Nightshades

by Melissa F. Olson

  The solicitous tone threw her off, as did the fact that he used her name. This guy had to be HR or maybe one of the analysts. Lindy glanced to her left and saw Drew, the night security guy, wave a hand. Drew was alive? Maybe Hector was trying to be subtle. She looked at the guy in front of her. “Who are you?” she demanded.

  The man blinked hard. “Well, I thought we’d have a softer introduction first, but okay, sure.” He flipped back one side of his suit jacket—not the side with the weapon—and pulled out a badge. Lindy’s heart froze as she saw the three letters and the shield opposite them. “I’m Alex McKenna, the new special agent in charge of the Chicago BPI.”

  Oddly, the phrase I was just thinking about you bubbled up on her lips, but Lindy swallowed it down. Chicago. He’d said Chicago. She took another step backward, toward the elevator. She had a contingency plan for this—of course she did—but the computer message and the collision had thrown her off. The plan. The roof access door. But she needed to get away from this guy first. Brute force or mesmerize him?

  McKenna broke in before she could decide. “Ma’am, you look like you’re panicking. I just want to talk, I promise. You should know, however,” he went on, “that every single exit to this building has an armed agent in front of it.” He didn’t sound so kind anymore. “Including the roof,” he added, as though he could read her mind. His gaze flickered for a moment, and then he moved closer to her. “Ms. Frederick, I know you’re a shade. I just want to talk to you,” he added quietly. “You don’t need the knives.” Shit. He’d seen the reflection in the elevator’s shiny brass.

  She could mesmerize this one agent easily, but they had to have at least half a dozen. That would get messy. She thought of the shades who were no doubt prowling this building, looking for her. She had to get the agents out of there before the shades in the building decided to have some more fun with the BPI. Silently, she cursed his stupidity—didn’t this guy know it was open season on government agents?

  Slowly, so he could see her doing it, she brought her hand out from behind her and lowered herself far enough to drop the knives safely on the floor, feeling a tinge of disappointment. They were really nice blades. “We can talk, but not here,” she said. McKenna opened his mouth to object, so she took his arm gently and propelled him back to the exit, adding, “Bring as many agents to watch us as you want, but I’m not speaking to you within a mile of this building. And if you try to make me, we’ll both have a really rough night. You more than me, I bet.”

  A half smile flashed across his face before he composed it again. “All right,” he said, nodding. “We’ll take my car.”

  Chapter 5

  Alex wasn’t sure what he’d expected from Rosalind Frederick, but it wasn’t a wholesome-looking blond woman with gentle curves and warm brown eyes. In her soft wraparound sweater and prim khaki pants, she was less “creature of the night” and more “hot kindergarten teacher.” She did seem on edge, her eyes darting around. At first he assumed she was checking for his agents, but the woman—the shade, he corrected himself—didn’t seem frightened of the BPI so much as just kind of . . . distracted. It was odd, but then again, this was Alex’s first actual shade bust. And only the second in the history of the Bureau. Maybe they were all like Frederick.

  They walked silently through the lobby, right up to the front entrance where Chase was waiting with two more agents on the outside of the door behind him. “Ms. Frederick,” he said politely as they approached. His eyes met Alex’s, widening with a question.

  “We’re going to drive around for a bit and chat,” Alex explained. “Can you follow in the other car?”

  Chase nodded, lifting his walkie-talkie to convey instructions to the rest of their team, on loan from the New York pod. Alex ushered Rosalind Frederick through the door, laying a hand on her upper arm as they entered the open air. The sidewalk was empty. “We do have a sharpshooter in the building across the street,” he murmured to Rosalind. “He’s been dying to know if he can shoot faster than a shade can run.”

  She seemed unruffled. “I assure you, Agent McKenna, I have no intention of running,” she replied. “You’re right; we should talk. Just as soon as we get away from here.”

