Parched - Chapter Two [2/?]
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AN: For the record, I failed anything to do with science when I was in school, so any of the smart science babble stuff? I totally stole that from my favourite tv shows. I only hope I haven’t completely messed up in a way that insults a bunch of biology/science aficionados.
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‘I tolerate this century, but I don’t enjoy it.’
DISCLAIMER & OTHER WARNINGS
‘I’m just saying, it’s time, is all,’ Peter protested in what was turning out to be a losing argument. The car slowed to a halt outside of the downtown seafood restaurant he and Olivia had been called to. Outside the window, he could see the familiar and telltale signs of flashing lights and yellow police tape. ‘You said you’d think about it once we got settled.’
‘And I still am,’ Olivia answered as she checked the rear view mirror and parked the SUV. ‘We’ve still got time.’
‘Cutting it kind of close, aren’t we? Just because you’re not showing -’
‘For the record, my mother didn’t start showing until she was five months in?’ Olivia interrupted. ‘Rachel either.’
‘Yeah, that’s great for them. Normally, I’d say it’s great for you too, but neither of them dealt with the stuff we see on a daily basis. Plus, we don’t know if there’ll be any complications because of the Cortexiphan. Honestly, I’m surprised Broyles hasn’t put you on desk duty before this.’
‘I’m sure he would have, if I’d told him,’ his partner replied as she opened the driver’s door and swung herself out of it.
Peter blinked as the implications caught up with him and hurried to undo his seatbelt. ‘Wait, what? What do you mean? You didn’t - you didn’t tell him?!’ Not receiving a response, he turned to the third passenger who had been humming silently in the back the whole time. ‘She didn’t tell him.’
‘Hm?’ his father wondered.
‘Never mind.’
Peter heaved himself from the car and automatically moved to help Walter out as well. After ensuring his father’s trousers were done up properly and that he wasn’t about to go on a walkabout in the wrong direction, they headed after Olivia.
The street was bathed in the flashing blue and red light of the emergency vehicles around the restaurant. All around, clusters of people huddled in small groups while authorities scurried around them. Some people sat in the back of ambulances, while others converged around uniformed officers.
No doubt former diners giving their statements.
Peter hurried his pace a little, catching up to his partner while still making sure Walter was following them.
‘What do you mean, you haven’t told him? Don’t you think you should?’ he prompted, trying not to sound like a nag but more reasonable. Olivia responded better to reasonable.
Usually.
‘Peter, there wasn’t a point until now,’ Olivia answered, sounding irritated. ‘If Walter and Astrid didn’t find out when we did, I wouldn’t have told either of them until the danger passed. I told you when we first found out that I’m predisposed to VPE.’
‘Yeah, and, the doctors cleared you today, right? I mean, that’s what the appointment was all about.’
Olivia sighed. ‘Yes, we’re clear. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to go sit on my butt for the next six months. Can you see me doing that?’
Peter opened his mouth, ready to tell her he would learn to see her do that, but they’d reached the entrance of the restaurant.
She held up a hand, her message clear: work now, baby business later.
He knew better than to argue.
They found the centre of the restaurant, where Broyles waited for them. Several yards away Peter got his first look at the reason for their interrupted dinner plans.
The scene itself was a mess, and Peter felt bit of bile rise at the back of his throat. He’d developed a strong stomach over the years, and this wasn’t the first time he’d seen a desiccated body. Hell, he’d witnessed back-alley charlatans in Egypt mummify stolen corpses and sell them to tourists as souvenirs.
Something about this display made him cringe.
It wasn’t like with amber where the people trapped in it either didn’t realise what was happening or were too busy coughing to panic. These people had known they were dying and hadn’t been able to do a thing. In a way, it reminded him of the series of murders perpetrated by Alfred Hoffman - mass suffocation of a specific group of people based on pre-selected genetic traits.
A dozen bodies awaited inspection, all petrified in the various distressed states of their last moment. All were so severely desiccated it seemed as if someone had posed a series of lab skeletons in a macabre imitation of The Last Supper. Their wasted faces, with skin hanging off like a too-big sweater, remained twisted in agony.
Though that could be because the ligaments in their jaws have completely disintegrated, he thought.
It only distantly resembled the photos he had seen of the Flight 672 victims and what he remembered of the comatose, rapidly degenerating John Scott. In those cases, it had been precipitous skin decay. Here, it seemed to be the opposite - all the victims still retained their skin, but everything underneath it had shrivelled into almost nonexistence.
