Playing with Fire (Judah Black Novels Book 4)

by E. A. Copen

  Chapter Twelve

  Twenty minutes later, I pulled my borrowed Hellcat up in front of a road block a quarter mile down the road from the Four Crossings Concho building. Ahead, a helicopter circled, but this one wasn’t white like the local news chopper. It had a sleek, black design and missile launchers mounted to the side. Those were serious guns for a random crash at an abandoned gas station. The men at the checkpoint were carrying heavy hardware, too. Military grade M4s and tactical armor with no identifying logo. They definitely hadn’t been there when I saw the news broadcast a short while ago. How the hell had they gotten there so fast and, more importantly, who the hell were they?

  “Ed, whatever you do, don’t say a word.” I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. He sat still as stone, clearly on full alert.

  I rolled down my window as one of the men stepped past the temporary cement blocks that had been placed across the road, his rifle in his hand and pointed at the ground. He spoke before I could. “This road is closed. You can use 380 to connect to 381 if you want to go north.”

  “I’m with the government,” I said and raised my fingers from the steering wheel. He tensed. “I’m going to grab my badge from my hip.” His fingers shifted on the gun as I moved to unclip my badge from my belt. “See?” I said, showing it to him. “BSI. Special Agent Judah Black. The patient in that squad up there is a suspect in my investigation.”

  “Hold please.” He straightened, grabbed the radio attached at his shoulder and spoke into it in a muffled tone. I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying because he stepped back from the car, careful never to let me out of his sight.

  Whoever these guys were, they were highly trained. Military, maybe? The Blackhawk hovering above the scene seemed to suggest that, but there weren’t any military bases nearby for them to have mobilized from. Closest thing was the border patrol, and these guys were not border patrol.

  The goon with the gun stepped back up to my car. “Sorry, ma’am, I can’t let you through. You’re not authorized to be in this area. I’ll have to ask you to turn around. If you want to go north—”

  “Not authorized? What the hell do you mean, ‘not authorized’? I’m the lead detective on this case and I know the patient in the back of that squad is a practitioner. You tell me what trumps BSI jurisdiction.”

  “You need to turn around and vacate the area.”

  “No,” I snapped and grabbed my door handle. “I want to speak to whoever’s in charge.”

  His gun snapped up, pointed at me. “Do not exit the vehicle!”

  “Get your commanding officer down here right now!” I opened the door and put one foot on the ground.

  An unseen force jerked me out of my seat and pinned me to the ground. Before I could process that I’d been slammed face-first to the side of the road, there were four guns pointed at me, little red dots dancing all over my skin. Whatever had jerked me out of the car held me down, the weight increasing.

  “Okay,” I ground out. “Okay, my bad.”

  “Judah?” Several dull thumps followed as someone pushed their way through the crowd of paramilitary assholes pointing their guns at me.

  I moved my head ever so slightly so that I could look up. A tall, lanky figure stood over me, the wide brim of his hat blocking out the late afternoon sun. “Abe?”

  He made a gesture with his hand and all four guns backed off me. His shoe scuffed over the ground, removing a fresh ring of white paint that I hadn’t seen. A ward. Of course. That’s what had knocked me face-first to the ground. It would have triggered on contact. When Abe broke it, the pressure released and I wheezed out a breath. Abe reached down and helped pull me to my knees. “What are you doing here, Judah?”

  “Same thing as you, probably. Trying to figure out what the hell happened. Why was Reed’s squad heading away from the Eden hospital?” I looked up at him. “That is what you’re doing here, right Abe?”

  Abe stared blankly at me before turning to look at Ed. “There is nothing here that concerns your investigation.”

  “Nothing here?” My fingers clenched into fists as they rested on my thighs and I squared my jaw. “Where the hell is Gideon Reed, then?”

  “Not here.” Abe put his hands on his skinny waist. “And you cannot be here either. The fire, it is dangerous. There are petrol pumps and perhaps some residual flammable material in the underground tanks. The situation is unstable and could blow at any time. It is best if you are away from here.”

