djinn wars 02 - taken

by Christine Pope

  “Step out of the vehicle, please,” she said. “Your companion, too.”

  This really didn’t feel good, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. As I’d loaded my belongings into the Cherokee, I’d contemplated bringing along a couple of handguns, and maybe one of the rifles. I’d decided against it, though, worried that the Immune would get the wrong idea if they discovered a cache of weapons in the vehicle. And now, as Evony and I got out, and the male officer peered in the back of the Jeep to see the chickens there, along with Evony’s weekender bag and my duffle, I was glad we were unarmed. Provoking a confrontation over a few guns would definitely be the wrong way to get started in Los Alamos.

  “Officer Ortega here will take the livestock to a safe place,” the female cop said.

  Wait, what? Dan Lowery had made it sound as if I’d be the one driving to wherever the goats would be sheltered. And if they thought I’d let this Officer Ortega take off with my dad’s Cherokee….

  Then I saw again the way the female cop’s right hand rested on the gun at her belt, and I realized getting in an argument about the Jeep probably wasn’t that great an idea.

  “Okay,” I replied. “But can I get my dog out of the back seat? She goes everywhere with me.”

  To my surprise, the hard set of the woman’s mouth softened slightly. “No problem. Go and get her.”

  I nodded and went over to the rear driver-side door of the Jeep, then opened it. Dutchie jumped right out, tail wagging. Since I was there anyway, I also retrieved Evony’s and my bags, and carried them back over to where she and the female officer were waiting.

  “Let me see inside those,” the cop said.

  Knowing any protests would be useless, I backed away a foot or so. The woman knelt and unzipped first my bag, then Evony’s, and poked around in each of them. Since there wasn’t anything more incriminating in there than toiletries and a few changes of clothes, she quickly closed the bags back up and got to her feet.

  While she was occupied, her companion had gotten behind the wheel of the Cherokee. It hurt to see him slowly drive it off, but I forced myself to stand there and let it go. Los Alamos wasn’t that big a town; I’d locate the Jeep again if they didn’t seem too eager to give it back to me when I needed it.

  “Your dog have a leash?” the female cop asked.

  I nodded and pulled Dutchie’s collar and leash from where I kept them coiled up in the outer zippered pocket of the backpack that held the rest of her supplies. These days, I really didn’t bother with either of them, and the dog gave me a curious tilt of the head as I snapped her collar on. But again, it wasn’t worth getting into an argument over.

  “Okay,” the officer said. “Come on, and I’ll drive you over to the justice center.”

  Evony’s eyebrows went up at an alarming angle. “Are we under arrest?”

  Not even a quirk at the corner of the woman’s mouth. She looked like she was probably in her early forties, with brown hair pulled into an intricate French braid and cool gray eyes. If she hadn’t been a cop before the Heat struck, she’d still been…something. Maybe ex-military.

  “No, you’re not under arrest. But it’s a hike up to the center, and the commander wants to talk to you ASAP. So let’s go.”

  Evony and I exchanged a glance, then silently gathered up our bags and obediently followed the cop over to her SUV. She opened up the back so we could dump our bags in, and indicated that we should get in the back seat. Dutchie got the place of honor, riding shotgun, and, to my surprise, I saw the officer reach over to scratch behind my dog’s ears before she slipped her key into the ignition. Dutchie, indiscriminate ho that she was, gave a big doggy smile.

  Brat, I thought, but my inner amusement faded as we began to move, heading into the heart of town. Here, too, the streets were all plowed, the sidewalks shoveled. And I saw what appeared to be normal signs of life — vehicles on the street, almost all of them trucks and SUVs equipped with four-wheel drive; cars actually parked in the lot of the local Smith’s grocery store; even a woman out at a park with a couple of kids, watching as they hurled snowballs at one another.

  Kids. These were the first children I’d seen since the Heat swept through the population. There had to have been some children among the Immune, but I hadn’t come across any in Albuquerque, and of course the djinn were preoccupied with their Chosen, so no children in Taos, either.

