Secret Worlds (456 page)

A ghost of sound whispered through her lips. She curled onto her side until bile rose from her stomach and made her roll forward and lift herself to hands and knees. Her throat and sinuses burned, waking her from her grounding-induced stupor. She eased back onto her heels. Ace’s hands were there then. He was with her, easing her hair away from her face, checking to be sure the desert glass hadn’t cut her after she fell.

She needed time to recover, but the final bolt shooting up and sheeting across the sky might well attract those two-legged predators. Instinct would have animals headed in the opposite direction. Slavers were the danger after grounding. Those willing to trade in humans found a booming market for Sparks. Slavers didn’t often come this close to Native Nations territory, but it was good practice to not make oneself obvious. She usually grounded during the day when figuring out more than the general direction of a bolt was made more difficult. The hour after grounding was not the ideal time to try to fight away some bastard intent on dragging her off to sell to the highest bidder.

Or to best an agent intent on dragging her back to the Council.

Four shaking hands pushed at the hair hanging over her forehead and cheeks as she and Ace both attempted to help her see. Every breath rasped in her throat and her teeth ached. Ace helped her get back into her clothes. She wouldn’t win any awards for presentation, but she was clothed and shod.

The stars lit their way back. She blinked up at them. She loved the light they provided in the open desert. Starlight was never as bright in Azcon. Perhaps it was a factor of the taller buildings or the grounding platform for the city Sparks that rose above them, where lightning lit the sky every night, the jagged discharges visible from miles away from the city. Maybe the darkness of roads and buildings sucked the light from the sky. Here in the desert the sand reflected the light back to the stars like a lover returning a smile. The vastness between them should have felt lonely. Instead, it was healing.

They made it back to Gloria’s to gather her clothes and knitting, the only things left of the world she’d built that she could carry. Gloria wished her well, and Lena and Ace trudged back to his car. Lena looked back over her shoulder, her head turning with every step, as if to sear the memory of the village and the Kewa into her memory through sheer force of will.

The frigid mountain air Alex sucked in as he jogged to Council headquarters cold-seared his lungs. He ran through darkness. He’d gotten back from Fort Nevada late—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say early. After he’d hiked back in through arroyos and tunnels, he’d fallen into the shower. Under the spray of the water, his mind woke and started working through the puzzle of Lena Gracey.

Finding her was a coup. Where there was one, they had to anticipate the possibility of others. Before he’d returned to Azcon, he’d left messages on three desks at Fort Nevada, to be seen whenever the others came in to make reports.

Believing Lena was not unique did not lessen her worth in Alex’s eyes. She wasn’t some abstract concept of the Spark’s Eve like she was to Thomas. She was a real woman, troublesome and smart and intriguing. He felt a little smug that he’d been the one to discover her. Unlike Thomas, he did question their ability to control and bend her to their will. He’d dealt with the maddening little thing. And the damnedest thing about it was he couldn’t wait to have the chance to do so again.

He tried to imagine what it must have been like for five-year-old Lena to suddenly be hidden from the world. He didn’t know the specifics, but she had to have lost contact with everything and everyone she knew except for her family. And as her taunt in the desert had reminded him, he understood that trauma all too well. He’d lost his family. She’d lost the world. Flip sides of the same scarring loss. He knew what made her so strong. He recognized it because it lived in him.

It had hardened him, that rage and grief, and his training had honed it into a weapon. He had survived the process, turned it against the people who had made him, due to the influence of Sam, one of his early instructors. Sam had seen something in him and had worked hard to bring back the humanity in little Alejandro. He hoped Lena had her own Sam. Was it Ace?

By the time he’d finished his shower, he’d decided to head back out and have a non-threatening conversation with her, to be honest and explain everything at stake. Surely, she had seen something of herself in him, too? It might explain why she’d stopped to speak with him outside Santo Domingo instead of merely running to safety.

He dressed, eager to start the day, regardless of the hour. He’d wait for Lucas to come in, coach him through a strategy session, have him collect Lena’s sister, and then head out while Lucas was distracted by his “interrogation.” He could be down to Santo Domingo, convincing her to cast her lot in with the men of Fort Nevada, by noon. If he could convince her, Lucas would be chasing a ghost.

