Stakeouts were a subtle art: choosing the perfect spot, finding the best vantage point, blending the most seamlessly with the immediate environment. Even in my relatively short experience in the matter, I’d been everything from a puddle to a barrel of water. Once, I even had to hide inside a drainpipe for half a day, waiting to catch my target in a compromising position. That knowledge was useless when it came to humans. The best they could do was find obvious concealment spots and remain still for long enough so that someone with the patience of a goldfish wouldn’t see obvious threats. Tech was a great help, but whenever there was tech there was also countercheck; and when dealing with powerful corporations, it wasn’t difficult to tell who had the upper hand. Our sole advantage was that H-Sec had access to Earth made comm tech. It looked a lot clunkier than I imagined, but at least lacked an essence trace.

“Are you sure they’ll show?” Clayton whispered in his comm.

“They’ll show,” I replied. “They can’t risk not to.”

The lieutenant had done a good job sharing the information with everyone involved in the case. As far as they were concerned, the department had accepted the loss and now was going on with the story that Jasan was murdered by an overzealous ex-company employee. Of course, it was the added detail linked the location of the victim’s mysterious device that had attracted all the attention. Marsha had even gone as far as to openly ask for the location, before being advised to remain quiet by the good old dragon shoes lawyer.

“Who do you think it’ll be?” Nixen asked. “My money’s on the daughter?”

“Why her?” Clayton sounded confused.

“Only a psychopath can be surrounded by so much shit and be this calm. Her father’s been living on charms, her brother’s a deviant, her mother’s been faking affairs left and right, and all she’s concerned about is getting a few grand for free the spirits cause.”

The detective did have a point. There was something messed up with Marshia. Having access to her medical file would have been nice, but that was off limits even before Ellcron had escalated things.

“So, who do you think’s good for it?” the detective asked again.

“Gellow,” Clayton replied.

“Ellron’s security guy? Why him?”

“You don’t get to become corporate security off a resume. If I wanted something like this done, I’d send him.”

“Letting a servant do the work? You sure your family aren’t corporates?”

The banter eventually stopped. While it was a good way to calm one’s nerves, it was also distracting and annoying for most others.

Another half-hour passed before the first signs of someone approaching.

“Lookout five. I’ve eyes on a camouflaged carriage approaching from the sea.”

Clever. Since most would be watching Clear Water’s watermark, coming from the coast would be unnoticed.

“Essence leaks are minimal. Looks like one of Ellcron’s.”

“Told you,” Clayton whispered.

“Wait till the suspect gets into the building,” the lieutenant ordered. “Looks like your plan worked, Waters. Good job.”

Being praised by someone important never got old. Yet, I still couldn’t help but feel uneasy. Setting up a sting in a slum was tricky business, even when some of the locals were on our side. Until the suspect entered Celsius’ old hiding place, we had nothing.

“Lookout two. I have activity. A biker on an aqua-bike’s making her way towards the honeypot. Identity confirmed. It’s Marshia Kode.”

“Say again?” I could hear Nixen’s smirk through the comm.

Now I knew the kid was crazy. A human riding an aqua-bike at high speed was the fastest way to get a few limbs ripped off. I could do it without a problem, but for a human to try, they had to be both crazy and experienced. Seemed like Nixen was right about the girl, after all.

“What do we do, lt.?” someone asked.

“Keep your positions! They haven’t seen us. Wait for them to get on the scene and—” there was a sudden moment of silence. “Shit. The widow’s coming as well.”

That pretty much made all major suspects, all arriving at the same conclusions at the same time. Unlike the first two, though, the widow didn’t even bother keeping it quiet. She was flying through the sky with her husband’s registered rune carriage, completely ignoring the speed safety limit.

“Waters.” The lieutenant’s icy tone was enough to freeze me solid. “You better have a solution for this. I don’t plan on getting two black eyes.”

“Just play it out,” I said. “Wait till all of them get near the building, then surround the place and we’ll settle it later.”

“All units, prepare to spring on my command.”

