Brown and de Luca Collection, Volume 1

by Maggie Shayne

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “My mistake. Anyway, we checked your blood for sedatives, tranquilizers and the more common poisons. It doesn’t look like anything got into your system.”

  “But can you be sure?”

  “No, not completely. We’re not going to find things we don’t test for. But if you’re not feeling any symptoms of anything…”

  I got that. “Yeah, okay.” The syringe was at the police lab, no doubt. This doctor wouldn’t have had the chance to see it or analyze it. He would only have been told the bare minimum he needed to know.

  “Doc, is there a drug that would paralyze a person so completely that they could barely even breathe, while leaving them completely awake and lucid?”

  He blinked at me like I’d turned into a brain-munching demon and took an actual step back. “Well, yes.”

  “Would you have found that if I’d been injected with it?”

  “No. It leaves the system so quickly it barely leaves a trace. We could test for the metabolites it breaks down into. But there’s no point, because you couldn’t have been given that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if you had, you’d be dead by now. Succinylcholine is what we use in the O.R. to keep the patient perfectly still during surgery. It paralyzes every muscle, including the lungs and, in large enough doses, the heart. It’s why you always need an airway during surgery. You can’t breathe on your own when your lungs are paralyzed.”

  “Is this—what did you call it? Sux-sin—”

  “Succinylcholine.”

  “Yeah, that. Is it easy to obtain?”

  “Almost impossible,” he said. “And like I said, if he’d injected you with that, you’d be dead.”

  “Yeah.” But not before he’d gouged out my eyes, I bet.

  He took back his chart, peeled off a copy of what I’d signed and handed it to me. Ah, yes, my release instructions. As he exited the curtained-off area, Mason and Misty came in. I was already sitting up, long since dressed and ready to go.

  “I got the all-clear, so let’s blow this pop stand.”

  Mason asked for the paper by holding out his hand, and I gave it over. He read every word, which was more than I had done, nodded and said, “Okay. We’re going to my place for the time being, if that’s okay with everyone.”

  “It’s not,” I said, sliding off the bed to my feet.

  Mason shoved the paper into Misty’s hands and came quick to my side, sliding an arm around my waist like I might fall down without him. Once I would have resented it, but I liked being close to him. Up against him. I liked it a lot.

  Down, girl. Finish your thought, before you lose it entirely.

  “I still have to pack, pick up Misty’s stuff and get myself a rental car so we can go on our trip.”

  “We could always take my car,” Misty said. “And grab my bags while we’re picking it up.”

  “That doesn’t cover the part where I still have to pack,” I told her. I looked at Mason. And oddly, I knew that he knew exactly what I was thinking. I have to pack, but I’m afraid if I go home a killer will be waiting for me.

  “I have a suggestion,” Mason said.

  I nodded at him to go on.

  “Come to my place tonight, rest, and let me worry about getting Misty’s stuff from her house and getting you a rental car. You can head up north in the morning. I’ll even take you home to pack your stuff first, and then out to breakfast. What do you think?”

  What did I think? I thought he was too good to be true. Fortunately I’d known him long enough by now to know that he was just what he seemed. I knew all of Mason Brown’s secrets. Okay, maybe not all of them, but certainly his deepest, darkest ones. None of them revealed him as anything other than perfect. Okay, so he liked to play video games, and he’d covered up the fact that his brother was a serial killer. Was still covering it up. But he had good reasons. And really, how could he have known his insane brother would keep coming back to haunt our lives the way he seemed determined to do?

  Not that it was his brother doing this. No ghost was going around injecting people with suxsy-fuck-acholine and reclaiming its lost organs. That hadn’t been a ghost in the back of my car, it had been a real flesh-and-blood person. I’d felt it.

  Thinking of that gave me a shiver.

  I rubbed my arms until the feeling went away. “I think that’s a great idea. Thanks, Mason.”

  “De nada. Let’s get a move on, Myrt’s getting impatient.”

