Legacy(60)

“Organized crime is Omega’s MO,” I said, and looked at the paper. “I take it she tore through the agents?”

He shrugged, as if he was trying to be indifferent, but I caught a hint of tension. “Seems like the situation might have escalated when she tried to run and found out she was boxed in. Apparently she has at least one accomplice who can project energy of some sort.”

“What type?” My mother asked.

“Don’t know,” Li responded. “It didn’t leave a mark, so it could be anything. Two of the agents had been flung through the air unexpectedly.”

“That could have been a straight up hit,” I said. “Metas hit pretty hard.”

“I suppose,” he said. “I don’t know much about metas or their capabilities, just the basics. You’ll find the crime scene details in there. They didn’t get off a shot first, which to me suggested that the assailant did not close on them but hit them at a distance.”

I racked my brain, but there was just too much going on for me to process it. “I’ll take a look.” I shot a sidelong look at my mom. “Is the FBI going to go balls-out crazy for Hildegarde and her gang now that they’ve killed some of your own?”

Li’s reaction was measured, and I still had a hard time getting a sense of what he was really thinking. “Maybe. Maybe not. The head of the local field office has been apprised of what they’re up against, and he doesn’t seem too eager to cowboy up, so maybe you’ll get lucky. When are you leaving for Portland?”

I looked at my mother. “She’s going tomorrow. Do they have any leads out there or am I just sending her to chase her tail around and sit in the office doing nothing?”

Li’s skin flushed. “They have some leads, yes, but aren’t pursuing them because if they were to get in another fight with Hildegarde, the outcome would be just about the same. The Special Agent in Charge—they call them SACs—is waiting for you. The investigation cannot proceed without our assistance.”

“And we’ll be giving it,” I said coolly,

Li stood in a rapid hurry, his face red. “You’re gonna wait on this? After all the FBI has done for you?”

“I’m trying to balance the fact that someone is going to kill all the metas with the fact that someone might, maybe, kill a few humans,” I said. “Not to sound like a dick, but if I’m weighing on the scales, I find one side a little lacking.”

“How many bodies does it take before your scales start tipping?” Li said, hot anger bubbling out. “A hundred? Two hundred?”

I kept my cool. “You really think Hildegarde is going to cut loose and start wiping out humans by the hundreds?”

“Probably not,” he conceded. “But—”

“But nothing,” I said. “Keep this in mind; whenever Sovereign is done killing us, whatever he’s got planned for the human race gets rolled out, and I have a feeling it’s going to involve some deaths of its own. So I guess you could say I’m trying really hard to take the global view on this one.”

“Hard to see the little people from orbit, I suppose,” Li said, spitting venom at me.

“I can see the problem clearly enough,” I said, still letting the ice in my veins keep me from decking him. “I have eight metas I can send on field operations. Versus one hundred of our enemy. I simply do not have the people to chase down everything that’s on our radar right now, because if I did, I wouldn’t have had to let a wildfire meta run its course in Nevada two weeks ago.” That was true. Some ass had come into his own powers and robbed a jewelry store, killing one of the patrons in the process. He was waiting in the wings to strike again, but I had nothing to root him out with right now unless I wanted to take the focus off of Sovereign.

“Every resource you’ve been given is at the behest of Senator Foreman,” Li said, his voice rising, “including the immunity from prosecution that’s enabled you to walk away from five different murders here in the U.S. that we know about—”

I felt my face heat up. “I had nothing to do with murdering Zack.”

“What about Wolfe?” Li said. “Your first victim.”

“And he was a real prize, too,” I said snottily. “I’m sure the FBI would be totally fine with him continuing to walk the streets, since he killed two hundred and fifty-four people in Minneapolis in a string of murders that is still to this day marked ‘Unsolved’ in your case files—”

“You’re still a murderer when it comes to him,” Li fired back.