Rogue Alliance (8 page)

             
“No, Sir…uh, sorry, Hal. I’m just eager to get to work. Obviously I’ll need to
set up my desk and get to my secretarial responsibilities right away, but I was hoping to
meet Jason and Shawn
today if at all possible.”

             
Hal crossed his legs
casually.

             
“You won’t have too much to worry about on that front
,
my dear,” he said, “
I’ve been with
out a secretary for eight weeks
now and do just fine. I’ll continue to
do
most of that work. I’ll offload just enough tasks and paperwork to keep up the
appearance but mostly
you’ll be able to focus on the
case.

             
“
Shawn and Jason are al
ready out and about for the day, b
ut I
made arrangements
for you to meet them
off site later tonight.
I figure my place is best. The wife is out of town with our girls at the State Fair. They show horses. Damn things eat up half my pay. Anyway, does that work for you?”

             
“Sounds
good to me.”

             
“Great. I’ll give you my address and directions later. Now let’s get you to your desk and start making introductions.”

*

             
Shyla
knew
very well what she was getting with
Jason and Shawn
. She’d requested all background information on the me
n who would be
working with her as soon
as she
learned about the transfer.

             
They were young, barely out of the academy, used to the typical day to day routine of being
small town
cops; traffic sto
ps, domestics, theft
.
Neither of them had ever seen a dead body on scene
.
They were green. They w
ere inexperienced
in comparison to most partners she’d worked with
. And
they
were her responsibility now
.

             
She
arrived early and
was sitting
comfortably with
Hal on his back porch sipping
lemonade when Shawn and Jason joined them.

             
Both were tall and lanky, mid-twenties. The one with blondish hair gave her a curt nod and she could see the skepticism in his eyes. The red-head
unabashedly scanned her from head to toe and gave an obvious nod of approval.

             
“Hey, boys,” Hal said,
“
g
lad to see you made it. Come on. Have a glass of lemonade with us. Or would you rather have a cold Hefewiezen?”

             
“Lemonade’s fine, Hal,” answered the blond
,
his
eye still on her. The other nodded in ag
reement but looked like he
would have rather had the beer.

             
Hal shook their hands.

             
“Shawn,” he said to the blond, “this is Shyla.”

             
S
hyla stepped forward and gave a
firm
handshake
.

             
“Nice to meet you, Shawn,
”
she said, not
wait
ing
for the next introduct
ion. She turned to the red-head, “and y
ou must be Jason. Good to meet you, too.”

             
Before Hal could speak again, she took the lead. She poured their lemonades as she spoke.

             
“
I’ve been following the Victor Champlain case
from a distance
for two years now so there’s no need to give me his history. What I’m interested in
right now
is his day to day life since he’s moved to Redding. Hal says you’ve got his routine down fairly well, so let’s start there. We’ll find little gaps and holes where I can intercept
his routine
and make his acquaintance. Under-cover means more than just hidden. It means getting up close and personal. I need
to
meet him and hopefully befriend him or else we just won’t get far. We’ll be reduced to simply following him
around and sniffing his trail. That approach is past tense. We want to be in the present. We want to be were he is when he is.”

             
Shawn clenched his jaw. Jason sipped his lemonade, his eyes wide and curious.

             
“We can give yo
u his full schedule
,” Shawn said,
“
i
t doesn’t vary a whole lot exc
ept on days when he leaves
town, which he does every few
week
s
or so. He always leaves
for two to three days
at a time.

             
“
The one thing
he does without fail is
skeet shooting
. Every
Saturday morning h
e meets
three or four buddies at the range. T
hey shoot and bullshit for about two hours. Then they call it a day and repeat the next Saturday.
“

             
“That’s perfect,” Shyla said,
“I can’t think of a better way to meet a man. I play dumb girl trying to shoot and he comes to the rescue. I couldn’t have asked for a better ploy opportunity.”

             
Once again, Shawn’s wary gaze met hers.

             
“A
ny
man? O
r just us stupid hicks
who don’t know any better
?”

             
There it was, Shy
la thought, t
he defensiveness and insecurity she’d expected.

             
“It’s not a hick thing, Shawn. It’s basic human nature. It’s psychology 101. Don’t tell me you’ve never witnessed the basic damsel in distress scenario.
”

             
She was challenging him. Hal and Jason squirmed but kept quiet.

             
Shawn narrowed his gaze but didn’t answer.
She knew he was trying to
grasp how he felt about her and their working situation. It would be awhile before he trusted her.