  Well, I guess that means the djinn don’t have any pedophiles among them, I thought, then wanted to shake my head at myself. But it was true. They obviously gravitated toward Immune who were young and good-looking, but that certainly wasn’t a crime.

  I could tell Evony was watching, too; her gaze was focused on the world outside the window, intent. However, her expression appeared to be very blank, for her. Not that I could claim to know her very well, not after only a few days in one another’s company, but in general she seemed to wear her moods on her face. Was this glimpse at an almost normal world upsetting her somehow? Or was she just merely trying to practice her poker face for our interview with the commander?

  That was an interview I could have lived without. Then again, I’d managed to face down Zahrias and lived to tell the tale, so I should be able to survive an encounter with a mere captain easily enough. Maybe. In the end, Zahrias had turned out to be — well, I wouldn’t go so far as to call him an ally, but he was certainly far less scary than I’d imagined him to be.

  We pulled off onto a side street, then into a parking lot that backed up to a large modern-looking building of brick and glass. Considering how rundown in appearance a lot of the municipal facilities in Albuquerque had been, I was a little surprised to see how nice this place was. It looked as if someone had had money to throw around in Los Alamos, small as it was.

  “Go ahead and bring your bags,” the officer instructed us. “You’ll be getting your housing assignments here as well.”

  “‘Housing assignments’?” Evony echoed. A flicker of worry passed over her face, and I could tell she was thinking we were going to get stuck in some kind of barracks apartment, something left over from the time when Los Alamos was Atomic City and they were building the Bomb here.

  “The commander didn’t want things to turn into a free-for-all with people squabbling over who would get which house, so now all newcomers have housing assignments.” The female cop opened her door and got out, and so Evony and I followed suit, with Dutchie leaping across the driver’s seat in her eagerness to follow us.

  Again the cop flashed one of those incongruous smiles. In general, she seemed pretty tough, but I could tell she must be a dog person.

  “But there’s plenty to go around,” she continued, handing me the trailing end of Dutchie’s leash once I’d reclaimed my duffle bag from the back seat. “At the worst you’ll get a townhome, but I think there are still a good number of regular houses available.”

  “That sounds fine,” I said. “Very generous, actually.”

  A nod, and then she told us, “This way.”

  We followed her inside the building, which was just as clean-edged and modern on the inside as it was on the outside. There were a good number of people here — an older woman sitting at the desk in front, and then more men and women in uniform. Just how many people did they have in their police force, or whatever it was? Way more than you’d think the current population of the town would require, from the looks of it.

  The female cop led us past the reception area and to an elevator. No worries about the power being on in Los Alamos, clearly. I wondered how they were doing it. Solar? Wind? Whatever its source, it seemed to be doing the job.

  Once we reached the second floor, we headed down a hallway to an office suite, where a woman, casually gorgeous with long dark-honey hair, sat at the receptionist’s desk. She smiled when she saw us, a contrast to our hard-faced escort. “Are these our newcomers?”

  “Yes. Captain Margolis said he wanted to see them right away?”

  “So he did. I’ll send them in
. Thanks, Nancy.”

  Nancy. The name didn’t seem to fit the female cop very well, but I wasn’t going to worry about it now. She gave us a sort of half-nod, then headed back toward the elevators, leaving us alone with the receptionist, or whoever she was.

  “Do you mind if I watch your dog while you talk to Captain Margolis?” the woman asked. She was very pretty, so pretty that I wondered why some djinn hadn’t snatched her up as his Chosen. But she did appear to be a few years older than I, and that could have been part of the reason. I hadn’t seen anyone in the group in Taos who looked older than twenty-five.

  “Sure,” I said, handing over the leash. “Her name is Dutchie. I don’t know how much work you’ll get done with her around, though — she’s kind of an attention whore.”

  “That’s okay.” She leaned down so she could scratch Dutchie behind the ears. “She’s a beautiful dog. I’m Julia, by the way — Julia Innes.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, and the words didn’t feel that far off from the truth. She seemed pleasant enough, especially in contrast to Nancy, the poker-faced cop.

