Courts and Cabals 2 by G.S. D'Moore (warren buffett book recommendations TXT) 📗

It had probably only been a minute, but it felt like hours. He was surprised he hadn’t paced a hole in the carpet by the time the receptionist returned. “She’ll see you now,” she squeaked as Vernon blurred past her and into the boss’s office.

Director of the United Nations Worldwide Registration Response Division, Evelyn Winters, looked damn good for someone in her mid-seventies. She’d been in Army Intelligence, the CIA, NSA, presidential administrations, and had even done some wet work once upon a time. As humans went – and he still wasn’t one hundred percent confident she was fully human – she was a badass. You couldn’t let her small frame distract you. She controlled a budget of billions of dollars, and people took lives when she sent out an email. Despite all his strength, speed, and magical talent, that was the type of power Vernon would never have.

The eyes that met his were cool, confident, but tired. She’d been through hell in the last few hours. Sometimes, bureaucratic hell was worse than taking fire. At least when you bought the farm in a gunfight it could be quick and painless. Death for a bureaucrat was death by a thousand papercuts given to you by brownnosing pricks when your back was turned. She endured all of that so Vernon could face the threats the world faced and shoot them in the face.

Remembering that, when he saw the look on the Director’s face, lessened his rage from about-to-violently-kill-everyone-in-the-room, to just ripping people new assholes for fucking things up.

“What in the holy hell, ma’am,” his Texas accent was thicker than oil as he faced off against her. “We were on their trail. We were a few miles behind at most. How in the hell can your little attack dog just call of the hunt . . . I mean chase? These kids put a cop in the hospital. Shit, Evelyn, there are seven bodies in the morgue over this. You can’t just let that shit go!” he realized he was yelling, but didn’t care.

It was like someone turned on the spicket, and the anger started to rush out of him. To the boss’s credit, she stood there and took it like a champ. She barely even blinked. She waited until he’d dug himself a nice hole before she started to bury him.

“You mean they hurt Becky Woods. It’s curious that you put her before the seven dead kids,” she stalked around her desk like a lioness hunting her prey, and this was why he wasn’t positive she was fully human. His wolf registered another predator, and there was no way his animal instincts would think of a human as anything other than food.

“She’s law,” he said it like he was Clint Eastwood in an old western.

“She’s a cute piece of furry ass that you’ve been tapping,” the Director’s five-three frame got all up in his six-and-a-half-foot face and forced him to retreat. “Your priorities are messed up, Special Agent Dud, and you need to fix yourself.”

He growled despite himself, barring his fangs, but the Director didn’t even flinch. The woman was tough as nails.

“You’re getting tunnel vision, agent,” she continued, calmly holding her ground. “You were the one who put us on this case. You were the one that connected the dots, but despite that, you’re missing the big picture.”

For a moment, he had no idea what the hell she was talking about. Then it clicked, “The others,” he sat down in the chair behind him hard enough for it to groan in protest.

“You found two, near-identical cases to Cameron Dupree. Now that we know Dupree is a novel supernatural, we can build on that. I’ve contacted the Moscow and Sydney offices, and they’re on it.”

“That must have been a surprise,” he couldn’t help but grin at the thought of the station chiefs’ reactions when they’d faced the overwhelming willpower of the Director of the Response Division. He was glad she was spreading the wealth around.

“The boy in Russia is in the wind. His family lives in Siberia, and was visiting the capital for the holidays. We’re not bringing in the government yet . . . because its Russia,” she didn’t have to say anything else.

Russia was a bit of a lawless land. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, oligarchs took control of the nation’s natural resources. Russia was the largest country in the world, and rich in commodities other nations wanted. That gave the oligarchs power, and it helped that almost all of them were supernatural. Occasionally, the oligarchs got too confident in their own power and violated the WRA. That’s when the echelon teams went in. They’d cleared out a power-hungry mage and an entire pack of shifters as an example to anyone who thought the WRA was full of suggestions and not rules. Unfortunately, nature abhors a vacuum, and the government stepped in to regain some power. They weren’t much better than organized crime, but they were human, and supposedly elected; although, no one really believed that.

Russia was one bad day away from being a failed state, but it had shit the world needed; so, people put up with them. For Vernon, and the Response Division assets in Moscow, that would make finding the Siberian boy like finding a unique snowflake in a blizzard. Vernon wasn’t holding out much hope.

The Director read his face as he weighed the options with the Russian boy before dropping the bombshell. “The girl in Australia already submitted a DNA sample, agreed to the deep dive, and is being flown to New York right now.”

That got Vernon’s attention, and if she wasn’t the boss, he would have kissed her. “We’ll study her, find her weaknesses, and figure out how to beat Dupree.”

“Reign it in, cowboy,” the Director’s eyes bored into his when he glared at her. “As far as we know, Dupree doesn’t