Darkening Dawn (The Lockman Chronicles Book 5) (12 page)

“You’ve clearly operated in a silo, unaware of the larger operations here.”

What the fuck was she talking about? “You mean, like a missile silo?”

Another sigh, another smarmy glare. “Each department in the Agency currently operates as a silo. There is little awareness of what happens outside of each department’s silo. The general plans on changing that.”

“Yippie doo. We’re all going to meet and hold hands.” She shook her head. Maybe the part of her brain that interpreted language had come loose and all this talk of silos was really something else entirely. A girl could hope, right? “I don’t understand what this has to do with the Return. You know, the whole point of the Agency nowadays? Or did you miss that memo when you barged in here and took over?”

Kinga sucked in her lips. Looked like she might have been biting one. It created an odd expression. She turned to Ree. “Is she always this insubordinate?”

Ree glanced at Jessie. A deer in headlights had nothing on Ree at that moment. He cleared his throat. “She has her own style.”

“Well,” Kinga barfed as if the word had been caught in her throat. “We don’t have time for
style
. The general has laid out a detailed strategy for the coming months that will keep Ms. Lockman quite busy.” She aimed a nasty, fake smile at Jessie. “Perhaps it’s time you matured to the level of your position.”

Jessie drew back. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means—” She cranked up the smile while her eyes looked a little crazed. Grace Kelly had turned into Mommy Dearest. “—you should show a little respect for your superiors.”

“Superiors?” Jessie choked on the word. “Let me tell you something, Kingaroo. I don’t like to get cocky, but this whole Agency realigned itself to back
me
up on
my
mission. I am the Return. And without me, you go back to trying to fight supernaturals the old way, shooting everything up and asking questions you can’t answer later.”

And there went the phony smile, putting Kinga into full rage mode. “I will not tolerate this disrespect. Neither will General Borscht.” She pronounced
neither
as n-eye-ther. Of course.

“You and the general can kiss each other’s—”

“Jess,” Ree hissed through his teeth. “Please.”

Jessie speared a finger in his direction. “And you. I’m ashamed to think I liked you. I thought you were different than the other stiffs surrounding me. Guess Wertz was the last one alive that really gave a shit about me. Now I’ve got no one.”

She stood, sending her chair rolling away behind her until it knocked against the wall. Damn the tears filling her eyes. She felt her mascara turning to goo. She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist making a black streak across her skin.

“I’m done,” she said, voice wavering. She felt like a petulant teen. She felt like she had back when she and Mom argued all the time. What she wouldn’t give to have those days back.

“I’d advise you take your seat.” Kinga had set aside her rage for a new look. Her pinched stare looked like a threat.

Tears rolling down her cheeks, surely making her look like Miss Piggy, Jessie laughed. “What are you gonna do to me? Demote me? Dishonorably discharge me? Don’t do me any favors.”

Kinga casually walked over to the door leading out of the conference room and stood in front of it. Crossed her arms.

Ree stood. “Lieutenant Kowalski, this isn’t necessary. Jessie is just upset.”

“You’re damn right I am.” Jessie strode up to Kinga. They were practically the same height, which let Jessie stare Kinga down, nose-to-nose. “Get out of my way.”

“Continue this behavior and there will be dire consequences.”

Jessie narrowed her eyes. “You have no idea the shit I’ve been through.” She saw her father. She saw her mother. She saw Marty. She saw Wertz. She saw Ryan. All people she’d lost one way or another. “There isn’t a damn thing you can do to me that would come close to hurting me worse.”

“We’ll see about that.” Kinga stepped aside and opened the door. She held a hand out toward the hallway outside, painted in industrial gray and lined with a track of fluorescent lights like a glowing spine along the ceiling.

A chill rolled in Jessie’s stomach. She didn’t like Kinga’s smug expression. “You’re going to let me out?”

“Be my guest,” Kinga said. “We know where to find you.”

Jessie suspected she might be facing another lockup. Not anything she hadn’t dealt with before. But not something she wanted to repeat. Which meant Jessie had to get the hell out of Dodge. If Kinga and her beloved general were the direction the Agency was taking, Jessie had every intention of traveling the opposite way.

