Wild Card

by Mark Henwick

  “You could say that. One of those.”

  “Me too. You been anywhere I could check this morning?”

  I wanted to beat my head against the steering wheel. It was a good thing I had a solid reply for him.

  “Yeah. Ask Agent Griffith. He was at the PD office on Cherokee and he suggested I start thinking about WITSEC.”

  “Ah. Then I guess you’ve been apprised of the changes here.”

  I snorted. I’d let him know my thoughts at our next meeting. “What happened this morning?”

  “Well, let’s see. I got Sergeant Alverson into an isolation ward, on account of that rash, and we were having a real interesting conversation. ’Bout that time, all the other army fellahs we’d picked up yesterday and last Friday, they were being transferred from the CBI to the secure military facilities down in Springs, pending them all being picked up by that JF-CoStPROE committee. Thing is, they didn’t make it.”

  “How do you mean? They escaped?”

  “No, ma’am. The van got hit by something as it came off I-25. Just been told it likely was a TGB-7V.” He spoke slowly, as if he was reading the designation off a report.

  “Shit.”

  The whole team, wiped out? It had to be Nagas. Killing people they’d worked with? What did they do to these guys to make them capable of that?

  Ingram gave me a second, then: “You’re familiar with this weapon?”

  “Of course I am. Round launched from a standard RPG. Thermobaric explosive specifically designed to take out armored personnel carriers and leave no survivors.”

  The fuel-air explosion from the TGB-7V was intense in the open air. In the confines of a prison van it would have been like a compressed piece of hell.

  “Guards as well?” I asked.

  He grunted. “No survivors.”

  I shook off another chill. The Nagas had to be taken out as quickly as possible. If they did that to each other, fine, but this way, innocent people were dying.

  Ingram was waiting for me to speak.

  “And you thought of me?” I said. “Sweet.”

  He coughed. “Just covering bases, Ms. Farrell. And be assured, Sergeant Alverson is now in a most secure location.”

  “Can I see him?” I didn’t really want to. I was just trying to get a feel for how secure it was.

  “You could maybe bring your Sergeant Alverson to see him,” Ingram said.

  “Hmm. And are the CoStPROE committee aware you have him?”

  “Been busier than a hog in a wallow, so might just have slipped my mind to mention it. And of course now, they’re all technically persons of interest to me.”

  I liked his paranoia.

  “Wrap them up, Agent Ingram. Reel them in and wrap them up now.”

  “Uh huh. Just a little issue of jurisdiction we gotta get over. Can hardly blow trumpets about bypassing the laws if we do it ourselves.”

  I couldn’t argue with him. You start like that and you end where Petersen was—killing his own soldiers in cold blood. And for what? The possibility that they might let his secrets out?

  We ended the call on a vague agreement to meet soon.

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  Neither Bian nor Skylur picked up.

  I tried Melissa. She was short to the point of being spiky. “You still run?” she said.

  “Of course.”

  “The trail out by Bluff Lake. Tomorrow, 3pm.”

  “Make it the Cherry Creek, meet at the parking garage behind the shopping center.”

  “Done.” She ended the call.

  By that time I was back at Manassah without having had a chance to get through to Julie.

  She met me at the front door.

  “Everything okay?” I asked. It was early for Jen to be back.

  “It went smoothly,” she said. “No problems. And you?”

  “I spoke to Ingram. The important thing is Keith is safe. The rest of his team got taken out this morning while they were being transferred.”

  She was good at keeping her face under control, but I could hear her heart skip a beat at how close she had come to losing Keith.

  “He’s safe,” I repeated. “Moved to a secure location, and Ingram’s no dummy.”

  Julie flashed a smile of thanks for that, but then she thought about it and frowned. “Why kill them? Makes no sense.”

  That had been bugging me the whole way back.

  “Nagas and the committee working against each other? Or they realized they knew too much about everything and were too visible?”

  “But there’s a whole battalion where they came from,” said Julie. “Or was it just specifically this op that had to be hushed up?”

