Free His Father's Eyes - eARC by David B. Coe Page B

around.”
    “Except Hibbard.”
    “Yeah,” she said. “And nobody likes him anyway.”
    We both grinned, though for no more than a second or two.
    “I’ll ask around a bit,” I said, sobering. “See if any of my kind have heard people talking about a new player in town. Or about why the old players might take a new interest in domestic terrorists.”

CHAPTER 6

    I left Kona there and ran the gauntlet of police, FBI, and TSA check points until I was out of the terminal and back in my car. The drive out of the airport loop proved to be a good deal easier and quicker than the drive in. Afternoon traffic on the interstates, however, was hideous.
    I sat in my car, idling alongside about ten thousand of my best friends, the Z-ster’s air conditioner working overtime and the sun glaring off the cars in front of me, and I thought about James Howell. To be more precise, I thought about the final minutes of his life, and possible reasons for his murder.
    It was too easy to assume that he was killed because he tried to blow up the plane. How would a weremyste know that, and if somehow his killer was aware of the bomb, why would he or she resort to murder rather than simply alert the police or the FBI? And if this sorcerer knew about the bomb, why would he or she bother with grounding the plane first? That made no sense. The bomb was in Howell’s luggage; it wasn’t in the plane’s cabin or cockpit or cargo area. Disabling the plane wasn’t going to save any lives. That was why Howell was antsy, but not panicked. If Howell hadn’t been murdered, the passengers and their luggage would have been moved to a different aircraft, and that plane would have been destroyed.
    The more I pondered this, the less sense it made.
    I don’t usually use my phone when I drive, and I’m intolerant to the point of abusiveness of drivers who do. But we weren’t going anywhere, and it occurred to me that I needed more information. I pulled out my phone and punched in Kona’s number.
    “Miss me already, huh?” she said upon answering.
    “Can you get me the passenger list for Flight 595?”
    “Sure. I’ll e-mail it to you. Why?”
    “I know a good number of the sorcerers here in Phoenix, and I’d like to see if any of them were on board.”
    “I’ll send it right away.”
    “Thanks, Kona.”
    I switched off the phone and tossed it on my jacket. A few seconds later, the cars around me started to inch forward.
    I drove the rest of the way to my office in a fog. I knew I was missing something, a logical, or at least magical, explanation for the sequence of events that ended in Howell’s death. But I couldn’t see it. I kept coming back to the same conclusion: Whoever had killed the man had made his crime more complicated than it needed to be.
    It wasn’t that I thought criminals always behaved rationally. Far from it. I’d been a cop for too long to think anything of the sort. But this was . . . odd. That was the best word for it.
    What did a dead skinhead, a Latino political leader, and a disabled 757 have in common? Well, for one thing, they were all messing with my head.
    Because my day hadn’t had enough surprises already, when I got to my office, Namid was already there. Waiting for me. That had never happened before.
    From the way he greeted me you would have thought it was the most natural thing in the world, like I was getting home from work, and he was waiting for me in the kitchen, fixing dinner.
    “What are you doing here?” I asked, tossing my car keys and bomber jacket on my desk.
    “You need to train. We have not worked on your craft in some time.”
    “It’s been two days.”
    “And that is long enough.”
    I no longer resisted Namid’s attempts to help me hone my craft. I still feared the powers I possessed, knowing where they would lead me. And if ever I forgot, all I needed to do was spend a few minutes with my dad. But I also understood that as my runecrafting skills improved, so would my ability to hold