“InterSec’s. We’re governed by treaty and agreement with the U.S. government,” Terryn said.
“What if I don’t want to do what you want me to do?”
Laura shrugged. “Quit.”
“What if I quit right now?”
Laura frowned. “Cute.”
“What’s the catch?” he asked.
“Trust, Jono. We need to trust each other, and we need to get out of this mess,” Laura said.
“What’s in it for me?” he asked.
“Protection. You’ll need it. The pay’s pretty good, too,” she said.
Am I going to have any say in this? Terryn sent.
Laura ignored him.
“I don’t know. I’ve got a pretty good career going,” Sinclair said.
“Which will likely be cut short by your death in the next few days,” said Terryn.
Thanks for joining the party, Laura sent him.
Terryn’s comment took the cockiness out of Sinclair. He leaned on his forearms and stared at his hands. “I won’t kill anyone.”
“No more than you’re asked to now,” Laura said.
“What’s in it for you?” he asked.
“Protection as well. We watch your back; you watch ours. I think we can trust each other,” Laura said.
“What if we can’t?”
She shrugged again. “It’s simple. One of us dies.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, simple.”
Terryn leaned forward. “Let’s make this provisional. We make it through the current situation, then decide whether you stay or not.”
Sinclair slowly shook his head while he considered. “But I don’t get a choice until then, right?”
Terryn didn’t crack a smile. “Who said the choice would be yours then either?”
Sinclair’s eyes shifted back and forth, not looking at them or anything else. Laura watched him closely. She remembered how calm he was when she first met him. The stress flowing off him now was understandable, but beneath it was a strong focus. He weighed his options and tilted back in his chair. “When do I start?”
Laura released the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “Now.”
CHAPTER 17
“I DON’T LIKE this,” said Terryn.
Sinclair remained locked in the basement. When Cress arrived, she went down to tend his bruised ribs. Laura leaned against the counter in the kitchen. “We don’t have a choice, Terryn. I’m exposed.”
“We don’t know if we can trust him.”
She crossed her arms loosely and stared at her feet. “He could have let me get killed tonight.”
“Or he could be lying to gain our confidence,” Terryn said.
She arched an annoyed brow at him. “Ahem. Are you questioning my ability to sense truth?”
She thought she detected embarrassment. Actual embarrassment from Terryn macCullen. “I didn’t mean that. I’m worried.”
“I’ve been sensing only the truth from him,” she said.
Terryn nodded. “I don’t dispute that. But he was also able to hide his fey nature from you. We don’t know if he can hide lies from you.”
She shook her head. “We’ve never disclosed my truth-sensing ability, Terryn. Every arrest or report we’ve ever made, we’ve used independent verification. No one knows about it. Sinclair wouldn’t know to hide from it.”
“You can’t be sure of that,” he said.
She stared at him. “Terryn, if I can’t be sure of that, then we have a bigger problem. Our agreement was that you and Cress would never tell anyone about my truth-sensing, not even Maeve herself, unless I agreed. Is there something you need to tell me?”
Again, embarrassment rolled off him. “No, we’ve never told. I’ll trust you on this.”
She ran water into a glass and watched him as she sipped. “This isn’t like you, Terryn. You’re never this unsettled. What’s wrong?”
He closed down his emotions. It was a natural reaction, Laura supposed. He knew she could read him. She wondered what it must be like for him to have two people he couldn’t lie to. She could sense lies in his tone, and Cress could feel them in the core of his essence. Laura could not fathom what it was like to have not one, but two people know him that intimately. It had been years since she allowed someone that privilege.
He closed the door to the basement, a move that surprised Laura. Terryn hid nothing from Cress as far as she knew. “Like I said, I don’t like this. You’ve had persona conflicts before, but never this many connecting to the same case and never with Laura Blackstone involved. I’m worried things could slide out of control.”
She swallowed water. The true reason her personas were tangled was her poor decision to create Janice. Janice Crawford wouldn’t have happened if Laura Blackstone hadn’t been involved with Foyle through Hornbeck’s office. “Are you sure that’s it?”
“What do you mean?”
She rubbed at the tense muscles in her neck. “I read the Alfrey file. He’s dredging up a lot of bad memories, isn’t he?”
Terryn glanced at the basement door again. “I know I can’t lie to you, Laura, so, yes. The Alfrey clan has always been a problem for my family. I don’t think this investigation is about me, but I’m concerned about where it can lead.”
Laura frowned. “Are you afraid it might lead to Ireland?”
He shrugged, a long, languid gesture for him that sent his wings rippling. “ ‘Afraid’ isn’t the word. My sister has things well in hand leading the macCullens. It’s the larger issue. I walked away from Danann and Inverni politics because it never ends, but I’m wondering if Simon Alfrey’s appearance is a sign that I made a mistake.”
“How would your being in Ireland have made a difference?” she asked.
He frowned. “I don’t know. But I do know that I would have a clearer sense of the nuances of what is happening with Alfrey.” His eyes slid to the basement door again. “And I don’t know if I can go back.”