  * * *

  Mason could see that Misty was starting to wonder what the hell was going on between him and her aunt, but she hadn’t asked. Yet. She probably would as soon as he left them alone at his place, which he had no choice but to do. Every Monday evening he picked the boys up from basketball practice and drove them home. It wasn’t far out of his way, and he enjoyed the extra time with them. Jeremy had opted not to play this year, but he still hung out at the school gym doing homework while his brother practiced.

  So he left the women at his place with Myrtle and drove to the school, pulling into the half-circle drive in front, taking his place in a long line of minivans and SUVs, and waited for the boys to come out.

  Joshua emerged a few minutes later, dragging his backpack, still in his shorts and sweaty T-shirt, with a hoodie slung over his shoulder, even though it was thirty freezing degrees.

  Mason cranked up the heat a little and reached across to open the door. Josh tossed his backpack into the backseat and got in.

  Mason resisted the urge to tell the kid to wear his jacket so he wouldn’t catch his death. He had no desire to sound like a nagging mother. If Josh got cold enough, he would put the hoodie on. All the nagging in the world wouldn’t make him do it any sooner.

  “You lucked out, got here before Jer and landed shotgun,” he said as Josh buckled up. “What’s taking him so long, anyway?”

  “He didn’t come. Said he’d catch a ride home with ‘one of the guys who actually has a car’ later on.”

  Mason got that the sarcasm-loaded part of the sentence had been Jeremy’s, not Josh’s.

  A car blew its horn from behind them, and when Mason checked the mirror, a woman in a minivan sent him an apologetic shrug. He didn’t like this and figured Marie was going to like it even less, but he didn’t have any choice but to get going. He wasn’t comfortable leaving Rachel and Misty alone, even at his place, right now.

  He pulled into traffic and headed for Marie’s, Josh talking a mile a minute as they went. Basketball practice, the coach, the holiday tournament being cancelled because of a flu outbreak at the hosting school, and about fifty other topics over the fifteen-minute ride.

  God, that enthusiasm. He could use a dose of it right now.

  He and Josh got out, and Josh ran ahead to the front door. Mason followed at a slower pace, until Joshua turned and said, “Huh. Door’s open.” Then he hollered, “Mom?”

  Mason reacted automatically, catching Josh before he went in, pulling him back a little and pushing the door open himself. He peered inside, and saw the place in shambles. “Josh, get back in the car. Get back in the car right now and—”

  But the kid shoved past him and darted into the house before Mason could finish, so he had no choice but to pull his piece and follow.

  Marie was on the floor near the sofa. The coffee table was on its side, a lamp smashed on the floor near her head and the back door was standing wide open.

  He lunged forward, dropping to one knee beside Marie. She was banged up to hell and gone, a huge lump, already purple, on her forehead, a bruise on one cheekbone, and more all up and down one arm and shoulder. Her eyes were closed. She was breathing, though, and had a solid, steady pulse.

  He turned. “Josh, stay close to me.”

  Josh came to him, phone in hand, already mid-conversat
ion with a 911 dispatcher. He put his hand over the phone. “She wants to know if the bad guy’s still here,” he said, and from the look in his wide eyes, he did, too.

  Mason took the phone from him. “Your mom is okay, pal. I want you to pat her face a little, talk to her, try to wake her up.”

  “Okay.” Josh began doing as he was told while Mason got to his feet again, checking the surroundings as he brought the phone to his ear. “This is Detective Mason Brown. I’m on the scene. I need backup and an ambulance. Looks like the attacker ran out the back door, but I can’t leave the victim and her son to give chase.”

  “We have help on the way, Detective.”

  “Good.” He set the phone down, put it on speaker, and said, “I’m going to take a look out the back door.” Then, louder, “Josh, if you see anyone, yell.”

  “I will. Come on, Mom. Come on, wake up.”

