The Children and the Blood (21 page)

Feeling more the child than ever, Harris left the room.

Dozens of eyes watched as he left the building, but he ignored them all. The drive home was a blur, and when he finally reached his apartment, it took three tries to get the key into the lock.

The walls echoed with questions, the same ones he’d asked all day. As he lowered himself onto the couch and tossed the keys onto the coffee table, he glared out the windows at the obnoxiously beautiful day. Blue skies. Not a cloud to be seen. If there was any justice in the universe, it would’ve been pouring down rain, desert climate be damned.

Because this would just make it that much easier for her to get away.

One hand rubbing at the knot on the back of his head, he sighed. City roadblocks. Police patrols throughout the suburbs and the metro area. And they hadn’t caught her. In the time it had taken to get everything in place, she’d slipped right past them, and from what he could tell by the chief’s statement, neither a sighting nor a clue had been found since. That she’d had help was certain. That her help was essentially anonymous – and presumably as dangerous as her – was equally assured.

And only by a ‘miracle’ or whatever, Malden hadn’t been added to her body count.

Harris leaned back on the cushions, trying to keep breathing. They’d take his badge. They’d sit him on administrative leave – such a nice, vague term. Investigations would follow. Culpability and other such things would be determined. And then…

He didn’t know. If the investigations went the way he suspected, firing was certain and prison was a decent possibility. Anything could happen if they tried to charge him in connection with yesterday’s events, though at a minimum he’d be treated for mental instability.

The report on her diary came back to him. Maybe the cops just hadn’t understood what they’d read at the time.

But regardless, Internal Affairs and the notorious Sheldon wouldn’t be happy to leave matters at ‘girl spontaneously combusted, case closed’. Hell, he wouldn’t be happy leaving it that way. He’d tear the case apart to determine what really happened, if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.

He’d want to know the truth.

Even if the truth was insane.

Time passed. He paced the room. He watched the clock tick around. He tried cleaning, but ended up breaking two glasses in the sink. He was too awake for coffee, too tired for tea, and the thought of food made his stomach turn. Sleep was a joke, and the idea of flipping on the TV was absurd. The plethora of cop dramas annoyed him on the best of days, and he knew what would be on the news.

The sun sank beyond the skyline and the city faded into purple shadows. Streetlights peppered the scenery, and gradually, windows began to glow in the darkness.

And still, the phone hadn’t rung.

Grimacing, he crossed the room, grabbed the keys from the table, and then headed for the door. There had to be something. A blip on the tapes. A piece of evidence they’d missed. Something, somewhere to prove he and Malden weren’t to blame.

And he couldn’t just keep destroying his apartment, one dish at a time.

His car found its way across town and, in the parking lot, he blinked, barely remembering how he’d gotten there. Shoving the gearshift into park, he climbed out and then thumbed the automatic locks on the key fob. At this time of night, the lot was nearly empty. Cutting across the parking spaces beneath the glow of the streetlamps, he headed for the side door to the station.

The swipe card still worked, and in short order, he was upstairs in the vast array of desks that made up the main office. Weaving through the room, he paused as he reached the place where he and Malden had been stationed.

He drew a sharp breath, and then flicked on his computer. The files were easily located, stored in the customary places on the server, and double-clicking swiftly, he waited impatiently as they loaded.

A window opened. The security tapes started. And it was just as the chief said.

Nothing.

Just… nothing. Static. Minutes and minutes of impenetrable static.

The recording rolled on and greeted him with a black screen once complete. Trembling, he reached out, smacking the playback button again.

Static.

She’d walked away and not a single camera had caught anything. Not a scream, not a flicker of her face. Half a dozen cameras in that hallway, and between the fire and the damned sprinklers, there wasn’t a shred of evidence left to exonerate them from this ludicrous fantasy.

The end of the tape. He hit the keyboard again.

He’d never been one for fantasy. He preferred reality, with all its flaws. He’d just tried to make them right. And then this girl came along.

