Mark Del Franco - Face Off

A waver in her modulation said lie. A partial lie, but still a lie. “I didn’t ask what it was. I want access.”

Moor did stare then, malice glittering in her eyes. “Do you think I can’t take whatever you throw at me? Do you think that after everything I’ve done to take down the monarchy, a little pain means anything to me? Do you?”

Laura leaned over the table. “Who said anything about a little pain?”

Moor laughed. “You’re not the Guild. InterSec won’t let you go as far as you’ll need to. If you think I’ll give you the key to bring it all down, you’re wrong. Do you hear me? Wrong. I’ll die before I tell you.”

Truth. Hard, clear truth rang in her words. She wasn’t going to tell.

Laura straightened up. “There are all kinds of pain, Moor. I don’t have to touch you to start,” she said. With the honed skill of years of practice, Laura swapped out the Mariel glamour for the Moor glamour without revealing her true face. Startled, Moor stared at her own image. “Have it your way. I’ll fuck the password out of your boyfriend.”

Howling screams followed her out the door. Laura stopped short in the anteroom. Sinclair, his face troubled, had joined Terryn while she had been inside. He looked about to say something, then gave her a crooked smile and left without speaking.

“How long was he here?” she asked.

“He saw and heard it all,” Terryn said.

Laura didn’t speak as she watched Moor’s face bulge and contort. She wanted to follow Sinclair and explain. It was the job. Part of the job. Sometimes . . . sometimes things needed to be done. Things she wasn’t always proud of.

Terryn interrupted her thoughts. “How did you know she was faking before?”

Laura blinked, stared at her feet. “She agreed to cooperate. She would go boggie only if something kept her from cooperating, and the only thing doing that was herself.”

“Unfortunately, we are no closer than before,” he said.

Laura shook her head. “Not true. Now we know that drive is important, and we don’t need to waste time on other things.”

She watched Moor pace back and forth across the room. Trapped. She wondered why Sinclair’s watching bothered her. No, why the look on his face bothered her. He knew what she did. He knew the stakes were high. They were always high. She clenched her jaw. She knew why it bothered her and didn’t want to admit it. Sinclair was a good guy. Honest. Sincere. Honorable. Things she thought about herself. But in that look he had, she doubted that was what he was thinking. And it bothered her.

Mission after mission, she did what needed to be done. She knew some people believed the ends never justified the means. Those were people who had never walked in her shoes. Sometimes what she did to get results was irrelevant. She would have been dead many times over if she didn’t believe that. If she had died, how would that have furthered a greater goal? Or was she being selfish? Did her life matter if her principles were betrayed?

Terryn more often than not held an even harsher view about the brutal necessities of their work. He was immortal. All that time accrued on him made him seem indifferent to the emotion. She knew him, though, knew he had sides he revealed to few. As a druid, she wasn’t immortal, but she wasn’t human either. She would live a long time. She wondered if the cold precision she brought to the heat of battle was making her lose something intrinsically important about herself.

She closed her eyes. Sinclair didn’t have to say anything to make her face herself. She wasn’t sure what his look meant, but she knew it wasn’t admiration. What was she becoming? And was Sinclair enough reason to change? Did she even want to?

A bang against the glass startled her. Moor scratched with clawed hands against the viewing glass, her face contorting in a snarl. Her eyes blazed yellow as she snapped, her jaw filled with razor-sharp teeth. Frantic, she flipped backward onto her elongated limbs, then scrambled around the room looking for a way out.

“I don’t think she’s faking it this time,” Terryn said.

“YOU LOOK LIKEhell,” Laura said.

It had been five days since she had last seen Sinclair. He hadn’t called, or, rather, he hadn’t called her. He had checked in at InterSec at the prescribed intervals, but he hadn’t contacted her even after she left him messages. So she finally called him.

Stretched out on the couch in her Alexandria apartment, Sinclair chuckled with his eyes closed. “I have been awake for almost three days that have included drinking, tramping through the woods, arm wrestling, and drag racing a truck. Then I had to ride here in the trunk of your car. I’m a little tired.”

Laura slid a cold bottle of beer into his hand, then dropped into an armchair. Picking up the remote, she lowered the sound on the flat-screen TV above the fireplace but left the news on. “Oh, sure. I’m stressed out undercover with an ex-CIA spook hanging over me, and you’re out having fun with the boys.”

He levered himself up so he could drink his beer. “I will gladly switch with you. I’m used to arresting rednecks, not hanging with them.”

She smiled. “How bad are they?”

He rolled his eyes. “You would not believe the crap these guys are into. The federal government is a criminal organization. The Constitution was dictated by God and must be obeyed, but all the laws that came after are from men and are optional. The fey are dirty scum that need to be wiped out—as well as non-Christians, most everyone darker than an albino, people with college degrees, and anyone who doesn’t drive a Chevy.”

“A Chevy? That’s nuts,” she said.

He laughed again. “Yeah. It’s a different world.”

Laura slumped in her chair, dangling her glass of orange juice and vodka over the armrest. “It sounds like you’re in, though.”

He held out his beer. “Meet the new freelance consultant for the Legacy Foundation.”

She tapped the bottle with her glass. “Let me guess—weapons training at a militia camp?”

“Yeah. They’ve got several acres up in Virginia where they run around playing guerrilla revolutionary. Now I have to figure out how to teach them enough so they think I know what I’m doing but not enough that they might learn something,” he said.

She watched the news anchor Jenna Dahl talking in front of a picture of Draigen macCullen. She was tempted to turn up the volume, but the image was gone before she finished the thought. Terryn would brief her on anything important. She sipped her drink. “That’s always the hard part of all this—sometimes helping a cause you don’t agree with in the process of getting what you went in for. I try to get in and get out as fast as possible.”

He rocked his head. “How far do you go?”

Laura stared down at her drink. How far indeed. She had done things she never thought she would do. Some depressed her, some embarrassed her, and, yes, a couple of things horrified her. She didn’t like to think about it. Ever since Sinclair walked away from Fallon Moor’s holding cell, she had been expecting his question. “It depends on the stakes, Jono.”

Curious, he cocked his head at her. “That sounds intriguing and . . . um, not so good.”

“It’s not that melodramatic. Sometimes you have to push the envelope. It’s the nature of the job.” She rose from the chair and freshened her drink at the kitchen counter. More ice and juice. She had rules about alcohol. Living a life with so much solitude and secrets made bottles and pills seductive. She had seen friends and colleagues spiral into despair, then burn out. Burned out of the job. Burned out of their lives. The loneliness of undercover work made them feel trapped, with no one to share their hopes and fears. She knew she wasn’t an alcoholic, but she wondered how many people thought about it like she did every time she poured a drink.