The voice in her mind sounded amused. And if there is no afterlife?
“Quince!” She forgot where she was and tried to sit upright. The box lid groaned under its weight. Dirt started spilling in through her hole. “Quince!” she repeated, her voice a half sob.
Easy, lady. He sounded tired. I think I feel your signature now.
“Get me out of here. Oh God, I’ll do anything, anything, just get me out!”
Be still for me. I know where you are.
His presence vanished.
“No, don’t go. Please don’t go!” Tears tried to spill down her cheeks but all her body could manage were a few salty traces of wetness.
The wait was interminable, the darkness like the blackest corner of hell.
The dirt continued to slide into her box. She shoved it back toward her feet as best she could. When she couldn’t pack it back any farther, she tried plugging the hole with her fingers. The entire lid buckled and collapsed against her. The air sucked out of her lungs. It felt like a giant hand was crushing her flat.
Quince! It was her last thought.
* * * * *
“You don’t look like a shrink,” Haynes said to the man who waited for him in his boss’s office. He looked more like a bad caricature. His nose was prominent, a plastic surgeon’s dream, his eyes dark and hidden beneath a set of thick dark chocolate eyebrows. An enlarged Adam’s apple bobbed as he finished swallowing his coffee. A file folder sat open in front of him. He rested his hands on the folder, thick meaty hands. Not the hands of a pencil pusher—they were too scarred.
“Quick eye,” he noted, rising and extending his hand. “Agent Roger Cliverson. I was assigned to your case. I know that must be hard on you. You have an excellent track record.”
His grip was firm. “You can take it,” Haynes muttered, shaking his head. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”
“Not exactly, but there are similarities to other cases.” Cliverson smiled. “All confidential, of course.”
“Of course.” Haynes hovered nervously above his chair.
“Please have a seat. Coffee?”
“No. I just want to dump this and get on with my life.”
“I understand. It’s an odd blemish on an otherwise spotless career.”
Haynes sat, toying with his hands in his lap. What about Cliverson made him so nervous? Or was it just this case? He took a deep breath. Kitzerow and Harris, he reminded himself. He had written the names on the palm of his left hand.
Cliverson lifted a piece of paper from the folder and scanned it. Then he set it down.
“Are you going to try to hypnotize me?” Haynes asked finally when the silence became unbearable.
“It didn’t work on the other two agents. Why should I believe it’d work on you?”
Then why was he here? “I’m sorry. I can’t remember much.”
Cliverson laid his palms flat on the desk. “I’d like to inject you.”
Haynes straightened. “What?”
“Think of it as a truth serum, but one for your subconscious. There are no side effects. And if you wish, it can be used to wipe this whole case out of your memory.”
To not see the hotel clerk missing his heart or hear from the lab that it looked like said heart leaped free from the man’s chest of its own initiative.
“Agent Haynes.”
Haynes looked up. “I’m sorry. I was thinking.”
“There are other bodies turning up that appear to fit into this case.” Cliverson slid him a stack of glossy 8x10 photos.
He didn’t want to touch them. He’d seen death in just about all its grisly forms. There was just something about this case that screamed, Run! Passing his hand over his face, he took a deep breath to steady himself. Cliverson was watching him closely. The first photo was of a woman, mid-twenties, in a jogging outfit. Her throat was missing and so was her heart. Haynes’ hand shook. He set the photo down. The next one was of a man, perhaps a sanitation worker judging by his uniform. He was missing his throat. His head bobbled loose on a rather gnawed-looking spinal column.
Haynes set the photo down and looked up. “I don’t recognize any of these people.”
“Nor should you.” Cliverson steepled his fingers. “Agents Byers and Lampson refused the injection. I wanted to stress the importance of your cooperation.”
“You made your point.” He shoved the stack of photos away.
“There are a number of missing women as well. Higher than average. We have reason to believe they’re tied to this as well.”
There was probably a war room somewhere just dedicated to this case, photos tacked all over the wall. He didn’t want to be injected. He didn’t want to remember. But he also didn’t want to forget.
