Free The Hysteria: Book 4, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) by Evan Ronan Page A

will be your handler.”
    “Handler my ass. She can be my partner, but only if the juice flows both ways.”
    “I don’t want to be his handler or his partner.” Manetti stood behind me in the open doorway. “This guy’s Little League.”
    “It’s always a good idea to introduce an element of unpredictability into the equation so your enemy has to be wary of the wild card,” Patterson said.
    “You speak of the enemy like it has a brain. I thought this was an MPI,” I said.
    “That’s our working hypothesis, but we’re not ruling anything out.”
    Manetti stepped between me and her boss. “No hits on Ken Hernando.”
    “Alias?” I said.
    She laughed derisively. “If it was an alias we would have found it.” She looked back at Patterson. “If it’s deep cover, it’s deep deep cover.”
    Riehl cracked his knuckles. It made a sound like walnuts getting smashed. “Or it’s nonsense. Just a code word for the initiated.”
    “Could be both,” I said.
    Patterson nodded. “First order of business is to run that down. Second is to find the man who laughs. Working assumption is they’re one and the same but we blow that up if it gets us nowhere.”
    The man who laughs? This was getting better and better.
    I said, “You want to fill me in?”
    Manetti’s eyes narrowed. “Not really.”
    I shook my head. “Fine. We’ll do it the hard, inefficient way. Or should I say the federal government way?” I turned to Patterson. “Or you can you tell me where you’ve already looked so I don’t waste my fucking time.”
    He smiled. “Where would you look?”
    “Known friends, associates, old places of employment, local motels, local short-term residencies. With your resources you can look for an electronic trail. I assume that’s turned up nothing.”
    He kept that smile in place. “We’ve already run all those dead-ends down.”
    “I thought you were short on people, long on expensive hand-me-down DARPA tech.”
    “My personnel are my best resources, tech included.” He smiled appreciatively at Riehl and Manetti. “I can say with absolute certainty that Megan Turner has not stayed with any of her friends, relatives, or associates in the last two days. And if she does, we’ll know about it pretty quickly.”
    “You questioned all these people?”
    “Only some.”
    “You bugged up their places, you’ve got recording devices?”
    “No.”             
    I couldn’t help but be intrigued. “I’ll bite. How can you say that with certainty?”
    The smile slid off Riehl’s face. He looked from his boss to me and back again.
    “Pater,” Manetti said. “This isn’t a good idea.”
    “I know you disapprove.” He smiled at her. “You’re always the voice of reason. But I’m going to ignore you for the moment because I’m terribly interested to see what happens. Everything is a social experiment.”
    “That’s what you’re always saying.” Manetti shook her head.
    I was on my guard. Door number one led to the vomitorium. Door number two led to an adjoining room where Manetti had used a computer. I’d been thinking door number three led to the outside world, but now I had a bad feeling about it. Like I wanted to see, but didn’t want to see, what was behind it.
    “Social experiment?”
    “Try to remain calm,” Pater said.
    “I am calm, can’t you read my blood pressure?”
    Pater pointed to door number three. “Eamon Moriarty is in there.”

Ten
     
    Before anybody could stop me, I burst through door number three, ready to kill or be killed.
    It was a large room. A glass partition divided it in half. And separated me from the boy who’d killed my one and only brother. Except the boy was no longer a boy. He was a young man.
    Eamon Moriarty.
    He was tall. Broad-shouldered. Handsome. He had brooding, intelligent eyes that held steady against my glare. He didn’t move a muscle as I rushed the glass. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink.
    He wasn’t scared of me.
    There