* * *
Chapter Four
Lauren
I had assumed the shock of waking up this morning to the knocks of two officers from the paranormal authorities would be the worst of my day. I was wrong, so very wrong. I stared at the officer who had escorted me into the holding facility, a man whose number was a mere 5, but the hardness in his eyes made me wonder if he would change to a 6 at any minute. I shook my head. “I can’t believe he’s dead.”
“Do you need to see the body for proof he did it as instructed?”
I flinched both at the officer’s growl and at the words used. Harry Smalls was dead and now I was being treated . . . I raised a trembling hand to my brow and rubbed lightly trying to process. “I don’t . . . No. No, why would you even ask such a thing?”
When he didn’t answer, I looked up. The officer studied me for a long moment then abruptly stood, his chair scrapping against the cement floor. “Wait here, Miss Hope.”
Watching him walk out of the room and slam the door in his wake, I couldn’t help wondering where he thought I would go. We were underground in the middle of the forest. There were powerful guards throughout the holding facility since we had walked by three different 6s and two 7s on the way down. I was a Spotter not a trickster or a shifter. I couldn’t force my way out of a paranormal built holding facility if I wanted to . . . I couldn’t even escape one of those prisons built by the norms.
Running a hand through my hair, I tried to calm my racing thoughts. Why would the authorities want me? Why treat me like I was somehow responsible for poor Harry’s death? In less than a second, my mind offered the memory of the too contemplative Mr. 10. Had he pointed them in my direction? To . . . To scare me into cooperating and letting him drag me to Chicago?
I pursed my lips as a little hint of anger flared at the notion. Glowing 10 or not, I wouldn’t let him push me into going to that awful place. A tiny prick of disappointment stabbed me as I realized this meant he was not truly any different from the other employees . . . or rather the hunters sent out by Weard. I shoved the feeling away. It had been incredibly stupid of me to even begin to think that the man could possibly not be corrupt like all the others.
“Miss Hope, you look a little upset.”
A gasp escaped me as I jumped in my chair. I looked up to meet the piercing grey eyes of a mountain. The man lumbered around the table with deceptive ease and then sat down causing the chair to groan a protest. I glanced at the number floating above his head. A 6 and he felt like a brooding storm, the kind that made me hunt for the nearest shelter. Too bad I was trapped across a narrow table from him. I swallowed hard. “Of course, I’m upset. You sent officers to my apartment who didn’t offer a single word of explanation before I was brought here. Then, one of them tells me that Harry is dead and he acts like I am . . . involved somehow. Forgive me if this seems rude, but I don’t know how you could expect anyone not to be upset by this.”
The man merely looked at me. “Miss Hope, I’m Dagfinn Bergman, the chief warden of this holding facility. The reason you are here is because Harry Smalls committed suicide this morning.”
“Yes and that is a horrible thing to happen,” I said. Swallowing hard, I continued in a low voice, “I still don’t understand why you want me here. Shouldn’t you be contacting Harry’s family instead?”
“Do you have that information?” he asked mildly.
I blinked at him feeling more confused by the moment. “No. But I’m sure Halliman’s has some form of information on file. As part of the emergency contacts form, I think. I never met Harry’s family.”
He grunted at that and before I could ask what he was trying to get at, he placed a bag with a piece of paper in it on the table. He slid it toward me. I stared at it, completely dumbfounded at first, and then drew it closer. It was notebook paper and had been scribbled on over and over again.
She did this to me. The burning. Voices, burning, burning voices. The burning cannot stop! Not until it’s done. Not until she is satisfied. So much burning. Shadows calling, voices whispering her name. My name. No! I know who I am! I know who I am! She can’t have me. But she does. She owns me. The burning won’t stop!
Lauren! Lauren Hope! Burning and burning because Lauren won’t stop. She won’t listen to me. So I make her! I make her listen and she’ll be the one to burn instead!
Voices, her voice, burning me. Have to attack, cut the voices, silence them.
Lauren Hope knows! She knows about them, about the burning. She knows and she laughs!
