The Forgefires of God (The Cause Book 3) by Randall Farmer

operation.  I needed to keep him from killing himself.  Then I listened, and told him I respected his capabilities, and told him his only problem was that he was on the wrong side.  He practically talked himself around by himself.”
    I shook my head.  She did like him as a person.  Compatible personalities.  She liked those blue-suited FBI men, and they liked her.  Even the ones she fought against respected her professionally.  If she had been male and not a Transform, she probably would have made a fine FBI agent herself.
    “Ma’am?”
    I saw deeper into this morass than she did.  “This was a trap within a trap.  Patrelle, under someone’s orders, fed McIntyre to you in an attempt to drive a wedge between us.”
    She closed her eyes and did her analysis fugue thing.  “ Yes. ”  Pause.  “But who?”
    “Ordinarily I would say ‘Bass’, but Bass isn’t good enough.  She might know enough to do this, but she lacks the necessary talents.”  Patrelle rarely left Washington.  Bass didn’t possess the skills to control someone like Patrelle long-distance.
    “Schrum?  She’s the most likely enemy to have an in with Patrelle.”
    “She wouldn’t know what to do.  Consider – whoever set this up needed to know about your work with the FBI, the fact the FBI had a trap set up for you, my feelings about McIntyre and your history with him.  They couldn’t have predicted the outcome of your trap fight, meaning the order to McIntyre had to be given as the situation happened.”  Adkins did things like this in Detroit, but she never left Detroit.  This was her style, though.
    “There’s something we’re missing,” Amy said, echoing my thoughts, Lori’s thoughts, Zielinski’s thoughts and Gail and Van’s thoughts.  “Something big and nasty, and we’re not going to like it when we finally find out what it is.  You know I suspect we have an ultra-powerful hidden Major Transform enemy.  This looks a whole lot like that enemy in action.”
    “Perhaps.”  I understood her worries, having run into her number one suspect in one of his many identities not too long ago.  A Major Transform he was not , though the rest was true.  Amy twitched and winced, another wave of pain riding through her, as her body did the Arm thing and healed, despite the pain the healing caused.
    “It’s all right,” I said, gently.  She relaxed in a glow of happiness.  She held my hand against her cheek, and I could almost hear her purr.
    “So what do we do now, boss?”
    “Well, for one, we need to get you a whole bunch of juice so you can heal that leg.  There’s one woman in storage here at Littleside, two days from going Monster.”  I would take the kills, and use our tag link to pass her the juice she needed.
    She nodded.  “I sense her.”
    “After that, I’m going to need to hunt.”  Amy would need an appalling amount of juice to fix her leg.  I would get Giselle to help, the sort of thing a younger Arm would be willing to do to up the favor balance with a touchy older Arm like Haggerty.  I already knew Giselle possessed the self-control to give up her kills to an Arm superior.
    Amy looked down, away from my eyes, when she realized how much I was going to do for her.  Then she tilted her head back and to the side, to expose her neck as fully as she could.  Vulnerable.  If she had been healthy, she would have prostrated herself at my feet.  I hesitated a moment, and then laid my fingers gently on the artery throbbing there, to feel her life’s blood pulse under my control.
    “I’m yours,” she said, with a musical whisper.
    It was moments like this that reminded me why I cared for her so much.  “You’re mine.”
    So beautiful.  I left my fingers on her neck and closed my eyes, basking in that warm, semi-sexual glow of possession.
    “Tell me what you know about how the FBI’s going to be protecting the ruling Firsts,” I said.
    “They’re going through Assistant Director