Dead Heat (Alpha & Omega 4)
Page 45“That would be terrific,” Leslie told her. “Thank you.”
Miss Baird raised her chin. “That child was in my class,” she said. “I feel responsible for what happened. Is there any way I could be informed what happens?”
“Of course,” said Anna before anyone else could refuse her. She pulled out her card, the one with nothing but the name “Anna Smith” in calligraphic writing on it and an e-mail address, and handed it to her. “E-mail me, and I’ll tell you what I can.”
“This is Dr. and Mrs. Miller,” Anna told Leslie, not quite comfortable saying, I don’t think they are competent to get themselves home. Hopefully Leslie would notice on her own. “They are our victim’s parents. I think they’ve been questioned enough.”
“Maybe Ms. Edison and I should see them home,” said Miss Baird. “I’m not sure either of them should be driving.” She looked at Ms. Edison. “If you drive them, I’ll follow and bring you back here.”
“I think that would be a very good idea,” said Anna, relieved. She made sure that the Millers had cards for the Cantrip agents and Leslie so that they could call with any questions and walked the four of them down the hall and out the door.
“She’s really gone.” Sara Miller looked up at her husband. “Our little girl is gone.”
He put his arm around her and said, “She’s been gone for a while.”
Dr. Miller looked over his shoulder and met Anna’s eyes for an unsettling moment. “Yes,” he said.
“Dr. Miller, we cannot promise that,” Anna said. “I can promise that we will find the person responsible and make sure that it never happens to anyone else.”
Ms. Edison stopped to frown at Anna. “How can you promise that? It’s a fae. You don’t even know what it can do.”
“I’ve worked with Special Agent Fisher before,” Anna said. “And my husband … Charles gets things done.” She turned back to the Millers. “We’ll find out what happened to her, and we’ll take care of the fae who took her.”
“Okay,” said Dr. Miller. “Okay.” He led his wife out the door.
“I’ll be back,” Ms. Edison said after the doors closed behind the Millers. “But the doors are all locked from the outside, so if you need to leave before I get back, just make sure the door is latched.”
“Terrorists,” Leslie was saying when Anna returned, “are people who commit violent acts against people with the purpose of coercing a population or their government. Hey, Anna, welcome back.”
“Yes,” Charles said.
Leslie nodded and then looked at Marsden. Leeds, Anna saw, was sliding the fetch-bundle into a large evidence bag.
“Marsden,” Leslie said. “I’ve done my homework on you, on both of you. You’re innovative and capable, even if the thing you’re best at is ticking off the higher-ups. It was your people, Cantrip analysts, who first alerted us—that would be the FBI—that the fae are sending out … a few individuals who have particularly nasty histories and letting them loose on the general population.”
Charles made one of his noises, and Leslie nodded at him. “Hah. I thought you might have noticed what the fae were doing. The FBI has been hoping that you people would contact us so that we can work together. Or at least talk about working together.”
He didn’t say anything, and Anna abided by his judgment. Marsden was staring at Charles like he was a puzzle.
Join the club. Anna hid her smile.
Leslie, apparently deciding she wasn’t going to get an answer yet, continued. “The fae want to get our attention. We took out someone … something in Florida, a kelpie we think. It was eating people who swam in its lake. There have been other incidents, too. Our analysts think it’s probably a negotiation tool, a ‘look what we’ve been saving you from all these years; you humans better start thinking about how the negotiations are going to proceed’ kind of thing. That’s the optimistic view. The pessimistic view is that this is the first wave of a war that we’re not sure we can win because the only thing that we know about the enemy comes from folktales and what they themselves have told us. They might not be able to lie, but they left a whole freaking lot out.”
Charles angled his face a little, considering her question. Finally he said, “About what you do.”
That was news to Anna. Though, to be fair, she wasn’t actively involved in everything he did for the packs or his father. She wasn’t honestly certain that Bran would be upset about the fae attacking regular people. She might love her father-in-law, but she was not blind to his faults. He was focused on the werewolves to the exclusion of anything else.
There was also the possibility that Charles hadn’t been aware of the attacks until Leslie told them. Some of his reputation for awesome cosmic powers came from not telling anyone how much he knew about anything. Thus leaving it to other people to assume the answer was “everything.” The rest of his reputation was wholly deserved.
Charles glanced at Leeds or maybe at the remains of the fake Amethyst Miller. “There was some question about what side we’d come down on, if any.”
“That’s what I thought,” Leslie said. She waved her arms around the room. “I’m hoping that your presence here means that you’ve decided to help?”
“All right, who are you people?” Marsden waved his hand vaguely at Charles and Anna.
“This thing is really pretty cool,” Leeds announced from the floor, as though he had entirely missed the conversation going on ten feet away. “I never thought I’d see one of these in person. Just think of the kind of power that can take a mannequin—something, anything, shaped to look vaguely human—and make it walk and talk and act human. Well, mostly human, anyway. And it fooled people for months. I suppose it could have been a doll or a clay figure, but a bundle of sticks is traditional. I think that this ribbon must have been something the original child wore. I also think, though I can’t swear to it without taking it apart, that there is some hair here as well.” He spoke with the intense enthusiasm of a miner discovering gold for the first time.