Face Off lb-2 Read online

  She pulled an evidence envelope out of a pouch in her jumpsuit and slipped the gloves inside. She handed Willis her business card. “Call me when you have an ID.”

  Before he could respond, she walked out. Sweeping her gaze over the gathered crowd, she checked for anyone or anything unusual. Nothing jumped out. A typical rubberneck crowd. She glanced back at the store. Sinclair emerged with Willis, who glared at her again.

  “That’s it? You came down here to yank my chain?” he asked.

  “I gave you a lead, Detective Willis. Would you like us to hang around some more?” Laura asked.

  He didn’t answer. Sinclair stuck his hand out. “It was nice meeting you.”

  Laura didn’t wait to see if they shook. Let Willis resent her. C-4 didn’t happen to end up here. It wasn’t like someone could purchase it from the local drugstore. Terryn had sent case details on the earlier fey attacks. They were being given low priority by the police department. Nothing they could be truly called out on, but anyone in law enforcement would know. Maybe if they had pushed a little, they would have seen more organizational intent behind whatever was happening.

  Sinclair walked beside her to the car. “That was bitchy.”

  Laura smiled. “Thanks. That was the point. You watch. Terryn will get a call from the Guild’s Community Liaison Department before we get back. They’ll take the case now.”

  “It was kind of hot, too,” Sinclair said, as they got in the car.

  “Feel free to turn up the air-conditioning,” she said. She enjoyed teasing him. He did, too. She knew she might be pushing it too far, though. Despite his persistence, even Sinclair had limits to his patience. She had almost invited him on vacation with her but panicked at the last moment, pretending to have miscommunicated. They had dinner before she left and a few times after she returned. Terryn decided to try Sinclair undercover with Legacy, and they didn’t have time to see each other then.

  Sinclair chuckled as she tossed the evidence envelope on the dashboard. It was an honest chuckle. He was still patient.

  CHAPTER 5

  BACK AT THE Guildhouse, they rode an elevator up to the InterSec unit. Laura caught curious stares from the other passengers. Although she and Sinclair hadn’t been at the crime scene long, enough airborne particulate had settled on their clothing that a fey with mild sensitivity could sense smoke, maybe the C-4. If she could smell it on Sinclair, other fey could smell it on her. If they hadn’t been wearing InterSec jumpsuits, no doubt someone would have called security.

  Reaching their floor, Sinclair went off to the conference room while Laura trailed down the hallway in the opposite direction. She found Cress sorting through labeled glass jars filled with what looked like dried herbs. Laura paused in the door and watched her work.

  She marveled at how such a small person could be so dangerous. Essence manipulation was not dictated by a person’s size, but the frail Cress hardly seemed like anyone’s worst nightmare. Leanansidhe were rare among the solitary fey, but not so obscure that people didn’t know what they looked like. And they all looked similar. On the occasion when Cress talked about the leanansidhe, she referred to them as her sisters, which made sense from a physical standpoint. They did have a familial resemblance, at least among the ones in the archive pictures Laura had seen. Cress was the only one she had met in person, but they were all short, with thick black hair falling in rippled waves to their shoulders. Their heart-shaped faces, with their delicate features, had lured more than one person to their deaths. Their eyes truly set them apart, though. Deepest black with no whites. Laura found that aspect disconcerting at times.

  Cress smiled without looking up from her work. “If you’re spying on me, you’re not doing a very good job.”

  Laura chuckled as she stepped into the room. “I’m sorry. I was woolgathering. What are you working on?”

  Cress held up a vial with something green floating in a clear fluid. “Today, I am a botanist. We’re trying to figure out where that panel truck from your morning mission has been, so I’m looking at the junk in the tire treads.”

