Memory Zero (4 page)

G
ABRIEL
S
TERN LEANED A SHOULDER
against the wall and watched dawn color the sky a bright, almost bloody red. The rising sun played across his face and arms, pleasant and warm. But if the gathering clouds were anything to go by, it was going to be a bitch of a day. God, he hated Melbourne in winter.

He crossed his arms and studied the stark white building across the street. Situated on the western edge of the central business district, close to the law courts, the building housed both the State Police and the Special Investigations Unit. With the precision of ants, men and women clad in the stark black of the State Police moved in and out of the building—a tide that was occasionally interspersed by the dark gray favored by the SIU. As yet, there was no sign of the woman whose life he’d saved last night.

“It may be hours before she gets back. You know what the cops are like when one of their own gets shot.”

The voice rose like a demon out of the darkness,
setting his teeth on edge. Gabriel turned from the window. Though it was still dark in the small office, he could see the old desk, chairs and recording units well enough. Martyn stood in the deeper shadows of the far corner, idly sipping a bottle of dark fluid.

Gabriel’s stomach rumbled a reminder that he hadn’t eaten in over twenty-four hours. He shoved his hands in his pockets and tried to ignore it. “I want the SIU called in on this. Me, specifically.”

Martyn’s smile was fleeting. “That has been arranged.”

A fact Gabriel knew, simply because he’d started the arrangements earlier. Still, there was protocol to follow if he didn’t want too many suspicions raised. And, technically speaking, Martyn was supposedly his one and only link to the Federation, the covert group they both worked for. While Martyn was well aware that Gabriel talked to Stephan, he had no idea just how often. And Gabriel intended to keep it that way.

“Good.” At least he could get closer to the woman, and maybe he’d find out just how she’d been able to sense the presence of the kite-monster last night. From the little information they’d been able to glean about the creature, it was supposed to be invisible to humans—at least until the point of attack. Yet she had sensed it early enough to escape.

“If your interest in the woman develops into an obsession, Stephan’s not going to be happy.”

Gabriel glanced at Martyn sharply. He knew better than Martyn just what Stephan was, and wasn’t, going to be happy about. And he knew for a fact that Stephan more than agreed with his interest in this woman. So why would Martyn say otherwise?

“Twenty-four people have been killed by the kites
since they appeared two months ago. She is the only person to ever escape. We need to know why.”

“
We
can sense them. Surely that’s all that matters.”

“We’re an extremely small group, and the kites are growing in number. We can’t hope to kill them all, nor can we hope to conceal their existence for much longer.”

“Worry about that when the time comes. For the moment, we have more important concerns.”

Yeah, like what the hell Sethanon—the man ultimately behind the attacks last night, and someone the Federation had been trying to stop for years—was up to. He glanced back out the window as movement caught his attention. A woman with red-gold hair walked up the steps of the opposite building, her slender figure almost lost in the sea of black-clad officers and camera crews that surrounded her.

Sympathy flashed through him. He knew what it was like to kill a partner. He’d done it himself, what seemed a lifetime ago. And he’d sworn at that moment never to take another partner—not when deaths ran in threes. It was a promise he’d kept to this day.

Once she’d walked through the main doors, he turned to face Martyn once more. “What intrigues me is the fact that she apparently sensed the presence of the kite—and her partner—yet showed no awareness that I was there.”

“Given you didn’t actually talk to her, you can’t be certain about that.”

No, he couldn’t. But instinct suggested that was the case, and he’d long ago learned to trust his instincts. At least when it came to issues like this.

“When I talked to Stephan earlier—”

“I’m your control,” Martyn said, voice sharp. “You’re supposed to talk to
me
first.”

“I’m reporting to you now.”

“In the future, you will report to me, and only me, or disciplinary action will be taken.”

Gabriel snorted softly. What were they going to do? Pull him off the job? Not likely—if only because it would take the Federation years to get someone else into his current position. And given the number of operatives that had been killed or uncovered of late, maybe the very reason he was still one of the Federation’s most effective plants was the very thing Martyn was bitching about—his lack of continuous reports.

