Swearing none too softly at the cat, at the rain running down his neck, at the cold mud soaking into his shirt, and at his own stupidity for getting himself involved in the whole damn thing, Jason stretched a hand under the cedar and touched damp fur. Just get the darn cat and blow this pop stand to catch up with Vallon and the others.
He caught a fistful of cat scruff and found himself holding a struggling, yowling, scratching bit of fury as he dragged Maggie out into the rain. Just get her in the cage.
But a hand caught his shoulders and dragged him to his feet. In the process he dropped Maggie and the little vixen caught him a good one with her claws on the back of his hand. Then she was gone in a flash of black and white, and he was being manhandled around and shoved up against the house next to the stairs, his arm twisted expertly behind his back.
Overhead the darkness was lightening toward dawn.
“I think you’re making a mistake, friend,” he tried, hoping he could bluff his way through this thing.
“Shut up.” Boots shoved his feet apart. Hard hands expertly patted him down, removing his Sig 226 pistol and wallet with care. “Well, well. What we got here?”
Hard hands yanked him away from the wall and herded him up the stairs and into the house.
“Boss! I found something out back.”
Jason blinked in the brilliance of the kitchen lights, then looked at the man who held him. Big, broad, brawny, and dressed in black with a black skullcap and shoeblack on his face. One of the muscle he’d seen piling out of the van.
“You looking for a war or something?” Jason asked.
“I said shut up.” Hard hands dragged him to the living room door. “Boss! You might want to see this.”
A cold wind from the living room said the front door was open, probably down. Another man, the one Jason recognized, came to the doorway and they shoved Jason back into the kitchen. The new man looked Jason up and down, then checked the ID held out to him.
A slow smile rolled across the familiar man’s face, his entire demeanor changed, and Jason didn’t trust him for a New York minute. Xavier de Varga was easier to trust.
“Detective Bryson. Always a pleasure to meet one of Seattle’s finest.”
The man crossed the room and offered his hand in too much bonhomie. Jason hesitated and then allowed the other man’s overly powerful handshake to crush his. Let boss-man think he was in control.
“And you are?” Jason asked.
“Pardon me. Very poor on my part. Wolf Amundson, Homeland Security, Seattle Station Chief.” Amundson’s smile broadened showing smooth white teeth that reminded Jason of the man’s namesake. Ready to rip out his throat.
“And what brings a Station Chief to Vallon Drake’s house in the middle of the night?”
Amundson’s brows rose. “A good enough question. I will ask you the same.”
The man spoke oddly, as if he’d spent his life schooling an accent out of his voice, but hadn’t quite accomplished it.
“I was catching her cat. Had caught her—until your man interrupted.” Jason sucked the blood beading on the back of his hand.
“Unfortunate. And tell me, do you come to catch cats at four a.m. for all the denizens of your fair city?”
Jason shifted uneasily, because the fact that Homeland Security was here said whatever was coming down was a heck of a lot bigger than he’d thought, and Vallon was in deep shit. So was he, for that matter, because there was no acceptable excuse for him being here. He shrugged.
“She called me. She told me she was going out of town and asked me to get her cat right away. She was afraid of the cat running off and getting hurt or something.” Jason looked around. He hadn’t noticed the house having this licorice scent before.
“An odd arrangement, when I believe you are investigating her for murder.”
“I guess she doesn’t have many friends.” Jason stiffened at Amundson’s measuring look. “Don’t tell me: you’re the guy my partner called.”
A small nod, and the man circled Jason as he studied him. “Tell me, how well do you know Agent Drake?”
The stink of licorice had increased. Jason searched around him for the source and wondered if it was on Amundson’s breath. “Well enough to think she may not be responsible for the murder. I suppose that’s why she called me.”
No surprise as Amundson stopped in front of Jason. “Your partner suggested you thought as much. So how do you explain it?”
Let the evidence speak for itself. “If you look in my wallet you’ll find two photocopies.”
Amundson opened the wallet he held and found the papers.
“One is of a drawing Agent Drake agrees she drew. The other is of the wall at the scene of the crime. See any similarity?”
Amundson eyed the two copies. But then his face stiffened briefly, the reaction quickly smoothed away. “They are the same scene—except for the body. What do you suggest?”
The man’s increased accent suggested an emotional reaction to what he saw.
“It suggests perhaps that archway existed. My partner suggested perhaps Homeland Security has, or had, something going on at that location. Perhaps it points to other motivations for the murder.” The licorice stink made him want to gag, and yet neither Amundson nor hard hands seemed to have noticed.
“Absurd.” Amundson let the papers flutter to the floor and ground them under his heel.
“Is that your official response, because I can pass that along to my partner?”
“Where is Agent Drake, Detective? There’s a great deal she needs to answer for, not the least of which is what happened to Agent Lamrey.”
“You’re saying she killed him?”
“I’m confirming no such thing.”
The air had gone electric in the room, and it wasn’t from Amundson’s pithy conversation. Something was happening. Something like what he vaguely remembered had happened with Vallon. A sense of falling. A sense of terror and being eroded by a wind so great it stole his soul, his mind. In that wind, only Vallon had been solid.
“Where is she, Detective? She’s unstable and dangerous. You’ll make the city a safer place if she’s picked up and held.”
“Really? Can she be held?”
He saw Amundson stiffen. Beyond him, a haze seemed to bleed from the kitchen wall like a morning mist, which certainly seemed to meet Vallon’s criteria of something weird happening with the house. Jason knew he had to act now or never.
He leapt back from the danger. Slammed an elbow into hard hands’ gut and grabbed for the door.
It melted under his hands, was putty he could-not-hold. Slammed his shoulder into it and –
Fell through. Amundson—quicker to react than Jason had expected—dove after and grabbed his legs so they both tumbled down the back stairs and slammed into the small pad of pavement in the backyard.
Jason struggled up, kicked Amundson in the chest before he could stand, and sprinted across the sodden grass. Amundson was after him, grabbed his coat, swung him around so Jason caught sight of the house, the grounds.
Everything was silent, eye-sick, Escher angles and melting walls that couldn’t be. That just couldn’t be. He froze.
Long enough that Amundson’s fist slammed into his chin. He stumbled back into the brush by the gate. His head connected with the wood. Lights flashed in his head and bells rang. He wanted to be sick. When he opened his eyes, more so.
Vallon’s house wasn’t there. A modern monstrosity, all too much pink stucco and too little glass took up most of what had been the yard. Lights glimmered in the kitchen window and Jason wondered who lived there.
Amundson stood over him panting, fists still ready, but then his expression flickered. The anger faded and he looked down at his hands, unfolding from their clench.
“Don’t you ever talk Homeland Security down again, Detective. And don’t let me catch you trespassing on the site of one of our investigations again. Vallon Drake might not be home now, but we’ll get her. We will.”
> He turned back to the house. Stomped across the miniscule yard and slammed inside.
Jason’s stomach rebelled then and he crawled to his knees and retched. What he’d seen. He could have been in there. He had been in there.
When he was done being sick he staggered up and fumbled at the rear gate. A chubby, black and white cat came up and rubbed along his sodden pant-leg, mewing pathetically.
Jason leaned down and picked up the little animal. She snuggled into his arms, purring.
“Now why didn’t you just do that before? You could have saved me an awful lot of grief.”
A contented chirrup was his answer, and a head-butt with a pink nose.