  Cress worked a dual-function job with InterSec. Her primary role as a forensic investigator drew on decades of knowledge. In fact, it was her species that made her particularly adept when dealing with fey crime. Her acute sensitivity to essence allowed her to see things a druid might miss. But that responsibility had evolved out of an earlier fascination: medicine. As she made her way in the Convergent world, Cress had focused her attention on healing and became a doctor, one of the first fey to have been graduated from an American medical school. Her achievement caused a sensation in both the human and fey worlds. Humans feared the fey, and Cress’s securing a spot in a human program caused all kinds of xenophobic reactions. As she was a leanansidhe, one of the most feared beings of Faerie, the fey treated her no better.

  As Laura drew closer, Cress wrinkled her nose. “C-4?” she said.

  If there was one thing Laura had learned about leanansidhe , it was that their abilities made them more sensitive to everything, not only essence. She dropped the evidence envelope on the desk. “Exactly what I thought. I tried to get some sample without the D.C.P.D. realizing it. Can you run these gloves and see if it has any taggant?”

  Legal manufacturers of C-4 embedded idiosyncratic chemicals that served as identification markers. The taggants provided clues as to who manufactured a particular explosive as well as who the intended customer was. From there, following the chain of custody to determine where it got loose in the world would be a matter of running down paperwork. If they were lucky. Making C-4 wasn’t a mystery. It could be done illegally if someone had the right connections to buy the materials. That would be a lead since the raw materials were tracked, too.

  Cress moved the envelope to a tray. “Of course. Is this from the bomb that went off this evening?”

  “Yes. Terryn’s not happy at how it’s being handled.”

  “Are you taking the case?” Cress asked.

  She shook her head. “Not directly. We’re looking at all the attacks from a broader perspective. A number of small connections to the Legacy case we’re working on have cropped up, but we’re not running the investigations on the individual crimes. I’m not thrilled that there’s C-4 floating around out there. If Terryn doesn’t push them, I’m going to make Com-Lie take it whether they want it or not.”

  The Community Liaison Department was the Guildhouse’s local law-enforcement arm, notorious for ignoring crimes that had no political benefit to the Seelie Court. “I’m sure they’ll do the right thing,” Cress said, a smile threatening the corner of her mouth.

  Her words dripped with doubt, and she knew Laura would sense it. Laura responded with equal insincerity. “Now, now, Cress, we’re all allies here.”

  The abrupt vanishing of the smile surprised Laura. “Yes, well, so we all hope,” Cress said.

  The nuances of truth were muddled, something that happened when Laura couldn’t sort the difference between hope and belief—both of which someone might hold as true. She wondered if Cress had heard about Rhys’s displeasure about her but hesitated starting what might be a larger conversation than a simple how-are-you.

  “Everything okay?” Laura asked.

  With no whites in Cress’s eyes, Laura found it hard to read her expression, but there was no mistaking the sadness that came over her. “Did you hear the news about Ian Whiting?”

  Ian Whiting’s car had been found on the Key Bridge that morning. All his personal effects were piled neatly on the passenger seat. He’d left his shoes and a note on the railing of the bridge. The scholar from the Druidic College had apparently committed suicide. “Yes, I saw. I had a class with him a long time ago. Did you know him?”

  She closed her eyes. “He saved my life. No, that’s not true. He gave me a life. Before I met Terryn, Ian helped stabilize my abilities. I can’t imagine the man I remember killing himself.”

  Laura rested a comforting hand on her shoulder. “That was a l
ong time ago, Cress. People change. Not always for the good.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think he’s dead. I think he walked away from his life. Too many people wanted too many things from him. That was true back when I met him. The man lived for research. He valued life. Until they find his body, that’s what I think.”

  Laura hugged her. Cress didn’t respond—she wasn’t physically comfortable with people—but she did allow herself to hold Laura’s arm. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too,” she said softly.

  On the counter behind Cress, Laura caught sight of a clear evidence bag with a handheld stun gun inside. She held the bag up for a closer look. “What’s this?”

  Cress returned her attention to her test tubes. “A fortunately malfunctioning liquid stun gun. I was almost mugged this morning.”

  Laura gaped. “Mugged? Are you all right?”