  Her matter-of-fact tone surprised him, but he didn’t loosen his grip on her arm. If she were planning to take off, it was unlikely she’d announce it first. The town car was waiting at the curb, with one of the loaner agents behind the wheel. “Just drive around, Agent Goode,” Alex instructed. He glanced at Rosalind and added, “But away from this location, please.” He pressed the button to raise the privacy screen, and turned his attention to the shade beside him.

  She was looking at him with some amusement. “You’re not afraid to be stuck in a tiny space with me?” she said with a small smile. “I think I’ve been insulted.”

  Alex shook his head. “I’ve done my research on you, ma’am. My team has cross-referenced reports of assaults, murders, suspected shade attacks, and unusual disappearances near all the places where you’ve lived in the last twenty years. We’ve also talked to your neighbors and coworkers going back nearly that far. You’re not violent, or at least, not as a first response.”

  Her expression cooled, her gaze sliding to the window as if she was checking the perimeter. “But you’ve backed me into a corner, haven’t you? You know what they say about cornered predators. We’re killers.”

  He grinned at her then. “Yeah, but you’ll try to talk me out of it first.”

  Rosalind smiled back before she caught herself, and Alex knew he’d gained a small point. She smoothed her pants over her knees. “So. You say you don’t want to arrest me, but you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get me alone. What is it you want? Information?”

  “To begin with, yes. But that’s just in the short term.”

  “And in the long term?”

  “I want to hire you.”

  She threw her head back and laughed, a musical sound that Alex found himself liking, even if it was at his expense. It actually took a few minutes for her giggles to subside. “You must be joking,” she said, the laughter still in her voice. “Hire me to do what? Type really fast?”

  Alex didn’t smile. He just leaned forward and picked up a file from the empty passenger seat. “No. I guess you could say I need a translator. That’s what you do, right?” He handed it to her. “Translate?”

  “What is this?” She opened the file with a frown. Alex watched her face carefully as she flipped through the photos and documents they’d collected so far on the Chicagoland murders. Her face clouded over as she looked at the pile of bodies in the cornfield, the same shot that had caused Ambrose to freak out. She closed the file and thrust it back at him. “Languages, I translate languages. Not behavior. And I don’t know why they’re doing this. It’s not . . . how we do things.”

  Well, he’d gotten her to admit she was a shade. That was a start, anyway. Alex leaned back in the seat. “Ms. Frederick, when I first got your name, I had every intention of going the same route with you that we went with Ambrose: locking you in a cell, observing, questioning, the whole nine yards.”

  “You could try,” she muttered.

  He let that go. “But I’ve been reading a lot about you. Our guys even worked up a psych profile, which is pretty much their favorite thing to do. You’re on the sidelines, Ms. Frederick, and it’s not an accident. You like to think of yourself as impartial, nonviolent.”

  Something flickered across her face, and for just a second Alex could imagine a warrior behind the soft curves and benign expression, but he pressed on. “You can’t be happy about this,” he said, lifting the file. “You don’t want these deaths any more than I do.”

  She pursed her lips for a moment, as if trying to keep something behind them. Then she took a great sniff of the air, making no effort to hide it. Alex knew from the Ambrose research that she was checking his scent for shifts in pheromones, heart rate. He kept his gaze steady. “No, I don’t,” she said finally.

&n
bsp; “So help me,” he urged.

  “From a plastic cage?”

  “No. Come to Chicago with me, be on my team.”

  She stared at him. “Work for the BPI? You’re serious? Do you realize how insane that sounds?”

  “Why?”

  “No one in your entire bureau will want to work with a shade.”

  “So we won’t tell them,” he replied. “I’ll tell the team we suspect a language component, and you can use your current identity and everything. I’ll know, one technician, and my second in command, just in case something happens to me. That will be it.”

  She stared at him. “You’ve collected a lot of data on me,” she pointed out. “I’m sure you didn’t do that alone. I’m guessing my current identity is already blown.”

  He shook his head. “As far as the research team knows, you’re a suspected shade sympathizer. I’ve kept your status as contained as humanly possible.”

