“I gave it all to Terryn,” she said.
Genda let out an exaggerated sigh. “I can’t speak for his strategy skills, but I do have to say his organizational skills leave a lot to be desired.” She shrugged. “Well, it is what it is. I’ll have to find where he put them. Anyway, I have a ton to get up to speed on. Can we regroup tomorrow?”
Laura stood. “Okay. I’ll send you my security schedule.”
Genda was already looking at her PDA. “Great. Your hair looks wonderful, by the way. Are you using a new conditioner?”
“Something like that,” she said.
Genda glanced up and smiled. “This is going to be fun working together.”
Laura gave her a tight smile as she stepped away. “I can’t begin to agree.”
She ducked into her office, retrieved an unregistered cell phone, and hurried down the corridor to Sinclair’s office. She surveyed the empty room, devoid of personality, as if it had recently been assigned to someone new who hadn’t quite moved in. Which was what it was. She dialed Sinclair’s direct line.
Sinclair picked up, his voice cautious. “Yes?”
“Jono, it’s me. Do you have anything personal in your office?”
“Not really,” he said.
She moved behind his desk. “Not ‘not really.’ I need a yes or no.”
“What’s going on?”
She pushed papers aside, mostly internal memos that didn’t have his name on them. “No time. Is there anything here that can identify you? Anything with your name or personal information?”
“No . . . Oh, wait. Some notes.”
“Where?”
He paused. “Top left drawer.”
She opened it and found a small stack of pink phone messages and scrap paper. She sorted through them. All in her handwriting. They were nothing important, quick scrawls to meet for lunch or reminders about meetings. “These notes?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you keep these for?”
A longer pause. “Because you wrote them.”
She started to laugh. In the midst of whatever crisis was unfolding, she found herself touched by the thought he had saved them.
“Look, throw them away. They don’t mean anything,” Sinclair said.
His embarrassed tone made her regret the laugh. “No, I’ll save them for you. Can you meet me in about an hour at the corner of O and Ninth?”
“Okay.”
“Gotta run.” She disconnected. She scooped up the notes and shoved them in her pocket. Taking one more look around, she made her way to the service elevator. As she walked through the accounting department, her mind whirled with unanswered questions. Whatever had happened had happened fast. Terryn would have told her his plans otherwise. She wanted to get to Cress and see what she could do to help. But first she had to write a memo justifying kicking her friend out of the building.
CHAPTER 27
A LIGHT DRIZZLE fogged the air as Laura waited for Sinclair. Halfway up the block, two Guild security agents stood in front of Terryn’s apartment building. At the far end of the street, she had spotted a brownie watching the street from a car. As the drizzle turned to rain, she moved into the shelter of the awning over a deli door. Sinclair’s body signature moved up behind her. Laura wore a long raincoat with a hood, but he didn’t need to see her face. He sensed the shape of her essence, something he claimed did not change despite whatever glamour she wore. “Okay, now I’m confused. I thought you would be Mariel, not Laura,” he said.
“I was worried someone might be watching for Mariel. Laura Blackstone isn’t well-known to the Guild investigative branch,” she said.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
She watched the street. “I don’t know. Cress agreed not to leave her apartment without Guild permission, and Terryn’s suddenly out of InterSec on leave.”
“What’s that got to do with stuff in my office?”
She leaned into the rain. “I don’t have a good feeling about it. If Terryn still has you off record, then we should keep it that way until he says otherwise, so I removed any trace of you.”
He dropped his voice into a saccharine tone. “You did that for me?”
She glanced at him impatiently. “Why do you read something into everything I do?”
He grinned. “I like to read. So far, you’re a good book.”
Dumbfounded, she stared. “That has to be the most corny pickup line I’ve ever heard. I think I’m in pain here.”
He pouted playfully. “Can we turn the page? I don’t like this chapter.”
She resisted the urge to laugh. “Jono, this is all nuts. They put Genda Boone in charge while Terryn’s on leave.”
He narrowed his eyes. “And, what, you’re pissed it wasn’t you?”
She poked him in the shoulder. “No. I don’t want to be in charge. I’m pissed because Genda has no idea what she’s doing, and that’s a dangerous thing in our line of work.”
“So what are we doing here?”
She turned her attention back to the street. “I have to talk to Terryn or Cress and find out what’s going on. Cress isn’t responding to my sendings.”
Sinclair peered up the sidewalk, rain glistening in his hair and on his face. “I’m getting interference. Probably a shield of some kind.”
“You can sense that far?” she asked.
He smiled. “Is that a conversational question, or are you taking notes?”
She elbowed him gently. “No games. I’m worried. You know leanansidhe are hated. I want to be sure Cress is safe.”
He shook his head. “I can’t sense anything beyond the shield. Why is she under guard?”
Laura followed his gaze up the street. “Because she’s a leanansidhe and an easy target for Rhys to make points. If she hadn’t agreed to the guards, he probably would have gotten the feds to detain her for trumped-up national security reasons.”
“She saved his life at the Archives,” Sinclair said.
“Gratitude isn’t one of his strong points,” Laura said.
A woman stepped out of the building and opened her umbrella. She hesitated when she saw the Guild agents, then walked between them.
“Why don’t we knock on the door and see what happens?” he asked.
She pursed her lips. “Because they might be looking for Mariel Tate to do that. Rhys is intent on discrediting Terryn. If he can take out another member of Terryn’s InterSec team for some bogus reason, he’ll do it. I don’t want to give him an opportunity.”
The woman from Terryn’s building passed them and continued around the corner. Laura took Sinclair’s arm. “Follow me.”
She pulled him along the sidewalk, moving fast enough to catch up to the woman. “You dropped something, miss,” Laura called. The woman turned and looked down. Laura muttered in Gaelic and tossed a pinpoint of essence at her. “Sleep.”
As the woman’s eyelids drooped, Laura grabbed her arm to prevent her from falling.
“What the hell are you doing?” Sinclair asked.
Laura cast furtive looks in either direction to see if anyone had seen her. “Take her other arm and help me get her coat off,” she said.
Sinclair did as she asked with a concerned look on his face. “This is technically assault and battery, you know.”
Laura shrugged out of her raincoat. “Good thing you’re not a cop anymore. Put this on her.”
She slipped on the woman’s coat. It was snug, but it wouldn’t matter in a moment. Rummaging in her own pocket, she pulled out a small garnet ring. Touching the woman’s cheek, she sampled her body essence. With a brief chant, she wrapped her own signature around it, pushed it into the ring, and slipped the ring onto her finger. Her features blurred and shifted.
Sinclair looked her up and down. “Wow.”
“How close am I?” she asked.
“Pretty close. You look like a cross between you and her.”
She shifted in the snug coat. “That’s good enough. I don’t have time for precision. I doubt those agents spent much time looking at her. Keep her out of the rain. I’ll be right back.”