Jones
Kelly awakens to the sound of her phone buzzing. It’s a text message from headquarters,
instructing her to check her email. She rolls
blearily out of bed and stumbles across the hotel room to where her laptop sits
open on the table. Jiggling the tiny
mouse to rouse the machine from its own slumber, she enters her password and
brings up her inbox. Sure enough, one
new message awaits:
Agent
Kelly,
Excellent
work. Postpone follow-up until
resolution of next case.
Terse
and to the point, with a congratulatory flourish. Some dozen attachments lurk beneath – she clicks
“Download All” and heads for the shower.
The
hot jets both relax and invigorate. She
breathes deep of the steamy air and works the stiffness out of her joints. Yesterday had been her recovery day, her time
to rest and eat while composing and filing her report. Her grafts were marvelous things, improving
her performance in nearly every area – but damn if they didn’t work up an
appetite. Whether running, healing, or
simply perceiving beyond the bounds of her mundane senses, everything had a
calorie count attached, and the price was steep. Yesterday’s dull ache had faded to a languorous
stiffness by the time she bedded down, belly full at last. As always, the stiffness seemed to have
tightened its grip on her overnight, but it would be gone in a couple hours as
long as she stretched.
She
turns off the shower, dries off, brushes her teeth, and performs her stretching
ritual to work out the last few kinks.
She then dresses and heads to the lobby for coffee – whatever it is, it
can wait until she’s fully awake. She checks
the time as she heads down the hallway:
a quarter past noon. At least she’d
been able to sleep in.
Two
cups of decent-for-free coffee later, a third in hand, Jones is back in her
room and perusing the attachments: dossiers
on five hunters in Las Vegas, just like she’d received for her current case, as
well as some intercepted network chatter and a load of photos. She sets up a new case file and starts
working her way through the mass of information.
The
whole thing seemed to have been noticed when one Ken Wu, a forensic analyst
with the Las Vegas PD, was two hours late without calling in. Atypical behavior, but his cell phone was
also off and his car was missing.
Members of his “poker club” were also unable to be reached at their
listed places of occupation – Jim Reynolds and Don Harper, who worked at a pawn
shop and a sporting goods store, respectively, hadn’t shown up for work all
weekend. Stacy MacIntyre, a certified
professional locksmith, was a no-call-no-show this morning just like Wu. Evan Lawrence, a mechanic, was the only one
to register any activity at all since Friday night. So he was going to be Jones’ point of
contact.
Flagged
files in police attendance records?
Jones could buy that. But a
pawnbroker and a sporting goods clerk? Like
a Chthonian horror, Task Force Whiteout seemed to have tentacles everywhere,
and even Jones Kelly herself was continuously baffled by the absurd level of
detail they were able to command. It
made her wonder what sorts of information they had that she didn’t know
about – such as the R&D that must have gone into her grafts before she
herself received them. Her first one or
two may indeed have been experimental, but as they added up, Jones considered
it less and less likely that she would be used as a guinea pig with such
considerable resources already invested in her.
Whatever. All this was above her pay grade, and she had
to focus on the task at hand. These
Hunters were tracking bloodkin, and only Evan made it out after showing up late
to the fight. Now Jones had to find out
whatever additional information she could, and determine how best to resolve
the situation.
She
decides to start by checking out of the hotel, renting a car, and working out
the rest over the course of the five-hour drive ahead of her. With luck, she would be able to find Mister
Lawrence getting off work, and he would bring her up to speed. Until then, all she could do was cogitate on endless
what-ifs.
At
twenty past six, Jones spots Evan’s silver Dodge pulling up to his garage. He spots her at the entrance to his building
as he exits the vehicle to lift the garage door. He hesitates for a moment, then resumes the
task, pulling the vehicle in and lowering the door behind it. He walks straight up to her, his posture
indicating that he knows she’s waiting for him.
“Can
I help you,” he asks, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans.
“I
hope so,” she replies. “Evan Lawrence?”
“Who’s
asking?”
