Mark Del Franco: Skin Deep

Cress kept her face turned away. “I had to check your vest in after I inventoried it. You can pick it up downstairs,” she said.

Laura slipped on her shirt. “Don’t need it. Just have an errand to run.”

With a glance to confirm that Laura was clothed, Cress faced her again. “An errand in your soiled uniform?”

Laura ignored the comment. “Do you have my stone?”

Cress held out the thick gold necklace. The green stone-an emerald Laura had had for years-glittered in the fluorescent light. Laura kissed the gemstone to honor its power and slipped the chain over her head. Residual essence draped a glamour over her. She charged the stone with an extra burst of body essence. A brief static tickled her entire body as the full Janice Crawford glamour settled over her.

Laura hadn’t wanted the SWAT-team persona to be too attractive, so she had lengthened the nose just short of distraction and fleshed out the appearance of her body frame by an extra twenty pounds. She looked trim but solid. Janice’s face was similar to her own, although she had dark red hair and light brown eyes instead of Laura’s blond hair and wider-set green eyes. She pulled her hair up in a clip. “How’s it look?”

Cress nodded. “Perfect, as usual. Are you going to tell me what you’re doing?”

“No.” Laura trusted Cress but made it a habit of treating everyone on a need-to-know basis. Cress handed her a small baggie. Laura emptied the contents into her pockets-cash, the Crawford badge and ID, car keys, and a cell phone.

She hugged Cress briefly. She did trust her. And cared for her. Cress understood trust like no one else. She had chosen Terryn, and he had returned her affection. When a leanansidhe committed to a relationship, she committed more than her heart. She’d walk in front of a bus if he told her it was safe. If a lover left, the leanansidhe could spend years in a madness of disbelief.

“No stunts, please. I want the rest of the night off,” Cress said, as they left the room.

Laura followed her out of the med clinic as she tucked in her T-shirt. “Will do.”

In the elevator lobby outside the InterSec offices, they went their separate ways. Down in the Guildhouse garage, Laura glanced wistfully at her Mercedes SL and jumped into Janice Crawford’s Honda SUV. She exited the underground garage and cut across the National Mall to pick up the highway. Out on the bridge, the lights across the river came into view. Everything looks attractive at night in D.C., she thought. Even Anacostia.

She parked the SUV a block from the apartment complex. Car and pedestrian access had been restricted, which didn’t endear the police to the troubled neighborhood. Laura looped her SWAT-team badge around her neck. At the nearest barricade, a police officer asked for photo ID, too, but she didn’t hassle him for hassling her.

Crime-scene vehicles littered the street. Two ambulance vans sat on the worn lawn of the building where the drug lab had operated. Medical examiners surprised Laura as they brought out a body on a gurney. Twelve hours later, and they were still finding bodies? She lifted her badge for the officer at the door. People walked the hallway inside, the same hallway the entry unit had stormed. It looked nothing like she remembered. Of course, now it wasn’t dark and smoke-filled. Bullet holes scarred the walls, white chalk circles around them. She avoided talking to anyone but moved deeper into the building.

She paused to examine the long hall. Crime-scene markers scattered across the floor like restaurant reservation tents. She passed the makeshift sweatshop, making her way around spent shell casings. On the left, her eyes trailed over the holes Sanchez had blown through the wall. Blood splat tered the wall on her right. A long smear marked where someone had slid to the floor. She felt grim satisfaction that Sanchez had hit his final targets.

The adjoining walls had been hacked through a string of apartments to create one long hallway. The farther she went, the more bullet holes riddled the walls, more than elsewhere in the building. Another archway revealed a large room, not as big as the sweatshop, but still a sizable workspace. A lone investigator squatted a few feet from the arch, sweeping his flashlight beam across the floor. He shifted his gaze to her, then back to the floor. “This room isn’t processed.”

She nodded. “Just looking.”

The blackened front wall showed evidence of the explosion she had heard during the raid. Three tall, evenly spaced windows were blown out. Lab equipment trailed in disarray across the floor. Broken glass containers the vague shape of beakers and vials showed the soot stains of burning, whether from chemical processing or the explosion, Laura couldn’t tell. Water from putting out the resulting fire saturated everything.

In the next room, a jumble of tables was shoved against a wall. Computers and cabling tangled within the pile and onto the floor. She paused. The room had a distinct lack of shell casings and bullet holes. It was the geographic center of the building, yet she saw no evidence of the fighting.

Opening her essence-sensing ability, she picked up several immediate hits, which was not unexpected near a door. What was unexpected was that the door had been warded, spell-blocked in some way. She pushed her awareness against it, studying the mode of warding. Door wards took many forms-sound or sight barriers, security shields that allowed certain people in or kept specific people out. They could be hardened to a substantial degree. Someone with enough ability could even create a barrier in the small area of the door that would slow a bullet almost to a stop. Not a brownie. They weren’t strong enough. An Inverni fairy would be, though.

Laura sensed nothing dangerous and stepped through, the invisible ward sliding over her with the sensation of flowing water. At minimum, then, the ward was not an access barrier, but likely a sound deterrent. Once she was fully past the ward, essence flashed across her vision. The room had been a hub of activity, more so than the drug lab. Multiple species signatures in green, yellow, and pale white flickered everywhere, losing integrity without their original sources present to reinforce them. The dominant hits were human, but she also sensed an Inverni fairy, at least two Teutonic elves, and several brownies and dwarves. Crime made strange bedfellows, but the collection of so many adversarial groups together was unusual.

Laura stayed on clear floor space, keen on not stepping on any potential evidence. If they were beginning to process the drug lab, they had not even initiated a walk-through in this room. The scene tech in the lab would be furious if he knew she had entered.

The computer equipment looked intentionally destroyed. A SWAT unit would not have smashed monitors, yanked cables, or mangled circuit boards. The outside wall had three windows like the lab. The middle one was open. She surmised it made an easy escape route for at least some of the people who had been there.

An essence signature moved behind her, at the edge of her range. Alarmed, Laura whirled to face the empty room, waiting several moments for the signature to return. Outside the window, the only people in sight were law-enforcement agents. Across the way stood another apartment building, its first-floor windows and entrance covered in graffiti-sprayed plywood.

A flash of light above caught her eye. Broken windows showed empty black squares. Her ability didn’t extend far enough for her to be able to sense if anyone was there. The flash didn’t return, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her. The mysterious essence reappeared behind her, and she spun. By the time she reached the hallway, it had vanished altogether.