Haynes met Cliverson’s gaze. He began to roll up the sleeve of his dress shirt. “Go ahead. Let’s get this bloody thing over with.”
* * * * *
Nikki gasped.
Quince drew her out of the mulch pile grave and buried his face in her hair. Her arms didn’t seem to work right. She hugged him awkwardly and felt him flinch. “Quince,” she breathed. “I thought, I thought you were dead.”
“Hush now.” His lips were in her hair, on her cheeks and touching her eyelids.
She felt something sticky through his shirt. “You’re hurt!”
He drew back long enough to look her in the eyes. “I am alive and so are you. Nothing else matters.”
They leaned against each other for a long time, just breathing in each other’s scent, and whispering promises and fears to one another.
Finally, she turned his head to face her and murmured, “Don’t take this the wrong way or think me foolish, but I love you.” She smiled. “I don’t know if you understand its meaning or not, but I do.”
“I know what it means here.” He touched her forehead. “And here.” He touched her heart.
She felt tears prick her eyes. “What a sappy pair we make.” The quixotic warrior and the romantic fetish bar owner personas would never survive in the real world.
“It will be our secret.”
Behind them, someone applauded. “Bravo, bravo.”
She glanced over her shoulder and saw Adonthe, a very disgruntled Adonthe covered in mud with dirt packed beneath his normally perfectly manicured nails. “I think it is time we found our Queen.”
“Adonthe.” She reached out to him.
He pulled back, hands up to ward her off. “You are a fright. Clean up first.”
“You silly twit.” She gave him a hug anyway. She felt drunk. Her limbs just didn’t seem to work right.
Adonthe and Quince steadied her, but she noticed Quince leaning heavily on Adonthe as well.
“How bad are you hurt?” she asked him, anxious.
“He would have died had our Queen not been there,” Adonthe said.
“Quiet.” Quince shot him a black stare.
Now that she was surrounded by her friends, she felt some of her confidence slink back. “Apparently the gunshot to the face only pissed the Hunter off, huh?”
Quince’s lips quirked. “It was very brave of you.”
She tried to not remember the shreds of flesh and silver bone after the gun went off. Thankfully, her mind blocked most of it out. “Thanks, I thought so.”
“But ineffective,” Adonthe added. “Here we are.” They rounded a pile of mulch and found the other members of the Dragoon hunkered around Adrianne.
“By the First Queen, is she dead?” Adonthe loosened his grip on Quince and Nikki and raced to Adrianne’s side.
Nikki and Quince clung to each other for support.
“Quince,” Nikki whispered.
“I do not know. I cannot feel her,” he replied, answering her unspoken question.
“She can’t be dead. She can’t be!” Nikki balled her hands into fists.
Quince wrapped his hands around her fists and buried his face in her hair. “Wait, love, wait,” he breathed, ruffling her hair. “She’s tough, our Queen, your Adri. Just
wait.”
Adrianne sat upright on her own. She needed to or she was going to be violently ill all over Navarre. When she thought about the box going through the chipper-shredder… No, she couldn’t process what she saw, the blood, the splinters, it was too much. Her mind shut off and refused to play back the scene.
“You are alive,” she heard Adonthe exclaim with relief.
She wasn’t quite up to speed with everything going on, but she was certain of a few things. One, the Hunter was dead. Two, Nikki was dead. And three, she had left Adonthe with Quince and Benito at the ship.
She swiveled her head on a neck that felt too wobbly to support a cotton ball let alone the throbbing melon that was supposed to function as her head. “What are you doing here?” She didn’t sound like a Queen. She sounded like a cranky child who missed her afternoon nap.
“I…I…” Adonthe straightened his shoulders. “Quince forced me. I tried to stop him.”
She waved him off before he could finish. She’d forgotten about Quince. She didn’t want to know how he died.
She put her hand on her belly. The babies were quiet, but she knew they were there, listening and watching, and forming an impression of their mother. It’s okay. We’ll all be okay, she said to them, but her grief threatened to overshadow even their existence.
