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Morrison pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant and sat there, contemplating these two phone calls.

As phone calls went, this one from Terk was guaranteed to create unrest. Now it wasn’t that Morrison didn’t appreciate help or that he was anti-Terkel or anybody else for that matter, but Morrison didn’t like people shitting on his plans, and that appeared to be exactly what was happening.

For that, he could probably blame the woman waiting for him in the restaurant, assuming she would even show up.

When a vehicle pulled up nearby, and a woman got out and walked into the restaurant, he studied her, wondering if that was Sadie. A hard knock on his passenger side window had him jerking up and staring out at the newcomer. He rolled down the window.

The man bent closer, his face hard and his features like stone. “I’m Gage.”

Morrison stared at him for a moment, sensing the power coming off him in waves. “You’re part of Terkel’s team.”

Gage gave him a ghost of a smile. “I am,” he declared. “Shall we go in?” He stepped back and waited as Morrison closed the windows, shut off the engine, stepped out, and locked up.

Morrison assessed the man in front of him, but no way to mistake the power, at least not if you were somebody who understood the feel of energy and who knew what it looked like.

Gage just waited while Morrison did his examination, finally raising an eyebrow.

“Well?” Morrison asked.

Gage nodded. “I gather you’re not happy at having your plans changed.”

“Would you be?” He shot back a hard look at the newcomer’s face.

Gage shrugged. “No, but you’ll adjust. In a case like this, it’s more about making sure we settle our differences and leave it be. You don’t take it with you on the job.”

“I don’t even know you,” Morrison muttered.

“No, and I don’t know you either,” Gage pointed out, “but I’ve been brought in on the case, so we’ll have to work it out.”

“All because of her word?” Morrison asked, with a nod toward the restaurant in front of them.

He nodded. “She called for Terkel, and when that happens?… Well, when it involves energy and energy workers, we’re there.” He smiled, looked over at Morrison, and added, “It’s not as if you didn’t already know that.”

“Knowing something and actually dealing with it is a totally different story,” he muttered. “You might deal with energy workers, but I don’t.”

“Yet you are one,” Gage declared in such a calm, laid-back tone that it left Morrison staring at him in shock. Gage snorted. “I call it the way I see it, and, if you have any hopes of hiding it from other energy workers, that won’t work.”

“No, maybe not,” he conceded, “but that doesn’t mean I want the world to know.”

“I get that, and I sure won’t be saying anything to anybody,” Gage shared, “but I do want to ensure that you and I are on the same page before we go in there.”

“I don’t know exactly what your skills are.”

“I’m not sure in this day and age that any of us really know anymore,” he admitted, “as ours are changing so much.”

Curious, Morrison wanted to ask how and in what way, realizing that he’d never had a conversation with anybody who utilized energy.

Gage motioned to the restaurant. “She’s waiting for us.”

Morrison headed inside and walked up and sat down across from the woman he had watched get out of the vehicle just moments ago. He bent closer and, in a low tone, asked, “Sadie?”

She looked around nervously and nodded. “Yes,” she whispered.

Gage sat down beside him so that the two of them faced her, yet it also blocked the rest of the restaurant from her view.

She shifted uneasily.

“Do you want me to move?” Morrison asked.

She shook her head. “No, not as long as you are part of Terkel’s team,… it’s all good.”

“I’m not,” he clarified, “but Gage is.”

With relief, she looked over at Gage. “Does Terkel remember me?”

He nodded. “He does, although he doesn’t have a whole lot of current information about you.”

“No,” she whispered. “It was a long time ago. I even met Celia a time or two.”

Gage nodded. “And those memories, those connections,” he noted in a soothing tone, “they’re very important right now.”

“Are they?” she asked, staring at him, fear evident in her gaze.

“Tell us how you survived the jewelry store robbery and how your brother avoided getting shot?”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t there at the time. I came later to check on my brother, one of the guards there. He wasn’t the guard who got shot that day.”

Gage said, “Why don’t you just tell us what this is all about?”

“The jewelry store robbers,” she began, “I think,… I think my brother’s one of them.”

As opening gambits go, it was pretty stunning.

Morrison frowned. “Your brother, the security guard, was part of the jewel thieves crew?”

She shook her head. “No, turns out I was adopted, and the security guard brother I grew up with is not my blood brother.”

Gage just stared at her, as she looked anywhere but at them. “You want to explain more about that?”

She snorted. “Not particularly, but I don’t really have much choice.

The thing is, my blood brother and I are not close, not at all.

I don’t know whether he’s doing this on his own, or maybe he’s being forced to do this.

Of course I want to think he wouldn’t do this, but I don’t know that,” she murmured.

“So how do you know he’s involved if you’re not close?”

She hesitated and then revealed in a low tone, “I read energy signatures.”

“As in, you know the energy of somebody who has gone before you?”

She nodded. “I was visiting my adoptive brother, the guard in one of the jewelry stores that had been hit, just to make sure he was okay,” she shared, shaking her head.

“The robbery had been a while ago, one of the earlier ones, but I felt the energy, and, although faint, it was my brother’s, my blood brother’s. ”

“That’s not damning. If you walked into that jewelry store right now, somebody else would recognize your energy,” Gage stated. “Just because you saw his energy there doesn’t mean he’s connected.”

“No, it doesn’t,” she admitted, with a shrug. “I know it’s not enough, but I was suspicious. So I went to the next site of the jewelry heists and to the one after that.”

Morrison stared at her, then sat back. “You’re telling us his energy was at all three robbery locations?”

She nodded, then looked at him curiously. “Everywhere.… Wait a second. This conversation isn’t freaking you out, but you don’t work for Terkel?”

“I don’t work for Terkel,” Morrison repeated.

“I guess you could call me a freelancer.” She didn’t seem to care what the label was, and he had to admit that most people didn’t,…

as long as they came to help. “So, why did you contact Terkel? Why not call the police?” Morrison asked her.

She stared at him as if he was a fool, and Morrison already knew it was a foolish question.

Still, he wanted to see if she understood where this investigation was heading and what was going on.

“I could have phoned the police,” she admitted, with a sarcastic tone.

“That would have been a great report. Yes, officer, I recognized my brother’s energy at each of these stores where there’s been a robbery, yet I don’t have any proof outside of that energy that he had anything to do with this . Yeah, that would have gone over well.”

“You still don’t have a lick of proof,” Morrison stated pointedly. “We can’t just go on your word for it.”

“No, of course not,” she agreed. She looked over at Gage, then back at Morrison again. “The thing is, I haven’t seen my blood brother for a very long time.” After hesitating for a moment, she then added, “When I say a long time, I mean a really long time.”

“So then how do you know it’s him?” Gage asked.

She stared at him steadily. “Because we’re twins.”