Duty and the Beast

by Chelsea Field

  Unfortunately, “as long as possible” had just arrived.

  With the first big day of trial tomorrow, the secret would be out. Cameras weren’t allowed in the courtroom, but Mr. Lyle Knightley wanted me up close and personal with his son in the desire that my innocence would somehow extend to him. I’d have to be by his side as he entered and exited the building—where the media circus would be lying in wait.

  So as much as every fiber of my being wanted to accept Mae’s offer, and as much as I wanted to avoid Etta’s certain ire, and as much as it pained me to utter the words, I had to tell them.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled into my mug, “but I’m seeing someone else.”

  “Who?” Etta spat. The ever-elegant woman actually spat.

  I wiped a few damp cookie crumbs off my face. “Richard Knightley.”

  I hid a cringe as I waited for them to react. Etta would explode. Mae would be disappointed. I wasn’t sure what was worse.

  Instead, they exchanged a significant look between them, and when Etta spoke again, she was calm.

  “You mean the Richard Knightley who’s stolen millions from old folk around the country?”

  “Allegedly.” The words came out through clenched teeth. I couldn’t believe I was about to defend him. As far as I was concerned, Rick the Prick could rot in prison. Just so long as he wasn’t poisoned before he got there. “He’s not as bad as the media likes to make out,” I said. He was worse.

  Etta and Mae exchanged another glance.

  “Is this the Richard Knightley who had suspicious relations with those Russian students?”

  “Nothing was proven.”

  “The one the media has dubbed the Silver Spoon Scammer?”

  It was a nicer name than I’d given him. “As I said, the press seems to have it out for him.”

  “This is the same man whose friend posted a YouTube video of him kicking a cat?”

  I winced. “That was a year ago. He’s changed.”

  They looked at each other again. “I see,” Etta said, still calm. It was like she was channeling Connor. Gosh, I missed him.

  Mae reached across the table and patted my hand. “We understand, hon. I guess I’d better let you get to bed then. The first hearing’s tomorrow, isn’t it?”

  Maybe I should’ve been relieved, but their quiet acceptance knocked me for a loop. I wanted desperately to be able to take it back. To beg them for help with Connor. To explain everything so I could undo the damage I’d just done with the woman I’d been considering as my future mother-in-law.

  The Taste Society’s demands for secrecy had never cost me so much as in this moment.

  “Uh-huh,” was all I managed to get past my teeth.

  They rose together, and I stood automatically and walked them to the door.

  What had just happened? I’d dreaded being grilled mercilessly, but their lack of questions was worse. Like they’d given up on me.

  Before they left, Mae gave me a final hug. I clutched her in return, wanting to cry. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

  Then they walked out of my apartment too. Just as Connor had.

  Connor

  It had been ten days since I’d last seen her. A situation that should’ve gotten easier, but hadn’t. So I’d been working long hours and coming home only when my body demanded rest. Like now.

  I slipped into bed, ignoring the drawer full of her clothes that I should’ve returned already. As if by holding on to them I could keep a piece of her for myself.

  Idiot.

  But I still didn’t ask Maria to post them back to her.

  It took me longer than usual to fall asleep.

  3

  After Etta and Mae had left, I’d been too out of sorts to do anything other than read. I read until the book fell out of my hands, and I escaped reality in sleep instead of fiction. So I was pretty sure I was still dreaming when I woke to my phone ringing, and my blurry vision told me it was Connor.

  Energy jolted through me, and I almost dropped the phone in my haste to answer it. I didn’t have a chance to clear my throat, so I hoped my voice would sound sexily husky rather than like a zombie’s after an all-night bender.

  “Hello?”

  “Isobel?”

  It was him!

  “Yes,” I sang. Oops, too enthusiastic.

  “Your client’s been killed.”

  “Oh.” I noticed then that it was still dark outside. The clock read a quarter past one.

  “Can you come to Hermosa Beach to see if there’s anything you can tell us before the scene is cleared away?”

  Oh sure. I loved seeing dead bodies. Especially in the middle of the night. And it was just the thing to get Connor in the frame of mind to take me back.

  “Of course.”

  Connor gave me the address, his tone all business.

  I allowed myself a self-indulgent groan before hauling my ass out of bed and grabbing the first clothes I found. Then I remembered this was the first time Connor would see me in a week and a half, and I might do well to remind him what he was missing. Then I remembered my client was dead and decided my romance plans would have to take a backseat.

  I mashed my hair into a semblance of a ponytail, washed my face, and was good to go.

