The Shadow Guard

by Diane Whiteside

  “Isn’t it?” Curtis shoved it back into the file.

  “What was the last time you saw Melinda, with or without her fiancé?”

  “We last saw them together at church. He always tried to arrange his schedule so he could sing, although he didn’t always make choir practice.” A wistful smile teased Curtis’s mouth. “Some of us are talking about making up a barbershop quartet with him, just to make sure he gets out.”

  “Very generous of you.”

  “He doesn’t need any more shit dumped in his life,” Curtis said bluntly. “I last saw Melinda at the same time.”

  Saw? “When did you last hear from her?”

  “She e-mailed me from North Carolina the evening before the snowstorm and asked to see me right away. Any fool could tell OPM would shut down the government here with that much snow forecast. So I told her I’d see her the morning after the storm.”

  “Did she give a reason?” Jake’s gut came to attenton.

  “Nothing. Wouldn’t expect her to, either. We couldn’t discuss a classified building over our GSA e-mail system.”

  “Of course not. But were you expecting anything?”

  “Nothing. As far as I knew, she was almost ready to make her final recommendation.”

  “Did she copy anybody else on the message?”

  “No, but I forwarded it to the building’s sponsor, just to keep him informed.”

  “Gotcha.” Jake didn’t blink. Keeping one’s ass covered was, after all, the most basic of all survival tactics in this town. “Anything else?”

  “No. We’ve only just started working through her files. Not many of my staff have her clearances.”

  “Very spooky stuff, huh?”

  Curtis cocked an eyebrow at him and refused to answer.

  “Hammond.” Jake hunched his shoulder to hold his phone in place and grimaced at his voicemail’s in-box. Shit, he’d only stepped out of the office for an hour or so to visit GSA. Did messages propagate like fleas?

  “Murphy here.”

  Jake straightened up so fast his chair squeaked.

  “Good to hear from you,” he answered honestly. “How’s everything going over at the FBI?”

  “Great. Couldn’t be busier, in fact.” Her usually businesslike voice now sounded like chocolate poured over acid.

  “What can I do for you?” Were they back to the traditional arrangement, where the FBI kept all the fun and the locals handled the sweat?

  “Just wanted to let you know Fisher and I have had our assignments reprioritized.”

  “Oh yeah?” That didn’t sound good.

  “Yes, we’ll be working on the follow-up for that elevator incident at the courthouse.”

  She’d try to clean up after a magickal attack? She’d probably been trying to get close to the terrorist’s bodyguards for months, given how she’d ogled them at the courthouse garage.

  Jake might have laughed except he was too busy trying to figure out the consequences for his own investigation.

  “What about the rest of your portfolio?” he asked cautiously.

  “Your case is no longer a high priority,” she said bluntly. “I recommended and my supervisors agreed—that the murder doesn’t appear to link to Williams’s job.”

  Shit. On the other hand, life might go smoother without the Feds around.

  “We’ll send you a summary of our findings, of course, plus everything we’ve found to date.”

  “Any loose ends?”

  “For you to tie up?”

  Her tone reduced him to dirt, and he made a rude gesture at the phone.

  “No, that won’t be necessary. The only thing left is our accountants’ report. Fisher and my supervisor insisted we audit the paperwork for the last sites Williams worked on, from the sellers’ perspective.”

  “A formality.” Jake’s hopes for a quick resolution to the case began to dissolve.

  “Yeah, considering she was basically just a property developer for the government. My money’s on the boyfriend. Anybody that cute”—she almost sighed—“has a right to get jealous when his girlfriend is out of the house so much.”

  Jake held his phone out and looked at it in disgust.

  “Why do you think she worked that hard?” He kept his voice as dispassionate as when he taught unsteady rookies.

  “Man, have you seen her phone logs yet? Or her e-mail records? If my man looked like that, you wouldn’t get a single e-mail out of me from sundown to sunup.”

  Fisher coughed violently in the background but said nothing.

  “What about her early return? Or the meeting she requested with her boss?”

  “You heard about that? She probably wanted to go over her final report before she showed it to their high and mighty Pentagon contact.”

  Crap, that made far too much sense.

  “Plus, she was such a dutiful daughter that she worried about her parents making it through the snowstorm. Heck, she was probably hurrying home to check on them, even though she only lived two blocks away.”

  “Right.”

  “Now it’s your job to nail the murderer. I think the fiancé hired somebody but that’s just my opinion; I don’t want to see anybody that fine behind bars.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Good luck.” She’d gotten all the poison out of her voice now that she’d dumped the shit on him. “I’ll send you my files by messenger.”

  “Good luck with your new assignment.” If she found anything, he’d buy himself a new system to play Argos.

  Or he’d take a week off to attend ArgosCon with Astrid. She’d gone last year in full costume as Andromache, which was enough to make a man’s head spin and libido roar. He understood now why she was fully masked in her photo but her smile blazed brighter than the marquee lights.

  Another line on his phone lit up. He lifted his hand to answer it, then just let it ring until it rolled over to voice mail.

