“Suppose that makes it easier,” I said.
“You would think so, but I’ve looked into a lot of depraved minds,” said Owen. He sighed. “Look, I know you don’t like Homeland Security. Thugs with badges, right?” I shifted in my seat. “There’s some of that, I won’t argue. But someone has to do this job. Someone’s got to find justice for victims. Someone’s got to help pick up the pieces after a crime. Sometimes we do a bad job, and sometimes you’re right, there are officers who are thugs with badges. But we’ve got to do the job, even if it’s done imperfectly.”
“Why don’t we start over?” I said. “I’ve said some things I shouldn’t have, and you have, too. But we’ve got to work together. I don’t want to explain to the High Queen that we screwed this up because we called each other mean names.”
“She would not respond favorably,” said Owen, which was probably the understatement of the year.
“So.” I stuck out my right hand. “Nadia MacCormac.”
He shook my hand. “Owen Quell.”
“Want to go find who sent that wraithwolf after the Doyles?”
“Yep.” Owen started the SUV and put it in reverse. “Besides, if we sit here too much longer, we’re probably going to give Toni Caplan a heart attack.”
###
Pablo Leon had a house in Wauwatosa, and a half-hour later Owen pulled the SUV to the curb in front of it. It was an impressive house, four or five bedrooms, three stories, and a two-and-a-half car garage.
“Nice place,” said Nadia, squinting at the house. “Who knew there was so much money in sewage?”
“It’s a good business model,” said Owen, shutting off the engine. “The one thing we’re not going to run out of is bullshit.”
Nadia laughed at that.
He gave her a half-wary, half-amused glance. Owen didn’t think he could ever be completely comfortable around her. Which was smart, given how dangerous she was. But he did think they could work together effectively, now that they had cleared the air. They had both served as reminders of past trauma to the other, and hopefully, they could put that behind them.
He thought they could manage it.
Because, in the end, she was just as pissed off about the murder of Ronald Doyle’s children as he was.
“Let me do most of the talking,” said Owen.
“Sure,” said Nadia, hands in the pockets of her coat. “You’re the Homeland Security officer. I’m just your daughter, seeing what Dad does for a living.”
“For God’s sake,” said Owen, shaking his head.
Nadia grinned. It wasn’t that ghastly rictus she displayed when pissed off, but a smile of genuine amusement. “I did warn you that I was kind of a bitch.”
“And I know better than to respond to that statement in any way,” said Owen, and she laughed.
They were halfway up the steps to the broad porch when the door flew open and Carolina Leon stalked out to confront them.
Owen blinked in surprise. He had seen Carolina’s headshot when Nadia had looked up Pablo Leon’s address in UNICORN, so he knew that she was a year younger than he was and reasonably attractive. But a picture didn’t capture the beauty of the woman. If a film casting agency had put out a request for “attractive older Latin woman,” then Pablo Leon’s wife would have been the picture in their mind’s eye. She was wearing stiletto heels, a snug purple skirt, a white blouse, and tasteful jewelry. She had a cloud of black hair around a face whose lines did not detract from its beauty. The blouse was just as snug as the skirt and Owen noted that Carolina was in excellent shape, both for her age and in general.
He made himself meet her black eyes, which were wide with fury.
“So!” she said. “He cannot even be bothered to come himself! Instead, he sends Homeland Security to do his dirty work!”
“Um,” said Owen. “I’m sorry?”
“I know why you are here!” said Carolina, pointing at him. “My husband, he sends you to frighten me, yes? I know that he is sleeping with that skinny white bitch at his office.” She glared at Nadia. “What, are you another of Pablo’s lovers?”
“Nope,” said Nadia. “Never even met the guy. I’m a consultant for Homeland Security.” She jerked a thumb at Owen. “I just follow him around.”
“I know he will lie,” said Carolina. “What lies has he poured into your ears? What falsehoods?”
“Mrs. Leon,” said Owen.
