Rogue Oracle (2 page)

An awkward silence stretched.

Harry stuffed his hands in his pockets, jingled loose change. He did that when he was nervous. “I missed you.”

Tara glanced up at him. His face was open, tired, and she felt a jab of sympathy for him. Her fingers knotted in her purse strap. She was fighting the urge to stand up and kiss him. “I missed you, too.”

His eyes crinkled when he smiled, and he dropped into the other chair on the opposite side of the table. Exhaustion was palpable in the broken line of his shoulders. “Special Projects is killing me.”

Tara reached across the table for his hand. His fingers folded around hers so tightly that she couldn’t tell where hers ended and his began. .

“I’ve been there,” she said, without irony.

“I know.” His mouth flattened. “That’s why I came to ask for your help.”

Tara’s hand froze. She had hoped that he’d come to see
her.
Not for work. “Oh.” She looked down at her fuzzy reflection in the table.

Harry reached across the table and crooked a finger under her chin. “Hey. That’s not what I mean. I wanted to see you, and—”

Tara withdrew her hand and pulled her chair back, drawing her professional mantle tightly about her. “Tell me about your case, Harry.”

Harry stared down at his empty hand, closed it. “A half dozen Cold War-era intelligence operatives have disappeared. We’ve got evidence that specialized intel connected to them is being sold internationally, to the highest bidder. Most of it has to do with uranium stockpiles, leftover pieces of weapons from Soviet Russia. Tehran has been all over it.”

“That sounds like a military issue. Or an NSA problem.” Tara crossed her arms over her chest.

“You would think. But the disappearances are … unusual. These men and women have been vanishing without a trace. No bodies, no evidence of struggles.”

Tara shrugged. “Maybe they defected. Maybe they’re having a beach party in Tehran.”

“Homeland Security hasn’t caught any of them trying to move outside the country. Some of them have literally walked off surveillance footage and were never seen again. It’s like the fucking Rapture—they leave their clothes, jewelry, even cell phones behind, and vanish.” He smirked, mouth turning up flirtatiously. “Of course, there’s also the fact that there are no beaches in Tehran.”

Tara lifted an eyebrow, intrigued at both the case and the flirtation. “What’s their connection to each other?”

“All of them were associated with something called Project Rogue Angel in the 1990s. It involved cataloguing and tracking the disposal of nukes in the former USSR.”

“That sounds like a thankless job.”

“Wasn’t as successful as one might hope.” Harry rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I think somebody got to these people. I can’t prove it. But I need help in figuring out who’s behind the disappearances. You’re the best damn profiler Special Projects has ever seen, and we need you.”

Tara considered him. Harry wasn’t the type of man who would readily ask for help, and he’d done so in a clumsy way. She was reluctant to become involved with Special Projects again, to be their tool. But she owed him.

He looked at her, eyes red with too little sleep. “I need you.”

She reached forward and took his hand. She couldn’t say no to him.

Chapter Two

G
ETTING AWAY
from work would be easy. With the piecemeal jobs she’d been working as a forensic psychologist, Tara was certain that no one would notice if she disappeared for a couple of weeks.

Getting away from her secret life as an oracle would be difficult.

Tara dragged her battered suitcase down from the top shelf of her bedroom closet. She chucked it on the butterfly-print bedspread that smelled like lavender. An aggrieved yowl emanated from the bed, and a gray tabby cat rocketed from under the quilt.

“Sorry, Oscar.” Tara winced. The fat cat could flatten his substantial mass into disappearing shapes that would defy Stephen Hawking to describe on the quantum level.

Oscar looked up at her and twitched his whiskers. He yawned dramatically, then stalked into the open closet to root among Tara’s shoes. Tara reached to the top shelf for a battered pistol box, containing a Ruger SP-101 revolver. Tara opened the barrel, forgetting whether or not she’d cleaned it after the last use. Fortunately, the stainless steel was shiny and smooth, smelling of mineral oil. She placed the pistol and a box of bullets beside the suitcase.

The suitcase sported an address sticker from years ago, and Tara ripped it off. She’d fill out a new one—reflecting her current address at a Tennessee farmhouse—at the airport. Her tenancy had been intended to be temporary, but it had already stretched into several months. It wasn’t home, but it was where she needed to be.

It was where Delphi’s Daughters were gathered.

Through the open window, feminine laughter echoed over the buzz of the cicadas and the bass notes of the bullfrogs. A bonfire blossomed in the backyard under a huge yellow-cheese moon, and the shadowy silhouettes of women passed before the flames. The bell-like sounds of zills rang into the darkness. Tara’s nose twitched. She smelled marshmallows and incense. A woman cast sparkling dust into the fire, while the others
oohed
and
ahhed
. Another, a little tipsy, got up to do the funky chicken dance to rowdy cries of “Opa!” and “Shake it!” The dancer kicked high, and a flip-flop soared into the bonfire.

