“Ain’t no reason we can’t be friends now,” I said, opening my door. “As long as we both remember there are specific boundaries on that friendship. Meaning that you can and will fire me if I mess up, and that I can’t speak my mind in front of other people.” I stopped, my legs and feet swiveled around to the grass where we had parked, my back to him. “Frankly I find that one sorta hard.”
I had the pleasure of hearing FireWind’s laughter as I stood and closed my door. Rick and Margot were already standing in the street and the looks they sent me, at the sound of FireWind’s laughter, were priceless. I just shrugged, but I was sorta proud of making the big boss laugh. I had a feeling he didn’t do that often.
Rick looked good, better than I had seen him in a long time, since I had helped to heal him of supernatural bindings. He stood tall and straight, and had put on weight that he sorely needed, in his shoulders and back and thighs. He had been working out. His white hair blew in the afternoon breeze, too long for regs, nearly at his collar. He looked older than before his trauma, but he had the perfect skin of a were-creature. Rick LaFleur was chick candy. Or maybe it was a chick magnet? One of those words. And he and Margot looked good together. Not romantic or as if they were in a relationship, but comfortable, which was good, since they were still dealing with the results of Margot becoming a black wereleopard in a freak shooting accident.
“Boss,” I said softly.
“Nell,” he said with a half smile. “I hear you’ve been doing good work.”
A flush warmed my face, any color change hidden behind my tree-bark-toned skin. To cover my self-conscious reaction, I said, “Thanks. Full moon’s coming in a few days. You two planning to hunt on my land?”
“If you and Soulwood permit. There’s no finer hunting ground in the world.”
I ducked my head in pleasure.
Rick turned his attention to our up-line boss.
“FireWind.”
“LaFleur. You wrapped that case up quickly. No bloodshed, no collateral damage.”
The four of us stood in the sun while the two male senior agents talked about the Chattanooga case, their backs to the Merriweather house. Margot and I were facing the house, standing side by side, listening, and I took the opportunity to study the probationary special agent. Margot Racer, formerly a special agent in the FBI, exuded self-assurance, a confidence I had never seen in women, especially not in any churchwomen. Her shoulders were back, her chin up, her eyes narrowed. Her dark skin glistened in the sunlight as if it was dusted with gold dust, and her buzzed short hair looked elegant and tough at once. She lookedbadass, a word I never associated with females but that certainly fit her. And fit Esther, though in a very different way. I would never be badass.
As I had hoped, some time spent with Rick, also a wereleopard, had helped Margot adjust to the loss of her humanity and the acquisition of a furry body during the full moon. When she and Rick had left for the case in Chattanooga, she had been grieving, often staring out the window, one arm hugging across herself, the other hanging to her side, too limp, her posture desultory. Grieving.
Grief was like living inside a weighted net, pulling you down. You could see out but not get away, not breathe freely, not... not live the life you once lived. I had grieved like that when Leah died, Leah who had been John’s first wife and my friend. And then John had died. And though there had been no romantic love between us, I had grieved his loss as well. And Ihad been alone. I hadn’t known how to help Margot, how to untangle the threads that trapped her, how to set her free, but the time spent with Rick had gone a long way to healing.
It made me want to cheer to see her back to her old self. Margot might be a probationary agent in PsyLED, but she would never be viewed by her coworkers as a probationaryanything. Watching Margot, I stood straighter, as if a chain hauled the top of my head up several inches. I tilted my chin high. Narrowed my eyes. The posture changes made me feel more in control.
We were a strange grouping, confident Margot Racer with her glowing dark skin and elegant business suit, Rick LaFleur with his navy jacket and pants, black eyes, and startling white hair, and FireWind with his yellow eyes, black clothing, and long black braid. And ordinary-looking me with my fading red hair, greenish eyes, and clothes from Target. Even with my shoulders back I knew I looked dowdy standing next to the others. It wasn’t a feeling I particularly liked.
I wondered if the churchwomen could make me some elegant suits. The thought was shocking. An almost violent collision between my two worlds.