She realized his conflict was about Cress. The clan would have a hard time accepting a non-Inverni as a mate for their leader. That Cress was a leanansidhe made matters worse. No one trusted them. With the failures of the past haunting the Inverni, they would find Cress’s influence disturbing. Hell, she thought, I find it disturbing sometimes. Their intimacy had a palpable texture to it. Everyone could feel it when they were together. That intensity for anything other than the good of the clan would be looked on as suspect. “The Wheel of the World, Terryn,” she said instead.
Terryn said nothing. The Wheel of the World, the fate of them all, a question of faith to which both she and Terryn subscribed. Things happened because they needed to happen for whatever reason fate dictated. They all rode the Wheel as It turned. Sometimes It ran its course as it would and sometimes people affected its course. At least that was what Laura believed. Otherwise, she was a pawn in the hands of some vast unknown Power. As far as she was concerned, if such a Power existed, she doubted it would care much about her as an individual.
“Sometimes I forget that,” he said.
“We all do.”
He changed the subject. “Sinclair stays off the books until he proves himself.”
“That’s fine with me,” Laura said.
Terryn allowed himself a tired smile, which was telling. Powerful fey didn’t tire easily. “Good. Because he’s your responsibility until then. He doesn’t go anywhere without you except when he’s at work.”
Laura nearly dropped her glass. “You’re joking.”
He shook his head. “No joke. I don’t trust him. I trust your judgment, but that doesn’t mean I won’t set precautions. You should decide where you’re going to live. The two of you can’t stay here. It will raise questions.”
She put the glass down. “You want me to live with him?”
“Is there a problem? You’ve done things like this before. If he’s willing, maybe he’ll let Janice Crawford move in to his place. The Crawford apartment is rather small, and the cable’s been disconn
ected.”
She retrieved the glass and turned away to refill it at the sink. “Fine. Bring him to the Guildhouse. I have to get some things from my apartment, and I’ll pick him up afterward.”
“Okay. Cress should be done by now. Do you want me to help debrief him?” Terryn said to her back.
She shook her head as she stared out the window. Someone had set up a swing set in the backyard. “It’ll help build trust if I do it alone.”
“True. Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” he said.
She kept staring out the window. She didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.
CHAPTER 18
DROPPING HER DUFFEL bag on the threshold, Laura stood in the doorway of Sinclair’s apartment. The small, spare living room was furnished with two armchairs and a couch. A pile of books and magazines teetered next to a used coffee cup on the coffee table. Throw pillows pressed to one side of the couch with a blanket hanging half on the floor. A flat-screen TV was mounted above the fireplace.
“Sorry the place is such a mess,” Sinclair said.
“It’s fine.” All in all, Laura thought, a helluva lot cleaner than her room at the Guildhouse.
Sinclair picked up the blanket and folded it. “Make yourself at home.”
She closed the apartment door. While Sinclair tidied the magazines, she scanned the room for essence. Moving along the bookcases to either side of the fireplace, she noted a few classic novels, plenty of mysteries and thrillers, and a substantial amount of nonfiction. Sinclair read biographies of politicians and histories. Or at least owned them, Laura thought. She mentally slapped herself for the unspoken dig at him. She couldn’t deny he read. There were too many books and too many categories for it to be one of those contrived libraries. She had been hoping he wouldn’t be interesting.
A stone cup sat next to a history of the Seelie Court in the twentieth century. It threw off the subtle essence of a listening ward. As Sinclair passed it on the way to the kitchen, the cup’s essence faded and reappeared when he was gone.
The dining area was large enough for a table and four chairs. Sinclair scooped an empty glass and a plate with crumbs off the table and carried them through an archway. A framed photograph hung on the wall. Other than that, the space held nothing that could be a ward.
To the left of the dining room, the archway led to a galley kitchen. She watched Sinclair place the cup, plate, and glass in the sink and run water. “Would you like a drink?” he asked.
“Sure. I’ll take any kind of beer,” she said. She opened the cabinets and scanned inside. No listening wards. Sinclair moved to the end of the counter and took two beers out of the refrigerator. She caught a subtle current of essence when he moved away. A ceramic canister outside the range of his medallion had been charged as another listening ward. She pointed it out to him and held her finger to her lips.
In the living room, he popped open both bottles and handed her one. He held his out, and they tapped bottles. Laura took a sip and set the bottle on a magazine. She opened her duffel bag. Ask me what this is, she sent.
“What’s that?” Sinclair asked.
She held up a small granite obelisk. “This? I like to mediate in a cleansed space before I go to sleep. Do you mind if I set it up?”
“No, go ahead. Can I watch?” he said. He put a mildly lewd tone to the question.
She glowered at him. “Sure, if that’s your thing.”
She placed the obelisk next to the stone cup on the bookshelf. She caressed it, strands of blue essence dripping from the tips of her fingers into the stone. Retrieving her beer, she sat in an armchair. “That cup’s a listening ward. The obelisk is basically a jamming device. We can talk freely in here. There’s another listening ward in the kitchen and probably one in your bedroom.”
He slouched across the couch and frowned. “Why the hell would someone do that?”
Laura shrugged. “I believe someone thinks Sanchez said something to me before he died. If I had to guess, they think I told you something when you found me in the warehouse.”
