Chapter 6

As I locked my apartment door, I let out a huge sigh. Talk about high-tension transportation. I usually walked from the precinct to my old/new condo in Coal Harbor, but with Kade playing cat and mouse with me, I'd decided a little bus roulette was in order. Combined with some well-timed invisi-warps, I hoped I'd sufficiently muddled my trail.

After all, this wasn't just my place of residence—it was the condo Blythe had bought to assemble her own anti-S?ze hideout. The last thing I wanted was to lead Kade directly to our center of operations.

Kicking off my shoes, I briefly checked the three monitors of our precinct surveillance setup, ensuring everything was as it should be. Spying on my fellow agents made me feel slightly icky, but we had an unidentified mole among our ranks. Plus, there was the skeevy jerk who'd vanished the hard copies of our reports about S?ze and the Consilium, though I had no idea if the culprit had been a precinct employee or an interloper who was long gone.

Heading into the kitchen, I whipped up a taco salad for my late dinner. With extra cheese… because, well, did I need a reason? Between the serious overtime I was pulling for Blythe and the added workload of teaming up with Darius, I was racking up some serious investigative hours, and now I wanted some Tex-Mex cheddar goodness to fuel the take-home assignment I'd acquired from the captain.

With my dinner and Blythe's folder of info about Commissioner Sparks beside me on the kitchen island, I opened my laptop and got started. The clock crawled from nine to ten to eleven. Sparks had been bouncing around various MPD roles and departments for the better part of thirty years, meaning I had three decades' worth of data to sift through before I could start digging into his personal life.

As the time ticked closer to midnight, I got up to stretch. Needing a break from endless archive reports featuring Sparks's name and a reprieve from the barstool at the kitchen island that was threatening to put my butt cheeks to sleep, I wandered over to the desk in the living room, where a much plushier office chair awaited me. I plugged in the USB stick that Zak, the walking manifestation of sexy danger also known as the Ghost, had given me.

Following the USB stick's instructions, which I now knew by heart, I logged into the sketchy online chat portal I'd been frequenting off and on all spring and summer. It took a few minutes, during which I watched cute cat videos on my phone. A feline-induced dopamine dump couldn't hurt right about now.

Soon enough, green text popped up in the black TOR browser.

>Sugar Glider has logged in.

>Sugar Glider: Who is this?

I pocketed my phone in the middle of a compilation of adorable kittens startling themselves into wild acrobatics and scooted up to the keyboard.

>You: Your favorite customer.

I waited for a moment, just to see, but I knew the faceless rodent on the other end of the connection wouldn't reply until I gave them the response they were waiting for.

>You: Rose Petal

It was the nickname I'd been assigned the first time I'd contacted the mole who lurked within the Vancouver precinct. Yeah, one of my coworkers was a sleazy, classified-information-selling scumbag. But they'd also helped me and Lienna out—for a price—when we'd been in real hot water last March.

>Sugar Glider: Is this another lonely nighttime chat? I'm a busy person, you know.

I glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen. It was almost midnight.

>You: Yet here you are, answering my lonely late-night call.

>Sugar Glider: Don't you have anything better to do, like planning your next mysterious out-of-town errand?

I grimaced. I hadn't been sharing my travel schedule with the mole, but at some point during our dealings, they had worked out my identity. They knew who I was, but I still didn't know who they were.

>You: I actually have a legit request this time.

>Sugar Glider: Can you pay for it?

See? Mercenary to their furry, whiskered core.

>You: Why don't you hear me out before we start haggling?

"Haggling" was probably the wrong word. The mole had zero sympathy for my mediocre financial situation. In theory, I could ask Blythe for a chunk o' change to pay them, but she was less than thrilled that I'd communicated with the mole in the first place. I imagined she'd be—to put it lightly—violently disappointed in me for bringing the mole into her ultrasecret investigation, no matter how carefully I did it.

>Sugar Glider: What do you need?

>You: I'm looking for information on the special committee that elects the IA commissioner.

>Sugar Glider: Why not ask me for winning lottery numbers?

>You: Can you actually do that?

>Sugar Glider: No. Which is the point.

>You: What about the Internal Affairs department itself?

>Sugar Glider: Slightly closer to a plausible request.

I took that as a "maybe," which surprised me. The IA was an international arm of the MPD. How was our local mole able to glean anything about the IA's business?

>You: How about information on other audits the IA has done like the one they did to us? Especially any that involve Agent S?ze or Agent Kade.

