Face Off (4 page)

CHAPTER
4

AS SINCLAIR EXITED
the freeway into downtown D.C., Laura toyed with her necklace, an emerald on a gold chain. She wore it always, both as a memento of the person who had given it to her and as a tool for creating glamours. Light glamours—like enhancing her skin tone or adding a glow to her hair—she produced with a simple manipulation of her body signature. More complex ones, ones that changed her appearance to someone entirely different, required a talisman to hold a template for the persona. Gemstones were ideal to use because their crystalline structure retained templates better than anything else. Once the template was set, her body signature powered it with no additional effort.

As they drove the local streets, she allowed her body essence to interact with the stone. The essence activated the template embedded within—the characteristics of Mariel Tate, her InterSec persona. As Mariel, she was a well-known InterSec agent, distinct and unconnected to Laura Blackstone. Physically, they bore little resemblance to each other, Mariel’s willowy figure and long dark hair a stark contrast to Laura’s more toned shape and wheat blond hair that fell to her shoulders. As the essence field activated, a soft tickle of static swept over her as the glamour settled. Her InterSec uniform remained since she had changed into it at Stafford.

Sinclair cast curious glances at her as he maneuvered their car toward the northeast of the city. “Why Mariel?” he asked.

“Why not Mariel?” she asked.

He grinned. “We’re about to pull rank on D.C. cops at a crime scene. I seriously doubt that after you took over a police station, held a captain hostage, then flipped everyone off when you left, they’ll be happy to see Mariel Tate again.”

Mariel had power and was not afraid to use it. Laura had designed her for brains, looks, and ability. Over the years, she had established Mariel as a force to be reckoned with, and the persona had become her default InterSec player. Laura enjoyed the persona because she was able to use her fey abilities without restraint—something that wasn’t appropriate in public relations. “I did not hold him hostage. I simply didn’t let anyone else in the room while we talked.”

Sinclair chuckled. “Same difference.”

Laura shrugged. “I got the job done. That’s all that Terryn asks. Terryn said to rattle some cages. Mariel rattles cages.”

They passed through Logan Circle, a section of the city due north of the Guildhouse. “Isn’t this a local crime incident? Why didn’t he ask the Guild to send someone over?”

Laura pursed her lips. “He probably did and got nowhere. Internal politics.” InterSec’s local authority in D.C. was tenuous at best—based on the fact that at least one of the victims in the new case was not a U.S. citizen. Not quite the explicit intervention protocol that InterSec’s international mandate demanded, but Terryn didn’t like the D.C. police dragging their heels.

Traffic slowed as emergency lights flashed into view ahead. Sinclair double-parked near a paramedic van. They left the car, pausing to survey the scene. “I’ll tell you one thing for sure, Jono. After the Guild hears we were here, they’ll get involved. If there’s one thing Guildmaster Rhys doesn’t like, it’s being embarrassed in public.”

A gaping hole puckered the front of the building up on the U Street corridor of cafés and boutiques. Wrapped bars of soap and lotion bottles in bright yellow-and-orange packaging lay scattered on the ground amid fractured-building char and debris. Odors tweaked Laura’s nose as soon as she left the car. Heavy soot, burnt herbs, crisped wood, and a touch of C-4 explosive.

A plainclothes officer came toward her. “Agent Tate?”

She stepped under the crime-scene tape with Sinclair beside her. “Yes.”

“Mariel Tate?” he asked. She sensed annoyance from him, particularly directed at her. Someone wasn’t happy his case was being looked at by another agency.

She cocked her head, letting him see her eyes, which glittered with the preternatural light of an Old One, a fey who had lived in Faerie. “Are you expecting more than one Agent Tate?”

The look had the intended effect. The officer’s mouth closed as he paused. “Yes. Well, I mean no. We got word a few minutes ago that InterSec was sending someone.”

She paced across the front of the building, not looking at the officer as she perused the damage.
Follow my lead, Jono,
she sent. “They have. This is Officer Sinclair. He’s consulting with us.”

The policeman narrowed his eyes as he pulled out a memory. “Out of Anacostia?”

Anacostia was Sinclair’s last posting with D.C. SWAT, where he was when he met Laura on a case. The entire D.C. police force knew that Sinclair was the only survivor of his squad. Rather than keep him in Anacostia with a new crew, he was officially on leave, an administrative lie that Terryn had put in place.

“That’s right,” he said.

