Face Off

CHAPTER 3

THE MORNING INTERSEC operation, like so many others, had left Laura keyed up and jangled. Getting shot at—even on purpose—did that to her. The afternoon volume of work in public relations had slowed to a trickle. She was used to shifting gears between jobs, but sometimes coming off an adrenaline rush needed more transition. She needed to clear her mind, and the best way to do that was exercise. As she gathered her gym bag, the cell phone she used for InterSec contact vibrated. She confirmed with a glance that her office door was closed before she answered the phone.

“Do you miss me?” Sinclair asked.

The sound of his voice relieved and pleased her. Despite Sinclair’s tendency to make light of, well, everything, she doubted he would joke if he was in trouble. She kept her tone purposefully neutral, teasing him with indifference. “I haven’t thought about you at all since you shot me in the head. Busy day.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, mine, too. Spent the morning running away from InterSec agents only to end up in a bunker to answer lots of questions from Legacy.”

“They bought your story?” she asked.

“I had a witness to my heroics. Thanks for leaving at least one of them alive, by the way.” His voice went dry on the last comment.

“Not my fault. They spooked. Our guys spooked. I wasn’t happy about it,” she said.

“Well, they’re cutting me loose for the night. Want to get together?”

“Sure, I’ll meet you in Stafford,” she said.

He made an audible groan on the other end. “Do we have to?”

“I can use a workout,” she said.

“How about in an hour?” he asked.

“Perfect. See you there.” She closed the phone.

InterSec’s training academy and research facility in Stafford, Virginia, was an easy ride south of Washington on I-95. Easy, as long as it wasn’t rush hour or something wasn’t going on at Quantico. Once she was able to replace her shot-up car from the morning mission, Laura made it within normal drive time before the end-of-day commute started. Sinclair was there before her, leaning against a beat-up Silverado truck. He had a few minor scratches on his face from his run through the woods, but other than that didn’t seem any the worse for wear.

Despite his strenuous day, Laura cut him no slack in the exercise rooms. White lightning streaked in a fan pattern as Laura scattered a burst of essence from her fingers. Sinclair ducked, one leg bent, the other thrown sideways, almost flat to the floor. He grunted as a finger of essence skimmed over his back, the glass particles embedded in the fabric of his safety vest dissipating the force of the hit. The instant the barrage passed, he was on his feet in a defensive posture. He grinned as they circled each other in the glass-lined training room.

Laura didn’t change her expression but continued analyzing his moves, forcing him to react as quickly as possible. Essence could kill. She could restrain only so much of its intensity. Despite Sinclair’s safety clothing, a slight hit in an unprotected area carried the risk of crippling him. Which was why they were in the box of glass, one of many rooms like it at the training facility. Thick sheets of glass lined every surface. Glass dissipated essence, rendering it inert, so no one outside the room was endangered.

She had avoided talking about the morning operation, preferring to lose herself in the workout. They had been at it for two hours before she brought up the subject. “They didn’t find your escape suspicious?”

He shook his head but remained focused on her movements. “Not with an eyewitness to my killing an InterSec agent.”

Still not registering any visible reaction, Laura noted with satisfaction that Sinclair was finally sweating and breathing heavier. His stamina didn’t surprise her, considering his grandfather was a jotunn, one of the Teutonic fire giants. His speed and agility, however, impressed her. His giant heritage showed in his height, not so tall to be mistaken for fey but well over six feet. To see someone that size twist, leap, and turn to avoid essence strikes impressed her.

“Do you know what the rocket launchers were for? I thought we were expecting guns,” she asked.

They circled each other, Sinclair not letting his guard down because she was speaking. “No, but they’re pissed about losing them. The guns were picked up by another team.”

She shot a burst of essence at him, which he easily avoided. She was getting tired, too. “Have you gotten any more names?”

“They’re using a pretty tight organizational cell structure. I’ve only met my team unit of ten. We’re down a few guys after this morning. I got a promotion, though. I’m hoping it’ll get me closer to the people in charge.”

