Still, she held out a hope of getting out of the situation unexposed. She sighed. “I’m sorry, Adam. I lied. We thought you might be working for someone else.”
He chuckled deep in his throat and pulled back to look at her. “We? That’s interesting. Who’s ‘we,’ and why did you need to steal data you had access to?”
Laura compressed her lips. She was going to give the tech team high hell for this. “I didn’t steal any data, Adam. I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
DeWinter continued caressing her. He moved his hand higher, his fingers slipping under the edge of her underwear. “Where’s the data drive, Fallon? Did you hide it somewhere you thought I’d never see again?”
She had passed the data drive to Sinclair when he helped her into the car earlier. She didn’t know whether to laugh or punch DeWinter. She had no idea where he thought the situation was going. He clearly had no idea she was a druid, never mind his marked indifference to the possibility of her going boggie. Maybe he liked it rough. His hand slid under the fabric of her panties and tickled the front of her hip.
Brace yourself, Sinclair sent.
“What?” she said aloud, startled.
“I said . . .” DeWinter began.
Laura grabbed the door and lurched forward as Sinclair slammed on the brakes. DeWinter flew across the floor and hit the front seat. She called up essence and shot DeWinter in the head before he could recover.
Laura frowned as she got out of the car. “I had the situation under control, Jono.”
Sinclair jumped out and peered in the back. “Is he dead?”
“No. I stunned him. What the hell did you hit the brakes for?”
“You looked like you needed help,” he said.
She glowered. “Really? Or did it look like someone was going for my crotch, and you couldn’t deal with it? Get this through your head, Sinclair. If we’re going to work together, you have to keep your head clear. I am not your damsel in distress.”
He grinned. “You’re wearing a short skirt and fuck-me pumps. That’s damsel wear.”
She jabbed him in the chest. “Try femme fatale, you idiot. I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you have.”
He affected surprise. “You speak French, too?”
She rolled her eyes but allowed herself a smile. For some reason, despite calling him on it, he amused her. They stared down at the unconscious DeWinter.
“Now what do we do?” Sinclair asked.
Laura scanned the interior of the car. DeWinter had fallen facedown. Her glass lay on the floor next to him. “Let’s keep you in as long as possible. I don’t think DeWinter saw me hit him with essence. When he wakes up, tell him something ran in front of the car, and he must have hit his head when you braked. Then tell him I jumped out and ran off.”
Sinclair looked dubious. “You think he’ll believe that?”
She withdrew from the car. “Play dumb and embarrassed. If he shoots you before you get him home, it’ll mean it didn’t work.”
He raised his eyebrows. “That’s reassuring.”
She grinned. “Having second thoughts about the job?”
He let the smile slip back on his face. “Not when I get to see you dressed like that.”
She held out her hand. “I’ll take the data drive back.”
He handed it to her, and she slipped it inside her bra again. She leaned forward and pecked him on the cheek. Turning, she walked toward the nearby highway ramp. “Good luck.”
“What the hell are you doing?” he called out.
She walked backward. “I’m going to the Guildhouse.”
“On foot?”
She shrugged. “It’s a nice night. I’ll see you at the office. I hope.”
He grinned again. “You’re crazy, you know.”
She pointed at the car. “Keep your eyes in the rearview mirror.”
DeWinter wasn’t going to shoot Sinclair. For all his swagger, she doubted he had ever been in a physical fight. It was all show, including the gun. He would wake up embarrassed, probably angry, with a nice headache for his trouble.
She withdrew the glamour essence from the stone around her neck. The wispy blond brownie hair faded to her natural softer hue as Fallon’s image faded. Her red dress felt shorter now that she had resumed her normal appearance. She felt mildly ridiculous walking down a highway ramp dressed so provocatively, but she had been in worse places with less clothing. When she reached the end of the ramp, she smirked as she pulled out her cell phone and hit speed dial, wondering if Sinclair believed she was going to walk all the way to the Guildhouse.
