Ella’s heard the rundown from the conspiracy theory crowd—her mother got bombarded with letters from the crackpots every now and then—but she never expected to find any kernels of truth buried in their nonsensical ramblings.
To think all this supernatural shit has been happening under my nose, she muses. And Mom was…
Ella stops dead in the middle of the hallway. “She knew, didn’t she?”
“I assume you’re referring to your mother?” Riker halts but doesn’t turn around. “Yes, she knew. The district attorney himself, all the assistant DAs, and many other employees of the DA’s office are, as we call it, in the know. They have to be in order to properly prepare for trials where the accused is a member of the supernatural community. Same goes for judges, high-ranking members of the Aurora Police Department, and those who serve a number of other important roles in the city.”
“My mom knew Sartell was a wizard?” Ella finds herself falling back into her broken memory of that awful day. Her mother’s terrified reaction to the phone call from Charlotte Braun. The way she raced from Aurora, without stopping to pack any suitcases or even to buy basic provisions. That behavior had seemed so bizarre to Ella, so far beyond Abigail Dean’s typical, controlled demeanor founded in sound logic and reasoning. But now, knowing that Mom was aware Sartell could easily kill her—and her daughter—that frantic dash for safety makes so much more sense. It was the only smart, logical thing she could do.
And yet, even her mother’s best efforts failed in the face of a man who wields magic.
This is why they exist, Ella realizes with a start, why DSI exists. Because criminals like Sartell exist, and there aren’t enough checks in place to stop them if they decide to go on a rampage. A rampage against normal, powerless people who stand no chance of survival.
Ella stares at the floor, hands clenched in tight fists, until the surge of fury inside her fades to an echo. “You better catch him,” she warns. “You better do your job and fucking catch him.”
“Or what?” Riker replies, with a note of genuine curiosity. “You’ll do it for us?”
Ella doesn’t flinch. “Maybe I will.”
“All right, kid.” He snorts. “If that’s how you want to play it.” He motions to a set of double doors at the end of the hall. The faded paint above the doorframe proclaims the room an infirmary. “But before you go nuclear on Sartell, you might want to get those patched up.”
He’s referring, of course, to her assortment of fresh scrapes and bruises.
A blush creeps up her neck, but she doesn’t back down. “And you better get that nose patched up before it heals crooked.”
Riker purses his lips. “Can we just get to the goddamn infirmary, please?”
“Whatever you say, Nicky.” Ella gestures for him to lead the way.
Instead, he swats her upside the head and says, “Don’t ever call me that again.”
She sticks her tongue out. “You don’t like cute nicknames?”
“No.”
Chapter Five
After a stern old doctor yanks Riker’s nose back into place and bandages all of Ella’s unsightly scrapes, they head up to the second floor via the same dying elevator. Riker escorts her to a big office lined with bookshelves and genuine wooden furniture that must’ve cost a fortune when it was purchased twenty years ago but now sits gathering dust and scuff marks that’ll never buff out. There are several chairs scattered around the room, and Riker drags a couple over to a window and pulls up the shade so they can lounge in the sunshine until the rest of his team returns from their “emergency call.”
They wait in awkward silence for almost half an hour.
Ella, still brooding over Sartell and processing all this supernatural underworld junk, can’t think of how to hold a conversation with the good-looking man of thirty-ish years sitting three feet away from her. And Riker, clearly, has no clue what to say to a sixteen-year-old girl now that he’s exhausted his explanation of DSI and Sartell’s case. So Ella rocks back and forth in the chair, twiddling her thumbs, while Riker stares at a particularly dark stain on the ragged carpet that could just as easily be old blood as it could black coffee.
Finally, voices pipe up from the direction of the elevator, and less than a minute later, someone opens the office door. The black woman strolls in first, carrying a crumpled McDonald’s bag and sucking the last drops out of a medium soda. Behind her comes the mopey-looking Asian man. And at the rear of the group, yet again, is the redhead, a peppy tone to her words as she describes some schoolyard fight involving her and four gangly boys she beat the tar out of. The older man with the salt-and-pepper hair is nowhere to be found.
