Page 16 of Rarely Pure and Never Simple
After another slurped mouthful of noodles, Damien sighed. "I don't work with a partner. I've always done these things alone."
"Yeah, she explained that.Andsaid I needed you to take lead. She knows you best. But I don't fucking think she meant me to do thisblind." Blaze slammed his palm on the table. "Damn it, Damien! Talk to me. I'm not the enemy."
"It's not…" Damien whispered. "I don't…"
Great. The feral cat came out from under the porch, but won't take the food."How much are the dues?"
"Dues?"
"To the Greater North American Paranoia Club. Oh, wait. You probably don't trust each other enough to send money."
Damien shook his head on another slurp of noodles, one corner of his mouth twitching up. "I'm sorry you've been saddled with someone so dysfunctional. But that's one of the reasons they never placed me in one of the Academies. I don't work and play well with others."
"Clearly." Blaze drummed his fingers on the table, the prickles of his temper threatening to ignite.He'll share details as he sees fit, Dr. Parma had said. But Blaze just couldn't work like this. "Is it some top secret thing, why you haven't shared the case file? I know what I heard in the conference room and I've seen the pics, but aside from that? You're making me solve puzzles just to catch up."
Somehow, Damien managed a penetrating stare while shoveling in the remainder of his second helping of noodles. He put the bowl down, poured himself a cup of tea, gulped it down, and repeated that three times, all while staring at Blaze. Finally, he sat back against the padded bench seat, his gaze sliding away while he straightened dishes and utensils again.
"The first two kids disappeared at winter break," he began so softly Blaze had to lean in to hear. "School staff put them on a train. Both sets of parents claim they never got home. The next three, same thing. Family members put them on transport to get back to school. Kids never got there."
"Okay, but all the transport's monitored. Something should've showed. Someone would've seen something."
"The investigative reports say no. They found nothing." Damien carefully aligned the salt and pepper shakers, frowned, straightened the cap on the pepper, and realigned. "That tells us one of several things. Possibility one: the investigators were incompetent."
"Always possible."
"Yes. I've run across this pair before, though, and I know they're thorough."
"So the second possibility. You're thinking cover-up?"
Damien's hands settled, fingers laced. "Which could mean anything. The school administrators. An outside agency. A criminal syndicate. The government." His fingers tightened, white-knuckled. "The Guild."
That set Blaze back. He attacked his chicken, ripping into the pieces as if they had offended him. "I'm not Guild."
"I know. But you're an independent investigator. You could be working for anyone."
Blaze stopped his campaign against the enemy chicken. "But you trust me at your back."
Damien blinked, doubt creeping into his unreadable expression. "Yes. I suppose I do."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
"You don'tknow?" Exasperated, Blaze fought the tingle in his fingers that preceded sparks. Losing his temper now would probably set them back weeks that they didn't have. "Look. If I'd wanted to kill you, I'd have done it a dozen times by now. You're sure as shit annoying enough. I bet lots of people've thought of it before me. If I wanted to slow you up or foul the investigation, I haven't done a good job of that so far, have I?"
He waited for the slow, deliberate shake of Damien's head.
"And if I was one of the bad guys—which, all right, I'm bad as hell—but I'm not the villain in this little drama. I'd already know all the info in the case file."
Damien's gaze had steadied again, that piercing, detached stare that probably made most people's skin crawl.
"And if I'm not the bad guy, which I'm not, that must mean I'm actually here to help you, dumbass. So either way, letting me in on the details won't fuck you over."
"I don't usually—"
"Nothing about this case is usual."
After half a sigh, Damien poured himself another cup of tea. The man's bladder was going to explode. "I didn't mean… I didn'tsayyou were the bad guy. A hypothetical. A long-shot possibility. I'll give you the case file to read. When we stop for the night."
