Agent Franks was inside the store, squatting next to the body, examining the carnage. Two other agents were taking pictures. I figured that since they hadn’t thrown me out yet—since officially I’d been here for the assist—talking was worth a shot. “Looking for any useful replacement bits? His left foot still seems to be in pretty good shape.”

Franks stood and glared at me.

“How’s that work, though? Do you have to try to find new feet in the same size? Because otherwise buying shoes would be a real pain the ass. Excuse me, I’d like these, but in a size ten for the right and a size thirteen for the left. I bet the shoe store hates you.”

“Escort Pitt from the premises,” Franks told his men, then went back to his examination. “If he resists, shoot him in the face.”

“Well, that’s fairly specific.” Before the first agent could reach me, I quickly said, “I wanted to talk about a mythological horse.”

Franks held up one hand. His men paused. “Leave us.” The agents knew better than to question Franks, gathered their cameras, gave me the stink-eye, and walked out, making quite a bit of noise on the broken glass. “What do you want, Pitt?”

“Your radio on?”

Franks moved his hand over and shut it off.

“Stricken? Know him? Really white fella, kind of scary. Controls a shadow government agency and throws millions of dollars at monsters worth a couple thousand bucks. Ringing any bells?”

“Ought to ring your bell…” Franks muttered, not bothering to look at me. “I know of him.”

“I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him in person either, but you know about this job he sent us all on…Did you hear the part where he said one of his teams went missing?”

Franks stopped poking at the body for a moment to shake his head in the negative.

“Interesting, don’t you think? Assuming he was telling the truth, a Unicorn team, including a werewolf that Earl Harbinger insists is remarkably talented, went missing. You heard about any more of these spiders?”

No response. I took that as another no.

“You’d think they’d stick out, rampaging and all. So just this one little critter takes out a strike team made up of PUFF-exempt monsters, massacres a truck stop full of people, then runs thirty miles an hour to come down here to eat this guy. Odd.”

“Your point?”

“Just wondering. Is the MCB as in the dark about this as we are?”

“I see fine in the dark. You don’t. You still owe me a kidney.”

Accidently shoot a guy once and he never lets you live it down. “I’ve got the organ donor sticker on my driver’s license. I’ll make sure to put you in my will. Agent Franks gets my kidneys. I hope you’re not in a rush to collect.”