Page 37 of Flesh and Fury
It was Invictus and Severin’s turn to laugh. “We established carrier pigeon communication with the I.S.R. years ago,” Severin said. “They don’t fly all the way up to our caves. They never go anywhere near our mountain. There’s a coop at the base of the mountain in Redding. Historically, we always used this method to communicate with the Agency. As we said, we used to be on closer terms with the I.S.R., many years ago. It’s been a while, though.”
“But how did you know there’d be a message waiting?” Ari asked.
“We figured your chief would be in touch when we were needed, so a month or so ago, we started checking the coop every few days. Two days ago, a message turned up and we left our mountain and started driving.”
“You didn’t fly or something?” Eoghan asked.
“Oh, definitely not. That would have been too dangerous. We do have an enemy as you witnessed for yourselves.”
Eoghan watched Ari reach up and touch the side of his face and hair where the enemy dragon had burned him. He remembered with dread how scary it had been to see the fire-breathing dragon attempt to roast Ari alive. It had been downright terrifying to see one dragon drop him only to be caught by another. Those minutes as he’d imagined Ari falling to earth, burning alive, had been one of his worst memories since he’d embarked upon this path with the I.S.R.
“I remember feeling like I was gonna die,” Ari said.
“And I remember feeling grateful that you didn’t,” Eoghan said. He looked deeply into his lover’s eyes for a few seconds before clearing his throat and forcibly dragging his gaze away from his, afraid that he was wearing his emotions on his sleeve. He probably was.
“I would have found that terrifying, Sapphire,” the chief said. “But we’re on to bigger and better things.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Eoghan said, grateful he could look at the table and hopefully he hadn’t given anything away in his glances or voice. Keeping Ari Brown as a secret lover as well as a partner was becoming harder and harder the longer he had to do it.
“Yes, well, as I told you during our last phone exchange, I have been assembling people I can trust here on my end to help with our cause,” the chief said. “Thanks to King John…who finally contacted me through a very strange Hispanic woman who showed up at my home one night several weeks ago, he suggested three other shifter reservations who might cooperate with us. He says they’re now on board to help in his cause. I’ll need to have you vet these, Sapphire…Brown.”
“What do you mean, vet them, ma’am?” Eoghan asked.
“He says they’ve done business together in the past and they’re friends but we have to be sure. Two are based in Colorado, one in Wyoming,” she replied. “We don’t think Tillis Bradshaw’s tendrils or that of his organization have reached that far, but we don’t want to be surprised when we are suddenly faced with wolves in the chicken coop.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Eoghan said. “You want us to go there and meet with these shifters?”
She nodded. “I’m going to task you to visit the ones in Colorado and ask our friends Severin and Invictus to go to Wyoming.” She glanced at the dragons. “Go ahead, tell them and then we have to wrap this up.”
Severin nodded. “I found a keystroke logger in your chief’s computer here at the office this morning. She already believed that every communication and email was being monitored and she was right.”
“Someone put a—” Ari started. “How’d that happen? Here in the office?”
“I don’t know but it had to have happened in the last couple of days. When Night was on my computer performing routine maintenance two days ago, it wasn’t there. This really is a good thing,” Priest said, trying to sound reassuring to Eoghan’s ears, but she was clearly affected judging by how haunted she looked. “We’ve all known someone has been monitoring me here in the office,” she said. “They’ve just become much more aggressive about it.”
“How could someone get into your office without your knowledge? There’re cameras in every corridor including the bullpen right outside your office,” Ari said. “Aren’t there?”
Oddly enough, she smiled slightly. “Yes, and according to Night, footage of my office from the cameras in the last two days has been erased which means someone either here in the office or at the Agency headquarters in Washington is responsible for erasing it. She’s tracking that also.” She paused and looked at everyone. “Come on. Don’t look so glum. Surprisingly, I wouldn’t call this a bad thing at all. It just means whoever they have spying on me—” She waved a finger around the table in a circle, encompassing all of them. “And us…is fucked once we figure it all out and call in the full force of the I.S.R.” She paused, sucking in a deep breath. “We will be successful, gentlemen.”
Or die trying, Eoghan thought.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t believe the chief’s courage. At what felt like incredibly risky circumstances, she’d gone on, finding one ally after another without them knowing a thingabout it until now. “Okay, Chief,” Eoghan said. “We get it. When do you want us to leave and who are we meeting?”
“You fly out tonight,” Priest said. “You’ll be meeting Rana Fields from the Falcon, Colorado reservation, located right outside of Colorado Springs. She’s your contact at the tribal police out there. When you meet with her, she’ll introduce you to the other tribe in Denver. That tribe isn’t so easy to deal with and even though Andy Red Crow says he’s willing to help, he’s young and impulsive. Rana says it’s best to have an ally and since Red Crow knows her, she thinks an introduction is the best way in.”
“Is he the tribal council leader or what?” Ari asked.
“He’s the new chief. His father recently passed away. He just turned nineteen so he’s heavily dependent on guidance from his elders and he doesn’t necessarily like to follow every suggestion they make even though obviously, they’re older and wiser than him, Rana says. She thinks it’s his youth and inexperience making a lot of decisions for him. She fears that possibly the real reason he agreed to help the I.S.R. is just to show his elders he’s in charge, capable of filling his father’s shoes. Still, Denver is a huge reservation and very wealthy due to Indian gaming.”
“This guy sounds shaky, boss,” Eoghan said.
“Yes, but we need the numbers he’ll bring to the table if he’s actually being genuine. Andy Red Crow has a lot to lose if Tillis Bradshaw gets his way. Denver isn’t that far away from other affected cities where we know Bradshaw is taking power and they have a synthetic blood plant as well,” Priest said.
“Are we sure we know everywhere Bradshaw has laid down tracks?” Severin asked.
They all turned to the big dragon. The orange fire around his irises was disconcerting to Eoghan, and if he and Ari hadn’tmet him before and broken bread with him, he would have been completely freaked out by it.
“One of our IT personnel has been on this project ever since we started,” the chief said.