She shook her head as she stared out the window. Someone had set up a swing set in the backyard. “It’ll help build trust if I do it alone.”
“True. Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” he said.
She kept staring out the window. She didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.
CHAPTER 18
DROPPING HER DUFFEL bag on the threshold, Laura stood in the doorway of Sinclair’s apartment. The small, spare living room was furnished with two armchairs and a couch. A pile of books and magazines teetered next to a used coffee cup on the coffee table. Throw pillows pressed to one side of the couch with a blanket hanging half on the floor. A flat-screen TV was mounted above the fireplace.
“Sorry the place is such a mess,” Sinclair said.
“It’s fine.” All in all, Laura thought, a helluva lot cleaner than her room at the Guildhouse.
Sinclair picked up the blanket and folded it. “Make yourself at home.”
She closed the apartment door. While Sinclair tidied the magazines, she scanned the room for essence. Moving along the bookcases to either side of the fireplace, she noted a few classic novels, plenty of mysteries and thrillers, and a substantial amount of nonfiction. Sinclair read biographies of politicians and histories. Or at least owned them, Laura thought. She mentally slapped herself for the unspoken dig at him. She couldn’t deny he read. There were too many books and too many categories for it to be one of those contrived libraries. She had been hoping he wouldn’t be interesting.
A stone cup sat next to a history of the Seelie Court in the twentieth century. It threw off the subtle essence of a listening ward. As Sinclair passed it on the way to the kitchen, the cup’s essence faded and reappeared when he was gone.
The dining area was large enough for a table and four chairs. Sinclair scooped an empty glass and a plate with crumbs off the table and carried them through an archway. A framed photograph hung on the wall. Other than that, the space held nothing that could be a ward.
To the left of the dining room, the archway led to a galley kitchen. She watched Sinclair place the cup, plate, and glass in the sink and run water. “Would you like a drink?” he asked.
“Sure. I’ll take any kind of beer,” she said. She opened the cabinets and scanned inside. No listening wards. Sinclair moved to the end of the counter and took two beers out of the refrigerator. She caught a subtle current of essence when he moved away. A ceramic canister outside the range of his medallion had been charged as another listening ward. She pointed it out to him and held her finger to her lips.
In the living room, he popped open both bottles and handed her one. He held his out, and they tapped bottles. Laura took a sip and set the bottle on a magazine. She opened her duffel bag. Ask me what this is, she sent.
“What’s that?” Sinclair asked.
She held up a small granite obelisk. “This? I like to mediate in a cleansed space before I go to sleep. Do you mind if I set it up?”
“No, go ahead. Can I watch?” he said. He put a mildly lewd tone to the question.
She glowered at him. “Sure, if that’s your thing.”
She placed the obelisk next to the stone cup on the bookshelf. She caressed it, strands of blue essence dripping from the tips of her fingers into the stone. Retrieving her beer, she sat in an armchair. “That cup’s a listening ward. The obelisk is basically a jamming device. We can talk freely in here. There’s another listening ward in the kitchen and probably one in your bedroom.”
He slouched across the couch and frowned. “Why the hell would someone do that?”
Laura shrugged. “I believe someone thinks Sanchez said something to me before he died. If I had to guess, they think I told you something when you found me in the warehouse.”
He looked dubious. “They bug my apartment and try to run me off the road on the off chance you might have said something to me?”
She took a swig of beer. “I’ve seen people killed for less reason, Jono. Depends on the stakes involved.”
A flash of satisfaction passed over him when she called him by his nickname. She stretched her legs out, watching his eyes shift to them and back to her face. Flirting with someone to manipulate them was so much easier when she actually enjoyed the flirting. She sipped her beer again. “Do you know much about how your medallion works?”
He shook his head. “No. My grandfather made it and told me to wear it. That’s good enough for me.”
She pulled off her barrette and shook her hair loose. “Want to hear something funny? The listening wards are pointless. The medallion neutralizes them when you’re near them.”
He grinned. “Thanks, Gramps.”
“Have you had any houseguests since the raid?” she asked.
He raised his eyebrows. “Are we at the point where we talk about past relationships?”
Laura rolled her eyes. “No, we’re at the point where I try and figure out if they’ve realized you have that dampening medallion. If you’ve been home alone, there’s been no reason to talk, so no reason to hear. With me here, they’ll notice if they can’t hear conversation.”
“Like now,” he said.
She nodded. “Like now. Only I just gave them the reason. They know a cleansing ward is meant to suppress other essence. Lots of fey like cleansed meditation spaces, so they shouldn’t find it suspicious they can’t hear. As long as they think the other wards are fine, they might not worry about the living room.”
“No one’s been here,” he said.
“We’ll have to be careful what we say when you’re not near the listening wards. They’ll pick up anything up to ten feet away, but not something near that obelisk and not if your medallion is near.”
“Got it.”
“Any word on what’s going down at the apartment complex?” she asked.
Laura caught herself noticing the way his widow’s peak curled off center, a satisfying quirk that broke the sharp planes of his face. He shifted to a more comfortable position on the couch. “The FBI shut us out. They’re claiming we stumbled into a European drug cartel they’ve been investigating, so they’re going with that.”
Laura nodded. “That’s become their standard excuse the last year or two.”
He grunted as he downed half his beer. “All drugs are connected to a cartel somewhere.”
“Is Foyle taking heat for the bad intel?”
She watched him hesitate, as if he were about to say something and changed his mind. “He’s been in his office with the door closed. I think he’s been sidelined. Are you going to be Crawford all night?”
She smirked playfully at him. “Who do you think is more attractive, Janice, Mariel, or Laura?”
He smirked back. “That sounds a lot like that who-do-you-love-more game parents tease kids with. How about you pick whoever you’re most comfortable with?”
Her impulse was to say Laura. That was who she was, physically. That was the face she put to the world, her real face without any artifice. Laura was her default, but in that moment, she didn’t think that meant the same thing as comfortable. Laura wasn’t a person anymore. These days, she was only someone when she was Laura Blackstone, director of public relations. By definition, she was a persona about presentation and image, not a fleshed-out human being with an existence outside her office.
She shoved the reflection aside and released the Janice glamour. Her hair lightened and face narrowed. Her body lengthened a bit and thinned, but the clothes remained the same black jeans and T-shirt. Sinclair showed little reaction at the transition except a slight lift to his eyebrows. His eyes shifted, as if he marked off something on a mental checklist. “I’ll get us more beer.”
She liked the way he walked, the way his jeans hugged his hips but hung loosely enough on the legs that she surmised he didn’t think much about it. Of course, like all elite cops, he had a gym body, the V-shape of his torso flaring to fill the T-shirt. His giant heritage showed in that, now that she knew to look for it, the height, the thick muscle, even the wheat blond hair.