Chapter 22 pt. 1

At the Nest, Leo was hungry so he left me in an office to pull up traffic cameras on his computer. I was clicking away, lost to my own thoughts when someone came in with an air of authority. He looked straight at me and his face went sour.

“What are you doing in here?” he demanded.

“I’m tracking a hunter who hit a pub this morning,” I replied, as I went back to my clicking. I assumed he would realize either who I was or that I was on a job and leave me alone.

“Who gave you permission to work on a case?”

“Kris. He should be here any minute,” I answered, still tracking the vehicle that the hunter stole out of the city.

“I doubt that. Favorite of Warren or not, you have to be a member of The Guard to access these computers and you are not Guard.”

I paused my search to look up at him in confusion. “I’m pretty sure that Kris wouldn’t have sent me here to search for a hunter if I weren’t a member of the Guard. Leo was with me just a minute ago. He can confirm my story.”

“Without word from Kris directly, you need to leave this office,” he spat as he pressed the power button on the computer tower.

I watched the screen go black and my work disappear, holding in the expletives I had for this guy. He would hear from Kris as soon as he got there and I would have the last laugh but at that moment it was not worth the fight. I forced myself to stand with my hands in the air in a surrender and left the office silently to stand by the door until Kris or Leo came to my rescue. Unfortunately for the arrogant guy in the office, they came out of the elevator together and I watched as both of them tightened their jaws against their anger.

“What are you doing, Raven? Why aren’t you tracking the stolen vehicle?” Leo asked.

“I was kicked out. I’ve been waiting for you for the past five minutes.”

“What? By who?” he continued in a growl.

Kris yanked open the door and we followed him in.

“I’ll have to start over. He turned off the computer as he was kicking me out,” I explained as we headed back toward Leo’s desk. Kris didn’t stop there. Apparently, Kris’ anger had made the guy give himself away, looking at us in terror.

“Jeremy! Did you destroy the progress of an ongoing investigation by kicking out the person I assigned to the case?” Kris boomed.

I didn’t watch Kris tell him off from there. I waited behind Leo while he redid the work I had been doing. Leo was much better at tracking the car through the city than I had been so he kept clicking and watching the car move out of the city. He only lost the blue sedan for a moment, where I jumped in to help. Traffic on the main freeway was thick and the only thing you could see of the blue sedan was a bit of the front.

When Kris came back, he tossed me a badge. “You’ll have clearance to be here next time and an idiot won’t keep us from catching a hunter.”

I didn’t say anything, trying not to mess up this good thing.

“The hunter took our man into a warehouse. Are your troops ready to go?”

“They should be gearing up as we speak. Do you have any information on the hunter or his motives?”

Leo shook his head. “I don’t have an ID on him yet. Did you have one Raven?”

I shook my head. “Since the car was stolen, I didn’t get an ID but you could run facial recognition. We got a pretty good picture of his face at one of the stoplight cameras.”

Kris nodded. “Good work. Now can you tell us how you got all the information from the pub? Do I need to clean up anything?”

“It wasn’t a spell if that’s what you mean. I followed blood splatter to the parking lot and assumed that the vampire had taken a human snack with him until I was coming back through the pub. Then I looked up at the mirror and watched everything play out. It wasn’t anything that I did on purpose and the humans didn’t seem to notice that I had spaced out at all.”

“That could come in handy in the future,” he commented nodding. “Leo, I’ll send someone to keep an eye on the computer and let us know when the facial recognition gets a match. I want both of you on standby when we raid the warehouse.”

“We’ll ride with intel,” Leo agreed, standing. I nodded as a silent acknowledgment of my understanding and we left the office.

Downstairs, Kris’s team was geared up and loading into trucks. Leo and I picked our way through them and I heard more than one of them ask what “the little girl” was doing in their preparations. I tried to ignore them but I really did feel small next to all of them.

Leo and I took our places in the intelligence van. I was going to take a back seat next to Leo but the driver had orders to put me in the front and to radio Kris if I noticed anything out of place. From there it was harder to hide my nerves than if I had been allowed to hold Leo’s hand in the back.

“Kris must like you,” the driver commented.

“He likes what I can do for him. I’m just a tool to him,” I replied and let the silence settle back around us.

When the convoy finally headed out, we were at the back of the pack. According to the radio the main group reached the warehouse a full five minutes before us. I listened intently as Kris and his primary team entered the warehouse. Every word was like a drop of water after a day in the desert.

The blue sedan was parked just inside the doors and had blood on the seats but no hunter and no vampire unless his ash had been dumped somewhere else.
“Team leader to intel,” Kris called over the radio.

The driver picked up the radio microphone and pushed the talk button. “Go for intel.”

“I need her down here.”

His tone sounded frustrated. I didn’t blame him; it was frustrating that we missed him.

I nodded and opened the door while the driver replied that I was heading out. Leo followed behind me but didn’t say anything as I approached Kris’ team which had gathered around the hood of a truck.

“What do you need Kris?” I piped up when no one acknowledged my presence.

Men looked over their shoulders at me like I was interrupting their meeting and was unwelcome. Kris ignored them as he spread a set of blueprints on the hood.
“Ryan and Jake, take her in. I need her eyes to tell me where the hell he went. If she comes out with a single scratch on her, you can answer to Warren yourselves.”