Skin Deep lb-1

by Mark Del Franco

  “You remember nothing after summoning help for Sanchez?” he asked.

  Laura pushed herself higher on the bed. “It went bad from the get-go, Terryn. Either the intelligence was wrong or there was a tip-off.”

  He pulled the damaged USB drive from the pocket of his tunic and handed it to her. “Does anyone else know about this?”

  She pursed her lips. “I don’t think I mentioned it on the comm. I saw it, thought it was odd, and picked it up. It had to have come from the Inverni. I got a good hit on a bag he was carrying. I was alone when I found it, that I’m sure of.”

  Terryn nodded. “Okay, write it up, then I’ll decide what to tell upstairs.”

  Laura didn’t respond. Working as part of InterSec was an exercise in cooperation and misdirection. She’d lost track of the number of law-enforcement agencies involved, and none trusted any of the others. She was proof of that. She’d gone undercover in most of the agencies at some point.

  She threw off the bedsheet and swung her feet around to the floor. “Where’s my gear?”

  Terryn arched an eyebrow. “I imagine Cress would know. Where do you think you’re going?”

  She held the back of her hospital gown closed more for courtesy than any sense of embarrassment. “I have to go back. There’s something I have to check before it’s too late.”

  Terryn crossed his arms. “And if I don’t allow it?”

  Laura looked him in the eye. “I’ll tell everyone you touched my ass.”

  She couldn’t help the twitch of a smile, and neither could he. He bowed his head. “I’ll tell Cress you have something to do. I want you back here as soon as possible, and if you feel at all ill, I want you to return immediately. That’s an order.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  She paced along the bed, her lack of memory gnawing at her. Her entire life was based on remembering-her name, her history, her work. One misstep could not only expose the Guild’s or InterSec’s unauthorized involvement in cases, it could get her killed. She didn’t mind if the Guild or InterSec was embarrassed. Like all institutional organisms, they survived beyond the moment. She wouldn’t.

  Cress returned. Not bothering to hide a sour expression, she held Laura’s SWAT-team uniform well away from herself. “I hate the smell of gunshot residue.”

  “Me, too,” she said, lying a little. She liked the smell in a way she couldn’t describe. It wasn’t enjoyment, per se, but she did experience an element of pleasure in the thin rime of residue permeating her hair and clothing after a session at the range. It was an emotion that had to do with a sense of accomplishment. Washing it off had its own pleasure, too, like shedding a layer of skin associated with work.

  Cress pulled the curtain around the bed as Laura removed her hospital gown. “Can you be less modest?”

  Laura chuckled as she wrestled into her underwear and pulled the pants on. As a healer, Cress dealt with naked bodies on a regular basis in the context of her work. But because of the fear they engendered, leanansidhe were vigilant about issues of exposure. I would be, too, Laura thought, if being discovered as a leanansidhe meant being chased by an angry mob. As a druid, Laura spent too much time naked with her colleagues, both male and female, to think much about modesty. Something about baring her skin to the light of the moon, in a forest glade with her fellows, seemed natural and right. She didn’t think about nudity as exposure, but as a means to an end-in so many ways.

  Cress kept her face turned away. “I had to check your vest in after I inventoried it. You can pick it up downstairs,” she said.

  Laura slipped on her shirt. “Don’t need it. Just have an errand to run.”

  With a glance to confirm that Laura was clothed, Cress faced her again. “An errand in your soiled uniform?”

  Laura ignored the comment. “Do you have my stone?”

  Cress held out the thick gold necklace. The green stone-an emerald Laura had had for years-glittered in the fluorescent light. Laura kissed the gemstone to honor its power and slipped the chain over her head. Residual essence draped a glamour over her. She charged the stone with an extra burst of body essence. A brief static tickled her entire body as the full Janice Crawford glamour settled over her.