“No
need to be coy, Mister Lawrence. My name’s
Jones Kelly, and I’m here to help.”
“Ha. One of the three great lies,” Evan says with
a wry grin.
“Excuse
me?”
“You
know, the three great lies? ‘The check
is in the mail,’ ‘Of course I’ll still respect you in the morning,’ and my
personal favorite: ‘I’m from the
government, and I’m here to help’.”
“I
don’t recall mentioning my employers,” Jones says flatly. Evan looks pointedly at her suit and says,
“You
didn’t really need to.” He looks over
his shoulders, each in turn, then says, “I’m guessing you’ll want to continue
this conversation inside.”
“If
that’s all right by you,” Jones says with a nod. She steps aside and follows Evan into the
building and up the stairs. Once inside
his apartment, he throws the deadbolt behind them and heads for the kitchen
before breaking the silence. “Make
yourself at home, I guess. You want
anything to drink?”
“A
glass of water would be nice, thank you.”
She takes a seat in one of a pair of armchairs at opposite ends of a
coffee table. Evan shortly returns with
a glass of water in one hand and a beer in the other. He sets down a coaster at each end before sitting
in the other armchair and taking a pull from his beer.
“So,”
he says after swallowing, “what’s this all about?”
“I
understand you’re something of a poker player, Mister Lawrence.”
“Drop
that ‘Mister’ shit, Evan is just fine.
So yeah, you’re a spook. That’s a
closed group, and invisible, and I somewhat doubt you’re a Facebook
administrator.”
“All
right, Evan,” Jones begins again. “Friday
night, you and your cohorts seemed to get in a bit over your heads. I’m here to try and help you untangle the
mess.”
Evan
stares levelly at her for a solid three seconds before slowly nodding his head
and heaving a deep sigh. “Well, you’ve
sure got your work cut out for you,” he says.
“So what’s your outfit, then?
FBI? NSA? DHS?”
“That’s
classified,” Jones replies. “But what I
can tell you is that my organization was founded to deal with exactly the sort
of problem that you and your friends try to solve. We’ve got our fingers in a lot of pots, we’re
spread pretty thin, but we do what we can.”
“That’s
a pretty swift response, thin as you’re spread.”
“We’ve
been keeping an eye on Mister Wu,” Jones explains. “And I was in the neighborhood, so to
speak. Working another case.”
“One
damn thing after another, huh?” Evan
leans back in his chair and takes another pull from his beer. “Ain’t that always the way of it?”
“Pretty
much,” Jones says. “Why don’t you tell
me what you know, and then we’ll see what we can do from there.”
“Not
much to tell,” Evan says with a shrug. “All
I know is probably in whatever communications records you’ve already got. I showed up after everything was done and got
out before I added to the body count.”
Evan pauses, then fishes his phone out of his pocket as he says, “Oh,
and there’s this.” He fiddles with his
phone, then sets it on the table. What
follows is an audio recording, dull with distance and echo, but Jones is able
to make out the words with some effort.
“Just
don’t fuck up, and we got four more in the stables,” a female voice says,
probably African-American.
“I
dunno,” another voice responds – female also, probably white, somewhat
younger. “Maybe we ought to let one of ‘em
go. Tell him there’s a new breed of – ”
“Shut
up, Della! You done fine so far, now don’t
go and fuck it up!”
“I
was just – ”
“Just,
nothing! Think about it. How’s it gonna help us if we turn one
loose? No way, no how – all it’s gonna
do is give them more intel on us. They
know we’re here, they know there’s a fight on, and four down is four down. Three down is one less. This scare-tactics bullshit, trying to make
your mark or whatever – it’s bullshit!
Don’t even fuckin’ try it. You
hear me?”
“All
right, I’m sorry.”
The
recording runs a few more seconds, then ends.
“Where
was this recorded,” Jones asks after Evan retrieves his phone.