The trio pause near the doorway when they spy Ella and Riker seated in front of the window.
The redhead speaks first. “I see you caught your light-footed thief, eh, Nick? A teenage mastermind, is she? Give you a run for your money?”
Riker rolls his eyes. “That’d be a no, Siobhan, to the last two questions.”
Ella makes a humming sound. “What do you mean, no? You lost me.”
“And then I found you,” he replies. “Your choice of hiding places left something to be desired.”
“Well, I wasn’t trying to hide forever. Just long enough to read the file. Which I did.”
“So she did one-up you, then?” Siobhan laughs. “Oh, captain’s going to have your ass for that one. He hates writing non-disclosure agreements.”
“Non-disclosure?” Ella asks.
Riker says, “If we reveal to you the reality of the supernatural underworld, you are required to sign an NDA stating that we can prosecute you if you attempt to go public with the information. Not that you will. Right, Miss Dean?”
Ella sucks in a deep breath. She knew they’d have some kind of administrative stuff in place in order to keep their heads down, but it still rubs her the wrong way to have to sign some shady government paperwork that’ll force her to sew her mouth shut. Even so, Ella guesses being embroiled in a conspiracy is better than spending the rest of her life not knowing what really happened to her mother. She lets out the breath. “I guess not.”
“Dean?” asks the black woman, who Ella supposes is Chantel, the senior agent who visited her when she was out of it in the hospital. “Not Ella Dean.”
“The very same,” Riker says. “Little Miss Sherlock here was on a mission to find out what happened to Abigail. Turns out she eventually did remember Sartell’s attack on the car, and none of her doctors bothered to inform us.”
“They tried to convince me I remembered incorrectly,” Ella sneers. “Because it’s so easy to mistake a hydroplaning accident for a man throwing a fireball at you.”
Chantel drops her McDonald’s trash into a bin next to the big desk in the middle of the room. “Figures. Half the doctors at St. Bart’s won’t give us the time of day. Should have known they’d give us the shaft on the Dean case the second they had a chance.”
“Should we lodge a complaint?” asks the Asian man, settling in a chair in the far corner. He plucks a baseball from a jar of random knickknacks on a shelf above his head and starts tossing it between his hands. “Perhaps with the mayor? He’s been batting for us since Sartell’s escape. Maybe a kick in the pants from an official office will whip the St. Bart’s crew into compliance.”
“Keep dreaming, Nakamura.” Siobhan closes the office door and ambles over to the desk. “The day a quarter of the people in this city give a crap about us is the day a black hole opens up next to the moon and swallows the Earth, vampires and all.”
“Your gross misunderstanding of black holes unnerves me, O’Reilly,” Nakamura retorts.
Chantel claps her hands to get everyone’s attention, then turns to Ella and Riker. “Okay, so I understand Miss Ella Dean needs to sign an NDA, since she read our case file without permission and obtained a few choice pieces of information that make her a liability.” She rests her hands on her hips. “But why did you bring her back to the office, Nick? We could ha
ve just mailed the documents to her. Unless you think she’s a flight risk?”
Riker side-eyes Ella. “No, I brought her along because she wants to be added to the witness list for Sartell’s trial.”
Chantel’s mouth opens in surprise, and hangs there until she can find the right words. “Oh, honey, no,” she says to Ella. “You don’t have to do that. We’ve got plenty of evidence to put Sartell away for life, and at least ten adult witnesses to seal the deal. There’s no need for a girl like you to risk herself in the courtroom.”
“It’s not about what’s necessary,” Ella says. “It’s about what I want. I want to be in the courtroom with him.”
Siobhan asks, “Why?”
“Because I want to look the fucker in the eye, that’s why.” Ella beats her fist against the windowpane. “He doesn’t know me. He put me in the hospital for months, and he doesn’t even know me. And he didn’t know my mom either, not really. He knew her as a prosecutor, not a person. I want him to see a person, a person he hurt, a person whose mother he killed, giving testimony on that stand. I want him to look me in the eye and see what he really did, what he really is: a pathetic excuse for a human being who deserves to rot in jail.”
