Department 57: Rubies of Fire (3 page)

“Don, I’ve assigned you a technical expert, one of the best we’ve got. Hook on to the private Department 57 system and see if you can break in.” He paused and looked from Nancy to Roz. “So which of you will it be? I need to know today so I can put your name on the transfer documents.”

Roz heaved a sigh and thought of doing it for her country. “Me. I’ll do it.” If Nancy went in on this op, she’d have to postpone the wedding or at least scale it down. Her mother would never let her hear the end of it. “I take it this is not a fast job. You’ll want your operative in place for as long as it takes.”

Knox watched her, his eyes gleaming speculatively. She saw the narrowed gaze, the sudden inspiration.
Fuck, what now?
“That will be fine.” He didn’t take his gaze away from Roz. “You and Constant can cover as an item. He can back you up much better like that.”

“But they know he works for the DIB.”

“Yes, and they’ll know he’s a schmuck, a lowlife, someone who won’t climb higher in the Company.” Constant made a sound, but Knox interrupted him. “You know it’s true, Constant. You don’t work hard enough to make a difference. You might have gone further, but you don’t have the dedication to do the job. If you hadn’t fucked the boss’s PA, that might have helped. But you can be liaison and backup, and you’re here to give us as much information as you can. If Roz gets into trouble, she can fake illness and they’ll call you to come get her.
Capisce
?”

“Yeah.” Constant didn’t sound any happier than she did. She’d only just shaken him off, and now she was stuck with him again. Whatever else, he was someone she could only despise.

“Move in together. Make like lovers.”

Could it get any fucking worse?

“My apartment isn’t in the best part of town,” Constant said. “I’m changing where I live, so I took a temporary lease on a small place.”

“You can move in with the two women, then.” Knox gave a bland, conciliatory smile. “You can claim the rent on expenses for the length of the case.”

Roz felt some relief, but not because of the rent. Because Nancy could help, even act as a buffer between her and Andreas. While she resented being reduced to one of the “two women,” she wanted this meeting over, so she didn’t object aloud.

When she finally looked at Constant, he grinned at her, but under the smile, she saw a promise. A dark, sensual promise she had no intention of accepting. Truly she didn’t.

Chapter Two

Following Andreas Constant had proved as easy as opening her mind and letting him in. So much so that Roz wondered briefly if he suspected anything and was making investigation simple for her. No, that couldn’t be possible. She’d read him, entered the forefront of his mind, and she found nothing there but lustful thoughts and work niggles. No sigil, the mental symbol all Talents had; no image of a shape-shifter’s other form, no family symbol that vampires used, no tense, electric tingling that she would have gotten if he’d had strong psychic gifts. Constant was just an extraordinarily handsome, sex-obsessed mortal. She had to be mistaken.

She’d picked up his trail right after she’d stopped in a back alley to feed from a college kid looking for kicks in this doubtful area. Being a couple of security levels above Constant had given her access to his files, so she knew where to start.

The district given as his address shocked her a little. Rather a lot, when she saw the stinking building it took her to in the middle of one of the worst areas of Manhattan, one of the few the authorities hadn’t cleaned up yet. Not so far for her to walk from her home on the Upper West Side, but a world away in every other sense.

Groups of teens lounged in the street, probably working when they should rightly have been in bed. If she weren’t Talented, Roz wouldn’t have dreamed of venturing here alone. But she fuzzed her presence well enough, blurring people’s vision of her so she looked like anyone else in this godforsaken rat hole, her nondescript sneakers and ragged hoodie fitting right in with the general wear of people here. No one took any notice of her.

She was beginning to think she had the wrong address, or that he’d lied, when a figure emerged from the block she was watching. She had to look twice to confirm the man really was Andreas Constant.

He wore a pair of perfectly cut pants and a leather jacket with something dark underneath, a shirt or T-shirt. No sign of the practical but deeply boring clothes he wore to work. His dark hair was free of the gel he used during the daytime, brushed back off his face in short, tousled locks. She supposed everyone was entitled to his or her secrets. Some secrets, anyway.