>Sugar Glider: Is there something specific you're looking for?

The mole's response was almost instant. Whoever they were, they'd spent considerable time under Agent S?ze's oppressive thumb, and they harbored the same resentment we all did on that front.

>You: I'm looking for a pattern. I want to know who else they've been screwing with and why. Can you do that?

>Sugar Glider: That depends on what you can pay.

>You: I have an alternative proposal. If you do this for me, I swear on the grave of Laurence Olivier not to come after you. Ever. I won't poke, prod, or probe for your real-world identity at any point between now and the heat death of the universe.

>Sugar Glider: That was never a concern for me.

>You: And now it never has to be.

A knock at the door jolted my brain away from the computer monitor and back into the nondigital world of my condo. Who the hell was that?

I turned back to the screen.

>You: Do we have a deal?

>Sugar Glider: I'll think about it. Check back in a few days.

>Sugar Glider has logged out.

Another knock. I unplugged the USB key, shoved it into my pocket, and jogged toward the condo's entrance. Squinting through the peephole, I saw the silver fox I should have expected.

I affected a deep frown as I opened the door. "You're not the pizza delivery guy."

Darius didn't wait for me to invite him in, striding through the open door. I locked it behind him, homing in on the brown folder he was carrying.

"Is that what I think it is?" I asked, pointing at it.

"That depends on what you think it is." He headed for the recliner, his seat of choice whenever he stopped by to talk shop—namely, our Consilium investigation. "No further sign of Kade?"

"Nope." I dropped onto the sofa across from him. "But the slippery bastard is bound to turn up sooner or later."

Darius's expression scarcely changed, but I recognized that steely shift in his eyes. If I was reading him right, that was his "I'd like to carve out Kade's spleen with a dull spoon" look.

"Aaron has put together two well-equipped teams," the ex-assassin said, nonchalant as ever. "He's feeling extremely motivated."

"Can't blame him. Kade almost cooked his bacon along with the rest of us. Did you give him a heads-up about Kade's potential telepathy?"

"Yes, he's aware. They'll take precautions."

I tilted my head curiously. "Did Captain Blythe talk to you?"

Darius's expression was completely unreadable now. "She sent a text."

Interesting. I definitely recalled her saying she would "personally speak with" all the GMs.

"Do you two text a lot?" I fished.

He didn't take the bait, instead holding out his brown folder. I hopped up to take it, then settled back into my seat.

I fanned the folder dramatically. "This is either the cocojito recipe I've been pestering you about for months, or you've got a lead. I'm not sure which I want more."

He merely arched his eyebrows.

I flipped open the folder. Front and center on the first page was the headshot of a clean-shaven businessman in the "semiretired" era of his life with a perfectly pressed white collar and black tie. His short, graying hair was neatly parted and styled to one side, and his nose had a charming bend à la Owen Wilson—an old break that looked like it had come from an overly aggressive game of frat boy flag football.

Since it wasn't a drink recipe, that meant it was most definitely a lead.

"Jayce Tyrian is a retired MPD agent," Darius informed me. "A pyromage originally from Pittsburgh. Over the past decade, he's constructed a very successful business empire."

I turned to the next page in the folder, finding a list of all the companies Tyrian either owned outright or had a controlling stake in: real estate ventures, an investment firm, a couple of businesses with names too vague to discern their nature, and a chain of boutique grocery stores. The vast majority of them were headquartered relatively close to his hometown in Pennsylvania.

I grimaced. "So, he's a gazillionaire."

"Well on his way to becoming a billionaire, at least."

"And he's a Consilium stooge?" I guessed.

"Not as far as I can tell. All of his business dealings appear to be above board."

"Then why do we care about him?"

"Page eight."

I flipped forward in the folder until I landed on a page about Tyrian's latest corporate acquisition: Trident Ltd., located in Miami, Florida. That was several hundred miles outside the business magnate's sphere of influence.

"‘Florida's Premium Brokerage Firm,'" I read aloud. "Is that supposed to mean something to me? I know I'm ex-KCQ, but I never became fully fluent in venture capital vernacular."

Darius drummed his fingers on his knee, a rare sign of impatience. "That's the very successful front hiding an equally successful mythic artifact brokerage. Again, as far as I can determine, its business activities are entirely legal."

"Then, to revisit my previous question: why the hell do we care?"