Nakamura drops the baseball.
It rolls across the floor and comes to rest at Chantel’s feet.
Chantel picks it up and grips it tightly. “Honey, look. I know how you feel. I lost my father to a werewolf when I was about your age. But what you’re asking to do is a dangerous thing, and DSI doesn’t like to risk anyone, especially children, when we have other options.” She raises her hand to preempt Ella’s objection. “But, since I can see how passionate you are about your desire to testify against Sartell, how about we come to a compromise? I’ll add you to the end of the witness list. If one of our primary witnesses drops out, or if Sartell’s lawyer somehow damages our case, then we’ll call you to the stand. But if not, then you stay out of the courtroom.”
Ella’s gut reaction is to reject the idea. But she manages to stop herself before she throws her hand. Even though Chantel is offering her a breadcrumb instead of the whole slice, just being on the list of witnesses might give Ella an in to the courtroom. Any number of things could prevent another witness from showing up to testify, and then Ella would have a chance to replace them on the stand. And, really, if Ella can get ahold of the witness list—by, for example, breaking into the DA’s office like she was planning to do from the get-go—she might be able to convince a witness to drop out of the trial and make room for Ella to burn Sartell the way he…
Ella yanks herself out of her thoughts before it gets obvious that she’s plotting something. She wrings her hands in her lap, pretending to be miffed about Chantel’s compromise, and files away her quickly growing scheme in the back of her head where no one can see it. She’ll flesh it out more later, when she’s alone and can make all the haughty, maniacal expressions she wants. For now, she pastes on a pout and tips her chin up at Chantel. “I guess that’s okay. But I really wanted a better chance of seeing him.”
Chantel gives her a Best I can do, hon shrug. “We don’t always get what we want, you know? Sometimes, you have to take what’s available.”
“I’m aware of that.” But some of your times don’t match up with mine. “Doesn’t make me any happier.”
“I know it doesn’t.” Chantel turns her attention to Riker. “Say, what happened to the case file she snatched?”
Riker pulls out the heavily damaged folder from a big pocket in his coat, holding it up for all to see. “She had a field day with it.”
Chantel frowns at Ella. “That’s government property.”
“Papers are still legible,” Ella counters.
Siobhan snorts. “Well, she’s got us there. As long as the file’s intact enough to read, we can’t claim she destroyed it.”
Nakamura, still sitting in his isolated corner, clears his throat. “Hey, Nick, I can’t help but notice your nose is swollen. There a story we should hear?”
“No.” Riker glares at him. “There is no story.”
“Oh, no,” Chantel says, lightening up a bit. “Did our little man take a tumble again?”
“First off”—Riker gets up and stomps across the room, slamming the file onto his captain’s desk—“I’m not your little man. If anyone’s a child on this team, it’s Nakamura over there, who eked out an undergrad degree by the skin of his teeth less than three years ago.”
“Hey!” Nakamura says. “I had a three-point-oh average.”
Riker pretends not to hear him. “And two, falling off the roof of that convenience store was a one-time affair that happened because somebody decided to patch the holes in their gutter with plastic wrap painted to look like aluminum. You don’t get to call me clumsy because of someone else’s half-assed repair job.” He stands his ground before Chantel, towering over her by half a foot, challenging her to contradict him.
Chantel is not even remotely intimidated. In fact, her expression is almost amused. She’s older and wiser and sees Riker’s rebuff for what it is. Bluster, Ella’s mother would have called it. The kind of speech defendants use on the stand when trying to paint themselves as being better than they are. All bluster and no teeth. That’s the way most criminals deal the cards, Ella, and it makes it easy to call their bluffs.
Chantel calls Riker’s bluff by reaching up and pinching his cheek, no doubt disturbing his broken nose in the process. “Aw,” she teases, “you’re so cute when you’re angry.”
Riker’s pride shrivels up like a salted snail, and he bats her hand away. “I’m not cute.”
