by E. A. Copen
His eyes met mine again, and his face went blank. “You mean that? I thought…I thought you two didn’t keep secrets from each other?”
“Well, Ed, let me let you in on a secret. Everyone’s got secrets. No matter how close two people are, there are just things they don’t tell each other. It’s important to have secrets, places in your head you know are yours. You understand?”
“I think so.” He nodded and rubbed his palms on his jeans. “How about we bust out of here, then? I’m dying for a cheeseburger and a soda.”
I smiled and clapped Ed on the shoulder as he rose. “We’ll hit a drive-thru on the way out of town,” I promised him. “But first, I need to swing by the hospital.”
Ed shrugged away from my hand on his shoulder. “Sal’s not still there, is he?”
“No.” I put an arm around Ed and led him to the door. “I’ll explain on the way.”
The hospital was close enough that we could walk. By not taking the car, I avoided paying for parking, too, which I was convinced was one of the hospital’s largest forms of income.
We came out the police station into the late afternoon sun, the scent of cooking asphalt, and car exhaust. Bass from a passing car mixed with the distant wail of a car alarm and the muffled chatter of people on the street. Ed stepped up beside me, hands in his pockets. He stared at a crack in the sidewalk and kicked at it. “I’m sorry to be so much trouble.”
“You’re not trouble, Ed. You’re a friend. That said, if you keep getting yourself into trouble with the law, I can’t keep bailing you out. Next time I tell you to leave it to the cops, please do. Or at least don’t get yourself caught if you’re going to take matters into your own hands.”
I turned and started down the street. It wasn’t crowded, but it wasn’t empty, either. The early shift at the hospital hadn’t let out yet, and the restaurants up and down the short strip hadn’t yet gotten their dinner rush. Two uniforms, beat cops coming back from the coffee shop judging by the iced coffees sweating in their hands, halted when they saw me and gave me a once over, stopping when they saw the bloodstains. I waved to them as we passed. “Fellas. How’s the coffee?”
They didn’t answer me, but I heard one of them say to the other once we’d passed, “You know who that was?”
“No,” said the other. “Should I?”
“She’s the fed.”
“You mean that werewolf’s bitch?”
The back of my neck itched as they stared me down.
Ed leaned forward, watching my face. “Why don’t you tell them to shut it?”
“Why? What good’s it going to do, Ed? You can’t change people. I can argue with them all day about me, my reputation, anything, but it won’t change a thing. End of the day, what I do has to speak louder than what I say. They’re not my enemies.”
“But what if they’re members of the vanguard? The way they’re glaring at you…” He turned to cast a glare of his own behind him, one that could have made toddlers cry and dogs bark. Ed’s eyes took on a slightly lighter shade of honey brown.
I put a hand on his arm. “It’s wasted effort to stop and argue with those who choose to be ignorant. What they think of me doesn’t change the fact that I’ve got a job to do. I’m here to help people, not to make friends or win any popularity contests.”
Ed planted his feet, turned ninety degrees, and gestured down the sidewalk toward the cops who still stood, staring at me. “Yeah, but they—”
“Trust me, Ed, I’d love to break their smug little jaws.” I turned and glared back at them, making sure to say it loud enough that they could hear me. “But we don’t need to stoop to their level. We can be better. Maybe not perfect, but as long as we’re a little better every day, someday maybe that ignorance will disappear.”
Ed nodded, shot one more angry look behind him, and we started back down the street. “So, you said you’d fill me in. Who’s at the hospital?”
“Gideon Reed. I shot him.”
Ed stopped again, this time with a dumbfounded look on his face.
My statement clearly warranted further explanation, so I gave him a quick rundown. When I got to the end, I stopped and pulled the hard drive out of my pocket. “This is what Creven was after. Now, I don’t know who hired him, or what’s on it, but he said it contains answers to questions I’ve never thought to ask.”
Ed plucked the hard drive from between my fingers and turned it over in his hands. “Creven works for Kim Kelley.”
