Chapter 7

"What did you tell her?" Darius asked as he parked our rental convertible on an ocean-side street. Palm trees and sand separated us from the water, and we were half a block away from a marina full of speedboats and yachts. A gentle breeze washed over our faces, keeping the humid heat at bay.

Directly opposite us across the road was the massive white skyscraper that housed Trident Ltd. on the fifty-eighth, fifty-ninth, and sixtieth floors.

It had taken a wee bit of persuasive Kit-charm to convince the distinguished guild master to pick the cherry red convertible off the rental lot instead of a nondescript gray sedan. But we were in Miami! I wore a lightweight, short-sleeved shirt, unbuttoned past my collarbone, a pair of salmon-pink shorts, and a heavy base coat of SPF 60.

The only warm-weather apparel I'd skipped was sandals, just to be safe. The last thing I wanted to do was blow a mission by tripping over my own feet while chasing after a rogue Floridian mage or something.

Darius, on the other hand, had opted for a business casual, white dress shirt and brown belt outfit. It was so simple, yet he still looked like he belonged on the cover of GQ. Everything about him said, "When I tell you this vintage of cabernet franc has notes of smoked raspberry and dried dark cherry, I'm not bluffing—my palate is just that refined." Whereas I looked like I'd ask a bartender for whatever cocktail was fruity enough to mask the taste of vodka.

I adjusted the oversized aviator sunglasses I'd picked up at the airport. "What did I tell who?"

"Your captain."

"With Kade in Vancouver, I couldn't concoct a plausible excuse to travel." I stared down at my shirt, wondering if the number of unbuttoned buttons had crossed the line from suave to skeezy. "I told her I was taking a personal day to catch up on sleep while the guilds got a head start on tracking him down. She seemed suspicious, but that's probably because I've never taken a personal day before."

Darius arched an eyebrow but didn't comment. His gaze turned to the curved architecture of the skyscraper across from us. "Are you ready?"

"We could just enjoy this beautiful day for a smidge. My pale skin aches for the sun."

"I just watched you smother yourself in an entire bottle of sunscreen."

"Yeah, I want vitamin D, not melanoma."

Darius opened his door. "We can sunbathe after we get what we came for."

The skyscraper's lobby had been uglified by an interior designer who clearly thought art deco was the only viable option for a luxury office building. The relentless fusillade of gold-inlaid geometric shapes and crisscrossing lines gave me a headache before Darius and I even reached the elevator. We rode the high-speed lift up to the fifty-eighth floor and emerged just around the corner from the receptionist's desk.

As we walked in, I craned my neck to take a gander at the ceiling forty-five feet above us. Equally tall glass walls revealed the three levels of open office space that surrounded the reception area. In the center, a steel-and-marble spiral staircase wound up to the top floor. I could see workers milling about on the second and third floors above me.

"Whoa," I muttered. "I guess artifact brokering pays the rent, huh?"

"It's time for your badge," Darius replied in an undertone as we approached the receptionist.

"Good morning, gentlemen," she said with a perfectly practiced smile, her gaze shifting from my loud beachcomber garb to Darius's much classier ensemble. "How can I help you today?"

"Hey there." I pulled my badge out of my pocket and flashed it at her. "MPD. We'd like to have a chat with Mr. Tyrian."

The receptionist's smile didn't so much as bobble, but her eyes brightened with interest. "Of course. Let me see if Mr. Tyrian is available."

"Thanks a bunch."

She picked up her phone and tapped a button. Her gaze flicked between us, her curiosity obvious. I guess administrative work at Trident Ltd. didn't offer a lot of excitement.

With the skill only a seasoned receptionist possessed, she spoke into the phone too quietly for me to catch more than a few words, even though I was barely three feet away. But I definitely heard "MagiPol" and "agents" and "ruggedly handsome."

She was probably talking about Darius.

She ended the call and smiled again. "Mr. Tyrian is just finishing up a meeting. Please have a seat while you wait."

The ruggedly handsome GM and I took a seat on the pristine white lounge chairs across from her desk, my gaze scanning the office and its convenient glass walls.

Revving up my psychic engine, I dropped a widespread halluci-bomb that would hide my voice from prying ears.

"Three cameras," I murmured.

Darius nodded absently as he smoothed his beard, four fingers turned toward me. I checked again and spotted the fourth camera half behind the spiral staircase.

"Security?" I asked.

