Authors: Elizabeth Lapthorne
He strapped on his two
thin blades and removed his leather jacket from the hook by the door.
Ange
had her sunglasses on, a small satchel slung across
her back containing the gear she always carried with her. They nodded to each
other, ready to go.
“Do you think we can
count on getting parking?” Blade asked as he locked up the house.
Ange
pursed her lips as she thought about it. Finally she
shook her head.
“
Nah,
might as well stick with the bike. It’s not like we need to take our kit or
anything. And if the worst comes to worst we can always swing by here, pick up
our kit at a moment’s notice and either take your car or ‘borrow’ one of your
neighbors’.”
“A woman after my own
heart,” Blade responded in a high, feminine, breathless voice as he placed a
hand mockingly to his chest.
Ange
flipped him off and climbed onto the
bike. Blade followed her just a moment later. The engine roared and the
vibration coupled with the feel of
Ange’s
warm,
supple body pressed into him made him partially hard. His grin widened as he
pressed himself into her ass and she wriggled back against him. He really loved
this bike.
* * * *
*
“I’ll have a double tall black, please,” Flame
requested the moment the server looked at her. The skinny man with an
emo
haircut nodded, bored.
“To go?” he asked,
already reaching for the paper mug and a lid.
“No, we’d like a table
please, for three,” Flame replied. The young man paused for a moment,
then
reached instead for a ceramic mug.
“Actually, could I have
the double tall in the takeaway mug,” she amended. “But we still would like
that table, please.” The man heaved a sigh but nodded and waved his free hand
to the few scattered tables which were empty. Most of the others held people
sipping coffees, hunched over their laptops, typing away and checking emails.
“Help yourself—I’ll bring
this out to you when it’s ready,” he said in a monotone.
“I always feel like I get
more coffee with a takeaway mug,” she confessed softly near Blade’s ear as they
headed to the table in the furthest corner. “I’m not sure if it’s really true
or if it’s just the way those mugs are so tall, but it always
feels
like
I get more. Besides, knowing our luck recently, all hell will break loose
before I can finish it and at least I have a chance of taking my java with me
if it’s already in a disposable cup.”
Blade laughed as they sat
down. He reached over and rubbed a hand on her shoulder, massaging it gently.
“You really
don’t
like
to start anything without your caffeine, do you?” he teased lightly.
Flame shook her head, her
glasses reflecting his face but also the other patrons as she scanned the
crowd. Her shoulders eased under his massage and after a moment the tension
flowed out of her and she shifted, leaning in to him.
“No,
not really.
Things are easier for me at night. I see better and
I’m
never really firing on all cylinders until after lunchtime. Or I never feel
like I am, anyway.”
“Do you want me to start
going through this, then?” he offered as he swung the satchel from his back and
opened it. He drew out a couple of the folders and one of the pads, preparing
to start making a few notes. “Jarred should be here soon and—” Blade cut
himself off as a large, solidly built man with close-cropped blond hair going
gray at the sides came toward their table. The man had the air of a warrior
about him, and the focused manner with which he looked at every individual he
passed—as if he would be given an observation test later—only added to the
image.
Instinctively, Blade
instantly returned the pad, pen and folders to his satchel and zipped it up.
This was not a man who looked as if he was about to sit down for a leisurely
cup of coffee and a bagel to browse over folders of information. This was a man
who was simply passing through.
“Shit,” Flame cursed as
she obviously came to the same conclusion. She turned around and waved to the
barista, got his attention and made a circular motion with her hands to ask him
to speed things up. He nodded and if anything looked more bored.
Blade stood as the blond
man stopped beside their table. “Jarred?” he asked.
The man nodded and held
out his hand.
“I’m Blade, this is
Flame. Good to meet you. We’ve gathered what data we could and have it here to
exchange. You look like you’ve found something, though.”
Jarred nodded and looked
from Flame to Blade. Flame still sat in her chair, though she had held out her
hand to shake when Blade had introduced her.
“We’ll need to move in a
few minutes. Did you guys order something?”
“Just a coffee, thankfully
to take away,” Flame replied. “It should be here any minute and we’ll be right
to move. Where are we going?”
“Down to the subway,”
Jarred said. “I started looking into your…
situation
after we hung up and
soon tugged on an interesting lead. Your hypothesis was
right,
the mayor might be involved with Will’s team being blocked.”
Blade felt an eyebrow
rise, a faint hum of power tingling along his nerves as his instincts leaped to
life.
“As a matter of fact,
yes, he was instrumental in it. Is he connected?”
“Not deeply,” Jarred
replied. “But he is part of the beginning of this story and I can help to
explain why he is still so eager to see this entire thing squashed and swept
under the rug. I’ve twisted a few arms, though, and I have found someone who
can, I believe, explain things more fully to us all.”
“Well, damn it to hell.”
Jarred
sighed.
“When are
missions like this ever neat and tidy, Blade?”
“Good point,” he conceded
as the young man finally brought Flame her coffee. She took a long sip,
then
stood up with a happy sigh.
“Okay, we can move now,
I’m good.”
Blade fell into step
beside his partner and Jarred walked a step in front of them. The subway
entrance stood two stores down from the cafe and they quickly made their way
underground. Blade and Flame bought tokens and followed Jarred into the bowels
of the station, the platform busy in the mid-morning rush.
They boarded the train
and got seats away from most of the other commuters. Blade checked they could
speak quietly with little danger of being overheard before he questioned
Jarred.