  “You don’t need unmarked military goons and a checkpoint to secure a potential gas leak and fire hazard.”

  Abe was silent. The only sound was the constant whirring thump of the chopper a quarter mile from us.

  “Gideon Reed attacked the drivers of the ambulance and escaped on foot,” Abe said after a long minute.

  “Impossible,” I said, rising to my feet.

  The four guns shifted, ready to fire on me if needed.

  Abe gestured for them to stand down and they obeyed. Was he in charge here? What the hell?

  “I put a bullet in his clavicle, Abe. I’m surprised he survived long enough to get this far. There’s no way he got up and overpowered two EMTs, not with the bullet in his shoulder.”

  “I suspect Gideon Reed may not be entirely human. He likely possesses some ability to heal rapidly. Nevertheless, what I tell you is what happened and he is no longer here. If you wish to capture him, you will turn around and go back the way you came.”

  A gust of wind swept over the ground where we stood, threatening to blow Abe’s hat from his head. He didn’t make a move to secure it, despite the way it tilted. The wind threw dust in my face, but I blinked it away to continue staring Abe down.

  Abe reached forward and put a hand on my shoulder. “Go home, Judah. I will take care of things here and get you up to speed tomorrow, da?” He patted me on the shoulder and strode off, gesturing for the military goons to follow.

  I turned and watched him slide behind the barrier and begin the trek to the crime scene. Meanwhile, goons one through four took up their positions at the barrier, giving me the stink eye. There were things I could do to get past them, magick things. I wasn’t great at offensive magick, but I might be able to gather enough strength to punch their lights out. If I hadn’t used everything I had earlier in the day to survive a fire, that is, and if there were only two of them. Four was a lot more than two, and I had a passenger in the car carrying what Creven had called answers.

  “Looks like those are the only answers I’m going to get,” I mumbled and sank back into the car. I shut the door behind me and sat behind the wheel a moment, my hands shaking too bad to drive.

  “You ever see the episode of X-Files where Scully and Mulder find out the FBI is up to some next level alien shit, hiding their DNA in an old coal mining complex in West Virginia?” I heard Ed’s seatbelt click into place. “You know this is starting to feel a lot like that, right?”

  “There’s no such things as aliens, Ed.” I put the car in reverse and backed her into the next lane to turn around.

  “So, what now? Reed’s in the wind. You’ve got no evidence, no way to find him, and no idea what you’re up against. We’re back where we started.”

  I nodded to the hard drive resting on his hip. “Not quite. Let’s plug that baby in and see what she’s got. Maybe we’ll finally get some answers.”

  All the way back to Paint Rock, the scene played over again and again in my head. I couldn’t make sense of it. Abe outranked me in the BSI hierarchy, but he’d never pulled rank. Mostly, he let me take the lead on the few cases we’d worked together. I knew he hadn’t been telling me everything but this… This hadn’t even registered as a possibility. Abe was supposed to be a liaison between BSI and high-profile vampires in Europe, not working with some off-the-books spec ops group to conceal car crashes. It felt like I was standing at the mouth of a gaping tunnel that led into the Wonderland of government conspiracy theories.

  I pulled up to the trailer where Ed, hi
s sister, Daphne, and Daphne’s girlfriend, Shauna, lived. It was a well-kept singlewide trailer with stepping stones and a gray, plastic mailbox.

  “This could take a while,” Ed said. “And it’s kind of late. Sal will be wondering where you are pretty soon.” He pointed to the clock on the dash, which read five twenty before turning in his seat to face me. “What if I find something on this hard drive I shouldn’t?”

  “You mean like proof of the existence of aliens?” I asked, my tone try.

  Ed’s face remained as stone. “I can’t help but see breadcrumbs. LeDuc worked for Marcus Kelley. Remember him? The guy who broke both my legs and ate Hunter’s finger?”

  I shuddered at the memory. Being trapped in LeDuc’s lair still gave me nightmares. “I remember.”