“Yep.” I waited for him to work through what I had.
“Kim is Marcus’ daughter. Marcus is Fitz’s CEO, and Fitz supplies supernatural testing materials to BSI…” He lifted his head and stared into the distance, eyes fixed on the Fitz logo on top of the tower across from the hospital. His head snapped back to me, eyes wide. “This has to be something big.”
“Can you find out what it is? Off the record. Wherever you plug that thing in, it’s got to be somewhere BSI can’t know about.”
Ed nodded once. “I can do that.”
I pushed the hand containing the hard drive down. “In the meantime, don’t let anyone know you have it.”
“I can do that, too.”
I waited for him to put the hard drive in his pocket before we started down the street again.
Hospital air smells like formaldehyde and disinfectant. It’s painfully dry. After spending only a few minutes on the other side of the double doors of the emergency department, the lining of my nose and mouth were on fire. The heavy chemical clean scent in the air was like acid.
The lady at the desk, a nurse with a dimple in her chin, shook her head as she typed something into her computer a third time. “I’m sorry, Officer. There’s no one here matching that description.”
“They took him from the scene in an ambulance. He has to be here. Try again.”
“I’ve already looked three times—”
I slammed my hand down on the desk, making her jump. “I said try again! Where else would he be if he’s not here? That ambulance wouldn’t take him anywhere but here!” I pinched the bridge of my nose and let out a sigh. Maybe if I tried the description again. “The patient is male, mid to late forties with auburn hair. Gunshot wound to the upper chest.”
“Is there a problem here?”
I looked up and met eyes with a hospital security officer, his hand resting on the weapon in his belt. I pushed away from the desk and was just about to explain the situation to him again when I caught sight of the breaking news on the television screen. It showed a scene on Highway 83 north of Paint Rock near an old, closed-down gas station known locally as Four Corners Concho. The abandoned building was ablaze and there were helicopters swirling overhead. But that wasn’t the interesting part. An ambulance was overturned in front of the building. One of the rear doors sat, charred black, propped up against a telephone pole several yards away.
I stepped past the security officer for a closer look at the letters crawling across the bottom of the screen. Crash at Four Corners claims two lives.
I exchanged glances with Ed before turning back to the lady at the desk. “I think I found your missing ambulance.”
Chapter Twelve
Twenty minutes later, I pulled my borrowed Hellcat up in front of a roadblock a quarter mile down the road from the Four Crossings Concho building. Ahead, a helicopter circled, but this one wasn’t white like the local news chopper. It had a sleek, black design and missile launchers mounted to the side. Those were serious guns for a random crash at an abandoned gas station. The men at the checkpoint were carrying heavy hardware, too. Military-grade M4s and tactical armor with no identifying logo. They definitely hadn’t been there when I saw the news broadcast a short while ago. How the hell had they gotten there so fast, and more importantly, who the hell were they?
“Ed, whatever you do, don’t say a word.” I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. He sat still as stone, clearly on full alert.
I rolled down my window as one of the men stepped past th
e temporary cement blocks that had been placed across the road, his rifle in his hand, and pointed at the ground. He spoke before I could. “This road is closed. You can use 380 to connect to 381 if you want to go north.”
“I’m with the government,” I said and raised my fingers from the steering wheel. He tensed. “I’m going to grab my badge from my hip.” His fingers shifted on the gun as I moved to unclip my badge from my belt. “See?” I said, showing it to him. “BSI. Special Agent Judah Black. The patient in that ambulance up there is a suspect in my investigation.”
“Hold, please.” He straightened, grabbed the radio attached at his shoulder and spoke into it in a muffled tone. I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying because he stepped back from the car, careful never to let me out of his sight.
Whoever these guys were, they were highly trained. Military, maybe? The Blackhawk hovering above the scene seemed to suggest that, but there weren’t any military bases nearby for them to have mobilized from. Closest thing was the border patrol, and these guys were not Border Patrol.
