Face Off lb-2

by Mark Del Franco

  She pressed her lips into a thin line to hide her annoyance. She hadn’t considered that his biographical details might have been altered. Cress wasn’t the only person in the world who was good at constructing fake life histories. “Thirty, is it, then? It must depress you to be so old.”

  He laughed as he shook his head. “Nah. It works out ’cause, like I said, I like younger women.”

  “Then maybe you should—” Laura began.

  “There she is,” Sinclair interrupted.

  Fallon Moor had emerged from the entrance of her building and turned up the sidewalk. Laura mentally chastised herself for being distracted. She had not seen the brownie leave the building. Moor stopped at her car, parked a few spaces up, and unlocked the door. Sinclair started to open his door. “Not here. She’s sufficiently high-profile that Legacy might have security watching her,” she said.

  He closed the door. “I didn’t notice anyone.”

  “Me, either. That doesn’t mean they don’t have someone in one of these buildings.” Laura started the SUV. When Moor pulled out of her space, Laura merged with the traffic behind her. She watched her mirrors for several blocks, but no one appeared to be following. Moor cut across the lane, parked her car on the corner of a side street, and turned on the emergency lights. Laura pulled into the space in front of a fire hydrant a few car lengths away while Moor entered a small tea shop.

  “What’s she doing?” Laura asked.

  Sinclair narrowed his eyes. “She’s getting tea . . . and . . . wait . . . a croissant. It’s definitely a croissant. I’m thinking she’s secretly French.”

  Laura pretended to be impressed. “You’re good.”

  He grinned. “Want to know how good?”

  She rolled her eyes and got out of the car. “Let’s go.”

  They both slipped on sunglasses as they strolled up to the shop. The glasses were clichéd government-agent intimidation, but they looked good. Moor shouldered her way slowly out of the shop with her cup of tea in one hand and the croissant in the other.

  Laura held up her badge. “Fallon Moor? Agent Tate, InterSec. This is Agent Sinclair. We’d like to talk to you.”

  Moor froze, her expression hard-edged for a second before slipping into puzzled confusion. “InterSec? What’s that?”

  Laura didn’t need her sensing ability to pick up the obvious subterfuge. “Let’s not play games, Moor. We’re enforcing a Homeland Security warrant. You’ve overstayed your visa.”

  Moor’s eyes began to bulge. Cornering a brownie like this was breaking with routine, especially since Moor was on the run from the law. Laura recognized the first stages of a boggart mania as the panic at being confronted set in. Laura took a casual step to her left to increase the distance between herself and Sinclair. “Let’s keep this calm, Moor.”

  “You must be mistaking me for someone else. It happens to brownies all the time,” she said.

  “Let’s talk about that back at the station,” Sinclair said.

  Moor stepped back with indecision. “You’re making a mistake.”

  “No, you are,” said Laura. Before Moor could react, Laura held her hand out and muttered in Gaelic. A small tangle of essence shot from her palm and settled over Moor. The brownie’s body flexed and pulsed as the boggart mania tried to kick in, then went still as the spell activated. Moor’s eyes glazed dully with sleep.

  “That was simple,” Sinclair said.

  Laura removed the tea and croissant from Moor’s still hands and placed them on the window ledge of the tea shop. “There was no point in prolonging it. She knew the warrant was an excuse.”

  “So, to be clear, we have a legal right to kidnap people, right?” he asked.

  She shot him a mildly exasperated look. “It’s an arrest, Jono. The warrant is real.”

  He splayed his hand against his chest. “That’s a relief. I was afraid without a warrant, we’d get in trouble for spelling the woman into a stupor.”

  She ignored him and muttered in Gaelic again. Moor rose an inch or so off the ground. Laura gestured to Sinclair. “Care to do the honors?”

  Sinclair took Moor’s elbow and coasted her toward the SUV. “This reminds me of our first date.”

  Laura fell into step on the opposite side. “It wasn’t a date.”

  “We had drinks.”

  “We had a fight. Threats were involved,” she said.

  He sighed. “Yeah, it was pretty hot.”

