Eridanus Flooding

9: A Deal With The Devil

Instead, she winked and nudged his side with her elbow. "I won't tell anyone if you won't."

Then, with a move that would have impressed Gotham's hero himself, she dodged Jack's body.

Sliding behind the sleek steering wheel, the doctor closed the door and donned on a pair of silver aviators.

It happened so fast, Jack hardly had time to process it before she spoke again.

"Yanno. . . those bullets you recovered from the scene, I'd be more than happy to take a quick look: send them over to my lab. "

Jack scoffed at her. "Not a chance."

"All right, but if you change your mind--" V.C. reached into the driver's seat visor and pulled out something to hand to Jack through the opened window.

After a millisecond of hesitation, he grasped the paper: a small white business card.

A lustrous ebony crown was etched into the surface and underneath, in sharp bold letters, read a seven-digit number.

Nothing else.

Very Bondesque--in Jack's opinion-- and very Coldwater.

As he was examining the paper, the doctor tapped her nails on the car body to get his attention.

She revved the engine and threw him a playful wink. "I have this strange premonition that I'm going to be hearing from you in the near future, Commander. See you around."

It was that statement that confounded Jack as he merged onto the highway.

He knew her.

And he knew she wasn't about to let this go. He just had to figure out what she was planning on doing next.

~**~~**~

"What do you mean you can't process my evidence?!"

Jack had driven back to the Rinshawn precinct after his encounter with V.C.

He had ignored the blatant curious stares of the officers loitering around his makeshift office and settled into a flimsy chair that squeaked with every movement.

Fingering the bullets from the Praxton crime scene, he had pulled out his phone with every intention of calling FBI headquarters.

However, before he could even dial, a shrill ringing pierced the silence as an unknown number called.

Answering had been a mistake.

He should have just ignored the call and went on with his day.

But he didn't.

He answered.

The talkative woman on the other end informed him that the FBI Forensics Investigation Unit could not expedite analysis on his evidence.

The Chief Investigator had been recently nominated for a grant research program all the way across the pond in Oxford: and therefore; until a new head of Forensics has been hired, all new crime scene evidence will have a waiting period of two to three weeks.

She then wished him a good day and promptly hung up.

Jack sat in stunned silence processing what he had heard, or what he thought he heard.

There was no way that this fortuitous serendipity (for the criminologist, not Jack) was just a coincidence, especially when that conniving doctor had practically told him this was going to happen.

In exasperation, he abruptly paced in the narrow space.

One stride.

Two strides.