Alien in the House

else that I felt I could get away with out of his desk. There’d be a problem if the police had already looked in here, but we’d cross that bridge when forced.
    There wasn’t a lot of ornamentation in here, but there was a small stuffed animal, a bald eagle, in one of the drawers. It had a card tied to it:
To Mister Reyes, the best man for the job, from everyone at Oasis of the Desert Middle School.
    “What did Santiago do, before he was elected, do you know?”
    “I think he was a teacher.”
    Put the eagle into my purse so it wouldn’t get squished in the briefcase. While I did my best not to tear up, I searched for more personal things like that, but there weren’t any, at least not in the desk.
    My phone beeped. “Len says we need to hurry up.” Replied back that I was still busy being sick and please stall.
    We had to be cautious leaving Reyes’ office because we didn’t want to disturb the tape and therefore had a bigger risk of being seen. However, the halls weren’t really hopping, so we only had to wait for a couple people to get to their offices and then we were off and on to the second floor.
    The three offices down here didn’t take too long. It was the same as the others—nothing much but trash left. Trash which I dutifully bagged and tagged and put into Reyes’ now bulging briefcase. At least it was soft-sided.
    Reyes’ office had taken us the longest, fifteen minutes easily, so with the others, we’d been gone about thirty minutes.
    We had only Juvonic’s office left to do, but as we reached it Bruno appeared before us, wings spread impressively. He didn’t make a sound, but his expression said to stop running, right now.



CHAPTER 53
    W E STOPPED RUNNING.
    “What the
hell
is that bird doing here?” Jeff managed to keep his voice down, for which I was proud. I hadn’t screamed when Bruno appeared out of thin air. I was proud of that, too.
    “Guarding.”
    “How did he get here?”
    “He came with us in the car.”
    “Really. Then why didn’t I see him?”
    “He doesn’t trust Vance?” Bruno did a head bob, wing flap, scratched with his foot, then stared at me. “Ah, no, that’s not it. Vance seems okay. Bruno didn’t want you freaking out about him coming along, he knows the game is afoot and therefore needs to be with us at all times, and he feels that it’ll be easier for us, you in particular, if he’s incognito.”
    Bruno nudged against me to share that I was indeed the most insightful of chicks, then disappeared.
    “I’m never getting used to that. I’m just telling you now.”
    “Hence why Bruno’s in Stealth Mode. He wants us being really cautious here, and quiet, and going very slowly.”
    We walked by Juvonic’s office and Bruno’s concerns were explained—there were people in there. People who were about to have a shock, I was pretty sure, but not as big a one as me and Jeff appearing inside their offices out of nowhere would have been.
    We walked on at human speeds down the rest of this hallway. We were passed by someone who I took to be a page—he was young, had an upset expression, and he was walking fast. I turned to watch him—yep, he went into Juvonic’s office.
    After we passed the Bearer of Bad News we weren’t that far from the lobby. I ensured I leaned on Jeff and he had his arm around me and had the briefcase in his free hand. We definitely had the “not feeling awesome” look going. The issue was whether Irene would remember that Jeff hadn’t come in carrying anything or not.
    There were paramedics here now, though not the ones from last night, so we had that going for us. There were also police, and not the K-9 squad. The people from Juvonic’s office came running in behind us. Which was nice, because they caused a small amount of chaos, which made it simple for Jeff to hand Reader the briefcase and ask him to hold it.
    Reader having possession meant that as the Head of Field, he didn’t actually have to surrender anything to the police. He could if he wanted to play nicely, but if he didn’t so want to do, he didn’t so have to do.
    Our absence was explained and the police were quite sympathetic to my reaction to seeing a man die in front of me. We were witnesses and Jeff was one of the people who’d brought the body inside, so the police wanted our statements, since they already had Reader’s and the boys’. We didn’t have a lot of information to give, and we were done quickly. No one mentioned the briefcase.
    Irene