  The address Connor provided brought me to a residential cul-de-sac illuminated by streetlamps and not much else. But I didn’t have to squint to spot the house numbers. The front of 2439 was buzzing with police and the grim sight of an ambulance with its lights turned off.

  There was no one here they still had a hope of saving.

  I parked as close as I could, which wasn’t all that close, and got out. The salty, kelp-infused scent of the ocean washed over me along with the cool night air. We weren’t near enough to the beach to see it, but the smell alone was a luxury in a city that so often smelled of exhaust fumes, pot, and urine—among its other more desirable scents. I breathed in a few lungfuls to brace myself and headed for the hive of people.

  Despite the hour, there were a few gawkers in nightwear and a couple of journalists too. I gave the journos a wide berth, offered my name to a guy in an LAPD uniform, and he waved me under the crime tape. Gosh. Somehow in all my recent brushes with the law, I’d never crossed crime scene tape. Maybe it was the sleep-deprived two-in-the-morning thing, but it felt surreal.

  The house in front of me was narrow but modern, with a gently arched roof and floor-to-ceiling windows on the second story. I passed shadowy trees and hedges to reach the door and found it ajar. A sign read:

  AI security is active on these premises. Enter at your own risk.

  It seemed whatever that meant, it hadn’t been secure enough to save Rick the Pr— No. Richard Knightley, I amended, the weight of his death settling on me like a sodden blanket. The door squeaked as I pushed through it, and then I heard a feminine automated voice say, “Authorization complete. What can I do for you, Officer Mendez?”

  A uniformed officer was sitting on the floor with a laptop and a frown. “Tell me what happened in the ten minutes before you called the police today.”

  “There was a security breach,” the feminine automated voice replied. “I followed protocol and administered vitrazolam to the intruders to sedate them until law enforcement arrived.”

  “Explain your protocol in more detail.”

  “When my security mode is set to active, I monitor the house using motion and visual sensors. If there is a human inside that does not match my database of allowed persons, I estimate height and weight using visual diagnostics, calculate the most probable amount of vitrazolam to sedate them with minimal risk, and fire a projectile injection to administer it with the nearest robotic air gun. I also simultaneously alert law enforcement to the security breach.”

  Far out. That was one high-tech security system. Maybe I should look into one of those.

  “Then why did you fire at Isaac Anand?” the officer asked. “He owns the house you’re protecting.”

  Or maybe not then.r />
  “Sorry, but I do not recognize the person you’re referring to.”

  “I’ve provided a photo for you to scan.”

  “There is no person with those visuals on file.”

  The officer rubbed her face, muttering to herself, and caught me gawking. Her glare reminded me I had my own job to do.

  “When were you last updated or restarted?” she asked behind me as I walked into what appeared to be half living room, half office. My brain was processing what I’d just heard and wasn’t prepared for the shock of seeing two bodies on the ground. One I recognized. Rick—Richard. The other was a male stranger around my age. Isaac Anand, I guessed.

  My empty stomach did its usual trick of threatening to heave, so I forced myself to concentrate on the rest of the room. Along the entire length of one wall ran a desk of monitors and computers, with a single lonely ergonomic chair suggesting they were all for the same person. The other half of the space was taken up with the sorts of things you’d generally find in a living room: a collection of armchairs, a coffee table, and a giant flat-screen TV. There were also two more law enforcement personnel I didn’t know and one that I did.

  I’d expected Police Commander Hunt to be here—he was the secret LAPD liaison assigned to the Taste Society, and it was a case involving one of their clients after all. But his scowl still hit me like a cold hose to the face. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who’d been dragged out of bed and wasn’t thrilled about it. No doubt having to cover up Taste Society secrets from his colleagues—secrets that included the reason for my presence here—wouldn’t help his temper.

  Connor’s presence would be easier for Hunt to explain. He at least was an experienced investigator, and most officers at the 27th Street Community Police Station knew he was called in to consult on certain cases. They just didn’t know the real reason for that was because Connor worked for the Taste Society and people high above both men had arranged discreet cooperation between the two organizations.

  In contrast with me and the commander, Connor would no doubt look as if he’d been styled by a professional team and awake for hours: alert and immaculate in his tailored clothes and ever-ready haircut.

  I wondered briefly whether I could pull off that haircut. Then I saw Connor.

  If Hunt’s scowl had been a cold hose to the face, Connor’s presence was like a flash storm. An instinctive rush of warmth and electricity followed by the cold, drenching reality of our separation.