A very well-protected ghost.

Alex jogged to work and took the stairs to his floor two at a time. He pulled open the door, sending it swinging behind him to bounce off the wall, then continued down the hall to the wide-open office space and crossed to Lucas’s desk, where he scrawled a note: “SEE ME. -Alex.” He left it on Lucas’s desk and went to unlock his office.

After lighting the candles on his desk, he pulled out the reports from last night. They were in need of changes now that he’d spoken to Thomas and knew what their goal would be. By the time he finished rewriting them, the candles near his head sputtered and popped. They were nearly burnt down. Sunlight had been flooding in through his window for the last few hours. He tamped the candles with his fingers and stretched.

Where the Dust was Lucas?

He rose and left the office, intending to march down to Lucas’s desk again. Before he got to the end of the hall, he heard his name behind him. Fernie Salas waved a wax-sealed folded paper at him as he came down the hall.

“Downstairs asked me to let you know—messenger dropped this for you. It’s urgent,” Salas said.

“Oh, yeah?” Alex stopped. “Urgent, huh? I’ve been so wrapped in urgent reports I don’t even know what day it is.”

“Tell me about it.” Salas grimaced in commiseration as he passed Alex and handed off the note.

“Thanks, Salas.”

The man raised a hand above his shoulder, waving back to acknowledge the thanks without turning. Alex changed directions, returning to his office. He closed the door behind him and examined the wax seal. A dragonfly. Dragonfly House, then, which meant Ace. He broke the seal and unfolded the paper.

In the city working on trust. If you don’t have your answer by this afternoon, meet me at the bar at three. No playing.

Alex felt a grin spread across his face. She had come to the city, and Ace would get her to contact him.

Three o’clock at the Piece of Asp, if he hadn’t heard from her before then. It gave him enough time to wrap things up and send his partner on a goose hunt.

No playing.
No doubt Ace meant it as a threat. A wheeze of a laugh escaped Alex. “Yeah. We don’t have to do the whole threatening thing, Ace. We want the same thing for Lena. I promise.”

He crossed to his desk, relit the candle, and burned the note. He checked to be sure the wax seal had melted away before discarding the ashes. Assuming she didn’t decide for herself before then, Alex would be there at three, and Ace would take him to Lena. A man like Ace was as good as his word. Occasionally, that presented problems. Not this time. Not yet.

***

Lucas wasn’t at his desk, and Alex’s note sat untouched. He crumpled it into a tight ball and glanced around the large room. Junior agents hunched over desks, dipping their pens in ink and then laboriously scratching out their reports. A laugh bellowed from a group of agents standing together in the far corner under a wide window.

They saw him coming. They also saw the closed, unhappy look on his face. The loud laughter died off, and several of the men who had experienced Alex’s wrath in the past turned away and scooted back to their desks, busy again. Alex tossed his head at Hilliard, one of the more senior of the men.

“Have you seen Lucas this morning?”

Hilliard’s face flashed surprise for a moment. “I haven’t, no. But…”

“But what?”

“He logged out early this morning. Noticed when I signed out mine.” Hilliard pulled a set of car keys from his pocket and gestured to the closed door across from them. The keys to the official vehicles were kept in a storage box mounted on the wall of the equipment room. Junior agents were required to log their usage of the vehicles.

Alex glanced over and then looked back. “Thanks, Hilliard. I appreciate it.” He strode away.

Lucas had checked out a vehicle? Had he decided to pick up Lena’s sister and nephew before meeting with Alex this morning? It would be just like Lucas. Not only was it insubordinate, but Lucas appreciated any opportunity for bullying. The man represented everything Alex knew was wrong with the Council agent system.

He gritted his teeth. If Lucas managed to stumble upon Lena and drag her into custody, making his real mission that much more difficult, what was left of the little jerk’s life would be short and intensely painful.

He walked into the equipment room. It appeared to be long and narrow, as walls closed it off on either side of a long desk. They shielded the wide, shelved space behind the agent manning the desk. Alex greeted him and slid the thick paper logbook down the desk to himself.

