Athena Force 8: Contact (15 page)

She must be getting paranoid, she decided. Lynch-mob mentalities could do that to a person.

The next afternoon, at work, Roy came by to talk to Greg about the shell casings found at the cemetery. He nodded at Faith as he strode past her toward Greg’s office—that was all, just nodded. He looked tall and tired and determined, and she felt short of breath just watching him move. Once he was in Greg’s office, she had a hard time concentrating on her work.

She tried desperately not to listen in on their conversation about Butch. A normal woman wouldn’t be able to hear them behind closed doors. Then again, if she were normal, she wouldn’t be in this bind.

On the way back out, though, Roy crooked a finger at her as he passed. Still not looking at her.

Intrigued, she got up and headed out the direction he’d gone. He was waiting by the bank of elevators. He raised his eyebrows at her, feigned casual, and stepped with exaggerated nonchalance through the door into the emergency stairwell.

Pulse picking up, Faith went after him—through the heavy door and right into his arms. Sensory information washed over her, as usual.
He’d had a po’-boy for breakfast. He was overdoing the coffee again. He wasn’t getting enough sleep.
But the images washed
gently.
His embrace felt like homecoming.

“So are we co-workers or not?” he demanded, neatly turning her between him and the concrete wall, his gray gaze dancing across her lips as if maybe he wanted to kiss her as much as she wanted to kiss him. “’Cause if we are, and you’ve got some kind of rule against it, this could be trouble. One of these days, I really do intend to take you out on a real date.”

“My rule isn’t that strict,” she reassured him, and was rewarded by his mocking grin—for just a moment, before his kiss blinded her to everything else. She stretched her arms up over his shoulders, hanging on for dear life, tasting him, breathing him.

“Good,” Roy panted, after a few minutes of that. “That’s real good.”

“So about this alleged date,” she started. She saw his wince and felt him tense up, so she smoothly added, “I’m guessing until you get Butch’s killer, you won’t have a lot of free time, huh?”

“No,” he agreed. “Not much. I’m sorry, Corbett….”

But even as he apologized, she could tell he was anxious to be gone—if maybe after a few more kisses. Work to do. Vengeance to wreak. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be with her. It was that his need to be elsewhere won out.

“Well, until then, feel free to come by the apartment after shift some night,” she offered. Evan occasionally brought lovers home. So did Absinthe. Absinthe would hang a stolen Do Not Disturb sign on her doorknob when necessary, at which point Krystal—or now, Moonsong—knew to bunk on the sofa, or in Faith or Evan’s room. As Krystal had explained when Faith first moved in, it seemed safer than them going into unknown territory alone. At least at the apartment, the roommates outnumbered the visitors. “I have my own room now. The others won’t mind.”

In answer, Roy kissed her again. Deeply. With tongue. She shivered against him with pleasure at both the feeling of him and the memories his kisses evoked. When he drew back, all he said was, “Damn.”

He said it in an admiring tone.

Then he set her carefully back against the wall as if she might fall over, kissed the top of her head and trotted off down the stairs.

Cheered, Faith headed back to her desk.

Her mood changed when she heard what Greg was discussing with Officer Leone.

“—no blowback on his hands,” Greg was saying, “and all the casings are from one or more .38 Specials. There’s the very real possibility he was killed with his own gun. It wouldn’t be the first time. Faith. There you are.”

She tried to look alert and innocent, instead of lust-starved and guilty as hell. And it wasn’t the lust she felt guilty about. “I just stepped out…the bathroom…”

The bathrooms were by the elevators were by the stairwell.

“Run this through the database, will you?” Greg handed her a ballistics report and a disk. “And put a rush on it. The slug Mandelet took out of Butch is our only hope for finding a striations match. The others all hit stone.”

“They think it was Butch’s weapon?” she asked. She knew full well that it hadn’t been. But if all the casings were .38s, and only one of the bullets was in any shape to be matched, how would anyone prove that?

Nobody knew except Cassandra and the killer.

She was an idiot.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have any slugs to match it against,” said Greg. “Roy was just here talking to me. Thirty-six years on the force, and Butch never had to draw his weapon. Isn’t that something?”

Faith nodded, sick at her own stupidity. She worked with evidence. Panicked or not, she should have known better. When she threw Butch’s weapon into the river, she’d destroyed any sure chance of proving that it wasn’t the same gun that killed him.

Unless the .38 that had killed him had its own history.

