Feeling flighty and capricious, more things no good woman should ever be, I scanned and signed everything and folded a copy of the three he had tossed at me. I’d read my copy more thoroughly later. Not reading something the government had thrown at me meant John would be double rolling. I smiled at the thought and tossed the two copies back at Rick. “I signed. Read me in.” When he looked at me, inquisitive and surprised, I said, “That’s what you said. You’d read me in. So do it.”
Rick cleared his throat and the rowdy room fell silent as he addressed his crew. Team. Whatever they were. “You were all assigned to Knoxville for temporary duty when you graduated last week, assigned to take on the investigation into the Human Speakers of Truth for the purpose of tracking them online and researching their financial activities. This was a job in line with your lack of experience, an on-the-job training exercise, predominately paperwork, social media, and Internet, Deepnet, and Darknet searches, to be overseen by the local FBI agent and me, to prepare you each for inclusion into existing PsyLED units elsewhere. As of this afternoon all that changed. Look around, people. This is the first official meeting of the newest PsyLED Paranormal Investigative Unit.”
Occam whooped, sounding like something from a rodeo.
T. Laine said, “Us four? All probies?”
Over her questions, Tandy said, “We’re Unit Eighteen. Or is it nineteen?”
“Eighteen. But we can discuss unit designations later,” Rick said, relaxing and letting that rare, charming smile out. “For now, we have official orders.” He read from a short paper he pulled from a file. “‘A team of recently graduated special agents will be assigned to the new Knoxville/Asheville/Chattanooga region, under newly promoted senior special agent, Rick LaFleur.’” There were catcalls—literally—and hoots of delight.
“Why here?” Occam asked, his words laconic but his tone laced with something darker, suspicious. “Why us? Because we’re mostly paranormals, so they stick us together in a backwater?”
“No,” Rick said. “Secret City is my best guess. They want us here to protect it, and they think a human/para unit is the best way to do that.”
A line appeared between Occam’s brows as he processed what that might mean. He didn’t argue. Secret City was the name of the underground testing and R&D part of the US government.
“Unfortunately,” Rick said, “our first investigation just went from looking around and asking questions about the homegrown terrorist group, the Human Speakers of Truth, getting our feet wet, and writing reports, to a higher priority.” A sensation like electricity flashed through the people in the room and through me. Outside, the woods rustled in anticipation. To me, Rick said, “We were initially only intended to see if the Human Speakers of Truth had moved into the region, an easy, strictly information-gathering and investigative assignment as part of the FBI’s investigation into the organization. As of this morning, there was a confirmed kidnapping of a human teenaged girl in Knoxville.”
I stood and went to John’s desk, pulled the small news sheet, and handed it to Rick. He made a face. “Yes. Fortunately, for the girl’s sake, it’s being downplayed by the mainstream media, and it hasn’t hit social media yet. In fact, the latest info is that this photo and the security camera it came from were part of an early Halloween prank.” He handed it back to me and booted up his laptop.
“HST raised funds through kidnapping in the past,” Occam said, sitting forward.
“Correct. But we’re not jumping to conclusions. We don’t yet have independent confirmation that HST is in the area. No confirmation of HST involvement. And the methodology of the kidnappings didn’t precisely fit the previous pattern,” Rick said.
“But PsyLED and FBI took down three of the top people in HST,” JoJo said, “so maybe someone else is in charge, putting their own ideas into play.”
Occam said, “I get all that. But why are we involved? We work crimes and cold cases with paranormal connections.”
“Correct again,” Rick said. He whirled the laptop and we watched as fuzzy black-and-white footage moved across the screen. Four girls were standing in a clump, all wearing identical short skirts and showing a lot of bare leg. A grayish van pulled up. Three men jumped out. They grabbed one girl, threw a sheet over her, and pulled her into the van. The van roared off, leaving behind a puff of dark exhaust and a group of screaming teenagers. There must have been three more people standing nearby, as the group increased in number. Cell phone cameras went to work. A moment later, a police car pulled up.
Rick played the sequence again, and the others detailed physical characteristics of the kidnappers. One large and clumsy. One small and jumpy. One halfway between the two. All wearing toboggans, the kind that cover the whole face.
Rick said, “Two hours ago, the FBI received a ransom demand on the girl. One million dollars for her safe return, with an offshore account for the transfer of funds. They let her talk to her mother. She was alive, terrified, but unhurt at the time. The call was on a cell phone, but by the time the agents triangulated it and got a team there, the only thing left was a cheap burner crushed in pieces on the roadway. No cameras in the area. No prints but the girl’s on the cell. We’ll know more when they get more.
