Heavy Traffic Read online

  Mitch was there among them, and approached Caroline. “Hey, you okay? Get into something you shouldn’t have? Again?” He smiled at her like it was a joke, but she knew he half meant it.

  “No, but we found something I hope to stay away from. We think there’s a few smudges of stunning powder over there and that my date for the evening ended up in the kidnapper’s van, though possibly without their attention since he seems to be awake and texting. He’s on the phone with Shakes right now getting himself tracked down,” she said.

  Mitch’s eyes widened through the whole story until she finished, then took a moment to blink at her.

  “How do you get into these situations?”

  “Just lucky?” Caroline shrugged.

  “Okay,” Mitch took a deep breath. “Let’s start with the least frightening of all those statements. There’s stunning powder residue?”

  Caroline pointed to where one of the other techs was collecting a sample off the wall. “You’re going to have to confirm that’s what it is, but yeah. We think so,” she said. “That six-pack down thereat the end of the alley, too. You’ll want to look at that. We think that Mike, the newly missing student, was walking past the alley, got shoved into it, then hit with the powder.”

  “There’s a little more on the curb,” Greg joined them. “Looks like it was dropped or dusted off, rather than scraped or thrown.”

  “So you think that’s where the kidnapper’s vehicle was?” Mitch asked, glancing back toward where his own lab van was parked, and got nods in return. “So, after Mike was subdued, he was loaded into it, most likely. I’ll have my guys get over there, as well then.”

  “And check out the the other end of the alley as well. Up and down the street,” Greg added. “Caroline’s… um… Her friend seems to have hitched a ride in a related vehicle.”

  The air was distinctly chilly now, and the night was leeching into the early hours of the morning. Caroline shivered as she watched the techs and lab mages work, and she pulled the hoodie tighter around her.

  The clean scent of laundry detergent hit her nose as she snuggled into it, with something woodsy faintly underneath. That somehow fit Lucas. Clean and presentable, but once you get past that, shadowed and full of broken sight lines and rustling noises at the edge of identification.

  Greg’s phone rang and he answered it, almost immediately turning his gaze to Caroline. “Yeah? Okay, Caroline and I will check it out. Mitch has this scene under control, but maybe we could get a couple big guys out, in case? I don’t like this stunning powder stuff,” he said with a nod. “Great, thanks. Send it to my phone? Great, later.” A second later his phone chimed again.

  “So. Want to go find your boyfriend?” Greg asked.

  “Shakes found him?” She felt a surge of hope. Lucas wasn’t her boyfriend, but she did think of him as a friend. He was, at the very least, an ally, and she felt responsible for his unplanned adventure.

  “Well, the cell phone stopped moving. Hopefully he’s still with it and nothing untoward has happened,” Greg said. “I still don’t totally trust this guy, but he’s your friend and any lead is still a lead, right?”

  “I… thanks?” Caroline frowned, unsure quite how to take that.

  Greg shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over Lucas’ hoodie before handing her his phone as well. “I don’t have a car here, and we’ve got to move quick. It’s cool down here on the ground, but it will be colder in the air for sure.”

  A grin broke across Caroline’s face despite the circumstances when her brain caught up to his words. Flying on the back of a manticore was definitely something to look forward to. After all, she knew that the number of people that the world’s only manticore offered to carry like that could be counted on one hand. With fingers left over.

  “Let’s go then,” she said.

  After stopping to let Mitch know what was going on, Greg and Caroline headed to the far end of the alley, where he stepped a few feet away and shifted. A moment of shimmering magic later and she was staring at a giant mythical creature.

  Sleek red fur covered the huge lion’s body, with gold threads throughout that made his mane look almost like flames haloing his still mostly human face. His spiked dragon-like tail swept away from her to be safe, though she had no fear of Greg turning his stinger on her. He already had his leathery wings out and he mantled like an eagle as he shook himself comfortable in his second body.

  “Best job ever. I am never going to get used to that,” she whispered, not even bothering to keep the awe out of her words. Greg smiled, his mouth now full of disconcertingly sharp teeth, and said something in his manticore’s musical pan-pipe voice.

