CHAPTER 7
WITH SINCLAIR SLUMPED
half-asleep in the passenger seat the next morning, Laura pulled
her SUV into a parking space a half block away from Fallon Moor’s
apartment building. She turned off the engine, let the seat back to
make more leg room, and picked up her coffee from the console. The
pale dawnlight revealed a flat-front, nondescript building in a
muted shade of brick in a line of similar row houses. It had no
distinct architectural character, but the location near Logan
Circle was pricey enough to warrant its appeal.
The morning commute coasted past the SUV on the
left, traffic moving at the speed limit at the early hour. Within a
few minutes of parking, it started to slow, as the traffic began
its gradual build for the day. Early risers made their way along
the sidewalks, coffee cups and briefcases in hand, their faces
neutral except for the occasional avid cell-phone talker. Another
typical day in a typical city neighborhood with the noted exception
of its being home to an international terrorist.
Sinclair slouched in the passenger seat. That a
grown man with rugged good looks seemed like a little boy when
asleep amused her. She wanted to smooth the worry line off his
forehead but resisted the urge. They were working. “Am I going to
handle this myself, or are you going to wake up?” she asked.
Sinclair shifted sideways in his seat, his eyes
open to slits. “It’s so nice to wake up next to you.”
She chuckled into her coffee. “Yeah, if you
actually, you know, woke up.”
He reached for his coffee. “You drilled me half the
night. Even I think I’m Bill Burrell now.”
She smirked. “Be glad you only had to do a history.
It’s worse when you have to bring some kind of expertise to the
job.”
He snorted. “Well, I think I’m bringing some
expertise to the job.”
A motion near Moor’s building caught Laura’s eye,
and she cocked her head for a clearer line of sight. A man in a
maintenance uniform stepped out and swept the sidewalk. She leaned
back. “I’ve had to learn languages for missions. I became a
qualified English professor for one. I’ve been on archaeological
digs, and no one questioned my knowledge. There’s a difference,
Jono, between behaving like someone and becoming that person.
You’re using existing skills and memorizing a life history you can
create on the fly. You can’t do that every time.”
Even as Sinclair complained about the hour, his
gaze was on the street. “Boast much, Cuddles?”
She flushed with anger and embarrassment, at the
nickname, at his tone, and at the dig. Several cutting responses
flew through her mind. As the silence lengthened, she caught
herself short and laughed. “Sorry. You totally have a point
there.”
He smiled. “Thanks. You do, too, but it would go
down better with doughnuts.”
“I’ll try to remember that next time you’re snoring
when I’m going through the drive-through. And I’m going to pretend
you didn’t call me Cuddles,” she said.
They fell into a comfortable silence. Laura was
tempted to quiz him on his undercover persona but resisted the
urge. She had to acknowledge to herself he knew it. In fact, she
had quizzed him far longer the previous night than she needed to.
He had it down, but her own anxiety kept her at him. On several
points, he had become so comfortable with the constructed history
that his voice resonated near truth when he spoke. Now, that
impressed her. As she had gone to sleep, she allowed herself to
hope everything would work out for him.
As the caffeine kicked in, Sinclair eased
straighter in his seat. He tapped his fingers to the beat of a song
playing on the satellite radio. “Do you like to dance?”
“Sometimes,” Laura said.
He glanced at her. “That’s kind of a yes-or-no
question.”
She pulled her hair back and flipped it up from
where she was leaning on it. “Not really. There have been times
when I’ve liked current music enough to dance to it and time
periods when I didn’t. I liked the stuff in the seventies and some
of the eighties.”
Sinclair cocked an eyebrow. “Time periods? How old
are you anyway?”
Laura pursed her lips. “Umm . . . right now, Mariel
is twenty-eight.”
Amused, he grunted. “Okay. How old was Janice
Craw-ford?”
Laura lifted her eyes in thought. “Well, I wanted
to create a SWAT persona who was old enough to have some experience
but not too old to be considered a washout. She was
twenty-eight.”
“Uh-huh. And Laura Blackstone?”
“Oh, Laura Blackstone is older. Twenty-eight and a
half.”
He tilted his head at her. “I like younger
women.”
She smirked back at him. “Oh? And how old are
you?”
He rubbed his chin. “I’m going to go with
thirty.”
She let a smile linger on her lips to hide a sudden
sense of unease. Her truth-sensing ability detected a fluctuation.
His statement should have registered as an outright lie, but it
didn’t. Granted, he had been joking, but humor didn’t hide
underlying responses. “That’s not what your birth certificate
says.”
He arched his eyebrows with a playful look.
“Really, Mariel Tate? My birth certificate might be altered?”