When Sinclair had worked for the D.C. SWAT team, he discovered Laura was working as an undercover InterSec agent. Terryn macCullen, Laura’s superior, forced him to make a choice—join InterSec or face incarceration to protect the agency. The fact that Sinclair joined willingly didn’t make it a fair choice. Laura felt an obligation to give him whatever skills she could to protect himself. It was only fair. His joining the agency had been forced in order to protect her as well.

“Well, don’t be so proud of yourself. They’re the bad guys.” She decided to hit him with essence, one high shot, one low, to see how he would handle it. In midthought, she changed her mind and shot a spray of essence across the floor. Sinclair leaped sideways, pulling his arms in as he spun in the air, then landed in a push-up position. Laura paused. It seemed like an unusual move for a ground-level attack. She narrowed her eyes. But it was a perfect move if she had hit him high and low.

Still propped on his hands and toes, Sinclair cocked his head at her. “What?”

She shrugged. “Nothing. Let’s go again.”

He hopped to his feet and tensed his body, ready to shift in any direction. Laura lifted her hands, starting to fire at his left shoulder but going for his feet again. Sinclair moved to his right and jumped, the jagged streak of white light passing beneath him again. Laura put her hands on her hips.

Sinclair landed on his feet. “Something’s going through that mind of yours. What’s up?”

“Let me try one more thing,” she said.

A head shot, she decided, shifting to his chest at the last moment. She fired. Sinclair ducked again, but this time kept going until he was crouched with his knees almost to his ears and his arms thrown to the sides for balance. He stood. “Okay, that was one more thing. What’s going on?”

“Describe how you react to my shots,” she said.

He rocked his head from side to side. “I watch the shape of your body signature. Before you release essence, it . . . I don’t know . . . sort of dimples.”

Everyone had essence signatures—even humans. Most fey sensed essence in one way or another. Druids had more sensitivity than most and could determine species with a secondary vision that registered essence as vibrant colors in their minds. Fairies sensed body signatures, too, but they had to physically touch the person or an object the person had come in contact with in order to read the energy. Sinclair did neither of those things. He sensed the shape of a body signature, which he claimed was like a fingerprint, unique to the individual. Neither Laura nor anyone else had ever encountered that type of ability. But what Sinclair described had to be true. It was how he had discovered Laura—by sensing her shape under its various glamoured disguises, something no other fey could do. “And that’s how you know how to anticipate the direction of the strike?”

“Yes.”

Laura’s talent for creating glamours so detailed and tangible made her invaluable as an undercover agent for InterSec. Her skill was so high, she had never been discovered. Until Jonathan Sinclair met three of Laura’s personas and recognized the same shape in each one. With her secret exposed, Terryn threatened to detain Sinclair indefinitely.

Sinclair had a secret of his own. The one species Laura—or any fey—could not create a glamour for was human. Humans had weak body signatures because they weren’t from Faerie. Laura’s glamours hid her druid essence under those of other species, obscuring one powerful body signature for another. A fey body signature, though, shone through a human glamour persona like a bonfire. For everyone except Sinclair, the grandson of a fire giant, registered as completely human. His fey essence was so subtle, Laura’s sharp skill didn’t see it unless she concentrated and knew what to look for. Sinclair wiped his forehead with a towel.

She backed away, setting herself into position to resume the practice. “Pay attention specifically to the change you see in the shape of my body signature this time. Try to focus on the whole thing, not just the dimple.”

She spread her hands, planning to wedge him between two fans of essence, then changed her direction to his feet. Sinclair spun sideways and jumped up, avoiding the strike. “Why did you turn sideways?”

Catching his breath, he placed his hands on his hips and looked down in thought. “Before you let loose, I thought you were going to squeeze me between two strikes, but when the dimple formed, it was aimed at my feet.”

“Why did you think that?” she asked.

A smile crept onto his face. “There was a change in the shape that looked like it was about to dimple, but it didn’t. Wow.”

