Following Fabian

by Holley Trent

  “Dana, I—” The brunette with the bangs came to a skidding halt near her boss. “What the fuck?”

  Dana took her by the arm and drew her closer to the huddle. “That’s more or less what I said. Astrid, meet our informant. Felipe Castillo Senior.”

  The woman with bangs—the one who’d rescued his son and whom his son was absolutely moon-eyed over—shook her head. “The fuck he is.”

  Senior laughed. He liked her. She was spunky. She reminded him of his late wife in a lot of ways. Of course his boy would want a woman who didn’t hold her tongue.

  “It’s true,” he said.

  “You abandoned them.”

  “Astrid,” Dana warned.

  “No, no. It’s okay,” he said. “It’s true. I had my reasons. They may not have been good ones, but I did the best I could do for my boys. At least, I thought I did.”

  Astrid tipped her chin downward and stared at him through the fringe of her hair. “The best you could do was leave them with Jacques? You should be happy they’re alive.”

  Fabian clasped a hand on her shoulder. “¿Qué estás diciendo, dragón?”

  “I’m telling your father he’s a dick.”

  Fabian’s eyes widened and lips parted. He looked from Astrid to his father. “I’m not sure I’m in a place to apologize for her,” he said in Spanish.

  Senior hooked his thumbs into the belt loops of his cargo pants and shrugged. “You should never apologize for her. You can’t muzzle a woman like her and you probably shouldn’t try.”

  Fabian nodded curtly and squeezed her shoulder.

  She stared back at him, and there was such an unexpected curiosity in her gaze—as if she didn’t expect him to be there. As if it was all so new and she didn’t know what to do with him.

  Maybe she didn’t. She’d learn that quickly enough. Castillo men were easy, assuming they didn’t run. Someone needed to keep Fabian from running.

  “I hate to put a damper on the family reunion,” Dana said, “but we’re trying to plan this scheme out. Obviously, you’re more intimately familiar with what’s happening in Jacques’s camp right now, so if you could debrief us, that’d be fabulous. I’d like as few injuries as possible, and not just to my Shrews…who tend to be a little more reckless on average.”

  “Hey!” Astrid balked.

  “I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. Listen”—Dana counted off on her fingers—“I need to know where Jacques has shifter guards posted, where any kids and women are being kept, and if you have any insight about identifying which of his fighters are Visas, I’d like to know it.”

  He made an appreciative grunt at her strategic mind. If his sons had to align themselves with anyone, Dana was the exact right person. She’d make sure they saw their full potential. That they’d be good at something other than being ogled.

  He rocked back on his heels. “Most of my knowledge is about the two camps Jacques has bounced back and forth between. He moves around a lot. Trying to keep himself from becoming a target, I suppose, but I learned to recognize his patterns. If he feels threatened, he may try to use women and children as a shield and send them out firing whatever weapons they’ve got, knowing that you’ll hesitate to fire back.”

  “Any psychics amongst them?” Astrid asked.

  “Some of the Roma women. There are only a few in the group Jacques is likely at right now. Why?”

  “Oh, we Shrews have some tricks we could try. We might be able to get the human shields out of the way without any injuries. We just need to know which individuals to communicate with.”

  “I could tell you that,” Fabian said, squeezing her shoulder again.

  Odd, the way those two seemed to be communicating. One in English, the other in Spanish. Must have been a Shrew thing, and Senior wasn’t going to try to make sense of it given his own relative oddness.

  “I think we all need to know in case we have to split up,” Dana said. “Tamara and Bryan can communicate telepathically within a certain range, so we don’t have to worry about hot walkie-talkies between the two of them. If we’re going to split, it makes sense we have one of them in each group.”

  “Send Bryan out with the muscle and to deal with the local Weres,” Astrid suggested.

  Dana nodded. “Dirty cat can go hunt down Billy if he’s nearby. The others will deal with the women and children.”