She pressed her lips into a thin line to hide her
annoyance. She hadn’t considered that his biographical details
might have been altered. Cress wasn’t the only person in the world
who was good at constructing fake life histories. “Thirty, is it,
then? It must depress you to be so old.”
He laughed as he shook his head. “Nah. It works out
’cause, like I said, I like younger women.”
“Then maybe you should—” Laura began.
“There she is,” Sinclair interrupted.
Fallon Moor had emerged from the entrance of her
building and turned up the sidewalk. Laura mentally chastised
herself for being distracted. She had not seen the brownie leave
the building. Moor stopped at her car, parked a few spaces up, and
unlocked the door. Sinclair started to open his door. “Not here.
She’s sufficiently high-profile that Legacy might have security
watching her,” she said.
He closed the door. “I didn’t notice anyone.”
“Me, either. That doesn’t mean they don’t have
someone in one of these buildings.” Laura started the SUV. When
Moor pulled out of her space, Laura merged with the traffic behind
her. She watched her mirrors for several blocks, but no one
appeared to be following. Moor cut across the lane, parked her car
on the corner of a side street, and turned on the emergency lights.
Laura pulled into the space in front of a fire hydrant a few car
lengths away while Moor entered a small tea shop.
“What’s she doing?” Laura asked.
Sinclair narrowed his eyes. “She’s getting tea . .
. and . . . wait . . . a croissant. It’s definitely a croissant.
I’m thinking she’s secretly French.”
Laura pretended to be impressed. “You’re
good.”
He grinned. “Want to know how good?”
She rolled her eyes and got out of the car. “Let’s
go.”
They both slipped on sunglasses as they strolled up
to the shop. The glasses were clichéd government-agent
intimidation, but they looked good. Moor shouldered her way slowly
out of the shop with her cup of tea in one hand and the croissant
in the other.
Laura held up her badge. “Fallon Moor? Agent Tate,
InterSec. This is Agent Sinclair. We’d like to talk to you.”
Moor froze, her expression hard-edged for a second
before slipping into puzzled confusion. “InterSec? What’s
that?”
Laura didn’t need her sensing ability to pick up
the obvious subterfuge. “Let’s not play games, Moor. We’re
enforcing a Homeland Security warrant. You’ve overstayed your
visa.”
Moor’s eyes began to bulge. Cornering a brownie
like this was breaking with routine, especially since Moor was on
the run from the law. Laura recognized the first stages of a
boggart mania as the panic at being confronted set in. Laura took a
casual step to her left to increase the distance between herself
and Sinclair. “Let’s keep this calm, Moor.”
“You must be mistaking me for someone else. It
happens to brownies all the time,” she said.
“Let’s talk about that back at the station,”
Sinclair said.
Moor stepped back with indecision. “You’re making a
mistake.”
“No, you are,” said Laura. Before Moor could react,
Laura held her hand out and muttered in Gaelic. A small tangle of
essence shot from her palm and settled over Moor. The brownie’s
body flexed and pulsed as the boggart mania tried to kick in, then
went still as the spell activated. Moor’s eyes glazed dully with
sleep.
“That was simple,” Sinclair said.
Laura removed the tea and croissant from Moor’s
still hands and placed them on the window ledge of the tea shop.
“There was no point in prolonging it. She knew the warrant was an
excuse.”
“So, to be clear, we have a legal right to kidnap
people, right?” he asked.
She shot him a mildly exasperated look. “It’s an
arrest, Jono. The warrant is real.”
He splayed his hand against his chest. “That’s a
relief. I was afraid without a warrant, we’d get in trouble for
spelling the woman into a stupor.”
She ignored him and muttered in Gaelic again. Moor
rose an inch or so off the ground. Laura gestured to Sinclair.
“Care to do the honors?”
Sinclair took Moor’s elbow and coasted her toward
the SUV. “This reminds me of our first date.”
Laura fell into step on the opposite side. “It
wasn’t a date.”
“We had drinks.”
“We had a fight. Threats were involved,” she
said.
He sighed. “Yeah, it was pretty hot.”
She shook her head. “You are incorrigible.”
Sinclair brightened with faux excitement.
“Encourageable? I knew you couldn’t resist me.”
“And you’re hard of
hearing. Another flaw.”
She opened the rear passenger door of the SUV and
helped Sinclair lift Moor onto the backseat. Sinclair leaned inside
and buckled Moor in. He pulled out and grinned down at Laura.
“Maybe we can talk about me over dinner?”
She gave him a sweet smile. “That will double your
usual audience.”
He chuckled as they resumed their seats. “Then we
can go dancing. I bet you’ll like new music. I can show you some
pretty good moves.”
She rolled her head toward him, then back toward
the road ahead. She hated to admit it, but he did amuse her. “I
think I’ve seen enough of your moves for one day.”