"Grab a seat," she said as she slumped down behind her desk. She sat there for a long minute, her dark eyes quietly assessing Riley, then she grabbed a notepad and pen. "All right. Give me the laundry list of what you want. Your boss must have some pull to get the chief to be so cooperative."
Riley had been thinking about what he needed the entire time they were in the car. "We need to know about any killings, particularly if the circumstances are similar to what we had in the horse rig — mutilated bodies and all that."
"Of course," Giannini replied, making a note.
Riley ignored her sarcastic tone. "I'll be by twice a day to get all this stuff. We also need to know about missing persons, broken down by areas last seen."
Giannini frowned. "That won't be easy. People have to be missing for forty-eight hours before we list them officially. By then it's usually 'cause they don't come home and someone reports them, so it ain't like we got this long list of where they were last."
Forty-eight hours. Riley cursed silently. That was a dead end. "All right. We also need to know if anybody reports seeing something strange."
"Something strange." Giannini put down the notepad. She didn't bother masking her tone anymore. "Like what strange? This is Chicago, for chrissake. There's always something strange going on."
"These two guys were last seen wearing animal skins — fur and all that," Riley explained lamely. "If someone reports something like, say, a werewolf or something, I need to know ASAP."
"A werewolf?" Giannini took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling for half a minute. "All right, Agent Riley. Why don't you level with me? Who the hell are you? You're not FBI, that's for damn sure. They always wear three-piece suits and carry clipboards. And even they know that missing persons reports are forty-eight hours old. No disrespect intended, but you don't know diddly about law enforcement. And you don't know diddly about Chicago. I can't help you if you don't help me."
Riley continued, ignoring the questions. "The fugitives will probably come out of hiding at night, if they come out at all. They won't be going to motels or bars or any of that — they don't like people much." He met her glare. "That's the kind of strange I'm talking about."
Giannini's lips were pursed together and her voice dropped the temperature in the room. "All right. Strange. You got it. Anything else?"
Riley stood. "No." He handed her the card that Lewis had given him. "This is my number. Call me if anything happens."
"Uh-huh."
"We've got two unmarked panel trucks downstairs at our disposal," Lewis said. "We've got eight portable phone lines. It's just a question of waiting."
"Waiting until the Synbats kill someone," Riley replied.
"Or get spotted."
"What about reaction from the police when we open fire in the city?" Riley asked as he watched the members of his team lay out their sleeping bags on the wood floor. Their weapons were racked against the wall ready for use. They were occupying a warehouse in south Chicago that was used by federal agencies such as the DEA and the FBI whenever they conducted operations in the area. The other personnel from Riley's team had arrived several hours ago, all looking uncomfortable in their civilian clothes. They'd all been issued papers and cards identifying them as federal agents.
"Don't worry about the police. That's my job," Lewis said. A half dozen of his men were also in the building, ready to react. They had a command post set up not only to man the phones, but also to listen in with scanners to all emergency frequencies.
Riley shrugged. It was Lewis's problem, and as far as Riley was concerned, he hoped the lid did blow off this whole operation. He was concerned for the safety of his men.
Doc Seay was the acting team sergeant; he'd taken Riley aside a half hour ago to brief him on the close-out down in Tennessee. The local media had bought the story of escaped prisoners. The deaths of Knutz and T-bone had been explained away by placing them on board the helicopter, which had been described as crashing during a training exercise. Seay said that Colonel Hossey was more than a little upset with the DIA, but the commander of the Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg had personally flown up and intervened between Hossey and General Trollers.
Another mess had been swept under the rug in the name of national security. Riley preferred to think of it more as career security for most of the people involved.
"I want your men ready to move out with five minutes' notice," Lewis ordered Riley. "If we get anything off the scanners, we're going in right away."
"Yes, sir."
Holly's nose was buried in a cardboard box of rotting vegetables thrown away by a produce truck on its way out of the city. The dog ate ravenously, teeth crunching on some carrots, when she suddenly paused and lifted her head. She looked from side to side, eyes training to penetrate the shadows in the deserted street. A lone streetlight more than a hundred meters away cast a feeble glow, reflecting off broken glass. The roar of traffic from the more populated part of the city was muted here.
It wasn't the noise or the light that had caught Holly's attention, though. Above the smell of her decaying meal, she'd caught a whiff of something else, something that her mind said was danger. She slunk farther into the darkness near a dumpster and crouched down, peering out. Then she heard the noise of glass breaking. Something was moving, coming closer from the dark end of the street. Deep, raspy breathing echoed off the warehouse walls.
Holly's head twitched from side to side. A low whimper started deep in her throat but her mouth clamped shut in an instinctive sense of self-preservation.
A figure lurched into the dim light, thirty meters away. The sight of the drunk relaxed Holly slightly. But in a second she was tense again as two figures appeared behind the man, moving fast. She barely had time to register their presence before they were on the hapless human. He uttered one brief yelp of surprise before his throat was torn out. The figures began dragging the body away toward the darkness.
Suddenly, one of the creatures halted and turned, golden eyes peering back up the street, searching. Holly froze, her breathing halted, instinctively knowing that she was in danger. The blood-covered muzzle of the creature turned in Holly's direction and bared large fangs as it growled.
Holly bolted for the opposite end of the street, deep-throated howls following her escape.
Chapter 20
"Anything?" Merrit asked.
"Nothing," Riley replied as he slid his 9mm pistol in the shoulder holster under his denim jacket.
"What's the plan for today?"
Riley pointed to the desk where Lewis was sitting, going through the reports gleaned from all sources. "We're going to the area where the Synbats left the rig and start searching outward, checking all the abandoned buildings. It's a shot in the dark, but it beats sitting here all day."
Merrit looked over at Riley's men, who were eating fast food brought in by one of the DIA agents. "How are you going to do that?"
"Civilian clothes. Armed only with pistols. We've got our FBI IDs, and Lewis will take care of the locals."
"It might work." Merrit pointed at the city map posted on an easel. "I don't think they've gone far from where they got out of the rig. If the timing on the brothers' deaths is correct, the Synbats had only a few hours at best before the pods activated. Once that happened they had to find a place to hide."
"How long before the young Synbats are able to move about?" Riley asked.