Chapter 9
Chapter nine
The tactical team had housed the two captives in the completely empty rooms on the ground floor, keeping them separate not just from the rest of the house but from each other.
Frollo flatly refused to let Hallie go into the room on her own, insisting he or another member of his team go with her, and not accepting Girard as a suitable alternative, given Girard’s injuries.
Hallie’s first impulse was to argue - she had spent her whole career as a skip tracer working alone, chasing down and capturing a wide range of violent offenders, human and veondken.
She thought she could handle one human man at a time, particularly when they were restrained.
And she didn’t want any more witnesses than necessary.
Only three people in the world knew about her truth sense and that was more than enough, as far as she was concerned.
However, they were running out of time before they needed to leave, and arguing would only waste some of that time and energy that might be needed for other things, such as making sure the house was properly cleared.
In the end, both Frollo, in body armour and bristling with weapons, and Girard, still pale, with his arm still in a sling, came into the first room with her.
The man she’d fought with in her bedroom glared up at her.
Someone, possibly Modron, had slapped a field dressing on the wound on his head, but someone else, almost certainly under Frollo’s orders, had added flexi-cuffs to his ankles as well as his wrists.
The man was sitting propped up against a wall, facing the door.
Hallie took a moment to study the captive in the harsh glare of the single, bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling.
Shockingly young, was her first and overwhelming impression.
From the way he’d fought, and the weapons he’d carried, she had somehow expected him to be older.
But he looked barely into his twenties, perhaps even younger.
Definitely human. If he’d been hochlen, the head wound would have healed by now.
He had the sort of pale skin that looked as if he’d never been outdoors, the stark white of the field dressing not far off his natural colour.
Dark blond hair cut short. Possibly so that no one could grab hold of it in a fight.
Pale blue eyes that were full of anger and hate as he looked across at his visitors.
If he hadn’t been restrained, she had no doubt that he would have tried to harm her, Frollo and Girard.
Frollo had already told her that neither this man nor the one in the room next door had carried any kind of ID. They had scanned negative for microchips. And they hadn’t said a word in the time since the tactical team had arrived.
Trying to ignore Frollo and Girard for the moment, Hallie took a pace forward and crouched down, so she was more or less eye level with the man.
“They tell me you’re not talking,” she said, in a conversational tone. “But I know you can talk. What about telling us your name?”
He just glared at her. There was a hint of something in his eyes that she didn’t recognise.
Not an emotion. More like a physical response that made his pupils small, even in the shadowed room.
Possibly drugs, although she was confident that Frollo would have told her if Modron had dosed their captives with anything that might slow their responses.
She didn’t know enough about medicine to know if a head injury would gave that odd response in his eyes.
As he seemed alert enough, she kept going.
“Alright. No name, then,” she said, still in that easy tone. If she could provoke some response from him, even non-verbal, she could use that. “What were you looking for in my room?”
He kept staring at her, and she realised he hadn’t blinked since she’d settled in front of him.
“I don’t think you’d fit into my clothes.”
There. That got a response. A twitch of his mouth. Disgust. So he was listening and aware. She could use that.
“You and your friends didn’t just decide to visit in the night and start shooting up the place,” she went on. “Someone told you to come here.”
For the first time, he looked away. Confirmation, as far as she was concerned.
“And you weren’t in charge, were you? Because you were upstairs searching the bedrooms while your friends were downstairs where all the action was.”
Another twitch. This time his jaw tightened. Frustration, she thought. Angry that he hadn’t been given a more important assignment. It was a young man’s response to having his worth questioned.
“So, they didn’t trust you with the important stuff. What happened? Did you drop your gun in training? Shoot one of your friends?” Hallie had managed not to do either of those things, but she’d heard both stories from Commander Rojas in her own weapons training.
The young man looked across at her, and his mouth opened as if he wanted to say something, but no sound came out.
There was a brief expression of confusion on his face, then he clamped his jaw shut again.
Hallie noted sweat beading on his forehead as he looked like he was struggling with some internal conflict.
“Can’t speak, huh?” She watched his response, then got to her feet and took a step back, making sure she was safely out of the way before she turned to Frollo and Girard. “Outside.”
They followed her out of the room without commenting, then both looked at her.
“You almost got him talking, ma’am. That’s more than we managed,” Frollo said.
“I think he’s been given something. Some drug. Did you see his eyes? Pupils were tiny and he was barely blinking. I think he wanted to speak, probably to swear at me, but he couldn’t,” Hallie said.
“Did Modron draw blood from them?” Girard asked Frollo.
“No. She just treated the wound,” Frollo said, frowning.
“If he’s still showing symptoms, it’s still in his system,” Girard said.
“We don’t have the facilities here, but Degan and Isoud should be able to identify whatever he’s taken.
” Leodegan, or Degan to his friends like Girard, was the investigators’ medical examiner and as competent at his job as Isoud, the head of the forensic team.
If anyone could work out what the drug was, it was those two.
