he spoke, his other hand reached into his suit pocket and pulled out the plastic bag, holding it up with narrowed eyes. “Well, we’re not entirely sure. We’ve never seen such a thing before—it looks like some kind of reptile scale. But far bigger than any species in known existence—” He stopped, as if the voice on the other end had cut him off, and the gleam in his eyes grew brighter. “All right, then. We won’t do anything until you get here. Thank you.”
“Clever,” Jade remarked as he lowered the phone. Riley snorted.
“I just know how Talon works, is all.” He stuffed the phone and the scale into his pocket again and leaned back in smug satisfaction. “If Miranda’s job is to cover this up and make all evidence of dragons disappear, something like this is going to light a fire under her tail like nothing else. She’ll be desperate to get to that evidence before Talon hears about it. We should see her anytime now. Like a bat out of hell.”
Less than two minutes later, the hotel doors opened and the Chameleon and a single guard strode across the lot, setting an even brisker pace toward the car, the assistant scrambling along in their wake. The woman’s normally smiling face was taut as she entered the passenger side and slammed the door shut. As the guard opened the driver’s side, the assistant nearly tripped over himself getting into the car. The sedan backed hastily out of the parking spot, barely missing the hood of a truck as it did, and peeled out of the lot.
Riley snickered and straightened in his seat again. “And that,” he remarked, watching the sedan turn onto the road, cutting off a van as it merged into traffic, “is how you freak out a Chameleon. But we do need to hurry, before she realizes ‘Mr. Smith’ is no longer at the crash site.”
“One of her guards wasn’t with her,” Garret observed. Riley nodded.
“Yep. Which means he’ll be in her room, just like I thought.” He turned to Jade, who seemed perfectly calm and serene, even as my heart was pounding with nerves and anticipation. “All right, O great and mysterious shen-lung,” he stated, and waved his hand at the hotel. “It’s all yours.”
Jade nodded. Taking off the suit jacket, she laid it over the back of her seat. Her heels followed, and then her earrings, being placed carefully in the cup holders as we looked on in bewilderment. “How long will you need to be in the room?” she asked, unbuttoning the cuffs of her white shirt. Riley blinked.
“Uh, not long,” he said, watching her finish with the sleeves and unbutton the top. “Five minutes, at most.”
The Eastern dragon nodded. “Give me ten minutes,” she said, and left the car. We watched her walk barefooted across the parking lot, pulling the tie from her bun as she did, and enter the hotel through the front doors. Riley shook his head and glanced back at Garret.
“If this goes spectacularly to hell,” he told him, “I’m blaming you. You realize that.”
The soldier just smiled grimly.
Ten long, tense minutes later, Riley blew out an explosive breath and reached for the door handle. “Okay,” he announced far too brightly. “Let’s go see if our Eastern princess has managed to eat anyone.”
We cautiously entered the hotel and made our way through the long aisles toward room 318. Along the way, a maid stepped out of one of the rooms, pushing a cart, and Riley quite literally ran into it. He tumbled to the floor with a yelp, and the poor maid began a string of rapid apologies, rushing over and asking if he was all right, while Garret and I looked on in confusion. Riley, picking himself up off the floor, suddenly switched to perfect, fluent Spanish, making soothing motions with his hands and, from what I could tell, assuring her he was fine. He said something that made her laugh, and then she thanked him and walked away, pushing the cart down the hall again. I stared after her, then at the rogue, who seemed very pleased with himself.
“What the hell was that?” I demanded. “I’ve seen you move, and there’s no way that was an accident. You ran into her on purpose, didn’t you?”
Riley grinned, dusted off his pants and then held up a card between two fingers.
“I was going to say I left my key card in the room and could she please open the door for me,” he admitted as we quickly moved toward the elevators. “That’s always worked in the past. But I figured this might be faster.”
“Risky,” Garret remarked. “What if you couldn’t lift it without getting caught?” Riley smirked.
“I don’t get caught, St. George. Now, let’s get to Miranda’s room before anything else happens.”
We took the elevator to the third floor and easily found room 318. The hallway was silent, and no sounds or light came from the room beyond the door. Riley cast furtive glances over his shoulder, making sure no one was around, and raised the card he took from the maid.
“All right,” he said in a low voice. “Here goes. Let’s see if that Eastern dragon actually did what she said she could.”
He slid the key into the slot. It beeped green, and we pushed the door open.
The room beyond was empty.
Riley let out a breath, and beside me, Garret relaxed. I slumped in relief, letting muscles that had tensed up for a fight uncoil. “Okay.” The rogue nodded, shutting the door behind us. “I don’t know how she did it, but I’m not complaining. Let’s find that evidence and see if we can discover what Talon is up to. But remember,” he warned as we stepped farther inside. “Try not to disturb anything. We don’t want Miranda knowing we were here. Let’s find what we’re looking for and get the hell out.”
That sounded like a good idea. The hotel room wasn’t large, and we did a sweep of the place fairly quickly. There was nothing in the main room or the bathroom, but when Riley pulled open the closet door...
“Dammit,” he muttered, gazing at several cardboard boxes stacked neatly in the corner. They were taped, sealed shut, with shipping labels stuck to the sides. “Well, here’s the evidence, but we can’t get inside to look at it. Not without Miranda knowing we were here. Where are they sending these? I wonder.” He pulled one of the boxes toward him and looked at the address on top. “NewTech,” he growled, and shook his head. “Son of a bitch, there’s another lab. Firebrand, grab me a piece of paper or something, would you? Looks like we to need to check this place out. Maybe Wes can find something on them.”
I hurried to the desk in the corner and reached for the complimentary notepad sitting beside the phone, then hesitated. The Chameleon’s laptop lay open and dark on the surface of the desk, a mug of coffee cooling beside it. As if she might have been working on something and had to rush off before she could complete it.
I reached for the touchpad and jiggled the screen to life, bringing up a page with an unsent email across the surface.
Mr. Hill, the top line read.
My stomach turned to ice. I sank into the chair, scanning the rest of the message as the cold spread to every part of my body.
I have arrived on scene, the email read. Per Talon’s orders, all evidence at the “crash site” has been gathered and logged accordingly. The human officials are all too willing to accept the cover story, as they have no idea what they are dealing with. They know something unnatural happened, but so far their posited explanations range from the mundane to the absurd. I believe the organization to be in no danger of discovery. As you requested, the first boxes of
