A tired sigh slipped out of me. Lately, there had been no open and shut cases. Nothing that was 'just find the kid and take him home'. I felt like someone was out to test me, to push me to my limits and see what would make me break.
Life could be a bitch like that.
“Kyle, round up Deanna, Will, Pamela, Alex and Agent Valley. I’ll brief them and then we’re going in.”
He ran to do as I asked, my now ever faithful servant, the little rat bastard. Leaning against the wall, I did a mental run-through. I had more than enough weapons, and I had plenty of help, but still, I felt as though it wasn’t enough. Like I was missing something.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, again feeling fatigue creep up along my vertebrae. Blame it on the jet lag. Or the lack of sleep the night before. Or the fact that there was so much to do once this case was done.
O’Shea.
Berget.
Jack.
Pamela and Alex came into the room, followed by Deanna, Will, Kyle, and Agent Valley.
“Kyle,” I said, and he looked up as he sat down. “Get out. This isn’t a meeting for you.”
He frowned, caught himself, and then gave me a weak smile. “Right. Sorry.” He scooted back out the door—his face red—and closed it behind him with a click.
Did I feel bad that I’d embarrassed him? Not for one instant.
“The Necromancer we’re dealing with is, for lack of a better term, nuts. She’s stealing the children—”
“Wait, she?” Deanna asked.
“Yeah, she. Her daughter died, and now I think she’s trying to replace her daughter with the bodies of other children.”
Will leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. “How are we going to catch her?”
Thanks the gods he could get straight to the point. “I’ll Track the kids, when we get close, Deanna you will block her access to the Veil.”
Deanna nodded. “I can do that.”#p#分页标题#e#
I shrugged. “Then we go in and put her down.”
Agent Valley choked. “Put her down?”
I laced my fingers in my lap. “Okay, we go in and kill her. That better?”
His eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “You can’t do that.”
“You can’t keep her in an institution. She’s broken out once,” I snapped. “Besides, Necromancers live for a long time. Very, very long. As in hundreds of years. How are you going to explain that to the institution, assuming you actually managed to keep her in one?”
The FBI agent was shaking his head. “No, I can’t let you do that.”
“Then kids are going to continue to be snatched in their final moments, the ones that they should be spending with their families.”
Agent Valley continued to shake his head and I knew that it was over. Whatever tenuous relationship the FBI and I had was done. Finito. He was always going to revert to what he knew best: rules. Rules I only knew how to break.
“That is not how we work,” he said.
“I thought I had free rein.”
“Not like this.”
Shrugging, I stepped away from the wall. “Fine. You explain to Interpol that the one person who could Track this baby-raising bitch down just quit.” I strode past him, deliberately butting my shoulder against his, shoving him with my body. Sure, it was immature, but he was pissing me off with his flip-flopping. First I was in charge, then I wasn’t. I should never have brought him in on the details. Lesson learned.
Pamela caught up to me first. “You aren’t really going to leave those kids with her, are you?”
I shook my head, and called back over my shoulder. “Will, Deanna. You coming?”
Will gave me a wink. “Of course. We wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
Agent Valley stepped out of the office just before I turned my back on him. “Adamson, don’t you dare cross me on this!”
I put a hand over my heart. “Me? Oh, hell no. I’m going to have a nap. No rules against that, is there?”
His eyes narrowed, a sign that he knew I was still going after the Necromancer, regardless of what I was saying. We’d have a tail, at the least.
Of course, I’ll admit I was kinda looking forward to them trying to tail a Harpy.
22
Will and Deanna sat on the battered up blue couch in my suite while I spread out my weapons on the floor.
My hand hovered over the crossbow. I hadn’t had a lot of time with it, but what I’d been able to see so far was promising. The bolts had been firing straight and clean, hitting the targets when I’d practiced.
I slipped the strap over my shoulder. A little distance between me and the zombies was not a bad thing. The remembrance of my flesh being yanked from my body with teeth was still too fresh to deny the shiver of fear of it happening again. Torn apart by dulled and rotting teeth. Not a pretty thought.