“Yeah,” I agreed softly. “I know. Listen—be careful. I’ll call you when I know something.”
“Thanks. I can’t afford to leave the Florida stations unmanned.”
I knew. Key areas had seasonal posts of enormous responsibility. California was important all year long. Tornado-prone states like Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas got extra staffing for the spring and summer.
Florida, in hurricane season, was a key weather post, and if John was missing …
We were in big trouble.
I signed off and headed for my car.
The Warden Regional Office was located not far from the National Weather Service offices in Coral Gables, conveniently enough; we’d sometimes used them for conferences and research. But the Warden offices were unassuming, located in a seven-story building with standard-issue brown marble and sleek glass. There was no sign on the building itself, just a street number etched in brass. Security on the entrance. I didn’t have a card key, so I sat in the car and waited until someone else pulled into the parking lot and wheeled a laptop toward the front door. I didn’t recognize her—she probably didn’t work in the Warden offices, of course, because they only had a couple of small offices out of seven floors, and the others were all occupied.
I moved in behind the woman, smiled when she smiled, and she carded me into the building and took off for the stairs. I, feeling lazy, went for the elevator.
The lobby was quiet and dimly lit, going for soothing and achieving a state of restfulness usually reserved for dropping into a nap. The elevators were slow—it was a general rule of the universe that the shorter the building, the slower the elevators—and I killed time by trying to imagine what the hell I was going to do if I got up there and found a major fight in progress. I wasn’t going to be of any help, that much was sure.
I was hoping like hell that it was a downed-phone-line problem. Weak, but sometimes optimism is the only drug that works.
But it’s sadly temporary in its effects.
The front door of the Warden offices looked like somebody had taken a sledgehammer to it—splintered in half, raw wood shining naked under the sleek brown finish. The lock was shattered, pieces of it scattered for ten feet down the carpeted hallway. The windows on either side were gaping, glassless holes, and I felt the crunch of broken pieces under my shoes as I walked carefully toward the destruction.
I was half afraid I was going to find everybody dead, given the state of the door, but I heard voices almost immediately. I recognized the slow, Carolina-honey voice of my ex-boss.
The tension in me let go with a rush of relief. John Foster was still alive, and I was off the hook.
I knocked on the shell of a door and leaned over to look through the opening.
John—still in a shirt and tie, which was his version of business casual—was standing, arms folded. With him was Ella, his right-hand assistant; she was a dumpy, motherly Warden with moderately weak weather skills but a stellar ability to keep John’s stubborn, independent group working together.
Speaking of which, none of the others were anywhere in sight.
Ella looked exasperated. While John dressed like he’d been interrupted on his way to a board meeting, Ella might have been called out of giving her tile a good grouting: blue jeans, a sloppy T-shirt, a flowered Hawaiian-style shirt over that. She had graying, coarse hair that looked windblown.
They both turned toward me when I knocked, and Ella’s mouth fell open. “Jo!” she yelled at ear-bleeding volume, dashed for the door, and knocked it back with a nudge of her Nike-clad foot. Before I could say “El!” she had me in a warm, soft hug, and then was dragging me over the threshold into the office.
Which was a wreck, too. Not as much as the door, but definitely not in the best of shape. Computers tossed around, papers lying everywhere, chairs overturned.
The filing cabinets had tipped over, and the big metal drawers were out, their contents spilling in waterfalls of folders to the floor. Everything looked thoroughly bashed and dented.
“Love what you’ve done with the place. Sort of Extreme Makeover meets Robot Wars,” I said. John—middle-aged, fit, graying at the temples in fine patriarchal style—smiled at me, but his heart wasn’t in it. He looked strained and a little sick. “Okay, that was lame, I admit it. What happened?”
“We’re trying to figure that out,” John said, and extended his hand. “Sorry, Joanne. Good to see you, but as you can see, we’re having a little bit of a crisis.”
“Paul was trying to raise you on the phone and couldn’t get an answer. He sent me to check up.” I looked around, eyebrows raised. “Robbery?”
“I doubt it,” Ella said, and kicked a destroyed flat-screen monitor moodily. “They didn’t take the electronics, and there wasn’t any cash here. Maybe it was kids, smashing things up.”
“You’re not going to say kids today, are you? Because I never really thought of you as grandmotherly, despite the hair.”
That earned me a filthy look.
John sighed and put his hands in his trouser pockets, watching me. “We’re fine, thanks. Tell Paul I’m sorry. My cell battery ran down hours ago. How are you?”
He sounded guarded, which wasn’t unexpected. I realized, from the wary light in his eyes, that my arrival was looking more and more suspicious. I mean, he’d taken me for a ride and practically accused me of corruption, and here we were, standing in his wrecked offices, and I was saying I’d been sent by the boss.
I could see how it could be misinterpreted.
“I didn’t do this,” I said. “You know me better than that, John.”
John and Ella exchanged looks. “Yeah,” Ella agreed. “We do.” John didn’t say anything. He kept his arms folded.
I took a deep breath and plunged in over my head. “Any trouble with the Djinn on your end?”
“What?” John frowned. “No. Of course not.” He had a Djinn, of course. Ella, so far as I knew, didn’t. Only four Wardens in Florida were equipped with magical assistants and, by last count, only about two hundred in all of North and South America. It was an alarmingly low number, until you considered two hundred Djinn who might decide to kill off Wardens, in which case it was alarmingly high. “What are you talking about? What kind of trouble?”
“Some of the Djinn are breaking free of their masters. You haven’t heard?”
Another look between the two of them. Silent communication, and me without my decoder ring. “No,” John finally said. “Not about that.”
“But you heard about some of the Wardens going rogue.”
He looked grimmer. “Yes. And that’s a subject I don’t think we should be discussing with you.”
A not-so-subtle reminder that I wasn’t in the Warden business anymore, and therefore not privy to the fun, interesting politics. I changed the subject with a wave around the trashed office. “Think this is related?”
“I doubt it.”
“Yeah? You get this kind of thing often around here?”
“Never,” Ella put in. “I guess it could be kids, though the timing’s odd. But Djinn wouldn’t have a reason to do this, and if a Warden did it, well, there must have been a reason.”
“Were they out to steal records? Destroy them?” I asked.
Oh, boy. Another significant glance.
“Again,” John said, “I think we’re on a subject that’s off limits. Look, you did what Paul asked, you checked. We’re fine. I think you should go now.”
It hurt. I’d worked for John for a long time, and we’d been friends. Not bosom-buddy friends, but strong acquaintances, good to get together for the occasional drink, chat about family and friends, exchange Christmas presents.
I’d trusted him with my life. I couldn’t believe that had changed overnight.