Chapter Three
Jacob Crow shoved the sleeves of his thermal shirt up on his forearms as he came out of the hallway and glanced around the main room of the silo bunker his clan was currently using as their safe house. He was heading toward the fridge on the other side of the room when David Sharpe came through the door that led from the kitchen to the garage.
Jake saw the file in David’s hand and stopped short. Dave gave him a sidelong look, continued to the recessed main sitting area, and tossed the file onto the coffee table.
“You sure about this?” Dave asked as he crashed onto the sofa and kicked his booted legs up onto the table. He draped his arms over the back of the couch. “Last chance to back out and play fair like a gentleman.”
Jake gave him a heartless smirk and grabbed two beers from the fridge, tossing him one.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” said Dave. He put the heel of his boot on the file and quickly slid it across the table as he twisted the top off his beer.
Jake sat down opposite him, legs wide, elbows on his knees, open beer dangling lazily from between his fingers. He eyed the file warily for a moment. Inside held everything he wanted to know about Angela Clemens, a warden from the Vega clan.
“You work fast, Sharpe,” he said, glancing up. They’d only finished the Vicium Mehemii job a few days ago, and it had been exceedingly difficult to crack. Eventually they’d pinned the mark down in Manhattan masquerading as one Victor Maze, the CEO and president of a large, powerful corporation called Maze Industries. Sharpe had been occupied nearly twenty-four seven with research Jake had asked him to look into for that job because it was priority one. Anything handed down directly from all twenty-six of the sovereigns like that took precedence over everything else, period.
Yet, just a few days after the job was done, here was Dave with a complete work-up of Angela Clemens. It almost pissed Jake off. It made him feel jealous for some reason. As if David had encroached on his territory by simply doing what Jake asked of him.
Dave grinned like he knew what Jake was thinking. “Time flies when you’re having fun. I had a very interesting subject.”
Jake’s gaze narrowed to warning slits, but his lips curled.
David laughed. “It still took a bit longer than I’d have preferred, though. A lot of this shit was really locked up tight.” He took his feet off the table and leaned forward, holding Jake’s gaze. “Your girl is something special.”
Jake put his beer down and picked up the file. He hesitated in opening it, though.
Dave laughed again, leaning back against the couch. “Getting cold feet, I see.” He took a long pull from his beer, then said, “I’ll give you a rundown if you want.”
Jake watched him silently.
Dave took it as a green light. “In there, you’ll find one Angela Clemens, formerly Angela Ortega. Angel, as she’s known to family and friends, is thirty-five years old, five-foot-five, all muscle, with dark brown hair and big, beautiful dark brown eyes.” He smiled a sharp smile at Jake, revealing a peek of fang just for fun.
Jake just looked at him.
Dave gleefully took that as a sign that he was getting under Jake’s skin, and actually he was right. “She’s an orphan. Her parents died due to injuries sustained in a car accident when she was seventeen. She spent seven months in foster care, then left town.”
She’s an orphan. Jake’s chest felt strange. It seemed every day, he found another reason to be impressed with Angel’s strength.
“She loves classic muscle cars, ice hockey, and –”
“Moonlit walks on the beach?” Jake quipped, his patience growing short. Suddenly it thoroughly irritated him that David knew so much about Angel. Fuck. He really was jealous.
Dave laughed. “Fine. She’s been a warden in the Vega clan for fifteen years and is currently second-in-command and lead trainer. She’s trained in tracking, hand-to-hand, and long-range with a variety of weapons, but her specialty is marksmanship. She’s Vega’s sharp shooter, but prefers handguns to rifles.”
Jake asked, “Is there anything she can’t do?”
“I’m pretty sure she can’t cook,” Dave shot back with a smile. “She’s a TV and film buff, the kind who manages to memorize every line after seeing something once. The Empire Strikes Back is her favorite, FYI. And she always eats while she’s watching the screen, but she never cooks a damn thing. She pretty much survives on take-out, delivery, and fortified protein bars. I’d say two-thirds the last one.”
Jake shook his head, but smiled as Dave continued.
“Her only living relative is her brother, who’s a year younger. He, his wife, and their three kids live in the Twin Cities. He’s a CPA. They’re estranged from Angel, and he has absolutely no clue what she does for a living. They haven’t talked in more than a decade.”