  Senior caught his sons casting speculative glances at each other over the women’s heads. Twin power. They probably didn’t need to talk. They already knew what the other was thinking, and Senior didn’t need to be a psychic to be let into the loop.

  They had the fire of revenge in their bellies, and Senior knew that feeling well himself. If they saw Jacques within their reach, no plan or organized scheme was going to keep them from him.

  But, what they didn’t know was that no matter what, Senior wouldn’t allow Jacques’s blood to be on their hands. Senior had penance to pay, and if anyone was going to kill Jacques short of Jacques himself, it was going to be Senior.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Stop twitching. You’re making it difficult for me to focus,” Tamara whispered to Astrid.

  The four Shrews crouched behind the rearmost RV in the caravan, trying to establish a psychic link with one of the Roma women. They had, at most, five minutes before the men and agents would move in on the encampment, and if they didn’t manage to warn the women in advance, they’d have to each pray to the god of her choice that the folks in the trailers understood what the game was when the bullets started flying.

  “We’ve never done this before,” Astrid whispered back. “We’re attempting something that’s wholly hypothetical right before we engage in battle, so excuse me for being a little nervous.”

  “That’s not why you’re nervous,” Maria said soothingly. “What I’m feeling from you isn’t pre-game jitters. Stop thinking about Fabian. He can take care of himself.”

  “Last time I checked, roomie, you weren’t a mind reader.”

  Astrid felt bad for snapping at her. Really, she did, but the comment had hit too close to home. Of course she was going to worry about Fabian. The fact she couldn’t see him—no, touch him—made her anxiety level flare. She’d grown so used to solitude in the past few years and her personal space had become a treasured possession after being poked and prodded so much during the study. Now, the one person she craved giving her space up to was nowhere to be seen and had walked away from her with a hitch in his breath and fire in his cheeks.

  “We’ll all get out of this unscathed,” Dana whispered sharply. “We’ve got backup. If there’s a choice between Jacques getting away and our people going home whole, we’re going to pick the latter. None of our lives are worth giving up to bring him down.”

  “The Castillos might not agree,” Astrid said.

  “I doubt they agree, but, my gut says Fabian’s not going to do anything that would lead to you being in harm’s way.”

  “Just himself, right? Because he wants revenge more than he wants me?”

  “Stop it,” Tamara said. She closed her eyes and canted her head toward the RV. “All right. There’s a woman resting inside. While she’s relaxed, I’m going to try to ease her into a dream and talk to her. I’m hoping whatever language she speaks is close enough to Romanian or some other language I know, or we’re going to have to resort to the psychic equivalent of charades.” She held out her hand to Maria, who took it. “Here goes nothing. Let’s see if you can extend that calming aura of yours.”

  Maria just nodded and closed her eyes.

  While the two worked, Astrid looked over at Dana, who was scanning the area behind them, gun poised at the ready. Astrid did the same.

  “Dana?” she whispered.

  “Yeah?”

  “I feel like this is a really bad thing to say at a time like this, but Maria’s right. I can hardly think straight. Feeling agitated. I haven’t felt this on-edge with a gun in my hands since the first time my grandfather took me deer hunti
ng all those years ago.”

  “It’s expected,” Dana said.

  Something rustled in a scrubby bush ten yards away, and they both trained their guns on it. It turned out to be a solitary bird. Bad time of year for it.

  They stood down.

  “You had nothing to lose before,” Dana said. “Nothing to fight for. I’m a lot more anxious when I go into the field now than I was before I met Patrick. It’s funny how the prospect of a future you’ll actually enjoy changes your treatment of the present.”

  Maybe that was it. The one man Astrid had encountered in her twenty-something years who soothed her instead of amping her up—who complimented her instead of cutting her down—was, figuratively, in arm’s reach. She could have him for keeps if this thing went right. She could have the closest thing to a normal life that a Shrew was going to get.

  She had to let herself admit that she wanted that.

  It was okay to want that.

