Smirking at that, Gus walked into the store and moved to the counter.
“I have a search warrant for this building,” he said. The young man behind the counter had black hair and brown eyes, looked human, and was wearing the convenience store uniform. “I’m looking for anything that would link this to a series of crimes that’ve been committed. In addition, I’m allowed to confiscate any electronic devices on the premises that could store information.”
“What? You can’t do that!” shouted the clerk.
“I can. And I am.” Gus pulled out the copy and set it down on the counter. “You might want to call the owner. And this is my badge.”
Gus held open his badge at the same time as Vanessa and Melody entered from the other side of the convenience store.
Melody folded her arms in front of her and stood there by the door. Much in the same way Chloe was standing at the other door.
Vanessa immediately started walking for the back. There was a back room that led to the basement, and that was the only location an entry could be.
“Satisfied?” Gus said as the man stared at his badge.
“No! You can’t do this,” the clerk said. “I’m going to call the cops.”
“Please, be my guest. They were too busy to be here despite me asking several times. Maybe you’ll get them to show up and they can help me with the search,” Gus grumbled.
Folding the warrant up, he stuffed it back into his inner coat pocket.
“Need your cell phone,” he said, holding his hand out to the man.
“What!? No!” shouted the clerk.
“Give him your damn phone,” Chloe said. Without meaning to, the elder Vampire projected authority through her voice. Gus could feel the pressure of her pushing down on the man.
Vampires who managed to survive a century tended to start ramping up exponentially in power after that.
The man flinched, looking toward Chloe. Then he reached into his pocket, fished out what was probably his phone, and held it out to Gus.
After taking what was indeed a cell phone, Gus pocketed it and nodded at the man. “Thank you. Anything else on the premises? Cameras? Computers? Anything like that?”
Not responding, the man reached over for the phone that was behind the counter and picked it up. He started to punch in a number.
Probably calling the owner. Alright.
That’s an answer all on its own, I suppose.
“It’s probably back here,” Vanessa called from the back.
Looking at Melody and then Chloe, Gus found both of them seemed ready and fine. He nodded at them and wandered off toward where Vanessa had gone.
Entering a “staff only” room in the back, he found Vanessa standing next to a computer.
“Password protected, but… I don’t think that’ll be an issue for Michael,” Vanessa said.
“No. He’ll rip right through it. He’s a cretin, but he’s really good at his job,” Gus said.
They’d found that Mark had indeed gutted the PID of anyone useful. That included the entirety of their IT department.
“I’ll secure it when we’re done,” Vanessa said, shaking her head. “Still can’t believe the local and the PID refused to assist.”
“They’ve been gutted by the Fed bombing as well. Just not in the way anyone expected,” Gus said. “I’m sure if you started calling around to your old precinct, you’d find most everyone gone. Either joining the PID or the Fed.
“So everyone has a people shortage.”
“Didn’t… yeah. No. I’d realized it, but never thought about it. Okay. So everything is going to be like that for a while,” Vanessa said.
“Yeah, at a national level.” Gus looked around for the door that led to the basement.
Off in the corner, he found a trapdoor. It showed signs of a lot of use and was clearly well maintained.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Vanessa said. “I guess.”
Fuck. It’s like getting into a damn spider hole or a tunnel. This is a stupid idea.
Shouldn’t be doing this by myself, or without a bot.
Pulling Indali from her holster, Gus walked over to the trapdoor.
“Federal Agent!” he shouted at it. “I’ve got a warrant to search the premises!”
There was no sound from below.
Nothing stirred.
“Federal Agent with a warrant!” Gus shouted once again. He really didn’t want to go down there like this.
“This sucks,” Vanessa grumbled, walking around to the other side of the trap door. Her standard-issue PID firearm was in her hand. Apparently she’d refused to turn it over.
Grabbing the handle to the door, Vanessa looked at him.
Gus lifted Indali up in his right hand and pulled his flashlight from his belt out in his left. Bracing the left hand under his right, he turned on the flashlight. Then he nodded at Vanessa.
She pulled the trapdoor up and open, then immediately went to pull her flashlight out in the same way Gus had.
Angling his flashlight into the hole with Indali ready, Gus found nothing.
There was no one waiting in there.
“Federal Agent with a warrant,” he said into the hole.
Once more, there was no response, no sound—nothing.
“Really don’t like this,” Vanessa said. “I’m going to go get Chloe. She can deal with this better than we can.”
Gus only nodded. He wasn’t getting anything out of the basement. Nothing from his telepathy, nor from his Boogieman predatory instincts.
He was almost positive no one was down there.
A minute later and Chloe was there, pistol in hand.
“Ness told me I’m jumping down a dark hole,” she said, walking over to the trap door. “Guess this is it?”
“Yeah. Pretty sure there’s nobody down there, but… I can’t see in the dark like some people can,” Gus said, glancing at Chloe. “Or get shot in the heart and shrug it off.”
“Yeah, yeah, Vampires are awesome,” Chloe said, then jumped into the hole.
Gus heard an almost immediate thump.
“It’s just a storage room filled with crap,” Chloe said. “No one down here. Oh, there’s the light.”