She smiled at Kinga. “See ya.”

“Most definitely.”

With that, Jessie slipped out of the room into the fucking blare of the fluorescents. She would not miss this place’s irritating lighting.

She heard Ree call her name on her way out.

She kept walking.

Chapter Twenty

T
HE URGE TO KILL PUMPED
hard in Elka’s veins.

She sat at a table toward the back of a Starbuck’s in Chicago’s Loop. At midmorning, the café was stuffed with people. Their human stink overwhelmed the coffee smell, ruining the peace she craved. Students from the local colleges took up many of the tables, backpacks slung on the chair backs, textbooks open in front of them, or notebooks they furiously scribbled in.

Elka had always planned on going to college.

That bitch had killed that dream as quickly as her friends in black had killed her father.

Oh, how she needed to kill. She imagined the feel of her horn stabbing the girl through the eye, the tip breaking through the back of her skull.

She had a ways to go before that could happen. She had to find the bitch first. But finally—
finally
—she had a lead, and if the Great Beyond granted her any luck, she would find a trace of the girl left behind in the rubble of that house, giving Elka material to cast a tracking spell.

Unfortunately, she needed mortal help if she wanted to get anywhere near who UniLover69 had referred to as the Chosen One. Seemed the girl’s sole purpose was to rid the mortal plane of supernaturals with that blue light of hers.

Whether they wanted to go or not.

This hitch in Elka’s plans was what kept her in Chicago and brought her to this café. Yesterday she put an ad in the
Tribune
’s classifieds. Cryptic enough that most mortals wouldn’t understand, but hopefully clear enough to draw the right types. The magic fanatics. Mortals who wanted to expose the paranormal underworld to the light.

A foolish goal.

Nearly the entire mortal population would go insane knowing what lurked around them in secret. Riots. The crumbling of governments. War. Cats and dogs living together. Mass hysteria.

She smirked to herself at her reference to
Ghostbusters
. Her uncle used to tease her that she had no sense of humor. If the Agency—as UniLover called them—hadn’t made him disappear, he would be here to see she had learned to laugh a little now and then.

The
Tribune
lay on the table in front of her, bought from the dispenser out front. She unfolded it, found the classifieds, and pulled them loose. She turned through the pages until she located her ad.

Seeking a true believer who wants to show the world the truth. Only mortals need apply. Otherworldly rewards promised. Interviews conducted at Loop Starbucks from 9am-12pm, Monday and Tuesday. Must have hunting experience.

The last sentence would communicate her need for someone who could handle a gun. She hoped it would get that across at least. She hadn’t been able to think of any other way to word it without it sounding any more suspicious than the strange message already did.

Of course, she hadn’t indicated any way for “applicants” to recognize her. She felt confident enough she would recognize them. Zealots had a certain look about them. This would also give her a chance to vet them before she had to actually engage with them. It would keep things a degree safer. But only one degree.

Chances were this strategy could get her killed. Or worse…

Imprisoned.

Some of these zealots liked to try to tame supernaturals to serve their own needs. And there were few with as much potential use as a unicorn.

At a minute after nine, the first candidate shambled into the café. He wore an orange hunting vest and a ratty camouflage sweatshirt underneath. With the temperature outside in the eighties, the sheen of sweat on his face and the stains under his armpits came as no surprise.

The fool had dressed up for the occasion.
Hey, look at me. I’m a hunter.

Elka lifted the fashion section of the paper open to cover her face enough that she could still peer over its top edge. The orange-vested creep scanned the café with narrowed eyes, brows drawn together. When his gaze came to her, she turned her attention to the paper, pretending to read, but only looking at a picture of a skeletal model on a runway wearing what looked like a chandelier with all sorts of glittering things dripping off it.

The I’m-a-hunter man’s gaze skated past her, roving over the rest of the café. Then back it came, like a surveillance camera behind the counter of a gas station. He did this six times before he crept farther into the café.

Elka had figured on a number of fakes and crazies to answer the ad, but she hadn’t considered the persistence of a zealot. So if this man were truly a believer, he might not leave for some time. Calling over a real potential applicant would likely draw this man to her as well.

