Dana Stabenow - Powers of Detection

Wren considered that, a small smile appearing on her face. “I like that,” she said finally.

“Yeah. It does have appeal. But it doesn’t always work. Anyway, it still doesn’t make sense. Why would anyone who knew about the heist want to-”

“Play a round of Kill the Retriever?”

“Yes.”

“Dunno. That’s your job to find out. I’m going home before I forget what it looks like, catch some sleep before my next turn playing peacemaker. Call me when you find out anything.” She got up, stretched, looked at her partner. “But do me a favor? Lock the doors when I leave. And don’t be careless.”

Sergei shook his head, his squared-off face softening as he smiled. “I’m always careful, Zhenechka.”

Wren thought briefly of the nasty little gun he carried on some jobs, and shuddered. “Right. Better them than us and all that jazz.” She kissed him good bye, rubbing her cheek against his five o’clock stubble, and let herself out.

–

The next evening he caught up with her on Park duty. A piskie had decided to pick on her, spluttering insults on her paternity, her maternity, and the general state of her underwear. Since piskies were, on average, twenty inches high and five pounds soaking wet, Wren’s reaction was closer to embarrassed annoyance than anything else. She kept trying to kick it, but it would dance out of the way and come back a few moments later, still talking.

“Goid, you’re annoying,” she said to it.

“And you could use a drag into the lake. Wanna try?”

“Remember what happened last time you tried dunking a lone-jack?”

Clearly it did, dancing back again until it was just out of reach. “Annoying human. Spoil all our fun.”

“Be glad that’s all I’m spoiling, you bothersome little wart.”

“Want me to shoot him?” Sergei asked, falling into step beside her.

“You got a bullet small enough?”

“I hear tell that’s all he’s got,” Goid crowed, then bit its tongue with an audible yelp when Sergei turned to glare at it. It was no secret in the Cosa that the Wren’s partner had little love for the fatae, the purely supernatural creatures of the Cosa Nostradamus.

“Scoot,” he said to it. Goid scooted.

“Damn. Next time the Cosa calls, you can answer, okay? What’s up?”

“Nothing.” His voice was sharp, and she could practically feel the irritation rising off him, now that the distraction of the fatae was gone. “As in, not a god-damned thing. As in, my contact seems to have disappeared.”

“The rest of the payment got deposited?”

One or two of the lines in Sergei’s forehead eased out. “The rest was deposited this afternoon, soon as they got their hands on the painting.”

“Well then.” Wren let out a little sigh. “What’s a possible attempt on my life, so long as we’re paid.”

He cast a sideways look at her. “You mean that?”

They walked a few more paces along a tree-shrouded path, ignoring the faint giggles and rustling branches following them. “No,” she said finally, on a sigh. “No, I don’t. Not after… I felt him. And I felt him die. I can’t walk away from that.”

“Right. Lowell did a rundown on this organization for me. They check out clean, he says-but he was very surprised that they had the money to pay us. Not a dime in their collective kitty, and no fund-raisers going on in their name.”

“Breaks my heart, it does.” She didn’t like Sergei’s assistant, but the twit did know how to do his research. “So they hocked the furniture to pay us?” The giggles got louder as they reached a particularly large tree, and Wren put a hand on Sergei’s arm to stop him. “Hang on.”

She slipped out of her sneakers and planted her bare feet in the grass by the side of the road. Safely grounded, she opened herself to the current of the world around her. Colors swirled, electrons danced, and she sorted through the information tugging at her senses until she was able to discern the slightly off pattern twined around the tree. A tendril snaked out, stroking the ends of the pattern, then retracting in a flash as the pattern snapped out, attempting to snare her within its own tendrils.

She came back to herself with a blink, after confirming that the trap had been sprung. A chorus of disappointed “awwwws…” trailed after them as she slipped her shoes back on, and they walked on.

“Okay. So: no money. And yet they manage to scrape together seventeen thou to pay us. So what’s the deal? They borrow the money from someone to pay for the retrieval, then that someone decides they’d rather have the painting than the promise of money?”

He shot her a sideways glance. “Maybe. Or it was never actually the organization who wanted it, at all. We might have been set up.”

“But then why make the final payment? I mean, we’re tough, but we’re not that tough. Are we?”

“More to the point, do they think we are? If so, not a bad thing.”

“Also besides the point, your ego aside.” And she squeezed his hand to soften the words. “Ignore who hired us for a minute. Who went after me? Did that same person kill poor old Bob? What do we have? An organization, poor as proverbial church mice, that still manages to retain us to retrieve an object that they claim they’re going to use to force political unity.

“Okay, here’s a question for you.”

Sergei nodded, indicating he was listening.

“Why did they bother to tell you what they’d be using it for?”

He let out a huff of breath. They walked in silence through the park, past human joggers running in pairs, and the occasional biker in bright spandex zipping through at high speeds. If any of the fatae were still watching them, they were being quieter about it.

“I’ve been wondering about that too. At first I thought the guy was just a talker. But then I started to think maybe his verbal diarrhea had a purpose. The assignment was the kind of thing you can’t help talk about, because it’s so different from the usual. But we don’t talk about clients outside the office…”

“You would have if I’d turned up dead. Especially if they’d done it in such a way to suggest that, rather than waiting to be handed the painting, they’d stolen it from us.”

Sergei stopped like he’d walked into a wall. “Chyort! Stolen it back, then used it to make peace. With your blood. Damn straight I would have talked. I would have blackened their reputation until they couldn’t stand under the weight of it.”

“And the talks would be undermined by doubt, maybe just enough to break them.”

Sergei started swearing again, alternating between Russian and English, until Wren was certain that she could see blue current sparking and shimmering in front of his mouth.

“We’re going to have to do something about them using us like that,” she said thoughtfully, almost to herself. “Bad for business, otherwise…”

–

Sergei had called the dinner date, his voice on the answering machine filled with such glee she could only imagine the retainer he’d managed to con out of someone. She wasn’t in the mood to party, her brain still filled with the annoyance of having been tricked into getting involved in politics, not to mention the attempt on her life, but dinner was dinner was dinner, especially if Sergei was buying. She threw herself into the shower, grabbed the first summer-weight dress she could find that wasn’t wrinkled, and threw it on. Things had changed enough in their relationship over the past year that she slicked on lipstick and mascara, and tied her hair up in a looked-more-complicated-than-it-was knot before heading out the door. Not that any of that was going to turn her into a raving beauty, but Sergei appreciated the effort. And she appreciated his appreciation.