Authors: Elizabeth Lapthorne
Blade marveled at how
with just some emphasis on certain words his witch conveyed the reality that
they were not interested in him per se. She made no promises of immunity or
other gray areas, but simply gave the confident feeling it would be in
Kincade’s
best interest to share all his information with
them.
“You’re not with the
police?”
Kincade
repeated, looking from Flame to
Blade, back and forth a few times. Flame shook her head.
“No, my partner and I
represent a different area of law enforcement.”
Lawrence
Kincade
ran a meaty hand thought his thick red hair. His
face looked paler than Blade assumed he usually
was,
which made his freckles seem to stand out more prominently.
“Jeez, I thought getting
the cops off the scent would be enough.
If there are other
factions to deal with…well, shit.”
Blade, Jarred and Flame
waited patiently while
Kincade
seemed to silently
sort himself out.
After a moment he
continued,
his voice shaky.
“This is all completely
off the record, okay? I will deny all of it if it becomes public.” Flame waited
for a beat,
then
nodded. The mayor continued, sweat
beading his brow.
“Okay, well, an old
colleague of mine, from back before I was elected mayor, came to me with this
ground-breaking new study. She said a few people she knew were looking into
synthesizing an undiscovered drug with magic essence infused into it. I scoffed
at first. I mean, it sounded like rubbish. But she introduced me to a few
people and I saw the preliminary reports and it seemed fantastic.” Again
Kincade
wiped a hand across his forehead to collect the
sweat before he continued.
“It seemed like a win-win
situation for me. Martine—my contact—assured me that these were only
preliminary trials and would be kept confidential. If the drug didn’t work out
it was no great loss to me. I could cover the money I would have to put up. And
if it did succeed…can you
imagine
what it would have done for my
standing? Politically, to have been the mayor to give a new
drug
a chance, to help enhance humans to become more magical? I’d have been set for
the rest of my career.”
“It didn’t cross your
mind that maybe it would be dangerous for humans to absorb magical essence?
That there might be unforeseen repercussions?” Blade remained skeptical.
“No,”
Kincade
replied with such a blank look it could only be the truth. “They seemed to know
what they were doing. They said this was only the trial stages and they wanted
to have some humans fund it as well as their own people. It seemed very
straightforward.”
“So what happened?” Flame
asked,
her tone neutral.
“About three weeks later
one of the commissioner’s reports landed on my desk,”
Kincade
continued in a big rush, as if now he had started his explanation he
desperately needed to finish it all. “The report had a few sketchy details of a
new drug out on the streets and in the clubs. How the hospitals were seeing an
influx of overdoses unlike anything they’d experienced. Initially I wrote it
off as a coincidence, something not connected in the least to what I was
involved in.
“There had been no talk
of testing the drug externally, in the general population. I didn’t connect it
back then, at the start, but something inside me must have been cautious or
worried. I insisted that I was to be kept informed. When some of those medical
reports included strange ‘magical’ abilities, I started to panic.” Lawrence
took a deep breath and looked at each of them, still sweating.
“I had
no
idea
they were testing on kids out in the clubs,” he stressed. “I thought it would
be volunteers properly prepared and kept in a contained environment. I
immediately called Martine and told her I was pulling out. She laughed at me,
said it didn’t matter. She explained that they had my money, which I wouldn’t
be getting back, and her associates had found the perfect niche. Hell, she said
if it made me feel better I could run a mile for all they cared.”
“How much money had you
sunk into it?” Blade asked, curious and hopeful he might be able to get a gauge
on how large an operation it was.
“Not much,”
Kincade
insisted.
“Only fifty grand.
In terms of medical research that’s peanuts. I thought it cheap at the price.”
“But it’s a decent
infusion into a drug business,” Blade murmured, mostly to himself. Fifty thousand
dollars was nothing to sneeze at, but from what he had discovered of this
set-up it really wouldn’t be a make-or-break amount. There must still be a
heavy financial supporter unaccounted for.
“Please tell us the full
name of your contact Martine, and anyone else she introduced you to,” Flame
said in an official tone of voice.
“Martine
Ormstron
,”
Kincade
replied
nervously. His hands shook as he ran them down his pants’ legs. “I was never
introduced to anyone else, but there was a tall, slender blond man and a
slightly beefier brunet man with short-cropped, spiky hair that was going gray
at the edges. They’re the only ones I ever met.”
“Okay.” Flame nodded
before she leaned in farther, her elbows resting on the metal table between
them. “But whose idea was it to shut down the police investigation? Was that
yours? Or have you had contact with someone else?”
For a brief moment
Kincade
looked startled, but he recovered himself, his face
hanging in long, unhappy lines.
“Shit. Okay. Look,
funding the new super-drug that’s causing kids to become mentally unstable and
commit suicide is not the best decision I ever made. Politically, it could very
well be the end of me. So far, however, I’ve managed to keep most of it under
wraps. Nixing the investigation seemed like a smart move from every angle.”
“So you
did that alone?” she clarified, a single eyebrow raised and her tone
disbelieving.
“I had to call in a favor
from the commissioner. It wasn’t too hard to persuade him that since the lab
had been destroyed, the villain escaped, they’d move on and not darken our
doorstep again,” he insisted, his tone optimistic.
“And what would you have
done when the next junkie died or went insane?” Flame asked logically.
Kincade’s
hands shook but he remained firm.