But not from her. If she was to work with him, she wanted to know more than he wanted to tell her, and that controlled touch to her mind this morning had made her wonder about him. She’d wait until he was off guard and read him deeper than she’d done so far. Before she began her assignment, she’d find out about her backup. Constant moved along the street with an easy stride, past people who should have mugged him for his jacket alone. Perhaps they knew him. Why he lived here, she had no idea. If he could afford to dress like that, he could afford a decent neighborhood. Perhaps it gave him some perverse pleasure to walk past these lowlifes every day.

He moved at a brisk pace, so she had to lengthen her stride to keep up with him. She tried a gentle mental probe, but she found his mind shuttered, even more than at work.

She paused, then had to hurry to catch up.

Half an hour later, she stopped for breath outside a fashionable nightclub in Gramercy. He’d walked all the way, and her legs ached with the pace he’d set. Also, she wasn’t dressed for fashionable nightclubs. She’d just about pass if she took off the hoodie, in her plain pants and white blouse, but it wasn’t the outfit she’d choose to party in, especially in a swanky place like this. She took off the ragged garment and rolled it into a bundle.

For New York, it was early, but she knew this club would be fuller than most others at this time. It was newly fashionable, and noncelebrities needed to arrive early. She fumbled in her pocket and found a credit card. She guessed the membership card would be about the same size.

Ignoring the long line of people neatly corralled behind red ropes, she walked straight to the front and held up her card to one of the door attendants. She didn’t bother to smile. Smiles weren’t for the muscle at the door; it made them suspicious.

Her standard white-blouse-black-pants looked like designer wear to the discriminating door attendant once she’d messed with his mind a little, and the gold card she showed him allowed her into any area she chose. He opened the door for her. She even got a smile.

Inside, she was as out of place as a demon in heaven. The fancy nightclubs she visited with her friends were livelier, even at this early time of night. No sign of the elaborate cocktails with paper umbrellas and fruit that the more ebullient crowd favored, no chalked list of cocktails with dubious names by the bar. Instead, she saw dimly lit tables with couples and threesomes sitting absorbed in anything but each other. They occasionally glanced around to see who had come in and who was heading for the roped-off area at the end, where the VIPs mingled with a purposeful air the main room lacked.

Except for one couple right at the end—two men totally involved in their conversation, leaning across the little table toward each other like lovers at a secret tryst. Roz hastily turned aside and found a place to sit, sliding into a seat as far away from the single, low spotlight as possible. They hadn’t seen her, but she didn’t want to take any chances.

Andreas Constant sat with his back to her. Facing her, though not looking at her, his features highlighted by the candle flickering on the table between them, was a face she recognized from the pictures from the briefing this morning. Classically beautiful, his blue eyes dazzling despite the dim lighting of the nightclub, Fabrice Germain stood out even here, in this place where beautiful people gathered. A Talent for sure, but what kind of Talent?

Cautiously she projected her senses. Just enough to eavesdrop. Blocking out the gossip around her took a moment, and then she honed in on the couple at the end table.

Her first shock came when she realized they were speaking telepathically. Her second when she realized she could “hear” them. They’d be speaking at a deeper level than the everyday, but that encounter in the elevator… She’d really gotten to Andreas. He’d let her in far more than either of them had realized at the time.

“There’s a mole in the Department.”

“What?”
Germain sounded rattled.

“I’m supposed to act as go-between for Roz Templeton and the DIB. They’re sending her into the Department.”

“We expected something like that. We’ll let her in.”

“I know. What you don’t know is that you, Anushka, Wyvern, and Takasc are specifically targeted. Knox briefed us this morning.”

A moment of shock, then,
“That could be from surveillance. Watching people coming and going, even if they use the back way.”

“They can identify most of the team from the San Francisco job, and they know too damned much. There’s a mole.”

She saw Germain’s slight shrug, the way his silk T-shirt moved like a second skin over his muscular shoulders.

“I think you’re imagining things, bro, but there’s no harm doing a second sweep.”