  Laura hadn’t wanted the SWAT-team persona to be too attractive, so she had lengthened the nose just short of distraction and fleshed out the appearance of her body frame by an extra twenty pounds. She looked trim but solid. Janice’s face was similar to her own, although she had dark red hair and light brown eyes instead of Laura’s blond hair and wider-set green eyes. She pulled her hair up in a clip. “How’s it look?”

  Cress nodded. “Perfect, as usual. Are you going to tell me what you’re doing?”

  “No.” Laura trusted Cress but made it a habit of treating everyone on a need-to-know basis. Cress handed her a small baggie. Laura emptied the contents into her pockets-cash, the Crawford badge and ID, car keys, and a cell phone.

  She hugged Cress briefly. She did trust her. And cared for her. Cress understood trust like no one else. She had chosen Terryn, and he had returned her affection. When a leanansidhe committed to a relationship, she committed more than her heart. She’d walk in front of a bus if he told her it was safe. If a lover left, the leanansidhe could spend years in a madness of disbelief.

  “No stunts, please. I want the rest of the night off,” Cress said, as they left the room.

  Laura followed her out of the med clinic as she tucked in her T-shirt. “Will do.”

  In the elevator lobby outside the InterSec offices, they went their separate ways. Down in the Guildhouse garage, Laura glanced wistfully at her Mercedes SL and jumped into Janice Crawford’s Honda SUV. She exited the underground garage and cut across the National Mall to pick up the highway. Out on the bridge, the lights across the river came into view. Everything looks attractive at night in D.C., she thought. Even Anacostia.

  She parked the SUV a block from the apartment complex. Car and pedestrian access had been restricted, which didn’t endear the police to the troubled neighborhood. Laura looped her SWAT-team badge around her neck. At the nearest barricade, a police officer asked for photo ID, too, but she didn’t hassle him for hassling her.

  Crime-scene vehicles littered the street. Two ambulance vans sat on the worn lawn of the building where the drug lab had operated. Medical examiners surprised Laura as they brought out a body on a gurney. Twelve hours later, and they were still finding bodies? She lifted her badge for the officer at the door. People walked the hallway inside, the same hallway the entry unit had stormed. It looked nothing like she remembered. Of course, now it wasn’t dark and smoke-filled. Bullet holes scarred the walls, white chalk circles around them. She avoided talking to anyone but moved deeper into the building.

  She paused to examine the long hall. Crime-scene markers scattered across the floor like restaurant reservation tents. She passed the makeshift sweatshop, making her way around spent shell casings. On the left, her eyes trailed over the holes Sanchez had blown through the wall. Blood splat tered the wall on her right. A long smear marked where someone had slid to the floor. She felt grim satisfaction that Sanchez had hit his final targets.

  The adjoining walls had been hacked through a string of apartments to create one long hallway. The farther she went, the more bullet holes riddled the walls, more than elsewhere in the building. Another archway revealed a large room, not as big as the sweatshop, but still a sizable workspace. A lone investigator squatted a few feet from the arch, sweeping his flashlight beam across the floor. He shifted his gaze to her, then back to the floor. “This room isn’t processed.”

  She nodded. “Just looking.”

  The blackened front wall showed evidence of the explosion she had heard during the raid. Three tall, evenly spaced windows were blown out. Lab equipment trailed in disarray across the floor. Broken glass containers the vague shape of beakers and vials showed the soot stains of burning, whether from chemical processing or the explosion, Laura couldn’t tell. Water
from putting out the resulting fire saturated everything.

  In the next room, a jumble of tables was shoved against a wall. Computers and cabling tangled within the pile and onto the floor. She paused. The room had a distinct lack of shell casings and bullet holes. It was the geographic center of the building, yet she saw no evidence of the fighting.

  Opening her essence-sensing ability, she picked up several immediate hits, which was not unexpected near a door. What was unexpected was that the door had been warded, spell-blocked in some way. She pushed her awareness against it, studying the mode of warding. Door wards took many forms-sound or sight barriers, security shields that allowed certain people in or kept specific people out. They could be hardened to a substantial degree. Someone with enough ability could even create a barrier in the small area of the door that would slow a bullet almost to a stop. Not a brownie. They weren’t strong enough. An Inverni fairy would be, though.

