Page 26 of Concluded (The Bureau #13)

T he chief and Tenrael arrived early, just as Dee and Achilles were finishing breakfast. “Want some?” Achilles asked, gesturing at the small feast that Dee had prepared.

If they survived this, Achilles was going to cook him some of the Greek dishes his mother used to make, because despite her long hours at the shop she had insisted on preparing big family dinners.

Achilles hadn’t made any of those things in years.

Grimes scooped up a couple of strawberries and popped them into his mouth, nodding with approval. Then he looked solemnly at Achilles and Dee. “Are you still willing to do this?”

“Yes,” they replied in unison.

“I should probably tell you that things are looking increasingly grim. I’ve lost touch completely with the East Coast Bureau. I don’t know what part, if any, they’re playing in recent events. Due to proximity, they’ve always had a closer relationship with everyone in DC.”

Achilles regretted eating such a big meal. “Is East Coast working with DC now? Are they… opposing us?”

“I don’t know.” Grimes winced. “I’ve also lost touch with some of our own agents. It’s possible they’ve just decided to disengage, now that we’re not official. Or it’s possible….” He stopped mid-sentence and looked away.

“Why are you even telling us this?” Dee demanded. His hands were fisted atop the table.

“Because I think you both deserve to go into this with open eyes. Or choose not to go at all.”

“I’m going,” Achilles said stubbornly. He’d already decided he couldn’t live with any other decision. “But Dee, you don’t have to?—”

“I’m going.”

Achilles managed to be both relieved and unhappy about that.

Dee’s presence would greatly increase his own chance of getting out alive.

But he cared about Dee, who’d turned out to be much more complicated than Achilles had initially suspected.

He hadn’t needed a shrink to tell him that his experiences with his family and Orson had made him extremely reluctant to form close emotional bonds with anyone, but all of that had apparently flown out the window over the past days.

Dee’s welfare was important to him, beyond the general sense of responsibility he felt for everyone in his jurisdiction.

Grimes still stood beside the table, looking as if he had something more to say but didn’t want to, while Tenrael waved his wings in a way that somehow seemed mildly reproachful.

“Spit it out,” Achilles finally grumbled.

Grimes let out a breath. “Agent Afolabi was unable to find much information on genies. Except that they prefer the term djinn, apparently. Sorry, I’ve been using the wrong word, Dee.”

Dee snorted. “I don’t care about that.”

“There’s really not much about them in our records. She thinks it’s because they originated in Asia and North Africa and not many immigrated here. Maybe some of the agencies abroad have the information we need, but nobody trusts us right now, and I don’t blame them.”

“So we don’t know anything,” said Dee sourly. “Like, magic tricks I might have up my sleeve and don’t even know about.”

“She mostly confirmed what we already know. She did find out one interesting thing, however. It’s about you personally.”

“What?”

“Your mother came to the United States about five months before you were born. She was from Bosnia. It was actually part of Yugoslavia then, but— Anyway, did you know this?”

Dee was frowning and shaking his head. “No. She never talked about it. She wasn’t very chatty. I don’t remember her having an accent either, but to be honest, I barely recall her voice.” This was obviously a painful subject, and Achilles wished he could comfort him. Not with Grimes here, though.

Then Dee’s eyes widened. “Wait! Five months…. The man I thought was my father was definitely not Bosnian. I’d be willing to bet he never stepped foot outside the US.” He swallowed. “So he….”

“Jack Martell was not your biological father,” Grimes said.

“Then who was?”

“We don’t know. But it’s entirely possible that both of your parents were djinn. In which case your abilities may be stronger than we’d assumed.”

Dee looked as if he couldn’t decide how to take this news. It could mean their mission had a better chance of success. But it also meant that he’d just had a fairly shocking revelation about his parentage.

“He must’ve known he wasn’t my dad,” Dee said quietly, probably to himself. “He was a son of a bitch, but he kept me fed and housed after she abandoned me.” He looked up sharply. “What happened to her?”

“Another thing we don’t know. Afolabi couldn’t find any records of her after her marriage to Martell.”

Silence filled in the room until Achilles huffed. “Do you have any more bombshells to drop, Chief? ’Cause I’d like to get this over with.”

“Okay. Let’s?—”

Tenrael startled all of them by whirling toward one of the doors.