             
“There’s one other thing you should know,” Shawn offered
,
changing the subject
,
“
Victor’s got a new bodyguard.”

             
“And?”

             
Shawn and Jason shared a quick glance.

             
“And,” Jason said, “i
t’s an odd development. All we’ve been able to find out about this guy is that his name is supposedly Brennan Miles. But we’ve yet to find any sort of background on him.
And
I don’t mean that he doesn’t have a record. I mean he flat out doesn’
t exist according to our research. Nothing. No prints, no birth certificate, no social. Zilch.

             
“He just shows up one day last month and he’s been inseparable from Victor’s side ever since. Doesn’t make sense.”

             
Shyla
sat back in the
wicker chair and bit her thumbnail.

             
“Hmm, that is a bit odd. He’s had his identity swiped somehow.
He’s definitely got friends in high places, then.
That’s very suspicious. We’ll have to keep trying and dig up whatever we can on him. It could prove useful. It could be nothing. Either way, we need to know what we’re dealing with.”

NINE

             
Shyla woke up in the dark of the night
with a pounding headache. After her evening at Hal’s she’d driven straight home and taken three good slugs straight from the bottle.
The musky contents
had
made her eyes
water and her chest burn, but
quieted the anxiety that had been building ever since the first moment she’d met Shawn and Jason.

             
Though she’d handled the meeting well and Hal had given her a fatherly look of approval, she’d been a wreck o
n the inside. That feeling, a
loathsome sensation of being out of control, had her angry at herself. She was always in cont
rol when it came to her job. It
was
one of the traits which made her such a
good detective. But ever since she’d driven over the Redding City limits, she’d been a goddamn internal mess.

             
Then there were the dreams. They were coming more and more often. As she
’d driven
home, she
’d
decided that she needed a night without them. She figured if she drank enough, maybe she could silence her brain long enough to have at leas
t one merciful night free of
torment.

             
If she’d dreamed, she didn’t recall the content. But the physical torment she woke to was
almost as unbearable. She felt queasy. Her head was pounding and her mouth was dry.
She glanced at the clock. Midnight. She hadn’t even made it halfway through the night. It was going to be a long one.

             
She rolled out of bed
still half-drunk
and fumbled through her bathroom medicine cabinet. Tampons,
Neosporin
,
Isopropyl alcohol, Maalox, and a bottle of eye cream she rarely ever used. No aspirin. Damn.

             
Rinsing her mouth out
, Shyla
caught a
glimpse of the pint-sized Cuervo
bottle she’d been drinking from in t
he reflection of her mirror. It looked guilty
,
sitting there
on her night stand
with only a few sips left in the bottom. She spit into the sink then turned and stared it down. Bile rose in her throat and she decided she wouldn’t be able to drink herself back to sleep.

             
She wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and trudged out to the living room. She plopped on the couch and prayed she’d be able to get back to sleep. Twenty minutes later, her headache was full throttle
. There was no way she was
going to get any rest if she didn’t get her hands on a bottle of aspirin.

             
Resigned, she pulled on her sweatpants, pulled a baseb
all cap over her head and threaded
her hair through the back. Then she slipped on runners and
stepped outside. The night
air was crisp but not too cold yet. If she’d
have
felt better she would hav
e inhaled it deeply, b
ut the only thing on her mind was getting to the Walgreens five blocks down.

             
The fluorescent lights inside seemed to exacerbate the rhythmic thrum of the migraine. She squinted against the light, pulled her c
ap lower and concentrated on not
throw
ing
up.

             
Instinct told her to go to the far back corner of the store, next to the pharmacy.
             
She spotted the signs hanging above each aisle and confirmed that pain meds would be on aisle 14.
The store appeared empty
,
other than the bored clerk at the register. She should be in and out.

             
As she passed aisle 12, she caught something out of the corner of her eye. She glance
d over
and spotted the side profile of plump girl
,
who looked
to be about fifteen or so, staring at the make-up selection. Shyla made note but kept walking eager to get out of the store and back into the sanctuary of her dark apartment.

             
A
s she
scanned the vast variety of pain meds, her cop brain kicked into gear and she started thinking that the girl looked highly suspicious. She had an over-sized, canvas satchel slung over her shoulder. And it seemed an odd time of night to be shopping for lip gloss and mascara.

             
Shyla
warned herself not
to
get involved
.
She was a secretary now
.
Besides, Walgreens
’
were riddled
with video cameras right? If the girl
stole anything, she’d be caught.