Guardian Angels – An Interesting Life (11)

"Yeah." Vic blew out a long breath. "I know you're right, but I still can't stay here and put you in danger. You're not trained for it."

"What part of 'I was in the Army' didn't you understand?"

"As a medic."

"A combat medic. I saw my fair share of battle. I know which end of a gun is which and I was taught hand-to-hand fighting after I enlisted."

"You're not going to give in on this are you," Vic muttered.

"No. First and foremost because I was a medic. I can't in good conscience let you leave until you're in better condition than you are right now."

"And while I'm sitting here recuperating, the blackmailer is trying his damnedest to get Marshall to pull out of the primary race. Presuming, of course, that's what he's going for. From what I was told when I was hired, Marshall has a week to make up his mind before the blackmailer goes public with his information."

Evan frowned. "How long since you took the job?"

"Four days now. Three following the husband around on campaign stops and at fundraisers, and then last night and today here."

"Then we don't have much time to come up with some other way to find out who the blackmailer is."

"Any bright suggestions?"

"No, but between us, we can probably figure out something. Like… catching those men when they come back here and doing a little interrogating of our own."

"Somehow I doubt they're going to spill their guts to us about who hired them."

* * * *

"Shall we tell them?" Dom asked.

He and Paddy had returned to Evan's house as soon as they'd gotten what information they could out of the minds of the two men they'd captured. Once they had, they dropped the men back at their car, having convinced them, telepathically, to forget the interrogation and just tell their boss that Evan had security on his house they couldn't bypass. 

"It would mean revealing ourselves," Paddy pointed out.

"As if we haven't done that before when the situation warranted it."

"But does it now? All we learned was that they work for someone who wants Vic stopped, although they don't know who it is."

"Agreed. We do have the phone number they use for reporting in."

Paddy looked thoughtful. "What if…? No, a strange note showing up in Vic's email, and that's presuming he'd even think to check it right now, probably wouldn't do the trick. He'd think it was a maneuver to throw him off the scent."

"I would, if it were me."

"The same if we wrote out the information and stuck it in Evan's mailbox." Paddy paced until Dom told him to stop or he'd wear a hole in the carpet.

"In this form?" Paddy replied scathingly. But he did come to a halt. "We don't have to 'appear'. We could come to the front door and say we're… the police? That we arrested two men who'd been seen trying to break in to houses in the neighborhood and they'd copped to why they were?"

"Given the way Vic feels about the police at the moment, you probably wouldn't get past 'Police' before he slammed the door in your face."

"You're trying to make this difficult."

"No, I'm just being practical."

"Revealing ourselves is practical?"

Dom nodded. "Once we get them to suspend their disbelief. And appearing in front of them should go a long way toward doing that, as you well know."

With a sigh, Paddy admitted he was right.