The Grendel Affair

Page 30

As to finding the explosives, who needed bomb-sniffing dogs when we had werewolves on staff?
Yasha and the five other werewolf agents who were working tonight had undergone extensive training to identify and locate the various pieces, parts, and ingredients that could go into making a bomb.
I tried to sit and relax, but the latter wasn’t happening, so the former was impossible. This much stress called for a sugar hit. I looked down at the carry-out container of banana puddin’ from the Full Moon sitting on my desk. I needed that puddin’. But first I needed a spoon. And milk. I had to have milk. I pushed back my chair and stood. “I’m fixin’ to go for milk,” I announced. “Anyone else want something?”
I went into the break room, got a spoon out of the drawer, a glass out of the cabinet, opened the fridge door . . .
. . . and stared.
My doppelganger hadn’t brought a bomb in that bowling bag—or even a bowling ball.
Ollie Barrington-Smythe’s blood-spattered toupee was perched on top of a honeydew melon.
And to make it extra festive, a fruit knife had been plunged through the top like a Lizzie Borden hatpin, and a face had been drawn on in black Sharpie that actually looked like Ollie.
As my vision went sparkly and my knees weak, my only thought was that my doppelganger was an artist. Who knew?
The combination of that and everything else left me with an overwhelming need to find a chair, sit down, and put my head between my knees.
“Ian.” I said it as loudly as I could while folded double in a chair.
Nothing.
“Ian,” I called again, going for more volume this time. “I found what was in the bowling bag.”
I heard more than one pair of booted feet running in my direction, and since I knew they were friendlies, I left my head right where it was and watched the light show behind my eyelids.
There were two obscenities, one guffaw, and an eww.
Ian’s hand was on my back. “Breathe.”
After about a minute, the sparklies started to go away. Breathing wasn’t particularly easy, but then I was wadded up in a chair. Air was way overrated anyway, especially when it smelled like overripe melon and something that must have been toupee glue.
“Is it Ollie’s?” Ian asked.
My voice was muffled between my knees. “Oh yeah.”
“The blood appears to be fresh; as to the claw marks, ghouls would be a safe bet.”
“Oh goody.”
“Though generally if kidnappers send a part or piece, it means the victim is still alive.”
“Generally?” I asked.
“Mostly.”
I slowly sat up. Minor sparklies, but no whirlies or woozies. “Aw jeez, my milk is in there.”
“It’s on the other side of the shelf.”
“From a bloody toupee.”
“Look on the bright side,” Ian said. “At least she didn’t leave you a body part.”
I stared sadly at the hairy melon that was even shaped like Ollie’s head. I felt my eyes start to tear up. “The toupee might be the only thing they didn’t eat.”
“There’s not enough blood for it to have been fatal,” Ian hurried to assure me. “But the melon and toupee couldn’t have been what was in the bowling bag.”
I sniffed. “Why not?”
“Your doppelganger brought the bag in early yesterday morning.”
“And Ollie wasn’t kidnapped until around eleven,” I realized. Duh.
“Right. However, the blood on the toupee is relatively fresh, and people have been in and out of this fridge all day.”
I slowly stood up. “Meaning if I just now found it . . .”
There was a gleam in Ian’s green eyes. “She’s still here.”
Vivienne Sagadraco’s voice came from the doorway. “I understand our intruder left a calling card.”
The boss was probably accustomed to receiving actual calling cards from her butler on a tiny silver tray. I got a melon wearing Ollie’s rug on a chipped plate.
“You could say that, ma’am.”
“I believe I just did.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ian told the boss his theory about the doppelganger’s present whereabouts.
“Alain?”
“Yes, madam?”
I jumped. Moreau was standing right behind me.
“Lock down the complex. No one else leaves or enters.”
“Consider it done.” The vampire left to carry out her orders, as silently as he’d come in. Creepy.
I started to slip past her and out the break room door.
“And where are you going, Agent Fraser?” she asked.
“I’m going to find me and kick my ass.”
“You will stay here.”
“But ma’am, I wanna help find—”
Vivienne Sagadraco held up a hand. “You can best do that by remaining here. That way there will be no confusion as to the doppelganger’s true identity if you are not dashing about the complex complicating matters.”
