I reached the edge of the concrete yard just as the boat came within leaping distance. One of the men gave a yell at the sight of me, but I was already springing across the gap.
I tackled the prick with the gun, knocking the weapon out of his hand and into the water. Thorn appeared next to me an instant later. He heaved another of the men by his bare arms onto solid ground, a few feet from where Sorsha had come to a halt.
The man landed on his side with a grunt, but he was sprier than we’d given him credit for. Ruse appeared with one of our lead blankets on one side, Sorsha dove to snatch off his helmet from the other—and he swung his leg around so fast he managed to kick the back of her knee. She stumbled, yanking herself out of the way of his next blow, and skidded right over the slick metal lip that jutted over the water.
She fell with a yelp and a splash, the water swallowing her up. Thorn rammed his fist into one of the other men’s faces, crushing his skull, and spun to dive for her, but Sorsha had already heaved herself back to the surface. With an angry hiss, she grasped a post to haul her dripping body out of the water.
Ruse had managed to trap the first man under the blanket. The one I’d disarmed threw himself at the shore. He snatched at Sorsha as she swung her legs out of the water, she smacked out at him with her hand—and just then, a tiny flare glinted along the collar of his shirt.
It was there and then gone. I wasn’t sure Sorsha had even noticed it, but I grinned—both at the momentary flame and at the crunch of Thorn’s fists pummeling the prick into the pavement a second later.
Sorsha picked herself up. Her drenched shirt clung to her chest and hips, emphasizing every curve of her athletic but undeniably feminine body, and a different sort of heat stirred in me.
Oh, she was something to look at. I wouldn’t try to deny that. She could light all sorts of sparks, indeed. But those ones, I had no interest in pursuing. She already had enough shadowkind under the spell of desire.
I motioned to the man we’d trapped. “Their friends will be on us any minute now. Get the iron and silver off him and let’s go!”
14
Sorsha
We held our second interrogation in the back room of a funhouse. The summer fairgrounds had shut down for the season a few days ago, but they left enough supply trailers and other structures on site year round for the camper van to blend right in.
Omen stalked back and forth in front of the chair where we’d plunked our now perfectly willing captive down. “The docklands, the bridge in the park, and the strawberry-picking place south of the city. Are those really the only rifts your people check regularly? You never go farther afield?”
The Company of Light guy let his head list to one side as he considered with a frown of concentration. Once Ruse had chatted with him long enough, he hadn’t even minded having his arms and legs tied to that chair. Bossypants was insisting on extra caution.
“I went out to a town just north of Pittsburgh with the guys once,” our captive said, “but I wouldn’t call that regularly. Covering those three every week takes up plenty of time as it is. We don’t catch many of the monsters, but the Company is happy with what we bring in.”
An edge of frustration was creeping into the hellhound shifter’s voice. “All right. Let’s run through all the Company higher-ups you’ve dealt with. Names, descriptions.”
“It’ll make helping them so much easier,” Ruse put in with a twinkling of charm, shooting Omen a look of warning not to get too brusque in his questioning.
Pickle, who’d been watching the proceedings with me where I was standing beyond the glow of the single overhead bulb, scrambled from one shoulder to the other with a prickle of his claws and a nervous twitch of his tail. Tension hummed through the small, barren space, most of it wafting off of our leader. After everything we’d risked, this captive wasn’t proving much more useful than the first one.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I stepped out into the evening air with a little relief at the excuse to leave. It wasn’t much fun listening to the Company jerks spout off about eradicating “monsters”—and even though they appeared to all be prejudiced and potentially murderous assholes, seeing them in that charmed daze for hours on end unnerved me.
I had my protective badge pinned to my undershirt to ward off supernatural powers, and I trusted Ruse not to use his on me anyway, but still… under certain circumstances, he could. He had on at least a few innocent people who had no opinions about the shadowkind whatsoever in the past couple of weeks in the service of our cause.
The phone’s screen glowed in the deepening darkness outside. It was Vivi calling. My heart leapt. Kicking at crinkly concession-stand bags, I wandered farther across the desolate concrete yard that had held a Ferris wheel a few days earlier and brought the phone to my ear.
“Hey, Vivi. Did everything go okay?”
“Oh, yeah. They ate up my posh persona like I was caviar with a cherry on top. I told you I could work a crowd.”
“You did,” I agreed, and I’d known it was true. Vivi’s brand of poise seemed to endear her to people almost as well as Ruse’s charm. She’d been out this afternoon at a fundraising event. Between the connections the Fund had started tracing and the information we’d gotten from our local hacker, we’d been pretty sure it was a front for the Company of Light. “No one asked any awkward questions?”
“Nah. I’ve been around this kind of crowd before—just like the folks my uncle would schmooze with when he was running for state office. As long as you look the part, they assume you’re some rich professional like them. And they do like to talk. I think I might have picked up a couple of tidbits your little team will find useful.”
I perked up, ignoring Pickle nibbling at my ear. “Oh, yeah? What did you get?”
“Well, I made friendly with some of the catering staff and was able to sneak a look at some of their paperwork to check the billing name and address. Not sure how far that’ll get you, but it should be worth tracing. And there were some pictures in this slide-show they did—they were claiming they’re raising money for a special treatment center for kids with cancer. Maybe Ellen and Huyen should reconsider the whole ‘no outright lying’ policy for our appeals, because man did it work—”
“The pictures?”
“Right, yeah.” Vivi laughed at herself. “I wondered if they might have used any from their actual buildings, since they wouldn’t want anyone to recognize a place they know isn’t really a cancer treatment facility. So I snapped as many pics as I could of their pics with my phone. I’ll email all that and the billing info stuff to you. I know it’s not a ton, but I didn’t want to get too pushy my first time out.”
“You shouldn’t get pushy, period,” I reminded her, but a smile had touched my lips despite the desolate atmosphere around me. We were building a real team here. With enough people—mortal and shadowkind—on our side, eventually the Company wouldn’t stand a chance.
“I know, I know. Safety first. I did find out they’re holding another event like this next month, so I can try to dig up more leads—in non-pushy fashion!—then.”