Hidden Trump (Bite Back 2) (37 page)

“I assume you’ve come to see me, rather than Jen?”

Agent Ingram nodded. “Yup. Dropped by on the chance you’d be here. Just a few small points.”

I hid my sigh behind a sip of the rum, and let it work its magic on me. At least he hadn’t come in brandishing cuffs and dragging Griffith along.

“Where’s your partner?” I asked.

Ingram looked uncomfortable. “We had to split up. He’s checking some stuff on the other side of town.”

Yeah, for sure
. Suddenly, this was a whole lot more interesting. Ingram wanted to talk to me without witnesses. At least, without FBI witnesses.

I raised my brows. “Jen okay to stay?” I saw her twitch with irritation out of the corner of my eye, but I wanted to see what he’d say.

He nodded and struggled to settle on his chair.

“Ah, dammit all,” he said. “Ray’s on a wild goose chase. He is…unimaginative. And not cleared for certain projects.”

“Uh-huh,” I replied. Anthracite, for example.

He’s trying to set me up for a sucker punch.

He finally relaxed and tilted his head to one side. “Y’know, Ms. Farrell, there’s more…’scuse me, more horse shit talked about you than a whole roomful of politicians.”

I just shrugged.

“An’ my interest must be like a red, red rose. Feed it horse shit and it jes’ keeps on growing. Lemme give y’all an example,” he said. He pulled out some notes and perched a ridiculous little set of reading glasses on his twitchy nose.

“Emily Schumacher.” He stopped me before I could say anything. “I haven’t bothered the family. Just past the anniversary, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for an answer; he knew the date perfectly well. “Let’s see. Three men, no known motive. There was a firefight, two police officers killed, little Emily taken hostage, yadda, yadda. You misplaced your partner in all the excitement, tracked them down, called in the SWAT team and it all ended well.” He peered at me over the glasses. “Y’see, horse shit, premium grade.”

No, it didn’t happen like that. But I wasn’t about to explain. At the moment, I was more intrigued by how he’d reached his conclusion than worried about where he was going afterwards. I had a feel for the way he worked. He’d explain the first part to me, to soften me up for the next part.

“Y’know, we live in a terrible age,” he said. “Ruled by bean counters. And bean counters got their claws into the police like nothing else. So after I got this here report, I looked at the bean counters’ stuff. The police do an audit on every SWAT operation. Every one. Can you imagine? Jeez, and every time a gun is fired too.”

Yeah, not the way they do it in Texas, Agent Ingram. There wouldn’t be enough paper.

“So important, this stuff, so important. And y’know what?” he said, peering at me over his glasses.

Okay, here it comes.

“Not one of the SWAT team fired a weapon that day. Not one.”

Oh, crap.

“You, on the other hand, Ms. Farrell, you were lugging around that there cannon of yours and the bean report says you fired it dry.”

Ingram leaned back in his chair and tossed the report aside. He took off his glasses and chewed the end thoughtfully for a minute.

“Twelve round clip. Three men. Only two of them with .45 bullet wounds. I’ve seen your shooting scores, Ms. Farrell. Care to comment?”

“It was dark.”

“More horse shit,” he said cheerfully. “No offense.”

Athanate can move faster than humans, an ability that develops slowly over time. I was fortunate that the three rogues I’d killed weren’t old, in Athanate years, and I’d had a chance against them, even if it’d taken nine shots to nail the second. But I couldn’t tell him any of that.

“Four other policemen tried earlier on. Two died and two wounded. You went in alone, ahead of the SWAT team, shot two of them and, uh, defenestrated the third.”

Seven syllables
said my demon gleefully,
seven syllables. Dee-yuh-fen-es-trah-ay-ted.

“Oh, and this.” He held up a single sheet of paper between thumb and forefinger like it was dirty. “This claims to be the complete forensics and coroner’s reports on the three bodies. John Doe, one, two, three. Bullet wounds and massive trauma and…nothing. No blood tests, no DNA, no fingerprints, no scans, no documentation, no photos, nothing at all. Not even details of the disposal of the bodies. And no signatures.”

The bodies had disappeared into the Obs laboratories for the scientists to study. Of course no one would sign that document.

