Free Darker After Midnight by Lara Adrián Page A

situation.
    Rowan pivoted away from the carnage and headed outside, passing the incoming team of Agents armed with body bags and cleanup equipment on his way to his vehicle. Once seated inside the sedan, he dialed a scrambled access line given to him by the Order. It rang through.
    “Gideon, it’s Mathias Rowan,” he said when the line connected on the other end. “We have a situation down here. Lucan isn’t going to like it. Bad news, my friend, and it’s got Dragos’s name written all over it.”
    “SHIT, SHIT, SHIT.” Tavia checked her watch again, impatiently waiting for the snarl of early morning commuters in front of her to step off the train at Boston’s Government Center Station.
    It was almost 8:00 A.M. , and she was late to work.
    Definitely a first for her, although it wasn’t as if she didn’t have a good excuse. The stress of the past few days apparently was getting to her. She was still tense from the incident at the police station and Senator Clarence’s odd behavior afterward.
    The troubling dream hadn’t done anything for her nerves either. While doubling down on her antianxiety meds had allowed her to sleep, it had also made her hit the snooze button on her alarm one too many times this morning.
    She saw an opening in the slow-moving throng and dashed through it. Walking briskly, she crossed the snow-spattered bricks outside the terminal, rushing past a florist stand bursting with red and white poinsettias and evergreen wreaths. On the street, a brisk, cold wind blew, carrying the repetitive jingle of a SalvationArmy bell from somewhere nearby and the smoky aroma of coffee beans and baked goods from the Starbucks on the corner. Tavia’s stomach growled in response, but she headed in the opposite direction.
    She tried the senator’s cell phone, but it went straight to voice-mail, just as it had the two other times she’d called on her way into the city. He would be at the charity breakfast by now. Normally she would have double-checked with him first thing to make sure he had everything he needed for the event. Normally she would have been in the office for at least an hour already, getting a jump-start on the day’s tasks while he was out courting his public.
    Normally …
    Nothing about the past few days seemed normal.
    Not even close.
    Tavia walked along the City Hall plaza toward the senator’s offices, her head down, face dipped into the folds of her knit scarf as another wintry gust rolled up. She cut between the pair of towers and the squat government building next to them, hearing the cacophony of a gathered crowd even before she rounded the corner and saw the commotion.
    News vans and camera crews from every local network and a couple of national cable channels lined New Sudbury Street like vultures. Police vehicles, not an unusual sight at the government offices when a large precinct sat directly across the street, were blocking the entrance and exit, shadowed by black federal-issued SUVs parked in front of the building doors and all along the arched fire lane at the curb.
    Dread squeezed her stomach, turning it into an icy fist in her gut.
    “Excuse me.” Tavia approached a reporter from Channel Five who was fluffing her unmoving helmet of blond hair and performing a sound check. “What’s happening here?”
    “Get in line, honey,” the woman replied. “That’s what we’re all waiting to find out. The police commissioner just called a press conference for eight o’clock.”
    Tavia stepped through the groups of hovering reporters and thegawkers who’d been drawn from around the neighboring streets by all the noise and activity. She weaved between the sea of bodies, trying to make her way closer to the building entrance where most of the police and federal agents had clustered.
    Someone took sharp hold of her arm. “Ms. Fairchild.”
    “Detective Avery,” she said, the kick in her chest relaxing a bit as she met the older man’s sober gaze. “What’s all this