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be blocking you?”
    “No, not really. It might limit the quality of direct contact with someone dependent upon how deep the prison was buried, the ground distorting my signal, but I should be able to pick up the most basic of brain waves floating about regardless. There’s simply nothing there.”
    “So Shaw is setting us up.” Rahim dragged a huge hand across the scruff growing on his chin, his frustration growing.
    He didn’t say, ‘I told you so,’ but he might as well have. Rahim had wanted nothing to do with the DSI after what they’d done to DRAC and had only come along because I’d told him of the threat to Abigail and Katon and Scarlett. He was loyal to a fault but that didn’t mean he was stupid.
    “Maybe not.” I remembered the strange tingling I’d felt while examining the cells. “Could they keep you from sensing anyone by using magic?”
    “Hmmmm. The wards would have to be pretty sophisticated.”
    “What are you thinking, Frank?” Rachelle broke her silence to ask.
    “When I was examining the last place there was this weird mystical energy between the main door and the interior of the prison and more of the same at the doors to the cells. Nothing happened when I triggered the stuff, and it felt residual for lack of a better word, inactive, so I didn’t bother to check it out. Maybe that has something to do with why you can’t pick anything up.”
    “It’s possible,” Mike admitted, “but I can’t be certain without examining the last prison to see what kind of defenses they put in place.”
    “Which isn’t going to happen anytime soon,” Rahim said, motioning with his jaw toward a figure that appeared out of nowhere a dozen yards ahead of us. Grace. She raised her hands in a peaceful gesture before starting our direction, a natural sashay in her stride.
    Or ever, seeing how they blew the place up. “Guess they got tired of waiting,” I said.
    “Looks that way,” Rahim confirmed. He turned and raised an eyebrow at Rachelle.
    “I’ll keep my finger on the proverbial trigger,” Rachelle answered, realizing immediately what he was asking. “Michael will be listening in as well and will assist me in opening a gate should we need a quicker exit.”
    Rahim sighed. If Shaw was setting us up, more than the usual that was, she could wipe out the last of the command structure of DRAC in single blow. Without Rachelle or Rahim around to keep the reins tight the organization would fall apart and become even more ineffective than it had become after the Army kicked in the doors at DRAC headquarters. She’d dealt us a hell of a blow that had only been mitigated by the whole of DRAC moving into Hell and me convincing the vamps and weres to hit back against the government to give them someone else to focus on. That had led to a lot of grief for Shaw and her people. As such, I could easily see Rahim’s point of view that she was luring him and Rachelle out of hiding so she could take a shot at them and end this once and for all.
    That said, I was starting to get a pretty good feel for the way Shaw thought. She was a user, first and foremost. She needed something and we were the means to achieving that particular something. The woman would most definitely make a play and try to take us out eventually but her primary motivation was to accomplish her goal and better her circumstances. As long as we were prepared for her and took precautions while we went about our little chores we could head her off at the pass and hold to the status quo of hate and hate alike.
    “Taking in the view?” Grace asked as she approached, her gazer meeting mine.
    I looked her up and down and grinned. “It is way more pleasant over here than it is over that way.” I gestured in the general direction of Shaw and the others. “Madam Corpsula send you to be our escort?”
    “We are on a bit of a schedule, end of the world and all that.”
    “Aren’t we always?” I met her cold stare and waved her off. “Run