“Minnesota?”
“Yep. She was born there.”
It had actually been a while since he’d met someone from his home state. He wondered at the coincidence of that.
“She’s had seven broken bones and two surgeries. She’s got two dental implants and is currently missing a back tooth, scheduled for her next implant.”
None of this was surprising, much less alarming to Jake. It was standard wear and tear for a warden, and he hadn’t failed to notice the bruise across Angel’s cheek during the initial meetings with the sovereigns. He wouldn’t soon forget it, in fact. Fortunately for the man who’d given it to her, he was already dead.
“You said her last name was Ortega,” Jake said, going back. That was something interesting. He met Dave’s eyes.
Dave ran a hand through his hair and said, “I’ll get to it, I promise.” Then he returned to the file summary, giving Jake all of the pertinent information up front. The rest, such as food and drink favorites, sleeping patterns, and shit like that would still be in the folder.
“Typical warden pharmaceutical line-up,” said Dave. “Benchmark chronic pain meds and occasional muscle relaxers or sedatives. She takes vitamins, along with prescriptions for thyroid and supplements for anemia. In-house PC and surgeon, of course.”
The warden-specific surgeon and PC were also orthodox for wardens. Many of them were not human, and what happened to them was certainly far from human, so it all had to be kept under wraps. The pain meds were part of the warden Bible, and in fact he usually smelled narcotics in a warden’s system. Wardens had learned a long time ago that between pain and narcotics, the thing that distracted you from the job more was pain. It made you angry, and when you were angry, you became aggressive. Itchy trigger fingers, unnecessary and reckless movements, rash decisions that put people at risk – these were the yardstick measurements of a warden who’d neglected to deal with their pain. Even the CIA, NSA and FBI had learned long ago that torture only made a prisoner insubordinate; the real way to get information from someone was to make them comfortable. Really comfortable. It worked almost every time.
But what got Jake’s attention a little here were the thyroid and anemia. “What happened with her thyroid?”
“Cancer at seventeen. It was removed entirely. A specialist went in surgically behind the ear, so there’s no scar.”
Jake processed that, cataloguing it with everything else. “And the anemia – you said she takes something, but you didn’t say what. What type of anemia?”
“That’s unclear,” he replied, sighing. “Her medical records become painfully hazy there, an obvious well-done cover-up. Something happened to her around a decade and a half ago, just before she joined Vega. I’m sorry to say I don’t have enough intel on it. All I could make out was that she was anemic. I’m fairly certain Vega’s clan warden is personally responsible for getting rid of the information, probably to keep his warden safe. But I would guess it’s a normocytic iron deficiency.”
“You mean from blood loss.” Jake hazarded.
Dave gave a nod. “It would make sense. She’s a warden, it’s a damn dangerous job, and the anemia comes and goes. She handles it though. She’s an exceptional warden, ridiculously gifted, never misses a detail. A bi-product of this is that she’s always up to the minute on her meds.” He paused and ruminated, pursing his lips as he slowly twisted the bottle between his hands. “But I think it’s partly that she feels the need to be on top of everything, and at all times.”
Jake’s lips curled into a smile. “A control freak,” he provided softly, musing. He understood the type well. Normally they were people who’d felt terribly out of control during some formative portion of their lives, and were subconsciously attempting to make up for it in the years since.
“Yeah.” Dave sighed, shaking his now empty bottle before getting up to get another.
David Sharpe was a rare type of being known as a Withered. He could be likened to a zombie, minus the gross decomposition and lack of intelligence. For years, Dave was the only one Jake knew existed. Earlier that month however, another had appeared, a teenager who’d made a surprising and impressive transformation after first dying in an explosion.
In the days since, approximately a dozen more had popped up on the radar. Like a spreading wildfire, they were in effect quickly forming their own new supernatural faction, and at their head was the rather dubious, more than a little infamous “undead” warlock, Darryl Maelstrom.
The Withered came from all walks of life, or rather afterlife, but one thing they seemed to have in common was a love of alcohol. They could go through it like water, and it never seemed to effect them. They were capable of drinking anyone under the table, even werewolves.