Delilah Street - 04 - Silver Zombie: Delilah Street: Paranormal Investigator by Carole Nelson Douglas

Author:Carole Nelson Douglas
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9781439167816
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2010-11-30T01:01:07+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

THREE MOLDED-WOOD CHAIRS were now lined up before Mrs. Haliburton’s desk, Ric and I flanking Helena Troy Burnside, whose suit was a smashing power red, probably Prada.

Quicksilver was guarding Dolly in the parking lot, but he’d made his druthers clear. He’d rather be intimidating the bureaucrat in the office above.

Mrs. Haliburton shifted on her wheeled desk chair, which squealed like a little boy. She didn’t quite glance at anything but the computer screen facing her.

“All the proper authorizations have reached your email address?” Helena inquired.

“Yes,” Mrs. Haliburton murmured, her pink face turning fuchsia. She licked pale, dry lips. “From the secretary at the Department of Human Services in Washington, the assistant director of the FBI.” She frowned at Ric. “And the lieutenant governor. This is most unprecedented, but I’ll download the files to any device you wish, Dr. Burnside.”

Helena extended a business card across the desk that Mrs. Haliburton whisked into her custody. “Both addresses?” she inquired.

“I always like a backup, don’t you?” Helena replied.

Mrs. Haliburton ignored her while clicking in the e-addresses. She hit enter with the high-handed flare of a concert pianist, totally unlike her tightly wired self.

“I think you will find that this young woman, Delilah Street,” she spat out, still addressing her computer screen rather than our party, “will be very sorry indeed to have the contents of these files in anyone else’s hands, even hands with so many highly placed connections. I know your specialty, Dr. Burnside, is severely damaged, and damaging, children, but you will have those therapeutic skills sorely tried in this case, as our social workers here in Wichita did thirteen years ago.”

Gulp, Irma whispered. And she doesn’t even know about me.

“Gulp” was right. I was sitting with the two people in the world whose respect I most wanted.

Ric laid his arm across the back of my chair, standing and drawing me up beside him.

“Thanks for your cooperation, Mrs. Haliburton, but warnings are unnecessary. I’ve found in my FBI work that files are sealed more often to protect the holders, not the subjects.”

Helena was checking her mini-netbook. She looked up and nodded. “Mission accomplished.”

Ric escorted me to the door, opened it for his foster mother, and ushered us into the hall.

“She’s shaking, Helena,” Ric told his onetime therapist in a furious undertone.

“Don’t let that harpy frighten you, Delilah,” Helena consoled me. “Little people like to make big threats.” She took my other arm. “Now, Ric tells me you’ve invented another fascinating cocktail, the Brimstone Kiss. I know where you got the idea for that one.” Helena smiled and added, “Let’s find a well-stocked bar that can make it, where we can munch on a sinfully caloric bar menu.”

She could make happy talk; it wasn’t her secret file that was heating up her personal computer.

Ric knew how to calm my nerves. He let me drive again, with Helena in the passenger seat while he and Quicksilver occupied the rear.

Ric searched his phone screen. “Here’s the place for us. The Petroleum Pavilion on Polo Drive.

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