“I’ll run this now,” she promised.

Greg continued to squint at her, his pale eyes increasingly concerned behind his wire-frame glasses. “Are you all right, Faith?”

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

“You know that you can come to me if you’re having any kind of problem, don’t you?”

His gentle sympathy just hurt all the more. She had to force a smile, a nod. “Thanks, Greg. But I’m fine. Really. I’ll run the ballistics check now.”

“Thanks.” And Greg and Leone continued toward the labs, talking about the line of fire in their crime-scene reconstruction. Greg only looked back at Faith once, respecting her space…but clearly concerned.

“All over the place,” Leone was saying as they vanished into the hallway.

Lying sucked,
thought Faith darkly. If only she hadn’t insisted on staying anonymous with Butch and meeting him in secret. If only she hadn’t destroyed evidence….

And she’d gotten on her
mother’s
case about lying?

Faith walked home from work in the rain, dry under her Tulane umbrella. Again, she got the strangest sensation that someone was watching her. But whenever she slowed and looked around, she saw nothing out of the ordinary. Smelled nothing. Felt nothing.

This wasn’t the way her abilities generally worked.

Butch’s killer had been particularly silent, too,
she thought. Or maybe that was just her guilty conscience talking. Either way, she vowed to be extra careful over the next few days.

“Have you noticed anything suspicious?” she asked the others when she got home. None of them did a very good business in the rain, so they’d rented videos. It was just the sort of group get-together Faith had always wanted roommates for.

“Anything suspicious like what?” asked Evan.

“Someone…lurking?”

They shook their heads.

“Maybe you should call your detective friend and tell him about it,” suggested Moonsong. “You know, people would be less likely to bother us if we have a police officer showing up now and then.”

“On the downside,” noted Absinthe dryly, “we’d have a police officer showing up now and then.”

“I already invited him to come by after shift, so I apologize in advance if he takes me up on it and wakes anyone.” In order to avoid their sit-up-and-stare interest, Faith went to the table to check for mail—and saw a Manila envelope.

From Dallas.

“He couldn’t be any noisier than Bud was,” said Evan. One of his old boyfriends really had gone by the name Bud, which was even more ironic when you remembered that he was gay.

Faith was hardly listening. She was picking up the envelope, tearing it open. She’d ordered this last week. After Butch died, she’d forgotten. But now…

Certificate of Birth,
it read.
State of Texas. County of Dallas. City of Dallas. Parkland Hospital.

Full Name of Child: Faith Ashley Corbett.

Her mother hadn’t lied, not about that anyway. Faith’s sex and date of birth were all spelled out. The form listed her weight and length at birth. There was a section where “Single Birth” was checked off, with “Twins” and “Triplets” left blank. Under “Mother” it listed Tamara’s name, residence, age, birthplace, occupation and even color.

But under “Father,” the form remained blank.

Name. Residence. All of it.

Absolutely blank.

More than ever, Faith suspected her father hadn’t left them. Not the way her mother had always insisted he had. Apparently, Faith
had
no official father.

This wasn’t something she could take care of over the phone. “I’m heading back out,” she said, folding the certificate to stuff into her slacks pocket and fetching her wet umbrella.

“Don’t you want to watch the movie?” asked Evan, but Moonsong’s gaze was more sympathetic. Moonsong understood something was wrong. She usually did.

“Maybe I’ll be back in time for the second feature.”

Faith went into the rainy French Quarter.

The St. Charles streetcar stop was across Canal from Bourbon Street. That was a walk of maybe twelve blocks, nothing Faith couldn’t manage even in the rain. It was a warm rain, this being August. She had hours of daytime left.

But if she’d been thinking clearly, it would have occurred to her that, in the rain, it was still dark.

It might have occurred to her to tell someone where she was going.

And it should have occurred to her, when she heard a dog crying in a close alley beside a dry cleaner, that it might be a trap. Then again, her ears weren’t easily tricked. It really was a dog’s sharp, ki-yi-ing cry, mixed with panicked growls, not some mimic. There was no way she could just ignore the sound of a creature in pain. So she detoured into the alley, around the large green Dumpster that blocked her view. She automatically strained her ears for the dog’s heartbeat to guess just how hurt it was—

And that’s when she heard the other heartbeats with it.

Slower than the dog’s agonized, racing pulse, but fast for humans…except for humans in confrontation mode.

