Windfall Page 0,20
Thomas Quinn," he said. Which I'd already figured out.
Too bad I knew exactly what had happened to Detective Thomas Quinn. And there was no way on earth I could talk to this guy about it.
"Thomas Quinn?" I didn't want to out-and-out lie, but the truth was a nonstarter. "Sorry, I don't think I know the name."
Rodriguez opened up a folder stuck in the side pocket of his driver's side door and slid out a collection of photos-grainy, obviously off of surveillance cameras. Me, in a black miniskirt, being escorted by Detective Thomas Quinn.
"Want to try that one again?" he asked.
"I hear everybody has a double," I said. "Maybe you've got the wrong girl."
"Oh, I don't think so."
"Prove it."
"You drive a blue Dodge Viper. Funny thing-we had a report of a blue Dodge Viper driving away from an area in the desert where Quinn's SUV was found burned." His dark eyes kept their level stare on me. "His truck was destroyed, like somebody had loaded it up with dynamite, but we didn't find any trace of explosives."
I lifted one shoulder, let it fall, and just looked at him. He looked back.
After a moment, he let one corner of his mouth lift in a slow, predatory smile.
It didn't soften the harsh, hard eyes.
Quinn had managed to look coplike and friendly at the same time. Rodriguez just looked coplike, and didn't bother with any warm-and-fuzzy bullshit to make me feel better.
"Quinn was a friend of mine," he said softly. "I intend to find out what happened to him. If anybody did him harm, I'm going to see that that person suffers for it. You understand me?"
"Oh, I understand," I said. "Good luck with that."
Any friend of Quinn's was definitely not going to be a friend of mine.
I pushed off from the car and walked away, heels clicking, hair ruffling in the breeze. It was hot and turning sticky, but that wasn't what was making the sweat run cold down my back.
In retrospect, becoming a television personality probably hadn't been the best career choice I ever made, when a cop was missing and presumed dead, and I'd been the last one to be seen with him. Guess I should've thought of that. I'd spent too much time in the Wardens, where things got taken care of, and frictions with the rest of the mortal world were smoothed over with influence and cash and-sometimes-judicious use of Djinn.
Shit. I wondered about the Viper now. Since I'd actually stolen it off of a car lot in Oklahoma. Was it listed as hot? Or had Rahel, my friendly neighborhood free-range Djinn, taken care of erasing it from the records? She hadn't bothered to mention it. I wasn't sure how important she'd have found that, in the great scheme of things.
Hell, she'd probably think it was kind of funny if I got arrested. Djinn humor.
Very low.
I needed to take care of that, soon. I had the bad feeling that Armando Rodriguez wasn't going to just go away, and if there was anything he could find as leverage, he'd start pushing. Hard.
Chapter Six
Just as I started to think my day couldn't get much worse, I heard a rumble from overhead, and saw that a thick bank of clouds had glided over the top of the mall while I was worrying about how not to get myself thrown in the slammer.
I stretched out a hand. A fat, wet drop hit my skin. It was as chilly as the water that the stagehands had dumped on me in the studio.
"No way," I said, and looked up into the clouds. "You can't be happening."
It peppered me with a couple of drops more for evidence. Marvelous Marvin had been right after all. Somebody-somebody other than me, most certainly-had made damn sure he was right. Looking up on the aetheric, I could see the subtle signs of tampering, and the imbalance echoing through the entire Broward County system. Worse than that, though, was the fact that as far as I could tell, there weren't any other Wardens anywhere around. Just me. Me, who wasn't supposed to be doing any kind of weather manipulation at all, under penalty of having my powers cut out of me with a dull knife.
I was so going to get blamed for this.
And, dammit, I didn't even like Marvin.
INTERLUDE
A storm is