Eternal. V.K. Forrest

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      Fia and Duncan completed their photographs, and Paddy’s Cleaning Service of Clare Point was called in to remove the bloodstains from the floor at the crime scene. Sixty-one-year-old Catherine Kahill, one of two mail carriers in town, agreed to run the post office as soon as it was cleared by the FBI and reopened by the postal service. The two agents then began their interviews.

      For the most part, Glen and Fia just stayed out of each other’s way, which was fine with her. She did, however, manage to convince him to hold the interviews inside the post office lobby, rather than going door-to-door. She suggested that the police station was too small, too crowded, and they wanted to keep their investigation as separate from local law enforcement as possible. Fia didn’t tell Glen that part of her reasoning involved keeping her Uncle Sean out of the fray. He didn’t know that the police chief was too loose a cannon for her to trust entirely. The bonus that came with not operating out of the police station was that she didn’t have to deal with any of Uncle Sean’s armchair COPS advice.

      The tricky thing was that she didn’t want Glen in Kahill family members’ houses, either. Everyone was used to behaving in a certain manner in public places; it was the way they had been coexisting with humans since their arrival in the colonies. But inside their homes…Fia wasn’t so certain they would keep their guards up as well. Besides, with her and Glen both interviewing in the post office lobby, she could keep an eye on him.

      Fia’s gaze strayed from Anna Ross, whom she was interviewing, to her notepad, where she had made no notes in the last twenty minutes. Anna was going on about how Bobby’s dog had barked in the yard. She had not seen Bobby the day of the murder and knew nothing about it, but Fia couldn’t get her to budge out of the chair no matter how many times she thanked her for taking time out of her busy day of watching game shows and soaps on her new big-screen TV.

      “Some kind of mixed breed,” Anna continued. “A dumb mutt, not smart enough to…”

      Fia glanced at her wristwatch and then her gaze strayed across the room to where Glen was interviewing Anna’s sister Peigi. Fia could tell by the look on his face that he was having a difficult time ridding himself of his interviewee as well.

      Just as she looked down at her notebook again, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Glen abruptly rise from his chair. Fia got up, looking in the direction he was looking. The back room.

      Both sisters, oblivious to the fact that their respective agents were out of their chairs, continued to chatter.

      “Agent Duncan?” Fia called out from across the room. He was closer to the rear entrance than she was.

      He held up his finger. He was still watching something or someone in the rear of the building.

      Suddenly, he took off across the lobby. “Stop, FBI!”

      Fia sprinted after him.

      There was a crash in the mail room. Something fell. An unidentified object slid across the freshly mopped and sanitized marble floor. By the time Fia made it through the archway, Glen was going out the back door into the alley.

      “You! Stop. FBI!” he hollered.

      Fia leaped over a box of spilled envelopes. “Agent Duncan, wait!” She burst out the back door, down the steps, through the fluttering strips of freshly acquired yellow police tape the local police had used to block off the building. Glen ran ahead of her, down the alley, toward the street that ran behind the post office. He was chasing a pigtailed teenager.

      Fia immediately recognized the girl from the back of her head. This is getting better by the second. This young lady was not someone in Clare Point the human needed to meet. She was an important woman in the sept, but in a vulnerable place right now, which made them all vulnerable. “Kaleigh,” she called. “It’s Fia. Stop.”

      The teen flew around the corner and down the block.

      Fia pushed to catch up with Glen, but he had almost half a block start on her. “Duncan,” she called. “Slow down. I know her.”

      He continued at an all-out run.

      They crossed the street and Kaleigh zigzagged, cutting through another alley, down the next block. Dogs barked. Pat Hill stopped his pickup in the middle of the street to watch the two FBI agents in suits chase down the teenager in shorts and a tank top. They had picked up a yellow lab, that ran behind them, barking excitedly.

      “Duncan, for Pete’s sake,” Fia hollered. She was fit and a good runner, but she had not packed her running shoes and she was going to be pissed if she broke the heel on her new loafers. “I know where she lives!”

      He slowed and Fia caught up. He was panting pretty hard. Fit, but not as fit as Fia. Most humans weren’t.

      “She was in the post office. In the back,” Glen panted, jogging beside her. “I don’t know what she was doing, but she took off the minute she realized I saw her.”

      Fia looked up ahead, shooting thoughts in the girl’s direction. What are you doing in the post office? What are you doing, running from a federal law enforcement agent?

      If the teen heard Fia, she didn’t respond. Kaleigh leaped a line of waist-high azalea bushes, cutting across Victor Simpson’s scraggly lawn.

      “Damn it, Kaleigh!” Fia called out, skirting two garbage cans turned over on the sidewalk. The lab had caught up and was leaping in front of her, still barking wildly. “Don’t make me run another two blocks to your house. Your da will have your hide,” she threatened.

      The girl, tennis shoes flying, threw a glance over her shoulder. “Fee? That you?”

      “How many FBI agents do you think we have in town? Yes, it’s me,” Fia answered, aloud.

      Kaleigh halted on the far side of Simpson’s lawn, eyeing Glen suspiciously.

      “Get over here!” Fia stopped just short of the hedge, waving her hand, then shooing the dog. Take a hike, buster, or I’ll be having doggy burgers for dinner tonight, she warned.

      The lab tucked his tail between his legs and took off down the sidewalk in the direction he’d come.

      Glen pulled up and walked around in a circle, trying to catch his breath.

      “Did she take anything?” Fia asked him.

      “No, I don’t think so. I don’t know, but she ran when she saw me.”

      “You probably just scared her. Let me handle this,” she said. Then to Kaleigh, “I said, get over here.” She pointed to the grass beside her.

      Kaleigh squeezed between two bushes, still considering the male FBI agent warily.

      “He’s with me,” Fia assured her.

      “Something of interest to you in the post office, young lady?” Glen demanded.

      “Special Agent Duncan, please,” Fia said. “This is Kaleigh Kahill.”

      “Another relative?”

      “Distant.”

      Glen studied the teenager. She glared back.

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