Twist of Fae by Tom Keller Read Free Book Online

he faced me. "Other than you playing tackle
with one of their SWAT guys, I mean? Good job on that, by the way."
    "Thanks, but what do you mean by strange?" I
asked, doing my best not to appear uncomfortable by the question.
    "Anything out of the ordinary, then?"
    "No, not really," I replied. I wasn't one to keep
secrets from my office, but having visions wasn't something I was eager to
disclose. Nikki had mentioned that she'd had an interesting day as well, but I
hadn't wanted to discuss it with her on the phone. "Best we can tell, our
suspect's sister was sleeping with their suspect, and directing him as to what
to steal. We found a shopping list in her car. She'd parked it in the
construction zone across the street. I doubt he even knew who he was ultimately
stealing the parts for. We did get some good leads on him, though. The
Sacramento office is working on it."
    "Anything about it look like it would have kicked off
an EAB contact?" he asked.
    "EAB?" I asked, surprised. "No, not that I
can think of. Everyone involved is home grown and there's nothing I found that
links these guys to anyone other than locals."
    The EAB was one of those specialized units that nobody liked
to deal with. At the very least, the agents were hard cases and never told you
anything about what they were up to. They only came in on certain cases, but
nobody was ever really sure what the criteria was for the cases they did come
in on. But they almost always involved multiple dead bodies and usually not
ones shot by the police.
    There were also rumors. Rumors that they might be involved
in hunting down weird stuff, like a modern day Project Blue Book. I'd dealt
with them in the past but nothing I could think of would be of interest to them
in this case. Except, of course, for the visions, and I hadn’t told anyone
about them, not even Nikki. "What's the EAB want on a case like
this?"
    "If I knew I wouldn’t be asking you, now would I?"
he replied, tapping a pen on his desk. "Anyway, doesn’t matter. Grab your
gear and head over to the airport office. Whatever's come up, someone at the
EAB wants you involved. That's all I know, so don’t even bother asking me for
more."
    "Alright," I replied.
    "… and Jay," he said with a concerned look on his
face. "Watch your back out there."
    "Always," I replied. What the hell had I stepped into
this time?

Chapter 5
     
    N IKKI
     
    I was finishing some processing in the lab, trying to catch
up on my case load, when the phone rang. It was my 'in' day, so the last thing
I expected was a call from my supervisor.
    "Nikki," I said as I answered the wall phone above
the desk.
    "Nik, it's Al. Can you come into my office?"
    "I'm up to my neck in blood stains," I replied.
"Can you give me a half hour?"
    "No, I need you now," he said.
    "Al, I've got half a clothing store spread out over the
tables. It's gonna take me a few just to be able to get out of the lab," I
said, irritated at the interruption.
    "I'm sorry, Nik," he replied. "I just got a
call from the Sheriff's office and I need to see you now. Retta hasn’t gone
into the field yet, maybe can she help."
    "A tower caper?" I said. "Yeah, I guess
she'll be ok. We worked most of these cases together anyway. Alright, I'll see you
as soon as I can."
    A tower caper was a call from the Sheriff's office that
usually meant he wanted something handled personally, and fast. It was nothing
nefarious. Usually it just meant that the media or some commissioner was
already all over a case and he wanted to be kept informed. But sometimes you
got special attention if you'd done something to irritate him.
    But why me? I hadn't pissed anyone off lately that I knew of,
and I certainly hadn't told anyone about the birds. I picked up the evidence from
the cases that were mine alone and locked them in my secure locker. I was irritated
by the backlog I wasn't going to get to once again, but there wasn't anything I
could do about that at the moment. I'd also hoped to have some down time