“Meaning no one will accidentally kill you while looking for her,” Ian said.
“But if I stay with you, you’ll know I’m me,” I insisted. “If she’s wearing that cloaking device, you won’t see her. I’m the only one who might be able to. Moreau said doppelgangers have supernatural strength, so wouldn’t it be good to see something like that before it finds you?”
Ian and the boss both regarded me with narrowed eyes, meaning that they didn’t like it, but they knew I was right, at least a little bit; though I wasn’t stupid enough to say so out loud.
“Your argument has merit,” the boss admitted. “I will consider your request.” She turned on her fashionably high heels and left the break room. “Commander Benoit,” she called out into the bull pen, “I want the doppelganger taken alive. I have questions and that creature has answers. I want those answers.”
“Understood, ma’am. One doppelganger conscious enough for questioning coming up.”
I started to leave, but was stopped by Ian’s hand on my arm.
“Wipe that smirk off your face,” he said.
“I’m not smirking.” Then again, maybe I was.
“If she says yes—and if she does, she’s wrong and I don’t agree with her—you will do exactly as I say.”
Normally, I would’ve argued with him, but with what he’d told me during dinner, I knew he was afraid. For me. For fear of another partner disregarding caution and getting themselves in a situation that was way over their head. It had taken a lot for him to tell me what had happened. I also remembered his promise to teach me how to survive those situations. He didn’t have to make that offer or tell me what had happened to him and his last partner; but he had, and both meant a lot to me.
So the least I could do—at least for now—was to toe the line.
“Understood,” I said.
Ian’s eyes widened in surprise then narrowed in suspicion. “You can understand something but still not do it.”
“Okay, then let me rephrase that. I will be a good and cautious partner and follow the directions of a senior—and more experienced—agent.”
Ian’s expression was dubious to say the least.
“Really,” I said.
Ian raised an eyebrow.
“And truly.” I raised a hand. “Scout’s honor . . . um, even though I was never a Girl Scout.”
“Let me guess, too many rules?”
“I never made it past Brownies. On our first campout, there was a fire drill, and I fell, rolled down a hill, and into the lake. There were scrapes, cuts, possibly a concussion—”
“I found bowling bag in trash next to incinerator,” said Yasha’s voice over Kenji’s speakers. “Is empty. Does not smell like bomb.”
Ian and I ran out into the bull pen.
Vivienne Sagadraco reached over Kenji and keyed the mike. “Can you identify it?”
A pause from Yasha. Then a long sniff. Then another pause. “There is smell, but I do not know it.”
“Take it up to the lab,” the boss told him. “They’ll tell us what it is. Mr. Hayashi, do you have those sightings compiled yet?”
“Aye, aye,” Kenji told her then looked over at me. “I need to know which of these are you, and which ones are not. Looks like you were all over the place yesterday.”
I pulled up a chair beside him and looked at the big, segmented screen.
“Once inside, I spent most of my day either at my desk, but I was in the break room, uh . . . several times getting cookies.” I lowered my voice. “Or in the ladies’ room . . . because of all the coffee and milk I had with those cookies.”
“It looks like your doppelganger went damned near everywhere else. She’s been in nearly every part of the complex, a few times going just out of the security cameras’ range.”
“Identify the places where she was out of range,” Sagadraco said. “All of them.”
“The hall behind the armory, locker rooms, labs, and of course, the incinerator.”
Ian maneuvered around behind Kenji’s chair. “Got a floor plan handy?”
“Coming right up.”
Lines and boxes crisscrossed on the screen. Kenji touched the screen in the five places, each area highlighting as he did.
“For one, they’re spread out,” Ian muttered. “Good blast radius.”
Kenji shot him a look.
“If you’re a bomber.”
I noticed small squares in each area. “What are those?”
“Air vents.”
“Bombs in air vents?”
“Could be gas.” Roy Benoit had paused on his way out of the bull pen.
“Commander,” the boss said, “take your people and coordinate with Commander Niles and her team. I want each of those areas thoroughly searched.”
Roy and his heavily armed monster-hunting commandos moved out to split up the search duties with Sandra and her folks, leaving me and Ian high and dry. Ian showed no reaction one way or another. I was more than a little disappointed.