“Well, not anymore,” Ella throws in. “You were way cuter before I broke your nose.”
A deathly silence blankets the room.
Then Siobhan bursts out laughing. “No way, Nick. You got bested by a kid?”
“She didn’t best me,” he responds, indignant. “I caught her, didn’t I?”
“Yeah.” Ella pointedly looks away from him. “After I read the entire case file.”
Chantel gives Ella a mildly impressed look. “Not bad, Miss Dean. Not bad at all. Though it would have been a more effective blow to his ego if you’d knocked out a couple of his teeth.”
“I don’t think I can punch that hard,” Ella says.
“Take some hand-to-hand lessens.” Siobhan strips off her coat to reveal well-muscled biceps, highlighted by a tight, short-sleeved shirt. “You’ll toughen up in no time, and then you can knock all the blockheads to the curb.”
“Guys,” Riker groans, “I’m standing right here!”
“We know,” Chantel and Siobhan say in unison.
Nakamura adds, “That’s why it’s funny.”
Riker looks ready to melt into the ugly carpet. “Jesus Christ,” he murmurs. “Why did I sign up for this?”
Siobhan playfully punches his arm. “Because you love us, no matter how much of a—”
The office door slams open.
All conversation cuts out as the stony-faced captain—Mortimer, Ella recalls—marches into the room and kicks the door shut, his gaze affixed to a typed report pinched between his fingers. He walks around Siobhan like she’s been in his way in that exact spot a thousand times before and sinks into his desk chair without looking up from the text. Setting the report on his desktop, he slides a small notepad over from its place near his inbox tray, then gropes around for a pen in his coffee mug of assorted writing instruments. He finds a slim ballpoint pen, clicks the top, and goes to work jotting down notes in a cursive scrawl on a fresh page of the pad.
No one says anything while they wait for him to finish, and Ella feels distinctly out of place. Like she’s witnessing a team ritual banned to outsiders that someone forgot to kick her out of before the opening act. She instinctively brings her knees to her chin to make herself smaller and less noticeable, a vague, uncomfortable fear of being singled out bubbling in her gut.
When Mortimer has filled out an entire page in his notepad, he sets the pen to
the side, reviews his notes, and nods in approval. Finally, he looks up from the desk and begins, “We received some additional information on that false emergency call. The neighborhood canvass turned up a witness, Wanda Scalzi, who claims that a tall white man in a gray hooded sweatshirt made the call from a payphone near Stein’s Market. We have her with a sketch artist now, but it looks like…” He trails off as his attention lands on Ella. “Who are you?”
Chantel answers, “That’s Ella Dean, Captain. She’s the one who took the file from the van.” She goes on to explain the whole story, including Ella’s demand to be added to the witness list.
Ella scrutinizes Mortimer closely, ready to defend herself in case the man tries to shoot down her request. But to her surprise, he seems entirely unconcerned that a sixteen-year-old wants to throw herself to the proverbial wolves.
Mortimer scans her curled-up form in a way she can only describe as contemptuous, and says, “As you like, Miss Dean. But if that affair is settled, and you have no more gripes, I would prefer that you head home now. We’ve stumbled into what’s shaping up to be a particularly tricky problem, and I need my team focused in order to resolve it.” The captain snaps his fingers at Riker. “Nick, if you will, please escort Miss Dean back to the lobby and have her sign the entry/exit log with her current address.”
Riker perks up. “You don’t want to do the NDA now, sir?”
“No, no.” Mortimer waves him off. “I’ll mail it when I have a chance.” He shoots Ella a quick, critical scowl. “Assuming, of course, that Miss Dean can keep her mouth shut in the meantime.”
Ella rearranges her mental How much I like the members of this team list, sticking Mortimer dead last. She says through her teeth, “Of course.”
“Good.” Mortimer points at the door. “Then we’ll be in contact when we have a break in our current case, and if you have any more questions or concerns, we’ll address them at that time.” He grabs the pen again and raps it against his filled-out note paper. “Is that all?”
Dream Snatcher Page 5