Delphi’s Daughters were just that: a contradiction. They’d existed since the beginning of recorded time, just behind the scenes, foretelling and nudging the courses of world events to suit their liking. By day, they were soccer moms, actuaries, and soldiers. By night, they told the future according to unique gifts. Some dealt in dreams, others in the reflection of the moon on water. Some could tell the future by listening to the calls of birds or swishing the albumen of eggs around at breakfast time. Most of them found some time during the year to gather at the farmhouse, under the guise of conferences or visiting distant relatives.

Tara was the only living cartomancer in the group—not that she was officially a member. She had mixed feelings about their work and their message, but she’d forged an uneasy peace with them to watch over the youngest of Delphi’s Daughters, Cassie Magnusson. She was Cassie’s self-appointed guardian and protector, and Delphi’s Daughters seemed to respect that.

Most of the time.

“Hey, do you know where the bottle openers are?”

Tara’s door swung open without a knock. Cassie Magnusson, a young woman in her early twenties, stood holding a bag of marshmallows. She was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, barefoot, with grass clinging to her pale legs. Her dark hair was tied back in a ponytail, and on her head perched a silvery headband with alien antennae topped with wobbly stars. Glitter from the stars had fallen on her cheeks, giving her an ethereal, if somewhat sticky, glow. A chubby Labrador retriever waddled behind her, claws clacking on the hardwood floors.

Cassie paused, taking in the suitcase and gun. “Where are you going?” she accused.

“Nice headgear,” Tara said. “Is that part of your training—receiving signals from space?” Against Tara’s better judgment, Cassie was being groomed to be the next Pythia, the most powerful of oracles and leader of Delphi’s Daughters.

“No. The Pythia gave ’em to me as a prize for passing my last astrology test. And don’t change the subject.” Cassie parked herself on the bed beside the suitcase, and the Labrador lay down at her feet with a sigh. “Here, Maggie.” She dropped a marshmallow on the floor, and the dog gobbled it. Oscar waddled out of the closet to sniff the bag of marshmallows. Cassie dropped another on the floor. He batted it under the bed and disappeared. “Where are you going?”

Tara sighed and sat next to Cassie on the bed. “Harry came to see me today.”

Cassie’s face brightened. “How’s Harry?”

“Busy with work.”

“That’s what you keep saying.”

“Yeah, well … Harry’s line of work is like that. It’s nothing personal.”

“That’s what you keep saying.”

Tara wrinkled her nose at Cassie. “Harry needs my help on a case.”

“Sure. He wants your
brain
.” Cassie arched her eyebrow, and her antennae wobbled.

Tara reached out to pat Cassie’s shoulder. “I won’t be gone long.”

Cassie looked sidelong at her, and the girl’s fingers fidgeted in the plastic bag of marshmallows. “Promise?”

“Promise.”

As she hugged the girl, anxiety twitched through Tara. She knew Cassie picked up on her unease with leaving her alone with Delphi’s Daughters. She realized Cassie had overheard the furiously whispered arguments Tara had with the Pythia, late at night, about her training. Tara wanted Cassie to lead as normal a life as possible.

But there was no normalcy in a house full of oracles.

Tara put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “You have the cell phone I gave you, right?”

“Yeah. It’s under the floorboards in my room.”

“You call me whenever you need me, or if you just want to talk, okay?”

“Okay.” Cassie’s antennae drooped.

“You’re gonna be okay.” Tara squeezed her shoulders, and the antennae nodded in agreement. Oscar peered out from under the bed skirt. “You’ll have Oscar to watch over you. And Maggie.” The dog’s tail slapped on the floor, and she whined for another treat.

“Yeah,” Cassie said, clutching the bag of marshmallows close to her chest. “I guess I should go find that bottle opener.”

Tara smiled bravely as the girl left the room, Maggie following behind. Her smile faltered when they left, and she stared down at Oscar.

“Keep an eye on her, will you?”

Oscar blinked his golden eyes and rolled onto his back for Tara to scratch his belly. Tara took that to be assent. She might be uneasy around the other oracles, but she trusted Oscar and Maggie entirely.

Tara finished packing and zipped up the suitcase. Its wheels made squeaking sounds down the hallway, following her down the steps with a series of
ka-thunks
. She rolled it into the dark kitchen, keys in hand. Dried herbs hung in fragrant bunches, strung by pieces of string from a lace-curtained window through which moonlight streamed. The moonlight picked out the dishes soaking in the sink and the cheese trays on the scarred butcher-block countertop. The only other illumination in the room was the dim blue light from the pilot light in the stove … and a red light bobbing in the corner.

Tara’s nostrils flared, smelling a familiar cigarette. “Hello, Pythia.”

A dragon of smoke blew across the window, and the Pythia stepped into the weak light. The short woman jingled softly when she walked, her swaying hips strung with a scarf covered in coins; she’d been dancing. She paused before the sink to tap her cigarette into an ashtray. A curtain of dark hair fell over her face, strands of silver glinting in the moonlight.