“This is Laura Blackstone. I need a car, please.”
CHAPTER 42
AN HOUR LATER, Sinclair entered Laura’s InterSec office and dropped in a chair. He still wore the suit he used for driving the limo. Laura didn’t visibly react to his presence as she reviewed DeWinter’s files, taking his arrival as a nonevent. “Oh, good. He didn’t shoot you,” she said.
“Nice to see you, too,” he said with a smile.
She leaned back with a chuckle. “I told you it would be fine. What happened?”
He shrugged. “A lot of screaming and swearing. He bought my story. He didn’t seem surprised. Fallon Moor apparently has a reputation for being erratic.”
“Yeah, well, I played into that the last couple of days.”
Sinclair gave her a measured look, one that told her he wanted to know what she meant. She wanted to clarify for him on the one hand that nothing serious happened but on the other hand disliked feeling answerable to him. The pause in conversation lengthened. He didn’t say she was answerable. She realized she wanted to tell him, but that didn’t mean she had to. Things were too new between them to expose every detail of her life. “Let me show you what I’ve found so far,” she said instead.
The tension broke, and he leaned forward as she turned to her computer. She flashed one document after another onto the screen. “More financial data. More anti-fey rhetoric, and these . . .”
“Blueprints?” Sinclair asked.
She tilted her head from side to side as she looked at the screen. “But of what buildings, I can’t tell. I’ve been in most of the major terrorist targets in the city. I’m not recognizing anything here. This one looks like a lab.” She zoomed in on the document.
The page showed a simple building layout. The first floor showed room after room of the same size, plumbing run into all of them for wash stations and complicated tangles of electrical and gas lines. “It looks hardened against the fey,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
Sinclair pointed at the blueprint of the basement—no windows, limited access points, fewer but larger rooms with electronic security systems on the doors. “Look at this section. These rooms are lined with glass and stone. Remind you of anything?”
“Holding cells,” she said.
He leaned back with a satisfied expression. “Yeah, I’ve probably had more experience with those lately than you have.”
She smiled grudgingly. Terryn had been quick to hold Sinclair in a cell when they met. “I’m not going to argue that. I think you’re right. Good call.”
She stared at the blueprints, trying to resolve them into something she recognized. “Could be Quantico or Stafford. I haven’t been everywhere in either place. Look at this part. It looks like a medical facility.”
A large room held an oblong shape that the notes identified as quartz. Smaller round shapes ringed the oblong in a border. “That sort of looks like a healing crèche,” she said.
On the rare occasion when the fey fell ill, essence formed a major component of the healing process. The crèche had been developed, stone beds that could be charged to supplement weakened body signatures as well as deliver targeted healing spells. “It’s a lot bigger than the ones I’ve seen,” said Sinclair.
Puzzled, Laura shook her head. He was right. Most crèches were not much larger than a standard hospital bed. “Maybe I’m wrong. It str
uck me as one.”
“So, let’s play it out. Why would a crèche be that big?” he asked.
“Maybe for someone gravely ill. The more stone you have, the greater the holding capacity for the essence. Maybe whoever it’s for is suffering from some kind of severe essence depletion and needs a large field to supplement it.”
“There’s room in that thing for a couple of people,” he said.
She gave him a significant look. “Or one very powerful one.”
He pursed his lips. “Draigen? I thought we hadn’t found any firm connection between Legacy and the threats against her.”
“Not yet, but under the circumstances, I’m not ruling it out until Draigen leaves the country.”
“But why a medical facility? She’s not ill,” he said.
She stared at the blueprint. The crèche had several kinds of quartz, not that unusual when treating an injured fey. Different stones had different properties, and sometimes it was necessary to create buffers between them to prevent interference. Suppressing essence was another form of healing, too. That thought sparked an idea. “What if it’s not for healing but modified as a holding cell? We use ward stones all the time in holding cells to prevent someone from using essence to escape.”
“You think they’re planning on kidnapping her instead of killing her?”
