Gale Force Page 0,43

alive was serious business these days. I'd fought beside him, and he knew that when the situation got dire, I'd be there.

Still. A little verbal hug might have been . . . nice. I replaced the receiver, listened to the machine swallow my quarter deeper into its gear guts, and peered around the corner of the scratched plastic bubble. The reporters were still there, trying to solicit comments from uncooperative cops. They were also talking to diner patrons. I hoped nobody had any creative explanations that involved magic.

David came out of the diner, hands in the pockets of his long olive-drab coat. He didn't look happy. Wind caught the tail of the coat as he strode toward me, giving him an almost princely magnificence, but I doubted anybody but me noticed except for some of the waitresses, who were still acutely David-oriented.

"I didn't find anything," he said as he reached me.

"Are you all right?" He knew I wasn't. It was a pro forma question, but I especially liked that it was accompanied by a gentle brush of his fingertips along the line of my cheek.

"Fine," I said. He held my gaze.

"Really?"

"No." I gave him a very small smile that felt crooked and unsteady on my lips. "That was - unpleasant."

"I know," he said, and looked down at my hands. They were clean - the cops had allowed me to wash up - but I still felt the psychic imprint of blood on them. "It could just as easily have been you."

"Maybe," I said. "I don't think so, though. There was something that made him vulnerable to them, maybe a link they'd created to keep track of him through the aetheric. It pushed us out of the way and went straight for him. If they'd been able to take me out the same way, don't you think they would have done it?"

I couldn't tell if it had occurred to him or not; David was being extraordinarily secretive at the moment. He gazed at me for a couple of seconds, then turned his attention to the reporters. "We should get out of here," he said.

"Do you know who was behind it?" I asked.

"If I did, would I tell you right now?" he asked, all too reasonably. "But I think you already know."

"If we can believe Lee, it was the Sentinels," I said. "How come I'm on their hit list when I barely know their oh-so-pretentious name?"

"Because of me," he said. "Let's get out of here. I'd like it if you were a less stationary target."

"Cops want to talk to you."

David took my arm, a sweet gentlemanly gesture that didn't exactly fool me. He walked me in the direction of the Mustang, which was currently an awkward bastard stepchild of a convertible, what with all the glass scattered in glittering square pieces on the ground. "I don't want to talk to them," he said. He opened the driver's-side door. "I'll let you drive."

"Bribery, pure and simple. You're bribing me to do something illegal."

"What's illegal about it? It's your car. You already talked to the police. You're not guilty of anything."

Well, he did have a point. But I still felt uneasy, driving away under the noses of cops and television cameras. "We'll be seen," I said, and nodded toward the news crews. David didn't bother to glance their way.

"We won't." Only a Djinn could sound that confident. Or arrogant. I supposed if I didn't love him so much it would have been just a shade more on the arrogant side. "If we get entangled here, more lives are at risk. We need to be moving, Jo."

Djinn were nothing if not ruthlessly logical. And they weren't above hitting the pressure points, even on those they cared about.

I silently got behind the wheel of the Mustang. It started up with a low rumble. Nobody looked in our direction. "Repairs," I reminded David. The broken remains of our windshields and windows rose up in a glittering curtain from the pavement, liquefied into a pool in each open area, and then solidified into clean, clear safety glass. I checked that the driver's-side window rolled down, and it functioned perfectly.

"I'm disappointed in you," David said. "You believe I'd do it wrong?"

"I think that you have enough to think about already, " I said. "His van's still in the way."

Moving a working crime scene would have been a puzzle even to one of the most powerful Djinn on Earth, but David was a lateral thinker; he didn't bother to