  Mason went through the kitchen, which was empty, one chair knocked over but nothing else out of place. He looked through the open back door. No one out there. And the sidewalk that led around the house to the front was snow-free and dry. Not a track to be seen.

  He closed the door, being careful not to touch the knob and obscure any prints, and headed back into the living room, grabbing the phone on the way. “I hear sirens now. I’m going to hang up.”

  Marie was sitting up, holding one hand to her head, crying softly and hugging Joshua. He went over to them. “Josh, go wait by the door and let the cops in, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  As soon as the kid was a few feet away, Mason leaned close to Marie’s face. “What happened?”

  “He…just walked in the front door and started hitting me.”

  “He?”

  She nodded. “Had to be. He was tall. Thin, but tall. And strong. He had a ski mask on. I couldn’t see anything, no skin, nothing.” She lifted her bruised face to stare straight into his eyes.

  God in heaven, why? Why would this killer go after Marie?

  “Did he say anything? Could you recognize the voice?”

  She closed her eyes, shaking her head. “He was trying to jab me with a needle. I thought he was going to kill me. He must have heard you pull in and run off.”

  “All right, all right, it’s all right now.” He hugged her, and then Josh was leading the uniforms inside. Rosie showed up on their heels.

  The paramedics arrived next, and Mason backed off to let them have a look at Marie. He had the uniforms scouring the neighborhood, and everything in him was itching to go help, but he didn’t dare leave Josh and Marie alone. While the medics were with Marie, he took Rosie into the kitchen, out of earshot. “It’s the same guy. The organ thief.”

  Rosie’s brows shot up. “The one that attacked Rachel earlier today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Dressed in black, ski mask, too similar to be coincidental. She said he had a needle.”

  Rosie leaned back against the kitchen counter. “Damn. Why would this guy want to bother with Marie?”

  “I don’t know, but if he’d come after her, he might come after the boys, too, and—” He broke off there. “Shit, the boys. I don’t know where Jeremy is.”

  He lunged back into the living room just in time to see his teenage nephew burst through the front door, his face etched in panic, no doubt from seeing the ambulance and police cars out front. “Mom?”

  “I’m okay, Jer. I’m okay,” Marie said as he rushed to her. She was on the sofa now, with two paramedics attending to her.

  Mason caught Jeremy’s eyes. “She was attacked, but we scared the guy off. She’s okay, I promise. I’ve got this.”

  Rosie clapped Mason on the shoulder. “You take care of your family. I’ll deal with the rest of this, all right?”

  Mason nodded, grateful, but seething inside. “This piece of shit’s gone too far, Rosie. He’s gone too far.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Monday, December 18

  Mason called about two hours after he’d left us at his place, and to be honest, I was relieved. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was scared shitless. The little farmhouse was in the middle of nowhere. Empty fields with stalky dead weeds and snow and bare earth, woods beyond them, treeless and black. A big old barn out back that could be hiding an army, for all I knew. No one knew I was there, but I was still scared. My brain wouldn’t stop spinning a dozen scenarios. Suppose the killer had seen me with Mason and knew I’d be likely to hide out at his place, or followed us from the hospital and was just waiting to finish the job? Suppose it was someone we both knew?

  Suppose you stop thinking about shit you don’t want to attract, Rachel?

  It doesn’t really work that way, I thought, denying my own bestselling philosophy.

  You’ve been thinking about Mason Brown a lot, and now he’s smack in the middle of your life again.

  I didn’t want it like this, with another string of murders, Inner Bitch. Not like this.

  Did you specify?

  “Rache? You there?” Mason asked through the telephone.

  “Yeah, right here,” I said. I was hanging out in front of the coffeepot. Misty was on the sofa, texting with God knows who. The house was too damned creepy, and had a loose shingle or something that kept flapping against the roof every time the wind blew and scaring the hell out of me. “We were beginning to think maybe you’d ditched us.” The wind howled, and I looked outside to see nothing but darkness.