“I know how he thinks,” said Carolina. “I looked at the other woman, this Toni Caplan, and she is not even that pretty! What, does he think to throw me out of my own home, the home in which I raised my sons? Does…”
“Mrs. Leon!” said Owen.
She blinked and looked at him, apparently shocked that he would interrupt her.
“We think your husband might be in danger,” said Owen. “No one has seen him for three days. Do you know where he would be?”
“In danger?” said Carolina. The thought seemed to baffle her. “Why would anyone wish Pablo harm?”
Owen blinked. The incongruity of Carolina ranting at her husband and then claiming that no one wished him ill seemed to have escaped her.
“Recently Ronald Doyle was murdered,” said Owen. Carolina nodded – she recognized the name. “The day after that, your husband disappeared, and no one has seen him since. Pablo had a business relationship with Doyle, but we’re unclear on the details. We’re worried that Pablo might be in danger, and we want to talk with him.”
“He probably went to his cabin,” said Carolina. She waved a hand. “He has a cabin all the way up in Minnesota. God only knows why, it’s so cold there. If he’s upset, he probably went up there to sulk.” She scowled. “Or he brought his strumpet with him.”
“I don’t think so,” said Owen. “We just spoke with Ms. Caplan. She has no idea where Mr. Leon is.”
Carolina sniffed. “She has no idea about a lot of things. You know she is forty and has never been married?” She looked incredulous. “If a woman has not been married by the time she is forty, then she is clueless about the world.” Her glower turned in Nadia’s direction. “You! Are you married?”
“For the third time,” said Nadia, waggling the fingers of her left hand. “I’m really hoping this time is the charm. He’s a printer repair specialist, and he plays guitar on the weekends.”
Owen just stopped himself from giving her an incredulous look.
“Yes,” said Carolina, nonplussed.
“Ma’am, I’m going to leave you with one of my cards,” said Owen, handing it over. “My number’s on there. If you see Mr. Leon, or if you know where he is, please give me a call. We need to find him.”
“When you find him,” said Carolina, “give him a piece of my mind. Tell him I know about his little whore!”
It was with some relief that Owen climbed back into the SUV and shut the door.
“Jesus,” he said. “Maybe we’re all wrong. Maybe Pablo ran to get away from her.”
Nadia snorted. “Couldn’t blame him.”
He gave her a look. “A guitar-playing printer repairman?”
“What?” said Nadia. “If I had told her the truth, it’s not like she would have believed me. Are you going to send someone to check on Leon’s cabin in Minnesota?”
“I’ll contact the Duluth branch office, they’re closest,” said Owen. “While I do that, break out your aetherometer, will you? Find out if there are any of those magical echoes in Leon’s house.”
Nadia nodded and dug her aetherometer out of her bag. Owen produced his phone, made a call, and spoke with the Homeland Security branch commander in Duluth.
“They’re going to send someone out to check on Leon’s cabin,” said Owen. “We won’t hear back for three hours. Apparently, it’s a long drive. Anything?”
“Nope,” said Nadia, staring at the dials on her aetherometer. “According to this, the only things nearby with magical auras are you and me.”
“Makes sense,” said Owen, starting the engine and putting the S
UV into drive. “Our warrants for Leon’s finances should come through soon, so let’s start looking through his records. He’s the closest thing to a lead we’ve found, so we’re going to follow it.”
***
Chapter 10: Better Half
The rest of the day was busy but unproductive.
Owen’s warrants had indeed cleared, and we started sifting through Leon’s financial data. It was a tangled maze, and about half of his business deals were on the legal side of sketchy. His finances were in bad shape – Modern Sewer Systems was carrying a debt load, and most of Leon’s credit cards were maxed out. Carolina had expensive tastes, and so did Pablo Leon himself.
Halfway through the afternoon, Owen got a call from Minnesota. An officer had checked Leon’s cabin, and it was empty and locked down for winter. No one had reported seeing Leon there since September. Wherever Leon was hiding, it wasn’t in his cabin.