I could see the widow’s carriage approaching in the distance. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one, for the daughter speared at the end of the road moments later, driving like a maniac. It almost looked like a race between the two to see who’d get there first. As it happened, it was the mother. Stopping directly above her son’s love nest, she moved the carriage about a bit, then gently landed on the street. The front door opened, and I got a faint whiff of the familiar dragon skin essence. The lawyer rushed to open the passenger’s door, but the widow proved faster, shoving him out of the way as she got out. Without her expensive clothes, she didn’t seem remotely as glamorous as during our first meeting.

“Mother!” The daughter arrived at the scene mere seconds later. “Really?”

“Marshia, go back home. This doesn’t concern you.”

“I think you need to get back home! Have you been drinking again?”

“It would be best if we all keep our tone down,” the lawyer intervened. I really didn’t envy his job. Even from this distance, his expression made it clear he thought coming here was a mistake. “We don’t need to attract attention.”

“It might be a bit too late for that,” Saura van Buren’s voice sounded without warning. The woman emerged from thin air along with a pair of fully geared battle mages with automatic weapons. “I’ve learned that there’s Ellcron property inside that building and am here to reclaim it.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“All teams, go, go, go!”

I braced for the inevitable chaos that would follow, and the chaos came. H-Sec operatives in full gear jumped out of their hiding placed in the surrounding buildings. While their gear wasn’t as impressive as that of the corporate guards, it was enough to scare the hell out of any civilian. Rune carriages flashing red, green, and blue rose up into the air, blocking any potential exits. That didn’t mean that no one tried.

The corporate battle mages were professionals, so they quickly surrounded van Buren, triggering a series of protection fields. They were fully aware that the law was on their side, so it never crossed their minds to engage in criminal behavior. Marshia, though, ran like a fox caught in the henhouse.

Without a second thought, she leapt onto her auto-bike, boosting it to full speed. The bike jetted forward, passing inches away from a pair of H-Sec agents further down the road. Adrenalin and instinct took over, overriding reason on all sides, resulting in shots being fired.

Damn it! Why did I have to be so close? I had a pretty good idea how messed you the kid was, but even so she remained a kid.

I poured out of the suit, speeding in her direction. No longer being restricted by form, I was a lot faster, though still not fast enough to prevent one of the projectiles from hitting her shoulder. The wound had to be serious, though remotely as serious as losing control of the bike. Even while not at full speed, it had gained enough inertia to be dangerous.

Hating myself, I leapt forward, enveloping the kid entirely as I pulled her off the swirling bike. There was a moment of sharp pain as a small part of me was torn off by the vehicle. Panic kicked in, bringing me back to the memory of the docks’ massacre. Instantly, I froze, feeling helpless. That had been the moment I was closer to death than I ever had been… and all I could feel was the sound of laughter rippling through the water.

“Waters!” A loud yell snapped me back to reality, just in time to feel the impact of the ground. Thankfully, the kid was still alive.

“Bring some med charms!” I yelled as I morphed back into human form. “She’s got one in the shoulder.”

“Marshia!” I could hear her mother yell in the background, H-Sec keeping her, or anyone getting closer.

“We got her, Waters.” Clayton came running to me moments later. “We got her.”

I stared at him in disbelief, his features appearing alien to me. Then, slowly, I let go of the kid.

Without a word, I went back to my clothes. The moment of chaos was over. It would probably take days for the effects to fully wear off, but until then, I had another job.

Order followed. Before I knew it, the whole area was full of H-Sec and local law enforcement. The entire area was cordoned off, leaving all suspects except the kid, safely isolated on the scene. In my mind, I tried to shift gears and return to normal. I failed. The only thing I managed to achieve was to put on my suit and pretend I had.

“You, okay?” Nixen walked up to me.

“As could be. How’s the kid?”

“She’ll live.”

“Good, because she isn’t the one who killed her old man.”

I made my way to where the suspects were gathered. This time, the conditions were as they should be. There were no chairs to relax in, no drinks, not even a sympathetic shoulder to cry on.

“I’m sure that you were only doing your job,” Saura van Buren said to the lieutenant standing in front of her. “Ellcron doesn’t intend to bring charges for that. However, our property is in that house.”

“That thing killed my husband!” Kode’s widow shouted. “I have a right to see what caused his death!”