The corpses also gave off an odour like baking sewage and raw fish.
And it’s really disturbing that I know that’s not what decaying bodies are supposed to smell like.
As usual, Olivia didn’t seem fazed by it all, which was a bit ironic. She’d been waking him up before dawn for weeks now with morning sickness.
Decayed corpses don’t bother her, but a two inch long not-even-a-baby-yet has her with her head in the toilet. Hell of a woman I’ve attached myself to.
Out loud, he joked, ‘See, that right there? That should make you sick.’
‘What’ve we got?’ Olivia asked Broyles, concerned with the case.
‘It seems all the victims had the moisture sucked out of them. No one can figure out how. It’s especially mystifying considering every witness states the victims spent their last moments trying to imbibe as much fluid as they could.’
‘They chose… poorly,’ Peter murmured under his breath, trying to keep things light while watching Walter hovered in the background, sniffing the air.
‘Witnesses?’ Olivia prompted.
‘Mostly being questioned outside. But that’s not where this gets complicated.’
‘Because instant mummies aren’t complicated?’ Peter quipped.
Broyles shot him one of his usual unimpressed frowns. ‘Because the FBI wasn’t first on the scene. There’s something you should know about the two main witnesses.’
Broyles nodded off to the side, where a tall man with a buzz-cut and wearing a leather jacket was examining one body. He kept pointing things out to the blond beside him - Christ, she couldn’t have been out of high school yet! - who looked like she belonged anywhere but a crime scene.
Olivia seemed to be thinking along the same lines, her eyes lingering on the girl’s jeans and hoodie with a frown, because she asked, ‘Why are they still here?’
‘Because they have the clearance to be here.’
If Peter’s eyebrows hadn’t been raised before, now he felt they were in danger of disappearing into his hair. ‘They have clearance?’
‘Their credentials check out,’ Broyles responded neutrally. ‘Dr Smith there is a CIA consultant, but he’s been granted the highest levels of access among both our agencies for this particular case. Rare, but there’s precedent.’
‘And the kid?’ Peter asked, looking at her watching uncertainly.
‘She’s his intern. Rose Tyler, grad student at Cambridge University.’
‘Pah! Cambridge,’ Walter muttered under his breath.
‘I don’t understand - what’s their interest in this?’ Olivia questioned. ‘This isn’t really CIA jurisdiction - they barely get involved with us. Is there a possible terrorist threat, or overseas ramifications on this one?’ She considered the corpses again. ‘One of theirs involved, maybe?’
‘It’s the CIA,’ Broyles said darkly. ‘They’re keeping it all need-to-know. And as much trouble as you’ll have with that, I’m ordering you to keep things civil on this one, Dunham. If only for the sake of interagency cooperation.’
· Φ ·
‘We’re so getting arrested for this one,’ Rose whispered, hovering nervously over the Doctor as he crouched by one of the bodies.
Although she had gotten used to the psychic paper and the many doors it opened (sometimes in the literal sense), she couldn’t help a sense of unease right then. So far the Doctor had only used the paper to legitimise little white lies that no one bothered to check up anyhow.
This time, the story it had made up took her breath away at its brazenness.
‘What’s wrong?’ the Doctor asked, unaware or uncaring that the brusque FBI Agent named Broyles was pointing them out to three other people Rose bet were also FBI.
‘Oh, you mean except for you telling them I’m some kind of… brilliant uni student?’ Rose hissed back. Her assumed cover story bothered her almost as much as being mistaken for a prostitute by a talking tree. ‘How the hell am I supposed to fake that?’
‘You don’t need to fake it - you already seem frazzled. Students are always stressed, aren’t they? Maybe mix in a little pretentiousness and keep asking for coffee.’
‘Oh, that’s all?!’
‘What else is there?’ He looked like he genuinely didn’t get it. ‘You’re already brilliant, and that’s the important thing.’
And, really, there was nothing to say to that. Which made her a little angrier at him because he was always doing that! One moment being caustic and insulting, the next giving her little heart-warming comments with the sincerity of someone believing they were just pointing out simple, truthful fact.
‘Anyway, I wasn’t talking about that,’ he continued. ‘You’ve been a bit off all night. Most of the day, really. Something’s wrong.’
‘Oh, now is definitely not the time,’ she told him, her cheeks heating up in embarrassment. As if she was going to talk to him about that here! Now! With him!