  “And you’re Evony, right?” she asked, looking past me to Evony, who stood there with her hands wrapped around the handle of her weekender bag.

  “Yeah, that’s me.”

  Julia blinked, seeming a little put off by the brittle reply. But then she straightened and essayed another smile. “Welcome to Los Alamos, both of you. Go on in — it’s that door over there.”

  She pointed to a door on the other side of the reception area, which was decorated with high-quality photographs of the Los Alamos area, mountainscapes and images of pine forests and snowy hillsides. I really wished I could have loitered there for a few more minutes, chatting, just so I could have maybe gotten a bit more information out of her about Captain Margolis and what he really wanted from us.

  That clearly wasn’t going to happen, though, and so I gave Dutchie one last pat on the head and then went over to the door, Evony right behind me.

  You can do this, I told myself, wrapping my fingers around the handle and pulling the door open. Just sell it, and sell it good.

  The office was a large one, with a big desk of dark oak and matching bookcases along the walls, all filled with legal-looking books. I had a feeling the office had once belonged to the local assistant D.A. or someone along those lines, but obviously he didn’t need it anymore. A silvery laptop lay closed on the desk, and next to it was a stack of papers and a walkie-talkie. One window overlooked the street outside, and standing by that window was Captain Margolis.

  He turned as Evony and I entered, a smile on his features that was about a hundred times less believable than the one Julia Innes had worn. Now that I was facing him in a much less turbulent environment than the one when he and his men had abducted Jace, I was able to get a clearer look at him — big and broad-shouldered, although with a bit of a gut straining over his belt, dark close-cropped hair, features regular enough but stopping short of actually being attractive.

  Or maybe he would have been attractive to someone else, someone who didn’t hate him quite so much.

  “Ms. Monroe,” he said, then hesitated, his gaze barely moving past me to Evony before it returned to settle on me. “And Ms. Rodriguez. I have to say I was a little surprised to hear that you’d come to Los Alamos.”

  “Well,” I began. I’d resolved to do the talking, but now I realized that wasn’t entirely fair to Evony. But out of the corner of my eye, I could see her shake her head slightly, and I took that to mean she was just fine with me being the spokeswoman. “I know I told you that I didn’t have any intention of coming here, but — ”

  “But?” he interrupted. He stepped away from the window and went over to his desk but didn’t sit down behind it, instead electing to lean up against its front, arms crossed as he stared at me. His eyes were dark, and set too close together.

  “But I didn’t like being there alone. It was — well, it was a little scary, if you want to know the truth.” There, I’d made my false admission. So what if it made me sound like a helpless female? I wanted him to think I was a helpless female. Then he wouldn’t expect much from me.

  “Alone?” Again he glanced at Evony, and this time his mouth twisted slightly. “Even though you had Ms. Rodriguez there with you?”

  His tone held the faintest hint of a leer, as if he had visualized some hot girl-on-girl action between Evony and me, even though he had to know I didn’t exactly swing that way. Or maybe that was just his way of attempting to put me off-balance.

  “Only for a couple of days,” I said. “She was frightened to be left alone, too, and when I told her how you’d said it was okay for me to come here to Los Alamos if I ever changed my mind, well, she wanted to do that, too.”

  For a few seconds, he didn’t respond, but just stood there, watching us. Or rather, watching me. After that last dismissive glance at Evony, she might as well not have existed for him. Maybe in a way, she didn’t. She wasn’t interested in men, and therefore he had no interest in her. Whereas I…

  …well, I was fresh meat, in a manner of speaking.

  “Besides,” I went on, thinking my flimsy story needed a bit more ballast, “there was someone prowling around the house. The cameras caught movement, but I couldn’t see for sure who it was.”

  Margolis’ gaze sharpened on me. “Did they try to break in?”

  “No, but they pulled on the padlock on the gate. I had to lock it up that way after — well, after your men got in the first time. But for all I knew, whoever was prowling around planned to come back with a set of bolt cutters and let himself in. I couldn’t take that risk.”

