Landon couldn’t quite congratulate himself about the meeting with Vallon. Something in her manner at the end had worsened the psychic bombardment he always felt in Vallon’s presence. By the powers that be, if he could ever figure out how to motivate her to really learn the extent of her power, what would she be able to do? But right now all he got from her was secrets. He couldn’t be as sure as he usually was. Her afterburn got in the way.
He padded to his bookcase and retrieved the heavy tome he desired. The antique copy of the alchemical text, Buch der Heiligen Dreifaltigkeit, published in its original German, had once been his great-grandfather’s. It always helped to give him focus and direction when he was in a quandary.
Vallon Drake seemed eminently capable of leaving him with that disquiet.
A heavy fist-fall against his front door spun him around. Only one person beyond Vallon ever pounded as if he were going to break the door down. Landon considered simply not answering, but knew he couldn’t get away with it.
Sighing at the second interruption of what he’d planned as a meditative afternoon to recover from his first meeting with Vallon, Landon crossed to the door, his soft-soled moccasins whispering like old friends on the hardwood. He needed the quiet.
“Coming. You don’t need to bloody break it down.”
When he pulled open the door, Gregor Gleason stood fuming in front of him with fury in his eyes and far more than rainwater sopping his suit.
Landon quelled a smile and held up his hand. The big man did rage so well. “Let me guess: you tried to stop her.”
“What the hell did you say to her?” Gleason shoved past him into the living room with a squelching sound, and tracked sodden footprints on the hardwood.
Landon bit back a comment and forced himself to smooth-faced calm because confrontation would only increase Gleason’s anger and that was not the way to help Vallon. Still, he planted himself in front of the big man.
“What do you think? I calmed her down, of course, fed her lunch and tried to plant some seeds about the bigger picture. Mostly I offered a shoulder to cry on because someone was threatening to fire her.”
Gleason glared in response to the gaze Landon hoped was noncommittal, but Gleason gave way first. “Damn woman pushes every button I have.”
“And you should remember she also had the highest scores of any Academy graduate. Surely you can cut her some slack.” He kept his voice calm, low, sing-song as he would with a beast.
Gleason rolled his eyes. “What do you think I’ve been doing since she got here? If that damned Lamrey had only done his job she’d have been a lot easier to….”
“And I told you that was never a good idea. Vallon’s full attention should be on her job, not a relationship or anything a relationship might bring. By the powers-that-be, it gets me all hot and bothered just thinking about what she might be capable of if we can just foster those skills along.”
“Well your ‘powers’ just better keep the damned woman out of jail and functioning in her job.”
Landon decided to take a chance. “And that job would be thirty days of the desk?”
It evoked another glare.
“Come, Gregor, what were you thinking? Are you trying to kill the girl? Drive her insane? No agent can withstand that number of days on the desk: the demands are too high on the Gift. The afterburn alone could kill her.”
Gregor slouched further into the room, tracking water across the floor to the plate glass window that streamed with a steady flow of rain so it was like they stood suspended apart from the world inside a giant piece of crystal. Landon bristled at the mess of his floor. He’d agreed on the Vallon Drake project simply because the girl who’d fascinated him with her brilliance as a child had turned into a woman with a powerful force of will—and the most profound Gift he’d ever seen. Not that she knew it. He wanted to find out what she was capable of.
“I didn’t sign on to see her become your whipping boy. If you don’t ease up I may have to reconsider my involvement.”
That got Gleason’s attention because he knew Landon was the closest thing they had to influence over Vallon. His shoulders slumped a little.
“I know. I know. Shit, what don’t I know?” Gleason turned back from staring out at the rain-sheeted window. “It’s just that—something she said last night. I think she’s onto our little problem.”
“The fact that something blocked her rescue?”
Gleason stepped over to the leather couch, slumped down and nodded. “Something that’s taking out Agents.”
The abuse of his furniture kept Landon’s enthusiasm in check. He went to a cupboard and came back with a towel. “The least you can do is be kind to my stuff.”
Gleason dabbed at his face and neck, but paid no attention to the water marks spreading across the couch. “How the hell do we stop this from getting out? Homeland Security is just looking for an excuse to take over.”
And that was what they both feared. When the little ‘research project’ that had been the AGS had come to light during the formation of Homeland Security, the only thing that had left the AGS autonomous was the uniqueness of its operations and the skill-set required to do the work. But if the AGS was no longer even able to protect its own….
Landon’s skin went cold, but he shook his head. “More to the point, we can’t afford our Agents knowing. That kind of tension and distrust detracts from the Gift and seriously undercuts our ability to take forward our job. Or had you forgotten that?”
Gleason glared up at him. “Of course I haven’t forgotten. I have the Gift. You think I want to answer to some blockhead grunt who can’t even tell when a change is made?” He shook his head and sent small beads of spray from his shoulders to the couch. “But what the hell do we do?”
The jab at Landon’s lack of overt Gift and the damage to his furniture was almost enough to break his control. It had been too much working with Vallon twice in one day. In her state, just being in the room with her left him feeling battered and bruised. But better that he deal with Vallon’s issues than leave her to go off half-cocked alone. The poor girl practically oozed isolation and he was not going to let her slip farther into it.
Before anything happened to her he needed to understand what gave Vallon Drake the power he sensed, and then figure out a means to duplicate it if the AGS were truly going to protect America.
“Did you think about talking to her? Maybe asking her not to mention it because it might cause trouble? She’s got a brain, Gregor. And she loves her job. Hell, we’re the closest thing she’s got to family. She’s loyal. She’d protect us and it might bring her more in line with what you expect of an Agent.”
Gleason’s snort of derision just exacerbated Landon’s pique—more so because it was accompanied by another shower of water onto his couch.
Landon took a deep breath, trying to rid himself of negative vibrations, and forced himself to sit down across from Gleason.
“You are being as short-sighted as she is. She would have listened. I know you don’t believe me, but she would have.” He thought a moment and then looked Gleason in the eye. “But now that it’s come to this I think you just might have landed us a way to deal with a couple of issues all in one fell swoop.”
Gleason raised one hoary brow and straightened. A wee glimmer of hope came into his eyes. “Do tell, oh lord of the darkness,” he growled.
At the taunt Landon released his control a little. “I will. But first get your wet ass off my couch.”