He nodded again, gesturing surreptitiously at a gray-suited man loitering on the second floor. My gaze swept across the enormous space, picking out four more men in identical outfits who were positioned at strategic corners and junctions.

The receptionist circled her desk, her heels clicking against the marble floor, and gestured at us to rise. "Mr. Tyrian will see you now. This way, please."

We nodded our thanks and made our way up the spiral staircase. As we walked, I could see Darius's eagle eyes carefully taking in details across the office. The doors all had security panels beside them, likely requiring a key card or fob, and I was going to go ahead and assume the staff didn't leave their computers unlocked either.

At the top of the stairs, the receptionist stepped aside to reveal the big boss man himself waiting for us with a charming, vaguely questioning smile. He looked almost exactly like his photo, albeit with a bit more white in his hair and a few more wrinkles.

"Agent Garabaldi," I said, shaking his hand.

"Agent Delaware," Darius told him as he also stepped forward for a firm handshake.

As far as off-the-cuff pseudonyms went, it was hard to go wrong with a random state. The same couldn't be said for Canadian provinces. "Agent Newfoundland" sounded more like a shaggy crime-solving cartoon dog than a respectable MPD agent.

I, on the other hand, had put careful thought into my fake name. Agent Gavin Garabaldi was a former extreme athlete turned devil-may-care MagiPol operative who used his world-class skydiving and wakeboarding skills to take down rogue villains across the globe.

Tyrian led us into his office, which took up an entire corner of the top floor. Massive windows offered a picturesque view of the ocean. Conveniently, there were no security cameras in view.

Tyrian sat behind his massive glass-topped desk, while Darius and I took our seats in the plush leather chairs across from him.

"Thank you for making time to speak with us," Darius said in a smooth, professional tone. "We'll keep it quick."

"I appreciate that." Tyrian clasped his hands, focusing entirely on Darius. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Agent Delaware. I thought I knew all the senior agents from our precinct."

And what was Agent Garabaldi? Chopped liver? I guess in the eyes of this aging plutocrat, being young and underdressed disqualified me from any form of respect or acknowledgment.

"I spent the last few years abroad," Darius said, leaning back comfortably. "I was interested to see what opportunities I could find at the international level."

Tyrian looked interested, still maintaining his utter neglect toward me. "Where did you end up?"

Since Darius had this part of the job handled, I would get a head start on our primary objective: finding Trident's artifact files. Dropping a halluci-bomb in case anyone from the lobby below happened to be peeping on their boss, I left a Split Kit to smile vacantly in my seat. The real me stood up, extricating myself from the doldrums of this conversation.

"I joined Special Investigations," Darius answered.

As I circled Tyrian's desk, the businessman sat forward, genuinely intrigued. "Really? I spent a decade in the Finance Department, and the watercooler talk about Special Investigations was always… fascinating."

Before I could worry that Darius was in over his head with this conversation, he answered without hesitation.

"That's what attracted me to the department." He gave Tyrian a sharklike smile as I scooted behind the CEO's desk. "The scope and impact of the cases was highly appealing."

"From what I've heard, Special Investigations doesn't have dull cases. What brought you back stateside?"

I peered at Tyrian's computer monitor—an email from his personal assistant about scheduling a flight back to Pittsburgh—then continued past him to check out the bookshelf behind his desk. The walnut shelves were laden with fat, leather-bound tomes he'd probably never touched.

Darius casually crossed his ankles, oh so relaxed. "You may have heard that Special Investigations utilizes contractors for a lot of their fieldwork. If you think managing employees is tiresome, try headstrong mercenary types."

As Tyrian snorted in amusement, I noticed a book that had been turned around, spine facing inward. Incorporating it into my warp, I slid the book out to read the title: Forgotten Secrets to Masculine Wealth.

Cool. Seeing as this bookshelf was a waste of both space and the written word, I continued past it. Where would Tyrian store the secret stuff?

"After a while," Darius went on, matching Tyrian's level of self-importance, "I realized I'd become a middle manager for contractors, and that wasn't to my taste."

"I'm selfishly pleased to have an agent of your experience back in Miami." Tyrian's tone shifted slightly, still amicable but more pointed. "What can I do for you today?"

My ears perked up. The conversation was finally moving from a schmooze-fest toward the heart of why we'd flown across the entire damn continent.

"As you're aware, our precinct did a brief investigation into Mickey Gomez's activities," Darius said, referring to a suspiciously abbreviated report we'd found in the MPD archives.

Tyrian nodded, undoubtedly familiar with his financially fishy predecessor.