The keyboard was going to break if he kept hitting the keys this hard.

Malden could still die. His whole legacy would be destroyed in the ensuing investigation. Criminal negligence, they were saying now. What would they say when weeks went by and the girl was still free? Would they blame Malden for his own injuries? Or say Harris had done it all?

He couldn’t stop seeing her face through the flames. The impossible, inconceivable flames that hadn’t burned her and melted metal like it was nothing.

She didn’t have an incendiary device. She hadn’t been covered in retardant. She’d just combusted. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to prove it.

The screen flickered.

Harris froze.

Smacking the mouse, he cued up the recording and played it again. Static and copious amounts of nothing, and yet for just a moment, he’d seen something else.

Damn it all, he’d seen her face.

Breathing hard, he gripped the mouse and tried not to throw it across the room. Malden could die. He was going insane. And some little human torch just–

An image of the hallway flashed in front of him, and then disappeared.

“What the hell?” he whispered.

He rewound the security feed. A flash of hallway. A bit of her face.

The tape played again. There was Malden. He could see himself in the corner of the screen.

For minutes on end, he watched the recording over and over, and with every pass, the images grew clearer and the static began to fade. The whole thing was right there, plain as day on the tape the chief said was beyond saving.

But it had taken twenty viewings to see it.

Malden walked down the hall, escorting the girl in her department sweats and handcuffs. A few paces ahead, Harris reached the base of the stairs. And then she skidded to a stop, her back to the camera and her head shaking furiously. She’d been scared of something. The FBI guy. Harris remembered hearing the man’s voice coming down the stairs.

Fire rushed over her. Up her arms, over her body, and oh sweet merciful… Harris wanted to turn away, but he couldn’t for fear he’d wake up and find the cleared recording was just a dream.

Malden fell back, thrashing in pain. The girl stumbled away. The flames… they just vanished, no doubt about it. Flames. No flames. Not a burn on her.

She ran. In the corner of the screen, he watched himself fumble for the gun. He should have been faster. He could have crippled her. Shot her leg and gotten answers. He shouldn’t have let shock slow him down.

The recording ended.

He hit the mouse again, and then leaned back in his chair, thinking of the girl in the interrogation room yesterday. Her eyes had been like smudges of shadow in her bloodless face, and she barely seemed to understand what was happening. Fear radiated off her in waves, and only conviction of her guilt had kept Scott from seeing it.

“What were you really afraid of?” he whispered to the girl on the screen. “Because if you could do that… you certainly weren’t afraid of the police.”

Unexpectedly, anger rose up and, dream or not, he turned away from the monitor. He’d almost pitied her. Seen a kid where Scott saw a homicidal lunatic, and thought there might’ve been more going on than met the eye. She’d looked so much like a victim, after all, and stared at him like a wounded animal in the hunter’s sights. But the whole while…

He realized he was crushing the pencil cup; the fine mesh sides were almost completely bent inward. Carefully, he released his grip and returned his eyes to the screen.

The girl went up in flames and then ran, leaving Malden dying. He hit the button to play the recording again.

No, she certainly hadn’t been afraid of them.

A shadow fell across the room and he looked up to see a human wall blocking the light from the hallway. The wall approached, calmly moving between the desks and steadily resolving into an identifiable person.

He hesitated. Mr. Brogan. The FBI agent.

“Good evening, Detective,” the man said, his constrained voice everything Harris would expect in a fed, though perhaps not one with the dimensions of a Viking.

At Harris’ silence, Brogan smiled. “How is the department’s investigation coming?”

Harris’ face darkened. There was humor around Brogan’s eyes, as though he was enjoying a joke, and the expression was the last thing Harris needed right now.

“It’s progressing,” he said shortly.

“Good to know,” Brogan answered, unperturbed. “I’d like the chance to talk with you about that. Is there somewhere we could speak privately?”

“I’m busy. Maybe later.”

The humor increased, though Brogan said nothing. His eyes went to the screen and Harris grimaced, cursing himself for not turning the monitor off. And then he froze.

