.
It wasn’t the files she’d been hoping for.
It was baby clothes. A chest full of unused baby clothes. Most of the tags were still attached.
Rae put the chest back in the closet and shut the door without a word. The entire apartment, everything in it, suddenly made sense. This had been where Jennifer was hoping to raise her baby.
A delayed chill ran through Rae’s shoulders and she walked slowly back to the kitchen to join the others. She didn’t like to think of her little half-sister, killed by Simon Kerrigan before she had a chance to take her first breath. Rae knew that Jennifer had wanted to keep the baby, but her father had refused—insisting on a son. She wondered what things would have been like if the baby had been allowed to live. She’d have been starting Guilder about now. Who knows—maybe in Rae’s own mentoring class. Would Rae have spent the entire year talking to this girl, teaching her to develop her powers, without ever knowing they were sisters?
The sight of her three friends snapped Rae from her reverie as she joined them. “Nothing?” she guessed at the disappointed looks on their faces.
Devon shook his head. “I just can’t think of where else they’d be. This was Jenn’s place. Her home base, you know?”
“Maybe she had another one,” Molly volunteered. “After all, you guys knew about this place, so maybe she didn’t think it was safe to—”
“But she was in London,” Rae cut her off. “At the hospital and the hotel right across the street. She just wouldn’t have had time to leave the city and stash them anywhere else—not when the freaking President of the Privy Council was with her all the time.”
“You know,” Devon turned to Julian, “now would be a great time to whip out one of those famous drawings of yours.”
Julian sighed. “You know it doesn’t work like that. Until one of us decides to open up the magic box where those files are hiding, I can’t see it happening.”
Molly frowned and stared around the kitchen.
“What about you Rae?” Julian asked. “You have a tatù that can find the bloody files?”
Rae shook her head and sighed. “We can’t just go back empty-handed. What are we missing?” She was bordering on desperation. Without the files, they had no way of figuring out what Cromfield had been up to all this time. An already cold trail was starting to look a whole lot colder. More like frozen.
Molly silently backed away as Devon took a step forward to comfort her.
“We’re not going back empty-handed.” He raised her hands up to his lips and kissed them on the knuckles. “We’re just going to have to figure out a different game plan if we want to—”
A loud bang made them jump. They whirled around to see Molly standing triumphantly by the open oven, a stack of files clenched in her hand.
“What the hell?” Julian scratched his head.
“It should have been obvious!” Molly grinned. “Like Jennifer would ever cook!” She shrugged. “I wouldn’t cook. The stove looked brand new so I figured she might be like me and hide them in the most obvious spot so anyone would miss it. Except me, of course.”
Rae jumped up on the balls of her feet and clapped her hands together. “Molls, you’re a genius!” She held out her backpack and her best friend slipped the files casually inside.
“Of course I am. But before we get these back to the lab, I’m voting for a lunch break.” She swept up her hair with a self-righteous sigh. “There’s only so much a girl can do without caffeine. Or calories.”
* * *
“I can’t believe we’re back at this bar.” Rae shook her head incredulously, her backpack neatly tucked between her and Molly for safekeeping. She had pulled out a couple of files and scanned over them. Expecting to find secrets too dark for the Privy Council to even believe, she couldn’t believe what were on the papers.
Nothing.
Well, barely nothing. Just missions the PC had done. Who had run them, what had been done, if it had been successful and if not, what repercussions had happened. The three Rae had grabbed from her bag were ones her mother had done. The PC probably had these same files on computer. They didn’t seem like much help.
“There isn’t much to go on here,” Rae said, trying not to sound too disappointed. They’d come all this way for this?
Devon leaned over and looked at one of the files. “Maybe Jenn had gone off her rocker. Maybe she thought these were im
portant.”
“Or she was fascinated by your mother,” Julian suggested. “And was trying to mimic your mother. Ironic that’s the kind of tatù you have.”
Rae closed the files and shoved them back in her bag. “Whatever they are, we’ll have to go through them later. Right now, it’s more important we find Jenn and Cromfield.”
The four of them were sitting in a booth at the Second Sister—the ambiguously named pub where Carter and Jennifer had caught Devon, Molly, and Rae breaking curfew just a few days before. Four chocolate milkshakes lay before them, as well as four cappuccinos and four burgers with chips.
“What can I say?” Molly shrugged as she bit into her burger and spoke between chewing, “I got hooked on this coffee the last time I was here.” She obviously felt the need to change the subject from the files that didn’t seem very useful.
“I remember,” Devon said with a strained smile, “I paid the bill.”
She giggled into her milkshake. “You better get used to it, Devon. You’re going to have to take Rae somewhere a lot nicer than this for graduation, and dates, and anniversaries, and your wedding.”
Everyone looked up and away from each other at the same time. It seemed daring and beyond crazy to admit they were dating, but marriage? That thought wasn’t even conceivable.
Rae quickly focused the conversation on another part of what Molly had said. “Wait. For graduation? What do you mean?”
The boys flashed each other a glance as Molly patted her hand consolingly. “Sometimes I forget how totally clueless you were when you first got to school. Of course, you wouldn’t know. Every year, the Guilder graduates get this huge celebration party thrown in their honor. There’s food, dancing, sometimes awards are even handed out for special achievements. The guest list is stacked—old alumni, members of the Privy Council. But, of course, each graduate is allowed to bring a date of their choosing.”
Rae absorbed this for a moment before turning to Devon with a curious smile. “Who did you bring?” She pictured Devon’s old girlfriend dressed stunningly beautiful.