As I moved away from the desk, I homed in on what looked like a nifty, supermodern wall with seams that formed a rectangular grid. Layering it into my warp so the masculinely wealthy CEO wouldn't notice me messing around, I pushed on one. It dipped inward, then popped out, revealing a wide drawer stuffed with file folders.

Greetings and salutations, mysterious compartment full of potentially damning documents.

"It seems there was a clerical error," Darius continued, "and certain reports were missed. With your permission, I'd like to collect some documents from Mr. Gomez's tenure."

I couldn't see Tyrian's face, but the displeased "hmm" he emitted was not a good sign. Not knowing how long this interview would last, I hurriedly flipped open the first file folder in the drawer. It was packed to the margins with numbers and graphs that made precisely zero sense to me, but I assumed would make a whole lotta sense to a corporate accountant.

"We have no need to see anything after the acquisition," Darius assured him.

I glanced over my shoulder to see Tyrian lean back in his chair. Despite all the sociable old-boys-club bonding he and Darius had done, the artifact magnate's body language had morphed into a distinctly unfriendly posture.

Picking up the pace of my search, I risked an array of paper cuts by zipping through the drawer's folders as fast as my fingers would let me—more numbers, more graphs, a handful of charts involving names, dollar signs, and multidigit codes.

Nothing I could make heads or tails of without a calculator and a few hours of spare time. Neither of which I currently possessed.

"Captain Atkinson assured me," Tyrian said after a long, weighty pause, "that the MPD would not subject my company to further nuisance regarding Mr. Gomez's tenure."

The Miami precinct's captain had personally promised to butt out? How much weight did Tyrian's preferences carry with the local MPD? He wasn't even from this state.

"The captain couldn't push the report through in its current condition," Darius said, his tone suggesting this was all a mild inconvenience. "We need to appear a bit more thorough. I'll make sure we're in and out quickly, minimal nuisance, and then we can be done with it for good."

To my ears, that was a solid argument. But I wasn't a multigazillionaire business mogul. Closing the drawer of financial documents, I opened the next one.

"In that case," Tyrian replied, "you must have a warrant."

Yikes. So much for buttering Tyrian up. Figuring this interview would be shortly drawing to a close, I skimmed the file labels in the drawer I had open, shoved it closed, and opened the next.

Darius lowered his voice as though sharing a secret. "A warrant would add to the nuisance factor for both of us, as you know."

Seeing nothing that resembled artifact deals, I closed that drawer and popped a fourth open.

"My apologies, but I don't provide anything to the MPD without a warrant. It's a professional policy." Tyrian's chair rolled across the floor. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Agent Delaware. I hope you can close out the case involving Mr. Gomez without further delay."

That was a not-so-veiled "screw off," if I'd ever heard one. I ran my fingers across the file labels, which were all nonsensical numbers. I pulled one out and peeked inside to find a page labeled "Certificate of Authenticity" and a lovely photo of a very magicky-looking silver dagger with a rune-etched blade.

"I'll do what I can, Mr. Tyrian." Darius scuffed his feet against the floor with unnecessary volume to notify me that he'd stood up. "Thank you for your time."

I shoved the drawer shut, spun around, and made my Split Kit stand up and smile vacantly at Tyrian. Not that it mattered. For all the attention Tyrian was paying me, I could've warped myself into Tony the Tiger and informed him that his cooperation was grrrrrrreat! and he still wouldn't have noticed.

I merged with my Split Kit as Tyrian escorted us to the office door. It opened as we reached it, held by one of the gray-suited security guards. He watched passively as we exited, closed the door, then trailed us as we headed down the spiral staircase.

"Have a lovely day, agents," the receptionist said cheerily as we passed her desk.

Positively brimming with a dearth of any discernible personality, the security guard followed us all the way to the elevator, pressed the call button, and stared blankly until the doors chimed and slid open. Darius and I stepped inside, and I gave the expressionless goon a toothy smile as the elevator closed.

Except it hadn't closed. I was holding the "open door" button while simultaneously unleashing a halluci-bomb across all three levels of the Trident office.

"Ready?" I asked Darius.

"Let's go."

I tapped the ground floor button, then Darius and I stepped out of the elevator in unison. The elevator began its lonely, passenger-free descent as we followed the security guard's trail back into the massive office space, completely unseen by any prying eyes—either human or technological.