  Cress looked more amused than anything. “I’m fine. Two guys came at me. One of them fired the stunner, but the liquid didn’t release correctly, and he ended up stunning himself. The other guy ran off. It was rather amusing, actually.”

  “Did you report it?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t have time. Too much to do here, and I didn’t want to lose half a day making the report. I left him there looking stupid, but I took the gun.”

  Laura placed the bag back on the counter. Liquid stun guns were the weapon of choice for humans who preyed on the fey. They shot a stream of liquid that carried the electrical current to the target—highly beneficial when the target didn’t need any gadget to shock someone. The trick was to take a fey unawares and fire before he returned an essence-bolt.

  “You need to be more careful, Cress. The fey aren’t the most popular right now, and you make an easy target.”

  Cress grinned. “Yes, well, I have my own defenses. People may not like them, but they keep me out of trouble.”

  Laura pushed away from the counter. “Terryn’s debriefing Jono and me. Any chance we can catch up later?”

  She didn’t answer right away, and again Laura sensed turmoil. “I’d like that, Laura.”

  Laura touched her on the arm. “You okay?”

  Cress smiled, but Laura thought it looked feigned. “I’m fine. We can talk later.”

  Whatever was bothering her, her expression seemed to indicate it wasn’t the mugging. Since Cress was willing to let it wait, Laura gave her arm an affectionate squeeze.

  The conference room held an oval table with chairs facing a wall of television and video screens. The dim glow of a flat-screen computer monitor illuminated the surface of the tabletop in front of each seat. Local, national, and world news played on the television screens. Laura scrolled through the messages on her PDA while Sinclair leaned back and watched a basketball game.

  Terryn macCullen entered with a firm gait that caused his long wings to arc sharply behind him. Inverni fairies’ wings tended to pale shades of blue and green and rose into points high above their heads. The wings moved of their own accord, shifting and separating as fairies sat or lay down, and their energy fields came in contact with objects. Laura had glamoured herself as a fairy in the past, but the wings she displayed were an illusion. Terryn explained once that they acted like opposing magnetic fields, automatically sensing physical surfaces and barriers and moving accordingly. The closest he could describe their sensitivity was somewhere between the acute touch of skin and the dull sensation of hair.

  Terryn dropped data drives on the table and plugged one in. Laura adjusted the monitor in front of her, its privacy screen rising out of the tabletop. Financial spreadsheets popped open. “The financial data we pulled after the Archives incident connects the Legacy Foundation to the Triad terrorist group,” he said without preamble.

  Laura recognized the earlier data. Triad was the organization responsible for the terrorist attack on the National Archives.

  Despite a century of integration, the fey engendered suspicion and fear among some human populations. No one—fey or human—understood how parts of Faerie and its people appeared in the modern world. Beings of myth and legend—fairies and elves, druids and dwarves and a host of other fey—walked the world trying to find their place in a strange new reality. Their innate ability to manipulate essence set them apart. The elusive form of energy that allowed the fey to perform tasks perceived as magic scared the hell out of most humans. It didn’t help that there were, in fact, fey groups like Triad that were taking more aggressive means to further their political agendas.

  Laura looked at Terryn from beneath her brow. “Rhys brought them up this morning. They’re making noise about the National Archives. If they’re connected with Triad, are you saying they’re interested in more than harassing loyalists to the fey monarchies?”

  Sinclair cleared his throat. “We were at a murder scene, Laura. That’s a bit more than harassment.”

  She winced as she skimmed through documents. “Right, Jono. Of course. I meant I was surprised about their connection to Triad. That makes them more sophisticated than we’ve thought. This looks like major money-laundering.”

  Terryn shifted some documents on their screens. “Legal, or as legal as it gets. Several of Legacy’s benefactors contribute checks and anonymous cash donations. Again, all legal, but the quantity raised suspicions that federal rules were being circumvented, which triggered a review. It’s the source of those funds we were able to match up with other intelligence. Genda Boone has pulled together a framework of the players involved.”

