Enforcer Ensnared (18 page)

Flame frowned as she
thought it through.

“Maybe,” she finally
conceded. “And Circe knows I’m not saying we should deal Malone down for
helping us with
Sarke
. He’s skidded on so many
charges the bastard deserves everything he gets and worse.”

“Agreed,” Will
responded
. “
Sarke
has lost his
starry-eyed sexual partner, who is also not coincidentally his pusher to the
humans. His lab has been blown up and he’s been almost caught twice in a matter
of only a few days. We’ll get him. I just think it foolhardy to rush in on
Malone when we could possibly use him to a greater purpose without his
knowledge or consent. Heaven knows we won’t be getting anything useful out of
him from the moment he’s in custody. I know neither of you approve, but I want
to make the best of this situation before it all goes to hell on us and we need
to scramble and do our best with a load of shit.”

“I can see your point.”
Flame gave in only grudgingly. “But only for a day or two, right? We don’t want
to discover he has a plane waiting somewhere and we’ve run out of luck again.
We know
Sarke
has contacts in the college. Even
without his own lab and gear, with the college backing him he can start all
over again, maybe on a bigger scale now he knows how things need to run.”

“The academics now know
he’s been manufacturing drugs,” Will pointed out. “There isn’t a chance in hell
they’ll welcome him back with open arms and give him free rein again.”

“But I bet people owe him
favors,” Flame insisted. “Not to mention in academia a person’s reputation is
worth more than gold. A few threats here, a bit of blackmail there and he could
easily be back up and running in a matter of weeks, if not days.”

“Hmmm.”
Will seemed to mull this over for a
moment. “That’s a fair call, Flame, I hadn’t thought of that. I will make sure
to contact the college and send patrols around over the next few nights. Maybe
we could catch him in the act over there. It certainly would save us a lot of
trouble.”

“Okay,” Blade said after
a deep breath, and the air cleared from the heated discussion. “So where does
that leave us? Do we need to set up a roster for listening in on the phones so
we can spell Matthias and Julian?”

“Well for now— Hang on.”
Will’s voice became muffled as his door opened and a voice spoke in the
distance. A quick conversation took place and Will returned less than a minute
later.

“Guys?
They’ve got something. Call the main
conference room. Jarred, do you still have the number?”

“Yeah, buddy, I know it,”
Jarred assured Will.

“Great.
Call that in five minutes, we’ll conference call you in and update
everyone at once.
I’m rounding up the rest of the team and it will save
us having to wait for you all to make your way here.”

With that, Will hung up
and they looked at one another.

“Well at least we won’t
be bored.” She laughed.

Blade carefully placed
their affidavit in a manila folder and unzipped his satchel. He debated for a
moment whether to leave the documents in his office or whether they would be
safer at his home, in the floor safe.

Finally he decided that
if he ended up carrying the satchel around with him all night it would be
preferable to leaving it in a locked drawer here at work. Blade didn’t think
anyone would steal or move the document, and he could give it to one of their
administrators to file safely away, assuming he could find one of them. But the
document was so important he didn’t want to trust it to anyone outside the
team.

“Bored is the last thing
we ever are with you, Flame,” Blade replied a little belatedly as he zipped the
satchel back up and placed it on the table where he wouldn’t forget it.

“You’re not going to
leave it with an admin to lock away?” Flame asked. She didn’t appear concerned
or annoyed, more curious.

“I thought about it, but
I have a home floor safe I usually use. Besides, it sounds as if we’re going to
be reconnecting with the rest of the team, and if we move right back out again
someone else can baby-sit it or put it somewhere safe. It’s not that I don’t
trust anyone over here, but if we lose it then we’re screwed…or more likely
we’ll have to play tug-of-war with Elias and Isobel. Far safer all around to
just be a bit paranoid, I guess.”

Jarred leaned over the
table and punched another series of numbers into the phone. Flame and Blade
took seats so the three of them were crowded around the phone. After a series
of clicks,
please hold
s and some truly horrendous waiting music, they
were connected to Will again.

“Okay.” Will’s voice
echoed. “We’re all on speaker phone and once again a happy family. Jarred,
first up, do you want in on this or are you content to remain playing out there
in black ops?”

“I’m in,” Jarred
returned. “Never did like to leave a job half done.”

“That’s what I figured,”
Will
replied
. “Okay, people, Jarred is now an official
member of our unofficial team. We’ll do the cutesy introductions thing
later—for now we have bigger fish to fry.”

Blade heard something
solid being placed near the phone.

Will
continued
as if he didn’t need to draw a breath. “When I so rudely hung up on you guys
earlier it was because Julian called. He and Matt have struck gold and we’re gearing
up. I need you to all listen to this and then we’ll discuss our moves.”

The sound of buttons
being pushed was followed by the tinny voice one gets when recording a phone
conversation.

“Hello?”

“Yeah,
Malone?
It’s
Sarke
.”

“What do you think you’re
doing?” Malone replied. To Blade he sounded incredulous and like he would enjoy
nothing better than to strangle
Sarke
.

“Look,”
Sarke
snarled, clearly at the end of his rope. “You really
must stop trying to fob me off onto your secretary. I’ve explained this twice
already and I will not just fade back into the woodwork. I need money, capital,
and a new laboratory to work from.”

“You’re the one who set
the damn explosions,” Malone grated angrily. “It’s your own damn fault your
last lab is now nothing more than an interesting crater.”

“Yes, and I am sure you’d
have been so very pleased had everything fallen into the hands of the Enforcers
and the police,”
Sarke
returned dryly. “If you
recall, most of our paperwork is still safely tucked away along with my recipe
for the manufacturing of the drugs. I don’t see why you’re all upset over what
really amounts to a small setback in the scheme of things. They’ve taken our
shell, sure, but all I need is an infusion of cash and a new place to set up
shop.”