‘But -?’
‘Oh, shut up, I’ve got to pretend to be brilliant,’ she grumbled with a scowl, and jerked her head in the direction of the bodies. She didn’t want to pay direct attention to them unless she had to. ‘Now tell me everything I need to know about that so I don’t look like a right moppet in front of this lot.’
She threw herself into appearing like she was examining the crime scene, and thankfully he dropped it.
It didn’t change her unease with the situation.
She was completely out of her depth. How was she supposed to fake being some amazingly smart university student when she’d barely gotten her GCSEs? More important than that, how was she supposed to fake that in front of the FBI?
Aren’t they trained to pick liars out of a crowd?
She wanted to throw up again, but this time it had nothing to do with dead bodies or the… other thing.
The nausea got worse when Broyles’ three colleagues wandered over.
‘Just pretend like you own the place,’ the Doctor told her, then straightened up and strode toward the approaching suits with his usual manic grin. ‘Hello! Doctor John Smith - forensic pathologist on retainer with the CIA.’ The daft man had even managed to scare up an American accent to go along with his ruse! ‘This is Rose Tyler, my intern.’
As before, when he’d first shown the paper to Broyles, Rose’s heart felt like it was in danger of climbing up her throat and choking her.
The intense looking blond woman scowled at the paper for a full minute longer than Broyles had.
‘Dr Smith, Miss Tyler - I’m Agent Olivia Dunham,’ she introduced. ‘I’m the lead on this case. This is Peter Bishop -’ She indicated the dark-haired man who smiled a wry greeting, ‘- and Dr Walter Bishop.’
The third person was an older man that looked a bit like Rose’s Grandad Prentice. Unlike her grandfather, who had been sharp as a whip right up until his death, Dr Bishop didn’t seem like he was completely there. He had a noticeable resemblance to the younger man, though, and Rose supposed they must be related. Father and son, most likely.
‘Walter Bishop?’ the Doctor repeated, frowning thoughtfully at something only he could see. ‘Bishop… Bishop… why do I know that name?’
He’s having another Harriet Jones moment, I bet, Rose recognised.
Agent Dunham and the younger Bishop exchanged looks that seemed almost wary, before the Doctor let out a jubilant laugh.
‘Hah! 1973! You wrote an article in that journal - can’t remember the name, but the write-up was brilliant! You scientifically proved breakfast was the most important meal of the day.’
Dr. Bishop blinked, looking surprised and cautiously pleased. ‘Oh…well, yes. I didn’t think anyone had actually read that.’
‘Why wouldn’t they? Your bit on bananas being a staple of the potassium hierarchy? Fantastic! Mind you, that bit about creating a tolerance to lysergic acid diethylamid in children was a bit much, but other than that it’s one of my favourite articles. Keep it in the library next to -’
Agent Dunham and Mr Bishop’s expressions had turned disbelieving, and Rose decided it was time to step in before the Doctor slipped back into his Northern accent in his enthusiasm. ‘Er, Doctor, s’now the time?’
He looked away from Dr Bishop, who he’d been sharing a grin with, and considered their surroundings. His expression became grim as he caught sight of the corpses again. Rose was doing her best not to look at them.
‘Good point, Rose. Mustn’t get off topic.’
‘Have you seen anything like this before?’ Agent Dunham wanted to know, her sharp eyes blatantly studying both of them.
Don’t think she’s really buying the CIA thing, Rose realized with a sinking stomach and scrambled to think of something she could say that wouldn’t sound like a dumb teenager.
‘Depends on what you mean,’ the Doctor answered easily. ‘Weird, unexplained events? Oh, yeah, loads - you couldn’t even imagine. Rapid shrinkage of vital organs beneath the epidermis? Not so much.’
‘How unexplained?’ Dunham asked neutrally.
‘What my partner means, is, are you in any way familiar with the field of fringe sciences?’ Mr Bishop spoke up, looking as exasperated with the woman as Rose felt with the Doctor.
‘Enough to know most people in this time still consider it no more than a pseudoscience,’ the Doctor answered. ‘But we’ve had our experiences with that, haven’t we, Rose? Allotransplantation, living calcium…’
His tone of voice indicated he expected her to chime in at any time, and as her thoughts raced. She had no idea what allotransplantation was, but she knew he was talking about the Slitheen when he mentioned the living calcium. She thought back on some of the things she’d seen since meeting him.
