“Last week,” I said quietly. “Thank you, Eagle.”
“Say what?”
I stepped forward and placed my hand on his shoulder, bending down slightly to look him in the eye.
“We’re going to get through this,” I said earnestly.
“Keen,” he drawled, blowing smoke in my eyes, “you so need a good fuck, don’t ya?”
“Not today, Eagle,” I told him, straightening up.
“I gots places to be, anyways,” he said, stubbing out the cigarette.
It hadn’t been finished, and his hands were shaking again.
“Take care, Eagle,” I said, stepping away.
But my Eagle was already gone. He wasn’t even listening to me.
I turned on my heel and marched out of the alley. Damon slipped into step beside me.
“Is it safe to leave him like that?” he asked quietly.
“If I move him, Weston will know I’m onto him. He thinks he’s managed to manipulate Eagle in a way I wouldn’t be able to detect.”
“Jesus, even I can see the kid’s been messed with.”
I grimaced. “Eagle’s fighting whatever Weston’s done, I’m sure of it. For now, it’s better if I don’t draw attention to that fact.”
“Fuck,” Damon muttered. He’d grown fond of my number one informant. Despite the history they shared, some of which at the hands of Weston, Damon felt rather protective of Eagle. I wouldn’t have put it past him to check up on my boy every now and then when I wasn’t watching.
I pushed that strangely unobjectionable thought away and climbed into the ute when Damon unlocked it.
Carl had only started servicing Eagle last week. Let’s say, one week ago, about the time Carl stopped coming home to Rachel. Could Carl have been twisted enough by Weston to actually do that to Eagle? And because of that twisting, hadn’t returned to the home he shared with his female lover?
I shook my head. I didn’t have an answer. But I knew where I could get one thing answered, so I directed Damon there.
We used the underground carpark at ASI this time. I knew if Weston was watching, he’d have seen us drive in from Broadway. But I was pretty damn sure that the back entrance via Remuera Road was monitored now, so hiding our approach was a waste of time. And I kind of wanted to send a message to Weston.
We know you’re watching and we don’t care.
Well, some of us didn’t.
“Could you have painted a bigger fucking bullseye on our backs?” Anscombe shouted when we made it past the dragonless reception area.
I knew my luck would have to run out eventually.
“What’s got your knickers in a twist, Anscombe?” I asked, walking across the kitchen to the coffee machine. For some reason, he’d brought us here. Not to Control where Eric or Amber Shaw would be hiding. Not to a meeting room, either. But here.
I poured him and Damon a coffee as well.
Anscombe snatched his up and took a fortifying sip.
“Damn spooks,” he muttered under his breath.
“Bad day?” I asked, sipping my cup of Joe.
He glared at me.
“Where is Charlie?” I asked, smiling sweetly.
“Here,” the woman in question said as she waltzed into the kitchen.
Ava swept in after her and Nick stiffened. He hadn’t stiffened when Charlie had entered; he’d been expecting her. But Ava?
Interesting.
Adam Savill made up the trio with his silent approach and brooding good looks and black leather motorbike jacket. They’d just arrived. I wondered briefly where they had been — looking for Weston?
We had a lot to catch up on.
I sat down at the table and waited for everyone to grab their coffees, and in the case of Savill, a plate of club sandwiches out of the fridge. It was covered in wrap and looked like it hadn’t yet been touched. It even had little bits of parsley pressed into crevices to make it look pretty.
Someone went to a lot of effort to feed these guys at night.
I couldn’t believe it was the dragon, but who else could it be?
I stared at Nick. He stared back at me. Adam shoved a whole club sandwich in his mouth in one go, garnering a raised eyebrow from Charlie. Ava painted her fingernails, and Damon sat rigidly beside me; he hadn’t even touched his coffee.
The tension was thick enough to cut with a knife.
And there were plenty of sharp knives in here, I was sure.
“OK,” I said, sitting forward. “Carl Forrester is dead.”