Faith spun—but not before a semicircle of young men had already begun to form behind her, shoulder to shoulder, to force her farther back into the alley.

The drumming of the rain on the Dumpster must have masked the sound of their footsteps, their heartbeats. But now there was no mistaking them. They all wore some piece of green—a do-rag, a band around the arm or leg, in one case a tattered ribbon dangling from one guy’s long black braid.

They were all members of the gang from Storyville that had attacked Evan the other week. Three of them had been arrested, but now…

But now they weren’t all teenagers. And there were a lot more of them. Six? No—ten.

Blocking her way.

Faith spun back to the alley and, beyond the Dumpster, saw two more. Two boys from the first attack. The ones who hadn’t been arrested.

The scraggly white boy, the one with all the tattoos, held a small dog by the scruff of its neck, twisted its paw to make it ki-yi again. Beside him a familiar Asian kid with a soul patch grinned with satisfaction.

And threat.

T
welve to one.

Faith didn’t have to be psychic to know she was screwed.

From here on out, all she could hope for was damage control. Preferably controlling the damage to
her.

She didn’t have time to consider options. Since she’d rather handle two first, instead of ten, she bolted deeper into the alley.

Maybe they’d expected her to cower, or to vacillate. She’d definitely taken them by surprise. She could smell that much over the scent of sweat and excitement and of rain on concrete.

She shoved her umbrella in tattoo-boy’s face and wrapped an arm around the dog to protect it as she bodychecked his friend. That felt like plugging into two electric sockets at once—the dog’s terror and the thug’s malicious glee arced through her in a single, acidic jolt. Luckily the shock passed as quickly as their moment of contact did. She drove a knee up into the thug’s crotch and, as he bent with a gasp, again into his ribs. But those weren’t bare skin on bare skin.

He crumpled, wrenching the umbrella from her with his weight. At least he let go of the dog, which snapped at her with a panicked cry. She let it scramble, limping, for the alley corner, even as she tried to turn to meet the second of her previous acquaintances.

Between her rescue of the dog and tattoo-boy yanking her umbrella from her as he fell, she wasn’t fast enough. A wiry forearm caught her around the throat and pulled back, lifting her feet from the ground. She grabbed his arm with both hands to take her weight off her neck—

His friends had been taunting him about her since the last attack. He’d never hated anyone so much. They would make an example—

Faith kicked out and found a brace against the Dumpster’s rusty side. She pushed, hard.

He only staggered backward, his brace across her airway tightening.
He’d been shot in the leg, once. His mother didn’t know what he was doing today. He liked the rain—

Struggling to concentrate, even to breathe, she drew her knees up toward her shoulders, then drove both feet back, hard, into the man’s knees. They were the best she could reach. He still didn’t let go.

Still, as in the previous fight, her aggression seemed to snap off a switch inside of her. She stopped reading the bastard, despite his sweaty skin against her throat and chin and under her scratching hands.

She could still feel his increased body temperature, could hear his racing heart and rough, wet breathing and smell him sharp in her nostrils.

But at least she had him out of her damned head!

She kicked backward again, still dangling. He bent, stumbled, then dropped hard to his knees. His arm across her throat loosened. As soon as her feet touched the littered concrete of the alleyway Faith pushed backward, holding the arm. She managed an awkward somersault over the boy’s bent form as he fell back. She was no gymnast. She ended up on her hip in the trash. But she was momentarily free of him.

She was also trapped beside a brick wall, her way blocked by him, tattoo-boy and the other ten men who now filled the mouth of the alley and advanced.

The dog, its coat matted and one leg dangling uselessly, was barking at them as if it thought itself much larger than it was.

Faith supposed she might give the same impression.

The idea made her laugh—which had the added benefit of surprising several of her assailants. But as the men closed in on her, their threat as obvious on their faces as in their smells, she feared that she wouldn’t be able to surprise them for much longer. Not this many of them.

The trick, she guessed, would be to see how many she
could
surprise—by any means necessary—before they overcame her. That, and to scratch, yank, bite and bleed as much evidence off them as possible on her way down. The only alternative would be not to fight, in hopes of simply surviving.

Another day, maybe she would. But for her, at this moment, that was no alternative at all.

They shuffled closer, past the Dumpster that would hide their actions from casual notice. They were talking big about what they meant to do, what she’d like—and what she wouldn’t.

“I guess you’ll know who to respect after this, bitch,” warned the biggest among them, a man older than her. He had a green design painted into his shaved hair. Apparently he was the leader.