‘Thought control,’ she suggested, remembering what he’d said about the Autons. ‘Oh, and walking corpses…’
He winked at her covertly, and she felt the corner of her mouth twitch upward despite the seriousness of the situation.
‘Thought control?’ Dr Bishop spoke up eagerly. ‘An isolated incident, or over a larger demographic?’
‘Oh, pretty large demographic,’ the Doctor chatted. ‘All of London was affected for a few minutes.’
‘Fascinating!’ Dr Bishop murmured. ‘The relay transmitting the control signal must have been massive, though.’
‘It was the London Eye,’ Rose explained, and this time she did grin at the Doctor. He offered her a mock frown, apparently sensing she was remembering his obliviousness the night of they encountered the Nestene Consciousness.
‘I’m surprised the CIA hasn’t sent more than the two of you,’ Dunham interjected, bringing the discussion back to the present. ‘Usually your people have the area cleaned and dealt with before you even think about reading us in.’
‘Well, it started out rather unofficial, didn’t it?’ the Doctor answered effortlessly. ‘Rose and I were only having dinner at the time of the event, so it’s no surprise the paper-pushers haven’t caught up yet. Only just got the okay to step in on this before you arrived. I’m sure they’ll send over more personnel in a day or so.’
Rose could read the subtext there: the Doctor didn’t intend for this to take longer than a day.
She hoped he was right.
· ΘΣ ·
Even before meeting them, Olivia decided that there was something a bit off about Smith and Tyler.
There wasn’t anything specifically untrustworthy about either one, but she had been fooled before. Her heart still ached when she thought of the shapeshifter that had pretended to be her friend Charlie for several weeks. The conversation with his widow was one which haunted her dreams even years later.
The Tyler girl looked like she should be at a pop-concert, not standing in the middle of a crime scene. As for Smith… he didn’t handle himself like any Central Intelligence Agent she had ever met or worked with.
He seemed unassuming enough upon first glance, perhaps a bit eccentric if his style of clothing was any indication. There was also a presence to him that didn’t quite fit the image he projected. It crackled in his every movement, and Olivia could feel it even standing a few feet away from him. His intensity only dimmed somewhat when he looked at his partner. From the soft and affectionate nature of those glances, she suspected their relationship was more personal than professional.
A mid-life crisis on Smith’s part? Olivia mused and then forced her attention back to the crime scene. Not important right now.
She forced herself to follow the proper procedure, getting Smith and Tyler’s statements and then excusing herself to get the accounts from the FBI agents that had arrived first. Oddly enough, Smith and Tyler left her alone to conduct these interviews; it was odd, considering there was usually an interdepartmental pissing match over priority when the FBI and CIA got together.
She finished going through the usual line of questioning with everyone on her list while Peter backed her up. They ended their interrogations with the maître d’ of the restaurant, looking for any last minute clues that might offer motive.
‘Did they mention anything? Perhaps when they were making the reservations?’ Olivia questioned.
The befuddled man’s head shook from side to side. ‘Nothing of importance, not that I remember. I think they were celebrating a merger of their two companies.’
‘Do you know the names of those companies?’
‘No,’ the man answered apologetically. ‘I think I heard one of the guests mentioned energy bars when I seated them?’
‘Hey, Liv?’ Pete spoke up. He had fallen behind and was fiddling with his phone. ‘I’ve got something.’
He held up the device to show her a picture of an aloof man in his fifties.
‘And this is?’
‘Mummy number seven,’ Peter answered, pointing to the head of the table to one of the most desiccated of the corpses. ‘Also known as Dr Melvin Farkas, the head of BW Pharmaceuticals. Someone just leaked his death online, and it’s making the rounds of the usual social media sites.’
‘Get Astrid to try to track down who made the original post,’ Olivia said, taking the phone and examining the photo. ‘We need to find out if anyone might have wanted Farkas dead, or had issues with his business.’
‘The easier question would be who didn’t,’ Peter answered. ‘The company’s practically known for the amount of ethics violations it’s skirted by, which makes it really strange that an energy bar company would be wanting a merger. With a reputation like that…’
‘All the same, in case that doesn’t pan out, we need to compile a list of all the victims and find out if they had any enemies,’ Olivia determined. ‘Keep an eye out for any individuals or organisations who might have had it in for any of the people who died.’