  She shook her head. “You are incorrigible.”

  Sinclair brightened with faux excitement. “Encourageable? I knew you couldn’t resist me.”

  “And you’re hard of hearing. Another flaw.”

  She opened the rear passenger door of the SUV and helped Sinclair lift Moor onto the backseat. Sinclair leaned inside and buckled Moor in. He pulled out and grinned down at Laura. “Maybe we can talk about me over dinner?”

  She gave him a sweet smile. “That will double your usual audience.”

  He chuckled as they resumed their seats. “Then we can go dancing. I bet you’ll like new music. I can show you some pretty good moves.”

  She rolled her head toward him, then back toward the road ahead. She hated to admit it, but he did amuse her. “I think I’ve seen enough of your moves for one day.”

  CHAPTER 8

  STILL GLAMOURED AS Mariel Tate, Laura entered a small, narrow anteroom deep within the Guildhouse. Light from a large window into the next room illuminated Terryn where he stood in the half dark. Without expression, he stared into the other room at Fallon Moor sitting immobile, Laura’s sleep spell intact.

  “Sorry I’m late. I was trying to process her in, but everyone suddenly became scarce,” she said.

  Terryn handed her a folder. “We can process her later. I want to keep this out of channels for now, which is why I’m delivering the paperwork to you personally.”

  Laura took the folder with a moment of unease. She could argue with Sinclair all she wanted that his not being an official employee of InterSec was irrelevant since the secrecy protected him. She could argue that he wanted the job, and his paperwork was a mere formality that would be cleared up once Terryn felt comfortable. She could even argue that some of their mission protocols allowed them to bend the rules other agencies had to follow.

  Given all that, she wondered how to justify to him that a woman named Fallon Moor sat in a glass-enclosed chamber under arrest, and no one knew she was there. Not the public. Not her family. Not her lawyer. If InterSec—no, dammit, if Terryn—decided not to process her into the system, no one would ever know. Except her. And Sinclair.

  She trusted Terryn. She believed he would do the right thing. Eventually. That thought gave her pause. It was the eventually part that bothered Sinclair. How long was it before eventually became inexcusable?

  She pushed her thoughts aside and opened the folder. The first set of documents was an expedited deportation order for Moor from the Department of Homeland Security that would send her to Tara without court delays. The second set was a plea deal with an offer of asylum in the U.S. with a prison term in exchange for cooperation. Both documents had been drawn in anticipation of Moor’s arrest. They gave no indication that she, in fact, had been arrested. So Homeland Security did not have explicit knowledge of her presence either.

  Laura closed the folder. “If she refuses to cooperate, we’re stuck.”

  Terryn gave her a thin smile. “Not really. It will make going undercover more difficult for you, though.”

  She wanted to laugh, but it wasn’t funny. If Terryn had decided she was going undercover at Legacy, she was going undercover at Legacy. He had put her in such situations before, and she hadn’t questioned Terryn’s methods until Sinclair began to make an issue of some of them. She stared at the sleeping woman. “But what about her?”

  “What about her?” Terryn asked.

  Laura licked her lips as she weighed a response. His tone registered indifferent, even callous. She knew Terryn could be single-minded, but
she wondered if he cared about the ramifications of his actions beyond his own point of view. It was true that Fallon Moor was a criminal who was creating an obstacle to their plans. She was a person, too, though. “Never mind. We can talk about it later.”

  She had a job to do. As she placed her hand on the doorknob to the room, she boosted the essence charge in the emerald stone on the chain around her neck. She entered the room, dropped the folder on the table, and took the seat opposite Moor. With a casual gesture, she released the sleep spell with a burst of essence. Disoriented, Moor caught herself as she swayed toward the table. She glanced around the room without surprise. Her gaze settled on Laura. “I want a lawyer,” she said.

  The hard truth resonating in her voice did not surprise Laura. “Lawyers may be involved eventually. What’s your name?”

  “Fallon Moor.”

  This time, the lie rang through clearly. Laura pulled the deportation papers out and pushed them across the table. “Try again.”