“Going somewhere?” Her musical, softly accented voice wrapped around a steely inflection. She gestured with her chin to Tara’s suitcase.

“Harry’s asked me to help him with a case.”

“Harry’s good for you. You should go.”

Tara gritted her teeth. “I don’t need your permission to leave the house, Amira.” She rarely used the Pythia’s real name; it was a sign of too much familiarity or disrespect. “I’m not one of Delphi’s Daughters.”

The Pythia shrugged. “You can say what you want, but your actions prove otherwise.”

“Leaving proves your influence over me? I don’t follow.”

“No. Coming back just might, though.” The Pythia’s white teeth shone in the darkness when she smiled.

“You know that I’d come back for Cassie. That’s all.”

“Yes. I know that you wouldn’t leave her for long. Heaven only knows what we would teach her, in your absence. But you serve us, and our patterns, whether you want to, or not.”

Tara bristled. She’d been estranged from Delphi’s Daughters for years, at her own insistence. She chafed under the idea of surrendering herself to their control, of giving in to her roots, rather than forging her own way in the world. She wasn’t going to be anyone’s tool. Not the government’s, and not Delphi’s Daughters’. “More of the idea that free will is an illusion?”

“Free will isn’t an illusion. Free will can nudge destiny off its tracks.”

“I know that,” Tara said, in irritation. The Pythia was old enough to be her mother, and somehow always managed to make Tara sound like a petulant child. “And I’m exercising my free will to help Harry.”

The Pythia stepped over to the stove, hip scarf chiming in time with her steps. She switched on the gas stove burner with a click and a
whoosh,
cranked the blue flame up high. The light cast her shadow long across the kitchen floor, and the Pythia squinted at the fire.

Tara crossed her arms. The Pythia’s talent was pyromancy. She could see the future in something as mundane as a match spark or as devastating as a house fire. The gas flames twitched yellow, curling in on each other.

“Interesting,” the Pythia said.

“What?” Tara couldn’t resist asking.

The Pythia abruptly switched off the burner. “Beware the Chimera.”

“What does that mean?”

The Pythia shrugged, took a drag on her cigarette. “I don’t know yet. That’s just what the fire said to me.”

Tara rolled her eyes and dragged her suitcase to the kitchen door. The Pythia called after her, cheerfully: “Call when you need us.”

Tara banged the screen door shut behind her, muttering under her breath: “Not fucking likely.”

T
ARA ALWAYS LOVED TRAVELING AT NIGHT, ESPECIALLY BY
plane. There was something about the dimness of the cabin lights, the lack of crowds, and the glitter of lights in the darkness below that made her feel apart and insulated from the problems of the world.

The commercial red-eye flight Harry had booked for them was nearly deserted. A group of hungover college girls was already asleep in coach, sprawled across empty seats. A salesman hunched over his laptop computer, sweat stains spreading underneath his arms. A mother held a sleeping infant on her lap, staring out the window. But Tara and Harry had business class all to themselves.

The silence was awkward.

For the first part of the flight, Tara busied herself with paging through Harry’s summary file of the case. Three former operatives had vanished, under odd circumstances. As Harry had said, they had all worked in various capacities for a project called Rogue Angel. The details of the project itself had been heavily redacted in black marker, but Tara gathered that the project’s goal had been to track inventories of nuclear components in the early 1990s. The project had met with little success, and had been scrapped in 1994.

All of the missing had worked for Rogue Angel. But it was there the similarities ended.

The first lost operative had been a retired CIA agent, Gerald Frost. His file photo showed him as a tanned, athletic, balding man. Gerald had spent a great deal of time traveling the countryside of the former USSR in the course of his work, and had apparently never gotten the bug out of his system. As a retiree, he’d returned to many of his old haunts as a tourist. An online travel agency had booked him on trips to Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Ukraine two years ago. Somewhere en route to Kiev, he’d vanished. His train ticket hadn’t been used. His cell phone and credit cards were later found, sold and resold on the black market. The State Department had assumed that he’d met with modern day highwaymen, and had not been able to trace his actual point of disappearance.

One incident might be a fluke. But the others drew more attention. Frost’s former administrative assistant, Carrie Kirkman, disappeared six months later from her Las Vegas real estate office. She was recorded walking into the building by a security camera on a Friday morning, and never emerged. On Monday, her clothes and jewelry were found locked in her office.

The pattern had repeated with the next victims. A retired intelligence agent, Carl Starkweather, vanished from a parking garage of a casino, with his clothes left in his trunk. Foul play was immediately suspected, but the ex-agent owed no one any money. His wife had taken out sizable life insurance policies on him, but she had an airtight alibi.

And secrets were filtering back through the intelligence community. Old secrets, but marketable ones. CIA chatter had caught snippets of information about degraded uranium sold to Iran. And Russian patrols had caught a group of Taliban sympathizers digging around old mines in Siberia. When the men had been arrested, the patrol found a half-exhumed nuclear warhead.