  “She heard me and understood,” Tamara said. She let go of Maria’s hand, stood, and pointed to the path leading away from the campsite. “I just told Bryan to have the agents move the bus to the trail mouth. They need three minutes to grab some things, and they’re going to haul ass out of here as quietly as they can.”

  “Felipe Senior has visual on Jacques still, doesn’t he?”

  “Bryan says yes. I’ve asked our Roma friend to see if she can arrange some sort of distraction to keep Jacques busy and oblivious to the noise while the women and children run. Apparently, she’s got a Visa lover who’s holding a grudge of his own against Jacques. He’ll keep him busy with bullshit long enough for the group to clear the trail.”

  “It’s half a mile long,” Maria said. “If they’re carrying bags and children, it’s going to take them a while to get to the buses.”

  “We’ll deal with anyone who goes after them,” Dana said. “But it’d be a good idea for the agents to send a couple of guys with guns ahead on the trail to meet them.”

  Tamara nodded. “I’ll tell Bryan.”

  A few blinks later, she grunted. “Let’s do it.” She gave the side of the RV a couple of percussive thumps, and the door opened on the other side.

  Heavy footsteps thudded down the stairs, and once on the ground, the departing man cleared his throat. “Ah, I want to take the kids someplace warm,” he said to no one in general. “All ten of them, I think. They’d enjoy them.” He whistled a jaunty tune as he walking away.

  “Ten,” Astrid whispered.

  “Count them off as they go past,” Dana said. “There’s no way they’re going to know if everyone’s out, and I don’t want them waiting on each other.”

  Tamara tapped the RV side again. This time, the footsteps that sounded down the stairs were lighter.

  A young woman in a hooded puffer coat zipped up to her chin holding a swaddled baby hurried around to them. The bags under her gray eyes looked nearly as heavy as the one she carried on her back.

  “Christ,” Astrid muttered. “She’s a baby!”

  “I’m nineteen,” the young mother said with an indignant tilt of her chin.

  “A baby,” the Shrews said in chorus.

  Astrid pointed to the path. “Go. And tell your friends to get a move on if you can.”

  “I already did. Every thirty seconds so there’s not too much noise at once.”

  “Smart girl,” Dana said. “Go.”

  The woman started for the trailhead, shifting the infant in her arms as she hurried.

  “You know,” Maria whispered as a slightly older woman with two preteen kids hurried after the first woman. “I’m generally able to squash any thoughts of violence if I try, but right now, I’d really like to squeeze Jacques’s nuts in a vise until they rot off.”

  “Maybe you’ll get a chance if there’s anything left of him at the end of this,” Astrid said. She counted four more children being herded past by an elderly woman.

  “I know her,” Dana said. “I believe that’s Mr. Tolvaj’s adoptive foster aunt. She was at the last shoot-out.”

  “Don’t assume this thing will devolve to that. If we pinch off the artery at the heart, there’ll be no more bad ideas coming out of Jacques’s camp.”

  “Shit,” Tamara said. “Bryan said there are some vehicles moving toward the second trailhead. He’s got a couple of local Bears doing surveillance for us, and it looks like some of Jacques’s enforcers are delivering supplies.”

  “ETA?” Dana asked.

  “About three minutes.”

  “We’ve got six kids out,” Astrid said, and nodded toward two teenage girls holding hands and running at full clip toward the trail. “That’s eight. Need two more.”

  Astrid rested her gun hand, peeled back her leather glove, and rubbed her itchy palm. The radio silence unsettled her. When Shrews went out into the field, they generally had walkie-talkies, or at least, kept tabs on each other via cell phone. This was the first time they’d ever relied on a psychic connection to link up separated groups. She’d be lying if she told herself she was fine with that. She was used to having a little more control and for more people in each party to have a line.

  More than that, she didn’t like going into this engagement on such tentative terms with Fabian. She’d never claimed to be an expert of relationships, but she was pretty sure she’d screwed something up somewhere. Yeah, she’d told him that if he knocked her up, he was stuck with her, but that didn’t exactly count as a profession of love.

  Did she love him?

  She picked up her gun and meditated on the hardness of its butt.