He heard a click, and then an off-white glow shone out from below.
Holstering Indali, Gus got closer and spotted a ladder. He climbed down into the basement and looked around.
It really was full of what looked like clutter.
Sales signs, banners, broken displays, and a plenty of boxes.
There were also chairs and a table, which Gus had seen multiple times in the memories of the people he’d interviewed in the hospital.
In the end, he’d learned nothing more from the others. They’d all received the same order, to kill Dunyasha before the day was out. She had to be dead by nightfall.
There was nothing else other than that.
“Maybe you fucked up,” Chloe said, looking around as well.
“No. Definitely didn’t fuck up,” Gus said. “Just… maybe too late. Or maybe it was only ever a meeting point.”
Chloe walked over to one of the cardboard signs flipped it over.
“Half off all drinks,” she said. “Still too expensive. Always taste flat. And I get the heebie-jeebies just thinking about when they last cleaned the soda machine.”
Sighing, Gus ran a hand through his hair. There really wasn’t anything here.
“Oh. Maybe you weren’t wrong,” Chloe muttered, flipping over a sign toward him.
It read “Humanity First” in big bold red letters, and nothing else.
“Yeah,” Gus said, looking at the sign. “With the Fed on the down and outs… there’s going to be a lot more of that.”
The Fed often had to spend time getting rid of messages like that, running them down on the internet, and simply trying to hide the Para world.
“This one’s rather awful. Given what you said they were up to, it makes me a little nervous,” Chloe
looked at another sign as she put back the first one.
Pulling it over, she set it down in front of her.
It was a caricature of a woman being hanged by the neck. Below it read “Send ’em back to hell!” in red lettering.
“I actually like Sarah Newbin,” Chloe said, looking down at the woman. “She does a lot of work to push Para rights without making it obvious. I think she’ll be a great president if she wins it.”
Gus could only nod at that. He was aware of her, though only marginally. He didn’t really pay attention to politics.
Apparently she’s big enough to catch Humanity First’s ire. That might make her a friend?
Gus only knew her at all because she’d been fighting to get all ingredients listed out on products that would be entering the body. There were a slew of Paras that needed to know everything that went into food, drink, and medical supplies.
“Actually, you didn’t fuck up at all, Gus,” Chloe said, digging through the signs. She shoved several of them to one side and pulled out a case.
He knew it was a rifle case just at a glance.
A long rifle, used for hunting game at a distance.
Chloe forced the lock open casually with her fingers, twisting the locking mechanism clean off, and opened the case.
Inside was an empty foam liner. A rifle had lain there, along with what looked like extra pieces and several magazines.
Fuck.
Pulling his phone out of his pocket, Gus immediately dialed up Mark.
“Agent. You have good news for me?” Mark asked.
Shit. Okay… maybe his boss is there.
“Don’t know about good news, but I have news. Just found an empty rifle case, some signs that really don’t bode well for the health of a congresswoman, and Humanity First propaganda,” Gus said.
“Would that happen to be Sarah Newbin, the congresswoman?” Mark asked.
“Yeah, why?” Gus asked.
“She reported a threat on her life a week ago,” Mark said. “Nothing came up though.”
“The orders on Dunyasha were a ‘must complete by tonight.’ Sarah doing anything today?” Gus asked.
“Nothing I know of,” Mark said. Someone said something Gus couldn’t hear. “Actually, she’s getting on a private plane this morning. She’s… going to go to the capital and meet some people. She’s considered a leading candidate for the presidency and is shaking hands, stealing babies.
“Think this is credible?”
“Very credible,” Gus said. “You’re gonna need to flood that airport with people. Probably haul out the Para national guard. You’re looking for a long-range shooter.”
“Got it. Thank you, Agent,” Mark said, and then he hung up.
“This doesn’t really make a lot of sense,” Chloe said, still sorting through signs. “Someone’s pretending to be the SA, another group wants to kill the real SA, and the SA is just trying to get out of the more criminal stuff.”
“Yeah, I don’t really get it either,” Gus said. “But it’s not my place to get that stuff. Our job was to pop the SA down to nothing.
“We did that. And in doing so we discovered there’s another group pretending to be them. Or so we think.”
“No fucking point in that. When I was workin’, we were really workin’ for someone else. SA wasn’t its own group for a long time. Was a lot bigger, too,” Chloe said.
“Bigger by a lot?” Gus asked.
“Yeah. Was huge for a long while, you know,” Chloe said. “I was there when we had our own mind reader. Before everything just… went bad.”
“And how’d that happen?” Gus asked, walking over to the signs. He started to sort through them, looking for anything else of interest.
“Mind reader and the woman runnin’ Vermilion vanished. I figure they both got dusted,” Chloe said. “After that we got infiltrated by the Fed, picked apart, and destroyed.
“Took a while to build back up from there. Especially when we stopped working for the other group. Never learned much about them other than a name. Jenaphila.”
“Makes sense,” Gus said. “And that’s where you met Dunyasha?”
Chloe made a disgusted noise.
“Fucking whore,” she growled. “She showed up one fine day as a recruit. Drank two kin on the third day, killed her boss on the fifth, and made herself a lieutenant by the end of the week.
