Kavon nodded. “I suspect both of them work with adepts, but I don't know who. Most shamans will hide their relationship with their adept so that they are not as easily targeted by enemies.”
“And you never considered doing that?” White sounded shocked, but then he had been the one approving a revolving door of adepts and low-level shamans in an attempt to stabilize Kavon’s Talent. “You never considered having an adept outside the team?” Maybe White was only now realizing that those agents had put their own safety on the line.
“Whether or not I use Les as my anchor, people who see us together are going to assume he anchors me. That puts a target on his back. And that's why I won't go out with him in the field.”
“You used to go out with him, and you went out in the field with all the agents brought in to maximize your shamanic gifts. Were they all at risk?” White didn’t sound angry as much as concerned.
“Every single person who transferred in understood the risks. They also understood I needed to have them near me in case I used my powers. I never hid any risk, and I took every precaution with the lives of every person on my team.”
“But you won’t go out with Les because it would put him at risk,” White challenged him. “How does that square with you going in the field with Oberton or even Ben Anderson? I know he broke your trust and his willingness to put lives at risk is unforgivable, but he was little more than a kid straight out of the academy. Can you tell me he understood the threat?”
“Yes,” Kavon said. He still carried a healthy share of guilt about how he’d handled the Ben-Darren conflict. His unwillingness to set boundaries had hurt both men. However, he’d never lied about the risks involved in being his anchor. “None of my temporary guides ever got so much as a hangnail in the field.”
“And Kaslov?” White asked. “Will he require a partner or will he work with Agent Gillette?”
“You would have to ask Supervisory Agent Nixon who she planned to assign as his partner.” There was no way Kavon was going to express any opinion about Coretta’s team assignments.
“Nixon is not a shaman, and I am asking you, as a shaman, whether Agent Kaslov will require an adept or shamanic partner. Am I going to have another merry-go-round of agents?”
Kavon hadn’t even spoken to Joe Kaslov about his Talent. “I have no idea. Some guides can help their shamans find the exits, and if he doesn’t develop his Talent, his perception of the spirit plane may be simple enough for him to find the exit. However, I need a partner, and anyone who knows Darren provides that anchor to the real world also knows that eliminating him will cripple me.”
White sighed. “So an attack on Darren might simply be an attack on your ability to use the spirit plane.”
“This attack is going to be far more complex than anything Unit Three is designed to handle. Part of me thinks you should hand any investigation over to the Djedi Center. They're not likely to find an answer either, but they’ll understand the scope of the crime.”
Even though Kavon expected an immediate rejection of that idea, White leaned back and appeared to think it over. Forty years ago before the civil rights movement, all crime involving those with Talent had gone through the Djedi center. The concept of separate but equal as it applied to race ended twenty years before the courts had banned it in matters of Talent as well. But plenty of agencies still turned to Djedi centers far more than the courts would have preferred.
“I’ll take it under consideration,” White said. “Until I make my final decision, make yourself available to Unit Three for questioning.”
Kavon nodded and stood. When White didn’t say anything more, Kavon hurried out of the lounge and back toward Darren’s room. This whole situation was getting messy. White had been a top-notch investigator before he had gotten his last promotion, and Kavon had shared far too many truths. Given time, White might put together a frighteningly accurate picture of what was going on.
While Kavon trusted Assistant Director White to keep a cool head, the man had his own bosses and wrote his own reports. Kavon didn’t want information about a potential war to find its way up the chain of command. Unfortunately he didn’t see a way to stop it.