  “Didn’t you have guns at the house?”

  “Yes, but I’m not a very good shot,” I lied, giving him what I hoped was a realistic shrug. Maybe I couldn’t exactly drill a hole in a dime at fifty yards, but in general, if I shot at something, I hit it. The commander didn’t need to know that, however.

  “And I’ve never shot a gun at all,” Evony put in. “Well, unless you count video games.”

  The look he sent in our direction after her contribution to the conversation was positively condescending, and I forced myself not to react. I wanted him to be condescending and macho and therefore, hopefully, blind and unaware.

  Then he nodded, pushing himself up from the desk so he could move toward us. He put a hand on my shoulder in a gesture he probably thought was intended to be reassuring, but instead just made me want to take a bath.

  “Well,” he said, “I can see why you girls would want to take refuge out here. Truth is, the world isn’t safe. We’ve had a lot of the Immune gather here, and they’re good people, but there are still others out in the wild who see the collapse of society as a good thing, who want to take advantage of anyone they come across. You wouldn’t have stood a chance, not in the long run.”

  “So,” I replied, attempting to look as big-eyed and concerned as I possibly could, “you’ll let us stay?”

  “Of course I will. It wouldn’t be Christian otherwise.” His fingers tightened on my shoulder, and I tried not to shudder.

  “Welcome to Los Alamos.”

  Chapter Eight

  After the interview, he handed us off to Julia, saying she’d take care of us, that he had a meeting at the labs he had to attend. What they were doing up at the laboratory facility, I had no idea, but I guessed it had something to do with those hideous little boxes, the ones that effectively destroyed the power of the djinn.

  “I’ve got a nice place over on Alamo Road,” Julia told us after firing up her computer and flicking through a few screens. The minute I’d showed back up, Dutchie trotted over to me, tail wagging, and I took her leash in one hand. I trusted her to stay put, but it felt more polite to keep her close by until we left the office. “Sara Garcia was staying there, but then she moved in with Jim Michelson. Three bedrooms, so there’s plenty of space for the two of you. That is…I assume you’ll want to stay together?”

 
“Yes,” I said firmly, even as Evony put in,

  “Yeah, we’re staying together, but we’re not together, if you know what I mean.”

  Julia didn’t bat an eye. “No, of course not. That is, I assumed, since Jessica was with….” At that point she did break off, looking a little flustered, and I filed her reaction away mentally to follow up later. It seemed clear enough that she knew something about Jace’s and my relationship, which made me wonder if he might be right in this very building somewhere. It was the justice center, after all, so possibly there were jail cells located here as well.

  I knew I couldn’t ask. No, I’d have to spend some time with these people, convince them that I was one of them, before I could even begin to inquire about Jace. Still, Julia Innes’ friendly expression gave me some hope. Maybe she would be sympathetic, once she knew the truth. In the meantime, I’d have to pretend I was oblivious to my djinn lover’s fate, that I’d seen the error of my ways.

  “Anyway,” Julia went on, recovering herself, “Lindsay cleaned it up before she moved out, so it should be ready to go. I’ll take you over there now.”

  Evony and I murmured our thanks, and Julia picked up the handset from the phone on her desk before pressing a few buttons. “Hannah? It’s Julia. I have to drive the new arrivals to the house on Alamo Road. The commander is at a meeting at the lab, so it should be pretty quiet up here. Just keep an eye out for me, could you? Thanks.”

  She hung up, then gave me an inquisitive look as I stood there, goggling at the phone.

  “What is it?”

  “That,” I said, pointing at the telephone, one of those multi-line deals you’d see at your doctor’s office or something. “Just…you using the phone. It’s like…it’s like it never happened.”

  As usual, I didn’t have to explain what I meant by “it.”

  “Oh.” A shrug, followed by, “Well, with the power on, it’s really not that big a deal. This is just an internal system. Obviously, the outside lines don’t work, because we don’t have anyone we could be calling, you know?”