The goon with the gun stepped back up to my car. “Sorry, ma’am, I can’t let you through. You’re not authorized to be in this area. I’ll have to ask you to turn around. If you want to go north—”
“Not authorized? What the hell do you mean, ‘not authorized’? I’m the lead detective on this case, and I know the patient in the back of that ambulance is a practitioner. You tell me what trumps BSI jurisdiction.”
“You need to turn around and vacate the area.”
“No,” I snapped and grabbed my door handle. “I want to speak to whoever’s in charge.”
His gun snapped up, pointed at me. “Do not exit the vehicle!”
“Get your commanding officer down here right now!” I opened the door and put one foot on the ground.
An unseen force jerked me out of my seat and pinned me to the ground. Before I could process that I’d been slammed face-first to the side of the road, there were four guns pointed at me, little red dots dancing all over my skin. Whatever had jerked me out of the car held me down, the weight increasing.
“Okay,” I ground out. “Okay, my bad.”
“Judah?” Several dull thumps followed as someone pushed their way through the crowd of paramilitary assholes pointing their guns at me.
I moved my head slightly so that I could look up. A tall, lanky figure stood over me, the wide brim of his hat blocking out the late afternoon sun. “Abe?”
He made a gesture with his hand, and all four guns backed off me. His shoe scuffed over the ground, removing a fresh ring of white paint that I hadn’t seen. A ward. Of course. That was what had knocked me face-first to the ground. It would have triggered on contact. When Abe broke it, the pressure released, and I wheezed out a breath. Abe reached down and helped pull me to my knees. “What are you doing here, Judah?”
“Same thing as you, probably. Trying to figure out what the hell happened. Why was Reed’s ambulance heading away from the Eden hospital?” I looked up at him. “That is what you’re doing here, right Abe?”
Abe stared blankly at me before turning to look at Ed. “There is nothing here that concerns your investigation.”
“Nothing here?” My fingers clenched into fists as they rested on my thighs, and I squared my jaw. “Where the hell is Gideon Reed, then?”
“Not here.” Abe put his hands on his skinny waist. “And you cannot be here either. The fire, it is dangerous. There are petrol pumps and perhaps some residual flammable material in the underground tanks. The situation is unstable and could blow at any time. It is best if you are away from here.”
“You don’t need unmarked military goons and a checkpoint to secure a potential gas leak and fire hazard.”
Abe was silent. The only sound was the constant whirring thump of the chopper a quarter mile from us.
“Gideon Reed attacked the drivers of the ambulance and escaped on foot,” Abe said after a long minute.
“Impossible,” I said, rising to my feet.
The four guns shifted, ready to fire on me if needed.
Abe gestured for them to stand down, and they obeyed. Was he in charge here? What the hell?
“I put a bullet in his clavicle, Abe. I’m surprised he survived long enough to get this far. There’s no way he got up and overpowered two EMTs, not with the bullet in his shoulder.”
“I suspect Gideon Reed might not be entirely human. He likely possesses some ability to heal rapidly. Nevertheless, what I tell you is what happened, and he is no longer here. If you wish to capture him, you will turn around and go back the way you came.”
A gust of wind swept over the ground where we stood, threatening to blow Abe’s hat off his head. He didn’t make a move to secure it, despite the way it tilted. The wind threw dust in my face, but I blinked it away to continue staring Abe down.
Abe reached forward and put a hand on my shoulder. “Go home, Judah. I will take care of things here and get you up to speed tomorrow, da?” He patted me on the shoulder and strode off, gesturing for the military goons to follow.
I turned and watched him slide behind the barrier and begin the trek to the crime scene. Meanwhile, goons one through four took up their positions at the barrier, giving me the stink eye. There were things I could do to get past them, magick things. I wasn’t great at offensive magick, but I might be able to gather enough strength to punch their lights out. If I hadn’t used everything I had earlier in the day to survive a fire, that is, and if there were only two of them. Four was a lot more than two, and I had a passenger in the car carrying what Creven had called answers.