  What the hell did another message matter? He’d have to answer them all before he left tonight. Plus, he needed to at least skim through his e-mail’s in-box.

  He stood up and arched his back. Maybe a five-minute break and a cup of coffee would make him feel more like doing his job.

  Yeah, right. Melinda was less of a workaholic than he was. She’d cut back the moment she found the right person.

  Now her fiancé at least had memories to help him through the long, lonely nights ahead.

  If Jake didn’t make a few changes in his life, he wouldn’t even have a chance to see Astrid again.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Astrid cast another long look around the stable yard before she dared raise her hand. She’d driven here since no individually powered portals were permitted within these grounds, unless guided by death throes.

  The stable was built entirely from weathered gray fieldstone, set and stacked into the hillside in the manner of centuries past. A dark stone roof capped it, topped by a wrought-iron weathervane in the shape of a running horse that pointed steadily northwest.

  The yard itself was paved in smoothly washed gravel, set closely in concrete, like a finer version of old-fashioned cobblestones. Chest-high walls surrounded the yard, made from the same stone as the stable. A heavy wooden gate, so closely bound in iron as to seem indestructible, provided the only entrance.

  Beyond the walls, horses wandered through dappled sunshine across muddy fields. Neatly fastened rugs protected them from the mountain’s crisp breezes. Two white horses stared at Astrid curiously, as if considering every article of her gear.

  Only the irregular stacks of rails that Virginians called running rail fences kept them in the pasture.

  Astrid knew far better than to think they’d started the day out with four legs, or would finish it that way. No, the watchers were her fellow members of the Shadow Guard, keeping watch over their order’s most prized fortress.

  She raised her hand to the bell and rang it once.

  The silvery tones danced across the countryside and attested
to her goodwill. She’d come in peace, even though she hadn’t been summoned.

  As soon as the echoes started to fall away, she rang it again to ask for an audience. As a member of the Shadow Guard, she had the right to come at any time and make this request.

  Come on now, take me inside.

  All the horses studied her now, their brown eyes uncannily thoughtful.

  Only members in poor standing had to ask three times. Surely she couldn’t have pushed the boundaries that far.

  Before the bell’s song could fade into the trees, she yanked hard. It jumped under her hand and sounded a single long note, like a hawk diving from the sky.

  Space shattered around her into blackness, cut with white spears like a glacier’s cold heart. She dropped for a long instant through icy winds that tore at her robe and hair until finally she landed on a solid floor in utter darkness.

  She would not grovel. She should not have to grovel . . .

  Light blazed into being around her, everywhere and yet nowhere at the same time, like the artificial landscapes inside Argos. The room itself was smaller than her living room and edged with curtains that shimmered like waterfalls. Square tiles marched across the floor in rough luminescence.

  Prisms spiraled from the ceiling in one corner like the weapons they were, ready to be snatched up by guardsmen in need.

  A pillar of light, too brilliant to be directly watched by farashas, stood in the center. It was both impassive and unfriendly at the same time.

  Astrid’s throat tightened. She’d expected to first plead her case to a lower-level officer, not be thrown straight to the top.

  “Greetings, Captain.” She went down on one knee, grateful for her leather trousers and high boots.

  “Carlsen.” His voice was both infinitely close and infinitely far. He must be physically elsewhere to run that kind of magickal link to this meeting hall.

  Zing! The pillar hummed, then shrank into a man’s form.

  The Captain of the Shadow Guard surveyed Astrid like an eagle eyeing a peregrine falcon chick who’d dared to enter its territory. His height and raven black hair came from his Native American mother, while his skill with blades came from his English father. None of his men had ever asked who gave him the scar above his right eyebrow; they knew only that the enemy had died long before the American Revolution.

  “Rise, Carlsen.” The Captain gestured and she came to her feet.

  He studied her in a style meant to intimidate, but she met his eyes steadily. She’d known him, worked for him, for more than a century. Surely that had to count for something now, didn’t it?

  “Why are you here?” An iceberg would have been warmer.

  “I came to beg the Shadow Guard’s help.”

  “Why?”

  “I am investigating a murder—”

  “Does it threaten the health or well-being of this country?”

  “No, but—”

  “Why should the Guard become involved?”

  “I sense great magick at work.”

  “Do you have any proof?”

  “No.” Her stomach tightened unhappily.

  “Then do not trouble us until you can offer something with meat upon it!” The light trembled and Astrid locked her knees.

  “With respect, sir,” she began again, “I request you consider an exception in this case.”

  He whirled upon her, so close he could have held a knife to her throat. He always carried at least one under his cropped jacket.

  “Carlsen, your job is to keep an eye on the FBI, not go haring off on your own adventures. You are walking a very fine line here. If you miss it by a hair, you will fry.”

  A hot wind blew past her. She dared a glance and saw blazing fires below her where the floor used to be, except for a single thread under her boots.

  Her stomach lunged for her throat, but she beat it back down.

  “Exactly,” said her superior officer. “You are one of my best, so I’m allowing you a little slack.”

  It didn’t feel like that.

  She tilted her chin up stubbornly.

