Rachel Caine: Gale Force

“I have videotape,” he said. “Television footage of a woman stopping a tornado in the Midwest last week. The more I searched, the more I came up with— strange events caught on tape here, surveillance camera video there. Put it all together, and it confirms everything my source has told me.”

I took a deep breath, covered the speaker of the phone, and whispered to Lewis, “We’re screwed. The New York Times has the scent on the Wardens. I don’t think he’s going away. He sounds serious.”

“He’s looking for independent confirmation,” Lewis said. “Print reporters have to prove a story before publication. He’s fishing.”

“He’s got really big bait. Whale-sized.”

Lewis shook his head. “Then we’d better handle it. If we don’t, he’ll catch us at a weak moment and get somebody to admit to something. Tell him we’ll meet with him.”

“We will?”

“Both of us,” he said, and grinned. “Tell him to pick a dark, smoky bar. They love that kind of spy shit. Besides, we need anonymity.”

“And scotch,” I muttered. “Lots of scotch.”

Due to the excuse of the emergency, our appointment with Mr. Garrett was in a week, in New York City. He’d offered to come to Florida, but the last thing I wanted was for him to run into some busy, annoyed Warden who blurted out the truth just to get him off their backs. We were working here.

A week. I had a week, in conjunction with the other Wardens, to come up with a good fiction to feed the hungry reporter—one that would induce him to back off. Alternatively, we could go for the big hammer— get someone in the UN or the U.S. government to tell him to back off, but that would pretty much prove his whole case for him. I felt an itch between my shoulder blades, as though somebody had drawn target crosshairs right below my neck.

As it happened, there wasn’t a lot for the Wardens to do about the earthquake; on the surface, it quickly became one of those weird leading-this-hour stories on the major news networks for half a day, then slipped into obscurity. It was all over but for the insurance claims, which were going to be considerable. No fatalities, only light casualties.

We’d been damned lucky.

I never finished my breakfast. By the time I felt composed enough to eat, the waffles were cold, tasteless hunks of dough, and I needed to lose a couple of pounds, anyway. Considering how nervous I already felt about facing Phil Garrett in a week, that wasn’t going to be a challenge.

In the interest of having a comfortable place to work, I went home. Well . . . comfortable was a stretch right now, since half the complex had burned to the ground, and the half left standing had sustained smoke and water damage.

Curiously, my apartment was perfectly fine. Not a water stain, not a smoke smudge. It even smelled newly cleaned.

David had done me a favor. Again.

I had a secure phone setup in my office area, and VPN access to the Warden’s database systems back in New York; I logged in and began reviewing files. Earth Wardens who specialized in detecting and handling radioactivity were few and far between, and a lot of them were dead, missing, or had quit over the last few years. It had been tough on everybody. First we’d had internal strife within the organization, and then the Djinn had found a way to destroy the rule book that bound them to servitude, and launched their own high-body-count conflict.

We were lucky to have as many Wardens as we did, but we weren’t exactly spoiled for choice these days.

My best bet was a naval officer named Peterson, but he was on a carrier in the Persian Gulf. Second best choice was an ex-army guy named Silverton. No address listed, just a cell phone. He was shown as NFA—no fixed address. In other words, Ex-Sergeant Silverton was either homeless or liked living out of a suitcase and hotels. Since he could afford a cell phone, I supposed it was the latter.

The phone call with Silverton revealed nothing much, other than he was available and could be on the ground in Fort Lauderdale in eighteen hours. I authorized his travel—paperwork was going to survive the nuclear winter, along with cockroaches—and set about typing up my incident reports on the earthquake. When that got old—which I admit, it did quickly—I began surfing the Net for bridal information. I had a wedding to plan, after all. These things don’t run themselves, unless you’re so famous you can not only get your wedding services for free, but have people pay for the exclusive coverage.

Hmmm, now that was an idea. . . .

I was looking at wedding cakes when the phone rang—the secured line. Paul Giancarlo’s raspy, Jersey-spiced voice said, “We’ve got a fuckin’ note taking responsibility for the earthquake down there.”

“You’ve what ?”

“Let me read it to you.”

To the Wardens,

Your time is up. You’ve been given warnings, but you’ve ignored them. Either cut off contact with the Djinn, or face the consequences. Today’s earthquake in Fort Lauderdale is proof that we can do what we say. The Djinn must be stopped.

Paul paused and cleared his throat. “It’s signed, ‘the Sentinels.’ ”

“The Sentinels? You’re kidding me. Aren’t they some football team?” It was almost laughable. Almost. “Seriously, man, I’ve heard rumors, but—wasn’t it just talk?”

“Not according to this. Not according to what I’ve been hearing. Look, we’ve got ourselves a real, live splinter group,” he said. “One not afraid of using terror tactics.”

“And they sent a note? How . . . 1980s of them.”

“E-mail, actually. And yes, we tried tracing it. No luck. We put the NSA on it, but nobody seems real positive about the prospects. This thing in the ground you and Rocha saw, you think it’s some kind of device?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But . . . it didn’t seem man-made. Didn’t register like that on the aetheric at all. I don’t know. This is deeply weird, Paul.”

“Yeah, but what worries me a hell of a lot more is that what I’ve been hearing about the Sentinels makes sense.”

“I—what?”

“We all know the Djinn are unpredictable,” he said. “We’ve seen it, all right? So is it all that surprising that the ones who got hurt the most—the Wardens who survived that whole bloody mess of a civil war— want to see the Djinn stay out of the way?”

I didn’t know quite what to say. “You sound like you agree with them.”

“Not entirely,” he said, which wasn’t, I noticed, exactly a denial. “But I don’t like the idea of putting our people at risk for no good reason, either. Maybe the Sentinels have the right idea, wrong tactics.”

“You’re telling me you don’t trust David ?”

“Kid—,” Paul sighed. “I can’t have this conversation with you. You’re not exactly rational on the subject. But I was in the New York offices that day. I saw what happens when the Djinn go off the leash. I fought for my life ; I saw friends ripped apart in front of me. You got any idea what kind of impression that makes?”

I couldn’t think of any way to respond to that. He’d caught me off guard. I knew that Paul still had bitterness about the Djinn revolt, and he was right; bad things had happened, mostly to Wardens. But he was discounting—or ignoring—all the thousands of years of suffering the Djinn had endured on their side.

Most Wardens wanted to ignore that.

“Right, moving on,” Paul said into the silence. “I’m getting the team together here for analysis. We’re going to count heads, see who’s not answering the pings for roll call. I want a line on anybody who’s missing, just in case. I don’t suspect my own, but it’s useful knowing if somebody’s in trouble.”