Laura rubbed at her eyes. “I don’t know. DeWinter talked about an acquisition, but, as much as I’m worried about it, Draigen’s being the target bothers me, especially after the assassination attempt. She’s so high-profile and secured, you’d have to be a genius or a nut to think you could take her out at this point.”
Sinclair snorted. “I vote nut. Isn’t that the defining characteristic of a terrorist?”
She leaned against her hand and closed her eyes. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m so tired I’m not thinking clearly.” She stretched. “Let’s make copies of this. I’ll get the research guys to take a look at it. Can you make a meeting in the morning?”
“I have some kind of training at Legacy tomorrow. No can miss,” he said.
She wasn’t about to press him on it. He was doing his part. She knew what it was like to get pulled in more than one direction. “That’s okay. You need to keep a lower profile around here anyway, Jono. Someone’s bound to notice a mysterious tall guy who keeps showing up.”
“Now let’s get out of here. We both need to get to bed.”
His face brightened. “Did you just ask me to go to bed with you again?”
She gave him a long, slow smile as she came around the desk. Bracing her hands on the chair, she leaned down with closed eyes and kissed him on the lips. She opened her eyes, smiling inches away from his face.
“No, I didn’t. Work first. Play later,” she said.
Sinclair dropped his head back and laughed. “Evil. Pure evil.”
CHAPTER 43
AS SHE STEPPED out of her SUV, Laura made no effort to hide her annoyance as she adjusted the jacket on her uniform. It was bad enough that the emergency call had come in as soon as she had gone home to bed after leaving the Guildhouse, but Genda didn’t know that an open call to a crime scene was heard by everyone in the city with a gun and a badge. Emergency vehicles and police cars from a number of agencies filled the edge of the park. If Genda had been more low-key, they would have been able to contain notice to the local police and the Guild’s Community Liaison department. Factor in the high-profile players in a town like Washington, and more obscure agencies turned out. Some came out of curiosity or political advantage, but most came for the adrenaline rush of being on scene for a crime with international ramifications.
Walking through a gauntlet of law-enforcement personnel, she held out her InterSec badge. They spent their few moments with her staring at her face. The extra care she had given to making Mariel Tate physically attractive paid off in chaotic situations. No one liked to admit it, but something clicked off in people’s brains around good-looking people. They trusted them more, liked them more, and believed them more. And let them slide through security without much scrutiny if they flashed a badge.
As she entered the grassy area of the scene, she noted that at least someone had had the common sense to isolate the area around the body. A local police officer lifted a long strip of crime-scene tape to let her pass. Up a short rise, people gathered near the edge of a stand of trees. Out of habit, Laura scanned the ground as she approached. The area hadn’t been processed. Someone could have gone across the same grass she was walking on and left a hint of their identity, but she saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Guild security agents and Inverni Guardians stood on opposite sides of another taped-off area. A few human officers hovered on the edges of the group, impotent in jurisdiction against all the high-level agencies on the ground. She made casual note of Sinclair’s presence. He wore his InterSec jacket, the hood pulled up and forward to shadow his face. His height might draw attention, but in a group of fey, that was less likely.
Brinen macCullen crouched by the body of a female Inverni. Alive, fairies resonated with power, their bodies naturally cycling essence out of the air. The energy was always there, to the point where Laura didn’t notice it any more than she would the fact that someone was breathing. Part of being in the presence of a fairy. Dead, that process stopped, leaving the body a shadow of itself, the lack of intense body signature an oddity that was noticeable by its absence.
The woman hadn’t been dead long. Even without sensing her fading essence, Laura knew by the lifeless drape of her wings that death had been within the last few hours. So soft and supple in life, the gossamer appendages shriveled and hardened in death, wrapping the body like a shroud. The woman’s wings lay against the ground, dark but not yet curling.
With one hand, Brinen stroked in the air above the body, shy of physically touching. A faint pool of blue light enveloped his fingers. His attention remained on the body as Laura crouched next to him. “I heard about the hotel. Here to threaten more of our people, Agent Tate?”