No one gasped. Pierce had been here.
“He hadn’t been home for a week,” I continued, “and about a week ago, he started turning up in places he shouldn’t have been, doing things he wouldn’t normally do.”
“Not unusual,” Anscombe said carefully. “He was a changed man.”
“Changed enough to change his sexuality?” I asked.
Anscombe and Savill frowned.
Ava said while concentrating on a blood red nail and not looking up, “I can make ‘em switch if I want to.”
“Switch?” Nick asked.
“Yeah, Nicky,” she crooned. “Girls. Boys. You name it. I can make ‘em switch sides if I have to.”
“High opinion of yourself, haven’t you?” Anscombe said curtly. There was no love lost between these two.
I liked the woman on principle because she was taking the heat off me. Nick’s mistrust of Ava was greater than his dislike of me; it seemed.
I smiled into my coffee cup.
“And what if they’re already heterosexual?” Anscombe pressed. “The men, I mean.”
Ava smirked at him. “I don’t always do the work, Nicky. It’s called delegation.”
“Hold on,” he said, sitting forward. “So, you have a stable of people to draw on to do the deed when you can’t be fagged getting off your arse or chip your nail polish?”
“Fagged. I like it,” Savill said, stuffing another sandwich in his mouth and making a show of chewing. I thought he might have been doing it on purpose, but to what effect, I wasn’t sure.
“If you’re chipping nail polish while you’re doing it, Nicky,” Ava said. “You’re doing it all wrong. What does your angel see in you?”
Nick pushed back his chair suddenly, making a thunderous crash which bounced off the walls. Savill was up and between his boss and the spook in a heartbeat. Shit, the guy could move. The sandwiches had been an act.
I was standing. Charlie was standing. We were all standing. No weapons had been drawn, but on the part of the spooks - and probably ASI - none were needed. I would have at least liked some pepper spray, but I did know Damon could throw a decent punch, so I wasn’t completely without options.
“Everyone,” I snapped. “Calm down.”
“You don’t get to make orders in here, Detective,” Nick snarled, emphasising my former title.
“It’s not as if ASI is sovereign ground, Anscombe,” I said dryly.
“You’re not a cop,” he growled.
“Do you really believe that?” I didn’t. Not anymore. Hart had made sure of that.
Nick finally looked away from Ava long enough to look at me.
“Fuck,” he said. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
“Eloquent as ever, boss,” Savill drawled.
“You!” Anscombe snapped, pointing at Ava. “Don’t ever mention my wife again. You!” he said, pointing at Charlie. “Control her. And you!” He looked at me. “What the fuck are you even doing here?”
I sat back down. Ava was the next to follow. Charlie and Savill slowly sank into their seats. But Damon and Nick had a pissing contest until I tugged Damon back into his chair and ended it.
I could not work in this place. I’d destroy it in under a week. Give me the Boys’ Club any day. I’d even put up with Cawfield and his innuendos to avoid this crap.
I looked at Charlie and ignored Anscombe completely.
“Can the manipulation be fought?” I asked, cutting to the chase quickly.
Ava paused painting her nails. Charlie remained icy, but a storm was brewing in those grey eyes. Nick and Savill had stiffened. It might be a dysfunctional business, but ASI looked after its own. And Charlie, if not Ava, was definitely one of ASI’s own.
“Possibly,” Charlie eventually said. Anscombe flicked her a look. If she saw it, she didn’t show a reaction.
Had Charlie fought her PSYOPS?
“Does it break down over time?” I pressed.
“Possibly,” she said again, a little quicker this time to offer up an answer. A repeated answer. But the tension in the room had lightened.
Time to test a theory.
“What would it take to break the PSYOPS brainwashing?”
Charlie studied me for a long while. Ava kept painting her nails. Anscombe and Savill were rocks. Damon sat quietly beside me, ready to jump up at a moment’s notice.