Although, truth be told, Stephan himself would have to be classed as
the
most successful undercover operative. No one, beyond himself and Stephan’s wife, knew Stephan had an alter ego in the SIU. Not even Martyn.

“Have you found out any more about Jack Kazdan’s disappearance and subsequent reappearance?” Martyn continued.

Gabriel shook his head. “Other than the fact he resurfaced about a week ago, no.”

“Why was he meeting with his partner?”

“Trying to recruit her, apparently.”

“Do we know why?”

“Not yet.”

Martyn grunted. “You’d better get back across the road. I’ll contact Stephan and see if we can dig up anything more on Kazdan’s recent movements.”

To Gabriel’s way of thinking, it was more important to find out what was so special about this woman that a man like Kazdan, who was reportedly a general in Sethanon’s organization, was forfeited in an effort to
try and recruit her. But he said nothing, merely nodded and left Martyn to the shadows.

“W
HAT DO YOU MEAN
, ‘
SUSPENDED
until further notice’?” Sam stared at the captain in disbelief.

He sighed wearily and spoke more slowly, as if she were a child with minimal comprehension—which, after twenty-two hours without sleep, was a little too close to the truth.

“You shot your partner, Ryan. Blew his brains out. There has to be an investigation, and you’re suspended until it’s finished.”

“Did I mention the fact that he’d become a vampire?”

“Several times,” the captain replied heavily. “Vampires have rights, same as the next person.”

She sighed and rubbed her forehead wearily. Somewhere in the last few hours, her head had begun to ache, and that ache was getting steadily worse. But she knew better than to ask for some painkillers. There were no such things as rights or fair treatment for a cop suspected of foul deeds. She was lucky they’d fixed her ankle before they realized she was the one who’d pulled the trigger on Jack.

“Did I mention he was trying to kill me?”

“Ryan, you blew a hole in his thigh, then shot his friggin’ head off. That’s more than self-defense.”

She shuddered and tried to ignore the bloody images his words brought to mind. He really didn’t have to tell her what she’d done. It was a moment she’d relive in her dreams for years to come.

“The first shot was just a warning, Cap. And I did warn him that the next time I’d shoot to kill, but he didn’t seem to believe me.”

“Well, you and Jack were partners for five years. Maybe he thought the bond between you meant you wouldn’t shoot to kill.”

She shook her head, unable to believe what she was hearing. “So, it’s perfectly all right for him to try to kill me, but not for me to defend myself?”

“Try to face the fact that we have only your word and a corpse. And while you said you had your wristcom on record, the labs weren’t able to pull any images from the unit.”

She glanced down at the wristcom. There’d been no indication that control had downloaded the information from it, and there should have been. “It was on, Cap. And it was working.”

“You may have thought it was working, but the labs say there are neither images nor voice.”

So was the unit faulty, or just the linking capacity? “Do they want me to send them the unit? Maybe there’s a problem with the sat-link?”

He shook his head. “They tested the link. They can read everything A-OK. There’s just nothing in the memory about last night.”

She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Then just do a DNA scan on Jack’s body. It’ll back up the fact that he’s a vampire.”

He hesitated and glanced down at his hands. “We don’t have to. His corpse was touched by sunlight when the boys were bagging it. It didn’t go up.”

How could there have been no reaction to daylight? Of all the myths that abounded about vampires, that was the one that had proven true. No immunity to daylight. The minute the sun touched them, they burned. “Damn it, I saw his teeth, Cap. He
was
a vampire.”

“You might have seen teeth, but there was no reaction to sunlight.”

She stared at him for a moment before asking, “Have you done blood and DNA tests?”

He nodded. “Inconclusive.”

“How can a blood or DNA test be inconclusive? Either he was a vampire or he wasn’t.”

“They’re running further tests. Until they come back, you’re suspended.”

She slumped back in her chair. What the hell was she going to do with herself if she didn’t have work to come to every day? “What about the old guy?”

The captain frowned. “What old guy?”

