Enforcer Ensnared (5 page)

Ange
frowned in thought, twirling her own
keys around her index finger while she considered his argument.

“If it really becomes an
issue we can race back here and pick up your car,” she said after a moment,
“but I think Will would have made us call him immediately if we were moving
that fast again. That’s how he handled the deal with the annex. I prefer my
bike when we’re moving around downtown, purely because it’s a simple thing to
leave it on the sidewalk. We don’t have to mess around with parking or
restrictions or going down into the sub-basement garage and all that nonsense.
It’s much quicker and simpler all round. Even though Will paged that this was
important, if it was truly that urgent I think he’d have wanted to speak with
us, not just meet. Don’t you think?”

“I really don’t know,”
Blade replied thoughtfully. “Maybe Will’s cell died again.”

Will had quickly learned
the hard way how potent magical energy had a tendency to fry new technological
items such as cell phones. In the time they’d been working with the mingled
crew, Will had gone through a number of cell phones.

Enforcers usually relied
on pagers to communicate in emergencies out in the field. The smaller, simpler
items still died but tended to have a longer life than a cell or other new
mobile device. Barely any Mages considered having a cell worth the effort and
many didn’t bother with more than one land line in their office or home either.
While it made communication difficult, it was by no means impossible, and
wizards and witches had grown used to the restrictions with a resigned ease.

They both remained silent
for a moment, thinking. Blade thought about
Ange’s
point but finally allowed
himself
to be convinced. He
had greatly enjoyed his two other rides on
Ange’s
motorbike. The witch drove as if possessed by a speed demon, a fact he loved
about her. Riding with her, their bodies pressed tightly together, the wind
whipping through her hair, her musky, enchanting scent all within his warm
grasp, had given him deep pleasure.

A sense of agility and
freedom overcame him on the bike, something he could easily become addicted to.
Nodding his head, he gave in graciously.

“We’re wasting time.
Let’s go on your bike,” he agreed, and together they left his house to head
down to the police station.

* * * *
*

The team that assembled
in the cramped meeting room at the local police station chatted amongst
themselves as if they had known each other for years. In reality they had been
together for less than a week. Being teamed in pairs and having survived a
number of ferociously intense raids had quickly drawn them together. Trust ran
deep between them—they had forged a strong bond nothing short of deceptive
betrayal could shatter.

Julian
Sherwyn
sat backward on his chair, his gray eyes laughing
at something Sage had said, his blond head tilted back as he snickered. Sage,
petite with long blonde hair, gesticulated as she told some story to Julian and
her partner Chase
Whieldon
. With dark shaggy hair
coupled with warm brown eyes, the man had proved himself not only a competent
partner for Sage but also the right one to hold her heart.

Blade didn’t know the
human as well as he would have liked, but Sage had never glowed so happily
before. There would be plenty of time for the wizard and human to get to know
each other better later, Blade figured. Besides, Chase had got the most
important bit right already—he made Sage happy and content in a way Blade had
never seen before.

Flame stood nearby,
talking to Matthias
Kestell
, one of the best trackers
Blade had ever met. Blade and Flame knew Matt from a few scattered missions in
the past. Matthias could focus in on people’s magical signatures, their
essence, and track them. That was his magical talent. Crystal-blue eyes matched
with brown hair made him handsome, though his raw power and talent were just as
responsible for the witches congregating around the sexy wizard.

Before Blade could join
Matt and Flame, Will
Allcott
came through the door.
His close-cropped blond hair and piercing blue eyes quickly scanned the assembled
group,
then
he closed the door behind him. They all
took their seats and watched their team leader with varying amounts of
curiosity.

“Okay, people, listen
up,” Will started as he seated himself at the head of the table. “The lab is
analyzing those drugs as fast as possible. They’re working around the clock
because it seems like the magic…or essence, I think you called it?
Whatever.
The magical shit infused into the production of
the drug breaks down and dissipates fast. Its half-life, I’m reliably informed,
is only a couple of hours or so.”

Blade nodded. The
discovery made sense to him. Prior to their raid on the annex, little to
nothing had been known about the drug because it had absorbed so quickly into
people’s bloodstreams, then broken down. Tests came back showing nothing at
all.

Besides, magical essence
did not usually linger too long in a non-magical substance without a proper
casting. Such a show of magical talent took significant energy, which would be
impossible to sustain on such a large scale as the drug production. The fact
that half-life of the magic—the time it took for fifty percent of it to
dissipate—would be so brief made perfect sense.

That meant that within a
day or so, the drug would be entirely out of a human’s system. The cravings
would begin and the cycle would start anew. That knowledge also fitted with the
fact that blood tests on users revealed nothing.

“So what have we actually
learned?” Chase asked as he leaned forward on his elbows.

“David
Sarke
has been manufacturing the drugs,” Will started as he
handed out copies of a few sheets of stapled paper. “He used Alice Greenly to
push them in the local clubs and probably made a mint in the process. He almost
certainly had a partner—or partners, plural—all of whom are currently unknown.
Different people react differently to the Jolt, sometimes being infused with
temporary magical powers, sometimes gaining heightened awareness or enhanced
senses. In all cases, however, it is potently addictive and leads to psychosis
and eventual mental breakdown.”

“So our next step is
finding where
Sarke
has run off to and following up
on his potential partners?” Julian asked as he scanned the brief summary they
had each been handed.

