Free Dragon Deception by Mell Eight Page A

it's their jurisdiction. They're supposed to red flag me on anything relating to dogfighting that they might come across. They're also going to have a look into why there aren't any witches or other magical creatures living there, but racism and discrimination is a separate department."
    "So we just have to wait?" Mercury sighed.
    "Wait and read through what we do have to double check we didn't miss anything," Valerie agreed. "You really don't know who might be impersonating Quicksilver?"
    Mercury pulled out one of the chairs around the conference table and sank into it. "Not a clue of who they are specifically, but I know what they want and why."
    "You think it's the same people who were kidnapping dragons and doing terrible experiments on them," she said evenly. Mercury couldn't tell if she believed him or was being sarcastic, so he chose to go with the former. "Look, I was at each scene and I saw the broken eggs and dead bodies that were uncovered. I tried to fight back when all my evidence and my findings were classified, which made me unable to pursue the case like I wanted to. It's one of the reasons I'm one more failed case away from being fired, although I think Director Stockton is aware that I got stonewalled by his predecessor. He's giving me a chance to reopen those cases with all my old notes and files unclassified again."
    Mercury sat up straight at her words and stared at her. "Do you think I could read all your old notes sometime?" he asked sharply. There could be a clue to the enemy in there. He needed to know who they were and where they were hiding. Platinum and the other dragons they were still experimenting on needed to be saved.
    "If you're right and the same people who operated those terrible labs are the ones who set your trap, then there might be a connection somewhere. I'll pull everything I can find." She jogged off.
    Mercury flipped open a folder in front of him and began reading. While he had been away at lunch, Valerie had apparently typed up all their findings into an official document. At his desk job, Mercury compiled dozens of reports exactly like Valerie's; he couldn't make himself feel guilty that he had made her do this one. Unfortunately, Valerie's report didn't outline anything he didn't already know. Mercury pushed it aside and pulled another folder forward. This one contained photographs of the scene. He browsed through them, but didn't find anyone looking shifty while carrying a bucket of paint hidden in the background.
    There were a number of shots of Mercury and Valerie, which confused him. Very few of the photos were captured as part of the larger scene. Most of them were close ups of his and Valerie's faces. He knew the police liked to get shots of the rubbernecking crowd because oftentimes the criminal liked to return to see his or her handiwork, but he had never heard of needing to purposefully take pictures of the responding officers. The last picture in the pile was another one of Mercury and Valerie. A white halo was standing next to Mercury, holding up a red haired child. The halo was Dane—he didn't show up on regular photography thanks to his heritage—and the child was Lumie. It only showed the back of Lumie's head and his hand as it reached up to free Mercury, but Mercury swallowed hard in fear all the same. That photograph proved to the enemy that Lumie wasn't a regular dragon, that their crazy experiments had been a success.
    Mercury had put Lumie in grave danger all because he couldn't control himself at a crime scene. Admittedly, the enemy would have a devil of a time catching Lumie and an even harder time keeping him confined, but that wouldn't stop them from trying. Mercury sighed—there really wasn't anything more he could do to protect Lumie than he already was—and forced his focus to Dane's image instead.
    Dane could control himself for long enough to take a picture when he tried. It was how the photo hanging next to Mercury's work computer had been taken.