“Surprised you’d be working with . . .” The officer glanced at Mariel and stopped speaking.

Mariel tilted her head at him. “I didn’t get your name, officer.”

“Willis. Detective Willis,” he said.

She turned her attention back to the building. “Well, Willis Detective Willis, maybe we can skip the biographies, and you can fill us in.”

Her sarcasm had the desired effect. Willis’s body signature glowed with anger. Good, Laura thought. He’ll grouse about her, and word will get back to the Guild that much quicker.

“Bomb thrown through the window. Two bodies inside. The owner and a customer. An Inverni fairy and a normal.”

He said the word without a hint of embarrassment, a feeble attempt to get a rise out of her. “Normal” was a mild dig. It meant human, as opposed to the “abnormal” fey. The fey used the same word, only their meaning was intending to convey someone, a human in particular, was nothing special. Laura didn’t like either sense of the word, but she didn’t rise to his bait. “This is the eighth fey business to be attacked in the last two months, Detective. Dead bodies mean this one is an escalation, don’t you think?”

He frowned. “We’ve been looking at several leads.”

Laura gave the shattered storefront a significant look. “Just looking doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.”

“You got something to say?” Willis asked.

Laura gave him a bored glance. The Mariel persona had a stop-in-your-tracks attractiveness that prompted people to resent her or fall over themselves helping her. She used both reactions to her advantage. Willis was falling into the former category.

Sinclair stepped between them with a feigned oblivious-ness. “Maybe we can take a look inside?”

Willis hesitated, shooting one more glare at Mariel before leading them through the remains of the door. A uniform theme ran through the store design and product packaging, bright colors in a brightly lit space. The small shop sold skin-care products and beauty aids. Laura didn’t recognize the brand. The owner probably marketed his own skin-care line. Lots of fey with herbal expertise did. The scented air was an unlikely mix of burnt chemicals, flower oils, and blood.

The apparent owner lay partially visible halfway down the room, crushed behind an overturned and destroyed counter. Against the wall on the opposite side of the shop, the mangled body of the customer slumped against the base of a shattered display case. Laura squatted to examine the line of scatter from the explosion. Pivoting on the ball of one foot, she peered toward the street, then back along the floor of the store.

“Any witnesses?” Sinclair asked.

“Not yet. We’re canvassing and checking for store-security footage,” said Willis.

Laura pointed at the floor. “I don’t see any glass on the floor near the window. All the scatter is outside. The bomb wasn’t thrown in. It was brought in and detonated inside.”

Willis slid his hands in his pockets. “I’m sure crime scene would have picked that up.”

Yeah, but you didn’t, Laura thought. She was getting a sense of why Terryn wanted InterSec to push the case along. If the officer in charge had such a bad attitude, she wasn’t surprised that the broader investigation into attacks against the fey wasn’t progressing much. She stared at the customer, the emotional part of her mind clicking off as she registered the extent of the damage. The bomb had savaged the lower half of his body until it was unrecognizable. She stepped around a fallen shelving unit for a closer look at the body.

“The scene hasn’t been cleared yet,” Willis said.

Ignoring him because she knew he was the type that hated being ignored, she crouched next to the body and slipped on latex gloves. With a professional detachment, she examined the destroyed body. Major damage. She pulled his torso away from the wall to peer behind him. Her senses picked up chemicals on his undamaged side that shouldn’t have been there if the bomb went off in front of him.

“You’re disrupting a crime scene,” Willis said.

“I think I know what I’m doing,” Laura said with enough inflection to imply Willis didn’t.

More anger clouded his body signature. “Is this my case or not?”

“Relax. We’re here to help,” Sinclair said.

Willis shoved his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t ask for your help.”

Sinclair gestured with resignation. “We didn’t ask to come. We’re all doing our jobs here.”

Laura released the body, letting it fall back against the wall. Resting her elbows on her thighs so that her hands dangled, she pressed her sensing ability against the man’s skin and found traces of industrial oils.

“This isn’t a customer. It’s the bomber,” she said.

Surprised, the officer stared at the dead man. “You can tell that by looking?”

She stood, removing the gloves. “Something like that. I’m picking up C-4 in the air, and this guy”—she gestured at the body—“has chemical traces on his skin that are in line with bomb-making materials. Given the body damage and the extreme coincidence of the chemicals, I’m comfortable with my assessment.”

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 long 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 expression as he reviewed the documents in front of him. “At InterSec, we examine every angle. We don’t have the luxury of trust.”