"Mickey Gomez," Darius replied. "According to the financial documents we have, he was the owner of Trident Ltd. before Jayce Tyrian acquired it."

I sat up straight. "And Mickey Gomez is a Consilium acolyte! We have a nice big pile of financial documents on him showing all those unexplained deposits."

Said documents were among the piles about to collapse the boardroom table on the Crow and Hammer's third floor.

"To make a convoluted tale much shorter, Mickey got himself into some legal trouble last year that the Consilium was either unable or unwilling to help him escape. Between debt, fines, and lawyer fees, he was forced to sell most of his holdings, and Jayce Tyrian snapped up Trident Ltd. a few months ago."

I leaned forward and braced my elbows on my knees. "Did Tyrian take over Trident for the business opportunity, or did he take over as a Consilium fanboy too?"

Darius's expression was thoughtful. "There's no indication that Jayce Tyrian has any involvement with the Consilium—or anything illegal, for that matter."

"That's boring." I waved the Tyrian folder. "What aren't you telling me?"

"Jayce Tyrian now has access to Trident's records, including all the artifacts that passed through the brokerage while it was under the control of a Consilium lackey. And we"—his mouth curved in a faint smile—"have an extensive list of spells and artifacts that interest the Consilium, all cataloged by Tino."

I let that sink into my gray matter. If we could get Trident's sales records, we could cross-reference them with our list of Big Bad Magic and see if the Consilium had successfully acquired a moon-exploding spell. Or worse.

"Do you think Jayce will be a ‘sharing is caring' kind of guy?" I asked.

Darius's smile sharpened. "We're going to find out. He's currently in Miami for a series of meetings with Trident's executives."

I stood up from the couch. "I guess I should pack sunscreen."

"I'll send you my flight details so you can buy a ticket." He also rose to his feet. "I'll see you at the airport at 6:30 a.m."

I groaned. Early morning mission flights were the absolute worst. How was I supposed to be at my warping best when I didn't get enough beauty sleep? And was there a sane person on the planet who could get genuinely restful shut-eye whilst being shuttled across the continent with a Planck length of legroom, in a vibrating metal cylinder going a thousand kilometers per hour, forty thousand feet above the ground?

Darius left me with the folder on Jayce Tyrian and headed home, presumably to prepare for our beachside date with our new potential informant.

As I packed my bag for the trip—sunscreen absolutely included; otherwise, I'd return to Vancouver the color of boiled lobster—I pondered what sort of excuse to give Blythe about my impromptu Miami getaway. I couldn't cherry-pick another Kade-related interviewee, not with that slippery shit stain in Vancouver.

It wasn't until I was stripping down to get ready for bed that I noticed the notification on my phone. I'd missed a text from Lienna.

How did it go today? Any insights from Captain Blythe after your trip?

I'd already filled her in on my interview with Kade's old schoolteacher, but not my perilous adventure aboard the Arizona Express with Darius. He'd been very clear that no lines of communication were safe. She didn't have a clue that I was up to anything besides investigating Kade, and even then, I had to be careful with what I shared. I hated keeping her in the dark.

I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at her message for a minute, debating what I could safely share and what I should hide to keep her concern-o-meter from skyrocketing. If I were in her shoes, I'd want to know that the psychopathic killer who'd planned to slowly torture us to death was back in town. All the bounty guilds in the city knew he was here, so it wasn't a secret.

I started typing.

No insights from Blythe, but I got a mindful from Kade himself. He's back in Vancouver, and it looks like his mysterious extra magic is telepathy. Blythe has all the bounty guilds on the hunt for him.

I read it over before hitting send, hoping I'd successfully walked the line between serious and nonchalant. I didn't want her worrying about me when she had her family to take care of.

A minute passed, but she didn't respond. It was after midnight. She was probably asleep.

I zipped my thumbs across the digital keyboard again.

I'm heading out of town first thing in the morning, so I'll be well out of Kade's way. But I might not be reachable while I'm on the road. Call you when I'm back. Hope you and your family are doing okay.

I almost hit send, then stopped to add three more words.

I miss you.

I sent the message off, set my phone on the nightstand, and rubbed my hands over my face. Long-distance relationships were hard—especially when your exact relationship was so undefined.

Lienna still hadn't replied by the time I set my alarm for an ungodly hour and crawled into bed. A lonely ache burrowed into my chest. Not for the first time over the past five months, a traitorous thought circled my exhausted brain.

Was Lienna ever coming back?