“Or been given,” Hallie added, remembering the frustration on the captive’s face as he’d tried to speak and found that he couldn’t.
“Fair point,” Girard agreed.
“I’ll get Modron to collect samples right away,” Frollo said, and moved away, reaching for the radio at his shoulder.
With the brief moment of privacy, Girard turned back to Hallie. “My impression is that he was annoyed with you and with us in general. Also embarrassed that he was given an assignment that seemed less important. Did you pick up anything else from him?”
Hallie could tell from the way he phrased the question that he was wondering about her truth sense. She shook her head. “He didn’t give us much. He’s a lot younger than I expected, though.”
“Yes,” Girard agreed. He glanced over as Frollo came back.
“Modron and Caerleon are on their way to collect samples,” Frollo reported.
“Can we try the other one, as we’re here?” Hallie asked.
“Of course,” Frollo said, and led the way to the next door along.
The scene was a near-perfect mirror image of the room they had just left.
The captive was sitting with his back against the wall, flexi-cuffs holding his arms behind his back and his ankles close together.
Hallie took a moment to assess him and the differences from the captive they had just left.
The man in front of her didn’t have a head wound, and his hair was a paler blond, but other than that their colouring was very similar.
He, too, was young. Perhaps a year or two older than the other one, but not much more than that.
He looked up at her with the same hate and anger and, in the harsh light from the overhead bulb, Hallie could see he had the same small pupils.
She tried the same approach, taking a step forward and crouching down so she could meet and hold his eyes almost on a level. “Can you tell me your name?”
No verbal response. The hint of a sneer at his mouth.
“Not talking, eh? Well, you can still be useful.” She paused and tilted her head, as if considering what options she had available to her.
The man’s pale brows drew together in a frown.
It seemed he had taken her words as a threat.
Interesting. He lifted his chin, as if to try to show his lack of fear.
“You were searching the office. What were you hoping to find?”
A flicker of something across his face. Glee or triumph, Hallie wasn’t sure, but something of that nature.
“Looking for something specific?” she prompted.
The chin went up a little, mouth set in a straight line.
“No. You didn’t know what you were looking for, did you? More likely you were just looking. Trying to find out what we knew.”
His eyes widened, expression changing to shock before he got his face back under control and went back to looking sulky again.
“Do you know what drug you’ve been taking?” she asked instead.
More shock. And a hint of worry, his bravado slipping. He opened his mouth, lips moving, but no sound came out.
“Can’t speak, can you?” Hallie rose to her feet and took a careful step back.
“No, it’s nothing we’ve done,” she said, reading the glare he sent her way and transferred to Frollo and Girard.
“Whatever drug is in your system it was there long before you came here. We’re going to take samples from you to see if we can work out what it is. ”
The man’s expression changed again. Confusion. Hope. Anger. He tried to speak again, with the same result.
“We’re also headed for a facility with a lot of very clever people and a lot more medical expertise,” Hallie said.
More of the hope, less of the anger.
Progress, as far as Hallie was concerned. “Any questions?” she asked Girard and Frollo.
“No. Doesn’t look like he’s capable of answering right now,” Frollo said. “But we’ll fix that soon enough.”
With that, Frollo opened the door, letting Girard and Hallie out of the room before he followed, locking the captive in again.
As they made their way back along the corridor towards the rest of the house, they passed Modron and Caerleon, with Modron carrying her large, dark green medical kit.
“Get anything useful, sir?” Modron asked.
“Not much,” Frollo said. “Looks like they both have the same drug in their system.”
“It seems to stop them from speaking,” Hallie added. “Any idea what that might be?”
Modron was frowning and shook her head. “No. I mean, there are some paralytic drugs that might stop someone speaking, but they would also be unconscious and barely breathing.”
“These two are wide awake and I’m guessing would be able to put up a fight if they weren’t restrained,” Girard said. “Would you make your own observations and then send them to Degan and Isoud before we get on the plane? We’ll take the samples with us, of course.”
“Will do, sir,” Modron said, and headed off with Caerleon.
“I’d like to get a report in to the director before we head off, too,” Girard said. “Have we got time for that?”
“Just about,” Frollo answered. “Griff and Dechtire have just got back with the other team from the plane and vehicle transport. We’ve still got some work to do, so you’ve still got time to make your report.”
“Need a hand?” Hallie asked Frollo.
“No, ma’am. We’ve got it.”
Frollo headed off through the house and Hallie went with Girard into the kitchen, which felt hollow with no scent of baking or coffee to meet her.
She settled on one of the high-backed chairs around the bare table and while Girard typed out his report to the director, his tablet set at an awkward angle to make it more comfortable for his wounds, Hallie thought.
She thought about attackers who had been trained to use their weapons, but had also been drugged so that they couldn’t answer questions.
She thought about the fact that too many people were dead.
That she was sure there were things she had missed.
And how she had not found Findo Trask, despite two weeks of looking.
Or, she amended in her own mind, she had not yet found Findo Trask.
There were still places to look, and she would find more people to question. He would not hide from her forever.