“The bitch has good ears, you know,” the newcomer said. “Who have we here?”
“Proof that this situation is as complicated as I feared,” answered Wentworth. “Mortal authorities are involved, and doubtlessly aware of whom they hold. The entire operation must be seized. We cannot simply smash down the door.”
“Oh, I’m sure any one of mine could get through those doors,” mused the woman, “or at least the windows.”
“Not without alerting those inside,” Wentworth countered. “They may call for help before we have taken the whole building. We must keep this isolated.”
“I’ll not put my brother at risk for your hurt feelings,” Unferth added curtly. “I came here to get him out.”
“Peace, please,” Wentworth broke in. “We can work together on this. We all have a role to play, and we will all get what we want. Freeing Bjorn must come first. That requires stealth, not just brute force.”
“You have a plan for that?” asked the woman.
“Paul can help us,” said Rosario. “Can’t you baby?” her cold fingers stroked his neck again, teasing his flesh where her fangs had been. “Is there a way inside?”
Keeley held his tongue. He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t.
“There’s a keypad on the outside that door,” someone said.
“Aw, is that so?” Rosario asked. “Tell us the code, Paul.”
“No,” Keeley said.
Rosario raked his sensitive neck with her nails. The pain was so sharp he couldn’t even cry out. “Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time,” she said, her voice still distressingly hypnotic. “You’re mine now. You don’t say no to me. ‘No’ is for people who can make their own decisions. You can’t do that anymore… can you?”
Keeley’s eyes watered. His body trembled with fear. He felt so weak. “No.”
“How long will this take?” asked the other woman.
“Not long, I think,” said Wentworth. “Rosario seems to be a natural at this.”
Rosario’s eyes wouldn’t let Keeley go. She wouldn’t even let him have his own thoughts.
* * *
Amber knocked on the door and waited for an answer before she entered. It seemed like the right thing to do. She was still part of the team, officially, and had as much right to be in the break room as the others, but at this point she wouldn’t take anything for granted.
One of the tactical guys answered the door. Amber offered up a polite but awkward smile and stepped around him into the makeshift break room. The tactical guys-those not on a watch, at least-seemed to all sit at one table. Two of her teammates sat at the other.
“You wanted to see me?” Amber asked Nguyen.
The older agent looked up from her book at Lanier rather than at Amber. “Did you tell her I wanted to see her?”
“You said to text her,” shrugged the other agent across the small table.
“I said to invite her.”
“Yeah, by text.”
Nguyen rolled her eyes, then turned them toward Amber. “We’re bored. Matt says he’s got a deck of cards. You want to play?”
Amber’s first instinct was to decline. This couldn’t be more than a token effort. Maybe Hauser or Keeley put them up to it. Though they would never say so, both agents probably hoped Amber would just say no and leave so they wouldn’t have to go through with this.
Grown-up Amber told downtrodden teenage Amber to take a hike. “Sure,” she said, opting to see if there might be more to this. She pulled out a chair and sat down. “What’s the game?”
“Just ordinary cards,” answered Lanier as Nguyen pulled the deck out of her coat pocket. He added with a deadpan tone, “Nothing fun or anything.”
Nguyen raised an eyebrow as she shuffled. “What other kind of cards are there? You hoping I carry around a trivia deck or something?”
“Colleen here is one of those people who hears ‘board game’ and immediately thinks of Monopoly or Risk,” Lanier smirked.
Again, Nguyen looked at the two like she didn’t understand. “Matt knows I’m a geek like him,” explained Amber.
“Yeah? And?”
“And geeks have better games,” Amber shrugged. A smile twitched at her lips. “With, y’know, fun in them.”
“I could throw these across the room and you two could play fifty-two card pick-up like my kids,” Nguyen suggested.
“No, I’m good. Regular cards is fine.” She paused as Nguyen dealt. “Thanks for inviting me.”
“Yeah, well, I figured I know what everyone else is up to except for you,” said Nguyen, “and I didn’t want you sitting in a room alone staring at the walls.”
Amber looked to Lanier. “How many cameras have you set up here, anyway?”
Lanier blinked. “Not that many. I’m not even watching them. She made me close up my laptop, see?”
“We’ve got a security watch going. You needed the break. Both of you,” Nguyen added meaningfully.
“Well, anyway… thanks. I kind of was just staring at the walls, honestly.”
“Feeling like you aren’t really part of the team?” ventured Nguyen.
“Kinda, yeah. I’ve screwed up enough.”
“No, you haven’t,” said Lanier as he sorted and righted his cards. “It’s a crazy case, and it’s your first assignment like this. We’re all still making this stuff up as we go along.”
“Pretty sure what I did was bad,” Amber frowned. “And what I didn’t do. I’m the one who turned up here in the back of someone’s car with handcuffs on.”
“We got our suspects in custody and nobody on our side got hurt,” said Nguyen. “You’re the only one here who’s gone one on one with a demon woman, so I figure none of us have any right to throw stones. Things go wrong even with normal perps. And we’re not here for the normal ones.
“Besides,” she added, “this all went wrong when we arrested Reinhardt and Jones. You didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“What do you think will happen with them?” Amber asked.
“We’ll have to let them go one way or another,” shrugged Nguyen. “There’s no way to prosecute them on the evidence we’ve got. It’s just a matter of when Hauser gets that through his head. But that’s kind of why we wanted to talk to you. I figure you’ve been walking around with everything hanging over your head, and it’s time to tell you that this isn’t your screw-up. You made some mistakes, but you didn’t botch the case. We all did that without you. I figure by the time all this gets worked out, any of your goofs will just get rolled into the whole big ball of ‘oops’ and it won’t even seem like that big of a deal.”
“I’m ready to own my mistakes,” said Amber.
“We know. That’s part of the point.”
Amber’s eyes came up to Nguyen’s. She understood then that Nguyen held back something significant in her reassurances. “What do you mean?”
“I’m just saying don’t be in any hurry to start checking the want ads. This isn’t over yet.” She paused. “And you’re not in the doghouse with any of us.”
Silence held long enough for the three to look at their hands. “So you didn’t call me down here to play cards.”
“No,” Nguyen sighed, “I don’t even know what we’re playing.”
“I might have a different card game in my laptop bag,” Lanier volunteered, “but I should warn you it’s pretty offensive.”
Amber’s eyes lit up. “Do you have any of the expansions?”
* * *
Keeley’s shuffling feet brought him to the door, but his remaining will fought to reassert itself. He felt so little control… or, really, so little of anything. His numb body moved slowly as he screamed and shouted inside to stop himself. Nothing seemed to work.
Others walked with him, but the cameras wouldn’t see them.
He saw the door come closer. His hand rose toward the keypad. Trembling fingers stretched out to the buttons, inputting the proper sequence.
The system beeped. The door unlatched. Keeley’s hand moved to the handle, but then it stopped. He refused.
He couldn’t know how much strength and courage it took to assert himself even that much. He only thought, over and over, that he couldn’t do this.
Rough, impatient hands shoved him aside. Unferth pushed past him and threw the door open. Keeley slumped against the doorframe, opening his mouth to cry out a warning, but all he could let out was noiseless breath.