Enforcer Ensnared (14 page)

Silver and red sparks
ignited around his hands, so faint at first that they were practically
invisible. He drew on his power so quickly he hoped his attacker would not see
the giveaway sparks of magical energy. Humans rarely saw things they didn’t
expect to anyway, so Blade felt partially safe with the speed he collected
himself.

Blade rose to his knees
and almost stumbled as his foot kicked something solid and shiny on the grass.
It appeared to be an Enforcer’s badge in a leather case and Blade instinctively
froze.
His
badge was inside the satchel, which still rested on the grass
near where he and Flame had sat.

A number of things happened
almost simultaneously. His attacker noticed the metal badge and visibly jerked.
A hand pressed to his jacket exactly where an inner pocket would be. Twin balls
of energy solidified in Blade’s hands, sparkling silver and red and looking
like something out of a comic book. His attacker’s eyes widened and he held his
hands out, palm up in the classic “Stop” signal.

“I’m an Enforcer,” he
stated with the presence and inherent power only another member could carry
off. “I don’t know what game you’re playing—”

“
I’m
an Enforcer,”
Blade cut him off curtly. His gaze snapped suspiciously back down to check the
badge. Idly he wondered if it was a forgery and what the hell was happening
here.

“Juniper,” the other man
stated calmly, and Blade’s mouth dropped in shock.

Each month a memo with a
new pair of “safe words” was sent to every member of the Enforcers. The point
of the safe words was to subtly verify “friendly” status out in the field when
one couldn’t speak freely. Blade released his energy and lowered his hands.

“Essence,” he confirmed.
For a moment the two men simply stared at each other, dumbfounded. Flame
grunted and he heard the crackle and snap of her energy, meaning any second now
the entire area around them was about to explode in fire.

“Shit,” he gasped and
turned to lunge protectively at his love.
“Flame, no!
They’re Enforcers!”

“Isobel!
Stop! They’re with us!” the other
man shouted.

As they raced to tackle
their respective partners, a blue-green ball of energy winked into existence
between Isobel’s manipulating hands.

Each wizard tackled his
witch. Blade dimly heard a hasty, angry exchange between the other two just as
Flame snarled at him. She snapped almost as if she wanted to bite his nose off
and a part of him desperately wanted to laugh.

“Blade, you stupid jerk,
I was just about to—”

“Get us into an
unbelievable mess of paperwork. Yes, my love, I know,” Blade cut her off before
she could say something in the heat of anger that might come back to bite her
later. “They’re Enforcers. I saw the guy’s badge. It dropped out when we were
struggling.”

“Badges can be faked,
that witch—”

“He knew the safe words,”
Blade insisted as his hands grasped her shoulders. “Flame, I promise, they’re with
us.”

Even with her reflective
glasses on Blade could so clearly imagine her sharp gaze narrowing at him. A
small crease appeared between her eyes as she frowned in thought. Blade slowly
released her and they stood up. Isobel and her partner were still exchanging
heated words as they held a nearly identical conversation.

As Blade and Flame got to
their feet the other two also stood up and they warily eyed one another.

The sandy-haired man
spoke first. “I’m Elias.” Large and solidly built, he exuded strength and
determination, the sort of sheer, stubborn, never-say-die attitude one often
needed as an Enforcer. “This is my partner Isobel. What the hell are you two
doing here?”

“I’m Blade, this is
Flame. We’ve been working on a joint task force with the humans. You must have
seen the internal reports?”

Isobel nodded warily. “We
have, and I know your partner in passing. This isn’t her,” she replied
challengingly.

Blade felt relief. If
Isobel knew Sage then maybe they could clear this up without egos being damaged
or blood being shed.

“Sage has been partnered
temporarily with someone else, another member of our joint crew. Flame and I
have been following a separate lead while Sage and Chase wrap up some
paperwork. She’d doing a database search for me as we speak.”

Isobel appeared
marginally appeased, though Elias still looked suspicious.

“So what are you doing
here?” he asked heatedly.

Blade glared at the man.

“We’ve been following the
drugs,” he insisted. “Someone who had been involved with the initial trials
told us his contact into the scenario had been Martine
Ormstron
.
How the hell did you get connected with her and why weren’t you warned off when
this is our case?”

“We recently wrapped up a
case and our suspect has been superficially involved in the managing side of
some tampering with magic and drugs,” Elias answered. “He’s small potatoes but
we wanted to
dot
all
the I
’s.
His records show consistent though small payments to Martine and she supplied
him with a few exotic drugs. We wanted to see if we could wrap her into our
package and make it neat.”

Blade barely managed not
to swear. Two cases dovetailing like this did occur, rarely, but it usually
didn’t pan out well for either party, as there was only so much suspect to go
around and one partnership always ended up having to give way to another.

“This woman is not only
involved with magically infusing essence into drugs,” Blade insisted, “but is
likely the connection to the middle man we need. She should connect to someone
who will be our connection to
Sarke
, the manufacturer
of the drug.”

“So if you find your
middle man you won’t need Martine,” Isobel countered. “Once you have your
middle man and his link to
Sarke
, Martine is just
gravy for you.
Whereas, for us, she could double our
suspect’s time in a cage.”

“Assuming you can keep
out of our way long enough for us to find our middle man,” Flame returned just
as icily.

An impasse had been
reached and the four of them exchanged weighted, hard glares. Once again Blade
felt eyes prickle along his skin. Turning his back to Flame he cast a quick
look away from the pair of Enforcers and saw Jarred walking down the street
with
a well
-worn black duffel slung over one shoulder.