If he was still alive.
I decided to leave at about five. If Owen needed me, he had my number. Otherwise, I would check back in at 9 tomorrow morning. I had something I needed to do.
It was time to pick up my husband from the airport.
I drove home and got ready. I showered and did my hair and makeup, taking a lot more care than I did when going to the Moran Imports warehouse or walking into Homeland Security’s Central Office. I donned a tight blue dress that dipped low in front, with a skirt that came just above my knees. Then I realized that it would be a pain to get out of it in a hurry, so I put the dress back in the closet and went with a snug black skirt and a white blouse with a few of the top buttons undone. I completed the outfit with a pair of boots with much higher heels than I usually wore, and then took a denim jacket in concession to the November weather. My clothes really weren’t warm enough for the weather, but to be honest, I didn’t plan to stay in them for very long once I got Riordan home.
Then I drove across Milwaukee to the airport.
Milwaukee’s airport is named for a guy named Billy Mitchell. I’d never known or cared who he was, but Riordan had told me the story the last time I drove him to the airport. Evidently, Mitchell had been an old-time general, back before airplanes were in common use. He had claimed that airplanes would one day be the future of warfare, and he had gotten laughed out of the military for his trouble. Then World War II happened and he was proven right, so suddenly Mitchell was a farsighted genius.
See, someone like Owen Quell wondered why I lied to Homeland Security so often. I’m a shadow agent, so I suppose it makes sense that no one believes me when I tell the truth. But Mitchell was a freaking army general, and he told the truth, and still, no one believed him.
I suppose there’s some sort of profound philosophical point there, but I didn’t care. I was too excited to care.
I parked at the airport, waded through the tedium of security, and waited in the lounge for Riordan’s flight. For once, the plane was on time, and a mob of tired-looking people disembarked from the plane. As the crowds thinned out, a man in a suit walked out. He was a big man, his coat and shirt tight against his chest and upper arms, and he wore a pair of wrap-around black sunglasses beneath a shock of brown hair. Underneath the glasses, I knew, his eyes would be the color of expensive bookcases, and underneath the suit, his body would be…
Let’s not get ahead of myself. We were still at the airport.
He saw me and smiled, and I grinned and ran to him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him, and as I did, he hugged me, lifted me off my feet, and spun me around. I laughed in delight, ignoring the half-amused, half-annoyed glances of the nearby passengers at our obnoxious display of public affection, and he set me back on my feet.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hello,” said Riordan. “You seemed glad to see me.”
“That’s because I’m really glad to see you,” I said. “If we weren’t in public, I’d show you how glad.”
He smiled. “Then let’s go home.”
“That’s the best idea I’ve heard in weeks,” I said. He took my hand, and we walked to the baggage claim. “How was the trip?”
He filled me in on the details as we claimed his suitcases and headed to the car, using various euphemisms in case anyone was listening. Riordan had gone to the UK on business for the Shadow Hunters. There had been a terrorist bombing in Edinburgh. Americans tended to think of Britain as one place, but it was divided between the English, the Scottish, the Welsh, the Irish, and the descendants of various African and Asian immigrants, all of whom had historical grievances against each other for reasons that went back thousands of years. The High Queen and the Elven nobles forbade open warfare between human nations, but sometimes dissatisfied people expressed themselves through bombings.
Except this time, it hadn’t been a terrorist attack. A cult of Dark Ones worshippers had been murdering people in the city, and they had staged the bombing to cover up their sacrificial killings. Riordan and the UK Shadow Hunters had tracked down the cultists and killed them.
“It sounds like you could have used my help,” I said. “Next time, I’m coming with you. I’ve finally got the paperwork cleared on my passport, so the next time you go to the UK for Shadow Hunters stuff, I’m coming.”
“We definitely could have used your help,” said Riordan. I opened the trunk, and he put his suitcases inside. “And I would have been glad to have you with us.” He smiled. “For a variety of reasons.”
