Page 8

CHAPTER 8

“Someone shot at you?” Costa started to rise from his chair, nearly dumping the baby onto the floor. She squawked in protest, and Costa sat down and maneuvered the bottle back into her mouth.

He had Diana on the big wall screen in his office, which meant that he was able to see she was fine—dusty and a bit tired-looking, with a couple of unfairly adorable leaves in her hair, but fine. Being able to physically see her was probably the only thing stopping him from pitching the baby into the arms of the nearest person he could find and running out of the office immediately.

Controlling the urge, he asked, “Is everyone okay? Where are you now?”

“Everyone’s fine—well, except possibly Agent Caine. He insisted on staying out there to search. I don’t know how he expects to get back.”

“He’ll be okay.” Costa waved it off without bothering to try to explain. “But you’re unhurt? You and the interns,” he amended. “It was Boyd and Dawes with you, right?”

“Jessie and Fifi? Yes, they’re fine, aside from a slight case of airsickness in Fifi’s case. We’re at my place, and they’re taking turns using my shower.”

“And you didn’t see anything of the sniper at all?”

“Other than the flash of light, which I guess was probably off a rifle scope, no.” Diana hesitated, adjusting the phone she was using to video chat with him. He could catch glimpses of a living room behind her with the blinds partly drawn to keep out the brilliant midday sun. “I don’t even know if it was one person or more than one, or whether we were the intended targets. If they were aiming at us, they weren’t a great shot, but they did have the sun in their eyes.”

Costa jiggled the baby in his lap, who was starting to fuss a little. “And you said the interns smelled something strange?”

“The interns and Caine. He said that it’s possible it might be related to, uh, the trouble you had last summer. He wasn’t sure, though.”

“Great,” Costa said grimly. “That’s all we need.” He decided to put the possibility out of his head for now. “We should know more soon. I’m having the artifacts from the crash transported to the SCB offices. They’ll be over here in a day or two, once the wheels of bureaucracy finish grinding.”

“That’s some pretty fast grinding for bureaucracy.” Diana smiled, a lovely tug of her flexible mouth that made him want to brush his finger across the corner of it, not to mention giving him some entirely different mental images for grinding. Abruptly her lips parted, distracting him sufficiently that he barely registered her next words at first. “We found something else.”

“What?” Costa asked, wrenching his bran back on topic.

“A business card of sorts. Caine’s got it, so I guess you’ll see it whenever he shows up again. All it had on it was a red lion device, kind of like medieval heraldry. Just that and no other information. For all I know it could be promo for a restaurant opening or something, but it looked like it could be important.”

“Where’d you find it?”

“On the plane. Caine found it tucked into a seat cutout on the floor.” Diana frowned a little. “Are you sure he’ll be all right out there? He doesn’t have any way to contact anyone.”

“Caine can take care of himself. If he doesn’t check in soon, I have a secret weapon.”

“What’s that?”

Costa grinned. “I’ll call his fiancée.”

This won him a bright smile on her tired face. “I didn’t even know he had one, but I would love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. Tell me if anything new comes up?”

“Will do. See you later.”

His office seemed less bright, somehow, with Diana’s face off his screen. The baby had finished her bottle and was drowsing on his lap. Costa tucked her into the front carrier that Mavis had brought in that morning along with some other baby supplies from her extended family, and went off to see how the investigation was going.

Walking around the building with a baby strapped to his chest turned out to have exactly the side effect everyone had predicted: he couldn’t go anywhere without people awww-ing at him or stopping him to look at the baby. Also, there were questions. He was tempted to say “She’s evidence in an ongoing investigation” but for now, he simply put them off by telling people he was babysitting for a family friend.

He was eventually able to unload the baby for a while at the lab, where Mavis wanted to run some more tests. Costa hung around to watch, unable to stop himself from hovering protectively until he realized he was doing it. Reminding himself that she was perfectly safe in the hands of Mavis and her team, he retreated to his office to try to get some actual work done.

The afternoon wore on, and he was genuinely about to call Gilly on Caine’s behalf when Caine walked into his office, looking exhausted and dusty and sunburned underneath a—was that a fisherman’s hat?! He was limping slightly.

“I hate to admit this, but Diana was right about the footwear,” he said, throwing himself down on the couch against the wall. “I’ll be picking thorns out of my ankles for days.”

“Is that a sun hat you’re wearing?” The image of Caine in his dark suit, dusty though it was, with a floppy-brimmed hat shading his face would stay with Costa for a long time.

Caine reached for it as if he’d forgotten he was wearing it, looked at it for a minute, and dropped it on the couch beside him with an expression of loathing. He took off his sunglasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, and leaned his head back against the wall.

Costa got up and closed the blinds, plunging his office into dimness striped with golden late-afternoon sunshine. He was aware that Caine was prone to migraines after being out in the sun too long.

“Thanks,” Caine said without raising his head.

“Need anything else?”

“Coffee’d be great. And food. I haven’t eaten all day, and I’ve been doing a lot of shadow-shifting.”

Costa picked up the intercom phone and requested some food and coffee sent up his office. Then he sat beside Caine on the couch.

“Diana filled me in on your sniper problem. Did you find anything?”

“Not really,” Caine said, cracking an eye open. “I found the vantage point that our sniper had been using to observe us across the valley, but there was no one there. I don’t know where he went. There’s a cave system back in there, and I spent some time exploring it. I should have been even more capable of finding him in there than outside. No signs, though.”

“Think he shifted?”

“I’d guess so, and given the situation with the kid, I’m also guessing an unusual shift form. I just don’t know what. I have a lot of talents, but tracking isn’t one of them, especially in sunlight.”

