Eleri almost smiled as Donovan let out a very impressive string of swear words.
“Creative,” she commented, even though she felt her muscles tense as their phones rang simultaneously. It could only be Westerfield.
She was reaching her thumb to push the button when Donovan held up a finger. “Walter's good. She just checked in.”
Then he held his phone out to motion suggesting that they should pick up together. Only this time, Eleri waved her hand at him, no.
Maybe it was better if Westerfield didn’t know they were in the same place if he hadn’t already figured that out. Turning, she left the room, not watching when Donovan picked up the call. In the other room, she waited until she heard his voice, then pushed the button and held her own phone close to her face, hoping that no ambient noise would filter in. Hoping that Westerfield wouldn’t figure out his two agents were only a room apart.
“Eames,” she answered.
“Now I'm four agents down,” her SAC offered by way of greeting.
“Four? What?” Eleri asked it a split-second before Donovan. Even though she was startled that Westerfield was rapidly losing agents. She was also congratulating herself and Donovan. They'd done a good job sounding like they weren't looking at each other while they said it.
“I sent the new guy after Pines.”
“What new guy?” It wasn’t that there was a new guy that confused Eleri—there was always a new guy—but was that Westerfield seemed to think she would know about it.
“Why would you send someone new after Pines?” Donovan volleyed. It was better that they weren’t looking at each other. “That's a high-level target.”
Eleri winced. She would never have referred to another NightShade agent as a “target.”
“Kimball. The one who worked with you in Miami and down in the Caribbean.”
Eleri could almost feel her ears perk. Hadn't Agent Noah Kimball turned Westerfield down? Yet somehow, he was off looking for Pines. Eleri tried to connect all the small dots. “And now he's missing?”
“He was. He caught Pines…or she caught him. It took a while for them to check in together.”
Eleri wondered if the tone in his voice was unwarranted. As far as she knew, Christina never did anything to hurt anyone. She made people think and see things, but then she tended to leave. No one had been harmed directly by Christina. She’d just manipulated situations … so if Westerfield thought she'd captured Noah Kimball and was holding him hostage, Eleri was certain he was way off track.
The dissonance she felt about Christina Pines being accused of such a thing was as concerning as the thought that Westerfield could be off track. It was his job to be on track, and Eleri was getting more and more confused about what that track was. It was clearly not the storyline she’d been fed when she joined.
“So, Pines went basically AWOL? And then you sent Kimball after her?” Donovan also was connecting the dots and seemed to have gotten sucked into the void as well.
“Not how I would have put it.” Westerfield’s words were short, clipped, and irritated. Eleri figured his discomfort was maybe his own doing.
But before she could even try to find the next dot, Westerfield barked, “I sent Fisher after him, too. Fisher grabbed Jansen even though she was specifically told not to.”
Eleri breathed a sigh of relief, even as she fought to hide it from her boss. Donovan had been wondering where Walter was for a while now. Thank God for the text that had just come in. It was as though Walter knew Donovan needed to hear it.
“Fisher is supposed to be out on her own. But now she, Jansen, Pines and Kimball are together at the de Gottardi/Little farm.” Westerfield obviously had his suspicions. “So I need you two—right now—to tell me everything you know.”
Eleri fought the sudden urge to laugh hysterically. How could she tell her boss that she'd been holed up in her home, practicing spells for the last week and a half? She knew absolutely nothing that would be valuable to him.
Well, except they already knew that Walter was okay. And Kimball was apparently working with them now, too. Eleri concurred that Walter most likely had called Jansen in on the job. The two were nearly inseparable.
But why did she hold all this back from her boss?