“And your little problem at Cheesman Park on Tuesday,” he said, and Jen’s head twitched around. I hadn’t told her anything, of course. Ingram spotted that, too. “Glad to see those bruises cleared up so quickly, by the way. Now, you didn’t have a gun on you then. You took two of them out and were having a damn good set-to with the third. They weren’t just muggers strolling in the park, were they, Ms. Farrell?”

I pursed my lips and shrugged again.

“And I’ve seen some fancy fighting in my time. FBI Taekwondo champion in my youth. You wouldn’t believe it now.” He chuckled. “Seen some moves, but I never seen them like that.”

 “
Dentou-tekidenai
,
” I muttered. “No style.” Competition is about points and styles. Fighting is about winning. My opponent that night had certainly understood.

“And when they ran away, flat-out sprint, a couple of them carrying injured men like they weighed nothing. Some muggers, Ms. Farrell. Anyhow. The army feeds me horse shit. The police sure rate you highly, but behind your back, they think you’re some kinda woo-woo army experiment gone wrong. More horse shit. Now Captain Morales knows something, but he won’t say squat. And it all boils down to this: you were out there doing something for ten years that no one who knows will talk to me about. And now you’re doing something else that someone else really doesn’t want you to do, and no one who knows wants to talk to me about that either.”

I wondered how high in the agency Ingram could reach. If Colonel Laine wasn’t able to use his contacts, then what about Agent Ingram? He was on the trail and with his resources he could stumble across the Athanate at any time. Hell, he already knew something about them from the phone tapping. Maybe it would be better to try and get him on our side. If it turned out he couldn’t work with us on Diana’s project, I was sure Skylur would require him to have a memory lapse.

We’d fallen silent and Ingram was watching me closely. It was a small mercy he didn’t have Athanate senses as well.

“Ms. Farrell, I’ve got no doubts you were in the army, and you did good things there, and I suspect your reluctance to talk to me comes from some agreement you had to make with them.”

Gods, he’d gotten so close on so little.

“Still,” he went on. “Anything that secret, it’s a problem. ’Cause if it’s so dammed secret, how do you know it’s doing what it should? And when I say secret, I mean the FBI National Security Director doesn’t know. I’m a-wondering if the Director of National Intelligence himself doesn’t know. Y’understand my point?”

Only too well. He’d put his finger on a problem I’d been having with Ops 4-10 ever since I had heard Colonel Laine’s news. Who was running the show now and who did they report to? I’d never had doubts when Laine had been running it. Now? I wasn’t sure any more.
Really
not sure.

How high in the FBI ranks was Agent Ingram? Could he have access to those guys?

 “You speak to those guys?” I asked.

“I’d get a nosebleed from the altitude,” he replied, which wasn’t confirmation or denial. He could play that game as well as I could.

I steadied myself, took some deep breaths, flicked an imaginary piece of fluff off my skirt. Ingram had just unknowingly signed up for a meeting with Diana and the colonel, if I could swing it. But he wasn’t finished yet.

“So’s anyway, I got to thinking,” Ingram continued. “If there’s one, maybe there’s more, and Lieutenant Krantz has been a most cooperative fella. And, y’know, it’s like there’s one of them blind spots you get in your eye.” He held up his pen in front of his face and moved it backwards and forwards near his eye. “But not in my eyes, in the military records. Guys and girls just disappear off the books and then maybe reappear a while later in a different unit, maybe with a different rank and pay grade. Not many folk, taking into account the whole military. Maybe a kinda short battalion, say five or six hundred.”

Again, close.

“And every request for clarification gets kicked up the chain of command. It’ll take time, but I guess we’ve got to find someone who knows what’s going on?”

He made it a question. He could see decisions being reached in my face.

“When Krantz was chasing me, I fed back through Colonel Laine. He spoke to someone and that someone had Krantz hauled off the case. Go ask Krantz who that was. It had to be someone in his chain of command that spoke to him. Maybe that’ll get you somewhere quicker.”

Ingram pursed his lips and nodded.

“You’ll make sure and tell Krantz that he’s done me a favor and I will repay it.”

Ingram smiled and nodded again, still waiting.

I laced my fingers together to still my nervous hands.

“You’re looking at two completely separate things. Give me till next week,” I said. “By then, you might have some idea who knows what in the army. And I hope I’ll be in a position to set up a meeting for the part that isn’t the army.”