  She looked skeptical. “These are trained BPI agents, Agent McKenna, not a bunch of night janitors and barflies.”

  “Trained agents who have never seen a shade in person, and certainly not one who looks like you,” he countered. “Everyone on the team will be new, and we’re going to be too busy hunting these guys for anyone to ask a lot of questions.”

  “Even so.” She shook her head, frustrated. “You don’t know what you’re asking of me. You’re right; I have been impartial, under the radar, and it’s kept me alive. If I start telling you all about shades I’ll be signing my own death warrant.”

  “Breaking the rules, in other words,” Alex said neutrally. “There’s a hierarchy, then. Interesting.” Rosalind just sighed, not taking the bait, and he leaned toward her again. “Look, Ms. Frederick, it’s all going to come out. I believe that, I really do. Now that we know about shades, the BPI isn’t going to stop pushing until we get to dissect one. We’ve already begun designing weapons specifically for shades, and in a few more months Congress is going to give us permission to declare Ambrose inhuman. When that happens, it’s open season on your people.”

  She sat quietly, just listening. “You can change all that just by working with me. Your identity is not going to come out, but even if it does, even if other shades spot you, some of them are going to see that you’re working with us and it’s okay. That we’re treating you well, that we’ve found a way to coexist. And that’s going to matter to them.”

  “You’re suggesting I’ll be . . . what, a mascot?” she said disdainfully.

  “An example of what we could be together, shades and humans.” Her expression didn’t change, so he added, “Look, a few months ago, no one cared any more about shades than they did about a genocide on the other side of the world. It was compelling, sure, maybe enough to write a blog or discuss it on social media, even donate a little money. But the whole thing was too distant for anyone to actually step outside their own problems and pay attention.” He gestured to the file. “These deaths in Chicago, though, they’re changing that. People are starting to pay attention to shades, and all they have to see is these murders. You can help swing the balance of public opinion.”

  Alex had more he could say, but he could see that he’d made an impact, and he decided to quit while he was ahead. He turned his head to look out the window, giving her some time to absorb his words. Alex didn’t know Cincinnati well; to him it just looked like any other city in the world: fast food places and graffitied sidewalks and homeless people. Whatever this city’s cultural forte was, they weren’t in it.

  “Say I agree to this,” came Rosalind Frederick’s soft voice. “How do you know I won’t run the moment you look away?”

  “I’ve thought of that.” He reached over the seat again and came up with a small container, similar to a jewelry box. “A few months ago the BPI explored the idea of releasing Ambrose with a tracker device,” he explained, opening the lid. Inside was a bracelet made of linked metal, sort of like a one-inch-wide strip of chain mail. “Ultimately we decided the risks weren’t worth it, but our tech team had already begun developing this tracking bracelet.”

  She was frowning. “Like an ankle monitor you’d give to a common parolee.”

  “Sure, only it costs more than I’ll make in this lifetime.” He picked up the bracelet, which was unusually heavy. “This is an osmium-titanium alloy. It’s supposed to be unbreakable, even for shades, and once the catch fastens it requires a code to open. Of course, you could eventually get it off with the right tools, but they’re not commercially available, and by the time you tracked them down we’d know.”

  She eyed the bracelet mistrustfully. “Look,” Alex added, “it even has a little medical ID tag, so you can keep it on in situations where you’d ordinarily need to remove your jewelry.”

  “Very James Bond.”

  “It’s the FBI. We have the cool toys,” he said with a grin, letting her take a closer look at the bracelet.

  “That’s why you need a technician to know about me.” She leaned back in her seat, away from the bracelet, and studied him for a long moment. Alex wondered what she saw when she looked at him—just an idealistic kid? A foolish man? Or an actual leader making a bold choice? He’d like to think of himself as the latter, but he couldn’t entirely blame someone for believing something else.