“Some
warehouse, Northwest of the strip. Jim
had ‘em cornered on a rooftop, the others showed up and stormed the gates. Della, the second girl, she’s new. Turned only a month and a half ago by some
bloodsucker named Cochran. They both
disappeared, but then Jim spotted her Friday night. We thought she’d be easy pickings, get in the
way of the other one – we got cocky. And
now we paid the price.”
“You
seem to keep pretty close tabs on the locals,” Jones says in a suspicious tone.
“Yeah,
well,” Evan begins, but a quick “don’t bullshit me” look from Jones interrupts
his train of thought. “Look,” he says
after a measured second. “Jim’s got this
ring. Someone pawned it, thinking it was
a mood ring. Turns out, it detects
pretty much any supernatural presence within about five hundred feet. It’s even conveniently color-coded: red for bloodsuckers, blue for mages, you get
the idea.” Jones nods for Evan to
continue. “So, you know, that helps
narrow it down. It won’t point ‘em out
in a crowd, but we’ve been able to get more than a few hunts underway because
of that ring.”
“I
see,” Jones says. “And is that what
happened Friday?”
“Far
as I can tell, yeah.” Evan takes another
sip of beer before continuing. “Jim was
at PT’s, he sometimes spots bloodsuckers there as they’re coming off the Strip.”
“Do
they tend to congregate around the Strip?”
“Shit
yeah,” Evan says. “It’s practically a
damn buffet for them.”
Jones
asks, “Have you found out where they’re holed up?”
“No, not yet,” Evan says. “We’re narrowing it down, though. They keep falling off the map at the North
end of the Strip. We’ve found a couple
of business fronts around there, fake companies that don’t do anything. Nobody enters or leaves. But we’ve combed ‘em over pretty well, haven’t
been able to find any leads.”
“Mind
if I take a look,” Jones asks. “I might
be able to spot something you missed.”
“Knock
yourself out,” Evan says with a shrug. “We
might want to head out tomorrow, though.
It’ll be dark soon, streets will be crawling with all kinds of
people. Without Jim’s ring, we won’t get
much of a heads-up if someone’s coming. I’m
trying to lay low for the time being, but the places are deserted during the
day.”
“Sounds
good,” Jones says.
Evan
finishes the last third of his beer in one long pull before standing up. “You want a beer or anything in the meantime?”
“Sure,”
Jones says. Evan heads for the
kitchen. “So about these stables,” Jones
continues.
“Yeah,
I caught that, too.”
“Any
idea what that’s about?”
“Not
really,” Evan says. “That is, not beyond
what you could guess just by hearing it.
They probably keep a bunch of people locked up in cages or something,
easy access.”
“It’s
not unheard of,” Jones says. “Chicago,
New York, L.A., Miami – all those cities have something like that. Keep a steady supply of blood in-house, so
they don’t need to go out on the prowl so often.”
“Sounds
like quite an operation,” Evan says as he returns with two open bottles. “Wouldn’t it be hard to keep something like
that under wraps, though?”
“Not
as hard as you might think,” Jones says.
She takes a sip of her own beer before adding, “People disappear in big
cities all the time, without any extra help.”
“Fair
point,” Evan says. “But something like
that seems like it would be pretty easy to notice. Gotta keep the prisoners fed, and all that.”
“Not
if it’s under the guise of some legitimate business.”
“True,”
Evan says. “That how they do it in other
cities?”
“Usually,”
Jones says. “But they’re not false
fronts. They’re actual companies, they have
employees and payroll and logistics, they even have websites. It’s easy to spot a fake – I’ll be honest,
you’ve probably got money-laundering or some other mundane crime going on with
the ones you guys found. Still, it won’t
hurt to take another look.”
“Right
on,” Evan says.
The two Hunters
set about planning their day, then call it a night. Jones sleeps on the couch in her suit, and
makes a mental note that she needs to hit up a dry cleaner at some point. As luck would have it, Evan works weekends
and has Tuesdays and Thursdays off, so he doesn’t need to dip into his sick
time. The Sun has barely set as they bed
down, but they have an early and busy day tomorrow.
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