“Took over operations for the Vermilion and a few Vamp brothels.”
“That why you call her a whore?” Gus asked.
“What? No. She never worked the sheets,” Chloe said, sorting through signs. “She just didn’t respect anything. She’d drink a peer or a higher-up, ditch the body, and act like nothing happened.
“No one could prove shit and she was getting things done, so the bosses let her run wild.”
“And you were…?” Gus asked, glancing back toward the Vampire.
“Killing people and expanding the business. We were still marginally running guns and drugs back then,” Chloe said. “I got popped, and that was the last I knew of it. They left me there.”
“And you came back out to find Dunyasha completely in charge,” Gus finished for her.
“Yeah. Pretty sure all the bosses I dealt with are missing all their blood and planted like flowers outside city limits,” Chloe said. “Whatever. Not my problem. We’ve more or less gutted her operations for the moment. She’s not making money. We just have to keep the pressure on her.”
“About that,” Gus said, standing upright. “Chances are the SA is done. Completely.”
“What? How do you know that?” Chloe turned to Gus fully now.
“Reasons,” he said with a smile for her. He didn’t want to talk about telepathy aloud, if that was what she was insinuating. “She seemed very much done with it all when she was lying there in her own blood.”
“Hah, good,” Chloe said, putting her hands on her hips. “She can go be a businesswoman or something. Fuck her.”
“Well, almost positive that isn’t going to happen either,” Gus said.
Chloe only glared at him now, her brows low over her eyes.
“I’m betting she’s going to get a job offer from Mark. Probably somewhere she can schmooze, charm, and politick the Fed into a better position.” Gus shrugged his shoulders. “People like her are always in demand for what they can do for an organization.”
Chloe’s face turned a deep, dark red, and her ears looked like they were on fire. He didn’t need to guess that she was extremely angry.
“I’m going to go back to prison,” she said, her voice chilly. “For my entire life. And she… she’s going to get a deal to walk free and just… work for the Fed?”
“She’s not been convicted of any crimes,” Gus said, his tone softening. “Technically… her file is clean as could be. Cleaner than mine, even. Yours is… yours is what it is.”
Shaking her head, Chloe looked down and to the side. Letting out a soft huff, she closed her eyes.
“That’s the truth of it. Did it to myself,” she muttered. “Did it all to myself. I let others use me for their ends while… while sabotaging myself all along.
“And that’s landed me in prison for… ever, really. Forever.”
Taking in a shuddering breath, Chloe visibly calmed herself. Then she reached up, smacked her cheeks with her hands twice, and nodded her head.
“Okay. I guess we just… clean this place out, head back to the building?” Chloe asked.
“Yep,” Gus said.
He wasn’t really thinking about that, though.
His mind was stuck on a single idea. His deal with Chloe was that as long as he employed her and she worked for him, she remained free.
She didn’t have to go back to prison unless he got rid of her.
In other words. I can keep her out.
Indefinitely.
Something to think on.
Chapter 13 - New Mistakes
“…realistically it’s just so much easier in the new h
ouse,” Melody said, clicking through something on her computer.
“Uh huh,” Gus mumbled.
Another order for beef jerky.
That’s a lot of beef jerky. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten more than a pack or two a year. This is boxes and boxes.
Finding nothing of any use on the sheet, Gus flipped it over to the other side. It was absolutely blank.
He peeled it off the desk and dropped it into the bank box on the floor next to him.
“I think my favorite part is that we each have a master bedroom,” Melody continued.
“Mel, you bought us a house with eight master bedrooms. It’s damn near ten thousand square feet. It isn’t a house—it’s a damn mansion,” Gus said. He wasn’t exactly sold on what Melody had done, but he couldn’t complain much either. It was a really nice house. “And don’t think I’m not aware of what you’re planning. You have seven contracts. That plus you makes the count eight. Eight bedrooms.”
“Oh, Indigo, I love you so much. I have many, many years to talk you into more women for my harem,” Melody said with a hand wave in his direction. “Besides, the house is just right for us. We’ll grow into it nicely. Besides, admit it. It’s a really nice neighborhood and you feel safe.”
Gus couldn’t argue that fact. It was a very nice neighborhood, and he did feel safe. If someone were trying to case his house, one of the bored housewives around would likely call the cops.
“I’m not finding anything,” Gus said, reading over the sheet of paper in front of him. “This whole cabinet is just full of stock replacement orders. Nothing that would get us a warrant on the owner’s home.”
“Honestly, I’m pretty certain the owner didn’t know,” Melody said with a sigh. “Everything is pointing right back to those lovely individuals you mauled. Their houses were all clean, though, and I’m not seeing anything in this computer. Somewhat of a dead end.”
Shaking his head at another order of beef jerky, Gus flipped it over, checked the back, and dropped it into the box.
“Does seem that way,” he muttered. “Feels like a cell. One designed to receive feeder orders and little else.”
“Mmhmm,” Melody leaned back in her chair. They were both sitting in her office. “I thought it was clever, personally. Using a convenience store. I bet it made it difficult to trace for the old Fed. Always using someone different coming in with orders for whoever was working the desk.”
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