  “I’ll give you a year,” she said finally. “But I want it in writing that if I work for the BPI—as a language consultant, meaning no cage, no medical testing, nothing like that—for one year, I get immunity from any prosecution involving my . . . evolutionary status. Permanent immunity.”

  “Five years,” he said. “And the agreement is null if you kill or hurt anyone.”

  “Two years is my absolute ceiling,” she insisted, “and I can defend myself if attacked.”

  “Ms. Frederick—”

  “Lindy.”

  “Lindy, how do I know you can even stop this person”—he gestured at the Chicago file, now on the seat between them—“within two years?”

  “Because,” she said patiently, “he’s my brother.”

  Chapter 6

  After dropping that little bombshell, Rosalind Frederick wouldn’t give him any more details until she had the signed agreement from the attorney general. Alex tried and tried, even going so far as to point out that more innocent people might die before the paperwork went through, but Lindy just gave him a hard look and shook her head. She agreed to put on the tracking bracelet as a show of good faith, but she wasn’t giving out any information without the paperwork in hand.

  Even with Alex’s new pull, getting the AG out of bed to draft a deal that would address laws that hadn’t yet been put into effect would take some time. While they were waiting Alex had the driver take them to the Cincinnati FBI office, where the technician who designed the bracelet was waiting to put it on.

  In a rare stroke of good luck, Noelle Liang was the star engineer at the Chicago FBI office; she had been loaned to the bracelet project and flown in specially to help with its “installation.” A tall, slightly gangly Chinese American woman in her midtwenties, she was a Chicago native and had deep roots there. Chase Eddy had actually crossed paths with her before, at a seminar in D.C. He’d hit on her; she’d pointed out that her girlfriend probably wouldn’t approve, and they’d struck up a casual friendship. Chase trusted her, which meant that Alex did, too. He was relieved that she’d be nearby and available for consultation during the case.

  The Cincinnati lab was a meager building. The cleaning service had come and gone, but the night security guard walked them downstairs to the lab, where Noelle was the only occupant. Chase walked in with them and introduced Noelle, who wore a miniskirt and a T-shirt with the periodic table underneath her white lab coat. It was nearly three in the morning, but she looked peppy and excited, like a little kid about to debut a new stock car. She shook Lindy’s hand enthusiastically, but Alex didn’t miss the little gleam of “I want to study you” in her eyes, and he doubted Lindy did, either. “Love this clandestine nighttim
e shit,” she said, leading them to a lab table with two stools, a bright light, and a set of tools that looked more appropriate for a watchmaker than an FBI lab tech. Noelle climbed on one stool and motioned for Lindy to take the other. “You’ve got my bracelet?” she asked Alex.

  He handed it over. “You made the modification I asked for, right?”

  She gave him a look of mock injury. “Of course I did.”

  “Modification?” Lindy said pointedly.

  “Yeah.” Noelle picked up the bracelet and flipped it over with one hand, pushing her purple-streaked hair behind her ear with the other. There was a small metal square on the back, roughly the size of a nickel. “This is the casing for the tracking device.” She pointed to an indentation where a second casing had been removed. “This used to be a second device, sort of a teeny little Taser controlled by remote. When we were gonna put it on a hostile we wanted to be able to zap him with a couple hundred thousand volts. Alex had me remove it for you.”

  “And he wanted the brownie points for doing it, which is why he brought it up just now,” she said, sounding unimpressed.

  Alex shrugged. “I’m playing it straight with you, Lindy. You need to know that.”

  Lindy nodded and told Noelle to go ahead. The engineer picked up a few of the tiny tools and fiddled with the complex latch for a few minutes until it was secure. Then she put the tools back on the tray in precise order. “Damn, I’m good,” she said admiringly. To Lindy, Noelle added, “Do me a favor? Try to rip it off? But, like, really try.”

  Lindy gave the bracelet a cursory tug, and then at Noelle’s encouraging look, she braced her back against the side of the lab table and pulled. The bracelet gave the tiniest creak, but held fast. The shade looked impressed, and Noelle and Chase high-fived.