"... Better see where Ken is," said the technical director's voice.
Ken started running for the escalators.
"Hey, Ben," Boo-Boo hailed a gray-haired black man in a guard's uniform standing at the guard station on the ground level. "You see a little thing go by, brown hair and glasses? She woulda been in a little bit of a hurry."
"Yeah, I saw her, Boo-ray," Ben said. He exchanged complicated handshakes with the FBI agent. "She flew out of here in a big hurry. Came out of the main door and practically jumped down the escalators."
"She get a taxi?"
"Nah, she just went right straight out of here on foot," Ben said, pointing. "Crossed Poydras without lookin', and kept on moving. Looked like she was preoccupied, I'd say."
"Thanks, Ben. I'll be seeing you." Boo-Boo looked worried as he took Liz's elbow and hurried her out the door.
"What's wrong?" Liz asked.
"She's on foot. I'm guessin' she's gonna try to get back to the French Quarter," Boo-Boo said. "She doesn't know where she's goin'. It's that way, but that's not the best neighborhood. It's got some lonely stretches, where nobody sees nothin', if you understand me. Most people don't go walkin' through it alone. A stranger, walkin' fast, not payin' attention to her surroundin's, is just askin' for problems."
Liz's eyes widened. "We'd better catch up with her."
Two shadows peeled themselves away from the side of the Superdome, and fell into step a dozen yards behind Boo and Liz.
Liz held out the psychic detector that she carried with her in her purse disguised as a box of breath mints. The faint traces of energy that she could find on the sidewalk opposite the Superdome verified the security guard's statement that Robbie had come this way, broadcasting a blue streak, so to speak. The girl had been moving fast, but still left behind a distinct trail. Liz shook her head at her own blindness.
"How could we have missed seeing the obvious? Robbie has had a longstanding grudge against Fionna, and she must have been with the company while it was in Dublin, the scene of our other agent's attack."
"One or two things are still botherin' me," Boo-Boo said, after exchanging a word with an old man eating a late lunch on a park bench. "Robbie Unterburger doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would take out the kind of revenge on a rival that she's been wreaking. In fact, she seemed kind of freaked out by the effects. And yet, there don't seem to be any doubt that she's the source."
"Could we be witnessing the birth of a rogue talent?" Liz asked. She'd read of such things in the departmental archives. Mass destruction often accompanied the emergence. Not that the reports lent any credence to the occurrences, citing instead natural catastrophes such as lightning storms and earthquakes.
"That'd be one good thing that came out of this situation," Boo-Boo said. "That is, if we can catch up with her before she hurts herself or someone else too much just to be able to walk away. We could get her some trainin', anyhow."
"It's not personal," Liz said. Beauray glanced back at her with his brows drawn up in a question. "I have the strongest feeling that Robbie still doesn't really want to hurt Fee. With the amount of power she's slinging, she could have killed Fee any time. That gigantic poster might have come down in a single piece, but she caused it to explode into little paper flakes. She doesn't mean any harm. She's venting frustration, or so it seems to me. She just can't control herself."
"That amount of power in an untrained practitioner just didn't seem natural," Boo said. "I've been thinkin' about it myself. We woulda detected it if that girl was buildin' it all up inside herself. You get some spillover even in experienced people. It's almost as if she was channelin' it from somewhere. I'm more curious about that. Where's it comin' from?"
"We won't know until we catch up with her," Liz said, grimly. "So far, she's managed to blend in far too well. She could stay hidden until it is too late."
"Not really," Boo said, encouragingly. "This is the Vieux Carré. It's a community. We're aware of strangers. Someone will know where she went."
In reference to strangers, Liz had taken note of a couple of large, muscular men walking behind them on the other side of the street. Wearing the usual working uniform of button-down shirts and twill pants, they could have been a couple of bouncers on their way to work, or a pair of musicians going anywhere, but she noticed that they kept pace with her and Beauray, although taking care to remain at least a dozen yards behind them. They turned when she turned, crossing the nearly deserted street in the middle of the block to follow them along a narrow street that ran parallel to Rampart. Once they crossed Canal into a rundown street that led between a huge yellow brick building with boarded up windows and an empty lot, it became an undeniable fact that the two men were following them with a purpose in mind. A glance at her companion told her that he had noticed them, too. His hands, deep in the pockets of his ratty coat, were working.
Liz paused very casually to dig into her handbag, coming up with a handkerchief under which she concealed one of her government-issue containers. As though she was freshening up her lipstick, she unscrewed the small vial and dribbled a little of the powder into her palm. The men had no choice but to saunter slower, and pretend to study the elderly brick building. As they came within a few yards, Liz put her handkerchief to her nose and blew a few grains of the dust toward them. The grains, part of a sensing cantrip she had learned in her first year at the department, revealed no magic in particular about their pursuers. Ordinary common-or-garden thugs. Well, she'd heard there was street crime in New Orleans. She should be prepared. And she was not alone. That was good. She started walking again, faster. The two men behind them picked up the pace, too.
As they neared the center of the lonely street, she readied the chamomile-and-gunpowder mixture that would stun or knock out an attacker.
What she couldn't have foreseen was that there were four of them. The other two heavies were waiting at the head of the narrow street where it came to a dead end. As Liz and Boo-Boo came within a few paces of the cross street ahead, they stepped out from the brick doorway where they had been concealed.
The surprise nearly spoiled her aim, but Liz reminded herself the British Secret Service was made of tougher stuff than street muggers. With amazing clarity of mind that surprised even her, she turned and lobbed the sandy mixture at the large man farther to the right. A flash of light erupted from Boo-Boo's hands, hitting the left-hand pursuer square in the chest. Both ruffians went flying several feet.
"Have you got any more of those?" Liz asked. He grabbed her arm and started to hustle her back the way they had come.
"'Fraid not, Liz," Boo said.
"Pity." They started running.
The second pair, seeing their quarry escaping, put on a burst of speed and ran after them. The first two had not been knocked completely unconscious. Liz dodged around the first one, who lay partly across the cracked sidewalk. He made a grab for her ankles. In evading his grasp, she nearly tripped over the second thug, who was on his hands and knees, shaking his head like a stunned steer. He wrapped an arm around her leg and hung on. Liz let out a squawk. Time to see if those unarmed combat lessons she had paid for had done her any good.
Boo-Boo, who had made it nearly all the way back to Canal, turned at the strangled sound. Liz was now surrounded by all four of the ruffians. One of them had snatched her purse and held it away from her, while two of the others grabbed her arms. The third one hovered over her menacingly, drawing back a fist. Boo-Boo ran back to help her, but arrived just half a second too late. In the blink of an eye, Liz squirmed loose from one man, kneed another soundly in the crotch, and was chanting with intent as her free hand worked in a hazy pattern Boo-Boo recognized as a confusion spell. She was pretty good, now that he had to admit it. The trouble was that her attention was divided between more than one person. Even if she succeeded in clouding the mind of one man, the other two would still be threats.