  “But even if it were just this op, there’s the entire Ops 4 group base. All the support and infrastructure. There’s got to be traces everywhere.”

  “You’d only need a day or two to take the IT and records down.”

  “Huh. Just the sort of time a jurisdiction dispute would take. Like the one Ingram says he’s fighting through now.”

  “And the people?”

  Julie and I looked at each other. I could see my own growing concern mirrored in her eyes. I didn’t give a rat’s ass for the Nagas, but my old unit was something else entirely. If the committee was cleaning up loose ends, there was a battalion of people Julie and I cared about.

  “I can’t call anyone,” she said. “They’d trace me in ten.”

  “You don’t need to worry about that.” I took her to the study I’d used as an office and sat her down with my laptop.

  Tullah’s wizard-geek boyfriend, Matt, had provided me with the ideal tool for getting around call tracers. I gave her the headset and introduced her to the octopus, explaining how the system worked, as much as I understood it.

  “…so they can backtrack as far as some server in the middle of Africa somewhere and then they’re stuck. Even the FBI didn’t manage to trace me, so you’re safe. Find out what’s happening at the base. Call only people you trust,” I said, and earned an exasperated sigh from her.

  “Eggs, suck, etcetera.” She slipped the headset on.

  “Where’s Jen?” I asked, before she started dialing.

  Julie pointed down the hall, her face going professionally blank. “In your suite, ma’am.”

  She couldn’t fail to understand the relationship with Jen, but she’d yet to comment.

  Maybe that only meant I had a prolonged and merciless teasing session to look forward to.

  Down the hall, Jen wasn’t the only person in my suite.

  “Lisa? Hi,” I replied awkwardly to my unexpected visitor’s greeting.

  Lisa Macy was a magician; she took cloth and turned it into dreams. That’s what she’d done for me at the McIntire-Harriman charity ball. I still felt giddy when I remembered walking in wearing that dress.

  Lisa was standing in my bedroom, surrounded by unfinished dresses. She smiled at me and pulled me forward into the middle of the chaos.

  “What’s this?”

  “Forgotten about the reception?” Jen said.

  “No, of course not.”

  Lisa began holding dresses up against me and swiftly making two piles—rejects and possibles, judging by her expression.

  “But—”

  “Bian warned us it’ll be formal. It’s important for you.” Jen stopped abruptly. “For us,” she amended.

  “I thought we could wear the same as we did at the charity ball. I love that green dress.”

  Lisa’s eyes bulged slightly, but she remained silent. She started going back through one of the piles she’d made.

  “Impossible,” Jen said. “We can’t wear the same dress twice.” She saw my expression. “Not this soon afterwards,” she added smoothly.

  “This one, I believe, Ms. Kingslund.” Lisa was holding a strapless gold dress against me.

  Could I bend over in that? I didn’t have the front to carry that off. Wouldn’t it just fall down?

  “Silver and gold,” Jen said thought
fully, tapping her cheek with a finger. “I like it.”

  “But what is this going to—”

  “I’ll leave you to the fitting.” Jen kissed my cheek and marched out, closing the door behind her.

  “Ms. Kingslund is paying, Amber.” The slightest crinkle at the edges of her eyes were all the sympathy she allowed herself to show me.

  I knew how much these contracts meant to Lisa and I couldn’t take it out on her.

  “If you would undress, please, then I can see how much alteration needs to be done.”

  I’d have to save my temper for Jen. I stripped and she draped me in the dress and started pulling the fabric and pinning it carefully. It was mostly complete and I guessed the measurements were based on the dress she’d made me before, so they were close. But Lisa aimed for perfection.

  “Back and shoulders bare. Here at the side, it will follow your line from here to here,” she explained. “Then just below the mid-point of the hips, after the body starts to curve back in, the material is doubled and layered, so it flares, so...” She demonstrated. “The materials here are lighter too, so they will float. A hint of flamenco in the shape, an exuberance in contrast with the pure, classic color. Ms. Kingslund’s dress will be a matching one in silver. They will be absolutely exquisite.”