She kept her voice cool. “Only the ones who don’t follow orders, Lord Guardian. Who called it in?”
“A human walking his dog,” he said.
Laura spotted a casually dressed older gentleman speaking to a Guild security agent. A small dog on a leash danced around them, excited by all the activity.
Brinen dangled his hands between his knees. “Essence shock.”
Odd, Laura thought. Taking out an Inverni fairy in a fight wasn’t easy, and the sustained burst necessary for essence shock was difficult to maintain on a moving target. She played the beam of her flashlight over the woman’s body. Dark lines crisscrossed her clothing on the sleeves and pants. Burns, the familiar pattern left when someone struggled against a binding spell. Whoever had killed her had bound her before she died. That took ability and power.
Laura recognized the woman’s body signature from the attic where the sniper had fired. She sensed Brinen’s signature, too, from the residue of his scan. Other signatures were whispers on her, which meant she had had only casual contact. They had their second suspect, which meant two dead ends. Literally.
“Uma macGrath?” Laura asked.
“She was on Draigen’s staff,” said Aran.
She pivoted to see Aran standing at the edge of her sensing range. She hadn’t noticed him arrive. “You knew her?”
Aran moved closed, his face troubled and angry. “She was the missing guard from your interview list. She and Sean Carr were lovers. It was an open secret.”
Annoyed, Laura stood. “Why didn’t you mention that earlier? We wasted manpower looking for two people when she was the obvious suspect.”
“I didn’t know. No one told me the other name until after Rory Dawson was caught.”
She glanced at Brinen, who remained intent on the body. For all his attitude, he wasn’t as thorough as he liked to imply. She sighed. “What’s done is done. There’s no telling if we would have found her sooner anyway.”
Brin
en joined them. “I suggest we start interviewing their associates.”
Aran cocked his head. “I was under the impression Agent Tate had done that already.”
Brinen glowered at his brother. “Yes, but two people from the same subclan bear investigating. We should check their bloodlines as well as their colleagues.”
Color rose in Aran’s cheeks. He stalked away. Laura noticed that Brinen didn’t appear fazed. “What was that about?” she asked.
“An old family disagreement,” he said. Without another word, he walked off, too.
Sinclair sidled in closer. “Looks like the macCullens aren’t as chummy as they appear.”
For once, Laura didn’t bristle at one of Sinclair’s digs. He was right. Friction among the siblings was apparent. Still, there was enough stress going on to trigger it.
“Did you notice the burns?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“She was silenced,” he said.
“Someone has a lot to lose,” Laura said.
“Like an underKing’s realm?”
She compressed her lips. “I don’t think Terryn had anything to do with this.”
Sinclair shrugged. “I’m looking at all contingencies until they’re discredited. Someone told me that’s the way we do things at InterSec.”
“I trust him, Jono,” she said.
“This is older than us, Cuddles. It has nothing to do with you,” he said.
They waited as the medical examiner staff gathered around the body. Laura couldn’t dismiss what Sinclair said. When Terryn had realized that the Treaty of London made his people an internal class of enemies, he had reacted like a different person, not the man she knew. Whatever was at stake, it was more than the murder of two renegade Inverni.
“I hate fairy politics,” she said.
Sinclair murmured agreement. “Now you know why I pretend I’m human.”
CHAPTER 44
DAWN BROUGHT LAURA back to her public-relations desk. In the last few days, the Guild work had grown to beyond neglect. Rhys was writing in a flurry of activity she hadn’t seen in years—memos, white papers, and speeches—all of which had to be revised and polished. Whenever the subject of Cress—and her species—came up, the Guildmaster found a negative way to associate Terryn with her. Since politically he couldn’t outright attack Draigen, smearing Terryn maintained his image as a defender of the Seelie Court. Laura understood the logic of it. That didn’t mean she liked it, even had her friends not been involved.
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