Page 11 of Concluded (The Bureau #13)

“U p and at ’em. We gotta scram.”

Dee blinked groggily at Ashley, who stood with arms akimbo, looking down at him. He was still sprawled on the chaise lounge, with no clue how long he’d been asleep. He still felt slightly weak and shaky, as if he were at the tail end of the flu. “What?” he croaked.

“It’s time for us to move on. Sooner than I wanted, but oh well.” She didn’t look unhappy. If anything, she emanated a smug satisfaction, like the cat who’d eaten the canary.

“Move where?”

“I’ll tell you when we get there. Come on.” She waved her hands impatiently.

Dee slowly stood and looked around. “I’ll get my stuff.

” He’d shoved a few items of clothing and some toiletries into a suitcase when Ashley had collected him from his apartment, but he couldn’t recall what he’d done with it when they’d arrived here.

Most likely he’d simply handed everything over to Ashley.

“You don’t need it, babe. We’ll get you something much nicer, something that shows off that nice bod and handsome face. You’ve kept yourself in decent shape for your age.”

He started to bristle but decided he didn’t have the energy. He also didn’t really care about any of the items he’d brought. Except one. He patted his jeans pockets, which were empty. “Where’s my phone?”

“You don’t need that either.”

“But—”

“I’ll get you a new one. One that doesn’t have a cracked screen—and that isn’t letting anyone track you.”

That shook away the last of his sleepiness. “Track me? Who the fuck?—”

“I’ll explain on the road.”

She took his hand and towed him out of the room, down a long hallway, through the entry foyer, out the front door, and into the chilly night.

The light from the mansion windows allowed him to see a dark-colored SUV parked in front.

He pointed. “Whose is that?” It hadn’t been there yesterday when they’d arrived, and its presence seemed ominous.

“I’ll explain that too.” Then she bundled him into the passenger seat of the Lexus, started the engine, and zoomed away.

“Look, Ashley,” Dee said after several miles of speeding through the fathomless desert. “You’ve given me nothing but puzzles and evasions. You want my help? Fine. Then tell me who you are and what the fuck is happening.”

She glanced at him. “Or what, honey? You’ll bail out right here on the highway?”

He growled, mostly at himself for getting into this helpless position. “I’ll stop giving you charms.”

“No, you won’t. I can be pretty persuasive.

” Ashley laughed, but it didn’t match her grim expression.

“Anyway, I’m gonna spill all once we arrive.

What I can tell you now is that the Bureau of Trans-Species Affairs has been following you, probably using your phone.

One of their agents showed up at my door while you were sleeping. That was his car you saw.”

“What happened to him?”

Ashley didn’t answer at first, which gave Dee plenty of time to imagine all sorts of things.

He could picture Abe Ferencz, that handsome older man in the old-fashioned suit.

And he could imagine Ashley doing all sorts of nasty things to him.

Dee already knew that her regard for human life was casual at best, and if she’d decided that the Bureau agent was a threat? Not good at all.

However, Ferencz and other agents weren’t Dee’s responsibility. He’d never asked them to contact him, and he sure as hell hadn’t given them permission to track him. Furthermore, they’d assumed the risk of harm when they signed up to be federal agents.

Still, he didn’t feel good about this.

Finally, Ashley spoke. “Don’t get your panties in a twist. He’s fine. In fact, I’ll introduce you two when we reach our destination. And you can stop swiveling your head around like that. He’s not in the car.”

Great. Another mystery. Although it was admittedly a relief to know that there was neither a corpse nor a trussed-up fed stuffed into the back.

Ashley patted Dee’s knee. “I kept my promise and told you a couple of things. Now just kick back, and when we arrive you’ll hear the rest. Meanwhile, I bet you’re hungry. I’ll stop for munchies as soon as we hit civilization.”

Dee opened his mouth to argue, then shut it and slumped back against the seat. Clearly she was going to divulge only what she wanted to, when she felt like it. There was no use wasting his energy pestering her. Besides, part of him was pretty sure he was better off not knowing.

He turned away from her and stared out the window, where there was nothing to see but darkness.