Quince would understand. He knew the importance of one’s duty.
“I am sorry about Quince,” she said wearily.
“What do you mean?” Adonthe looked over his shoulder. “I left him two steps behind me and he is in no condition to escape further.”
“What?” She bolted to her feet and nearly fell back down. But…Nikki…she’d seen the box go through the shredder. How could Quince be alive?
She didn’t think she could walk, let alone think clearly. Navarre, moving nearly as drunkenly as she, slipped his arm around her waist.
Quince’s back was turned to them, head bent.
“Quince,” she called.
He turned at the sound of her voice, his arms wrapped around someone.
Adrianne’s heart skipped a beat. She recognized that spiky head of hair. “Nikki?” It came out a raw whisper.
Nikki lifted her head off Quince’s chest. Her face was smudged with dirt as was her clothes. “Hey, nice of you to drop by.”
She needed Navarre’s and Adonthe’s steadying grips on her elbows to make her way to Nikki’s side. “Don’t you ever do that again.” She hugged Nikki fiercely.
“That I can promise you,” Nikki said fervently and squeezed her back.
Chapter Twenty-One
Nikki had just finished scrubbing the last of the dried blood off her floor when she felt the hair stand up on her arms. Sheesh, she was getting as bad as Adrianne. What had those aliens done to her? Her lips curved. What hadn’t one particular alien done to her? Focus now. Get your mind out of the gutter.
Despite the protests from Adonthe, she insisted on cleaning her place up herself. The Beast was hers alone. She raised her head and looked around carefully. Quince was asleep in a chaise lounge she’d set up on the dance floor far away from her ruined bar, her grandmother’s crocheted afghan partially draped over his body. There were several silhouettes in the front entryway of the bar. She sighed. Press or police? That was the sixty-million-dollar question.
She took her time straightening up, appraising the men under lowered lashes. They didn’t remind her of the FBI, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Two uniform-clad men and two plainclothes men waited for her. Police, then. After dealing with the voracious appetite of the press, she was almost relieved it was the police. Almost.
A phone call a week ago had sent the police to the nursery where they found Nikki alone. It was one of the best acting jobs of her life. The story was she had dug her way out of the mulch pile, which incidentally, held several more grisly bodies of women cached for later unknown purposes, broke into the nursery office and placed the 9-1-1 call. She couldn’t identify the killer’s face. She didn’t know who or what was put through the chipper-shredder. Basically, she was the quintessential damsel in distress. She thought the police had fallen for it. Judging by the men standing at her door, she hadn’t been convincing enough.
Leaving the chain latch in place, she opened the door a crack. “I’m sorry, Officer. The Beast won’t be open this weekend.”
The younger of the two uniform-clad officers choked back a snicker.
The other uniformed officer sent him a black stare and turned politely to Nikki. “Ma’am, we’re here regarding your abduction.”
“Of course. Have you found the killer? Those poor women.” She undid the chain latch and let them into the bar. Glancing discreetly over her shoulder, she noticed that the chaise lounge was now empty. Good. She didn’t want to have to explain Quince’s presence to the police. Nor his injuries.
The older of the two officers cleared his throat. “We believe he’s deceased. Tissue collected from your establishment and some of the machinery at the nursery match. We’re really here to just introduce you to these two gentlemen and if you feel comfortable, be on our way.”
She waited.
“These are Agents Cliverson and Baker, from the FBI.”
What happened to Haynes and his cronies? Were they kicked off the case when they turned up at Lake Superior? She wished she could have been there to see the looks on their faces.
Cliverson looked to be about her age, with a smattering of crow’s-feet around his eyes, well-defined laugh lines and deep creases in his forehead. His dark hair was mostly gray now, but his brows remained thick and chocolate brown. A prominent nose, thin lips and an enlarged Adam’s apple completed the look. He wore a well-pressed navy shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, and a thick wool overcoat.