  Yeah, she did. Or at least thought she could soon. That’s what that gnawing anxiety was. A fear that she needed and wanted him so badly, and he wouldn’t be there.

  That he wouldn’t want her.

  God.

  She counted one more adolescent hurry past with an escort of indeterminate age.

  Shit. She squinted at them in indecision.

  Dana clasped her shoulder. “Does that count as nine or ten?”

  “I was just wondering the same thing. That guy could have been a teenager or a young man.”

  Doors slammed near the parking lot of the other trailhead.

  “Goddamn it,” Tamara muttered.

  “Well, if there’s any more of them, they’d better have fleet feet and prayerful tongues,” Dana said.

  “The men are moving in now,” Tamara said. “Ours and theirs. Felipe Senior is supposed to try and subdue Jacques on his own, but we can’t expect that to go according to plan.”

  “I really hope he can control any murderous instincts, because we need to squeeze some information out of that man if we can. He’s been raising so much hell in the past thirty years and swept so much dirt under so many rugs that we don’t know really how many people he’s dicked over,” Dana said.

  “That’s the good cop in you talking,” Astrid said.

  “Mm-hmm. And the bad cop in me thinks it’d be easier to just kill him and dig up whatever information we can after he’s gone.”

  “And you call me ruthless,” Tamara said. She stood, and they all stood with her.

  Dana pointed toward the path as the din of masculine voices boomed closer to the camp. “Maria, follow the group and round up any stragglers. If there are any more, we’ll send them behind you calling your name.”

  Maria started, distress clear in her expression. “Don’t you need me here?”

  “I need you where you can do the most good and receive the fewest injuries.”

  “You’ve never accused me of not being able to pull my weight before.”

  Astrid grabbed her arm. “And she’s not doing it now, either. There’s a difference between hitting a bullseye on a shooting range and incapacitating an assailant who’s running at you. We all know you’ll do what needs to be done, but you shouldn’t have to with us here.”

  “Look,” Tamara said, and pointed to one more young woman running past with a toddler and a bag half her fucking height.


  “Hey! Where you going?” a man shouted from the other side of the camp.

  The woman turned to look, stumbled, then hobbled in earnest toward the trailhead.

  “Maria, go!” Dana hissed.

  “Got it.”

  Fast as lightning, Maria was at the young mother’s side. She slung the big bag over her shoulder, and grabbed the woman’s hand without missing a beat.

  They ran.

  The guard followed, and, as a trio, the Shrews moved from behind their cover and into his way, guns poised.

  “Nope,” Dana said.

  His lips peeled back over sharp, rotted teeth as his bones and skin began to shift.

  “Visa,” Astrid whispered, stunned at the man’s quickly changing mass and bulk.

  “Nice try,” Tamara said. She punched and kicked in a mighty blur, and in a moment, the heavy man was on the ground, groaning. She put a foot on his back and grabbed his wrists. Dana handed her a pair of plasticuffs. “Bare your teeth and growl all you want, you pissant. To me, you’re a little fish, and I’m a bear. Guess who wins? Grrr, motherfucker.”

  He groaned as she bound his ankles.

  “You have one of the kits with the tranqs?” Dana asked, and turned her head toward the excitement booming in the general vicinity of the RV Jacques occupied.

  She started moving toward it as Felipe, Bryan, and the others came into view.

  But where was Fabian?

  Astrid caught a flash of him—or was it Felipe?—and then he disappeared into a vehicle.

  “I’ve got some,” Tamara said. She pulled a metal syringe out of one of her cargo pants’ pockets and pulled off the needle’s cap with her teeth. “Go get them. I’ll catch up.”

  Astrid and Dana ran.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Fabian sighed as he increased pressure around the guard’s neck and watched his brother having a bit of bruising fun with a guard who’d given the both of them quite a bit of hell in the past ten years. With Felipe’s newly added bulk and his will to go home to his pregnant wife, he’d transformed from lithe acrobat to efficient fighting machine.