“Checking on my junior,” he told the agent. He scanned back up the entries for the morning until he found Lucas’s scrawled name. He traced across. Six a.m. Lucas had left the building while Alex had still been deep into his paperwork. That made no sense. It didn’t take that long to pick up a set of potential witnesses and bring them in. Where had he been since then?

His eye caught on a scrawled word down the line. Lucas had checked out the Tesla, the long-range vehicle reserved for the Councilor. When not scheduled for use, it could be checked out by senior agents. Breath slid from between his tight lips in a thin stream of whispered sound. Wherever Lucas was, and whatever he was doing, he’d given Alex the means to hang him high. He returned his scrutiny to the agent before him.

“You signed out the Tesla to him?”

The man looked down to Reyes’s pointing finger on the log. It was all show. He’d remember signing out Councilor Three’s vehicle. “Uh, yeah. He had the req form signed and sealed by his senior.”

“Is that right?”

The man nodded, but the expression on his face turned from efficient detachment to dread.

“May I see that req form?”

The metal drawer of the desk rasped open, and the agent reached into a bin of papers inside. He leafed through them quickly before pulling one out. He handed it to Alex without a word.

Alex stared at the signature blocks. The little rat had forged his signature—and done a piss poor job of it, too. His seal imprinted the glob of wax, and the mark was authentic. He kept the seal in a locked drawer in his locked office. When had Lucas taken it? Not that morning. Alex had been in his office. But Alex had used it himself the night before. Lucas must have broken into his office overnight.

Alex took a deep calming breath. He tracked up the paper to the Need/Destination section of the requisition form.

The words were scrawled in clotted ink. “Apprehension of illegal & possibly overpowered Spark posing danger to the community & Council of 9. Agent acting on time-sensitive info regarding location of family members in order to force cooperation of target.”

Alex gave his attention back to the agent before him at the desk. The man leaned away from him.

“There’s only one problem.
I’m
his senior. And I didn’t sign this.”

“But your seal?”

He didn’t even blink. “Yes. My seal. So we have a junior agent who broke into my office and desk, stole my seal, and drove away in the Councilor’s long-range capable vehicle. Sounds like an idiot going rogue.” He placed the form on the desk and used one finger to slide it back across to the agent. “Don’t worry. I’ll retrieve him.” He tilted his head toward the rack of keys. “Any of the Volts will do.”

The man turned and snatched up a set of keys from a hook.

“You should probably get started on the incident report right away.” He pocketed the keys. “I’ll sign off when I get back.” It would look better if the report had been timed and signed by the man before Alex got back. Since it involved the Councilor’s vehicle and the man would be eager to distance himself from the mistake, he’d likely go up his own chain of command as soon as he could.

“Yes, sir.” Before Alex left the room, the agent gathered sheets of forms from a drawer on the other side of the desk.
How cooperative.
For every agent who knew Lucas had gone rogue, it would be that much easier to return with Lucas’s corpse.

As he passed through the bullpen, he snagged Fernie Salas’s junior agent, clapping him on the shoulder as Alex passed behind his chair. “Mark, grab Salas and come to my office. I need you to process it for a break-in.”

The man’s eyes widened. He nodded and rose. Alex returned to his office. He stood at the door, examining the lock of the knob for tampering. Inside his office, he did the same at his desk. The evidence at the desk was clear, a scratch veering away from the drawer lock where Lucas’s hand had slipped. Nothing too obvious, though. Lucas had done his thieving well.

He turned at the sound of shoes scuffing the floor behind him. Salas was framed in the entry, Mark hovering behind him.

“Someone broke into your office?” Salas asked. At Alex’s nod, he shook his head. “You’re on the main corridor. Do you know when? How’d it go down without someone noticing?”

“Early this morning or last night. And no one noticed because they assumed he had a right to be in here, I’m guessing. You’ll have to see if anyone saw him.”

“Right to be in here?”

Alex nodded. “It was Lucas. He came in to get my seal so he could forge my signature on a req form. He wanted the Tesla.”