So at least they meant to leave her alive, she thought. She reached slowly behind herself amidst the wet litter, seeking a broken bottle that she knew was there from the sound of raindrops on hollow glass. They would probably change their minds about her living, once she was done with them.

But she decided it was still better than giving up.

Faith’s fingers touched a jagged edge. She readjusted her hand to close around the smooth neck of the bottle instead. She didn’t like the idea of using it, particularly not since they’d be more likely to use it back on her. But it might be her only chance.

Maybe if she could take down the leader.

Maybe if she could go past him in the confusion.

Maybe…

“Is this a private tea party, or can anyone play?”

Faith was as stunned as the gangbangers when a golden-haired woman suddenly dropped into the alleyway, smack between her and the gang members. In reality, the woman must have dropped off a fire escape over their heads. But it seemed as if she just
appeared,
landing in an easy crouch, like an angel in boots and leather.

The dog backed farther into the corner, barking his confusion.

“Shit!” exclaimed one of Faith’s assailants.

The woman glanced almost imperceptibly over her shoulder. “You’re Faith Corbett, right?” she asked, then turned back to the gang members. “Not that I wouldn’t do this one just for the sheer enjoyment of it.”

In that brief glimpse, Faith thought the woman looked to be about her age. There was something strangely familiar about her. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m Dawn O’Shaughnessy. Nice to meet you. You hurt?”

“What the fuck is this?” demanded one of the shorter men, beside the leader. “This some freakin’ meet-and-greet? You just dropped into a whole world of trouble, bitch.”

Faith and the stranger—Dawn—ignored his posturing.

“No.” Leaving the bottle amidst the litter, where it would do less damage, Faith stood and brushed off her legs. That was one pair of slacks that wouldn’t see work again. “I’m not hurt. I can take at least half of them. I have before.”

Several of them began to protest that. Loudly.

“Won’t have to,” Dawn assured her. Her pose radiated confidence. Her thick golden braid, her skintight leather suit, the boots…even her breathing and her heartbeat remained even, unconcerned. Ready. “Maybe a third of them.”

Faith shook her head, confused.

Another woman, chestnut-haired, stepped out from the street beyond the Dumpster and walloped one of the gang members across the head with a piece of metal pipe.

“Three to one,” the newcomer explained, with a satisfied nod.

Two of the boys turned on her. At least five of them surged onto Dawn. And the others rushed Faith.

All at once.

It didn’t help that the dog kept barking, hobbling on three legs from one corner to the next. All Faith could concentrate on, at first, was the immediate—

A guy in a concert T-shirt tackled her to the asphalt. She hit her head, the impact jarring the world around her. She still managed to roll with his force, his weight, so that he was suddenly beneath her, where she could start punching him repeatedly across the face. Again. Again….

Big hands dragged her off, copping a feel. She drilled an elbow backward into the sound of breathing and felt teeth give under the blow. For a moment she was free of them—standing on her own two feet, nobody dragging her anywhere.

That’s when she saw how well the other two women were faring. The smaller one, with chestnut hair, was holding off at least three bangers with her metal pipe, and to judge from the blood, that’s not all she’d been doing with it. The blonde didn’t seem to need weapons. She moved in a slow, ready circle, hissing beneath her breath in words that sounded Asian to Faith’s untrained ear. When she struck, she struck hard and fast, kicking one boy right in the jaw, martial-arts style.

Two men already lay unconscious at her feet.

Someone grabbed Faith’s ankle and yanked her down into the wet garbage. It was the man who’d tried to strangle her. She kicked out at him, sending his kneecap into a world of pain, even as tattoo-boy got her pinned by the shoulders.

“You coulda just taken it, you stupid bitch,” he whispered over the frenzied barking of the hurt dog. He exuded a hatred that frightened her even worse than his words did. “Now we gotta finish it. Right here. Right—”

Then he slumped, unconscious, down onto her.

“Yeah,” muttered the woman called Dawn as, having dispatched this final threat, she dragged his inert form off Faith and rolled him against the brick wall. “Blah blah blah. Don’t these idiots know that they expend energy with all that bad-guy bullshit?”

Then she extended a helping hand.

Faith looked, dazedly, from her to the smaller, darker-haired woman.

That one dropped her metal pipe with a clang and swept her shoulder-length hair out of her face. “All done,” she announced.

She was right.

