I had a strong and growing conviction that the police, well-intentioned as they were, could not help us in this, and the longer we stayed here, trying to fit in, the worse things would become. Like the investigators, I knew that trails rapidly went cold, especially such slender trails as I had to follow.
It would be very inconvenient to be jailed as a suspect.
“You don’t seem too upset,” the detective said to me.
I cocked my head slightly as I thought it over, as I’d often seen humans do. “I don’t? I suppose I’m in shock.”
“No. Your friend Luis, he’s in shock. Grandma Sylvia’s in shock. You’re not in shock.”
“That makes me seem suspicious, I suppose.”
“You think?” She smiled again, and it raised alarms all along my spine. “We’ll continue this discussion downtown.”
She took my arm. Across the yard, I saw Luis, cornered by another detective, notice what was going on. I didn’t know what to do—cooperation seemed a waste of time, and violence counterproductive—but Luis reached out, put his hand on the detective’s shoulder, and gave him a wide, warm smile. Then he shook hands with the man and came toward me.
“You can’t talk to her now, sir,” my detective said. Her tone wasn’t inviting any arguments, and her grip on my arm was just as firm. “Please go be with your family.”
“She is family,” Luis said. The detective gave him a look that was so full of incredulity that even I smiled. “Distant relative.”
“Yeah? What galaxy?” The detective tugged on my arm again. “Come on, ma’am. Let’s go.”
“Detective. One moment.” Luis was still smiling, warm and wide, and he captured her flat stare with his. “Thank you for all that you’re doing to help us.” He extended his hand. I knew what he was doing—it was an Earth Warden trick, one of making themselves seem likable and trustworthy—but I could see that it wouldn’t work on this woman. She had a streak of distrust as dark as rust through her brittle, bitter aura.
“My job,” she said shortly, and added her other hand to push my shoulder. “Move it.”
I glanced down at her feet, and whispered into the ground. I was learning, from the carefully controlled way that Luis applied his skills, that for an Earth Warden subtlety was as effective as brute force.
Green grass looped up in ropy strands, lashing her ankles, burying her sensible shoes. When she tried to take a step, she overbalanced, and for a moment she clung closely to me before she let go to crouch down to see what was holding her. “What the hell—?”
Luis leaned over, too, placed his hand on her shoulder as if in concern, and I felt the strong pulse of power that slid through her. The grass fell away, but the woman didn’t immediately move.
“You’ve cleared us,” he told her in a very quiet tone. “We didn’t have anything to do with Ibby’s disappearance. You know this to be true. We have somewhere important to go, and you’re giving us permission to leave.”
I sensed her struggle against him. It was a very close thing, and Luis’s strength was very low just now, both in power and in human terms.
I had little enough to add, but I stepped in and added my hand on top of his. He glanced up, acknowledging the infusion of power, and guided it to surgical precision, shaping the woman’s response.
Again, it was illegal. The Wardens would have dismissed him for such a use, or taken his powers and left him a crippled shell. But the Wardens had taken their eyes from us, and this was now a fight for more than just survival.
Isabel’s life was at stake.
Whatever he did was on too fine a level for me to sense the exact methods, but when he removed his hand, the detective blinked at him, nodded, said, “Fine, thanks for your cooperation. You two can go. I know you’re in a hurry.”
We walked away together. As we approached the line, one of the officers turned from his post, frowned, and held out his hand to stop us. Luis looked over his shoulder at the detective, who was standing where he’d left her, arms folded. She made an impatient gesture to the perimeter policeman, and we ducked under the fluttering barrier and headed for the street.
We were lucky, I thought, that the news organizations were held back at the end of the street. I saw cameras focusing on us, felt the pressure of their excited attention. It was not pleasant.
I positioned Luis with his back to the cameras, so that he covered me, as well, and said, “You didn’t make her trust us?”
“Couldn’t,” he said. “It’s like hypnotism; you can make people follow a path they would have normally gone down, but that detective doesn’t trust anybody, and even if she did, she damn sure wouldn’t trust me. It was easier to just skip her farther along a track she’d have taken. Anyway, let’s get out of here. We don’t have too long before she starts looking through her notes and realizes she didn’t finish questioning us.”
“I could destroy the notes,” I offered.
“Cassiel, we want the police to help. Just not to put their sights on us. Destroying their notes doesn’t get us anywhere.” We had arrived at the parked truck, but it was surrounded by forensic technicians who were taking samples. In case, I supposed, we were all lying, the witnesses were all lying, and Luis had abducted Isabel himself. “Crap,” Luis muttered. “Well, they’re just doing their jobs. Too many to influence.”
“It’s a foolish waste of time.”
“No, it’s not,” he said soberly. “Statistically, kids get abducted by family members more than strangers. Makes sense. I got no problem with them following every possible lead.”
My motorcycle, I noted, was sitting neglected at the curb not far away. Luis noticed it at the same time, and we exchanged a silent look of inquiry, then moved toward it.
“No helmets,” I told him, as I straddled the bike.
“Least of my worries right now.”
I felt the shift of mass as he climbed on behind me, and then his hands closed on me, low, near my hips. I started the motorcycle. Something about the low growl of it soothed the gnawing fear and anger within me.
Luis shifted his weight to find the balance point, and I eased the bike out into the empty street.
One problem, I realized: we would have to pass through the gauntlet of press clogging both ends of the neighborhood. In the truck we would have had the advantage of height and sealed windows. On the Victory, we didn’t even have the relative anonymity of helmets.
“Alley,” Luis said in my ear. “That way.”
I leaned the bike the way he directed, over a spray of gravel and behind a neighbor’s house, and into a narrow paved street filled with overflowing trash cans and refuse.
“Go!” he shouted. “They’ll follow us if they can!” I applied the throttle, and the bike shot forward. Luis’s arms tightened around me to hold on, and I accelerated down the alley and into the next at right angles, which spilled into a street. I took the turn fast and accelerated yet again, narrowly beating the light and weaving around a slow-moving van.
“Left here!” Luis shouted, and I crossed three lanes of traffic with the throttle wide open, almost skidding through the turn. “Okay, good, ease off. I think we’re okay”
The Victory seemed disappointed to return to its role as mere transportation, but at traffic speeds it glided smoothly, sleek as a shark. We attracted curious glances. I was almost growing used to it.
“Back to your motel,” he said. “You get your stuff. I can’t guarantee the police won’t want to ask us more questions, so it’s better we move.”
“We need to go,” I said. I heard an echo of the Oracle’s voice, back in Sedona. You need to go.
“Yeah, but where?” he asked. I heard the frustration in him, sensed it in the harshness of his grip on my hips. “How are we going to find her?”