Spirit Animals (Ritual Crime Unit Book 3) (7 page)

A strained silence filled the room as they sized each other up. When she’d seen enough, Pierce moved forward unhurriedly to take the seat beside Leo, folding her arms on the tabletop—a posture that meant leaning forward slightly, showing no fear of the potential threat across the table.

“So, Mr Tate,” she said. “How’s incarceration treating you?” No response, but he was watching her. “I imagine you must be getting a little bit restless by now. Muscles giving you trouble? I hear it’s hard, getting used to being stuck in one shape when you’ve spent your time shifting at will.”

She didn’t make more than a cursory pretence of waiting for a response. Always better to proceed calmly and casually as if everything was going to plan and the interview was a mere formality; let the interviewee know they had knowledge that was worth something to you and they’d do their best to skew the bargain further in their favour.

Assuming they were prepared to bargain at all. Tate hadn’t proved an easy nut to crack so far; she could only hope that by now he’d undergone some softening as it sank in that he was likely to be in here for a very long time, and his former allies didn’t seem too fussed about hastening his release. Six weeks on the inside stretched an awful lot longer than it did in the outside world.

And even if Tate was a true fanatic for the cause, being deprived of his enchanted pelt would surely be taking its toll. Certain types of magic could be pretty addictive—and addicts, as a rule, didn’t stay loyal for long to anyone who couldn’t get them their fix.

“I’m afraid if you refuse to speak even in your defence, you’re definitely not going to be leaving this place any time soon,” she said. “We have you caught red-handed on possession of a class two restricted artefact, shapeshifting without a licence, and attempted murder—and unless you’re prepared to provide evidence that proves otherwise, then you’re still in the frame for at least one other murder carried out by a panther shifter in the vicinity. You prepared to give us information on any other shifters you know of that could potentially clear your name?”

Pierce raised her eyebrows enquiringly, but unsurprisingly, the possibility of reexamining a charge he was almost certainly guilty of anyway didn’t make for much of a carrot. Since she certainly wasn’t about to dangle an impossible offer of early release or transfer to a regular prison, there was little she could promise in return for his cooperation.

He was still pretending absolute indifference to the fact she was even speaking—and she was still sure that he understood every word she said. But even if she was trying to persuade the man, her best route in might be appealing to the animal.

“No? Then you’re going to be in here for the long haul, I’m afraid,” she said. “Might be a good time to start thinking about creature comforts. I’m sure you’d appreciate more exercise time—a chance to go outside, get some air.” She sat back to stretch, glancing around pointedly at the bare walls. “What do they feed you in this place? Getting enough meat? Maybe if you work with us, something could be arranged.”

The prisoner said nothing, but he bared his teeth in a silent snarl, rattling his cuffs. Beside her Leo subtly shifted, as if reaching to check on the firearm that he no longer carried.

Time to bring him in on things and see if the stick was any more effective than the carrot. Even unarmed and far below strength, Leo was remarkably good at exuding a sense of quiet threat.

“Perhaps you recognise Mr Grey here,” Pierce said, tilting her head towards Leo. “Or maybe you don’t, if you weren’t quite as high up in your bosses’ confidence as you think. He’s been involved in our investigation from the start, and he’s helped bring some very interesting information to light.” All technically true statements, if misleadingly assembled. Now for the big push. She sat forward, folding her arms on the table.

“We know your panther pelt was made by a man who calls himself Sebastian. We know it was made considerably more recently than should have been possible, given that he’s supposed to be dead. And we know that makes
you
a liability to the people that you’re working for, with that tattoo still on your shoulders. You think there aren’t techniques to prove who gave you that tattoo and when? Rituals that will prove that you had contact with Sebastian after his apparent death?”

She was bluffing, but the odds were there
was
something to find, if they dug deep enough. It was an avenue of investigation, but a slow and risky one: cooperation from Tate had much higher odds of netting them the bigger prize.

And maybe she was actually starting to get through; he was looking steadily more twitchy. “Now, maybe you’re feeling pretty confident in here, and fair enough—it’s a secure facility, after all. Nobody should be able to get in here to come after you. Unless, maybe, you have some reason to believe that the people you were working for have some way to compromise that?” She tried to catch the prisoner’s eye, but his head was down, his shoulders taut with tension.

Leo huffed dismissively beside her, the first noise that he’d made since they’d entered the room. “I think it’s pretty clear that we’re wasting our time here,” he said, though it was the opposite of what Tate’s body language was suggesting. He recognised the time to apply pressure, just as well as Pierce did. “There are other sources who are far more likely to be cooperative.”

She turned halfway towards him, making a show of setting her hands on the tabletop to stand. “Well, in that case,” she said, “we may as well just—”

Tate lunged forward as if triggered by some unseen signal, yanking at his cuffs and snapping his teeth in a violent snarl. The sound that tore out of his throat was a hoarse, rasping cry that shouldn’t have come from any human being. Pierce jumped back from the spitting, gnashing jaws by instinct, stumbling over the bolted-down chair as she tried to push it back. He shouldn’t be able to reach her—but the silver cuffs were clanging and scraping against the chair, and she was all too aware they were made to stop magic, not brute strength.

Leo scrambled up beside her, slapping once again at his side for the Glock full of silver bullets he no longer carried, and she heard him curse as he put too much weight on his injured leg. Tate was growling and thrashing against the restraints, his wrists already blooded from the cuffs as he mindlessly threw himself forward. The glint of alertness that she thought she’d seen in his eyes had given way to wild animal madness.