“The culprit is already in H-Sec custody. This whole matter has nothing to do with Ellcron.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said, forcing a smile. “Both of you.”

The comment grabbed both women’s attention, making them stop glaring at each other and turn my way instead.

“There’s no doubt that someone killed Jasan Kode, but that person isn’t Ellcron’s cleaner. Excuse me,” I quickly corrected myself. “Ex-Ellcron’s cleaner. Neither is Celsius, which they’ve done a great job hiding away.”

“But the device is in this building,” Saura van Buren said. “A device that was stolen by our ex-employee. A device worth billions,” she stressed.

“Why are you so sure?”

There was a momentary pause.

“Because H-Sec told me,” she glanced at the lieutenant. “You told me that Delin confessed to putting it here.”

“No, he didn’t. All he said was that he confessed to taking it and using an uncharted to stash it somewhere. Isn’t that right, sir?”

“Pretty much.” The lieutenant nodded.

“But we checked! The essence signature of the device is there right now!”

“Is it? Or is that the residual essence from Jason’s hiding place along with a stash of charms?”

The woman’s face turned pale, then red as winkles formed round her eyes and mouth.

“You think this is amusing? You’ll think differently when my legal team buries every last one of you. Even Earth won’t be able to save you!”

“Ominous.” I walked a few steps away, moving towards the widow. “One person was fully aware that there was nothing here, though.”

“Me?” the widow asked in disbelief. “Why would I? I came because I was told I’d find the reason for my husband’s death.”

“Not you, Mrs Kode. Your Ellcron appointed lawyer.”

In seven out of ten cases, when a suspect was accused of a crime they committed, they ran for it. That made things a lot easier later. The lawyer, however, was either too smart for that or too stupid to realize he had been caught.

“Me?” he smiled straight at me. “That’s quite a remarkable thing to say.”

“You see, I had Celsius’ significant other call each of you with a slightly different version of events. It all boiled down to the same thing: H-Sec believed the device to be hidden in the house where Celsius spent his time while in the slums. The place had been checked, of course, but there was just enough suspicion to make you think that maybe something was missed.”

I looked at each in turn.

“Would that be nice? A valuable piece of technology that Ellcron had lost. The cause for Jason’s death. The one thing that could exonerate a beloved brother. The threat of exposure. Couldn’t take the chance there might be something to incriminate you, could you, Victor?”

“As mis van Buren said, if you’re making baseless accusations, you’ll—”

“You were at the crime scene, right?” I cut him short. “How did you get there?”

“I was called by Kode’s family. I am their family lawyer.”

“So, you were there before Denil?”

A glint of hesitation appeared in the man’s eyes. I couldn’t tell whether he had to figure out what I was going for, but he didn’t feel as confident as a moment ago.

“N…” he paused. “Yes, I was there before. In fact, I was the one who suggested that we request Ellcron's assistance. Mis van Buren will confirm.”

Got you! “Then why wasn’t there any trace of that awful dragon skin essence in the building?” This was it—the coup de grâce. Even the H-Sec agents nearby were clear on the matter, for then moved closer in case the lawyer made an attempt to escape. Now that someone with his level of comfort would try. “I’m pretty good at finding traces of essence, but I didn’t find it. And neither did the entire Rune Investigation team.” I widened my smile. “It wasn’t that you wanted to be afraid of leaving traces, but just needed something to get the presence of the ever so expensive device off yourself. That’s why even when I saw you for the first time, I couldn’t feel any essence coming from the shoes. Funny thing. If you had changed them, I’d never have known.”

In the last five years, I’d confronted culprits many times. Sometimes they cried, sometimes they became aggressive, sometimes they tried to bribe me to keep quiet. Not once did it feel this satisfying? Maybe Clayton had a point. More likely I was going through the aftereffects of my flashback.

“Was it worth it?” I had to ask.

“It would have been,” he said with a sad sigh. “More than you’d even know. For decades I’d been working for messed up families. It was alright when they were marginally competent. But him? He was a walking lab rat with delusions of grandeur. In the last few months, he had me make his charms because he was too lazy to do it himself. Well, now he got to taste something unique. For a few days, at least he was special.”