While I rendered us both invisible to every mind in the vicinity, Darius was utilizing his lumina magic to bend the light around us, screening our existence from the snooping lenses of the four cameras that populated the space.

Over the past five months, I'd mastered the ability to not only make my fashionable friend invisible, but also to exclude his mind from the requisite halluci-bomb. It required an extra dollop of brain effort from me, but it spared him from the disconcerting sensory numbness of his own body being erased from his perception. I was basically doing the work that Lienna's cat's eye necklace normally did for her.

Side by side, we walked back across the reception area and straight up the stairs. I kept close to Darius's elbow so he didn't have to bend as much light to hide me from the cameras. The security guard was a dozen steps ahead, also heading for the top floor.

"That fancy wall in Tyrian's office is full of hidden drawers," I said, my voice audible only to Darius. "I think the fourth one from the left has files with artifact information. You should start there."

Darius nodded. He tended to get very quiet whenever we were up to something covert. Old habits, maybe. He'd done a lot of assassining without a psycho warper around to suppress the noise he made.

Reaching the top level, we shadowed the security guard as he knocked on Tyrian's office door. Inside, the business mogul was on the phone, and he didn't look pleased. He waved at the guard to enter, giving me and Darius the perfect opportunity to slip inside as well.

"Delaware, that's what I said," Tyrian snapped into the phone. "What about Garibaldi? Not a single agent by either name?" His jaw flexed, and his voice dropped ominously low. "You promised me no interference, Atkinson. Now I have no choice but to deal with these rogue agents myself."

I made a silent "yikes" expression at Darius. Was Tyrian suggesting what I thought he was suggesting?

"I do hope you can keep your end of our deal," Tyrian finished, threat clear in his tone. He dropped the phone back onto its cradle, then looked at his security guard. "Bring those two ‘agents' back here. Use the telethesian if you need to."

The guard nodded sharply, turned on his heel, and left the office.

I glanced at my invisible comrade. "I think our time is going to be much shorter than we hoped."

"Keep him distracted," Darius murmured.

"Got it."

As Darius headed for the wall of hidden filing drawers, I added a layer to my halluci-bomb to keep his clandestine inspection concealed. Tyrian, meanwhile, was drumming his fingers against his desk, face hard with anger. With a huff, he stood up.

Son-of-a-pirate-wench. If he was headed for the filing drawers, I'd have no time to stop him from colliding with Darius.

Quickly, I locked onto his mind and made his phone ring, drawing his attention back to his desk.

The CEO dropped into his chair and snatched up the phone. "Yes?"

"Hello, Jayce. Do you know who this is?"

Tyrian frowned. He didn't seem to recognize the slow, ominous drawl of Morpheus from The Matrix.

"I've been looking for you, Jayce," my Laurence Fishburne impersonation continued.

"Who is this?" Tyrian snapped, peering at the blank display on his desk phone for a clue about the caller's identity.

I kept half an eye on him and the other half on the rest of the office. Through the glass wall, I could see Tyrian's main security man, now joined by two more gray-suited men. One of them—the telethesian, I assumed—was pacing back and forth in front of the reception desk like a bloodhound trying to catch a scent.

"I don't know if you're ready to see what I want to show you," Morpheus rumbled in Tyrian's ear. "But unfortunately, you and I have run out of time."

It was almost eerie how well Morpheus's movie line matched reality—the trio of blandly attired security stooges were sprinting toward the spiral staircase, following the psychic trail Darius and I had created on our return from the elevator.

Behind me, Darius was rifling through folders at the speed of a professional card shuffler. I really hoped he found something useful in there.

"Who the hell is this?" Tyrian snarled.

"They're coming for you, Jayce," I had Morpheus say as I watched the telethesian lead the two other security guards up the final few steps. "And I don't know what they're going to do."

Tyrian's jaw clenched, a vein pulsing in his cheek. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Stand up and see for yourself," Morpheus suggested just as the door to the office burst open.

Right on cue, fellas. I was mildly proud of my timing, but more than a trifle concerned that Darius's search efforts would be cut short.

I backed toward the silver fox as Tyrian slammed his phone down and swiveled angrily to face his coterie of intruding security personnel.

"What are you doing?" he barked. "I told you to bring me those agents."

"Their trails lead back up here," the telethesian said. "They're somewhere in this office."

"What? I'm the only one in here."

The telethesian's head whipped around as he searched for us with an unexpected air of desperation. "They have to be here. Maybe they're hiding."