  As Mariel Tate, Laura shared an office suite with Genda, a Danann fairy who specialized in financial analysis. The two had formed an easy friendship although Genda wasn’t aware that Mariel was a glamoured persona.

  “So, in addition to weapons-smuggling, we’re looking at an organization that has a political motivation to use the weapons,” said Sinclair.

  Terryn shifted new documents to the front of the displays. An organizational chart appeared. “Their professed goal is unity among human and fey without a monarchy.”

  Laura scanned the chart, recognizing a few high-profile politicians and businessmen. “Odd goals for a place with so many anti-fey people on its board.”

  The organization chart shrank as Terryn expanded the template to include more people. “We’ve found connections to a sort of shadow board of directors. Peeling back the corporate layers, we start to see interesting contradictions and oddities.”

  Laura recognized several names either from high public profiles or internal research—a group of unsurprising businesspeople, some politicians, and a few notable military personnel. Then things got interesting.

  “Is this right? These look like fey names now,” said Laura.

  Terryn nodded. “They’re separated by several layers, but that’s right.”

  “That would fit the unity thing,” said Sinclair.

  Laura examined the names. She recognized some, including Tylo Blume, an important businessman among the elven tribes. He was also a legal arms merchant and sometime philanthropist. “Blume’s showing up bothers me.”

  “Maybe not so surprising, considering that our corresponding intelligence is from his Triad corporation,” said Terryn.

  Blume had had a falling-out with a former Triad partner named Simon Alfrey, an Inverni fairy—and political rival to Terryn—who had been responsible for the recent terrorist attack at the National Archives. Despite claims of innocence, Laura was deeply suspicious of how much Blume knew about Alfrey’s plans.

  “The Archives incident would be precisely the kind of thing this group fights against, wouldn’t it?” asked Sinclair. “If Blume’s in this group, then he’s been telling the truth that he had no idea Triad was involved at the Archives.”

  Laura rocked her head from side to side. “It could be a blind to cover his activities. Or he could have staged the event to drum up support for Legacy.”

  Sinclair snorted. “Wow. That’s pretty cynical.”

  Terryn didn’t change his express
ion as he reviewed the documents in front of him. “At InterSec, we examine every angle. We don’t have the luxury of trust.”

  Sinclair frowned. “So people are guilty until proved innocent?”

  Terryn did not look up. “Circumstances are evaluated for all contingencies. InterSec discards them as it discredits them, Agent Sinclair. If you can’t be thorough, I can find you a desk job.”

  Sinclair rocked back on his chair. “Hey, we’re buds. Call me Jono. Maybe later we can go hang out and have a few beers.”

  Laura didn’t look up as she felt the flash of anger from Terryn. She was going to have to talk Sinclair. Terryn was the wrong person to taunt. “I think what Terryn’s saying is that we try to be as objective and analytical as possible.”

  Terryn shifted more documents onto the screen. “I think Terryn said exactly what he meant.”

  Startled, Laura did look then. Terryn maintained his focus on the information in front of him. He was never short with her. In fact, it was so out of character, it took her a moment to realize her jaw had dropped in reaction—an emotional display that was out of character for her. She closed her mouth and glanced at Sinclair. He shifted his eyes away before they made contact. Embarrassed, Laura cleared her throat. “Of course.”

  Terryn wasn’t known for his sense of humor. His expression was subtle, but his message was clear. Laura’s decision to bring Sinclair into the agency did not sit well with him. He tapped his screen. “We’re getting some chatter that Legacy may be connected to the recent attacks on fey businesses. There are also indications that they are going to target Draigen for some type of political action when she arrives. I want inside information.”

  Laura sensed the emotion beneath the way he said her name. Terryn was heir to the rule of the Inverni clan. Because of political intricacies she didn’t fully understand, he had refused the underKing title to spite High Queen Maeve and appointed his sister Draigen as regent. Her arrival in Washington had to be causing all kinds of conflicts for him, both personal and professional.