“Looks like those are the only answers I’m going to get,” I mumbled and sank back into the car. I shut the door behind me and sat behind the wheel a moment, my hands shaking too bad to drive.
“You ever see the episode of X-Files where Scully and Mulder find out the FBI is up to some next level alien shit, hiding their DNA in an old coal mining complex in West Virginia?” I heard Ed’s seatbelt click into place. “You know this is starting to feel a lot like that, right?”
“There’s no such things as aliens, Ed.” I put the car in reverse and backed her into the next lane to turn around.
“So, what now? Reed’s in the wind. You’ve got no evidence, no way to find him, and no idea what you’re up against. We’re back where we started.”
I nodded to the hard drive resting on his hip. “Not quite. Let’s plug that baby in and see what she’s got. Maybe we’ll finally get some answers.”
All the way back to Paint Rock, the scene played over again and again in my head. I couldn’t make sense of it. Abe outranked me in the BSI hierarchy, but he’d never pulled rank. Mostly, he let me take the lead on the few cases we’d worked together. I knew he hadn’t been telling me everything but this… This hadn’t even registered as a possibility. Abe was supposed to be a liaison between BSI and high-profile vampires in Europe, not working with some off-the-books spec ops group to conceal car crashes. It felt like I was standing at the mouth of a gaping tunnel that led into the Wonderland of government conspiracy theories.
I pulled up to the trailer where Ed, his sister, Daphne, and Daphne’s girlfriend, Shauna, lived. It was a well-kept single-wide trailer with stepping stones and a gray, plastic mailbox.
“This could take a while,” Ed said. “And it’s kind of late. Sal will be wondering where you are pretty soon.” He pointed to the clock on the dash, which read five twenty before turning in his seat to face me. “What if I find something on this hard drive I shouldn’t?”
“You mean, like proof of the existence of aliens?” I asked, my tone dry.
Ed’s face remained stony. “I can’t help but see breadcrumbs. LeDuc worked for Marcus Kelley. Remember him? The guy who broke both my legs and ate Hunter’s finger?”
I shuddered at the memory. Being trapped in LeDuc’s lair still gave me nightmares. “I remember.”
“And I know there was an attempt on Marcus Kelley’s life, and that
this Seamus guy who’s supposed to come after you was somehow behind it. Mia got caught in the crosshairs. It’s how Sal found out about her. You said you thought someone was controlling Reed.” Ed took a deep breath. “What if that someone is connected to Creven and whatever we’re going to find on this hard drive? What if BSI wanted to silence them before this—” He raised the hard drive from his pocket and waved it. “—went public. Only now, silencing Reed isn’t enough. He recorded something or has some records here.” Ed cradled the hard drive in his hands and looked down at it. “What if knowing the answers gets me killed?”
I put my hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “If you don’t want to do it, I won’t make you. I’m not going to lie. It’s a possibility that just having that hard drive is dangerous. That’s why you can’t let anyone know you have it, especially not Abe.”
Ed’s jaw muscles flexed. “You know I have it.”
It suddenly dawned on me the point he was trying to make. It wasn’t a question about the danger. Ed had already faced down experiences worse than most people could imagine and lived to tell about it. He wanted to know what I’d do. If he was right and the hard drive did contain something BSI wanted buried, I’d have to make a choice. Do my job and destroy the evidence, whatever it was, or let the truth get out? Freedom of information or protect my job and my family?
“And I wouldn’t be asking you to look at it if I was just going to turn it over or destroy it blindly, Ed. I need to know what’s there before we can start making decisions.” I withdrew my hand from his shoulder. “Either way, I’ll protect you from any fallout. I won’t let anything happen to you, Ed, even if it turns out there is something big on there. As far as we know, it could be a porn stash.”
Ed’s eyes widened, and he whispered, “Are priests allowed to do that?”
I rolled my eyes. “Get out of the car, Ed. And call me when you know what we’re dealing with.”
Ed complied and shut the door before bounding up the stairs to the trailer. I waited until I knew he was inside and in relative safety before pulling out of his driveway.