There were four people already seated around the long wooden table, three of whom I didn’t know. I recognized the last one though. As an attractive, athletic, redhead, she was hard to miss. I grinned when I saw my second favorite werewolf. “Heather!”
“Why the hell is he handcuffed, Franks?” Heather Kerkonen demanded. “This was supposed to be a voluntary invitation.”
“Really?” I asked.
“This was easier.” Franks shrugged, took out his keys, and unlocked my cuffs.
“And look at his arm!” Heather gestured angrily toward the sloppy bandage and the bloodstains all over my shirt. “He needs medical attention. Is the concept of civil liberties completely alien to you?”
I could answer that one for Franks. “I don’t think he’s familiar with those, no.”
“I was there when they wrote the Bill of Rights,” Franks muttered.
“But did you pay attention to what was in it?”
He shrugged.
I rubbed the circulation back into my wrists. It was weird seeing Heather here. She’d served her time, earned her PUFF exemption—which meant that she was one of the only werewolves in the country not legal to kill on sight—but then she’d surprised everybody by deciding to stay on with Special Task Force Unicorn voluntarily to help the other unfortunate monsters who were stuck there.
“Earl didn’t mention you were in town.”
“He doesn’t know.”
“Ah . . . ” I avoided that minefield. Earl was not exactly enamored with his girlfriend’s employers. “Are you here on official business?”
“I’m working.” Heather left it at that. It wasn’t good to talk about her ultra-top-secret job in polite company. Instead she introduced me to the other people around the table. “This is Owen from Monster Hunter International.” Then she nodded at the suit sitting at the head of the table. “This is Director Cueto of the MCB.”
He had a shaved head, a goatee, and looked a lot more like a trigger puller than the expected paper pusher. I remember hearing that he used to be the MCB’s elite strike team commander, so that made sense. “Yeah, I’ve read up on this one. The name Owen Zastava Pitt seems to show up in a lot of the really annoying reports that land on my desk.”
Even if it wasn’t meant that way, I took that as a compliment. “Great.”
Heather gestured toward the fifty-something woman seated next to her. She struck me as dignified and professional. “This is . . . ”
“You can call me Beth.” She gave me a wry smile. “Just Beth.”
“So what secret government outfit are you with, just Beth?” I asked.
“Heather works for me. You’re smart enough to figure out the rest.”
Oh shit. This must be the woman who had replaced Stricken as the head of Special Task Force Unicorn. This was the leader of the organization who used Santa’s naughty list as a recruitment tool. Monsters who served on her black ops kill squad could eventually become exempt from PUFF bounties and live like normal citizens, and she was the ultimate arbiter of whether those monsters earned that exemption or not. This was the lady who got shit done. The MCB sort of colored in the lines, but from what I’d seen, STFU did pretty much whatever it felt like, all while everybody else pretended they didn’t exist.
I’ll be honest. Knowing all that, Beth made me kind of nervous.
“Oh, relax, Mr. Pitt. I’m not my predecessor.”
“Good.”
“I don’t play mind games like he did. If I want someone dead, they die.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that. No reason to drag it out.” Beth gestured at an empty seat. “Now sit. There’s matters of national security to discuss and we’re on a timeline.”
Well, that was one hell of an invitation. I pulled up a chair. Franks sat down too. Grant looked to his director, but Cueto just shook his head in the negative. Apparently, even though he was Franks’ partner, Grant didn’t have the rank, clout, or clearance for this particular discussion. Grant quickly left and closed the door behind him.
The last person at the table hadn’t been named yet, and he didn’t seem inclined to introduce himself either. He was a rather plain-looking, innocuous little bald man in a brown suit. He was old and really short in that hunched over way. Heather looked at him, like she was trying to think of what to say, but then she didn’t say anything at all.
So I asked, “Who’re you?”
“You may call me Mr. Coslow.”
“And you are?”
“None of your concern.”
Heather gave me a warning look and a little shake of her head. I trusted her and shut up.
“So why am I here? Because the sooner we get this all cleared up, the sooner I can get some stiches. I’m getting a little woozy here. I just killed a reptoid in hand-to-hand combat.”
“Who hasn’t? You’ll be fine, you big baby.” Director Cueto picked up a remote control, pressed a button, and a giant screen lit up on the wall behind him. It was a satellite image of the office park we had been staking out. “So we’re all on the same page, approximately an hour ago, the MCB executed Operation Kill Stricken.”
“That was the actual name of the operation?” I chuckled. “Who came up with that imaginative title?”
“We were going to use the official computer-generated random op name, which was Husky Duckling, but Franks insisted on this one and he’s kinda hard to debate with,” Cueto explained.
That was obviously true. It also illustrated why Franks was so bitter that the operation hadn’t lived up to its name yet.
“This was the culmination of months of investigation and cooperation between the MCB and . . . certain other government agencies, which led to the capture of this man.” Cueto pushed another button, and the image changed to that of Stricken. It was the same picture as the one on the Most Wanted board. Gaunt and haunted, yet smug. “The dickbag in question you all have had personal dealings with, so I’ll spare you his resume, most of which is bullshit
