Nightshades Read Online Free

get someone to sub in for a month or two until Ruiz was back on duty. But both Alex and Chase were scrambling to come up with even one.
    “Okay, I want this guy, Bartell,” Alex said finally, moving one of the files to a rare clean patch of table. “He was in on the first shade case, Ambrose. Helped design the cell they still keep him in.”
    “He’s fifty-five,” Chase pointed out, looking over Alex’s shoulder. “Two years to retirement?”
    “He’s
experienced.
”
    Chase shrugged. “Okay, fine. At least he doesn’t have a family. What about this one?” He slapped open a file. “Jill Hadley. She’s a star with the Chicago FBI, applied for a transfer last year and hasn’t pulled it since the killings. On the contrary, she’s e-mailed Harding’s assistant twice to remind him that she’s still interested.”
    Alex examined the file, noting the attached picture of a slender woman with red hair so long it might have touched her navel. “You get that you can’t sleep with her, right?”
    “Grow up, man. She’s hungry, and she’ll know the town.”
    Alex held up his hands. “Okay, okay. That’s two,” He picked up Hadley’s file and set it on top of Bartell’s. “We need one more.”
    Chase frowned at the piles around him. “All of these are losers.”
    “Well, which one of those losers will be the biggest asset?”
    “None of them are all that great, far as I can tell,” Chase grumbled. “Unless, of course, you’re purely looking for cannon fodder. . . .” He made a show of eyeing the piles with sudden interest.
    “No, I think they’ve killed enough of us.” Alex sat back in his chair and surveyed the files. “But you’re right. We need to think outside the box. And that means more intelligence on shades themselves.”
    “Good luck with that. Every agency in the world’s been working on it.”
    Alex thought about it for a few minutes, absently tapping out a rhythm on the table. What the Chicago pod
really
needed was a fresh angle. “Maybe they have,” Alex said slowly, “but we have something most of them don’t.”
    “What’s that?”
    “We can go see Ambrose.”
    Chase snorted. “To what end? He won’t tell us anything. Do you know how many agents have tried? And last I checked Congress still hasn’t gotten around to declaring him inhuman.” According to the law, the shade was technically still a US citizen, which meant he couldn’t be tortured or even studied invasively. Ambrose had a team of exorbitantly priced lawyers who made sure of it. The Bureau labs had gotten permission to draw blood and collect hair and saliva samples, but anything else was off the table until Congress got around to declaring him inhuman. Even then, Ambrose was so high profile, it was unlikely they’d get away with physically torturing him for information as long as he was on US soil. He was too famous now.
    Still, plenty of agents had taken a run at interrogating Ambrose through his two-inch-thick plexiglass cell—not to mention Bureau psychologists, biologists, and MDs. Ambrose had proven himself impervious to all of the Bureau’s forms of psychological manipulation, and they were pretty good at that kind of thing. If Alex wanted to get anything out of him, he would need to get creative. Trouble was, every FBI agent in the world spent years being trained how to think the way the Bureau wanted. Even out-of-the-box thinking was according to Bureau specifications.
    Unable to remain still any longer, Alex got up and paced the conference room. Chase, who had worked with him for over a decade, just pushed back in his chair, stretched, and waited him out. “Make the call to Camp Vamp,” Alex said finally. “I’ll think of something.”

Chapter 2
    Washington, D.C.
    Friday night
    One good thing about being the new Chicago SAC, Alex thought a few hours later, was you could get things done in a hurry.
    By eight o’clock that night he and Chase had arrived at the National Security Branch building,