remember.”
Perez nodded.
“I know that much, and that’s all I know. I need more. Lots more. I want you to talk to the wife. She defaults to Spanish under stress. You said you’re fluent.”
He straightened unconsciously, looking very young and very serious. “You want me to conduct the interview in Spanish?”
“I want her comfortable so she’ll open up. I think using Spanish will help with that.”
“Anything in particular I’m looking for?”
“Connections. You know I’m a touch sensitive, right? When I interviewed Winsome I got his permission to check for magic. Found something, the same sort of something that was on my other vic. At this point, we’ve got nothing to connect the two of them but that vague trace of magic and memory loss. I want you to find out who Winsome knows socially. I need names, addresses, professions, and when and where Cara thinks her husband might have last seen each person. I want to know about his ex, her ex, and casual acquaintances. The guy who mows their lawn. Where they shop for groceries and go to church and fill up the gas tank. Find out where and how Winsome spends his time when he isn’t at the office. Does he read a lot? Work out? Go fishing? Haunt the home improvement center? You get her talking, you’ll get some of this without asking. Take your time. Get her comfortable with you. I’ll send someone else to talk to his boss and coworkers, see if there’s a work connection. You’re going to focus on the personal.”
“Okay. Who’s the first vic? You have someone cross-checking there?”
“Her name is Julia Yu. She’s my mother, so I’ll be cross-checking on that end.”
“Your . . . shit. I mean—I’m sorry, Special Agent. Is she okay?”
“She will be.” Somehow. Getting her to Sam was the first step, and Rule would handle that. Lily didn’t have a clue what the next steps were, but they’d find out. Somehow. “I’m going to—” Her phone buzzed. She glanced at it. “I have to take that. Get busy. You’ve got my number.”
Officer Perez nodded crisply and left. The call was from Ackleford, who’d already conducted the interview with Winsome’s boss. “She never heard of Julia Yu or any other Yu. I got the names of twelve of Winsome’s coworkers from her. My men are calling them.” One of Ackleford’s charming habits was referring to the agents in his command as his men, regardless of their sex.
“Good. I’ve got a local cop digging for more names from Mrs. Winsome. He speaks Spanish, and she’s more comfortable in that language. I’m going to contact more of my family to see if they know of any link to Winsome. I’m also going to alert area ERs to watch for cases of unusual impairment or memory loss.”
“Fuck. You think there’s more?”
“We’ll find out, won’t we?”
“Maybe this isn’t about you, after all.” He hung up.
Lily stood there a moment, holding her phone tightly. She needed to call Ruben, but she wanted to call Rule instead. There was no point in it. If Rule had persuaded her mother to let Sam treat her, he’d have let her know. He hadn’t, so there was no reason to call him . . . but he’d have texted instead of calling, wouldn’t he? Knowing she might be with the victim or a witness, he’d text so he didn’t interrupt, and sometimes texts were delayed. She could call him and check and . . . maybe interrupt him when he was talking to Julia.
Lily stood there and breathed and couldn’t make her phone ring no matter how hard she tried, so she did what she was supposed to do and called Ruben. She had the authority to put out the alert herself, but Ruben needed to know about it.
“I should have done that when I alerted the local police,” Ruben said as soon as she told him. “Any additional cases will probably be seen by the hospitals, not the PD. I’m relying too much on hunches, not enough on logic. I’ll take care of it from here.”
“You have any other logic or hunches to share?”
“I do. This is both. Karonski will be there at noon tomorrow to assume the lead, as I said. I’ve decided to place you in charge of the Shadow Unit’s operations regarding this situation.”
For a moment she had no idea what to say. Finally she managed, “You must be very confident that this line isn’t being monitored.” Normally Ruben didn’t refer even indirectly to the Shadow Unit over the phone. Normally the dragons handled most of the Shadow Unit’s communications. They weren’t part of the Shadow Unit—dragons weren’t exactly joiners—but they were allies, and mindspeech was perfect for a clandestine organization, being as untraceable and undetectable as it was uncanny.
Things were not normal, were they?
“Mika contacted me about what Sam plans to do to help your mother. While that is in process, Sam won’t be able to handle communications for us, so I took certain measures. These measures are temporary and cannot be used often. This is our only chance to talk freely until Sam is able to handle Shadow communications again.”
What measures? She didn’t ask, much as she wanted to. Ruben would have told her if it was okay for her to know. “All right, but why me? If Karonski’s in charge of the Bureau’s investigation, shouldn’t he be in charge of both? Or Rule could handle the Shadow end.” He was second-in– command and knew a lot more about Shadow stuff than she did.
“You and he will function as a team, no doubt, but I want you in charge. That’s both hunch and logic. I think the Shadow Unit will be needed, but in parallel to the official investigation rather than in support of it. Both investigations will share the goal of finding the person or persons responsible, but the official investigation will of necessity focus on acquiring evidence to prosecute and convict. Your goal will be to stop the perpetrator, period. If that can be done through official means, good. My hunch—a strong hunch—is that it cannot.”
“I’m not an executioner or assassin.” Unlike Rule. He considered assassination a valid and moral tactic in war. Lily understood his reasoning intellectually, but the idea made her insides roil. “I know this is a war, but I . . .” Could kill whoever had done this to her mother.
“There are others who can kill should it prove necessary, and I can make that call if you can’t. But killing isn’t the only solution the Shadow Unit can provide that our legal system cannot, just the most obvious. That’s why I want you in charge of that end, Lily. Not in spite of what you call a conflict of interest, but because of it. Your awareness of that conflict, and your visceral distrust for such unilateral action, will make you work hard to find the less obvious solutions, if they exist.”
Again she didn’t know what to say. “Thank you” didn’t fit. “Damn you” did, but was a little too revealing.
When Lily had first learned of the existence of the Shadow Unit the previous September, she’d been appalled. For law enforcement officers to be part of an organization whose very purpose was to operate outside the law violated everything she stood for. Grudgingly, she’d come to accept the need. The law simply didn’t cover the sort of attacks the Great Enemy could wield and the wider world didn’t even know there was a war going on, so the law was not going to be changed to apply to wartime conditions. She’d still wanted no part of it, personally. The Shadow Unit had to operate in secret. Secrecy eliminated accountability, and without that, abuse was all but guaranteed.
But Ruben had been right. She should have known he would be. Lily’s boss was a precog, with the most uncannily accurate precognitive Gift on record. That Gift usually manifested as hunches, but for a time he’d had actual visions of the various ways the country was going to be destroyed if the Shadow Unit didn’t exist . . . and if Lily didn’t take her place within that Unit. In the end, she had.
If Ruben had a strong hunch the law would be unable to deal with this threat, he was right. She hated it, but he was right. “All right. I’m still lead on the Bureau’s end of things for now, though, so I need to go deal with that.”
“Of course. Abel is aware of your role in the Shadow investigation. He won’t mention it unless you do, but he’s aware. I haven’t spoken to Rule about it yet. I leave that to you.”
“Okay.” Her stomach hurt.
“I’ll see that hospitals in your area are alerted.” He disconnected.
Lily lifted the cup still in her hand and sipped. And grimaced. She could drink coffee burned and bitter, but cold . . . no. She went to the small sink and poured it out, still holding her phone in the other hand. She had calls
