Thicker Than Blood (8 page)

Breakfast was in the same room where we’d had dinner. Apples, bananas, bacon, hard-boiled eggs, and Old Fashioned donuts were piled on the table this time. From the depleted platter of bacon, it looked like everyone else had gotten a head start on me.

I was relieved to see Kira and her crew. If they were still here, hopefully it meant they would help.

The other person at the table surprised me. He was a Hispanic male in his mid-thirties, with short brown hair and deceptively sleepy brown eyes. His suit was different from the last one I’d seen Agent Salazar wearing, but it had the same kind of understated tailored cut. I’d last seen him in Wylde, after walking naked out of a fire that had destroyed my game store.

“Salazar,” I said, taking a seat next across from him. “We meet again.”

He was seated where I had been the night before, next to the twins. Kira had the head of the table again. I glanced at Jaq as I sat, nodding a greeting.

“The Archivist told you I was coming?” he said. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“He didn’t,” I said, grabbing a donut and an egg. “But you being a special agent of some unspecified secret agency, combined with us needing information about a secret government prison, I just can’t find it in me to feel shock right now.” Which was true. I’d been surprised for about half a second seeing him there, but logic had quickly draw the lines for me.

“I hear you want to break into Custer,” he said. “Because you haven’t done enough crazy shit.”

“I need to talk to one of the inmates,” I said, unsure how much Noah had filled him in. “It could be the key to defeating Samir.” I knew I was overstating things. I had no idea what would happen when I met my father for real.
I don’t always make life-or-death decisions that impact everyone I love, but when I do, I go off vague ancestral vision memory thingies
.

“Don’t hurt yourself with the convincing,” Alma said. She and her twin giggled.

I glared at them, glad my twins didn’t giggle at least, though their smart-ass qualities seemed similar enough to put on a real cage match against each other.

“Jade doesn’t need to convince me,” Salazar said. “Things are changing, have been for a while. My time with the NOS is nearly over.”

“NOS?” I asked around a mouthful of donut.

“My agency. Not Otherwise Specified. Our government does love their acronyms,” Salazar said. He blew on his cup of coffee.

“So you’ll help us break in?” I said. Ideas were already whirling around in my head. “You have codes or clearance or whatever?”

“Ooh, maybe he could take you in as a prisoner!” Alma said.

“Or pretend you are some kind of government inspector,” Cora chimed in.

“I do have clearance, but stop whatever you are thinking,” he said. “You all have seen too many spy movies. Spy movies always forget one thing.”

“Paperwork,” Jaq said with a chagrined smile.

“Paperwork,” Salazar confirmed. “It would take weeks to process a new prisoner in. There are holding facilities all over the States where people and such are evaluated before transfer. Almost no one is sent directly to Custer. And before you ask, no, I can’t fake the paperwork.”

“Before you ask me, neither can I,” Noah said from the other end of the table. He’d been so still I had forgotten he was there for a moment. Pesky vampires and their lack of breathing and noise-making.

“So we can’t walk in the front door,” Kira said. “Obviously, or we wouldn’t be needed.”

The twins made faces at her. I felt a pang of longing. These people were friends, Kira had her crew with her. I was alone, in a room of near strangers. No history, no camaraderie.

Whose fault is that, exactly
? the traitorous voice of reason whispered in my head. I mentally slapped tape over her mouth.

“I can get in myself,” Salazar said. “Though it will likely come back on me and I’ll have to burn this identity.”

“You mean your name isn’t Salazar?” I asked. I cracked an egg against the table and started peeling it onto my plate. I was hungrier than I had felt in days. Maybe because I knew that my friends were safe, for the moment, and that if I could get my magic back, I might even have a chance at saving Harper, too. Hope can really work up an appetite.

“It is, but I was placed in the NOS by the Council of Nine. The government doesn’t like to hire shifters and supernaturals directly. Only on a contract basis. The Council pulled some powerful strings so I could keep track of Custer and the NOS. I reported to them.” His shrug was careful, belying the tension in his body.

“To them, and to the Archivist,” Kira said. She had her ice-blue lazer beam gaze focused on him.

“The Council knows, I’m sure,” Salazar said, returning her look with bland acceptance. “As long as I reported to them too, they didn’t care.”

“Why do you keep using the past tense?” Alma asked.

“After I help you, I’m out. It’s complicated.”

“Need-to-know-basis?” I asked, though I had a pretty good guess why he wasn’t going to report to the Nine anymore. Alek’s words about the Council being dissolved ghosted through my brain.

“That’s right,” he said, throwing me a small smile that told me he’d guessed that I knew.

It was like a word puzzle. He knew that I knew and now I knew that he knew that I knew… Fuck it. I preferred puzzles that gave me levels.

“Why do you need us, then?” Kira asked, directing her question down the table to Noah. “Can’t secret agent man here walk in, open the cell that has the guy we want, and then walk him out again?”

“He could, though getting out with a prisoner would be complicated, I imagine. But we are not breaking Ash out. We must get Jade inside,” Noah said. “Her father is in there voluntarily.”

“Well, he’s locked up,” Salazar said in a mildly defensive tone. “But he doesn’t wake up much. Just eats and sleeps, and occasionally binge-watches television before passing out for another few months. Nobody knows what he is. He just walked in about forty years ago, or so the stories go, anyway. Asked for a room. Killed a guard when they told him it was a prison and he couldn’t have one. So they locked him right up. He’s never been a problem since, not in all the years I’ve been in NOS.”

“What does he look like?” I asked. It wasn’t relevant really, but this was my father, my biological one at least. Curiosity nudged out sense.