“There is one paranormal connection. It’s tenuous, but was enough to read us in. When the ransom call came for the girl, it was for one million, to be deposited into an account in the Turks. The family said they could get the money, and then called a blood-servant of Ming Glass, the Master of the City.”
There was a soft sound of interest from JoJo.
Rick nodded. “It took the feds by surprise. Apparently the family thought a century-old relationship couldn’t be part of their current crisis, so it wasn’t initially disclosed to the feds, but they have a link and a prior attachment to Ming Glass or one of her scions, back a few generations.”
“You’re right, though,” T. Laine said, pointing at the laptop. “That is definitely not the MO of HST.”
“MO?” I asked.
“Modus operandi,” Rick said. “Latin for ‘method of operation.’ The kidnapping took place on school grounds in front of witnesses in a nonfamily, stereotypical kidnapping.”
Modus operandi, I repeated to myself. I was gonna have to learn Latin? I needed to watch more crime shows and fewer comedies. And was there such a thing as stereotypical kidnapping? As if reading my mind, Tandy opened a saved file on his laptop with information from a .gov site on kidnappings. And stereotypical kidnapping was a proper term claimed by the National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children.
I had so much to learn.
“Until we know more,” Rick said, shutting down the replay, “we’ve been assigned to assist as needed, with the FBI, local law enforcement, and the Tennessee state police. We’ll be going back over their reports and the actual crime scene looking for anything paranormal that might have been missed. What we have so far is sketchy. A sixteen-year-old, taken after cheerleading practice at Farrington High, Caucasian, from a well-to-do, politically connected family.
“The definition of the security footage is too low to make much out, except that it matches the white panel van with a dented back bumper and no license plate described by the witnesses.”
“No info on who set up the account used for the ransom demand?” T. Laine asked. “Nothing that ties to HST?”
“Not yet.” Rick went on. “All we have is current information on the church from our civilian operative, which indicates no outsiders on the compound. We have no new intel on where HST has gone to ground, and we’ve not been assigned the case, but because of the tenuous paranormal connection, we have been asked to assist in a joint task force, primarily as backup and as a training exercise for us. Our participation will be mostly observational. For now.”
I counted up the people he might be referring to as a civilian operative and came up with me. My mouth turned down harder, and I caught Tandy looking at me, reading my emotions. I wasn’t sure how to handle having someone around who could read me so well, but so far I didn’t like it much. I felt a childish impulse to stick my tongue out at him, and when he laughed unexpectedly, I figured he had gotten the message. He looked away, his expression lightened.
“The victim is considered to be in peril of injury or death, though thanks to the ransom demand, the element of abduction for sex trafficking has now been taken off the table. Because of our lack of experience, the FBI will consider us warm bodies, but we have databases and paranormal experience they don’t have. As we are integrated into the team, I expect you all to take orders and follow their leads unless you find something concrete—and I mean rock solid—to offer. Otherwise, come to me first. Pick up coffee and donuts, be agreeable, listen, and learn.”
Rick’s black eyes settled on me. “We aren’t leaving anything to chance. While it isn’t likely that God’s Cloud is harboring HST, if it’s determined that the girl is inside, we may need help getting onto the compound to find her.”
Such an action would bring down the wrath of the church onto me. I took a slow, unsteady breath, and placed my feet on the wood floor, reaching out to the woods for steadiness and calm.
“It isn’t likely, Nell,” Rick said, “but kidnapping is an HST moneymaker. If all of this is connected, and if they are at the compound—lots of ifs—we’ll need you.”
Tandy said, “No one will use you, Nell, not any more than we use each other. It’s what a team does: borrows on one another’s strengths, holds one another up through our weaknesses.”
The empath had been reading me again. “What are you? My confessor? My psychologist?” I stood up, transferring my weight to my bare feet on the floor, feeling the restless forest outside and the massed emotions inside, agitated and tense, the sensations mixed up and tangled through the old wood of the floor and up inside me. I leaned toward Tandy. “I told you to get outta my head.”
“You belong with PsyLED,” he said, “with this team on our first gig.” He smiled uncertainly, showing slightly yellowed teeth, the enamel cracked in fine lines, like the Lichtenberg lines on his skin, but paler. “You will bloom working with us.”
Bloom. I couldn’t help but love that word and, despite myself, some small, tight place inside me warmed and stretched, like a bud trying to open. “I’m not a plant,” I said, stubborn.
Rick said, “You said you wanted to be a consultant.”
“You should a told me things had changed, before I signed the papers.”
“You might not have signed them, then.” It had been intended to be humor, but when I sent him a look, Rick added, “Fine. I’ll tear them up right now—no harm, no foul. And you can walk away from a girl in peril, simply because there is a remote—very remote—chance that she is on the church grounds.”