“Don’t tell me you can’t find him. I
know
that’s impossible.”

“There
was
no other body besides Jack’s.”

“Surely to God you found blood. There was a ton of it all over the fire escape.”

“The only blood we found was Jack’s.”

She stared at him. How could that be possible? The kitelike monster had all but stripped the old man of his flesh. How could all that blood simply disappear?

It couldn’t. Not unless someone had cleaned it up. Someone like the man who’d saved her life, perhaps. But why would he do that? Did he actually want her framed for murder? Foreboding began to beat in time with the ache in her head.

The captain cleared his throat softly. “We notified Suzy of Jack’s death.”

Sam frowned at the sudden change of topic.

“She’s not happy,” he continued softly.

“Well, gee, I wonder why?” She didn’t bother trying to hide the sarcasm in her voice. “Might it have something to do with the fact that her husband of three and
a half years turns up dead after he’d been missing for weeks?”

“Dead because you shot him.”

That wasn’t what she’d meant, and the captain knew it. And though guilt rose, she determinedly pushed it away. Guilt wasn’t a luxury she could afford right now. Not when she was up to her neck in trouble and sinking fast. “How did she take it?”

“Her reaction was interesting, to say the least.”

God, what had Jack’s bitch of a wife said about her now? “Interesting how?”

The captain smiled slightly. “She said you and Jack were having an affair. That you’d been casual lovers for some time and that you’d finally given Jack an ultimatum—leave Suzy, or you’d kill him.”

She stared in disbelief at the captain. It was evident by the look in his eyes that he didn’t really believe it. But others might. She and Jack
had
been close. Hell, most of the people in their squad had presumed they were lovers—a notion that seemed to gain more credibility every time she and Jack denied it. And yet nothing could have been further from the truth. The fact was, she rarely saw Jack outside of work.

“You know that’s not true, Cap.”

“Do you deny having a fight with him the day he disappeared?”

How could she deny it when half the station had probably heard it? “That was over prisoner treatment.”

“And degenerated into some serious threats.”

She frowned. Even now, she had no idea what that fight had really been about. Jack had been edgy, strung out, all day. But when he’d started beating on a suspect, she’d stepped in—and he’d turned on her as
swiftly and as violently as a snake. “I didn’t threaten him. You can check the vid tapes, if you like.”

“We have, and you’re right—the threats didn’t happen then. According to Suzy, they happened later, on the way home.”

Suzy would say that, because Suzy hated the thought of anyone else being close to Jack. As far as Sam was concerned, it was a hatred that bordered on an obsession. Why, she had no idea.

“Since Suzy wasn’t in the car, she can’t actually say what Jack and I did and didn’t talk about.”

“She said Jack told her.”

“And I could say Jack told me the sky was green, but would you believe it?”

A smile lifted one corner of his thin lips. “No.”

“Then it’s her word against mine. You choose who you’d rather believe.”

“Unfortunately, it’s not for me to choose. I need your badge, gun and wristcom.”

“This is ridiculous,” she muttered, leaning forward to unclip her gun from the back of her belt. She thumped it down on the desk with her badge, then undid her wristcom and dropped it beside them. “I should have let him bite me. Then maybe someone would believe me.”

The captain made no reply. He slid a piece of paper across the desk. “They want you to undergo a psych evaluation. Here are the appointment details. I advise you not to miss it. Your job may depend on it.”

“I’m not crazy,” she said softly. Beginning to get as mad as hell, maybe, but not crazy.

“It’s standard procedure, Ryan.”

No, it wasn’t, and they both knew it. She leaned forward and picked up the paper. On it was a name,
section and time. She folded the paper and shoved it inside her jacket. “That appointment is with the SIU. I didn’t know they’d taken over psych evaluations.”

“Your claim that Jack was a vampire forced us to report it. The SIU are responsible for investigating all crimes involving nonhumans, so in claiming Jack was a vamp, you fell into their jurisdiction.”

“But why would the spook squad be doing the psych evaluation as well?”

He shrugged. “Maybe they want to make sure no hidden prejudices are behind this.”