Alex looked up at him then, a sense of dread growing inside as he considered Hauser’s demands-and where they could have come from. Some random Seattle vampire might have coughed up Alex’s name in some moment much like this one, but it seemed unlikely that they would know the angel’s name…
“Who talked to you?”
“Your friends rolled over on all this when they got into trouble of their own.”
“Right. Pull the other one.”
Hauser let out a sigh. “No, I haven’t had any luck with that line on them, either,” he admitted. The agent took a sip of his coffee and leaned back in his chair. “That’s a tight group of pals you have there. To be honest, though, they’ve all got their own legal problems at this point. Might help them to know they didn’t have to keep silent on your account.”
Alex stared, his mind racing through conclusions. The pieces quickly fell into place. He winced, feeling an emotional jab that would probably be much worse for someone else. “Damn,” he muttered. “Poor Jason.”
“Yeah, poor Jason,” Hauser nodded with something akin to sympathy.
“You son of a bitch,” Alex hissed.
“Alex. I’m telling you. I play rough because I have to, not because I enjoy it. I’m one of the good guys.”
He didn’t know any better, said the voice in Alex’s head. He doesn’t know you or the others. How could he have done anything differently?
Alex looked down at the table once more, wishing the voice he took for his conscience would shut up and leave him alone. Forgiveness and logic didn’t make him feel any better for what his friend would have to endure-if it wasn’t upon him already.
* * *
“I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest one last time that we could all dial this back a few steps,” Amber spoke up from the back seat of the parked car. She sat with her hands still cuffed behind her. Her voice remained calm as she looked up at the tall trees outside the window. “We’re not the bad guys. I know you’re not the bad guys. We could all just talk this out if you’d ease off from this.”
The woman in the driver’s seat was unimpressed. “You might have started by opening a dialogue rather than making arrests.”
“I wish I could’ve. I don’t see how.”
“No?” Lorelei asked mildly. “After you saw the danger Alex and Jason both faced, you could not have come forward and explained yourself and your agency’s concerns?”
“You know it’s not that simple.”
“The same could be said for our position. I do none of this without regret.” Lorelei turned to Jason, who sat in the front seat wearing a naturally troubled expression. “Can you do this?” she asked him with considerably more empathy than she showed Amber. “You have every right to step aside or object. I will think no less of you for it.”
“You’re still gonna go in and get him anyway, right?” Jason shrugged.
“I would not put you in the middle of it.”
He glanced over his shoulder at Amber. It didn’t help his glum mood or his worries. “I’ve come this far. You’re not leaving me here to protect me, are you?”
“I would never doubt your courage or your wits,” Lorelei shook her head. “I am simply much stealthier on my own. We may need Amber before this is over, and someone must stay with her. But I am worried about you. It would be natural for you to question me, and all of this. It would even be natural for you to still feel torn over Amber. I know what it is to manipulate someone as she has done. I know how lost and conflicted you must be. This is no test of your loyalties. Not on my part.”
“Hhff. That’s a good line,” grumbled Amber.
Lorelei ignored her, focusing her attention on Jason. “You mean that, don’t you?” he asked Lorelei.
“I have walked this world for three thousand years, Jason. In all that time, I have made fewer friends than I have fingers to count them upon.” Lorelei’s hand came to his. “You are one of them. There is no crime I would not commit nor any foe I would not face to keep you safe.”
He smiled a little. “Alex is a lucky bastard.”
“He has been since he met you, and he knows it. I have been similarly blessed. Fear not,” she said, leaning in to kiss his cheek. “You will not be alone for long.”
Lorelei stepped out of the car. She stood at the side of the closed door and put on her sunglasses. The car sat to the side of a small park trail surrounded by tall evergreens and bushes. “I rarely look for your kind these days,” she said quietly to the otherwise empty trail. “You do not often concern me.”
The two angels standing beside the car concealed their surprise. Demons of Lorelei’s stature could sometimes see their kind if they exerted enough effort. It was a rare trait, though, and easily forgotten.
“I will say nothing of your presence to them. I would do nothing to harm Jason-and I will be quite satisfied to resolve this without harm to Amber, despite her trespass against me and mine.”
She saw nothing but a stern, wary frown from the female angel, who was a stranger to Lorelei. The other had never spoken with her, but Lorelei had seen Daniel before. “I sense you have something else to say…?” he asked.
“Yes. As I said, I mean no harm to Jason or Amber. Should you wish to ensure no one else is harmed in all of this, I suggest you find the angel in dominion over this city and bring her here. Immediately.”
In the car, Jason watched Lorelei pause and look around, but thought nothing of it. She knew what she was doing.
“So you realize how bad this is, right?” Amber asked. “I mean not just trying to bust Alex out, but what she did to those cops?”
“They’re fine,” Jason muttered.
“You call that fine? Whispering sweet nothings into their ears to make ‘em forget the whole morning of being knocked catatonic and dragged into a strange apartment is ‘fine?’ That’s still gotta be like felony brainwashing or something. Probably a law that applies there somewhere.”
“Better than leaving them tied up at my place,” Jason shrugged.
“Is that why she did it to me that night in the pool hall?” Amber asked. Jason blinked, turning to face her. “Yeah. I know about that. The question is, how do you know she’s never done it to you?”
He didn’t answer right away. “She’s my friend.”
“Sh’yeah, soon as she tells you so with that voice of hers and a flirty touch. How can you ever trust someone who can do something like that? How would you even know any better?”
“How do any of your friends trust you not to run their names through your FBI records every other day? Or take their fingerprints? Or keep files on ‘em? Oh, wait, I forgot. You don’t have any real friends, right? Wasn’t that part of your story? Is that something you made up to get me feeling sympathy for you, or is that one of those little true facts about yourself you slip in like your real first name to minimize the number of lies you have to keep straight in your head?”
Amber sucked in a long breath and bit her lip. “I guess maybe I deserved that. You’ve got every reason to be mad.”
“You know why I’m fuckin’ pissed?” Jason fumed. “It’s not the undercover bullshit. It’s not that you thought I might be up to somethin’ greasy. It’s the fact that you keep droppin’ hints that I shouldn’t trust people who’ve had my back from square one when they could’ve written me off and ignored me as just another random jackass. Like I should bail on them when they’ve never once bailed on me.”
“That’s because I’m used to having to look out for myself rather than waiting for people to abandon me or stab me in the back!” she retorted.
He glared at her, but as he watched her, his face softened. “Yeah,” he sighed, “maybe you haven’t had a whole lot of real friends after all. Otherwise you wouldn’t make a play like that, huh?”
* * *
“So are you ready to start talking?” asked Hauser.