“Yeah,” I said. My throat was a little dry, and I forced moisture into it. “Let’s go home and talk about those reasons.”
We got into the car. I drove for home.
“The investigation the High Queen gave you,” said Riordan. “Have you made any progress?”
“Not really,” I said, some of my good mood fading. “I don’t think I’ve handled it very well.”
“What happened?” said Riordan.
I told him everything that had happened over the last two weeks, starting with Arnold Brauner’s threats and ending with my little mutual snit fit with Owen this morning. I didn’t leave anything out, even the stuff I wanted to keep to myself because it made me look bad. I had made myself a promise that I wouldn’t keep any secrets from Riordan, and I wouldn’t lie to him. It had to be difficult to be married to someone like me, and sometimes I wondered if he secretly regretted it. Or if he should have been with someone else, someone taller and curvier and more interested in books and intellectual crap than I was. That was just insecurity talking, I know. Riordan had gone to insane lengths to save my life.
But, still. I didn’t want to make things harder. So, no lying, and no keeping secrets.
“I think you handled the problem with Brauner as best you could,” said Riordan.
“Really?” I said, gratified.
Riordan shrugged. “If you had rolled over at his first demand, he would have ended up owning Moran Imports by the end of next year. If you give a man like him an inch, he’ll take another ten miles. But he’s smart enough not to push too hard once he realized that you can push back. It’s just a fact of life that a large business must deal with the local shadow councilor, and Moran Imports is probably going to end up becoming very large. I suppose Brauner was clever enough to see that, and he wanted to get in on the ground floor. It could have been much worse.”
“True,” I said. “I don’t think I handled things with Quell very well.”
Riordan’s voice hardened. “He attacked you with the mindtouch spell.”
“I goaded him into it because I knew I could beat him,” I said. “Please don’t hurt him.”
“I wasn’t going to,” said Riordan, “but I might have to join your investigation.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“A Shadowlands creature of a type no one has ever seen before attacked and killed a family in Milwaukee,” said Riordan. “That definitely falls under the interests of the Shadow Hunters. The creature, and whoever summoned it.”
“Makes sense,” I said. Truth be told, I would be glad
to have Riordan’s help. And not just as a counterweight to Owen. My husband was good at this kind of thing, had been doing it for decades. I had helped him a few times, but the Shadow Hunters hadn’t really needed my help. My magic had just made things quicker in the end. Which was good, because when hunting Shadowlands creatures, the longer you delay, the more time they have to hurt and kill people. “I would like that. Thank you.”
“And to make sure this colonel doesn’t push you around,” said Riordan.
“Please don’t hurt him,” I said again. “He’s…well, he’s all right. I mean, he’s not my favorite person in the world, yeah, but he’s not corrupt, and he’s good at his job.”
“A good Homeland Security officer?” said Riordan.
“I’m as surprised to hear myself say it as anyone,” I admitted. “Hard for me to admit it. But…he seems like a decent man.”
“Who used the mindtouch spell on you,” said Riordan.
“Because I provoked him into it,” I said. “And because he thought I was someone like Martin Corbisher.”
“He must not be a very good detective, then,” said Riordan. “You don’t look anything like Corbisher.”
I laughed at that. “But, seriously, I’ll be glad for your help. If it doesn’t interrupt your writing or your other work.”
“The Shadow Hunters won’t need more from me for a while,” said Riordan, “and I’ll be doing the Family’s work by hunting down this two-legged wraithwolf. And it was a ten-hour flight from London to Milwaukee, with a two-hour stopover in New York. I finished four and a half chapters of my next book. Not much else to do on the plane.”
“Then I’ll be glad to have your help,” I said. “Really, really glad.”
The conversation turned to other topics – Moran Imports’ potential growth, Russell’s enthusiasm for the business, how Nora and Alex Matheson had bickered constantly in the UK – and then a short time later we were home. I pulled into the garage next to Riordan’s truck, and the door slid shut behind us.
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