  “Yeah, I still don’t speak manticore,” she said and Greg rolled his eyes. He also lowered himself as close to the ground as his massive body would let him, and Caroline pulled herself onto his back as carefully as she could. “Vampires, manticores, brownies, trolls… hey, we got any dragons or unicorns at the office?”

  Greg answered, but the wind-over-bottles sound made no sense to her, but she laughed anyway. Then, his wings stretched out, giving her enough warning to grab two solid fistfuls of mane and hang on for dear life before he took a couple of bounding leaps forward and launched them into the sky.

  It was several minutes before Caroline convinced her eyes to peel open. The sensation of riding a manticore was not much different now than she remembered. Greg’s lion body was huge, with broad shoulders that she tried with only moderate success to hang on to with her legs. Kept safely in front of his wings and away from his deadly poisonous tail, hanging on was still her main priority.

  The main difference between her first manticore ride and this one was that the rolling sway of his stalking gait on the ground had been replaced by the surge-and-retreat of the muscles powering his wings. That and the significant increase in distance to the ground if she slid off.

  Still, the wind in her face was somehow fresher, more pure, than when they’d been on the ground, and the sight of the suburbs and the hills scrolling away below them took her breath away. This really is my life now, she admitted to herself. How many people get to experience this? It was absolutely terrifying and completely thrilling.

  Greg fluted something at her and rolled his shoulder under her thigh to make sure she was paying attention. He repeated his musical word again, slowly, like that would help. Oddly it did.

  “Oh! Right.” She fumbled his phone out and glanced at the screen. The pin in the map was still ahead of them. “We’re going the right way. Maybe another couple of miles?”

  They seemed to be following a road out to the highway. It was popular in the fall for the autumn-colors tourists, and had a number of scenic overlooks and charming restaurants. Caroline kept her attention on the map until, “There.” She leaned into Greg’s neck and pointed down to the right at what looked like a roadside motel. It seemed to be mostly empty, but a few vehicles dotted the patch of asphalt surrounding the building.

  Greg circled the property once before gliding to land at the side of the parking area. This side was just a narrow access road connecting the front lot by the small restaurant to the back where most of the rooms were. Caroline slid off Greg’s back and landed on wobbly legs. He thrust his head under her arm as she lurched to the side, and let her lean on him until she steadied.

  “Okay. I’m okay. Man, who knew manticore riding would be so exhausting?” Caroline probably wouldn’t need a serious workout for a few days. Her legs felt like cooked noodles. Greg’s musical chuckle warbled through the air.

  He turned to her with narrowed eyes after a moment then nosed his face under her jacket. Well, his jacket.

  “Hey! What are you doing?” Caroline shoved at his head and only managed to push herself backwards. Greg pushed his face back under the jacket and she saw his ribs heave with a deep breath before she shoved again.

  “What the hell, Greg? What are you, a badly trained dog?”

  Greg just grinned at her and shrugged befor
e turning towards the cars again and taking another deep breath. He was sniffing the air, she realized, and he got Lucas’ scent off the hoodie she wore. Huh.

  After a moment he started prowling forward, sniffing at a door handle here and a rear panel there until he stood in front of a slightly beat up delivery van in desperate need of a carwash. The back window had WASH ME! PLEASE! written out in the dirt. The air shivered and reality slid over itself for a moment and then Greg stood there on two feet again, looking pleased with himself.

  “Well, your boy was definitely in here, but I don’t think he’s there now. Let’s take a look,” he said. He tested the back door, which opened easily, and stuck his head in. He pulled it back out and shook it grimly at her. “We’ll find him, C.”

  Ice had formed in her stomach, but she just nodded. Greg reached into his pocket and pulled out his badge to clip to his belt in case of questions, and Caroline stuck her own head into the van.