He looked dubious. “They bug my apartment and try to run me off the road on the off chance you might have said something to me?”
She took a swig of beer. “I’ve seen people killed for less reason, Jono. Depends on the stakes involved.”
A flash of satisfaction passed over him when she called him by his nickname. She stretched her legs out, watching his eyes shift to them and back to her face. Flirting with someone to manipulate them was so much easier when she actually enjoyed the flirting. She sipped her beer again. “Do you know much about how your medallion works?”
He shook his head. “No. My grandfather made it and told me to wear it. That’s good enough for me.”
She pulled off her barrette and shook her hair loose. “Want to hear something funny? The listening wards are pointless. The medallion neutralizes them when you’re near them.”
He grinned. “Thanks, Gramps.”
“Have you had any houseguests since the raid?” she asked.
He raised his eyebrows. “Are we at the point where we talk about past relationships?”
Laura rolled her eyes. “No, we’re at the point where I try and figure out if they’ve realized you have that dampening medallion. If you’ve been home alone, there’s been no reason to talk, so no reason to hear. With me here, they’ll notice if they can’t hear conversation.”
“Like now,” he said.
She nodded. “Like now. Only I just gave them the reason. They know a cleansing ward is meant to suppress other essence. Lots of fey like cleansed meditation spaces, so they shouldn’t find it suspicious they can’t hear. As long as they think the other wards are fine, they might not worry about the living room.”
“No one’s been here,” he said.
“We’ll have to be careful what we say when you’re not near the listening wards. They’ll pick up anything up to ten feet away, but not something near that obelisk and not if your medallion is near.”
“Got it.”
“Any word on what’s going down at the apartment complex?” she asked.
Laura caught herself noticing the way his widow’s peak curled off center, a satisfying quirk that broke the sharp planes of his face. He shifted to a more comfortable position on the couch. “The FBI shut us out. They’re claiming we stumbled into a European drug cartel they’ve been investigating, so they’re going with that.”
Laura nodded. “That’s become their standard excuse the last year or two.”
He grunted as he downed half his beer. “All drugs are connected to a cartel somewhere.”
“Is Foyle taking heat for the bad intel?”
She watched him hesitate, as if he were about to say something and changed his mind. “He’s been in his office with the door closed. I think he’s been sidelined. Are you going to be Crawford all night?”
She smirked playfully at him. “Who do you think is more attractive, Janice, Mariel, or Laura?”
He smirked back. “That sounds a lot like that who-do-you-love-more game parents tease kids with. How about you pick whoever you’re most comfortable with?”
Her impulse was to say Laura. That was who she was, physically. That was the face she put to the world, her real face without any artifice. Laura was her default, but in that moment, she didn’t think that meant the same thing as comfortable. Laura wasn’t a person anymore. These days, she was only someone when she was Laura Blackstone, director of public relations. By definition, she was a persona about presentation and image, not a fleshed-out human being with an existence outside her office.
She shoved the reflection aside and released the Janice glamour. Her hair lightened and face narrowed. Her body lengthened a bit and thinned, but the clothes remained the same black jeans and T-shirt. Sinclair showed little reaction at the transition except a slight lift to his eyebrows. His eyes shifted, as if he marked off something on a mental checklist. “I’ll get us more beer.”
She liked the
way he walked, the way his jeans hugged his hips but hung loosely enough on the legs that she surmised he didn’t think much about it. Of course, like all elite cops, he had a gym body, the V-shape of his torso flaring to fill the T-shirt. His giant heritage showed in that, now that she knew to look for it, the height, the thick muscle, even the wheat blond hair.
Stop, she thought. Everything was complicated enough. She was lonely and tired and frustrated. He was handsome and smart and different. The wrong combination for her at the moment. He startled her by dangling a beer bottle in her face. Between her weak sensing field and the medallion dampening his fey nature, she didn’t know he had returned. Even that lack of warning intrigued her. She literally couldn’t see him coming.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“What?”
“You’re smiling. You’ve been aggravated all night, and now you’re smiling,” he said.
Tired, she shook her head. “Long day.”
“Liar,” he said, around the opening to his bottle of beer.
She lifted her head, a little too quickly, wondering if the jotunn had truth-sensing abilities after all. They were an enigma among the main branches of fey species, not so few to be considered solitaries, not so many that they posed a threat to anyone as a group. She knew few truth sensers other than herself. Jotunn were among the least studied species, which probably was another reason to be careful around Sinclair. And hybrids like him were even rarer and less studied. “I was just thinking you met Janice Crawford only a couple of days ago, and now anyone watching will have seen me show up here with an overnight bag. Makes you look like you take advantage of women who might be a little emotional about getting shot at.”
“Nah. Makes Janice look a little easy,” he said.
Laura surprised herself by snatching up a bottle cap from the coffee table and playfully flinging it at him. He pretended it came at him harder than it did, then tossed it back at her. She snatched it out of the air and took another deep draft of beer. “So what were you doing at Hornbeck’s hearing yesterday?”
The smile on his face went out like a light. Mood killer, she thought. “Foyle asked me to drive him. The overtime’s good. It’s interesting sometimes.”
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