“Huh, good point. Where are you?”
“A diner outside of Albuquerque—the Adobe Bowl. You know where it is?”
“I’m not that far away. Stay put. I’ll come to you.”
“I’ll be here.” I hung up without any kind of conventional end to the conversation; in my experience, that left the other party feeling off balance and frustrated. I liked to have Turner frustrated; he tended to give more away than he intended.
I ordered pie and coffee, and nursed both while the sunrise turned the land to intense bands of color—purple for the mountains, dark green for the foothills, ochre and gold for the flatlands. There was a television running silently in the corner of the diner, tuned to a news channel. One of the stories was about an abduction of children that began in Denver and ended in Chicago, which had been foiled by a fast-thinking citizen. All the children had been recovered safely, and the kidnappers either dead in the ensuing gun battle with police or fled. A manhunt was under way.
I doubted they would ever find the bodies of those who’d “fled.” Rashid had not been in a very good mood, and after posing as the “fast-thinking citizen,” he would want his pound of flesh.
The children were safe. That made me feel a distant, cold satisfaction, if not happiness; but even the satisfaction was wiped out by the next story, which involved the grisly discovery of a shooting victim in the woods, two men dead of apparent natural causes and one who’d been torn apart by wild animals.
Luis had gotten what he’d wanted from me. Full value.
They hadn’t found the one who’d been sealed alive inside the tree, but he was as dead as the others, no question about it.
“Gruesome stuff,” said Turner as he slid into the booth across from me, a porcelain cup of coffee already in his hand. He was a thin, bland sort of man, and as usual he was dressed in what I considered the FBI uniform—a dark suit, a plain tie, a white shirt. Turner was, however, also a Warden—not very powerful but well trained, at least. I doubted his FBI bosses had knowledge of that particular aspect of his life. “What kind of pie was that?”
“Good,” I said. He sighed, motioned to a waitress, and pointed at my pie.
“Another one of those, unless it’s cherry. I don’t like cherry.”
“Coconut,” the woman said. “That okay?”
“Brilliant.” He sipped coffee and returned his attention to me. He’d showered recently; the ends of his hair were still dark and damp against his neck, and his face seemed freshly shaved. By contrast, his shirt seemed wrinkled and stale, and his suit hadn’t seen recent cleaning, either. “Nice trip?” He glanced over his shoulder at the TV. “You pass that place along the way, the one with the dead guys?”
“I think I would remember something like that.”
Turner had enough experience with me to recognize a non-answer when he heard one, and for a moment I thought he might continue to pursue it, but he decided not to, as his slice of pie was deposited in front of him. “I’m sure they needed killing,” he said. “That would be the usual excuse, even if you’re not from Texas.”
“I thought you investigated things like that.”
“Murder isn’t a federal crime,” he said, “luckily for you. Abductions are, which is why I was tracking this Denver thing until miraculously everything just went wrong for the kidnappers. Kids got out of it fine, which was another miracle considering the bullets that started flying around. Incidentally, although this isn’t going out to the media, all of the adults in the plot were either recent converts to the Church of the New World or hired guns paid as muscle. And the kids were all Warden kids. You got any insights?”
“None that would be useful to you,” I said. “But you didn’t call me because of those kidnappings.”
“Not originally,” he agreed, and considered his next words over a bite of pie. “You said the FBI wanted you to come in for a case. Truth is, there is no case. They want you to consult on some hypothetical scenarios.”
“Consult,” I repeated, frowning. “I don’t think I understand your meaning.”
“I did some digging around to get this, so please, tip generously. I mean that some eggheads up in Quantico have developed a what-if idea about what could happen if our relationship with the Wardens goes sour, and they’d like you to render an expert opinion about how likely the FBI and other governmental agencies are to be able to contain the situation.”
It was frankly laughable to think that, should humans somehow go to war with Wardens—much less with Djinn—there would be any scenario at all under which they would live, much less win, but I gazed back at him with what I hoped was a politely interested expression. “I should be glad to render my opinion,” I said. “But I don’t have time for such things at present.”
“I’m afraid their response to that is that you’re going to make the time,” he said. “That’s why I wanted to meet you out here instead of at my offices. They’re going to, ah, require your immediate assistance. You understand what I’m saying?”
I thought so, and ate the last bites of pie instead of offering an immediate reply. “You think they will take me into custody and force me to do it.”
“I think they’d try. Look, I don’t agree with eighty percent of what the Wardens are up to these days, but I could say the same about the FBI, and that’s why I think I’m getting less than half the story at any one time. Wardens don’t trust me; my colleagues at the day job trust me even less. Officially what they’re telling me is that you’re under no obligation to help them, but I’m placing my bets that if you say no, you get strongly reminded that you’re now a citizen of the United States of America, and there’ll be some statute they invoke to make damn sure you don’t go anywhere until they’re ready to let you off the hook.” He paused, licking coconut cream from his fork. “I know you well enough to know that detaining you when you want to be somewhere else is a really awful idea. So in the interests of you not melting down a wing of a government building and putting yourself on the Most Wanted list, along with every Warden who ever met you, let’s get you heading somewhere else. Fast.”
It explained much, including why the government had initially wanted Luis to bring Ibby, and me, to an area they controlled ... Area 51. They wanted me, and they weren’t inclined to change their minds.
I signaled the waitress for another cup of coffee and, after due consideration, for another piece of pie. Watching him eat was making my taste buds crave another. “And you? They’ll know you spoke to me.”
“Yeah, they’ll know,” he said. “Fact is, though, they don’t know what we talked about, and technically I don’t know enough to have warned you off anyway. My story is that I tried to persuade you to come in, but you didn’t want anything to do with it. You told me you were heading for Mexico.”
I raised my eyebrows. “And where am I going?”
“Anywhere but Mexico. Look, I don’t care. I don’t want to know.” Turner was concentrating very carefully on his pie, and no longer meeting my eyes at all. “I’ve seen the stakes. You need to get where you’re going and put an end to this. I don’t care if you do it by our rules or not. I’ve seen what Pearl has done to these kids. So have you.” He suddenly looked around, frowning. “Where’s your shadow?”
“Who?”
“You know who I mean. Big, tall guy, badass tattoos ...?”
“Luis has other commitments,” I said coolly. “He’s not involved at present.”
“Huh.” Turner chewed his pie thoughtfully. “I’d have placed a bet that I’d never seen the two of you apart.”
“You’d lose,” I said.
“I wouldn’t be the only one.”
My pie and extra cup of coffee were delivered, and I slid the waitress a larger bill than necessary to pay for us both. “Margaret,” I said. She looked up, startled, and I focused on her tired, faded green eyes. “Margaret, we were never here. You don’t remember serving us at all.” The money was for my FBI friend’s benefit. The pulse of power—illegal to use in this way, for a Warden—was the real weapon I was wielding. In her mind, our faces blurred and became indistinct. “Keep the change.”