The voices— Have to stop them. Have to stop her. Shouldn’t listen, shouldn’t have listened. Tried to silence her, but she made him stop me. Trapped me.
Leaving now. Escaping burning voices, her voice. Escaping. Escaping Lauren. She won’t find me again. The veil will protect.
The voices are calling. Burning me, burning them. She wants them to all burn. Louder. Hotter. Lauren knows! She knows! She sees! No more. No more burning, no more voices, no more her. No more. Lauren knows. She knows me, knows why. She knows. Lauren. Lauren—
I was shaking again by the time I finished reading the note. It was rambling and disjointed and the handwriting far shakier than any notes I had ever seen from Harry. But, it certainly seemed that Harry was . . . that he had accused me. Thought I did something. My stomach clenched as I realized why the authorities had come for me. Why I was sitting in that room. They thought I had compelled Harry to his fate.
I covered my mouth with trembling fingers and shook my head. Warden Bergman didn’t seem to sympathize much though as he gruffly broke the silence. “As you can see, Miss Hope, we have reason to be asking you a number of questions. Beginning with the most obvious, did you put a compulsion on Harry Smalls to force him to attack the executives of Halliman’s?”
“No. No, I uh, I don’t have that ability.”
“You are aware that the night hags have the ability to create artificial compulsion through teas, drugs, and powders?”
I shuddered at the mention. “I don’t associate with their kind.” I didn’t bother to hide my disgust as I added, “Besides most everyone knows the night hags are hiding in the arctic circle to avoid capture because of their lack of common sense and a conscience.”
“Your work history is rather patchwork though,” he murmured as he flipped through a file, “traveled to a lot of places too.”
“Not above the arctic circle,” I stated firmly. When he looked up at me, I met his gaze steadily. “I told you. I didn’t know Harry would even be at work that day. He had been out sick for a week, and I assumed that if he had the same illness some of the others caught. He probably wasn’t going to be able to come back for another week, if not a little longer.”
“I see. So you had not been in contact with Mr. Smalls in the days leading up to the attack?”
“No.”
He glanced at the table, no, the note and grunted again. “I see. All right, Miss Hope, I’ll play your game. When was the last time you spoke with or had any contact with Harry Smalls?”
The fact that he called this a game disturbed me. I hesitated as I tried to remember. “Maybe three or four months ago. I work as a secretary on the fourth floor. Harry was with logistics and relocation on the fifth floor so we didn’t cross paths that often. He had asked . . . He had asked if I could move a meeting time between his team and one of the ERTs regarding the relocation of a . . . bear shifter who had been damaging fishing nets due to a feud with one of the norm fishermen. I had to get together with a secretary from each floor in order to pull it off, which was unusual.” I shook my head with a sigh, adding, “After that, we didn’t speak beyond the occasional passing greeting. I barely saw him at all this summer. I hadn’t seen him for a good two months when he showed up at the firm that day.”
“The note says you know why Harry Smalls not only attempted to attack the executives at the firm, but why he decided to hang himself in his holding cell.”
“I can’t explain why he put my nam
e in there.” I glanced at the note then shook my head as I repeated, “I can’t explain why.”
“Because you thought your hold on him was stronger than that?”
“No!” I frowned at Warden Bergman as I stated in a calmer tone, “No. Because I had nothing to do with the attack on Halliman’s or with Harry’s tragic decision to end his life.”
“Tragic? Not convenient?”
I leaned back in my chair staring at the man. My mouth opened and closed several times before I could force any words out. “How can you even say such a thing? I don’t know why Harry did this. I know he was a nice man who certainly didn’t deserve such a fate. Yes, it was a tragedy. I still don’t understand why he even attempted the attack on Halliman’s. He was never like that. Harry Smalls couldn’t get ruffled if a trickster targeted him for pranks much less go on a rampage.”
“Those sound like the words of someone who knew Mr. Smalls quite well.”
I didn’t respond. The contemplative tone when he spoke made me wary of whatever Warden Bergman was going to say next. Grey eyes as emotional as granite bore into me as he continued, “Why don’t you tell me about your relationship with Harry Smalls? Is it normal for you to spend a long time apart from your lovers?”