“It’s not that easy,”
Malone argued. “I might be a financial whiz but I can’t just suddenly infuse a
ton of cash into a laboratory with no cover. And I certainly can’t just hand
over a great wad of cash with no reasonable excuse. I’ve told you we should
wait. Lay low, go on a holiday and fuck some ditz on the beach for all I care.
Just leave things alone until it all dies down and we can set up somewhere else
and do it again.”

“The essence I have in
reserve for the drugs won’t last that long and you know it,”
Sarke
retorted, annoyed. “It would be a monumental waste.
Why do I have to keep reminding you of this? You
know
exactly what I’m
talking about. Look, your cousin has reined in the cops. You said they’ve
closed the case. What the fuck is the problem here?”

“The commissioner
received their final reports just a few hours ago,” Malone confirmed
grudgingly. “So they will all be reassigned as soon as the next thing crops up.
Hell, they might be disbanded and on something new already, for all I know. But
that doesn’t mean I think it wise for us to immediately start this up again.”

“If
they’re disbanded that means the cops aren’t after us.
We have a degradable product leaking
energy as we speak. Surely someone you do investments for has a property I can
use?”

“Just because they’ve
been pulled off doesn’t mean they aren’t still monitoring us,” Malone insisted.
“These things take time, need planning.”

“What’s to plan?”
Sarke
replied, exasperated. “We have the method—one that
works perfectly, I might add. We have our niche in the human market with an
almost untapped potential. One club is all we’ve hit so far and look at
everything we’ve accomplished! All we need is new equipment and a new floozy to
push the drug. If we wait too long some other new and exotic drug will come in
and take our place and our niche will be lost.”

Malone hesitated. “I
don’t know…”

As if he could scent
victory,
Sarke
continued. “The last thing we need is
for the humans to think the punch has gone out of Jolt and to move onto
something else. It would take months to recover from that, and a lot more
expense than either one of us wants. If we start up again before they realize
we’ve hit a glitch we’ll be rolling in power and cash within a matter of
weeks.”

“I’d hate to lose my
capital,” Malone agreed. After heaving a huge sigh, he conceded.
“Fine.
We’ll meet later tonight outside one of my
holdings—it has a small chemistry lab set up in it and we can discuss our
arrangements further.”

Blade found himself breathing
hard, adrenaline surging through his body. The thought that they might be able
to wrap this up later tonight thrilled him. He could hardly believe their luck
in catching this conversation and hoped it would stand up later at the
Tribunal. While not the most inflammatory conversation he had ever heard, it
clearly outlined Malone’s more than passing interest in the drug trade.

He listened with half an
ear as directions were given and
Sarke
agreed to meet
him there at around 9 p.m.

“So we’re moving on
them?” Flame asked excitedly the moment the
snap
of the recorder
sounded.

“There’s more,” Will
replied smugly. “They traced that call to a public phone, so it’s a dead end.
Matthias and Julian hung around another ten minutes, curious as to whether Malone
would leave it at that or not. They struck gold—more than what they’d already
found. Malone made a two-minute phone call a short time after he hung up from
speaking to
Sarke
. It’s to a blocked, unlisted
number, and out of context of this whole thing doesn’t make much sense. But
after that conversation with
Sarke
and what we know
of their manufacturing, it’s utterly perfect. Listen.”

Blade heard Will depress
the button of the recorder again and listened to the tinny voices on the phone
in a much shorter, more staccato conversation.

“Yeah?”

“David
Sarke
.
Thirty-two.
Photo faxed
through channels. I’ll need your special for
Bellango
Laboratories.”

“The special is
expensive,” the deep voice cautioned. “It’s a quarter a piece. Nothing’s
getting cheaper, you know.”

“Done.”

Both parties hung up and
Blade felt his jaw almost hit the ground. “That can’t be what it sounds like?”
he asked as a deathly silence overtook the room.

“Sure sounds to me like
our pal Malone just ordered a hit,” Chase commented. “Have we been able to work
out who he hired? We could win the sweep if we pick him up as well.”

“Any fool can tell he’s
just ordered a hit, and I’d bet it was a quarter of a mil before and after,”
Will confirmed. “No, we can’t seem to find anything else, but we’re on it. I’m
reliably informed there are professional assassins in the magical world, people
whose legitimate job it is to do this—though obviously as Malone isn’t working
this in an official capacity, this assassin is either dipping into shady areas
best left alone or has outright gone rogue. Regardless, what I want is this.
Chase, Sage—
Sarke
has almost certainly seen your
faces at the club. You’ll come in the back and catch him when he realizes
what’s happening and tries to run. He’s escaped us twice so far—he won’t get a
third chance.”

“Any force necessary?”
Chase asked gruffly.

“No.
Unless
it all goes to shit.
We need him and we want him to stand trial
whichever route we go through, the human courts or the magical Tribunal. We
want him alive.”

“Sounds fine to me,” Sage
agreed.

“Blade, that leaves you
and Flame on point. Now for fuck’s sake,
don’t blow up the lab
. At the
club it wasn’t your fault, and I get that you saved all our asses at the annex,
but I’m getting tired of explaining this shit to the brass. We do this clean.
We wait for Malone and
Sarke
to enter the lab, we
rush them.
Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.
We tie them up
in knots and ride off into the sunset. Am I clear?”

Flame waved her hand
dismissively. Even though none of the others could see her, the meaning
transmitted loud and clear. “These things just happen, Captain,” she insisted.
“But sure. I’ll be happy to do it cleanly if they play along too.”