Grimes spun too, hand inside his jacket and, no doubt, on a weapon holstered to his chest. Achilles didn’t have any weapons—they’d disappeared during his encounter with Ashley Dunn—but he leapt to his feet and tensed himself in readiness.

If he had to, he could throw dishes or use his fists.

Dee shrank back in his seat, looking bewildered.

Three aliens burst into the room, all speaking rapidly in their own language. They were clearly upset, but it took Tenrael a few moments to understand them. “Vehicles approaching,” he finally translated. “Not likely friendly.”

Shit.

Fortunately Achilles and Dee were dressed and ready to go, and neither had any personal items to worry about.

They abandoned the kitchen and rushed after Grimes, followed by Tenrael and the aliens, down a hall and out a door into the glaring morning sun.

A black Jeep was the only visible vehicle and their apparent destination.

They climbed in and, without even a chance to thank their hosts, they were off.

Eschewing the road, Grimes piloted them straight across the desert, bumping over rocks and roaring down hills. It was not a comfortable ride.

“Are they safe?” asked Achilles, referring to the aliens.

It took a few moments before Grimes responded. “Maybe. They have tunnels. And I suspect that right now, the four of us are more interesting to our foes.”

That would need to be reassurance enough since there was little that any of them could do to protect their hosts.

Achilles imagined masked men in ICE uniforms swarming the place—demanding papers from people who were definitely aliens and likely undocumented—and unsympathetic to explanations that they were refugees.

A ridiculous scenario, yet eerily possible.

“Townsend promised to help them,” he said, knowing it was hopeless.

Tenrael turned his head to look at them. “They understood the risks and they know the forces that oppose us.”

Maybe Achilles would have argued about this, but Dee, who was looking out the back window, made an alarmed noise. “They’re following us.” Sure enough, two dark shapes were barely visible through the dust kicked up by the Jeep’s tires.

“I’m aware,” Grimes said, driving faster and more erratically, zooming over ridges as if he didn’t think gravity applied to him.

Achilles held onto the grab bar for dear life. The jostling was uncomfortable to his wounds and his ears were ringing. “We could wish ourselves somewhere else,” he suggested.

“No,” Dee said firmly. “I don’t trust my ability to be a transporter beam for four people and a Jeep. I don’t know where we’d end up or in what kind of shape. And I need to save my battery.”

Fair enough. Achilles didn’t want to end up like that scientist in The Fly . And he wanted to get into the black hole and back out again. But he also didn’t want to fall into Dunn’s clutches again. “Where are we going?” he shouted over the roar of the Jeep’s engine.

Grimes didn’t answer, which could have meant he was too busy to chitchat or he didn’t think Achilles needed to know.

Or, less happily, it could have meant that Grimes himself didn’t know where they were going.

Perhaps he was just speeding aimlessly through the desert until they crashed, ran out of gas, or got overtaken by their pursuers.

Tenrael didn’t say anything either, and he looked tense, although that could have partly been discomfort from his wings being squashed against the car seat.

Which got Achilles thinking about Grimes’ wings, or lack thereof.

It had never occurred to him that Grimes might once have possessed them, but now he wondered what past trauma those scars represented.

Unlike Dee, Grimes must have grown up knowing he was different, that he was something…

not quite human. But both of them must have felt isolated.

As had Achilles himself, even though, as far as he knew, his DNA was one hundred percent Homo sapiens .

That thought brought the idea that Dee could have his DNA tested—if he wanted—if things ever got back to normal. The Bureau had those capabilities in the Northern California lab. It might answer at least a few of Dee’s questions and would likely also prove interesting for research’s sake.

All of these thoughts were convenient ways of distracting himself from current facts: his body hurt, the Jeep didn’t seem to be getting anywhere but deeper into the desert, and the two dark shapes behind them were now considerably closer.

Dee leaned close and spoke just loudly enough to be heard. “Are you used to things like this?”

They slammed together as Grimes made a sharp left-hand swerve, and then bounced high enough to bash their heads into the ceiling. “I guess,” Achilles answered, rubbing his scalp. “Not a ton of high-speed off-road chases, but uncomfortable near-death adventures, sure.”

“Let’s just hope it’s only near-death.”