If I had a drink, I would have sprayed it all over the room. Instead, my jaw dropped as I stared at the warden. “Harry and I were not in a relationship. We are . . . were coworkers and we were always cordial with each other.”
“Never dated?”
“No. Well, wait, that’s not quite right.” I ran a hand through my hair again, wishing I had been given more time to brush it, as I gathered my thoughts. “When I first came to work at Halliman’s, Harry asked me out. I gave him a chance because I usually agree to go out with the guys who are brave enough to ask, and he seemed nice enough. We went on a couple dates, three or four, I think.”
“What happened?”
I shrugged. “By the third date, I think we both knew there was no spark between us. We were barely through the appetizers on our fourth date when Harry suggested we should just be friends. Instead of attempting to force things. I was . . . relieved that I didn’t have to be the one to suggest it because I was worried about hurting his feelings. Once the pressure was off that was, frankly, the most natural, at ease, of all our conversations. Every once in a while we would join a group from work and go out as coworkers and friends, but that was it.”
“He never came back to you wanting another shot?” Warden Bergman tapped his pen against the table as he added, “Maybe he tried threatening you to force himself back into your life? You’re a pretty enough woman. Maybe he regretted letting you slip through his fingers and you took him back out of pity, then when you got tired of him again you decided to make sure Harry Smalls got out of your life. Permanently. How’s that sound?”
“Like a load of crock.” The retort slipped out before I could stop it. My heart started hammering in my chest beating more and more frantically as panic rose. Mouthing off to a warden was a stupid thing to do. What if he sent me to Weard to be interrogated further?
“Note says otherwise.”
“That’s not written there. What is written in that note is a desperate man’s ramblings. He needed medical attention. That was clear from the moment he showed up that day.” I leaned forward desperate for the warden to believe me as I continued, “Look, I was there. I saw Harry. And he looked horrible, he looked terribly ill, or like something was off. His . . . his eyes weren’t right. Something was wrong with him and maybe he was struggling under a compulsion or something worse, but I was not the one to do it to him. I don’t hurt people. I try to help them if I can.”
“So you have a lovers’ quarrel with Mr. Smalls and you help him how? By slipping him a little something? Maybe a drug you thought would calm him down, but instead he had a reaction. Or he realized you were trying to slip him something. And, his girlfriend’s betrayal pushed him past the point of no return so he came to Halliman’s that day to get even with you.”
I shook my head. How was I even having this conversation? “No. I was not Harry’s girlfriend. I am not anyone’s girlfriend at the moment. I didn’t give Harry anything. He didn’t come to attack me that day.”
“No? How do you explain what happened?”
I stared at the warden. The man was infuriating or insane . . . or, more likely, trying to trap me in a contradiction. I rubbed my forehead. There was no clock in the room, and I hadn’t had time to grab my watch. It felt like I had been here for hours already.
“Well, Miss Hope? What do you have to say?”
“Harry was out sick when I was moved up to the exec level. No one would have told him about it. He couldn’t have known I would be there so I wasn’t his target.”
“How do you explain him attacking you?”
“I was the one who didn’t want to let him in. The doors are glass and since I was the only one sitting at the reception desk, he had to know that I was the one who didn’t want to let him in. I was the one who pulled Sharon out of his way.” I shuddered as I recalled the attack. Licking my lips, I whispered, “He wasn’t even aiming for us until he realized I had gone for the silent alarm. That’s when he attacked me.”
“So if not you, who was he after?”
The amount of skepticism dripping from his tone was almost worthy of one of the experts on those norm television shows focused on debunking myths and legends. One in particular had the distinction of featuring two Fae on the team, one Seelie and one Unseelie. Of course, that was a show that had come a little too close to the Lamia colony in New Orleans in their hunt for vampires of the city.
I blinked clearing my thoughts. Now was not the time to get distracted. Meeting Warden Bergman’s hard gaze, I replied steadily, “Harry had apparently made a last minute appointment with his boss, the exec for Logistics. It seems logical that she was Harry’s true target. Maybe Harry had a disagreement with her? I don’t know.”