“Who cares?” Kira said. “Fine, he won’t walk out, and I assume you can’t carry him out. How do we get in?”

I really wanted to tell her to go fuck herself, but I needed her, rudeness and all.

“I can open a secret hatch, a side door. It’s an emergency exit. Here.” Salazar shoved his plate to the side. “Let me show you the layout.”

We all started moving dishes down the table toward Noah, clearing a spot in front of Salazar so he could unfold a piece of paper he pulled from an inner pocket in his suitcoat. On the paper was a rough sketch of something shaped like an infinity sign.

“This is Custer,” he said, tapping a finger on the figure eight. “Whole thing is underground. It’s almost like a Möbius strip, which I’m going to assume I don’t have to explain.” He waited for us to nod or glare at him, depending, before continuing, “The front is here, at the crossing of the sides. It is actually two levels, this loop being on top, the other the lower level. Lower level is the more dangerous one.”

“Let me guess,” I muttered. “That’s where we have to be?” It would be with my luck, lately.

“No, that’s the good news,” Salazar said. He wasn’t smiling, which worried me. “Upper level, here on the bend where it starts to straighten? That’s where you want to get to. And here…” He indicated the middle of the upper bend. “This is where the hatch I can open for you is.”

“So we creep up to the side, you open the door, we go get the guy, easy peasy?” Alma asked. I shared her skepticism.

“What are all those little dots?” Cora leaned forward to examine the paper more closely.

“Those are why we need you,” Noah said from directly behind me.

I barely flinched. Really. Except my knee hit the table hard enough to leave a bruise and jump the cutlery around. Damn quiet vampires.

“Those are magical landmines, more or less. They trigger nasty things, most of which I don’t know about, not specifically. It is hard to sort what is Agency legend and what’s reality, and I can’t ask too many questions. Rumors are the traps trigger magical creatures that attack whatever steps on them. Or they just might be like regular mines and explode.” Salazar spread his hands and gave us an apologetic smile.

“Why would they build an escape hatch into a deathtrap?” Kira said.

“The hatch leads to the helipad. No one is supposed to just walk across the field.”

“It’s open ground?” Jaq asked.

“Yes. About twenty acres are kept clear. I haven’t even gotten to the best part.” Salazar picked up his coffee, took a big drink, and set it down, looking from Kira to me. “There’s an invisible magic fence around the whole place except the road in. Maybe more than one fence—the water-cooler stories vary from one to three fences.”

“If it is magic,” I said, thinking things over, “it is most likely three. Three is a common and powerful number.”

“There are one or three invisible fences. There are invisible magical landmines, or possibly just straight-up normal landmines. The whole facility is underground, and this time of year, under snow. We’ll have to cross open ground in full view to deliver the package, over dangers we can’t even see,” Kira summed up, ticking off the problems on her fingers.

“Hey,” I said. “I’m not a package.” The way she’d kept ignoring me, and her rudeness, was starting to grate.

“Did your magic come back while you got your beauty sleep?” she asked, her voice as icy as her eyes.

“No, but…” I said. I stopped talking, because I had nothing to add after the but.

“Can you shoot?”

“Not if you want me to hit what I aim at,” I muttered. Now I knew how a deflating balloon felt.

“Fight hand to hand?”

I shook my head. Alek had been teaching me some stuff, but I had no illusions about my skills versus anything deadly.

“Detect landmines? See invisible fences? Fly a helicopter?”

“Kira,” Alma and Jaq said at the same time.

“Kira, come on,” Cora echoed.

“She has no practical skills; that’s why we are here. I won’t have a normal fucking up my team. Tell me what you can contribute, or get out and let the grown-ups plan.” Kira glared at me.

I opened my mouth to say a lot of words that began with the letters F and C, but Salazar cut me off.

“None of you can fly a helicopter in. They’d see you coming and shoot it down without questions.” He gave me a sympathetic look.

“Fine, genius,” I said, standing up. I’d had enough. “You figure out a plan, since that’s what you’re being paid to do.” I stormed out of the room, brushing past Noah.

I didn’t know where the hallway led, but I tried to return to my room. I needed to think. I needed to breathe. I really, really needed
not
to cry in front of that bitch. Or start trying to punch her. As she’d just pointed out, I wasn’t a match for most humans, much less a giant tiger shifter. Punching would just end in tears. Mine, probably.

The door I opened wasn’t to my room. Instead I found myself in the library I’d first been in months and lifetimes ago with Yosemite, when we had traded Samir’s dagger for the druidic book. Tall shelves lined the room, stretching up into the shadows. Lamplight bathed the room in a cozy golden glow, adding to the mysterious atmosphere. It gleamed off leather spines and gold-leaf titles. This was as good a room as any for a sulk, I decided, and shut the door.

Kira’s words had hurt because I had to acknowledge, much as my smarting pride didn’t wish me to, that she was right. Not that I couldn’t think strategically, of course. I was a gamer, I’d planned more imagined assaults and break-ins of facilities and castles and dungeons and whatever than most people. But those were all imaginary.

I didn’t know Kira. I didn’t know her team. I had no clue what the resources available looked like. I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t protect us with magic. It was worse than that, however.

Samir was still in Wylde. He potentially had Harper captive; doing Universe knew what to her. My friends, Alek… they were all out there in the wilderness, licking wounds, hiding from a mess I’d made, from an evil I was responsible for bringing into their lives. I couldn’t go to them either, because what could I offer? My best hope for saving them was to find my father, get my magic back, and
then
go kick some ass.