  Jen would be exquisite. I’d probably look like a donkey at the races. With ribbons on it.

  Then again, to give Lisa due credit, she’d worked the impossible for me once at the charity ball. I forced a smile. And of course, it was the politics that were important at the reception, not the clothes. I’d endured worse than being dressed up in something that made me feel out of place.

  I was so going to throttle Jen.

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  After Lisa had left, Jen had a glass of rum waiting for me in the living room as a peace token. Wise woman.

  “There, all done,” she said. “Those shoes that Werner made for the ball will work with this dress as well.”

  “Oh, so I’m allowed to wear the same shoes, am I?”

  “Yes, honey, of course. They’re long dresses. You can get away with the same shoes.”

  “I still don’t see—”

  “It’s not just for you. It’s for me as well, Amber. I have a position in this Athanate society. I’m kin.” She stumbled a little at the term before resuming. “Of course, any of them who were at the ball will have met me, but I wasn’t part of their society then. Now I am. I intend to make a good impression, for both of us.”

  “But all this preparation. And what about Alex?”

  “I can’t answer for Deauville. I don’t think Lisa would have the right clothes for him.”

  “It’s Alex,” I said.

  Temper flared in her blue eyes, making them icy. She turned away and took a sip of her brandy. “Alex, then.”

  A knock interrupted us, and Carmen came in with a tray of her mouth-watering tapas. More careful planning by Jen. But there was nothing quite like sharing food to calm me down, especially since Carmen’s cooking was so good. We sat side by side on the sofa with the tray on the coffee table in front of us.

  “Oh, try this one,” Jen said, holding up a bite-sized taco for me. Instead of the standard open purse shape, it was closed and folded in the shape of a rosebud. I opened my mouth and she popped it in.

  At the same time the crunchy corn wrapping burst, releasing the tang of beef chili, cream and chives onto my tongue, our eyes met and lingered.

  I blushed. Tingles ran all the way down to my toes.

  “Didn’t realize you’d find it that spicy,” Jen murmured. “I’m so sorry.”

  We started laughing and it was hard to stop as we fed each other from the tray.

  When we’d finished, Jen kicked off her shoes and curled up contentedly.

  “So,” she said. “Are we good?”

  “We are excellent. I have somehow lost my intention to throttle you.”

  She wriggled closer. I felt the gentle pressure of her knees resting on my thighs, and then the odd flip where I sensed what that felt like to her, and the flavor in my mouth was brandy instead of rum.

  “Is this part of the binding?” she said. “It’s not my imagination, is it?”

  “It’s not your imagination,” I cleared my throat. “It’s called eukori. Whether it’s part of binding, you need to ask Pia or someone like that. I’m as new to this as you are.”

  Her hands took mine, or mine took hers.

  She sighed. “Well, we’ll explore it together.” She stroked my arm.

  Of course, she immediately felt it as I tensed, just as I felt the pain that caused her.

  “Sorry,” I said quickly.

  “It’s okay.”

  The breathless sense of sharing blurred into disappointment and faded away.

  “It’s not okay,” I said. “It’s complete shit.”

  “What’s the problem? Too much, too quickly?”

  I managed a weak laugh. “That ran out about a week ago.” I eased closer to her and concentrated on breathing evenly and slowly for a while. It helped to remember we might be interrupted at any time. I could hear Julie’s voice in the study and I could sense David in the house, though not Pia.

  She rested her head carefully on my shoulder and we were fine. After a moment, our hearts fell into sync and the sense of sharing came back a little.

  “So tell me,” she said.

  “Pia filled you in on the details of the cross-infusion between Were and Athanate?”