  An odd delivery van, it had a bench of seats behind the driver’s row. Still, there was more than enough space to transport packages— or people— in the back. It was just as messy inside as it was outside, with fast food bags wadded up and tossed behind the front seats, a locked tool box sliding around loose on the floor, and…

  “Hey, Greg! Look!” Caroline pointed to a cell phone peeking out from under a wadded up napkin under the second row of seats. She reached in and carefully nudged the napkin away and the glow of the screen showed it was still connected to a familiar phone number. The phone was wedged hard between the wall of the van and the bracket bolting the seat down.

  “Lucas’ phone. Wherever he is now, he made sure we could find this van,” Greg said, grudging respect coloring his words. “We’ll find him. There’s already a team on the way. They’ll be here any minute.”

  9

  “You sure it’s okay that you skip class today?”

  Caroline sighed and shrugged. “Yeah, I think that my Intro to Criminology T.A. will accept part of an active Federal investigation as a valid excuse for missing class. And this afternoon’s just math. As long as I pass the tests, that guy doesn’t care about attendance.”

  Besides, she felt that finding the missing students and Lucas was a bit more important than sitting in a lecture hall for a grade. Right now, they were sitting at the conference table in the tech department, hunched over a large screen tablet with a map on it. When it wasn’t being taken over by agents on a case, the table was often covered in computer parts and other electronic bits and pieces. There were small gouges and scorch marks and silvery drips of solder all over the surface that spoke to its real life as a workbench. A very expensive, once attractive workbench.

  She had called Shelly an hour earlier to let her know what was going on, and that there was an official investigation on Janine’s disappearance, and the relief and hope in Shelly’s voice by the end reinforced Caroline’s determination, so here she was.

  “This is the alley that Mike and Lucas disappeared from,” Greg tapped the map and a digital pin lit up again. “And this is where Shelly says that Janine disappeared. Nobody knows where Lucas’ friend Sara was, but as near as we can tell this is her last known location.” He tapped a few more locations. None of them were actually on the campus, but all of them were within a mile and a half of it, except for the abandoned van at the motel.

  They’d been over this already, twice, but Greg kept going back to it. Caroline groaned and flopped back in her chair. “Yes, Greg. And there was no sign of either Lucas or the kidnappers when you made the rounds at the motel. You tracked the scent up and down the stairs and through the parking lot and then nothing. And so far we have nothing useful from the van itself.”

  “Well, we have the owners, but since it was reported stolen months ago, that’s not much help,” Greg said with a grimace.

  “This might help,” Shakes held up a thumb drive and grinned on his way through the door.

  It was nice to put a face to the name, finally. Shakes turned out to be a small elvish mage with long, strawberry blonde hair pulled back in a braid down his back. Aside from that, he was almost too stereotypical a tech geek, with his faded video game t-shirts, glasses, and slightly superior smirk that fit oddly on his otherwise slightly nervous face.

  He had been recruited by the FPAA in the wake of the Beckett fallout, when they’d needed to refill the newly opened positions quickly, and Shakes had turned out to be an unexpected gem. Caroline could tell that he still wasn’t used to the respect he was getting from just about everyone in the building, especially the more senior agents and Chief Point himself.

  “What miracle have you wrought for us this time, Shakes?” Greg asked with a grin.

  “I would have brought this to you sooner, but I thought you’d want me to get rid of as much screeching and road noise as I could,” Shakes’ smug grin made Caroline chuckle.

  “Road noise?” Greg asked, leaning over Shakes’s shoulder when the technomage sat down at the laptop at the end of the table.

  “Well yeah. Caroline’s boyfriend wedged that phone in between the frame and the outer panel of the van. There was a ton of road noise in the recording of the call I traced,” he plugged the thumb drive into the laptop and clicked a few keys. “Now I couldn’t get all the audio clear. I’m good, but I’m not an actual god.” He hit one last key and the speakers in the corners of the room hissed to life.

  “—a few more and we can firm up the schedule for November,”

  “Fine, fine. But we’re going to have to move soon. Even Elm has to admit that. The cops here have been helpful, but they’re up shit creek now.”