She was turning to call for assistance, but prison officers in riot gear were already flooding in, armed with Tasers and batons and barking orders: “Outside! Out!” She and Leo were manhandled out of the interview room and the door slammed shut behind them. It wasn’t quite soundproof enough to cut off the yelling and sound of spray canisters discharging.

The prison officer who’d first escorted them in hurried over from the CCTV station. “You need to leave this area,” he said. “Interview’s over.” It was clear they’d get nothing out of Tate in this state, but Pierce still mentally cursed as they were hustled away from the scene; the days in isolation or medical care he’d more than likely win for this stunt would give him plenty of time to collect himself and prepare for any further questioning.

“When can we re-interview?” she asked.

“Not my call,” her escort said tersely. “You’re going to have to leave the building. No visitors on site when there’s an incident in progress.” Never mind her DCI status or their collective years of experience dealing with magical offenders—it was clear that right now she and Leo were just inconvenient members of the public getting in the way of the staff.

Of course, Leo actually
was
retired now. As they were escorted back out to the gate, Pierce glanced around to see how he was doing. The speed at which they’d been bundled out and away from the interview room didn’t appear to have done his bad leg any favours: his limp had grown dramatically worse, and his face was tight with pain as he rubbed the heel of his hand down his thigh. The February cold couldn’t be helping either; his movements were stiff as he climbed back into the car, struggling to secure his seatbelt until he gave up and twisted awkwardly to do it left-handed.

Pierce looked away to give him some privacy as she started the engine. “Well, I’m not sure this got us anywhere that was worth the hassle,” she admitted, running a hand over her face and stifling a yawn. Between this morning’s escapades and all the driving, this had been a very long day already.

And it wasn’t going to get any shorter if she sat zoning out here. With a sigh she flicked the headlights on, illuminating the shadowed grounds beyond the fence—and a figure in a long coat walking through them. As the man turned to glance up at the sudden light, Pierce recognised him with a jolt.

Jason Maitland, head of the so-called Counter Terror Action Team: the man who’d interfered every step of the way in her attempts to arrest Sebastian, and one of the prime suspects for having helped fake his death.

What the hell was that bastard doing here?

CHAPTER SIX

P
IERCE SCRABBLED FOR
her phone to take a photo, but before she could find it in her pockets Maitland was gone, heading into the building by a staff door. She didn’t know if he’d recognised her past the glare of the headlights. “Shit,” she huffed, sitting back.

“What?” Leo asked, squinting into the darkness.

“Maitland,” she told him. “Counter Terror fucker. How the hell did he get here so fast?” Someone at the facility must have called him in—but it was too soon for him to be responding to the security alert. He had to have been called in response to their arrival.

“What’s this got to do with Counter Terror?” Leo asked.

“Bugger all,” Pierce said grimly. Maitland’s involvement in her pursuit of Sebastian had been tenuously justified by the security threat that human-form shapeshifting represented, but if the only skinbinder who could create human skins was supposed to be dead... “The only reason for him to be here is if Tate could tell us something about Sebastian that he doesn’t want us to hear.”

“So he’s our link back to Sebastian,” Leo said.

She nodded. “If Maitland’s people aren’t the ones who faked his death, you can bet they’re on the trail of whoever did.” And doing their best to scrub that trail out, because to them, having control of Sebastian’s abilities mattered more than getting justice for his crimes.

Not to Pierce.

She flicked the headlights off again, plunging the grounds back into shadow. “We’ll see where he goes when he leaves.”

Her previous efforts to track down Maitland had met with no luck; by the time she’d returned to work after her shoulder injury, the Counter Terror Action Team had been renamed, reorganised, and swallowed by other departments, its members shuffled away like the money card in a game of Three-card Monte. Trying to find anyone who knew anything about a man called Jason Maitland had only led to endless telephone loops, passed from one office to another without ever getting any answers.

But now here he was in the flesh. Pierce settled in, prepared to wait him out, but before thirty seconds had passed a sharp rap on the window made her jump. One of the gate guards shone a torch in her face, bright enough to blind her. “Is there a problem here?” he asked.

“Just making a phone call,” Pierce said. She still had the phone in her hand, but she doubted the guard really cared whether she had an excuse anyway.

“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to move along right now,” he said. “It’s policy to completely clear the access road of civilian traffic when there’s an alert.”

There were at least three things that set her teeth on edge there, starting with the word ‘civilian’: police weren’t military, and prison officers working for private companies certainly weren’t police. But arguing would take her nowhere useful, and it wouldn’t be wise to go out further on a limb when she had no official authorisation to even be here, following up on cases that were supposed to be closed.

With the guard watching and waiting, there was little choice except to drive away.

“We’ll keep digging,” Leo said. “There’s something here to find; Maitland’s arrival proves it.”

“Yeah.” Unfortunately, it also meant that whatever there was to find was about to be more deeply buried.

B
Y THE TIME
Pierce got home that night, she was too exhausted to bother to tackle her long-neglected list of household chores, which meant she had to do some hasty ironing in the morning to have a shirt for work. She switched the TV news on for background noise, half-listening until the word ‘vampire’ snagged her attention. Looking up to see a reporter outside a familiar-looking graveyard, she cursed and grabbed for the remote to turn the volume up.