Honestly, he reminds me of… me.
Which makes this next step much easier.
“Hi there,” I say brightly, closing the office door behind me. And then I pepper-spray him.
He launches out of his chair like a cat with its tail on fire. His knees clip the desk and he falls over backward, the chair crashing down with him. He tries to stagger upright, clawing at his stinging eyes.
A nice person would’ve let him have a moment.
I whack him upside the head with the baton. He falls again, moaning and dazed and half blinded—but still alive. I look him over. There’s no ringware on his fingers, no visor, and no weapons.
Holding the baton in one hand, I use the other to scour the desk for anything useful. There’s an electronic picture frame featuring Matthew and two young kids, a half-empty coffee cup, a ball of rubber bands, a permanent marker, and a half-used roll of duct tape.
I seize Bud’s arms and quickly duct-tape them behind his back. Then I do the same for his ankles. At least now he can’t run.
“What the hell,” he rasps.
“If you scream, I will knock you unconscious and dump you in the pool,” I say pleasantly.
“Who are you?” Bud gazes at me, squinting as though trying to focus through immense pain. He snorts—and then he hacks up a gob of saliva, spitting it on the floor.
I skip back. “Oh, that’s disgusting.”
“You pepper-sprayed me in the face,” he says accusingly.
“You’re a murderer,” I snap back.
He tries to sit up, a difficult task with his arms bound behind him. “Oh, no. I killed no one. I am strictly here for tech support.”
“Oh, yes,” I retort. “You came here to commit a crime and someone ended up dead. That’s textbook felony murder.”
I should know.
He snorts again. “What are you, the world’s youngest lawyer?” He blinks. “Where did you come from?”
“I’m asking the questions here.” I point the baton at him.
Bud appears unimpressed. “You’re a teenager with a stick. You’re not gonna kill me.”
“I could,” I say. “I’ve got full immunity at the moment.”
The problem with employing criminals is that… well, we’re criminals. Which can cause problems when we’re working on behalf of a federal agency. If ISD ends up with a serial killer gleefully going on a new spree, that would be bad for their image. So part of the deal for any wraith is that if we commit a crime—outside of our work with ISD—then we can have our contract yanked. On assignments, weget a certain amount of flexibility. We can weave the line of legality… but we can’t just pole-vault over it. Things like murder are still frowned upon.
But for this job, the only thing that matters is retrieving that mysterious government property. Prefect made that perfectly clear.
“Wait…” Bud frowns and I can see the thoughts running behind his reddened eyes. “You—you’re a wraith.”
I don’t know how to react to that.
“I—uh,” I say eloquently.
“You’re working with them.” He squints at me. “You’re so young. I thought they didn’t recruit that young. Makes sense, though, with this job.”
For some reason, I always thought an interrogation would bedifficult.
“Well, of course,” I say. “They needed me for this. Uh, job. Because I’m young.” Even as I speak, my brain is racing. A lot of people don’t believe in wraiths. We’re one part boogeyman and one part action hero. Those who are in the know look at us like we’re badly trained attack dogs. That I find more understandable—after all, most wraiths are felons. Those not in the know think we’re a rumor, a conspiracy theory. So why the hell is Bud unsurprised to find a wraith in this building?
“How much do you know?” I ask. Might as well be blunt.