  “And I know there was an attempt on Marcus Kelley’s life and that this Seamus guy who’s supposed to come after you was somehow behind it. Mia got caught in the crosshairs. It’s how Sal found out about her. You said you thought someone was controlling Reed.” Ed took a deep breath. “What if that someone is connected to Creven and whatever we’re going to find on this hard drive? What if BSI wanted to silence them before this—” He raised the hard drive from his pocket and waved it. “—went public. Only now, silencing Reed isn’t enough. He recorded something or has some records here.” Ed cradled the hard drive in his hands and looked down at it. “What if knowing the answers gets me killed?”

  I put my hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “If you don’t want to do it, I won’t make you. I’m not going to lie. It’s a possibility that just having that hard drive is dangerous. That’s why you can’t let anyone know you have it, especially not Abe.”

  Ed’s jaw muscles flexed. “You know I have it.”

  It suddenly dawned on me the point he was trying to make. It wasn’t a question about the danger. Ed had already faced down experiences worse than most people could imagine and lived to tell about it. He wanted to know what I’d do. If he was right and the hard drive did contain something BSI wanted buried, I’d have to make a choice. Do my job and destroy the evidence, whatever it was, or let the truth get out. Freedom of information, or protect my job and my family.

  “And I wouldn’t be asking you to look at it if I was just going to turn it over or destroy it blindly, Ed. I need to know what’s there before we can start making decisions.” I withdrew my hand from his shoulder. “Either way, I’ll protect you from any fallout. I won’t let anything happen to you, Ed, even if it turns out there is something big on there. As far as we know, it could be a porn stash.”

  Ed’s eyes widened and he whispered, “Are priests allowed to do that?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Get out of the car, Ed. And call me when you know what we’re dealing with.”

  Ed complied and shut the door before bounding up the stairs to the trailer. I waited until I knew he was inside and in relative safety before pulling out of his driveway.

  I was halfway across the rez, on my way home, when the burner in my pocket began to ring. I fished it out and glanced down at the number on the screen. Someone had programmed that one in, since the caller ID showed the EPD building instead of a number. “Black,” I said in the form of an answer as I pressed the phone to my ear.

  “How do you like the ride?” Espinoza asked.

  I smiled to myself. “You’re a crazy person if you want to trade this for a beat-up old Firebird, Espinoza.”

  “It’s sentimental value, mostly. I hate that Hellcat. Too many bad memories. An ex bought it for me, you know? Anyway, you following this shit north of Paint Rock?”

  For a second, I thought about telling him I could neither confirm nor deny anything. After all, from Espinoza’s point of view, I was part of what was keeping him and his men out of the crime scene. I could just as easily dismiss the conversation and hide behind my status as a fed. Any information I gave him was really just a courtesy. I didn’t have to tell him anything.

  And on the off chance that he was somehow a BSI plant to keep an eye on me…

  I shook my head. Ed’s crazy conspiracy theory was already getting the best of me. “Yeah. They set up a road block and turned the scene into an Area Fifty One knockoff. I couldn’t get through and the answers I got were bullshit.”

  Espinoza sighed on the other end. “Well, I’ve got half my crew pulling a double to try and dig up something on Reed’s background before Paint Rock. All anyone would tell me is that Reed was up, on the run, and to be considered armed and dangerous. We’re working to try and find him. In the meantime, I figured you’d want to know Hector finally showed up.”

  I nearly wrecked the car doing a U-turn in the middle of the street. “Make sure he stays put until I can get there in…” I glanced down at the clock. “Might be able to do it in ten minutes.”

  Espinoza chuckled. “I think that car’s getting to your head. Don’t hurry. I’ll make sure to let him sweat.”

  “Just one more question, Espinoza. Have you called Abe?”

  There was a moment of hesitation. “Should I not?”

  “Abe’s got his hands full with something else. I’ll bring him up to speed the next time I see him. See you in ten.” I hung up before Espinoza could ask any more questions and pressed the gas to the floor.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Eden police station was even busier than it had been when I’d come in earlier. A small crowd of people gathered around the information desk, swarming the rookie cop. The phone in front of him rang incessantly. He’d pulled his tie loose and tipped his hat back. His cheeks were red, and it wasn’t just because it had warmed up inside.