‘And anyone who might’ve had access to the Ark of the Covenant,’ Peter added.
‘Friend of mine won that in a game of gin rummy.’ Olivia jumped as Smith seemed to appear from nowhere. ‘Also, that’s pretty close to what actually happened to them.’
Peter snorted. ‘Really?’
‘Yep. Had their liquid bits drain right out of them - or, well, evaporate, really.’ He gestured back to the corpses. ‘They were all drinking, right? Some of them even have liquid still in their lungs from trying to chug it down. And I can’t show you without an autopsy, but no doubt when we check the pulmonary veins you’ll find they’re filled with collapsed platelets.’
‘Indicative of dehydration,’ Walter declared, also popping up as if from nowhere. ‘I’d like to further examine the bodies back at the lab. I require a microscope to be sure, but there might be traces of foreign bacteria within what remains of their digestive systems. Those could offer clues to exactly what happened.’ He started taking out several tools he used for taking tissue samples. ‘If we can culture them, we might know for sure…’
‘So what caused it?’ Olivia asked, a bit of a challenge to Smith.
‘Could’ve been a lot of things,’ he admitted. ‘Deployed in a gas form -’
‘Yeah, but that would’ve gotten all of us, too,’ the British girl chimed in. ‘And we’re not all… corpsified.’
Is that a technical term, Olivia wondered vaguely as Smith offered the girl something like a proud look.
‘True,’ he agreed. ‘Maybe whoever did this added something to a specific dish. Easy to drop something in powder form into a soup, though that’s a bit Jonestown for such a public place.’
‘And everyone had different things to eat.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Could there be some other factor, like shared genetic traits?’ Peter spoke up. ‘We worked a case like that a few years ago.’
‘Possible, but unlikely, given the presence of cleft chins in three of the victims and what looks like heterochromia on that one woman,’ Walter spoke up. ‘I can’t be sure, most of her eyeball’s shrivelled to the size of a raisin, but I would say the probability is high.’
Smith nodded, like he had expected this. ‘That said, I think it’s best to ascribe the KISS principle on this one. Obviously it was something they all drank.’
‘That’s right, they were celebrating something,’ Tyler recalled suddenly. ‘All of them would’ve had at least a sip, right?’
She’s at least observant, Olivia decided. Still running a check on them both later.
Walter whirled around to stare at them then, an excited and thoughtful expression on his face. ‘Perhaps it was the catalyst - the trigger of whatever did this.’
‘Alcohol does interfere with the mechanism that regulates the water levels in the human body,’ the Smith agreed.
‘Aren’t restaurants usually really careful with their alcohol, though?’ Tyler was asking, examining the upturned bottle that had fallen from the table. ‘They wouldn’t serve something that’d been opened.’
Olivia’s toe nudge something, and she bent down to inspect it. It was the cork from the bottle of champagne.
‘How was it poisoned if it was sealed?’ Tyler went on.
‘Injected via syringe through the seal,’ Olivia answered as she scrutinised the top of the stopper and then the bottom. There was a pinprick sized hole in the cork. ‘Then they melted it back into place.’
‘Okay, how did you know that?’ Peter wanted to know, sounding a bit impressed.
Olivia offered him a bit of a grin. ‘Saw it in a movie.’
‘Doesn’t mean it’s not possible,’ Smith pointed out. ‘Even probable, I’d say. Bet if you got someone to snoop around back there, you’d even find the syringe.’
‘Only a few people would’ve had access to the wine cellar, and if the champagne was specifically requested we might be able to find out who handled it. At the very least we’ll find out who their server was.’ Olivia directed her next question at Smith. ‘You didn’t happen to notice their waiter, did you?’
‘Nope. Wasn’t facing their table.’
She sent Tyler a questioning stare, but the girl shook her head. ‘Bit busy eating at the time. We didn’t even realise there was anything we should be paying attention to until… well, until it happened.’
Olivia was about to question this - the CIA weren’t in the habit of employing the unobservant - when she noticed something flicker across Smith’s face.
‘So, you didn’t see anything at all?’ she pressed, trying to catch his gaze. ‘No one suspicious hanging around, or…?’
She let the question hang, curious as to whether he would actually answer it or avoid it.
Despite his manic grin and seemingly cheerful disposition, she fully expected the latter. Smith was hiding something, and she doubted it had anything to do with any agency procedure or confidential information.
The question is… what doesn’t’ he want to talk about?