  “Remember I spoke up for you when you broke all the rules and married that British sahir.”

  Too many old memories, good and bad, all of them edged in pain, slammed into her heart and she flinched.

  Her captain’s voice became a little gentler.

  “You’ve chosen to play this like a lone wolf so you will finish out the game the same way. But if you singe even one letter of the Council’s laws, you’ll go down.”

  “Sir.” She snapped out her assent as she’d first been taught, during the desperate days before the First World War.

  Before she’d learned the true cost of failure.

  Carter huddled deeper against the shopping center wall and shuddered. He’d have to dry clean—or burn—his favorite jacket when this was over.

  But that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except making this phone call.

  The only pay phones left in Northern Virginia all seemed to be found on either public intersections or squalid malls like this one, where the newly arrived bought their smelly staples.

  He glared at a young female, who scuttled off with her three brats like startled rabbits. Much better.

  He allowed himself a deep breath before he checked his watch again. Five minutes since the last call.

  Next time, he could let the call go through. The first time, he’d let it ring three times before hanging up and waited one minute. Then he’d dialed again, rung five times, and waited.

  Thank God this place didn’t boast any cops on patrol. They might stop to ask him some questions.

  Six minutes.

  Who cared what a security camera thought? It wasn’t illegal to use a pay phone.

  Seven minutes. He pounced on the phone that he’d scrubbed so thoroughly.

  “Yes?” barked Mr. Big.

  “The FBI came to see me.” Another cold trickle of sweat gathered inside his collar.

  “So? You knew they would. I presume you said all the right things.”

  Soothed by Mr. Big’s implacable calm, Carter’s pulse began to steady, despite everything that had happened.

  “Of course I did.” He mopped his forehead.

  “Then I’m sure they went away happy.” Mr. Big’s voice would have sent stampeding buffalo to sleep.

  “Well, yes, except—”

  “What?” The final consonant cut like a rifle shot.

  “They’re sending accountants to audit my records.”

  The phone line’s silence sounded like the entrance to the abyss.

  “There’s nothing to worry about, really,” Carter stammered. His heartbeat could have done double duty working for a hummingbird. “They’ll need somebody to talk to, to understand it. But I’ll be gone before they can figure it out.”

  “Of course you will.” Mr. Big sounded soothing again.

  Relief, sweet as a fresh martini, ran through Carter’s veins.

  “I’ll call you from the Caymans,” he promised recklessly. “With my connections and your money, we can do an even bigger deal next time.”

  “Certainly we can. But think about yourself first.” The line went dead.

  The phone dropped out of Carter’s hand and swung back and forth like an old-fashioned hangman’s noose, buzzing all the while.

  He ignored it and leaned his head against the wall, his eyes shut.

  Now he had time, the most precious commodity of all. He just had to use it right.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Carlsen?” The concierge’s disembodied voice echoed through Astrid’s apartment. She preferred a man’s voice, so the building’s services manifested themselves that way to her.

  “Yes?” She warmed her hands around her stone teacup. She’d needed a long, hot bath to make her stop shaking after her visit to the Captain.

  “A gentleman to see you, ma’am. Sergeant Hammond.”

  Jake? What was he doing here? Was she ready to deal with his question
s tonight, on top of everything else? Not really—but did she have a choice?

  Would he go away quietly? Almost certainly not.

  “Send him up, please.”

  She shoved a hand through her hair and pulled a face. She didn’t have the energy to get it under control before she had to face him.

  Well, at least she could put her unruly locks into a ponytail. That’d give her some semblance of composure before she had to face him and whatever he wanted.

  Soft chimes rang, announcing a visitor at the door. She hoped Jake wouldn’t be here often enough to learn this building’s elevators all traveled at the same speed—as in, immediate arrival at any floor.

  “Good evening, Jake.” She managed a rather stiff smile for him. Her soft silk and wool sweater with the ruffle at the throat was feminine but not fancy, while her jeans were definitely casual.

  His eyes narrowed at her lack of warmth.

  “Won’t you come in?”

  “Glad to.” He kissed her on the cheek but didn’t try any other intimacies. She firmly told her heart that she was glad.

  He sauntered forward, arrogant and masculine in the polished room.

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  “No, I’ll take whatever you’re drinking.” He stopped by the long bank of windows. “Quite a view you’ve got here.”

  “Thank you.” She wouldn’t mention that the glass was warded against magick, or that her tiny balcony was a portal to anywhere on this continent.

  She poured water from the still steaming teakettle. “Would you like sugar or cream?”

  “Just straight up.”

  A flick of her fingers replenished the kettle before she served him his drink.

  “Thanks.” He brooded over the fragrant brew for a few minutes, his eyes hooded like those of a hawk on the hunt.

  She turned her cup around and pretended to admire the stone’s natural patterns. She had no pretty words left after the Captain had wrenched Gerard’s loss back into being.

  If Jake wanted bed play, she’d agree, but she had no energy to encourage it.

  “Astrid.”

  “Yes?” She looked up to meet his gaze and was instantly pinned. Golden sparks glittered deep within the brown.