  “How is everything? Are you guys okay?”

  “We’re fine.” I frowned, because his voice sounded…off. “What’s up, Mason? You sound weird.” Scared. He sounds scared and nerved up. Shaken. My knees quivered, and I pulled out a chair to sit down. Myrtle promptly collapsed on top of my feet and sighed.

  “You don’t miss much,” he said.

  “Blind people can’t afford to miss much. So what’s going on?” I reached for the cup I’d just filled and sipped it for something to do. The wind sent something skittering over the front porch, and I almost wet myself, then lunged to the door to look out and spotted what looked like a plastic jug tumbling off the far end. I sighed in relief and double-checked the lock.

  “Marie was attacked.”

  Just like that and my relief went out the window. “What? My God, like she hasn’t been through enough. Is she all right?”

  “Yeah. Wouldn’t even go to the E.R. She looks like she went a few rounds with a prize fighter, but I think she’ll be okay.”

  “Son of a—”

  “It was the same guy, Rache.”

  “What do you mean it was the same guy? That doesn’t make any sense.” His cop sense was off. He was too close to this.

  “Since when do psychopaths have to make sense?”

  He was practically quoting me back to me, I realized. I’d said something similar to him once, only a few months ago. “I know. I just… I don’t get it. Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. He had a syringe.”

  I cussed impressively, and imagined finding this jerk and cramming his syringe right up his ass. “So now what?”

  “Same plan, just more of it. Marie, the boys and I will be staying at the lodge, too. And my mother. The police are parked outside their places for the night. We’ll get out of here tomorrow, maybe a little bit later than planned.”

  “Your mother?” Did that sound as unpleasant as I think it did? I’d met the woman once. My first impression had been stone-cold bitch, but I really didn’t know her well enough for that to be carved in granite.

  “I can’t get it out of my mind that this maniac keeps going after people connected to my brother. First, people with his organs and now his widow. If Marie qualifies just because she was married to Eric, then Mother might, too, even though Eric was adopted. I just can’t risk
it.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to.” Oh, God, I did not want to spend Christmas with Mason’s mother.

  Right, but you were just wishing you could spend it with Mason. Wish and it is granted, right, Rache?

  It was just like my inner bitch to use my own titles against me.

  Besides, you like the boys. Jeremy could be just the medicine Misty needs for her broken heart. And she might be just what he needs for his.

  Was it just me, or was my inner bitch morphing into Pollyanna?

  I felt for Mason’s family, I really did. His mother had lost a son only a few months ago. And Marie had lost her husband, quickly followed by her baby. Stillborn. What a nightmare. But as sorry as I felt, I barely knew them. And I wasn’t exactly the warm and gregarious type.

  “Rachel?”

  I silenced my inner argument. “Yeah, I’m still here.”

  “I booked us a huge cabin. Mother refuses to stay in it, though. Says she’d rather be in the main lodge. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  “So six of us in one cabin, then? I mean, couldn’t Misty and I get a room, too?”

  “They’re full up. And besides, the whole idea of going up there is so I can keep you safe.”

  “I know.” But he’d been planning to send me up there all alone before this happened, and he’d presumed I would be safe then.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

  “You do not know what I’m thinking. You’re a good cop, but you’re not that good.” I had an eerie feeling I was wrong about that.

  “I decided to go to the lodge with you right after you were attacked, Rachel. I just didn’t know how to broach the subject without either pissing you off or making it sound like a come-on.”

  I shrugged and looked away, like he could read my face through the telephone line. “It wouldn’t have pissed me off. I do prefer your company to having my eyes gouged out.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” I swallowed hard. “Do you think your mother will be safe in the lodge?”

  “She’ll be surrounded by people at all times, and I’ve talked Rosie and Marlayna into coming along. They’ll be in the lodge, too, for added security.” He sounded guilty. “That’s why all the rooms are gone. They booked the last one.”