“It varies,” Charlie finally said. “But the current belief is that a connection to something or someone stronger than the PSYOPS directive can possibly break through the training.”
I stared at her. Had she broken through her training? My eyes flicked to the man sitting beside her. Savill had stopped using the sandwiches as a cover. His gaze met mine. There was a definite warning to back the fuck off there.
It didn’t matter. Their stories weren’t mine to uncover.
But Eagle and Carl?
“I think,” I said steadily, ”one of my informants, who we’ve confirmed has been manipulated by Weston previously, broke through the PSYOPS a couple of times to warn me.”
“How close are you to this informant?” Charlie asked.
“Close.” Eagle was my best. He was also like a little brother to me. I slipped him extra cash and checked up on him frequently, even if I didn’t need him for information. I just did it. I had hoped I’d meant something to him too. I was pretty sure, now, that I did.
“It is possible,” Charlie said.
All that was left was figuring out if Carl had switched sides before he had been captured.
He ain’t who you thought he was.
Was that because he suddenly liked to spank young men? Or was it because it wasn’t even Carl under that fedora and trench coat?
If you can’t see the wood for the trees, then get the fuck out of the forest.
Only this forest was all around me, and it went on for as far as I could see.
What else have you got, Old Man?
Carl didn’t answer, because Carl was dead.
I had to stop talking to myself.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“You Can’t Live Life In A Vacuum, Keen. Otherwise You End Up Sucking At It.”
It was late. I was tired. It had been a hell of a day; a hell of a week. But we weren’t done yet.
We left ASI and headed back into the CBD. We could have kept going to Central Police, but I was suspended so turning up there was out. We could have kept going past the station to my place and crashed there. But we didn’t.
We made it as far as Damon’s.
I thought perhaps Damon was exhausted, too, and the thought of negotiating central city traffic any longer was just too much. I didn’t blame him. Enough was enough.
He rolled his ute to a stop out the back of his terraced house and pressed the remote to open his garage door. Sitting inside was his private vehicle; the HEAT truck would have to weather the outdoors. I checked the shiny Audi out with its four overlapping rings on the grille and looked up at the Paddington styled building.
I always forgot that Damon came from Old Money. He didn’t act like he’d had a silver spoon in his mouth his entire life. He roughed it with firemen. He drove the HEAT ute more often than the Q7. He dressed in jeans and well-worn jackets, scuffed boots and soft leather belts with tarnished buckles. Damon was a man’s man, but more than that; he was an everyday man’s man.
But he was loaded.
He had top of the range stainless steel appliances in his gourmet kitchen. An expensive and complicated sound system piped throughout the house. Designer furniture and sought after artwork. A huge, in-your-face TV that spanned an entire wall. But opposite that was a bookshelf just as big and covered in well worn and equally well read books. Marble floors and granite bench tops abounded. A beautiful view out of the front windows across to the Domain park stole attention. And a sophisticated security system, that ASI would have salivated over, topped it all off.
I didn’t exactly feel uncomfortable at Damon’s place, but I certainly felt like I could kick off my boots and leave them wherever they fell at my place, whereas here, I lined them up against the wall; perfectly straight.
Damon smirked at me and made a show of leaving his boots slightly crooked. It was me who straightened them up as I walked past.
“Hungry?” he asked as he headed directly for the kitchen. “Or straight to bed?”
Sleep was desperately needed, but my stomach had been rumbling for the past hour. Even the club sandwich I’d managed to sneak in at ASI hadn’t quietened it.
“Food,” I told him. “Then shower and bed.”
“I like the way you think,” Damon said, pulling ingredients out of the fridge for an omelette.
I slid onto a stool at the bench and pulled out my cellphone. It was possible that Weston was tapping our calls somehow, but to do that, the CIB traitor would have had to expose himself before now. The fact that he might have with the GPS system was fortuitous.
And also a little out of the ordinary from what we’d come to know of our man.