At the house, the black-suited woman opened the door and stared us down. She didn’t motion us forward so much as simply stand there and study us. I figured it was a power play of some sort. My stride long and sure, I walked around the jabbering men and up the walkway. I didn’t look back, but I could feel them start after me. As I moved up the walk, I studied the lawyer, because that was surely what I faced. She was lean and muscular and exuded the same kind of power that Margot did.
I smiled a churchwoman smile as I walked up the three short steps, flipped open my ID, and turned on just a smidge of my church accent, along with a big smile. “Hey. I’m Special Agent Nell Ingram. I thank you for coming to protect the identity and juvenile record of your client. She’ll need you.”
The lawyer blinked in surprise. Point to me. She didn’t know her client had once had another name and a juvenile criminal record.
I felt the others step onto the small porch behind me, and the lawyer, who regrouped quickly, said, “I’m Dominique Goode, Mrs. Merriweather’s attorney. I understand that you do not have a warrant?”
“No, ma’am,” I said, still churchy. “We’d rather not intrude too much on Mrs. Merriweather’s life, and acquiring a warrant would make this public record instead of a nice private chat. She has a new name and a new reputation to uphold, after all.”
The lawyer’s expression didn’t change at all this time, but I knew, justknew, that she hadn’t known, still didn’t know, about her client’s past. I resisted looking at Margot to see if she had picked up on anything.
Goode said, “I advised my client against this interview, but you may come in. You may have half an hour of her time. You may ask questions. She may or may not respond. In most circumstances, I will be speaking for my client. There may be questions she does not wish to answer, and she will not do so. Is all this understood?”
“Pretty much,” I said, stepping over the threshold. The client was standing in the hallway in a dim corner, a curvy, more mature version of the out-of-focus girl from the poly wedding and the photos of group sex. Her face looked fierce and tense and... guilty. No one had said I was lead on this interview, but I continued anyway. “But honestly, how can you answer any questions when you got no earthly idea about her name change and her juvenile criminal record?”
Racine/Cadence Merriweather went pale at my words and backed into the far room before she turned and ran down a hallway.
Ms. Goode stared me down. I smiled sweetly back at her. She pointed down the wide foyer hallway and said, “Sit. Do not roam.” She followed her client.
I went down the hallway and into the main room. While the three other special agents gathered together and spoke in low voices, I looked around. The main room had ten-foot-tall ceilings with crisscrossed moldings all over, what they called coffered ceilings. The ceilings, moldings, and walls were painted in three warm neutral tones that were reflected in the couches and the chairs. There were hardwood floors everywhere I could see and fancy rugs. The décor was kept from being boring by a threadbare Persian-type rug that was probably ancient and expensive. To me it just looked as if it needed to be replaced. Despite its age, it was a pretty shade of faded fuchsia pink withmint green and pale blue, the deep pink tint picked up by throw pillows and two small chairs.
There were family photographs on the walls in groupings, a big painting of sunflowers, wild roses, and honeysuckle on the wall over a fireplace, and antique vases on the shelves of built-ins. The neutral couches were darker than the trim, and the back of the room was mostly windows that looked out on the water and a pool, which had to be new because it hadn’t been in the satellite photos. Instead of sitting, as the lawyer instructed, I walked around the main room, taking in everything that could be taken in without touching anything. Taking surreptitious photos of the art and vases, the antique ones in particular. One of those voice-activated security systems was sitting on a table, so I didn’t say anything aloud. There were no visible cameras, but security could be monitoring our every move, so no one overstepped a legal code of behavior and I kept my back to the security device while taking pictures of everything on the shelves and on the walls, thinking—knowing—they were important but unable to tell the others.
Sotto voce, FireWind said, “Ingram.” When I got to the group he said, “Jones informs me that Mrs. Merriweather’s personal checking account shows she wrote a ten-thousand-dollar check to a private security firm, the kind that does background checks and divorce investigations. On the same day, she wrote a similar check to Ms. Goode. This took place eight weeks past.”