“Yes, Agent Ingram,” Jen came in. “Hell, all I’ve heard is that Amber’s been doing good things and can’t talk because of some restrictions that aren’t her fault. I think some leeway would be in order.”

Ingram scratched his chin thoughtfully while he looked from one of us to the other, taking his time reaching a decision. I noted he didn’t say anything about needing to talk to a boss. That added to my impression he was far more senior than I first thought.

“I thank you, Ms. Kingslund, for your hospitality,” Ingram said, getting suddenly to his feet. “And I will hold you to that, Ms. Farrell. Keep in mind, I won’t stop looking in the meantime. And I won’t restrict my investigation.”

“Yeah. Fair enough.” I stood up, and in a moment of inspiration, I took a complete flyer. “Y’know that recording you played me? It’d be a great help if I had a copy.”

Ingram’s nose twitched and his eyes got all beady. The Taekwondo champion thought it would give him an advantage to have me in his debt. Maybe he was right. He took a tiny recording disk out of his Dictaphone and handed it over with a smile.

“Thanks,” I said. He nodded cordially back.

Jen saw him out, and I collapsed back on the sofa.

“He’s gone. You okay, honey?” Jen leaned against the doorframe.

“Yeah,” I sighed, rubbing my face.

“Just one more,” she said enigmatically, and went back out.

Tullah came in alone.

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself. What’s up?”

She sat stiffly on the sofa beside me.

“Ma was sort of right, I guess.”

“What, you’ve just realized I’m an evil Athanate?” I grinned at her.

“No! You’re not evil.”

“Good to hear. Okay, so what was she sort of right about?”

“My dragon,” Tullah said. “She’s not…safe.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “But you sort of knew that already, though.”

Tullah looked as frustrated as I felt.

“It’s different. It’s as if she wants things and they start to seep through into my head.”

“Like what?”

“I can’t talk about it yet. I have to get my head straight.” She hunched her shoulders. “I’ll keep working on my cases, but I need to steer clear of you and Ma for a while.”

“Look, Tullah, that doesn’t fly. You can’t tell me you’re being distracted and then say you’re okay to work.”

“I’m not distracted when I work. I’m distracted when you’re around.” Tullah pressed her hands down on her thighs, digging her fingers in. “She wants something from you.”

“And..”

“I can’t agree until I understand what it is. The Adept must incorporate the guide, not the other way around.”

“Sounds like a bit of good rote-learned wisdom,” I said. Which was not to say it wasn’t valid. But Tullah and Kaothos probably couldn’t manage to besiege Byzantium for another couple of days. “Okay, take off till Monday. Then we talk and settle this.”
Maybe with Mary and Liu.

She nodded agreement. I dug in my pack for my last set of cheap burn phones. “Keep this on you,” I said, handing one to her. “For emergencies, use this phone. I mean all kinds of emergencies, dragon included.” She nodded again, a brief smile flickering into view. “I’ll check my usual cell as well, but with people tracking it, I won’t keep it on.”

She took the phone and looked uncertain. The implications of going off and doing it on her own were sinking in. Suddenly, all the pressure was on her to get things right.

“I think it’s a good idea,” I said. “With everyone out there so damned interested in me, all of us would be better off someplace else for a while. In fact, I’m just about to tell Jen that.”

That raised a smile. “Good luck,” she said. Her eyes flicked up at me and then quickly back down to her hands, clasped on her lap. “Was it like this for you, with the Athanate stuff?”

“I don’t know, Tullah. Like what? I don’t know what’s going on in your head, but if you’re asking if I was confused and angry and upset at times, yes, it was like that.
Is
like that.”

“You don’t show it. You’re always, like, so in control.”

I snorted and shoved her gently towards the door. “Get out of here.”

She got, and Jen came back.

“Are we ready to go to this horse thing?” I asked.

“After what Agent Ingram was talking about, I’m not sure how to take that.” She smiled. “Anyway, we’re not. I have my new cowboy boots from Werner, and we both have to be in style.”

“As in?”

“Why, surely, country and western, honey.”

She’d left the right clothes out on my bed. Curly-brim Stetson, blue jeans and jacket, plaid shirt like a freaking tablecloth and a leather belt with a monster horsey buckle that I’d never have worn otherwise. Sigh. I decided to go along with it. I’d pick my battles.