Page 25 of Red Boar's Baby

“Everyone’s fine—well, except possibly Agent Caine. He insisted on staying out there to search. I don’t know how he expects to get back.”

“He’ll be okay.” Costa waved it off without bothering to try to explain. “But you’re unhurt? You and the interns,” he amended. “It was Boyd and Dawes with you, right?”

“Jessie and Fifi? Yes, they’re fine, aside from a slight case of airsickness in Fifi’s case. We’re at my place, and they’re taking turns using my shower.”

“And you didn’t see anything of the sniper at all?”

“Other than the flash of light, which I guess was probably off a rifle scope, no.” Diana hesitated, adjusting the phone she was using to video chat with him. He could catch glimpses of a living room behind her with the blinds partly drawn to keep out the brilliant midday sun. “I don’t even know if it was one person or more than one, or whether we were the intended targets. If they were aiming at us, they weren’t a great shot, but they did have the sun in their eyes.”

Costa jiggled the baby in his lap, who was starting to fuss a little. “And you said the interns smelled something strange?”

“The interns and Caine. He said that it’s possible it might be related to, uh, the trouble you had last summer. He wasn’t sure, though.”

“Great,” Costa said grimly. “That’s all we need.” He decided to put the possibility out of his head for now. “We should know more soon. I’m having the artifacts from the crash transported to the SCB offices. They’ll be over here in a day or two, once the wheels of bureaucracy finish grinding.”

“That’s some pretty fast grinding for bureaucracy.” Diana smiled, a lovely tug of her flexible mouth that made him want to brush his finger across the corner of it, not to mention giving him some entirely different mental images for grinding. Abruptly her lips parted, distracting him sufficiently that he barely registered her next words at first. “We found something else.”

“What?” Costa asked, wrenching his bran back on topic.

“A business card of sorts. Caine’s got it, so I guess you’ll see it whenever he shows up again. All it had on it was a red lion device, kind of like medieval heraldry. Just that and no other information. For all I know it could be promo for a restaurant opening or something, but it looked like it could be important.”

“Where’d you find it?”

“On the plane. Caine found it tucked into a seat cutout on the floor.” Diana frowned a little. “Are you sure he’ll be all right out there? He doesn’t have any way to contact anyone.”

“Caine can take care of himself. If he doesn’t check in soon, I have a secret weapon.”

“What’s that?”

Costa grinned. “I’ll call his fiancée.”

This won him a bright smile on her tired face. “I didn’t even know he had one, but I would love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. Tell me if anything new comes up?”

“Will do. See you later.”

His office seemed less bright, somehow, with Diana’s face off his screen. The baby had finished her bottle and was drowsing on his lap. Costa tucked her into the front carrier that Mavis had brought in that morning along with some other baby supplies from her extended family, and went off to see how the investigation was going.

Walking around the building with a baby strapped to his chest turned out to have exactly the side effect everyone had predicted: he couldn’t go anywhere without people awww-ing at him or stopping him to look at the baby. Also, there were questions. He was tempted to say “She’s evidence in an ongoing investigation” but for now, he simply put them off by telling people he was babysitting for a family friend.

He was eventually able to unload the baby for a while at the lab, where Mavis wanted to run some more tests. Costa hung around to watch, unable to stop himself from hovering protectively until he realized he was doing it. Reminding himself that she was perfectly safe in the hands of Mavis and her team, he retreated to his office to try to get some actual work done.

The afternoon wore on, and he was genuinely about to call Gilly on Caine’s behalf when Caine walked into his office, looking exhausted and dusty and sunburned underneath a—was that a fisherman’s hat?! He was limping slightly.

“I hate to admit this, but Diana was right about the footwear,” he said, throwing himself down on the couch against the wall. “I’ll be picking thorns out of my ankles for days.”

“Is that a sun hat you’re wearing?” The image of Caine in his dark suit, dusty though it was, with a floppy-brimmed hat shading his face would stay with Costa for a long time.

Caine reached for it as if he’d forgotten he was wearing it, looked at it for a minute, and dropped it on the couch beside him with an expression of loathing. He took off his sunglasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, and leaned his head back against the wall.

Costa got up and closed the blinds, plunging his office into dimness striped with golden late-afternoon sunshine. He was aware that Caine was prone to migraines after being out in the sun too long.

“Thanks,” Caine said without raising his head.

“Need anything else?”

“Coffee’d be great. And food. I haven’t eaten all day, and I’ve been doing a lot of shadow-shifting.”

Costa picked up the intercom phone and requested some food and coffee sent up his office. Then he sat beside Caine on the couch.

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