The Grendel Affair

“We need to speak with the boss after she and Roy are finished,” Ian told him.

Moreau’s pale blue eyes regarded me with absolutely zero expression. “I was about to request the same of you and Agent Fraser on behalf of Madame Sagadraco.” He opened a door behind us that appeared to have been part of the wood-paneled wall. Inside was a small conference room with a table and six chairs. With a pale, elegant hand, he indicated that we precede him.

Once we were inside, he closed the door. “Please be seated.”

We did. Ian and I sat on one side of the table, with Moreau and his iPad on the other. Except for the fact that the iPad wasn’t a file folder, the setup felt uncomfortably like the precinct interrogation room from last night.

Ian started to speak, and Moreau held up a hand. “Madame has requested that we wait for her.”

Ian sat back, with him and Moreau wearing identical poker faces.

Oh boy.

With the faintest of clicks, the door opened and Vivienne Sagadraco came in the room. The three of us automatically stood.

“Please be seated,” she said. Moreau held a chair out for her.

Ian spoke before Moreau could. “Ma’am, after we left Green-Wood this afternoon, the vampire Mac encountered last night tried to kidnap her near the Twenty-fifth Street subway station—an abduction with the intent of killing her. He acted as if he knew her, but Mac had never seen him before last night.”

Moreau didn’t blink an eye. The only reaction from Vivienne Sagadraco was to lean forward and steeple her long fingers in front of her face.

“You don’t seem surprised,” I ventured carefully.

“I assure you, Agent Fraser,” the boss said, “today has been abundantly full of surprises—every one of them unpleasant.”

I smiled weakly. “Sounds like my day, ma’am.”

Vivienne Sagadraco settled back in her chair. “Why don’t you tell me about your day, Agent Fraser?”

After I found enough spit to swallow, I did. I left nothing out, and relayed the conversation with the vamp word for word. Then Ian and I told them what we’d discovered about the Tarbert family.

“Where is this flash drive now?” Sagadraco asked me.

“Kenji Hayashi has it. I don’t believe he had time to look at it before the meeting, so he’s probably doing it now.”

“The assassin from Green-Wood was unable to shed any light on the identity of her employer,” Sagadraco said. “The transaction was completed by leaving instructions in an obscure volume in the main branch of the New York Public Library. The payment was deposited in a library coat locker. Our examination uncovered that the assassin works there part-time.”

“A librarian?” I blurted.

Vivienne Sagadraco’s eyes went cold and hard. “I would think you of all people, Agent Fraser, would not be fooled by outward appearances.”

I felt the blood rush to my face, and I had to clutch my hands under the table to stop them from shaking. The boss was pissed—at me—and while I had no idea why, I think I was about to find out.

“Unless we discover otherwise, we will assume that the assassin’s services were secured by the vampire you encountered.” Sagadraco paused. “I have learned a great deal today, and not all of the unpleasant revelations came from Director Anderssen.” She cast the barest glance at Moreau. “Alain?”

“I have discovered the identity of our traitor,” Moreau said. He touched the iPad’s screen and turned it so we could see the photo. It was the vampire from last night and today, bundled up like he had been today, smiling and shaking hands with an equally happy-looking woman with a blond ponytail and wearing an all-too-familiar green sweater.

It was me.

12

IT took me a good five seconds to find words, another five to get them out. “Ma’am, that ain’t me.”

I cringed to myself. Way to sound like a hick to the boss, Mac. You can take the girl out of the mountains, but fear of being eaten by your dragon boss brings out the mountain in the girl.

“This photo is from a surveillance camera mounted outside of Saga Partners Investments,” Moreau said. “This particular scene was recorded at eleven thirty-five yesterday morning at the café across the street.”

“That’s him, but it’s not me.”

“Who is he, Agent Fraser?”

“That’s the vampire from SoHo last night and Brooklyn today. Those were the only times I’ve ever set eyes on him in my life.”

You have to believe me, I wanted to shout. But they didn’t have to believe me; they had photographic evidence smack-dab in front of them, complete with a date and time stamp, and I couldn’t prove otherwise. The homeless man was the only witness last night, and today the vampire was gone by the time we came up from the subway station. Hell, either him or one of his MiB buddies had even cleaned up his blood first.

I’d been set up.