There was a tap at the door, and Cat Delgado came in with a tray. “I heard you’re back,” she said to Caine, setting it down on the table by the couch. “I also suspected the boss hadn’t eaten lunch either, and absolutely no one in the building is able to give me a straight answer about why you’re walking around with a baby, Chief.”

“By design,” Costa said dryly.

“So I figured I’d volunteer to bring up some food and hang around until answers drop out of one of you.” Delgado straddled a chair backward and crossed her arms over the back of it. She was in her casual hanging-around-the-office look, with her unusual physical features on full display, the scales across the side of her head and one slit-pupiled lizard eye. She could hide it in public, but generally chose not to bother in the office.

“I could order you out,” Costa remarked. “Does anyone around here remember that I’m in charge?”

Delgado looked expectant. Caine raised an eyebrow and reached for a sandwich from the tray. Costa sighed, picked up a sandwich, and filled her in briefly.

For some reason, Delgado seemed to get stuck on the whole situation last night, specifically the Diana elements. “She brought you a baby?”

“Well, where else was she gonna take her, the laundromat?”

“Boss, not that it’s any of my business, but you guys have been dating how long now?”

Refreshed with painkillers and food, Caine was now observing Costa intently; Costa could feel it through the dark glasses. Abruptly Caine said, “Are you two actually seeing each other?”

“What?” Costa said.

“What?” Delgado echoed. “She’s his plus-one to, like, everything.”

“You need to spend more time thinking about your jobs and less time thinking about my love life,” Costa said pointedly.

But Caine was still looking at him in that peculiar, pointed way. “They go to functions together, it’s true. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen them together otherwise.”

“ You avoid every group function if you can help it,” Costa said.

“You don’t have any pictures of her on your desk.”

“You don’t have any pictures of Gilly on your desk.”

“That’s for security purposes,” Caine said stiffly.

“Game, set, match. Every relationship is different.”

“Yes, but—” Delgado protested. “Maybe she wants to take it to the next level.”

“Maybe there isn’t a next level to take it to,” Caine muttered.

“If you’re done gossiping, can we work now?” Costa said shortly. “Di said—that is, I understand you found a business card on the scene.”

“Or something.” Caine reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and retrieved a small plastic bag, which he passed to Costa. “It had slipped into a recess in the floor. Looked like the crash investigators either didn’t see it, or considered it too insignificant to keep.”

Costa turned it over to look at both sides, then shrugged and handed it to Delgado. “Any ideas?”

“I don’t know. Could be a promotional coupon or a game piece. Just about anything.”

“I know it’s a long shot, but take it down to the lab and see if they can pull anything off it.”

Delgado nodded and rose.

Once she was gone, Caine laced his long fingers over his knee. “So. Diana.”

“Will you shut up?”

“I can’t believe I didn’t see it. Nobody saw it. You’re close-mouthed about your relationship; well, lots of people are. But in your case, there isn’t a relationship to talk about.”

Costa glared at him. “Don’t go around telling people.”

“I’m the absolute master of keeping secrets,” Caine said solemnly.

“Yeah, I saw that when you and Delgado were speculating about my love life two minutes ago.”

“If you seriously ask me to, I won’t,” Caine said. “But why on earth would you?”

“You really want to know?”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know.”

Costa got up and walked to the window, looking out the stripes between the blinds at the desert landscape slowly turning sunset colors. “We were together years ago. A very long time ago. We lived next to each other. Adjacent ranches. We grew up together and started dating in our senior year of high school.”

“I didn’t know that,” Caine said quietly.

“Yeah, well, it didn’t work out.” He pushed away the memories. “It really, really didn’t work out. We wanted completely different things out of life. But we stayed in touch, and a while back, we both realized we had a similar problem. My family kept pestering me about settling down, and she was constantly getting hit on by the guys she works with.” A sharp frisson of jealous anger swept over him at the thought, there and gone.

“So naturally, like any sensible person, you decided the way to resolve this problem was to pretend you were dating each other.” Caine’s voice was as dry as the desert outside.

“It’s a logical solution,” Costa said stiffly.

Caine gave a sudden, barked laugh. “You’re not dating her, and yet, she shows up at your house with a baby when she could’ve gone anywhere else.”

“No, she couldn’t have. She needed my help.”

“She wanted your help.” Caine laughed again.

“Stop laughing, Azarias.”

“I’ll stop when it stops being funny.” Caine wiped his eyes and put his sunglasses back on. “I just appreciate that you’ve fucked up your love life much worse than I ever did, and in a novel way, too.”

“ Caine .”

“I’m done. I swear. However, if you ever want to talk?—”

“And be mocked?”

“You know you enjoy a little mocking in your day.”

“Only because I know you’ll cheat in a fight,” Costa said, but he was grinning.

“She’s good for you, Quinn,” Caine said seriously. “That thing that didn’t work out—maybe you should try it again.”

Costa’s grin faded. “Mocking is fine, or at least unavoidable, but I don’t need advice. And on that note, take the rest of the day off. I’ll find someone to cover the night shift. I know you couldn’t have had more than a few hours of sleep since last night’s shift, and you’ve been out in the sun all day. Get some rest, have a nice evening with Gilly, and come in tomorrow.”

He waited until after Caine left—because there was likely to be another round of mocking in the wings if this next part got out—and then called down to the lab and asked Mavis if she’d found a placement for the baby yet.

“Not yet. The Seattle office is working with us, but it isn’t easy.”

“I’ll take her overnight again, then,” Costa said promptly. “It won’t be a hardship; I already had her at my place for one night, and I have some things for her there.”

What he didn’t want to examine too closely was why the idea of a night alone at home suddenly seemed so unappealing. At least with the kid around, he wouldn’t be lonely and he wouldn’t be bored.

The fact that the baby was leaving soon too—whenever they found her parents, or a permanent foster placement—was something he also refused to look at. He’d deal with that when it happened.