After several miles of that, with the sound of the engine and tires murmuring in the back of his head, he fell into a trance that felt a bit like being stoned.

Since he had nothing external to concentrate on, his focus turned inward in a way that was rare for him.

He thought about how passive he’d been since Ashley had walked into his apartment.

Although he wanted to use her powers as an excuse, that would be lying to himself.

The truth was that he’d spent his entire life being passive, as if he were a bit of wood floating down a river.

The water carried him wherever it willed, sometimes bashing him against rocks and sometimes submerging him, and he never attempted to fight the current.

He didn’t know why. Maybe if he’d gone to a shrink, he’d have an answer.

And now here he was, capable of doing these incredible, inexplicable things, and he’d never done anything about it.

Never explored to discover exactly what he could and couldn’t do.

Never really questioned why he possessed these abilities.

Never thought about the possibility of using his gift for more than earning a few bucks.

“What’s wrong with me?” he whispered.

“Nothing that we can’t fix, babe.” And Ashley gave a little laugh.

* * *

Dee awoke achy and hungry, eyes crusted and skin feeling grimy. “Where are we?” he asked, blinking as the sun shone through the windshield.

Ashley grinned. “Our new home. Come see.”

He moaned as he extricated himself from the car and stood upright in what felt like the first time in years. Then he moaned again as he stretched mightily, his joints creaking and popping in a noisy chorus. His vision finally cleared enough to see where they were parked.

More desert. But this was a different desert, rocky instead of sandy, with scrubby brush and scattered evergreens close by and jagged orange hills in the distance.

The car was at the edge of a road that barely merited the term, the tarmac cracked and degraded into barely more than gravel.

The air was cold despite the sun, and there were a few traces of old snow on the ground.

Apart from the road, there were no signs of civilization.

“Let’s get cracking,” said Ashley, interrupting his surveillance. She handed him a pearl. “I want a house.”

Doing his thing to the pearl took only a moment. It was coming easier to him now, much easier than before Ashley entered his life, and the electric, almost erotic thrill was stronger. This morning, he felt as if he could move mountains.

And in fact, he sort of did. Because when she clutched the pearl, closed her eyes, and mumbled a wish, the earth in front of them rumbled and shifted, creating a slope where none had existed before.

Then the air shimmered and seemed to pixelate.

When it normalized, a flat-roofed multilevel concrete-and-glass mansion sprawled in front of them.

The water in the vast swimming pool was an ethereal blue.

Ashley clapped her hands in delight. “That’s great! I’ll bet I’ll need to make some adjustments inside, though. C’mon.”

He followed her dutifully, just as his dog, Happy Meal, had followed him during childhood. The entryway had a high ceiling and an enormous glass chandelier; the floor and walls were white marble. The air smelled faintly of flowers.

Ashley seemed to know the floor plan. She took Dee’s hand and led him down a long, echoey corridor, through an outdoor breezeway that spanned an artificial stream, and into a vast great room with a kitchen and several sleek white couches.

She pushed him onto one of the couches and demanded another wish, which she used to create a lavish brunch of fruit, french toast, bacon, and eggs.

“Eat up,” she commanded.

The food was… not quite right. Not awful, but off, with a slightly chemical taste that he couldn’t place.

Even as he ate, Dee wondered where wish-food came from—hell, where anything Ashley wished into existence came from—and whether the food had accurate nutritional properties.

Maybe it would slowly poison him. He ate a lot anyway.

So did she, much more than he would have thought possible. Sometimes her food dripped onto the couch or floor, gaudy blackberry purples and egg-yolk yellows against the white, but she didn’t seem to care.

When they finished eating, she wished away the leftovers and dishes but didn’t do anything about the spills and stains. She sat primly on the couch opposite his, legs crossed and hands folded in her lap.

“It’s like this,” she said. “I used to be nothing. I grew up without much of anything. Like, d’you know what car my daddy bought me when I turned sixteen? A used Toyota! Seriously.”

Dee, who had been on his own by sixteen and had rarely owned a vehicle of any type, held his tongue.