Flame spoke up. “Blade
and I have been already working on that. After the meeting we plan to collate
the list of possible suspects with any known links to
Sarke
and hopefully get a working list we can do more in-depth searches on. We’ve
combed through the Enforcer database, as we’re working on the assumption that
at least one of the partners has strong ties to the magical community.”

“We’ve already copied
some of the files on the usual suspects,” Blade added, “just to get a
jump-start in case any of them rings a bell. We were hoping, before we
discovered
Sarke
, to go around and interview them.
The plan was to look more deeply into their potential connections with Jolt,
but with Chase and Sage uncovering
Sarke
we now have
a much stronger basis to work from.”

“We can look into things
from the human end too,” Julian interjected enthusiastically. “Since
Sarke
spent a decent amount of time on our side of the
fence as well, working in the college and staying under the radar of the
Enforcers in the human world, there should be information we can mine from his
contacts here.”

A fresh-faced intern,
looking to Blade’s mind almost obscenely crisp, knocked on the glass portion of
the meeting room door. She opened it without waiting for Will to look around,
let alone call out to her, and stuck her head in.

“Captain
Allcott
?” she said with a faint blush. “There’s an urgent
internal phone call for you. I tried to explain you were in your task force
briefing, but they insisted.”

Will rolled his eyes and
nodded as he stood up. Turning to the group, he pointed a finger at them.
“Don’t move. I’ll get this idiot off my back and return in a minute or so. We
have plenty to discuss and plan for.”

Blade watched as Will
followed the young girl from the meeting room, the door slamming behind them.

“Do you think you could
print out a copy of the list of the main people you want to investigate from
your side?” Blade asked Julian. “Flame and I can also hammer out a list of the
main people of interest on our side, along with their information. If we keep
each other in the loop we might be able to narrow things down faster. Any
obvious connections between your list and ours should be red-flagged.”

“I take it Sage and I get
to data-mine because we were point on all the action last time?” Chase replied
with a wry grin.

Blade snickered. “We’re
all grinding through the information mining, sunshine.” He chuckled. “We have
entire databases full of suspects and the six of us to whittle it down to the
guilty parties.”

“Is there anyone in
particular
you’re liking
for this?” Matthias asked,
his eyes glinting with interest. Blade exchanged a look with Flame and shrugged
a shoulder at her.

“We had a few people we
liked initially,” she answered.
“Finger-in-every-pie-style
wizards.
But knowing beyond a doubt now that
Sarke
is involved in the manufacturing and distribution helps us immensely. We just
need to correlate our preliminary list against
Sarke
,
see if anything pops up at us. Or we might get supremely lucky and someone new
might rear their head.”

Sage cast a quick glance
at Chase, who nodded in silent agreement. “We could help you search deeper,”
she offered. A more in-depth search might uncover wire transfers or other
unusual activity.”

Blade nodded and grinned.
“That would help save us time, definitely.”

Flame started to add her
thoughts, but the meeting room door opened again and Will stormed in, his face
rigid with temper. Blade noticed the human had pulled out a semi-chewed Cuban
cigar and had it clamped fiercely between his teeth. Moving it to the side of
his mouth so he could chew and speak simultaneously, Will stood at the head of
the table, his hands fisted on his lean hips as he vented angrily.

“Mother-fucking asshole
management,” he started. “Apparently the college has thrown a hissy fit over
our ‘poorly managed raid’ on their damn annex. Said we ‘misrepresented the full
truth and scope of the matter’ when we said a person of interest might be
performing illegal activity on campus grounds without their sanction.”

“Campus
grounds?”
Julian
repeated. “But the annex wasn’t on the college campus!”

“
Apparently,
” Will
drawled sarcastically, “the mere fact the annex is a part of the college
buildings, despite the fact it isn’t on campus or anywhere near it, makes it
technically still a part of their grounds as an off-site satellite. Or some
sort of red-tape bullshit along those lines. Regardless, the dean of facilities
has been on the phone with the mayor and the commissioner. Apparently the
academic asshole has been throwing a fit of hysterics over the structural
damage and bemoaning the quotes for rebuilding that are now pouring onto his
desk. The end result is we’ve been yanked from the case.”

Blade felt his jaw drop
as Matt and Chase leaped to their feet.

“That’s a total crock of
shit—”

“They can’t possibly
influence the commissioner that much when there’s a drug lab been discovered on
site—”

“Who the hell do they
think they are—
”

The group quieted down
respectfully as Will waved his hands at them to shut up, pulled his cigar from
his mouth and took a deep breath before he took a seat. With obvious
reluctance, he twisted the cigar in his hands for a further moment almost as
one might fondle a set of stress balls,
then
replaced
it in his shirt pocket.

“You guys are the best,”
he said. “I promise you I had a few choice words to say to the commissioner
myself. If I recall correctly, it was something along the lines of asking how
cramped his ass felt with the mayor’s hand sticking up it and what it felt like
to be a puppet on a set of strings. I imagine soon yet another colorfully
worded official complaint about my choice of phrasing and lack of respect for
authority will be overflowing from my already bulging personal file.”

Blade snickered, and
noticed everyone else did as well.

“Regardless,” Will
continued more solemnly, “we’ve been given a cease and desist. Julian,
Chase—that means it’ll be more than our miniscule pay checks are worth if we
break form and decide to continue. Matthias, Sage—I’ve managed to convince
brass it will take forty-eight to fifty-six hours for us to get the lab
results, finish up the paperwork and wrap everything up on our end. So sadly,
you’re also desk bound with your buddy partners until the team is disbanded,
then you’ll be returning to your regular work with the Enforcers.”