· Φ ·
The Doctor didn’t, as a general rule, trust secret government organisations. It didn’t matter if they were human, alien, past or present. They did all sorts of secretive and dangerous things, usually for money, or worse, in the name of national security.
Under normal circumstances, keeping information from anyone wearing a white hat and calling themselves an authority was his prerogative. No question, need-to-know, it’s for your own good, now stay out of the way while I save your world.
But in this case, the Doctor couldn’t help hesitate.
The bald man he had seen was a calculated murderer at best, and a dangerous temporal anomaly at worst. Either way he would stay and track him down, but if it was the latter case…
Well, that put it under the Doctor’s jurisdiction, to borrow the contemporary jargon.
Add it to the list of thing I need to deal with since the War, he thought ruefully, and definitely over the heads of some trite little human organisation.
On the other hand, this “Fringe Division”, as Agent Broyles had called it, clearly had some kind of exposure to events beyond the norm. It was possible they could shed light on the situation and save him time and effort. He didn’t have the patience or the inclination to investigate the matter from the drawing board.
He levelled with them.
‘There was one diner that wasn’t acting as you’d expect,’ he told them. ‘A group of people start screaming, usually everyone panics. Him, he gets up cool as you please and saunters out of the place like nothing’s happened.’
‘What’d he look like?’ Agent Dunham demanded.
‘Completely bald,’ the Doctor said, and watched as Dunham and the two Bishops suddenly tensed. What have we here? ‘Carried a briefcase, wore a suit and hat - but didn’t seem especially cold despite the temperature. And the bugger could move. I went after him but he disappeared.’
Which also added a tally in the temporal anomaly category because the Doctor was much faster than the average human. Which meant the mystery man was as well.
‘You went after him?’ the younger Bishop exclaimed.
‘You didn’t mention that before,’ Dunham pointed out. She sounded a bit accusing.
‘Figured you’d see it all on whatever security cameras you’ve no doubt seized,’ the Doctor shrugged. ‘Anyhow, who is he?’
‘How would we know?’ the young man asked quickly.
‘Because you’re all acting like I mentioned some horrible family secret when I brought him up,’ the Doctor said. His voice dropped, and he warned them, ‘If this man had anything to do with what went on here tonight, you need to tell me right now. I won’t allow this to happen again.’
Dunham met his gaze for several seconds and then looked away.
‘I’ll have the security feeds brought to me to be sure. But if this was the person I think you’re talking about, I don’t think he was responsible for this attack,’ she said finally. ‘It doesn’t match him MO.’
‘What do you mean?’ the Doctor demanded. ‘You do know him?’
‘Sort of. He’s shown up at a few of our crime scenes, but there’s never anything to tie him to them.’
‘And you didn’t bother to mention that?’ Rose piped up, sounding as annoyed as the Doctor felt.
‘He wasn’t the one responsible for what happened here,’ Dunham insisted.
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Because of his pattern of behaviour. He shows up at what he maintains are significant events, but he doesn’t interfere.’
‘Well, sometimes he does,’ the younger Bishop pointed out, exchanging meaningful looks with his father. ‘But those times usually end up helping us. In a roundabout, really obscure way.’
‘And no one’s tried to, I dunno, find out more about him? Oh, of course not, no doubt for some bureaucratic bit of nonsense or useless reasons such as diplomatic immunity,’ the Doctor snapped.
Honestly, weren’t these people supposed to be the government! He was used to a better class of governmental ineptitude.
‘Hey, pal, we’ve found out plenty -’
‘Anything else, you’ll have to wait until the rest of your paper work comes through,’ Dunham interrupted her partner, pursing her lips at the Doctor. Apparently she was putting her foot down. ‘And you, Dr Smith, if you’ve finished your preliminary investigation, maybe you and your… partner should get back to your agency and debrief them.’
The Doctor glared at her, opening his mouth to tell her how much he didn’t give a damn about paper work, but a hand on his arm stopped him.
Rose’s fingers tightened around his bicep, eyes darting from his face to that of Agent Dunham. She was radiating anxiety again, and he supposed she had good reason. Getting exposed right now would help no one and would waste time.
He nodded tersely and stepped back from the FBI agents.
‘My agency will definitely hear about this,’ he confirmed, voice dark with promise. ‘Trust me when I say this matter is going straight to the highest authority.’
· ΘΣ ·
NEXT CHAPTER