Ashley, who didn’t seem to notice his disdain, continued.

“But I always knew I had it in me to be someone great. I didn’t have any magical powers or anything, not back then.

It was just little ol’ me. I got married when I was eighteen, and Cody and I worked really hard at his daddy’s construction company.

His daddy also introduced me to politics—he was a state senator—and I got super interested.

Eventually I ran for US Congress and won.

” She flipped her hair back and raised her chin.

“Congratulations.” Dee had never paid much attention to politics, even less so in recent years, when the shitshow had grown worse. The whole damn thing was too depressing to consider. “And I appreciate the bio, but this isn’t?—”

“Patience, baby. So Congress was great. I had a ball in DC, meeting with all these movers and shakers who had to bow to me because they needed my vote. I was moving up! But then….” Her expression darkened and she stared at the floor.

“I wasn’t doing anything different than the rest of them.

Hell, some of those good ol’ boys were doing way worse.

But they resented me. They had it in for me! So I had to step down. It wasn’t fair.”

Looking at her now, Dee could almost envision her as a young child. Spoiled, perhaps, but also deprived of something fundamental—love or attention—and that absence had dug a hole in her psyche that could never be filled. He felt that himself on occasion.

After a pause, she returned her gaze to him.

“Things were rough for a little while. There were some court cases. We owed a lot of money. Cody was talking about leaving me. Then a gentleman showed up at my door, told me that he knew I was special, and explained how things could be different. I could have the kind of power those assholes in Washington could only dream of. I jumped on board and haven’t regretted it even once.

Not even at the beginning, when I had to…

. Well, let’s just say Cody met an untimely end. Oopsie.” She flashed an impish grin.

“You murdered your husband?” Dee wasn’t even surprised at this revelation.

“He was in the way. And he wasn’t like me—he wasn’t someone who matters. He wasn’t important.”

Dee spoke carefully. “Your prize for joining this mystery man was supernatural powers?”

“Not a prize, honey. My tools.”

The magically created food sat heavy in Dee’s stomach, and he tasted the bitterness of bile at the back of his throat. “Tools for what?”

“Changing the world. Right now we’re focused on growing our ranks—with the right kind of people, of course.

People with lots of money, with political influence, or with special abilities.

Like you. It’s not so much the size of our group that’s vital, but its strength.

And right now we’re so strong… and getting more so every day. ”

She stood, walked over, and settled so close to him on the couch that she was almost in his lap.

She settled a hand on his thigh. Maybe she was trying to seduce him, but the only sexual high he was interested in nowadays was the thrill he felt whenever he created a charm.

That sensation was more addictive than any drug he’d tried.

“We’re gonna reshape the world,” Ashley said. “Because it sucks, doesn’t it? And there’s not nearly enough resources to go around. So many billions of nobodies living here like parasites. If you don’t get rid of fleas, honey, they can eventually suck a body dry.”

Dee didn’t believe that most of humanity were parasites.

He knew, on an intellectual level anyway, that he was no more worthy than any of them.

But Ashley had a point about limited resources, and if something didn’t change soon, humans would face a mass extinction, along with countless other species that were blameless.

Why not speed things along while the planet was still salvageable?

“What’s your group?” he asked. “SPECTRE? LexCorp? KAOS? Demons?”

Ashley laughed. “The first three are fictional. And as for demons, you’d think they have potential for us, but it’s like trying to organize cats. Impossible to get them to direct their energies where they’ll do the most good.”

“Demons are real ?” Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised by anything at this point.

“Yep. Demons, angels, and a zillion other things that most people assume exist only in fairy tales. But my group, we’re humans.

Just ordinary old Homo sapiens . We make our little pushes online, in boardrooms, in government offices.

Sometimes we hardly need to lift a finger.

We set those parasites against each other until there’s nothing left but us . The cream of the crop.”

He wanted time to think about what this meant, exactly, but Ashley hopped up and clapped her hands. “C’mon. I’m gonna show you something really cool.”

She set off down a hallway lined with gilded mirrors. Dee, gods help him, followed.