  Moor glanced at the paperwork and pushed it back. “It’s like I said to you earlier. You’re mistaking me for someone else. I never heard of Allison Forth.”

  Laura stood and slid the paperwork back in the folder. “Okay. Sorry. That’s not my problem. You can sort it out with the Seelie Court.”

  “I will fight extradition,” Moor said.

  Laura pulled a lazy smile. “That won’t be necessary. You are already on sovereign territory of the Seelie Court. Your transfer is a matter of a plane ticket.”

  Moor’s eyes bulged. With a few breaths, she fought the rise of her boggart mania, and her face relaxed. Laura was impressed with the level of control and noted it for the future.

  “I demand a lawyer,” Moor said.

  “For which? Your deportation or your acceptance of asylum?”

  “I have rights,” Moor said.

  “So did the people who died in the bombing you participated in at the Dublin airport. I’m sure you can clarify that with the Seelie Court when you get back to Ireland.”

  Moor set her jaw. “What do you want?”

  Laura took her seat again and slid the asylum documents out. “Your cooperation.”

  Moor’s eyes became hooded. “For what?”

  “Legacy,” Laura said.

  “I work there. It was a convenient place to hide,” she said.

  Laura leaned back, tapping her pen on the table. “Legacy claims they want unity among the fey and humans. They think abolishing monarchies is the way to achieve that. You have a career of antimonarchial activities that involves violence. I get your excuse for being there. What I want to know is why they want someone like you.”

  Moor smiled. “I’m very good at keeping people on message.”

  Laura arched an eyebrow. “So what’s the message this time? Extortion? Murder? Another bomb?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “We’ve got a dead shopkeeper and a dead suicide bomber, Moor. It’s only a matter of time before we connect them to the other acts of anti-fey violence, then to Legacy. We’re almost there already.”

  She sneered. “Then what do you need me for?”

  Laura released some essence into her eyes, letting it shimmer in the manner of an Old One. Moor didn’t try to hold the gaze but looked away, easily cowed by the power in front of her. “I want to know what’s being planned, Moor. Whatever your goals are, they won’t be accomplished with murder. I’m going to stop it with you or without you.”

  “Go ahead, then. You can’t connect me to anything,” she said.

  Laura nudged the folder. “I don’t have to. Whatever is going to happen, you’re out of the game. For good. The Dublin case against you is open-and-shut. You want the justice of the Seelie Court, I will be more than happy to accommodate you.” She pushed the folder closer. “You want to live, I can accommodate that, too.”

  “I want time to think about it. And I want a lawyer,” she said.

  Laura placed a pen on the folder. “Fine. I’ll give you time. You have thirty seconds. After that, the deal is permanently off the table, and you go to Ireland. I’ll pay for your lawyer’s flight myself. I don’t have more time than that, I’m afraid.”

  Moor stared at the documents in front her. Laura weighed the options herself—humane treatment in a U.S. jail in exchange for the betrayal of her associates or certain death at the hands of Maeve’s justice. The Seelie Court was not a kind and gentle judge. It didn’t take Moor long to decide.

  “Where do I sign?” she asked.

  Laura spread the documents out and handed her a pen. “I’ll walk you through it.”

  CHAPTER 9

  LAURA HAD PLANNED the detention of Fallon Moor for early in the morning in order to free up time for the rest of the day. She was glad she did, since between the initial interview of Moor and the subsequent paperwork, she didn’t get upstairs to the public-relations department until noon.

  The chaos on her desk did its best to depress her, but she retaliated by remaining focused. The reception for Draigen macCullen produced layers of pressure that she hadn’t anticipated. Working for Guildmaster Orrin ap Rhys as his public-relations director and for Terryn macCullen as his top undercover agent created conflicts that were becoming harder to ignore. At this point, she recognized that Rhys was no fan of the Inverni—neither past nor present—and enjoyed fanning the flames of their disagreements. As a diplomatic extension of High Queen Maeve’s court, the Washington Guildhouse was playing a major role in discrediting the Inverni position—and Laura was finding her job as public-relations director bumping up against her moral and personal ethics as a friend and colleague of Terryn.