“After shutting down the investigation the commissioner has as much face to
lose as I—it would have been handled. Look, I didn’t know until
after
I
received reports through other channels this shit makes kids crazy. It was
never mentioned to me as a possible side effect and I couldn’t have guessed it.
Speak to Martine—she’s all chummy with them and crazy herself.”
“Do you have a number for
Martine?” Blade asked.
His gut indicated that
the mayor was at the end of his rope and they’d pretty much bled him dry.
Kincade
pulled out his cell phone, scrolled down a little
way and read out a number, which they memorized.
“Are we done here?” the
politician pleaded, his tone a petulant whine.
Flame cast a quick look
at Blade, who nodded,
then
she looked at Jarred, who
silently agreed. Pushing herself away from the table, she rose.
“Thank you, Mr. Mayor,”
she finished, her tone icy but polite. The man nodded and as Jarred opened the
door the two security guards entered again, cast the three of them careful
looks and returned to their posts. Blade subtly waved at Flame to follow Jarred
out, then with a final look at
Kincade
, exited
himself
. The door echoed as it slammed behind him.
* * * *
*
Blade climbed up onto the
subway platform behind Flame and Jarred, and for a moment they all stood there
deep in their own thoughts. The platform was mostly empty, a few travelers
right down at the other end near the entrance and exit. With plenty of privacy
open to them, Blade finally gave voice to his thoughts.
“I don’t think the mayor
will be much more help, but I do think this Martine is a solid lead,” he said.
Flame nodded in agreement, but they waited to see what further thoughts Jarred
could add.
The tall man looked
thoughtful for a moment or two,
then
put his hands in
the pockets of his well-worn jeans.
“Do we know if this woman
is human or a Mage? Can we make an educated guess?” he asked.
Blade frowned
thoughtfully but Flame replied for him.
“Her name isn’t one of
the half dozen or so who came up as a potential connection to
Sarke
,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean she isn’t magical.
Both Blade and I feel fairly strongly that there would be at least two more
people instrumental running an operation like this. If Martine is connected
primarily through our third, unknown person she wouldn’t come up in a search on
Sarke
.”
“This entire situation is
volatile,” Blade added. “In the space of less than three days we’ve managed a
few significant hits on this group. Things will be moving rapidly and I am not keen
to go back to headquarters and do more searches and data mining.”
“What about the rest of
your team?”
Jarred suggested.
“With some assistance we
could get a line on her easily enough. That would let the three of us go watch
her and gauge the situation while your buddies dig into her paperwork. Any
trails they could unearth would be nice and simple to follow so it shouldn’t
take up too much of their time and still allow them to remain under the radar
of the police commissioner.”
Automatically Blade shook
his head,
then
paused. He threw a questioning look at
Flame, curious how she felt about it. His initial, protective thought had been
to insist they should be doing all the work alone. The last thing he wanted was
to let the other members of their crew stick their necks out for them.
But regardless of his
concerns, Blade knew the heart of an Enforcer team—with a few humans now added
into it—was complete and absolute faith in one another. Blade reminded himself
to keep in mind that these were his friends and they were more than capable of
looking out for themselves.
Had the circumstances
been different, had it been Sage and Chase—or Sage and Flame—who by chance had
been able to continue the investigation, had he been the one who had been
sidelined, Blade knew for a fact he’d be itching in ten different ways to be
involved. It wouldn’t matter how he could be useful, or how small the task
might be, he would simply want to be
doing
something and not sitting on
his ass wondering how the case was progressing.
Tilting his head to
Flame, he voiced his thoughts.
“I’d want to be involved
if it were me. To hell with what the commissioner said—since when has some
pompous ass in a brass chair given me orders? Even if it had been our
management, you don’t pull someone off a case before it’s closed. That’s not
on, no matter what the asshole thinks.”
“I agree. Maybe we should
call Sage, get her or one of the others to dig into Martine,” Flame replied.
“While you do that I can
get some of my people to get us her address,” Jarred said as he pulled his cell
phone out of his pocket. He switched it on and dialed a series of numbers and
spoke into it. Blade and Flame headed toward the bank of pay phones nearer the
entrance of the subway.
Blade picked up the phone
receiver and paused, turned to Flame. “She won’t be at her desk and chances are
she won’t be at home either. Do you still have Chase’s cell number?”
She rummaged in her
satchel and finally pulled out a small leather-bound notebook. Blade dropped
the required coins into the phone and punched in the numbers as Flame read them
out to him. The phone rang a few times, and after the fifth ring, as Blade grew
concerned, Chase’s voice answered.
“Yeah?”
“Chase, Blade here. How’s
it going?”
“Absolutely shit. Do you
have any idea how mind-numbingly boring paperwork is when the subject not only
escapes but a historically protected annex is blown to smithereens? I’m so
buried in complaints, audits, arson investigations and forensic documents I
might never recover. How are things with you?”
“Things are…interesting,”
Blade replied as truthfully as he could. “Say, could you put Sage on, please?
Is she there?”
“Just so you know,” Chase
replied, his voice lowered, “anything she goes on, I will too. I know you don’t
have a problem with me—it’s the situation—but you really should know.”
Blade wrinkled his nose.
He had guessed Chase would insist on partnering with Sage—any fool could see
how deeply connected and in love they were. The man had almost literally had to
be carried out of the annex while Sage remained behind.
When it had exploded, not
even Blade had been able to restrain Chase, so urgent had been his need to
protect and see to Sage. That didn’t mean that Blade wanted to be instrumental
in Chase getting
himself
fired.