Even though his steps
didn’t change tempo, Blade could feel the weight of curiosity and interest as
he glanced them over.

“Problem?” he asked
mildly as he came close enough to be in earshot. Blade stared hard at Elias and
Isobel,
then
finally shook his head.

“Small turf war,” he
explained.
“Seems our Martine has been a busy lady.
She’s connected to Isobel and Elias’s case, which has a minor impact on ours.”

“
Our
woman has
been aiding and abetting a known criminal,” Isobel stated, “currently awaiting
trial in our own system. Not only can we compound his charges with her under
our belts, but we can put her in a cage for a decent length of time as well.”

“We were discussing
Isobel and Elias having a small hiatus until we get ourselves a link between
Martine and our middle man and can confirm our middle man’s connection with
Sarke
,” Flame added.

“Well,” Jarred replied,
“if we can get out of full view of half the street, here, I can set this up and
we can at least see how good the reception is.”

“What have you got
there?” Elias asked, clearly intrigued as he eyed the duffel.

Jarred
smirked.

“Technology,
dear boy.
Eyes and ears that will be able to penetrate Martine’s computer and
phone systems through the wiring.
With luck we—or
I,
considering
the level of testosterone and magical energy weighing in the air between you
all—can search her files and calls and, with the backgrounds of the suspects
Blade and Flame have already compiled, we can hopefully find a match and our
middle man.”

The group moved back to
where Elias and Isobel had been largely hidden behind a small copse of trees. A
faintly uneasy silence descended between them all as Jarred set up his
equipment.

Elias watched eagerly,
clearly intrigued by the gadgets and devices, while the others kept their
thoughts to themselves. After a few minutes Elias started to ask Jarred a few
technical questions, and slowly the tension left the air between them.

“That’s a solid left hook
you have there, Isobel.” Flame finally broke the ice and Isobel and she talked
shop and compared maneuvers when fighting dirty and in close quarters.

Satisfied the two women
were not going to start another struggle and attempt to kill each
other,
Blade stepped closer to the men and entered the
technical discussion.

“They work it out?” Elias
spoke softly with a tiny nod toward the women when there was a natural pause
between them.

Blade nodded in response.

“Yeah, they’ll be fine.
They’re comparing styles and debating various techniques now,” he answered
quietly. He lifted a hand to his tender jaw and smirked.

“One of the best things
about being so dark skinned,” he said. “Unlike yours my bruise won’t be so
visible. You look like you walked into a door, Elias.”

The blond grimaced and
waved his hand, not bothering to touch his own bruise. “I’ve had worse I’m
sure. A day or two and it will go an interesting gray-green color and I’ll
frighten little old ladies and small children. I’ll live.”

Content, they returned to
discussing the potential of the high-tech gear Jarred had set up and was now
fiddling with.

“Okay, let’s see what we
have,” he said after another few minutes. The men leaned over to peer intently
as the women continued to chat between themselves. A few LEDs lit up on the
console and Jarred opened a window on the laptop he had attached to the
monitors. With a few keystrokes data began to race across the screen and they
appeared to be in business.

“I’ve got a memory
stick,” Jarred explained, “so we can download and save whatever any of us
decide might be important to our various investigations. I know
it’s
double handling, but Will found vast amusement
describing to me some of the…technical difficulties he’s experienced with you
guys in recent months. I decided it was safer to have multiple backups in case
my laptop dies a sudden and painful death, particularly with all the magical
adrenaline and testosterone that will likely start to fly around in the heat of
the moment. Now I
gotta
be honest, I don’t have a
warrant for any of this. Will that be an issue for the integrity of anyone’s
case?”

Elias shook his head in
the negative. “No, Isobel and I lodged our paperwork before we came out here.
Management knows we’re looking into Martine and keeping her under surveillance.
Anything we get on her and can explain rationally will be fine to use before
the Tribunal.”

“Nice,” Jarred commented
with a huffed out laugh. He typed a few keystrokes and the screen separated
into different boxes. “Okay, what I’m going to do is start downloading
everything into temporary files. That way if we get booted from the connection,
or if we have to close everything down in a hurry, we will still have what data
we did manage to download and can look through it later on at our leisure.”

Blade peered over the
large man’s shoulder, the screens scrolling through almost faster than he could
read them. The tiny hand-sized satellite hummed at their feet in the grass and
Jarred clicked open another window.

“There, got her phone
logs,” he said, satisfaction thick in his tone. “Okay, we’re downloading
emails, her browser bookmarks and her most frequently used website URLs. Let’s
start with the phone logs since we’re going to have to run cross-searches on
them, so we maybe can get something good on these first. Hmmm…”

Blade leaned closer, the
numbers Jarred scrolled down not ringing any bells with him. But then he had to
admit he had so few phone numbers memorized that his lack of recognition didn’t
necessarily mean much.

“Man, she doesn’t make
many calls,” Jarred commented.

Blade laughed. “That’s
pretty normal, considering most of us Mages don’t usually bother with cells.
Generally anyone who really needs to be contacted uses pagers. The technology
within them is much simpler and generally has a better life with us. These two
numbers here and here, though—they’re repeated fairly frequently,” he
suggested.

“Only a call or two every
week,” Jarred replied.
“Could be her sister or best friend.”

Even as he spoke Jarred
opened yet another window and logged into a federal database.

Blade’s eyebrows rose and
he gave the blond man a respectful glance.

“Either you’re a very
well-connected man,” he said, “or your ‘computer skills’ are a lot better than
I had accounted for.”