This was officially a nightmare.

I locked eyes with Moreau. “You know who he is, don’t you?”

Without taking his eyes from mine, he touched the bottom of the screen again, and the photo changed to a scene I didn’t recognize, but it was the same vampire. “Charles Warrenton Fitzpatrick the Third. He previously worked for the CIA as a handler.”

I froze. “Handler?”

“A point of contact for their undercover agents.”

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse.

Someone was setting me up to not only be fired, but probably killed, if not by the vampire CIA agent, then by my own employers. I was shaking in my snow boots, but I was also mad as hell. Whoever had painted a bull’s eye on me wasn’t here, so I turned my anger on the vampire in the room with me. “So what is it that I’m supposed to be all happy about with this Charlie Fitzpatrick?”

“Unknown,” Moreau said.

“You mean unknown until you get it out of me.”

Silence.

“We’re merely seeking an explanation, Agent Fraser,” Vivienne Sagadraco said.

Then they’d turn me over to the Vulcan mind meld people.

“You said previously a CIA handler,” Ian said to Moreau.

“That is correct.”

“Who’s he working for now?”

“Unknown. But it appears he is working in a similar capacity.”

“You said this was taken at eleven thirty-five yesterday?” Ian asked.

“Correct.”

“The photo of Mac in Adam Falke’s pocket, did you discover when that was taken while reviewing the break room tape?”

“I did.” Moreau brought up the security camera’s version of that photo on his screen, the one where I had a cookie in each hand. The date was yesterday. The time was 11:00 a.m., which gave me plenty of time to get across the street for some vamp schmoozing. Great. Just great. I resisted the urge to kick something.

Ian indicated the tablet. “May I?”

Moreau slid it over to him.

“Is this icon for the break room video?” Ian asked.

Moreau nodded. “For a twelve-hour period beginning at six yesterday morning through six last night.”

Ian glanced at me, then his attention was back on the tablet. “Mac, you said you ate cookies several times yesterday.”

“Yes.” I failed to see how bringing up my cookie addiction could do anything but get me fired and/or killed quicker.

Ian fast-forwarded the video until I appeared again. The time indicator read 12:15. Again it left plenty of time to get back from the café across the street.

A small smile creased Ian’s lips. “Makenna Fraser is no traitor. But then I already knew that.”

He isolated the three photos and dragged them so that they were side by side.

“What do you see, Mac?” he asked me.

I leaned in for a closer look. There I stood in the first photo eating a cookie, with another in my hand lined up to be devoured next. Powdered sugar was sprinkled down one side of my sweater. At least in the third photo I was only eating one cookie. Aw jeez, I hadn’t even wiped off the powdered sugar from the previous cookie raid.

Wait a minute.

My eyes went to the middle photo of me and the yuppie vampire. The vampire was in profile, but my twin was almost facing the camera straight on. I could clearly see the front of the sweater.

“No powdered sugar,” I said, almost to myself.

Ian sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Not one speck.” He showed Moreau and the boss. “It’s on her sweater in the exact same place at ten and twelve fifteen in the break room, but not at eleven thirty-five across the street.”

“I didn’t have time to go to lunch,” I remembered, “so I had another cookie.”

“Security has your hand scan indicating that you left at eleven thirty-one and returned at eleven fifty-five,” Moreau said.

“I was at my desk during that time,” I said. “Check the bull pen video. I may have cookie issues, but I’m no traitor.”

Alain Moreau and Vivienne Sagadraco exchanged a concerned glance.

Moreau lowered the tablet. “I no longer need to check. It was not you.”

“You have our apologies, Agent Fraser,” Vivienne Sagadraco told me. “I had hoped there was a logical explanation. Now we have one.”

I was even more confused, if that was possible. “Apology accepted, ma’am. But there’s not a damned thing logical about that second photo. It’s not me, but she could be my twin. She’s even wearing the same clothes.”

“Not your twin, Agent Fraser. Your doppelganger.”

“My what?”

“A doppelganger is the paranormal double of a living person,” Sagadraco said.

“I’ve been xeroxed?” I heard myself ask.

“Historically to see one’s doppelganger was a harbinger of death. In modern times, they are often used to take the place of a person for nefarious purposes.”

“Framing me for corporate treason is plenty nefarious.” ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">