The remaining gang members had scattered. The dog had stopped barking to hobble closer to some of the forms that lay, insensible to the rainfall, on the alley floor. It snuffled them warily, looking from them to Dawn.

They’d won.

“We should probably head out ourselves, unless we want a lot of extra attention,” said Dawn, bending to make the offer of her hand even more obvious, more impatient. “I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to stay under the radar just now.”

She had unusual, green-gold eyes. Something about them disturbed Faith…but she couldn’t ignore the woman indefinitely.

She took the offered hand—and the impressions that came with it.

A sterile environment—lots of white, lots of metal. Almost impervious to pain, to wounds. Powerful emotional shields…shields that had begun to crack. A circle of concerned women, strong women, seeking something. And a sense of closure, of triumph beyond the fight….

Something in Dawn seemed to say,
At last.

And that familiarity!

As soon as she could, Faith released the woman’s hand. Faith tried to hide her confusion with a fleeting smile, but she didn’t need to be able to read people to know she hadn’t fooled either of them.

Quickly, she bent and gathered the hurt, wet dog into her arms, so that she wouldn’t have to shake the other woman’s hand. Not yet. Not so soon after…

Faith wasn’t sure after what. But touching Dawn had been more than enough sensory input until she at least caught her breath.

Holding the dog helped. It was quickly calming, in the cradle of her arms, which calmed her in return. Dogs were so simple.
Hungry. Safe. Hurt. Safe. Friends.

It still cast wary looks toward Dawn, but otherwise it wiggled and licked raindrops off her arm, which calmed her even further.

Dawn stood slightly taller than Faith. The other woman, the one with the chestnut hair, was slightly shorter than her. That one smiled with a quiet grace that was almost as unsettling as Dawn’s touch.

“Pleased to meet you, Faith,” she said, her voice thick with an emotion Faith didn’t understand. “I’m Lynn White.”

She, too, had unusual eyes. And now, Faith recognized them.

From the mirror.

Her world bottomed out—even as Lynn finished the introduction.

“We’re your sisters.”

They left the little dog with a nearby veterinarian, who insisted on keeping it overnight to give it IV nutrients after he set its leg. He said it was a cocker mix, and from its level of malnutrition, it had probably been a stray for weeks.

Faith hardly paid attention as she guaranteed to cover the bill and collect the dog the next day.

Sisters?

By unspoken agreement, none of them broached that revelation until they’d found a secluded corner in a café where they could have some privacy. The delay had given Faith a chance to process the bombshell they’d just dropped on her…and to try to come to terms with how true it felt.

Her mother’s lifelong secrecy.

How very similar she and the others were in appearance—especially Dawn’s hair color, and their unique, green-gold eyes.

The sense of earnestness she read off both of them.

So, cradling her coffee between two hands, Faith didn’t bother arguing the idea, no matter how mind-boggling it was. Instead, she simply asked, “You’re my
half
sisters?”

Dawn and Lynn exchanged telling glances. “Not exactly,” said Lynn.

“You mean…my mom had more than one daughter?” The birth certificate had said
Single Birth. Older? Younger?

“No, you’re her only child. As far as we know.”

Faith was out of options.

“Here’s how it is.” Dawn leaned across the table in her intensity. “You’re the product of artificial insemination. Tamara Hallwell may be your birth mother—”

“Corbett,” whispered Faith. “She’s Tamara Corbett.”

“—but she’s not your biological mother.”

“I know it’s a shock.” Lynn covered Faith’s hand in sympathy, before Faith thought to draw back. It happened again.

Sheltered life. Scholarship. The clicking of a computer keyboard. Recent betrayal by her father figure. Love…

Faith snatched her hand free, but not before she’d gotten that last, definite impression. Lynn White was in love with someone. But she was here, instead of with him. Out of concern for Faith.

“I’m sorry,” she said to her—
her sister
—at the same time as Lynn.

Lynn smiled her sympathy, instead of touching again. “I was pretty stunned when Dawn showed up and told me, too. But things were already a mess, at that point.”

“Apparently Corbett is the name your birth mother took after she ran off, pregnant with you,” Dawn continued. She had a more direct manner. “From what we can tell, she answered an ad to be a surrogate mother. She was implanted with three fertilized embryos, just like Lynn’s and my surrogate mothers were. But somehow she convinced the folks who hired her that she wasn’t pregnant. Gave up on the promise of a $50,000 payoff to do it, too.”