His pleasure at the thought pleased her. “You can sense at such an acute level that you react subconsciously.”

His smile turned into a grin. “And you thought I had no abilities.”

Amused, she twisted her lips. “I never said that. You did.”

“Yeah, I guess I lied.”

Laura folded her arms and leaned against the wall. With her truth sensing, Laura knew he meant he hadn’t known, not that he had hidden the ability. Sinclair was an enigma to her—confident, assertive, yet cautious. He had spent his life hiding his fey nature. Humans and fey did not interbreed successfully. Sinclair’s grandfather knew that his grandson would be the subject of intense scrutiny, so he gave Sinclair a spell to hide the small hint of his feyness. The spell was bound to a medallion that Sinclair always wore. It hid excess essence, which for Sinclair meant his fey nature. He read human to her senses—and everyone else’s.

Sinclair lied about himself. So did Laura. Having that particular character trait in common was not the best basis for a relationship. She knew she could be trusted. She didn’t know if Sinclair could. More and more lately, though, she thought he was worth the risk. “You didn’t know.”

“You don’t know that,” he said. She watched and listened as he spoke, testing the nuances of his speech. His words and tone indicated truth. Laura had limitations on certain of her abilities, a fact that she had shared only with Terryn macCullen and Cress. For one thing, the field range of her sensing ability was limited for someone with her power. The more important secret, though, was that that limitation seemed to result in a huge advantage. Instead of a wide-ranging sensing ability, her short-range skill included truth sensing. Sinclair was telling her the truth; he hadn’t known about his own acuity.

Or so she hoped. He had managed to hide his fey nature from her, something that was hard to do. She took no solace in the fact that he had hidden it from everyone. Not for the first time in the last few weeks did she wonder, If he could do that, could he evade her truth sensing? Could he lie to her?

Terryn assured her no one else knew about her skill, so theoretically no one would know to counter it. She had never realized how much she had taken for granted knowing when someone spoke truth. Until she trusted Sinclair enough to believe him, she had to assume he was lying. She felt deaf or blind around Sinclair and wondered how people functioned without truth sensing. She didn’t like it.

“You would be surprised what I know,” she said. It was a bluff, but only she knew there was something to bluff about. Sinclair couldn’t know about her ability. She thought. Hoped.

He sauntered up to her, crossed his arms, and smiled playfully down at her. “Surprise me.”

She looked away with her own smile. He couldn’t have been more physically appealing to her with his dark blond hair and warm honey skin. The unusual lightness of his brown eyes made them look like rich caramel or amber. Warm eyes that said, Trust me. She liked his height, almost a full head taller than she, another thing she wasn’t used to. She wished he wasn’t so appealing. His attraction sparked something in her, made her realize how shut off from a personal life she had become. He made her think about things that made her afraid. If he had been less appealing, she would have felt safer.

Sinclair stepped closer, close enough for the body heat he radiated to touch her skin. He had that look on his face that said he was going to kiss her. He knew it would annoy her if he did. Not because of the kiss, but because someone might be watching. She didn’t want people to know they were becoming involved, not yet, not until she knew what it meant. A chime sounded, breaking the moment. They stared at her duffel in the corner of the room. Laura retrieved her PDA and read the message.

“Time to go. Terryn’s got a job for us in town. He wants us to shake up the police at a crime scene,” she said.

Terryn had been tracking a recent series of attacks against the fey and fey businesses. In the previous weeks, fey entrepreneurs around the city had been mugged and assaulted, and their businesses vandalized. The incidents were too frequent to be random. He wasn’t liking what he was seeing—particularly since his sister Draigen would be arriving soon and there was a lack of any concrete investigation from either the Washington, D.C., police or the Guild. His text message had passed word that another fey business had been attacked. The new attack had resulted in deaths.

Sinclair pushed his lower lip out. “He’s got bad timing.”

Laura smirked as she lifted the duffel. “Or very good.”