Tyrian scanned his sparsely furnished and mostly glass office with an ounce of exaggeration, as if to emphasize that his interior designer hadn't incorporated an abundance of hidey-holes. I concentrated on my warp as Darius closed a filing drawer and opened another, trusting me to keep him hidden.

"There are two trails leading into your office," the telethesian insisted. "Only one trail out. They couldn't have gone anywhere else."

"Are you certain?" Tyrian asked, a new, acidic note in his voice.

"Yes," the telethesian said with confidence marred by a clear tinge of fear.

"In that case…" Tyrian gestured at his main security guy. "If he doesn't find the two agents in the next ten seconds, shoot him in the head."

The telethesian stiffened. Without so much as a surprised blink, the security guard pulled a black handgun from a holster inside his jacket and pointed it at the telethesian.

Holy shit. I didn't know which was scarier—Tyrian ordering the murder of an employee or the unquestioning obedience of the employee about to murder his coworker. Had Tyrian learned how to run a business from Dr. Evil?

Actually, on second thought, this was probably standard operating procedure straight out of the CEO handbook.

"Oh god," the telethesian gasped, obviously terrified. "Okay, okay, okay."

"Darius…" I muttered, amplifying my voice in his head. The situation was one twitchy index finger away from devolving into a scene out of Pulp Fiction, and we needed to get going ASAP.

Darius was leaning over his fourth drawer in the wall, a folder in his hands. I couldn't see what it contained, but it had completely ensnared his attention. Hopefully whatever he was looking at was worth the shitshow we were about to find ourselves in.

The telethesian took a few steps toward me, most likely using his powers to follow the psychic scent I'd left in my wake. I backed up another step.

"Five seconds," Tyrian warned, his expression devoid of empathy as his employee shook with fear. The security guard with the gun hadn't wavered in his aim.

The telethesian stepped closer to me. If I stepped back again, I would collide with Darius, who'd now pulled a second folder from the drawer and was flipping through it at high speed.

"Three," Tyrion snapped.

"Darius?" I said out of the side of my mouth as the telethesian turned in a confused, terrified circle, unable to reconcile what he could sense with what his eyes were telling him.

"Two."

Darius glanced up, giving me a look I could read perfectly. "Just handle it" was more or less the gist.

"One!"

In the split second before he could pull the trigger, I locked onto the gun-toting lackey's brain and flooded his neurons with the sudden, searing sensation of his pistol heating up to approximately a thousand degrees Celsius.

The security guard yelped, dropped the gun, and clutched his hand in agony.

Time for another distraction—a bigger one.

Before Tyrian could pick up the gun and splatter the telethesian's brains all over the wall himself, a deep, booming whump-whump-whump sound filled the office. Tyrian and his men looked around in confusion.

From outside the floor-to-ceiling window, a large black helicopter descended to hover on the other side of the glass. A black-clad and grim-looking Keanu Reeves gripped the handles of an M134 Minigun—which, despite its name, was not "mini" at all. Its six-bullet barrel was pointed straight into the office.

"What?" Tyrian gasped, and I was vaguely annoyed that he'd gotten his line wrong.

Keanu—I mean, Neo—opened fire. The window shattered, and all four men dove for nonexistent cover as three thousand rounds per minute tore up the floor. The sound of gunfire was deafening, layered with shattering glass, the roar of the helicopter's blades, and the absolute demolition of Tyrian's book collection.

In short, it was awesome.

I aimed the warp at the four men in the room with me, sparing Darius and everyone else from a possible heart attack. As I added swaths of shattering marble floor tiles across the office, I had to resist the very powerful urge to do it all in dramatic slow motion, which would definitely interfere with the realism.

As Tyrian and his men frantically crawled into the corners of the office, Darius shoved the filing drawer shut. He had a small stack of folders under his arm.

He glanced at the grown men cowering and shouting as they crawled around, shielding their heads from shrapnel that Darius couldn't see.

Eyebrows raised, he looked back at me. "Shall we?"

"Yes," I agreed calmly while making Neo obliterate Tyrian's desk with his never-ending supply of ammunition. "Let's."

And so we did, the ongoing scene of completely innocuous carnage still raging in our wake. It wasn't until we'd reached the bottom of the spiral staircase that I dropped the warp, leaving Tyrian and his men to abruptly discover a pristine, undamaged, and helicopter-free view of his office and the sunny ocean beyond the window, with no sign of the mysterious Agent Gavin Garibaldi and his dashing sidekick Agent Delaware to be found.