Aaron leaned forward in his seat as the street lights flashed by silently outside.
‘I have a problem, Miss Lopez, and at this time the only person we know who may be able to help is beyond our reach. There have been some discoveries recently that bear similarity to excavations made in the Negev desert in Israel some years ago, discoveries in which Ethan Warner was involved. I have it on record that both you and he signed nondisclosure agreements regarding these events, and I find it highly unlikely that you would truly have no idea at all where Ethan Warner has disappeared to.’
‘I find it highly unlikely that you think I would give a f…’ The sound of a truck’s horn blared outside the vehicle as it rushed past in the opposite direction. ‘… where Ethan Warner has disappeared to.’
‘He was your partner for several years.’
‘He was a pain in my ass for several years. People move on. He outlived his usefulness.’
Aaron leaned back in his seat and shook his head. ‘Was your relationship about something more than just business?’
A tiny smile curled from the corner of Lopez’s sculptured lips.
‘You’re starting to outlive your usefulness, Devlin,’ she replied. ‘I don’t know where Ethan Warner is and frankly I don’t give a damn. For all I know he’s disappeared up his own ass.’
Aaron sighed and looked out the window at the passing city.
‘There is more to this than just the government needing to speak to Ethan Warner. There could be immensely important implications in what’s happening, and right now we’re trying to play catch up because there are others way ahead of us.’
‘Others?’
‘Need to know,’ Aaron replied, ‘and like you said, you don’t work for the government anymore.’
‘Then we’re done here,’ Lopez informed him. ‘How about you be a good boy and drop me, Dyson and his crony off at Cook County Jail?’
Aaron watched her for a moment longer, and his reply was as deep and rumbling as the road beneath them.
‘So be it.’
It was close to midnight by the time Lopez finally got home.
True to his word, Aaron Devlin had ensured that both Dyson and his accomplice had been delivered to Cook County Jail, along with Lopez’s car which she had found parked by the sidewalk after she had booked Dyson in. She had also taken the precaution of downloading the video of both Dyson’s drug deal and assault attempt directly at the jail, just in case any of Dyson’s accomplices attempted to break into her offices and snatch the evidence away before she could bring it to court.
Lopez pulled into her parking slot and killed the engine, then sat quietly for a moment and rubbed her eyes. She was working eighteen hour days and could not really remember the last time she had taken a break to do anything other than wash, eat or sleep. The sheer number of bail jumpers and the scale of Chicago meant that tracking down any one perp’ was like looking for a needle in a haystack and as she had found out on numerous occasions, grabbing a needle sometimes hurt.
She got out of her car and walked towards the apartment block she had lived in for the past five years. Her apartment had been paid for by the proceeds of her very first investigation with Ethan Warner, which at least meant that her cost of living was appreciably lower than most people living in the city. That was just as well, because since working alone as a bail runner her income had dropped dramatically: most all bail companies employed several agents to track down and apprehend bail jumpers. Doing it solo was widely considered to be something of a lost cause, the romantic notion of a bounty hunter shattered by the sheer difficulty and low financial reward of hunting down individuals alone. Without Ethan Warner to back her up, every successful mission was the result of a long hard slog that often lasted weeks.
Lopez walked wearily up the steps toward the apartment entrance and was surprised to find a woman sitting at the top of the steps. Young, with long blonde hair and green eyes, the woman had obviously been waiting for some time because she got to her feet the moment she laid eyes on Lopez.
‘You must be Nicola?’ the woman said.
‘You must be psychic.’
The woman smiled and extended a hand. ‘Sorry, my name is Dr Lucy Morgan. Ethan told me a lot about you. Is he about?’
‘Sure he is,’ Lopez replied as she shook the proffered hand, ‘somewhere. If you find him, let me know as it seems everybody in the damned city’s looking for him.’
‘He’s not here?’
‘Hasn’t been for a year or so,’ Lopez replied. Despite being tired she could tell that Morgan was not of the same ilk as Dyson or Devlin, and she remembered enough of the name to recall that she was some sort of scientist. ‘You’d better come up.’
Lopez’s apartment was larger than most and reasonably well decorated, her feminine eye for tasteful furniture marred only by her natural disregard for tidiness. Magazines were scattered across the leather couch, a couple of small beer bottles stood on a glass coffee table in the centre of the lounge and a fairly impressive stack of washing-up remained untouched on the kitchen counter.
‘It’s a nice place you’ve got here,’ Lucy said politely as Lopez shut the door.
‘It was until I moved in and forgot to tidy. Make yourself at home in any space you can find.’
Lucy perched on the couch and watched with some consternation as Lopez un-holstered her pistol and laid it on the kitchen counter, followed by a nightstick, two savage-looking blades and what might have been a knuckle duster.
‘Tools of the trade,’ Lopez said with a faint smile as she saw Lucy’s concerned expression.
‘Ethan said that you were bounty hunters.’
‘Law enforcement assistance,’ Lopez replied as she tossed her leather jacket across a table and then slumped into a well-used armchair nearby. ‘We’re like street cleaners, sweeping up the trash and the dregs of society. Beer?’
‘I’m good,’ Lucy replied as Lopez pulled the cap from a bottle and took a deep swig.
‘What do you want Ethan for?’ Lopez asked. ‘I thought that the case he worked with you finished some years ago?’
‘In Washington DC, so I recall,’ Lucy replied with a nod. ‘It’s about where he met you, correct?’
Lopez replied simply by inclining her head in acquiescence.
‘Ethan kept in touch the year following my return to Chicago,’ Lucy explained. ‘He saved my life in Israel and remained friends with my mother Rachel, so I got to hear about your work from time to time.’
‘Must have been fun,’ Lopez replied.
‘Ethan didn’t say anything about the details. I got the impression he probably wasn’t allowed to.’
‘That’s government contracting for you.’
‘I think that what happened in Israel has happened again,’ Lucy said simply.
Lopez set her beer bottle on the coffee table between them and looked at Lucy for a long time. Because of the nondisclosure agreements signed by herself, Ethan and anybody else involved in the case they had shared little information on what had happened. Lopez had only met Ethan when he had arrived in Washington DC in search of a crazed Baptist minister by the name of Kelvin Patterson, whom it was alleged had paid Lucy Morgan to go in search of the remains of Angels buried in the deserts of Israel. What Lucy had found had not been the remains of Angels at all but something far more earth-shattering: the seven thousand year old remains of a creature not of this earth.
What Patterson had been intending to do with DNA of those remains had so appalled Lopez that she had not really allowed herself to think about it much. She had seen the consequences of the pastor’s actions in the deaths of many innocent people and had no wish to be involved in the case any further. In fact, virtually all of the cases that she and Ethan had worked for the DIA had involved a variety of paranormal or supernatural events, many of which had nearly cost them their lives.