Free The Silent Army by James Knapp

the friend was or what kind of trouble he was in, but something was really bothering him.
    “Fine,” I said.
    “Thank you. They’re upstairs now. Here.”
    He handed me a folded piece of paper with a series of questions on it. He usually did that, so I could include them in my “notes” and it didn’t look like he was telling me what to ask once we got inside. To me, though, they had started to look like grocery lists, things I was supposed to pick up for him and bring back.
    I didn’t say that. I just folded the paper in my hands.
    “The second part might be trickier,” he said, “but get it if you can.”
    “Fine.”
    “I have to go.”
    “Fine.”
    I watched his mind shift gears as he walked past me and out through the glass door. He shielded himself from the rain as a gust of wind made his overcoat flap around him.
    I checked the paper he’d given me and got the name of the interrogation room, then took the elevator up.
    It was true; they were expecting me, sort of. I could hear Vesco talking as I approached the doorway, and a couple other people inside with him.
    “. . . that creepy redhead,” I heard him say. Someone chuckled.
    “I don’t know why Noakes allows this shit,” someone else said. “There’s more to that story, I’ll bet.”
    “You think Wachalowski hits that?” Vesco asked, and two men laughed. My face got hot.
    “Can it, you two,” I heard a woman’s voice say. And then I was through the door, and everyone shut up.
    There were three people in the room, and through a one-way glass panel I could see a fourth sitting in the interrogation room. Vesco was there, a smirk still on his obnoxious face, and some other guy I’d never seen who had to be the one who laughed.
    The third person was a round-faced Asian woman with short, straight hair. Like the two men, she wore a dark suit and even wore a tie that somehow looked right on her. Before the other two could say anything, she stepped forward and offered her hand.
    “My name is Alice Hsieh,” she said, as I shook the offered hand briefly. “Agent Wachalowski said you might be joining us. This is Agent Ves—”
    “I know who he is.” Heat was coming up from under my collar. I knew my face was totally red. I felt completely humiliated.
    “Then if you’ll join us in the—”
    “I’ll talk to him alone,” I said. I’d just interrupted her twice, but I didn’t care. Vesco got ready to say something, and I swore—right then I swore—that if he started in on me, I’d make him shut up, no matter who saw.
    I didn’t have to, though. The woman, Alice, made him shut up instead.
    “That will be fine,” she said.
    “Like hell,” Vesco said. Alice didn’t raise her voice, but her eyes turned serious.
    “Are you contradicting me?” she asked. The look on Vesco’s face, and his friend’s face, left no question as to who in the room was in charge. He was angry, but he pressed his lips together.
    “No, ma’am,” he said. Alice turned back to me.
    “You’re on.”
    I walked past Vesco, and took some satisfaction in the anger I could sense coming off him. The interrogation room was cold, like they usually kept it, and a man sat in a wheelchair across the table from me, almost shivering. I took out my notebook, and smoothed the paper Nico had given me over the open page, keeping it out of view.
    “Who are you?” the man asked. His face was sweaty, in spite of his slight shiver. He had a tube under his nose, and a few more stuck out from inside his robe. According to Nico’s notes, his name was Franco Reese, and he’d been shot in the side not even twenty-four hours earlier.
    “Never mind who I am,” I said. “I’m going to ask you some questions.”
    “I’m not saying anything without my—”
    His voice trailed off as the room brightened around me, and the colors appeared around his head. Over the past two years, I’d gotten better at doing what I did. I didn’t have to get close anymore or tell him to go to