Brogan was watching the tape.

“Interesting recording,” the man commented. His gaze slid back to Harris. “Yet you’re the only one seeing past the static, am I correct?”

“Who are you?”

“Someone who would like to speak privately.”

Harris headed for the nearest interrogation room.

Brogan set his briefcase down on the metal table as the lights flickered on. “I suppose I should start by telling you that I am not with the FBI, though some of my associates once were. I represent a… group… with specific interest in capturing the young lady you detained, for reasons connected to what you experienced yesterday.”

Noting the pause for later review, Harris regarded the man. “I’m listening.”

“To put it simply, the young lady and those with her are not – for lack of a better word – what you would consider ‘normal’.”

“Human.”

Brogan made a hedging noise. “No, they are technically that. They simply have special skills that they choose to use in the service of their own ends. Doing as they please, or as they deem necessary. The latter of which you saw yesterday afternoon.”

“Burning people alive.”

“If it suits their needs… yes.”

“And how do you fit in?”

“My associates and I work to stop them. Many in our number have, in one way or another, been hurt by her type in the past, much as you have. And thus we try to prevent them from being able to harm anyone again.”

“How?”

“Various methods. Whatever is necessary to ensure the innocent remain safe.”

Harris paused. The answer truly defined vague, but he wasn’t sure it mattered. He needed answers. “Why can’t anyone else see the security videos?”

Brogan chuckled deprecatingly. “Fire is only one tool in their arsenal, Detective. Another is remaining invisible to those you would call ‘normal’ humans – again, when it suits them, and barring the unusual event of someone withstanding their own discomfort long enough to break past the ‘static’ as you’ve done. Trust me when I say the latter is rare.”

Filing the information away with the rest, Harris’ gaze dropped to the table, remembering the girl in a room identical to this one. Invisibility. Fire. And she’d sat there the whole time, giving every sign of just being a frightened teenager.

“So she was setting us up?” he asked, anger beneath his tone.

“Or seeing what you knew. And when it no longer served her purpose to remain…”

Harris’ memory went back to the moment before she set Malden on fire.

“But she was afraid of you,” he said, his voice only barely making it a question.

A small smile crossed Brogan’s face. “We’ve had some success in stopping her kind before,” he admitted. “We are similar to her in skill, Detective, but there the similarity ends. Our goal is to bring an end to what her kind have done. We fight fire with fire, yes, but only to the degree necessary to achieve that goal. Yet most of her allies don’t even know we exist, and that anonymity is our best defense and weapon in the war to stop them.”

For a moment, he stared at the man, trying to process what he’d heard. He felt like he’d lost sight of the edges of the map hours ago.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

“We want your help.”

“Why?”

“Several reasons,” Brogan answered. “For one, you are an ordinary human and, to their view, unworthy of consideration. Yet you can see them and therefore, if you choose, you can be a threat.”

Harris said nothing.

“And secondly,” the giant continued. “There is this.”

Flipping open the briefcase, he withdrew two photographs and then tossed them onto the table. Blown-up images met Harris’ gaze, both slightly pixilated but easily recognizable.

He stared.

In the nearest photograph, the girl was across a city street, staring directly at the camera. She stood next to a hotel he recognized, though it’d been closed for years. Two men were with her, African Americans, one of whom looked between forty-five and fifty, and the other in his early twenties.

The second image clearly originated from a security camera, and though nearly useless as all cheap video cameras were, the grainy picture nevertheless caught the younger girl, looking very much alive. The young man with her had his face turned from the camera and was blurry to boot. But the logo on the girl’s sweatshirt was visible.

A thrill ran through him. Brighton Modisett. The damned prep school was only a few minutes from here.

“Where’d you get these?”

“From associates,” Brogan answered cryptically. “The photo of the younger girl we obtained through contacts who
are
actually with the FBI. The other originated from one of our own who, unfortunately, was unable to catch the girl when her companions blew up a spray paint can in the street.”