“Okay, fill us in on the
background,” he said. “How the hell did the mayor get himself involved in a new
drug making humans crazy? I thought drugs and pharmaceutical manufacturing were
frowned upon in those sorts of circles.”
“Only when you’re caught
and only when it doesn’t work out as you expect it to,” Jarred replied wryly.
Flame snickered but remained seemingly focused on her coffee, though Blade knew
beyond a doubt she was absorbing and dissecting every word.
“Will and I go way back,
so despite my reticence on the phone, once I’d confirmed from him personally
you were on the up and up I threw everything I had into this. I tapped a few
buddies and called in some markers. Initially I looked at anyone with political
and police pull who had been linked to new, exotic drugs. In certain, very
shadowy quarters, the mayor’s name cropped up almost immediately.”
Jarred looked around them
again, leaned farther in and lowered his voice further so Blade had to strain
to hear him over the movement of the subway car.
“Someone with the mayor’s
ear had obviously filled him in on a rose-tinted glasses version of the drug,”
he continued. “You won’t believe some of the bullshit that’s floating around
about what they planned to do here.
Humans gaining magical
powers, heightening their senses, all sorts of crazy things that could be
extrapolated from the research that could come from this.
Comic book
rubbish, almost. Oh, I know at least at first that stuff happens to some degree
or other, but anyone with a brain could have realized that what goes up must
come down. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out the punch-line wouldn’t be
as pretty as the main event.”
They both nodded as
Jarred continued.
“So the mayor quietly
helped fund the ‘research’ in its initial stages,” Jarred explained, which
caused both Blade and Flame to gape at him. He nodded. “I know.
Insane, right?
The mayor thought it was a win-win situation.
If it didn’t work it would all have been carefully controlled and could be
easily denied. If it did work he could take part in the glory and be a shoo-in
for re-election. But of course it bit him in the ass. Somehow the ‘testing’
wasn’t controlled as he expected and it all snowballed into a giant
clusterfuck
. Or that’s what I can gather, anyway. Hopefully
he can fill in some of the blanks.”
Blade exchanged a look
with Flame as he tried to digest everything Jarred had told them. Before either
of them could think of voicing questions the train slowed to pull in to another
stop and Jarred stood.
“This is us,” he said.
“You can ask more questions of the mayor himself, I have a few things I’d like
clarified myself.”
Silently, Blade stood and
waited for Flame to go first. They stepped onto the platform. Jarred waited
while the train doors shut and the vehicle moved away and the dozen or so
passengers passed them and went up the stairs. When the station stood empty
except for them, he walked to the end of the platform and jumped down off the
edge and into the tunnel.
Blade watched their rear
as Flame kept an eye on Jarred and their front, but only a hundred feet or so
into the tunnel a small niche had been carved into the wall. Surprisingly, the
niche housed a door with a privacy sign and a warning to trespassers. Jarred
entered a code into the lock and it opened, admitting them all.
“Secret bunker,” he
explained and led them into a small room with a few comfortable chairs, a table
and an overhead light. At the table a man sat, relaxed and comfortable. He wore
a pin-striped suit and had what appeared to be a two-man security detail, one
man standing to either side of him. As Blade looked him over closely, he
realized from the slight tension in his jaw and the set of his shoulders that
he wasn’t as calm and relaxed as he’d first appeared.
The man remained seated
as they entered and Jarred nodded to one of the security men. They
both returned
the nod, rose and went to stand on the other
side of the door.
“I’m Jarred and this is
Blade and Flame,” Jarred said. “Guys, this is His Honor, the mayor of Chicago,
Lawrence
Kincade
.”
Blade and Flame paused
for a moment, waiting to see if the man would rise or offer his hand to shake.
He did neither, so Blade gestured for Flame to take one of the two seats and
walked to the corner of the small room. Leaning against the slightly damp stone
wall, he betrayed only a small measure of his paranoia over the situation by
watching their backs, ready just in case they were ambushed.
Kincade
had his most political mask
plastered onto his face. Blade weighed the likelihood of whether the man would
utter a single truthful word versus their very real need to receive help and
answers from him. For the moment, he struggled to give the man the benefit of
the doubt. It might be naïve, but Blade was reluctant to court trouble when
there was not currently a need to do so.
Jarred took the other
seat and kept his own counsel, his face appearing scrupulously blank to Blade’s
eye. Flame, silently given the floor by Jarred and Blade, turned to face the
mayor. Blade watched as his witch used her sunglasses to their best advantage.
Despite her evident
beauty she appeared intimidating, since one couldn’t see her eyes or read her
gaze. Blade watched as the mayor seemingly struggled silently with the urge to
tell her to remove the shades, but someone must have already warned him that
would result in nothing but argument. The mayor stared hard at the glasses, his
eyes flickering now and then to her other features but always reverting back to
the reflective shades.
Flame kept her cool impressively
and her face remained utterly impassive as she allowed the silence to stretch
for a moment longer. It was a classic and well known technique, but still
remarkably successful in interrogations the world over. Blade struggled not to
grin, warmth and love overflowing in his heart for her.
“Mr.
Kincade
,”
she
started,
her voice deceptively soft and
comforting. “My partners and I are not associated with the police. We represent
a different force and are not interested in whatever laws, ethical or legal,
you might have skated close to or overstepped. The
only
thing we are
interested in is every single detail—regardless of how insignificant
you
think
it might be—that you can give us on the people who are financing, manufacturing
and distributing these drugs.”