  “True. I guess it was just too—” A series of creaks and rumbles muffled the voices for a moment, before the recording cleared up again.

  “—ple more while everyone’s distracted then we’ll move on. Oh, hey. Did you hear that Elm picked up a buyer? He says he’s just started looking and found us first. He wants a bleeder.”

  “Yeah? Didn’t know we’d put out feelers yet.”

  “Yeah. Elm’s been out there, ear to the ground, yanno? This guy’s apparently been in a couple places looking for a drink. Elm struck up a chat with him, thought maybe we could start the word of mouth campaign for the next auction, but I guess this guy’s really eager..”

  “Can we trust him? I heard that wannabe detective girl’s got some friends in the FPAA. That’s why the cops’re being investigated now. Who knew college kids were coming up to the cops, now?”

  “Whatever. Elm says he’s clean. You know how these vamps are. Even if they’re pretending that they’re model citizens, they’re still bloodthirsty freaks.”

  Greg and Caroline exchanged glances as the kidnapers laughed. Caroline held onto her temper. Darien did everything he could to avoid hurting anyone as a result of his dietary needs. The one time that he’d fed from a live person it had been Caroline herself and she’d damn near had to force it on him to save his life even though she was already bleeding anyway. These two were lucky she hadn’t been there in person while they were talking.

  The recording got quiet suddenly, the background noise mostly cutting out.

  “Okay, we’re here. Thirty-seven B, he said?”

  “Yeah. Let’s get this done, I’m hungry.”

  There was the sound of doors slamming, then a soft slither like fabric sliding across something and a soft click, then silence.

  “That’s it, I’m afraid,” Shakes stopped the recording. “I have a transcript of what you just heard, and an analysis of the noises. Even the stuff I cut out. There was a lot of road noise and bad suspension squeaking and stuff like that.”

  “This is fantastic, Shakes,” Greg said. “I want to listen again in a minute, but did you pick anything up, C?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. My talent doesn’t really work on recordings, but I would really love a chance to punch those two in the face.”

  “Yeah, you looked a bit violent there when they were trash talking vampires in general and w
ho I assume was Darien in particular.” Greg grinned at her. “Not that I can blame you. They were irritating me, as well.” His eyes flashed golden for just a second, in case the anger in his voice wasn’t enough for Caroline.

  “Darien?” Shakes asked.

  “Agent Webb is undercover right now, as a buyer,” Greg explained.

  “Oh, wow. So you slipped a fake vampire in there? Man, that’s hard to do. The eyes are easy enough to glamour, but fully sensory fangs are nearly impossible, I thought,” Shakes raised his eyebrows. “Good thinking, though. Those guys are more likely to easily believe a hungry vamp than about anything else.”

  “Uh…” Caroline glanced at Greg who was frowning at Shakes.

  “Do you have something against vampires?” He asked.

  Shakes grimaced and shrugged. “I guess not? I dunno. They’re pretty rare so I’ve never met one, but you have to admit the idea is kind of freaky. They’re probably pretty creepy in real life. I mean, drinking actual blood? Gross. That’s got to warp a person.” The honesty in his voice is probably what kept Caroline from snarling. Much. He had no experience with vampires, and admitted as much.

  “Darien is not in the least creepy. Or gross. Or warped,” Caroline said, her eyes narrowed on the man at the laptop. Darien’s species wasn’t a secret in the office, even though it wasn’t widespread, common knowledge what he was, but she hadn’t actually come across any of the casual bigotry he’d sometimes talked about.

  “Well, I don’t mean Agent Webb, of course. I mean real vamps,” Shakes shrugged, only half paying attention to the conversation as his eyes darted around the screen. Greg’s quiet rumbling growl behind him caused him to glance up, though, and he saw Caroline’s face.

  “You do mean Agent Webb, of course. Because Darien really is a vampire. And he’s one of the most dedicated, honorable, selfless creatures I have ever come across,” Caroline said, leaning into Shakes’ space. “In my personal experience the cruelest, nastiest, most warped non-human species are the elves, so I suggest you think before you slander an entire species.”