Baker was young and good-looking with a trace of arrogance in his manner that spoke volumes about how women treated him. His blond hair was slightly longer than average, curly, with gel obviously worked through the mop. Piercing blue eyes watched her from beneath sandy lashes. She hated men who naturally had lashes longer than hers.
She kept her face composed. “Oh?”
“They belong to a special task force and are often assigned to cases like this one.”
“Multiple murder cases?” she asked.
The older officer looked nervous. “Well, not exactly.”
“May we sit?” Cliverson asked politely.
“Sure.” She laid her folded cleaning cloth on a stool and waved them to a table. The FBI looked pointedly at the officers. The older officer glared back.
“If you need anything, we’ll be outside,” the older officer offered.
“I don’t have much to offer, but I do have coffee. Would you like some while you wait?”
“That would be nice,” he replied, despite the glare from Cliverson.
She moved to the bar and filled both officers’ mugs. “Cream? Sugar?”
“No, thank you. Again, if you need anything, we’ll be outside.”
She laid her hand over his. “I appreciate the concern. I just don’t feel safe anymore,” she said softly. Was she laying on the damsel-in-distress bit too thick?
Nope, it was the right words to say. “We’ll be looking out for you, Miss Kitzerow.” The uniformed pair left with their hot coffee. She knew quite a few members of the police force who attended her private parties. While she closely guarded all her clients’ information, she wouldn’t hesitate to start revealing names in order to save herself and The Beast. A few phone calls to the right people had gotten the worst of the press off her back.
She returned to the table and sat, waiting for the FBI to make the first move. They appeared unaccustomed to that type of patience. Serenity was not one of her strong suits, either, but Quince’s bedroom sessions had taught her more than interesting sexual positions.
“Ms. Kitzerow, do you know why we are here?”
“Because there’s been a series of murders?” she asked innocently.
Cliverson was trying har
d to be the grandfatherly type while Baker watched her reactions carefully. “Not exactly. We investigate unusual cases, things that may involve unexplainable events.”
She brightened. “Like The X-Files?”
Both agents visibly cringed.
One point for the dumb pretty woman act.
“Ms. Kitzerow, when was the last time you saw your friend, Adrianne Harris?”
“Mmm, probably a week or two ago.” She inspected her nails, then laid her hands carefully on the table. Her manicurist actually had to apply falsies. She hadn’t had fake nails since she was twelve. It was almost as bad a deception as finding out a particularly curvaceous blonde stuffed herself with tissue. If the Hunter was still alive, she’d have shot him again for the damage he inflicted on her hands and the horrible lie she was forced to live with. That thumbnail didn’t look quite right. She picked at it.
She wished Adrianne could see her now. Adri thought she couldn’t handle the police. Well, after being buried alive, the police were nothing. “She’s married now,” she added, as if an afterthought.
Baker leaned forward. “Do you know her whereabouts?”
Nikki shook her head, smiling. “Sorry. Her husband’s a bit eccentric and quite possessive of her at the moment, being newlyweds and all.”
“How long have you known Adrianne?” Cliverson asked.
“Five years.”
“In that time has she done anything strange? Anything that didn’t seem quite right? Like Wiccan, the occult, voodoo, a fascination with paranormal, holding séances?”
Nikki didn’t have to fake surprise. They actually had a division of the FBI that pursued things like that? “No. What do those things have to do with Adrianne?”
“I can’t really say right now,” Cliverson said. “Is this house haunted? Anything strange happen while Adrianne lived here, things like lights flickering on and off, doors opening and closing of their own accord, cold drafts coming from nowhere? Take your time answering.”
Nikki laughed. She hoped it didn’t sound forced. “I don’t believe in that kind of thing.”
“But you do have quite some elaborate parties here,” Baker pointed out.
She leaned back in her chair, her face now a cold mask. “Yes, I do host private parties. We most certainly don’t sit around trying to call back dead relatives or sacrifice cats to the gods.” She stood. “Gentlemen, I wish you well on whatever tangent you’re taking. I’m not sure where you’re going.”
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