  “She said that the Were might influence the development of your Athanate side. It might make you become like the Basilikos. That Altau would be worried about you even without that, because you’ve developed in isolation and the Athanate that bit you sounds like he must have been Basilikos. Yadda, yadda.” She stopped abruptly. “Sorry, I shouldn’t dismiss it like that. I know it’s complicated. I know it’s a potential problem and I am worried for your sake. But why—”

  “Pia should also have told you that newly infused Athanate are usually kept away from humans except under supervision.”

  “Why?”

  “The lure of Blood and sex,” I said and she laughed. “The problem is that new Athanate get carried away with it and, if they were with humans, they would end up unconsciously trying to change them. The process of successfully getting a human to become Athanate is long and careful. Someone unprepared like you, bitten by a new Athanate, would likely end up dead, or insane.”

  “So what do new Athanate do?”

  “They bump bellies with other Athanate,” I said, “or maybe Were, who are pretty tough and can’t be infused. Supposedly.”

  “I see.” I wasn’t looking at her eyes, but her eukori took on that same steely blue sharpness. “So, you can make love with Deauville but not with me.”

  “Alex. At the moment.”

  “And Pia and David? Bian?”

  “Not going to happen, Jen. I don’t care what the Athanate usually do or don’t do. To me, kin is different from House and affiliation. Kin is special.”

  Her head came up and our eyes met.

  My heart was hammering in my chest. I was gambling everything on being completely truthful with her, even though so many of those truths she wouldn’t want to hear. Any one of them might finally convince her I was a monster and she was better off alone.

  A year ago, a woman called Dominé had fastened an angoisse around my neck. It was a mesh collar with the spikes pointing inward, like a choker made of barbed wire. She’d done it to show me how she felt I was living my life, a tightrope walk with pain on every side.

  At that stage, one of the spikes had been the fear of becoming Athanate, another was losing my job, another letting the army down.

  The spikes were all different, but I hadn’t changed my situation much.

  David barged in noisily, carrying a laptop. “There you are. I’ve built a spreadsheet to show you what I was talking about on your P&L.”

  Jen blinked. “Ahh. The boy wonder,” she
muttered. She gave my hand a quick squeeze and swiveled around. “Okay, show me.”

  I slipped out to check on Julie.

  She’d had no luck—no one at Ops 4-10 was picking up calls from an unknown caller. We worked out how to set up the octopus so it looked as if the call was coming from a mutual friend and I left her to it, calling ahead to set up my next event.

  The one that sent sudden, unexplained chills down my back.

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  Olivia and I crouched in the shadows of a fragrant screen of mountain mahogany shrubs. Leaves shivered around us in the breeze. Our target was an ordinary house, no security, lights bright enough in the rear-facing living room to ruin night vision for anyone who happened to look outside. Piece of cake—a ten-year-old could sneak in. So why was I anxious?

  I was okay. Of course I was. I’d done this sort of thing before; I could handle this. My worry was Olivia. I was feeling guilty for persuading her to take this on.

  Bit late for that.

  Why hadn’t I had second thoughts earlier? Was werewolf impulsiveness leaking through into everything I did?

  Oblivious to my thoughts, Olivia’s face was set; tense determination in every muscle. So much for the surface; I could sense the near-paralyzing uncertainty underneath. This wasn’t what she was used to.

  “You sure?” I whispered. “We can still back off.”

  “I said I would do it.” She bit her lip and then took a couple of deep, steadying breaths. “I need to do it for myself.”

  “Okay.” There wasn’t any point in delaying any longer. “Let’s go.” I clapped her shoulder and gave her a little shove.

  She got up and started walking forwards.

  Now my nerves threatened to paralyze me.

  I wiped my hands on my jeans.

  Crap! What the hell was wrong with me? Was I channeling Olivia’s fear? Was I worried what Ricky was going to say?

  Come on! This should be easy. A walk in the park. A meeting of lovers, not a struggle to the death.

  I reckoned there was only one way to get rid of the nerves.

  In seven strides I was at the fence and vaulting soundlessly over it into the unlit back yard beyond.

  A broad picture window overlooked the neat lawn. The lights were on in the living room behind it, but the curtains were drawn.