“So you are still saying that you were not Harry Smalls’ target when he attacked Halliman’s?”
“That is exactly what I am saying because it is the truth. The only reason he went after Sharon and me is because we were in his way. Then, I compounded it by hitting the silent alarm.” I met Warden Bergman’s gaze without blinking as I added, “That is the truth.”
He didn’t seem satisfied. Instead, he kept coming back to the note Harry had written. Asking the same questions a dozen different ways. Trying so very hard to make me slip up and confess to . . . something, the attack on Halliman’s or being in a relationship with Harry or even contributing to Harry’s tragic death. One of those. The entire ordeal made my head ache almost as much as my ribs as panic continued beating its frantic wings. How long it went on, I couldn’t even begin to guess. All I knew was that I had to try and convince the warden that I was telling the truth.
Finally, he leaned back in his chair, which gave an ominous groan of warning. “Those are all the questions we have today, Miss Hope. You may return home.”
I nodded too weary to even speak again.
As I rose from my chair, he added, “It would be in your best interest, Miss Hope, not to leave town.”
As I mumbled assent, I was struck with the realization that my hesitation to run when Mathias first approached me was probably the only thing that kept me from being declared suspect number one. It was only when I was standing on the front porch that I realized I didn’t have a way to get home. The mere thought of going back inside and asking for a ride made me quake. No, I couldn’t go back in there. They might not let me back out.
“Can I give you a lift, Lauren?”
I froze, hardly believing my ears, but there was no denying that accent. I stepped down from the porch and peeked around a couple bushes. Mr. 10 himself was leaning against his car. He nodded to me. “Or do you already have someone coming for you?”
A soft denial slipped out before I caught it. My shoulders drooped as I walked toward him. My head screamed that hikin
g out of the forest was better than getting anywhere near the man whose number was still that blazing 10. But the closer I got to him, the safer I felt, which was absolutely insane. Warden Bergman’s interrogation must have truly rattled me.
I stopped in front of him. “I don’t have anyone coming for me, and I left my apartment without my phone or my purse so I can’t even pay for a ride. You could just drop me at one of the bus stops in town.”
His eyes were an icy blue again but they looked . . . warmer than Warden Bergman’s. The side of his mouth pulled into a half smile. “I am a gentleman, Miss Hope, and I am obliged to see you safely home. Come on, I’ll give you a lift back to your flat.”
I nodded. As I walked to the passenger side, he beat me there and opened the door for me. I slipped in feeling ridiculously close to tears at such a little show of kindness. Maybe it was a trap, but at that moment I couldn’t worry about it. When he got in and started the car, I cleared my throat. Risking a glance at him, I whispered, “Thank you . . . Mathias.”
* * *
Mathias
The car was silent as I drove away from the holding facility. Lauren was gazing out the passenger window, but I could still see the tremor in her hands and even her olive skin wasn’t dark enough to disguise how drained she looked. I clenched my jaw as I reminded myself that going back and getting into a fight with Bergman would not make things better.
Just watching her when she left the holding facility had confirmed everything I witnessed earlier. Bergman had informed me that he brought Lauren in for questioning, and I had used my standing at Weard and Halliman’s alike to ensure I was sitting in the observation room when he went in there. I had watched the questioning dissolve into a true interrogation.
Realizing I was in danger of strangling the steering wheel, I forced my hands to relax. I could not lose control. Bergman had been correct in that on paper Lauren seemed a perfect suspect. She had a past with Smalls, something that annoyed me more than it should have, and she was named by Smalls in his suicide note. However, there had been no hint of deception in her answers . . . except when she avoided revealing to the chief warden that she knew something was wrong with Smalls because she was a Spotter. Of course, her answers weren’t quite enough to completely clear her as a suspect. Not yet at least. However, perfect suspects should be handled with as much skepticism as the most unlikely suspects until there was a solid dismissal of the person as a suspect.
Rogue Spotter Collection Page 5