  Laura sensed nothing dangerous and stepped through, the invisible ward sliding over her with the sensation of flowing water. At minimum, then, the ward was not an access barrier, but likely a sound deterrent. Once she was fully past the ward, essence flashed across her vision. The room had been a hub of activity, more so than the drug lab. Multiple species signatures in green, yellow, and pale white flickered everywhere, losing integrity without their original sources present to reinforce them. The dominant hits were human, but she also sensed an Inverni fairy, at least two Teutonic elves, and several brownies and dwarves. Crime made strange bedfellows, but the collection of so many adversarial groups together was unusual.

  Laura stayed on clear floor space, keen on not stepping on any potential evidence. If they were beginning to process the drug lab, they had not even initiated a walk-through in this room. The scene tech in the lab would be furious if he knew she had entered.

  The computer equipment looked intentionally destroyed. A SWAT unit would not have smashed monitors, yanked cables, or mangled circuit boards. The outside wall had three windows like the lab. The middle one was open. She surmised it made an easy escape route for at least some of the people who had been there.

  An essence signature moved behind her, at the edge of her range. Alarmed, Laura whirled to face the empty room, waiting several moments for the signature to return. Outside the window, the only people in sight were law-enforcement agents. Across the way stood another apartment building, its first-floor windows and entrance covered in graffiti-sprayed plywood.

  A flash of light above caught her eye. Broken windows showed empty black squares. Her ability didn’t extend far enough for her to be able to sense if anyone was there. The flash didn’t return, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her. The mysterious essence reappeared behind her, and she spun. By the time she reached the hallway, it had vanished altogether.

  Alert from the odd occurrence, she retraced her steps to the sweatshop. Crime-scene investigators were spread throughout the room, videotaping. Standard investigative op would be to process the scene from the front of the building to the back, so Laura knew they hadn’t begun to process the room for physical evidence either.

  She gave the overturned desk a wide berth. She didn’t need to see Sanchez’s blood. At the far end of the room, a videographer recorded the jumble of crates that had fallen during her fight with the Inverni fairy. Once he started taping, he was required to keep the tape rolling. By habit from working undercover, she avoided being photographed as much as possible, so she stayed out of his range.

  After he moved away, she approached the tumbled pile of crates and opened her essence-sensing ability. Around her, the body signature of the others in the room ghosted into her range. All weak, indicating human, which made it easier for her to dismiss them and focus on the space in front of her. She found her own essence from earlier, a concentration in and around the broken crates where she had been trapped, a thinner layer trailing up the aisle from her two runs during the shoot-out.

  She circled the crates and found what she had returned for, a thick residue of Inverni essence. Anger and fear or stress had amplified his essence, enough for her to register not only his species, which Laura already knew, but also his unique body signature. The sensation filled her mind and settled into her preternatural memory. She wouldn’t forget it.

  As she finished, she sensed Aaron Foyle behind her. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Just came to look.”

  Laura felt anger coming off him in waves. “What happened?” he asked.

  She resisted the urge to sigh. Being part of law enforcement meant constant repetition of information. Before the next twenty-four hours had passed, she’d have to have written two reports for Terryn-one a redacted official one, one for his eyes only-another report for Foyle, and probably others. She debated how much she should say without being debriefed by Terryn. “I’m not sure yet. I’ve got some memory loss from a concussion. The medics said coming back might jog something.”

  He glanced up the aisle, noting, she assumed, who was in earshot. “Well?”

  She shrugged. “Not much. Right now, all I can recall is firing at the objective and calling for help.”

  Foyle shook his head. “I’ve got a dead officer, Crawford. I want to know what happened to Sanchez, and I want to know now.”

  She kept her face and voice neutral. “I told you I have memory loss. They said it will come back soon.”