“Yeah. You do that. I’m moving to Roz’s apartment. Knox wants me to play the lover.”

She saw the chuckle, echoed in Germain’s mind.

“That shouldn’t bother you none. She’s a good-looking female.”

“I thought your kind weren’t supposed to notice that?”

Another chuckle.

“We notice just fine. We just don’t act on it.”

Fuck
. Fabrice Germain was a Sorcerer. Even worse, if he chose to stay a virgin, that meant he was the most powerful of their kind. Fabrice would make her in a minute.

They had to know she sat here, listening in. That was why she’d tracked Constant so easily. He’d let her. Their encounter in the elevator didn’t have anything to do with it. He’d picked up her presence back at his apartment and let her in to see what she would do. Let her follow him, let her in on their conversation, so the Sorcerer could latch on to her and perhaps even read her. They wouldn’t let her go. If  Germain wanted it, he could kill her with a thought.

Roz swallowed, concentrating on controlling her rising panic, and slid out of their minds slowly, a fraction at a time. If she could get away without them noticing, she could flash—teleport—back to her apartment. Flashing exhausted her, but she’d be safe at home. Constant hadn’t been to her apartment yet. He wouldn’t dare flash to an unknown place for fear of landing in the middle of a piece of furniture or even a person. Vampires flashed blind, and unless they knew precisely where they were going, it could mean instant death. But no one would be in her room, and she knew it well.

She could do it. Just a matter of slipping into the bathroom and flashing from there.

Watching the men carefully, aware that hunter had just turned into prey, Roz moved to the end of the seat and glided out of her place. She kept her attention on the two men, who looked at each other, seemingly unaware of her presence.

Forcing herself to move slowly, she headed for the bathroom, walking around the small and sparsely populated dance floor to avoid passing the two men.

The only sense she dared use was empathic, sensing their presence, making sure they didn’t move or watch her as she worked on keeping her pace steady and unhurried.

A strong, male hand clamped over her shoulder and turned her around, pushing her against the wall.

Before she could catch her breath, a hard mouth slammed over hers, preventing any cry she might have made for help, and a voice she knew well commanded her mind.
“Say anything and I’ll knock you out cold. Come with me. I need to talk to you.”

He flashed them to an alley. She felt the wind whip around them and sensed they hadn’t gone far. If he’d flashed, then he would be at least momentarily weak. She pulled away only to feel herself dragged back.

“So tell me what you were doing watching me and my friend so closely?” Andreas Constant demanded.

She glared at him. “How on earth did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“I kept tabs on you while I was walking to the restroom. You and your friend were still sitting at the table. How did you move without me tracking you?”

“You haven’t met many Sorcerers, have you?”

Her brows went up. “No.”

“He kept the illusion for me while I followed you.”

The sound came into both their minds simultaneously.
“Incoming! Prepare for attack!”

Andreas sprang back and pressed against the wall, gaze darting to either side of them.
“I see them. Roz, we have company. Truce.”

“Truce,”
she agreed tensely.

Dark figures slipped around the corner, three, maybe four. They weren’t friendly shadows.

Roz dropped into the pose her karate master had taught her. Beside her, Andreas did the same, but she felt an aura of danger emanate from him, terrifying if he’d aimed it at her.

“You want something?” he asked, his tone deceptively mild.

“Your wallet, for a start.”

Immediately Roz felt a piercing pain. Psychic attack, like fingernails down a chalkboard, paralyzed her senses for a brief moment. Long enough for them to attack.

A swift blow to the side of her head knocked her aside, but she recovered, snapping up her mental defenses as she should have done at the start of the fight. No time to scold herself for her stupidity, but she felt it just the same, embarrassment curling hotly through her body.

Her slip helped psych her up. Her job didn’t involve regular combat, but vampires were always on guard. One of their attackers held something that glinted in the light, smaller than a knife. She didn’t stop to identify it, just assessed the distance between the hand and her foot. Then there was no distance at all as she kicked out and struck the object away. She didn’t hear it fall, because by then Andreas was roaring in pure fury.