Poor planning.

But then, she knew this ruse could easily fail. She just couldn’t figure out a better way. Finding true believers who didn’t have holes in their brains was impossible. She had to draw them to her.

Ten minutes passed as the wild-eyed hunter strolled between the tables, looking around as if he were the manager checking on his patrons. He had a habit of sniffing, nostrils flaring at regular intervals.

Elka kept her eyes down at her paper as he curled his way around her table. She could feel his gaze. He smelled of cheap cologne, a heavy cloud of it surrounding him. Not the sweaty mortal stink she had expected, but no less putrid. She had to hold her breath to keep from puking.

He sidled around the back of her chair and continued his search, snaking closer and closer to the counter.

When Elka dared a glance over her shoulder, she noticed the hunter had caught the attention of one of the baristas. The barista stared at the man while wiping his hands on his green apron. Then he whispered something to the girl next to him who had just handed over a drink to one of the half-dozen people lined up, waiting for their own caffeine fix.

The girl joined the male barista in staring at the man. They exchanged words. The male nodded, wiped his hands on his apron again, then moved around the counter toward the hunter.

Over the din of the crowded café, Elka could only pick up a few words of the conversation between them. But she heard
must order something
from the barista and
meeting someone
from the hunter. They exchanged a few more words. The hunter raised his voice slightly. The barista kept his own even but firm.

Then the hunter turned and beelined for the front door, mouth curled in a cross between a scowl and a pout.

Elka rested her newspaper shield onto the table and took a deep breath.

An hour later, she had read most of the paper and drank another latte. The caffeine made her shaky. She desperately craved a cigarette, but couldn’t abandon her post to slip outside and risk missing a potential helper, not to mention her seat.

That’s when the man in the plaid shirt and the Chicago Cubs cap sat down across from her. He had a warm smile on his face that reminded Elka of her father, even though the two looked nothing alike. This man just gave off that fatherly aura that immediately set you at ease.

Despite that, Elka started when he sat. He seemed to have come out of nowhere.

“Easy now,” he said as he rested a paper cup on the table. The smell of the café’s house came across the table. Either this mortal didn’t stink like the others, or he wasn’t mortal.

“Who are you?” she asked.

His smile quirked as if wanted to chuckle but held it in. The lines in his face deepened when he did this, making him look like he was in his late forties. The lines, especially the crow’s feet, added a wisdom to that fatherly grin.

“Don’t mean a thing who I am,” he said. His country drawl made Elka thing of Andy Griffith. She and Aunt Jill used to watch hours of Matlock together—before her murder. “Only thing matters is who you are.”

A heavy pit dropped in Elka’s stomach. She steadied herself to keep her voice even. “And who am I supposed to be?”

“I’m being rude,” he said. He took off his ball cap and set it in his lap. Streaks of gray ran through his dark brown hair. His hair looked greasy. It lay matted down in some spots and sticking up in others. “Name’s Farmer. Earl Farmer.”

Elka chuffed. “And are you?”

“Am I what?”

“A farmer?”

“Well, ain’t that the most original joke I heard in a long while?” His voice was soaked with sarcasm, but his big grin stayed planted on his face.

She didn’t know this man, had no idea of his agenda, should have felt scared, yet couldn’t help but smile herself while her cheeks warmed, feeling a little shame at the same time. “I’m sorry.”

Earl waved a hand. “Don’t worry none. I’m pulling your leg.” His grin fell away. His eyes took on a serious intensity. “But time for fun’s past now. We have serious business to discuss.”

The mix of feelings in Elka made her feel like a wet rag in a washer on the spin cycle. She liked the man, then worried about insulting him, and now felt a tremor of fear work through her.

She put her hands in her lap under the table so Earl couldn’t see them shake.

“What kind of business?”

“You put that ad in the paper, right?”

Elka’s gaze dipped down to the newspaper in front of her, then back up to meet Earl’s eyes. “How did you know it was me?”

“I had a dream last night. I was reading a newspaper. The words on the page started glowing. So bright I thought my eyes might cook like a couple of eggs. Then, in the middle of all this golden light, I see your face. The light is like a halo around you.”