Running Hot

sociable crowd.
    The whiskey was doing its job. He was starting to feel if not exactly mellow, at least a tad more philosophical.
    As if on cue his cell phone vibrated and buzzed. He unclipped it from his belt and opened it without bothering to look at the ID of the incoming call. There were only three people who had his number and he was pretty sure Petra and Wayne were asleep by now.
    “Do you know what time it is here, Fallon?” he asked.
    “Hawaii is two hours earlier than California this time of year.” Fallon sounded irritated, a normal state of affairs for him. “What does that have to do with anything?”
    Fallon Jones was the head of Jones & Jones, a very low-profile psychic investigation agency. He had a few redeeming qualities, including a powerful talent for spotting patterns and links where others saw only random chance or murky coincidence. Other assorted virtues such as good manners, thoughtfulness and patience, however, eluded him.
    “I was going to call you in the morning,” Luther said.
    “It’s four a.m. here. That’s morning. I can’t wait any longer for you to think about whether or not you’re going to take the job. I need an answer now. I don’t have time to cater to your delicate sensibilities.”
    “Translated, you don’t have anyone else available who just happens to be in the neighborhood.”
    “Yeah, that, too. You’re good and you’re convenient. A real win-win combination in my book. What’s the problem? This isn’t like you.”
    Why was he hesitating? Luther wondered. Fallon was right. It wasn’t like him. He’d been taking contract jobs with J&J ever since he resigned from the Seattle PD two years ago. He liked the work. Okay, except when he got shot. Fact was, when he was in this kind of mood he craved J&J assignments.
    The agency was unique. It was established during the Victorian era, and it was always understood that its chief client was the Governing Council of the Arcane Society. Its highest priority was to protect the Society’s deepest secrets.
    But somewhere along the way, the Council had acknowledged that most police departments simply weren’t equipped to deal with certain types of psychic sociopaths. Few members of modern law enforcement were even willing to acknowledge that some killers were endowed with talent. By and large, the Council considered that a good thing. The paranormal got enough bizarre press as it was, most of it in the harmless form of outrageous tabloid headlines and silly television talk shows. No one wanted the police to start making serious announcements to the media about psychic killers.
    As far back as the Victorian era, the Council had reluctantly accepted responsibility for hunting down certain dangerous, renegade talents on the theory that it was better to handle such problems internally rather than risk allowing the freaks to continue to operate.
    The Maui job might be a routine bodyguard assignment but it was something and he could use the money. And Petra had a feeling about it.
    “I’ll do it,” he said.
    “About time you came to your senses,” Fallon grumbled. “By the way, you’ll be working with a partner this time.”
    “Whoa. Hold it right there. In your voice mail you said it was a bodyguard gig.”
    “More like a chaperoning gig.”
    “What the hell does that mean?”
    “The person you’re going to be looking after is not one of my regular agents. She’s what you might call a specialist. A consultant. It’s her first time in the field. Your job is to make sure she doesn’t get into trouble. Let her do her job and then get her out of there. Simple.”
    “I’m not mentor material, Fallon.”
    “Don’t go into your lockdown stubborn mode on me, Malone. You’ll definitely be in charge of the operation.”
    “That’s supposed to reassure me? In my experience specialists and consultants don’t take orders well.”
    “Damn it, we’ve got a real shot at nailing Eubanks here. I’m not about to see it blown just because you don’t fancy working with a specialist.”
    Eubanks was a suspect in the recent murder of a young woman whose family were all registered members of the Society. After the police officially ruled the death a tragic accident, the victim’s parents asked J&J to investigate the death. A psychic profiler who visited the scene of the crime prepared a profile that Fallon then handed over to one of the librarians in the Society’s Bureau of Genealogy. The librarian ran the data