“We are a simple folk,” she jested.
“Please. I already know you’re smarter than Andy. If I thought you wouldn’t laugh me out of the car, I’d make you a job offer right now.”
Melissa couldn’t help but smile at Cain’s perceptiveness. After seven hard years in British Intelligence, she’d sooner club baby seals than step back into the world of national defense.
She followed Cain’s gaze across the lot, at the silver Royal Seeker that had been seized with Amanda and Theo. Her men had already pored over every inch for prints and fibers.
“How much do you know about this case?” Melissa asked.
“I’ll put it to you this way: I only recently started smoking again.”
“You’ll have to give me more than that.”
“I read all your summaries and transcripts,” he said. “Stole a gander at the Filipino’s hospital report. I sat in this car an hour ago, watching you interview Amanda Given on my handtop. There’s not a drop of evil in that woman, is there?”
“That feed was closed-circuit.”
“Nothing’s closed-circuit. You did a stellar job, by the way. The generators were a brilliant idea.”
Melissa blew smoke through a scowl. “So while we’ve been following these people, you’ve been following us.”
“More or less. But before you beat the war drums, know that I’m not here to plunder. I’ve only been asked to assess and report. You’re lucky they sent me and not someone else.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I don’t think we’re ready to handle this problem,” Cain confessed. “Integrity’s in a state of flux right now. Bunch of young hard-liners are taking us over, pulling us back to our dark early days. If they got their mitts on these outlaws of yours, it wouldn’t be pretty. At the very least, that Maranan fellow would be a goner. The lab boys would fish the ring out of his brain like the prize in a cereal box.”
Melissa’s stomach twisted in tension. “You can’t do that.”
“There’s no ‘me’ in that equation, hon. I don’t run the Sci-Tech division. Not anymore.”
“Obviously you still have some influence if the agency sent you here.”
“If I sing the right tune, I can quell their interest for a while. But I can’t do it alone. You need to keep me posted on everything you learn, especially about this Azral and Esis Pelletier.”
“You seem fine at gathering this information on your own.”
“It’s harder than it looks. If I get my news straight from you, I’ll have better luck spinning my new bosses. Are you willing to work with me?”
“That depends. Why are you really doing this? What do you get out of it?”
Cain sighed a long spout of smoke, then tapped his ashes out the window.
“‘Associate’ is just a title they slap on the folks they don’t know what to do with. There are those who hope I go the way of Andy Cahill. I have other plans. Fortunately for you, they involve keeping these fugitives away from Sci-Tech. At least until I get it back. Now I know you’re cynical about us God-and-country folk, but I swear to you I want these people alive. I think we can learn a lot more from their mouths than their corpses. I know you feel the same way. So let’s help each other.”
Melissa couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being positioned like a chess piece, though she saw little choice at the moment. “I’ll keep you posted on everything I learn.”
“Good. Your big task now is to find those other four runners, fast.”
“Believe me, that’s my top priority.”
“It better be. Because if they make any more headlines, it’ll be out of my hands. Integrity will cloud up and rain all over them.”
They stared at the Royal Seeker again. Neither the license plate nor the Vehicle Registry Pin existed on record. Either the tags were unparalleled forgeries or the van had somehow been pilfered from the future. A month ago, Melissa would have laughed at the latter theory.
“Guess everything’s about to go topsy-turvy again,” Cain reckoned. “Everything we know, right out the damn window.”
“I only recently resumed smoking myself,” Melissa admitted.
“Have you said it out loud yet?”
“Said what?”
“That they’re from another world.”
Melissa felt a familiar lurch in her gut, the one she suffered whenever mad reality confronted her.
“Not yet.”
Cain took a last drag of his cigarrillo, then chucked it away. “Well, maybe it’s time to start.”
—
As soon as she returned to her desk, her handphone buzzed with a new text message. Owen Nettles was a blond and bespectacled little man who never made eye contact and rarely spoke above a mumble. But for all his awkwardness, he was one of the Bureau’s best ghost drill operators. Melissa had left him at the Nemeth lake house to learn more about the missing fugitives.