  Foyle tilted his head back to look at the skylight. “How did a brownie get up there?”

  Laura followed his gaze. “It wasn’t a brownie. It was a fairy.”

  He looked at her sharply. “What do you mean?”

  Laura kept her eyes on the shattered skylight. “The intelligence was wrong. It was an Inverni glamoured as a brownie.”

  He folded his arms across his chest, his voice sharp when he spoke. “No one else said anything about a fairy.”

  “I’m not sure I understand your meaning… sir,” she said.

  Foyle stepped closer. “Listen, Crawford. An officer is dead, and his killer escaped with you as the only witness.”

  Despite her anger, Laura remained cool. “What exactly are you implying?”

  He set his jaw. “You aren’t a team regular, and the only perpetrator who seems to have escaped was fey.”

  She felt a slow burn at the phrase “team regular.” It was a loaded term usually used to imply someone fey was not regular, not human. She pitched her voice low and controlled. “I did you a favor, Foyle, and almost got killed for it. You have a lot of nerve race-baiting me.”

  He let his own anger edge into his voice. “Who do you think you’re talking to, Officer?”

  Laura stepped around him. “I left the med unit against doctor’s advice. You need something from me, you call Terryn macCullen.”

  She had stalked all the way to the door when Foyle called out, “Crawford, I want a report in the morning. You can amend as you recall.”

  Laura stopped, ready to snap at him, when her eye caught the overturned desk. Whoever had shot her would have stood where she was. Sanchez would not have been visible, but she would have been. She shivered as she examined the essence on the threshold.

  “Crawford?” His voice startled her.

  “Will do, sir.”

  With an effort of will, she did not look over her shoulder as she left the building. Once past the barricade, she circled around the back of her SUV and let the moment sink in. Cursing under her breath, she yanked the door open and got in the car. Gripping the steering wheel, she forced her breathing to slow. A flash of uncharacteristic panic went through her. She locked the doors. With a forceful exhale, she started the SUV.

  Driving along the winding parkway that led back to downtown, Laura allowed herself to acknowledge what she was thinking. Standing in the doorway, standing on the spot from where someone had shot at her, she had not sensed essence from unknown drug dealers or whatever the hell they were. She had registered and recognized three distinct signatu
res. She had no way to tell if all three people had been together when she was shot or if one had stood alone before the other two arrived.

  She pulled out her cell phone. Terryn picked up on the first ring. “MacCullen.”

  “We’ve got a problem. I’m coming back in right now,” she said.

  He didn’t speak right away. “You don’t sound like yourself. What’s wrong?”

  Laura took a deep breath. “I think our side took out Sanchez. I think they tried to kill me, too.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “DO YOU WANT backup?” Terryn asked.

  Laura’s eyes shifted to the rearview mirror. As she neared the Anacostia Bridge, more cars appeared on the parkway. “No. Let’s keep this line open.”

  “Okay. Can you give me details?”

  “Not now.” Eavesdropping devices littered the District more than anywhere else in the world. Terryn probably thought the same thing because he didn’t press her. She put down the phone and switched the call to the dashboard system.

  “I’m getting Cress on the line,” said Terryn.

  The light changed, and she drove onto the ramp for the bridge. Traffic receded behind her. “No, wait. It’s okay. No tail.”

  She was so focused behind her, she didn’t see a van shoot up a side ramp until it was huge in her passenger window. She yanked the steering wheel left and stomped on the accelerator. The van caught her rear panel, spinning the SUV. Laura lurched forward, but her shoulder strap slammed her back against the seat.

  “What was that?” Terryn said. Laura found herself smiling at how calm his voice sounded.

  “Bad driver, I hope,” she said. She spun the steering wheel back and pulled away across the bridge. Another van appeared on her left while the first van came up close on her right. “Okay, I definitely have a problem,” she said.

  “I’m on my way,” he said. Over the car speakers, she heard the rustle of the phone on the other end moving.