  Regardless of her job title on the Guildhouse letterhead, Laura’s public-relations position had expanded over the years by a slow accretion of tasks and favors that had nothing to do with her primary job. Her inherent drive to get things done had clouded the fact that she had let things get out of control. Hiring Saffin Corrill as her assistant helped manage the unwieldy numbers of responsibilities, with the added benefit of finding someone she could trust. Where Laura didn’t want to say no to people, Saffin had no problem booting them to the curb.

  To complicate things more, Rhys didn’t know she worked for InterSec. Terryn, of course, knew about her Guild work but made it a point never to ask her for inside information. Which made things harder, since the decision to reveal or not reveal was hers. Depending on the situation, she sometimes was forced to make a choice between Terryn and Rhys, something that did not always sit well depending on which job hat she wore.

  Which all came down to why she had become more involved in Draigen macCullen’s reception than she would have otherwise. Rhys had assigned the lead responsibility to Resha Dunne, but Laura wanted Draigen’s meeting with the president of the United States to succeed. If Draigen succeeded, Laura wouldn’t have to draw a line in the sand with Rhys regarding how far she would go to discredit Terryn’s clan. If Draigen succeeded, Laura’s personal feelings for Terryn wouldn’t make her feel obligated to disclose Guild strategies against the Inverni to him. She didn’t want Draigen to succeed. She needed her to.

  Saffin arrived with a stack of folders, which she laid out along the front edge of Laura’s desk. “This folder contains top-priority issues. This one has potential issues. This one has issues I don’t think are issues. And this one has issues that I know aren’t issues. Some people need to find better things to do with their time.”

  Her efficiency amused and gratified Laura. She and Saffin had worked together for years, knew each other’s rhythms, and helped each other get their jobs done. Without Saffin, Laura’s double life would have been impossible. She had saved Laura’s reputation several times—once literally saved her life.

  Brownies by nature were skilled organizational personalities with a knack for order and efficiency. Those talents came at a price. Stressed by an obstacle in their path to successful completion of a job, they transformed into boggarts—a manic ver
sion of their normal selves. She had seen the effect recently with Fallon Moor. The physical transformation was exhausting for brownies—and dangerous to the people around them. “Going boggie” had a range of behaviors from an annoying relentlessness to outright violent acts.

  Without comment, Laura observed the healing cuts on Saffin’s face and arms. Saffin had been caught in the recent terrorist attack at the Archives and gone full boggart. Her body became a killing machine to save her life and the lives of others. While Laura knew it was a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, she couldn’t help feeling responsible for what Saffin had done, especially since Laura had had to encourage it to save them. If Laura had prevented the attack in the first place, Saffin wouldn’t have been hurt—or hurt others. Saffin hadn’t blamed Laura. She didn’t dwell on what she had done but accepted it as the inevitable outcome of her nature. Laura wished she could be so comfortable in her own skin.

  “How about I take the office complaint folder, and you take the reception one?” she asked.

  Saffin flipped her wispy blond hair over her shoulders. “Sure. Of course, that means the reception hors d’oeuvres will be vegetarian, people will have to get their own, the music will be rockabilly, and I might consider some kind of role-playing party game to loosen everyone up.”

  Laura shook her head. “You do not like rockabilly.”

  Saffin smirked. “Neither do fairies. Everyone will leave early, and I’ll have enough leftovers to not cook for a week.”

  “You convinced me. I’ll take the first folder,” Laura said.

  Saffin sighed. “Have it your way. A Stray Cats reunion would have been awesome.”

  Laura pulled the folder closer and flipped it open. “I won’t be in tomorrow, but text me if you need anything.”

  “No problem.” Laura picked up a slight pause before the reply. Saffin was the only person outside InterSec who knew about Laura’s double life. She had figured it out on her own years ago. That she kept it to herself—not even discussing it with Laura until recent events exposed her knowledge—assured Laura that she could rely on Saffin to keep it a secret. From experience, she had no doubt that Saffin would have no problem running the office without her.