  Espinoza stepped away from where he was chatting with another cop to greet me. “Eleven minutes, Black. I was starting to get worried.”

  “I hit a red light,” I explained. “How’s Hector?”

  “You’re not going to like it,” he said, gesturing forward. “Bastard lawyered up before he even got here. The lawyer arrived a few minutes ago.”

  Espinoza led me back downstairs to the fourth room on the right. It wasn’t the interrogation room. Rather, it was the viewing room beside it, a plain, narrow room lit only by the low light filtering in through the two-way mirror that allowed us to see next door where Hector waited.

  But Hector wasn’t alone. Sitting in the chair beside him was a man in a navy suit. White-haired and sporting glasses, the briefcase and tie screamed lawyer. Hector himself sat with his hands on the table, staring down his knuckles while the lawyer leaned in close to whisper to him.

  “Shit,” I grumbled, crossing my arms.

  Espinoza shrugged. “It’s nothing we can’t handle. I think it says a lot, though. Innocent people don’t bring lawyers to pre-arranged chats.”

  “Unless he is afraid his civil liberties might be violated.” I sighed and turned my head to see Espinoza giving me a look that said he wanted to hear more. “What are you looking at me for?” I snapped. “He’s not sitting in there because of his religion. He’s in there because he knows something and won’t spill it. Besides, he’s not even under arrest yet.”

  “Yet being the important part of that sentence. So, how do you want to play this?”

  We’d let Hector stew long enough. It was time to get some answers, but that lawyer was going to block any real progress with loopholes and doublespeak. “Espinoza, do me a favor. Go and get us some coffees while I get him warmed up.”

  “Coffee?” He crossed his arms.

  “Trust me. It’ll help with the lawyer.”

  His irritated frown turned into a knowing smirk. “I think I know where you’re going with this. Two cups, right?”

  “Two cups and a stack of napkins.”

  Espinoza made for the stairs while I opened the door to the interrogation room and stepped in.

  Whatever Hector and his lawyer had been discussing before I entered, the conversation halted abruptly. The lawyer shifted forward and adjusted his tie. “Ah, you must be the federal agent we’ve been waiting for. I’
m Adam Sloan. Of course, you know my client.” The lawyer extended a hand to me.

  I ignored his gesture and jerked the third and final chair out away from the table, my gaze fixed on Hector. “As a matter of fact, I don’t. Hector’s not your real name, is it?”

  “I assure you my client is compliant and registered with BSI.”

  “You’ll understand if I don’t take your word for it.” I leaned back in the chair and crossed my arms, still never letting my eyes leave Hector’s. “So, who are you? What’s your story?”

  The sleazy lawyer sat back down and turned to Hector. He gave a subtle nod.

  “Your records will indicate that my legal name is Timothy Dekker, spelled with two k’s and no c’s,” Hector answered. “However, that name no longer holds any significance for me. I have been reborn.”

  He said his name in a flat, unattached tone that told me he believed his statement to be true. That was important. Names have a lot of power in the supernatural world, but only when you’ve got the right one. To do anything with a name, you need to know what a person calls themselves, how they say it. It’s why BSI agents adopt new names. Doing so provided an extra layer of protection against some of the more common elements of magick.

  I wrote down his legal name anyway in a small notebook I’d carried in with me. “Why’d you change your name, Hector?”

  “Just as Simon became Peter when Christ named him a disciple, so too was I changed by the Lord.”

  “You think of yourself as some kind of thirteenth disciple, Hector?”

  Hector smiled and then broke out into laughter.

  “He doesn’t have to answer that,” the lawyer pointed out and then turned to Hector. “You don’t have to answer that.”

  “Technically, I don’t have to answer anything,” Hector added. “I’m here of my own free will to assist with your investigation. I’ve come as promised.”

  “Better late than never,” I grumbled.

  “And I apologize for the delay. However, there was an incident this morning with a trespassing werewolf that kept my hands tied for some time. We have decided not to press charges.”