I dialled Pierce as I watched Damon flit about the kitchen with practised ease. I could boil an egg. Possibly scramble something resembling a rubber mat. But omelettes were beyond me.
Damon had taken his jacket off and now wore a simple Henley t-shirt. The muscles across his back were obvious through the thin material of his top. I watched them shift and ripple. Maybe food, shower, sex then bed.
“Keen,” Pierce said over the line, disturbing my fantasy. “Thought you might be in touch.”
“You didn’t call with what you found out, Sarge,” I accused. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re trying to cut me out.”
“For your own good.”
I sighed. “It’s that bad? I promise I won’t flip. Who is it?”
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow? And by the way, it is half past eleven at night. Daisy’s in bed and so were we.”
“Did I interrupt anything?”
“At half-past eleven at night? Some of us have day jobs, Keen.”
“Marie does, but when has that ever stopped you, Sarge?”
“I prefer early morning,” he told me, and I actually blushed.
It was one thing to be one of the boys but a whole other to picture your, albeit quite ruggedly handsome, superior officer having sex first thing in the morning.
“Good for you,” I muttered.
He chuckled; that deep, manly, self-satisfied chuckle they use when they’ve just proven how much the man they are to anyone.
“So?” I said. “What did the log say?”
He swore softly. “You really want to go to sleep tonight knowing but unable to do anything about it?”
“Maybe I won’t be sleeping,” I said, trying for dirty humour and just not having the heart for it to do it right.
“Lara,” he said. “You can’t do anything about it tonight. Do you understand? That’s a directive straight from Hart.”
“He wants to sit on this?”
“Just for tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because we need to mourn Carl first.”
The punch hit me so hard I sucked in a breath of air. Damon spun around from the stove and raised an eyebrow at me. I let the breath out and nodded my head to indicate I was all right. I wasn’t.
Carl was dead.
“I’m sorry,” Pierce said tiredly. “It’s been a long day.”
It had been. And it’s not as though I’d forgotten about Carl; I’d just filed it. Perhaps the o
nly time I had followed my father’s example and filed something in a mental drawer. I needed to see this through to the end. And then I would break down and mourn my former partner. If I let myself mourn now, I would be a liability.
And that was exactly what Weston wanted.
“I won’t act on anything tonight,” I promised Pierce. “But I also won’t be able to sleep knowing you’ve identified our traitor and I don’t know who it is. Tell me. Please,” I added for good measure.
Damon placed the completed omelette down before me and then fished out some utensils. He grabbed his own plate and slid onto the stool at my side. He dug in without waiting; clearly famished having not partaken of a thing at ASI.
I stared at the beautifully presented eggy meal, full of mushrooms and chives and bacon and tomato. It looked and smelled divine.
I knew very shortly I wouldn’t be able to stomach it, so I grabbed a fork and shovelled in a big mouthful. It wasn’t very ladylike, and I was sure Pierce could hear me masticating, but I needed something on my stomach before eating became a challenge I couldn’t battle tonight.
My money was on Cawfield. I was as ready as I’d ever be to hear if I was right.
“OK,” Pierce said. I could hear liquid sloshing into a glass down the line. He was pouring himself a beer or more likely, given the topic of conversation, a whisky. A stiff one. “Ready?”
“Come on,” I said between mouthfuls. “Spill it. The suspense is killing me.”
Damon grunted. Pierce sighed.
“It’s Joe,” he said, and I slowly stopped chewing.
Huh. I’d been right.
“Cat got your tongue?” Pierce asked.
“Just thinking.”
“Yeah, I’ve been doing a lot since I saw his login code and password earlier.”
“What did you come up with?”
“It’s too convenient.”
Dammit. I’d just been thinking the same thing.
“So, we ignore it?” I asked.
“Hell, no. Hart intends to question him officially tomorrow morning, but if he isn’t who we think he is, then we might just be walking into a trap.”
A Lick Of Heat: H.E.A.T. Book Four Page 21
