Shadowfires

Sarah Kiel
said, “Daddy…”
    The Stone started past Sharp, toward his daughter, who had sat up
in bed and held out a hand toward him.
    Sharp stepped in his way, leaned close to him, loomed over him,
and said, “You can see her when we've finished the interrogation.”
    The Stone looked up at Sharp with a placid expression that was the
essence of equanimity and imperturbability, and Peake was not only
gladdened but thrilled to see that Sharp was not going to
intimidate this man. “Interrogate? What right have you to
interrogate?”
    Sharp withdrew his wallet from his jacket, opened it to his DSA
credentials.
“I'm a federal agent, and I am in the middle of an urgent investigation concerning a matter of national security. Your daughter has information that I've
got to obtain as soon as possible, and she is being less than
cooperative.”
    “If you'll step into the hall,” The Stone said quietly, “I'll
speak with her. I'm sure she isn't obstructin' you on purpose. She's
a troubled girl, yes, and
she's allowed herself to be misguided, but she's never been bad at
heart or spiteful. I'll speak to her, find out what you need to know, then convey the information to you.”
    “No,” Sharp said. “ You'll go into the hall and wait.”
    “Please move out of my way,” The Stone said.
    “Listen, mister,” Sharp said, moving right up against The Stone,
glaring down at him, “if you want trouble from me,
you'll get it, more than you can deal with. You obstruct a federal agent, and you're
just about giving him a license to come down on you as hard as he
wants.”
    Having read the name on the DSA credentials, The Stone said, “Mr.
Sharp, last night I was awakened by a call from a Mrs. Leben, who
said my daughter needed me. That's a message I've been
waitin' a long time to hear. It's the growin' season, a busy time-”
    The guy was a farmer, by God, which gave Peake new
confidence in his powers of observation. In spit-polished city shoes,
polyester pants, and starched white shirt, The Stone had the
uncomfortable look specific to a simple country man who has been
forced by circumstances to exchange his work clothes for unfamiliar
duds.
    “-a very busy season. But I got dressed the moment I hung up the
phone, drove the pickup a hundred miles to Kansas City in the heart
of the night, got the dawn flight out to Los Angeles, then the
connector flight here to Palm Springs, a taxi-”
    “Your travel journal doesn't interest me one damn bit,” Sharp said, still blocking The Stone.
    “Mr. Sharp, I am plain bone-weary, which is the fact I'm tryin' to
impress upon you, and I am most eager to see my girl, and from the
looks of her she's been cryin', which upsets me mightily. Now, though
I'm not an angry man by nature, or a trouble-makin' man, I
don't know quite what I might do if you keep treatin' me high-handed
and try to stop me from seein' what my girl's cryin' about.”
    Sharp's face tightened with anger. He stepped back far enough to give himself room to plant one big hand on The Stone's
chest.
    Peake was not sure whether Sharp intended to guide the man out of
the room and into the corridor or give him one hell of a shove back
against the wall. He never found out which it was because The Stone
put his own hand on
Sharp's wrist and bore down and, without seeming to make any effort whatsoever, he removed Sharp's
hand from his chest. In fact, he must have put as much painful
pressure on Sharp's wrist as Sharp had applied to Sarah's fingers,
for the deputy director went pale, the redness of anger draining
right out of him, and a queer look passed through his eyes.
    Letting go of Sharp's hand, The Stone said, “I know you're a
federal agent, and I have the greatest respect for the law. I know
you can see this as obstruction, which would give you a good excuse
to knock me on my can and clap me in handcuffs. But
I'm of the opinion that it wouldn't do you or your agency the least
bit of good if you roughed me up, 'specially since I've told you I'll encourage my daughter to cooperate. What do you think?”
    Peake wanted to applaud. He didn't.
    Sharp stood there, breathing heavily, trembling, and gradually his
rage-clouded eyes cleared, and he shook himself the way a bull
sometimes will shake itself back to its senses after unsuccessfully
charging a
matador's cape. “Okay. I just want to get my information fast. I don't
care how. Maybe you'll get it faster than I can.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Sharp. Give me