Mark Del Franco - Face Off

“Look, throw them away. They don’t mean anything,” Sinclair said.

His embarrassed tone made her regret the laugh. “No, I’ll save them for you. Can you meet me in about an hour at the corner of O and Ninth?”

“Okay.”

“Gotta run.” She disconnected. She scooped up the notes and shoved them in her pocket. Taking one more look around, she made her way to the service elevator. As she walked through the accounting department, her mind whirled with unanswered questions. Whatever had happened had happened fast. Terryn would have told her his plans otherwise. She wanted to get to Cress and see what she could do to help. But first she had to write a memo justifying kicking her friend out of the building.

A LIGHT DRIZZLEfogged the air as Laura waited for Sinclair. Halfway up the block, two Guild security agents stood in front of Terryn’s apartment building. At the far end of the street, she had spotted a brownie watching the street from a car. As the drizzle turned to rain, she moved into the shelter of the awning over a deli door. Sinclair’s body signature moved up behind her. Laura wore a long raincoat with a hood, but he didn’t need to see her face. He sensed the shape of her essence, something he claimed did not change despite whatever glamour she wore. “Okay, now I’m confused. I thought you would be Mariel, not Laura,” he said.

“I was worried someone might be watching for Mariel. Laura Blackstone isn’t well-known to the Guild investigative branch,” she said.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

She watched the street. “I don’t know. Cress agreed not to leave her apartment without Guild permission, and Terryn’s suddenly out of InterSec on leave.”

“What’s that got to do with stuff in my office?”

She leaned into the rain. “I don’t have a good feeling about it. If Terryn still has you off record, then we should keep it that way until he says otherwise, so I removed any trace of you.”

He dropped his voice into a saccharine tone. “You did that for me?”

She glanced at him impatiently. “Why do you read something into everything I do?”

He grinned. “I like to read. So far, you’re a good book.”

Dumbfounded, she stared. “That has to be the most corny pickup line I’ve ever heard. I think I’m in pain here.”

He pouted playfully. “Can we turn the page? I don’t like this chapter.”

She resisted the urge to laugh. “Jono, this is all nuts. They put Genda Boone in charge while Terryn’s on leave.”

He narrowed his eyes. “And, what, you’re pissed it wasn’t you?”

She poked him in the shoulder. “No. I don’t want to be in charge. I’m pissed because Genda has no idea what she’s doing, and that’s a dangerous thing in our line of work.”

“So what are we doing here?”

She turned her attention back to the street. “I have to talk to Terryn or Cress and find out what’s going on. Cress isn’t responding to my sendings.”

Sinclair peered up the sidewalk, rain glistening in his hair and on his face. “I’m getting interference. Probably a shield of some kind.”

“You can sense that far?” she asked.

He smiled. “Is that a conversational question, or are you taking notes?”

She elbowed him gently. “No games. I’m worried. You know leanansidhe are hated. I want to be sure Cress is safe.”

He shook his head. “I can’t sense anything beyond the shield. Why is she under guard?”

Laura followed his gaze up the street. “Because she’s a leanansidhe and an easy target for Rhys to make points. If she hadn’t agreed to the guards, he probably would have gotten the feds to detain her for trumped-up national security reasons.”

“She saved his life at the Archives,” Sinclair said.

“Gratitude isn’t one of his strong points,” Laura said.

A woman stepped out of the building and opened her umbrella. She hesitated when she saw the Guild agents, then walked between them.

“Why don’t we knock on the door and see what happens?” he asked.

She pursed her lips. “Because they might be looking for Mariel Tate to do that. Rhys is intent on discrediting Terryn. If he can take out another member of Terryn’s InterSec team for some bogus reason, he’ll do it. I don’t want to give him an opportunity.”

The woman from Terryn’s building passed them and continued around the corner. Laura took Sinclair’s arm. “Follow me.”

She pulled him along the sidewalk, moving fast enough to catch up to the woman. “You dropped something, miss,” Laura called. The woman turned and looked down. Laura muttered in Gaelic and tossed a pinpoint of essence at her. “Sleep.”

As the woman’s eyelids drooped, Laura grabbed her arm to prevent her from falling.

“What the hell are you doing?” Sinclair asked.

Laura cast furtive looks in either direction to see if anyone had seen her. “Take her other arm and help me get her coat off,” she said.

Sinclair did as she asked with a concerned look on his face. “This is technically assault and battery, you know.”

Laura shrugged out of her raincoat. “Good thing you’re not a cop anymore. Put this on her.”

She slipped on the woman’s coat. It was snug, but it wouldn’t matter in a moment. Rummaging in her own pocket, she pulled out a small garnet ring. Touching the woman’s cheek, she sampled her body essence. With a brief chant, she wrapped her own signature around it, pushed it into the ring, and slipped the ring onto her finger. Her features blurred and shifted.

Sinclair looked her up and down. “Wow.”

“How close am I?” she asked.

“Pretty close. You look like a cross between you and her.”

She shifted in the snug coat. “That’s good enough. I don’t have time for precision. I doubt those agents spent much time looking at her. Keep her out of the rain. I’ll be right back.”

Without waiting for a reply, she grabbed the woman’s umbrella and walked around the corner, lowering the umbrella to obscure her face. The rain accommodated her by falling more heavily. As she reached Terryn’s building, she pulled keys from the woman’s pocket. One of the security agents tilted his chrome helmet toward her, and she rolled her eyes dramatically. “I forgot my phone.”

They gave her room to enter through the unlocked outer door. In the close quarters of the vestibule, she hid her fumbling with the keys behind the open umbrella. She found the right key, closed the umbrella, and let herself in. A static prickle danced on her skin as she walked up the stairs, evidence of the shield spell Sinclair had sensed. She reached Terryn’s apartment and listened at the door but heard nothing.

Cress, it’s Laura. Are you alone? she sent.

The door opened a few inches, one of Cress’s whiteless eyes peering through the gap. She pulled the door open all the way, and Laura hurried inside. “I don’t have much time. Are you all right?”

In the dim light of the apartment, Cress looked small and forlorn. “They haven’t hurt me.”

“Where’s Terryn?”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “With Draigen. He’ll be back tonight.”

“What happened? Why did he take a leave?”

Cress lowered herself on the couch. “He didn’t. They suspended him, too. The Guildmaster agreed to say it was a leave because Draigen threatened to accuse him publicly of harassing her family.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on.”

Cress lowered her chin and frowned. “The Guildmaster accused InterSec of endangering the Guildhouse by granting me security clearance. I’m suspended while they investigate. I think I’m fired.”

Laura hugged her. The leanansidhe ’s essence flared a moment, purple tendrils flickering out of her skin before she pulled them back in. Suppressing a shudder, Laura released her, trying not to appear as if she were pulling away. She knew the reaction was instinctive, but it made her uncomfortable, even if Cress didn’t absorb any essence from the contact. “You’re not fired. This is all Rhys’s political posturing while Draigen’s here.”