  It had only been ten days, but he looked different. I was used to his face being more familiar than my own, and I didn’t like the milliseconds it took to catch up.

  Against my expectations, he wasn’t immaculate. Not quite. There were new circles under his eyes, and the state of his shirt suggested he’d been wearing it all day instead of picking it out from his perfectly ordered wardrobe an hour prior. Had he not gone to bed?

  “Hi,” I said. There was so much more I wanted to say, but this was not the time nor place.

  “Hey.”

  “What happened here?” No need to gesture to the bodies I was avoiding looking at.

  He seemed relieved to jump straight into work mode. “It appears the artificial intelligence security system shot these guys with tranquilizer darts. Or someone else shot them with tranquilizer darts and is trying to make it look as if the security system did it.”

  “Does the security system have a woman’s voice? Because I just heard her… I mean it talking to Officer Mendez in there, and the system confirmed it was the one to shoot the darts. But the darts were supposed to sedate, not kill. The computer or robot or whatever it is estimates their weight to get the dose right.”

  “Yes. And I’m guessing it wasn’t supposed to shoot them at all since Isaac Anand—the second victim here—is the owner of this house and the designer of the security system. Can you tell what was in the darts? Maybe someone switched them with a more lethal substance.”

  I’d only been trained to identify drugs that could be swallowed and absorbed through the stomach, but many poisons could be administered by both injection and ingestion, so it was worth a try. Connor unscrewed the tail end of the dart and handed me the rest of it, complete with the pointy needle attached. A needle that was a good 1/16-inch thick and over an inch long. Ouch.

  I sniffed it before doing anything else. A faint bitter chemical aroma. Nonconclusive. I ran my pinkie finger around the inside edge and carefully tasted the tiniest amount I could manage. First on the tip of my tongue, then allowing it to mix with my saliva until it coated my whole mouth. It tasted the way it smelled, except with the added pleasure of a mild, rotten citrus-like tang. “Yes, it’s vitrazolam or a very close relative, which is what the system said it was.”

  “Hmm,” was all Connor said.

  “Does that mean that this… their deaths… could really be the result of some technical glitch?”

  “It’s possible. Mendez told us the security system is a working prototype that is being tested before it can be released on the market. But if that’s vitrazolam, the dose would’ve had to be more than double what it should’ve been to kill them so quickly. The LAPD was here within ten minutes after the AI system called nine one one, but both Knightley and Anand were dead on arrival.”

  “Oh.” That changed the picture substantially. Vitrazolam was a slow-acting sedative, taking a solid fifteen minutes to reach full strength when injected intramuscularly. Not that a person wouldn’t be sluggish and dopey within a minute or two, but to be beyond resuscitation after just ten minutes? I chewed my lip. “I mean, someone could be unusually sensitive to vitrazolam and lose respiratory function on a low dose, but two of them?”

  “Exactly. The odds are astronomical that they’d both have abnormal reactions.”

  “So either the artificial intelligence isn’t that intelligent and its calculations are way off, or somebody tampered with something to make sure they died.”

  “Yes. That’s why I phoned you. When did you last see your client? Do you know what he was doing here?”

  “No. I left him hours ago at a restaurant called Brago in Santa Monica. He told me he was having late-night drinks with his father before the trial started tomorrow.” I remembered it was two in the morning. “Or today, technically. They didn’t want me there. Mr. Lyle Knightley was arrogant enough to assume no one could’ve spiked his expensive scotch, I guess.”

  “Have you ever seen Richard with the other victim?”

  I forced myself to take a proper look at the second man. He was young, about my age, and his expressive dark eyebrows and neatly trimmed beard failed to make him appear any older. His face was relaxed as if sleeping, lips slightly parted. But those lips were tinted blue from lack of oxygen, and his rich brown eyes were fixed open, unseeing.

  “No,” I said.

  “Heard him mention the name Isaac Anand?”

  “No.”

  “Interesting.” Whatever Connor was going to say next was interrupted by a phone call. “Will you excuse me for a minute?”

  Left to my own devices, I looked around the room some more, trying to think of anything but the two dead men on the floor and failing miserably. What had they been doing when they’d been shot with lethal amounts of vitrazolam? Their awkward positions against the carpet suggested they’d gone down with little control over their limbs and didn’t leave any clues. Richard was a prick—for all I knew he was here to scam Isaac—but it didn’t make his death feel okay. I wasn’t sure how professionals who dealt with violence or tragedy or death on a daily basis dealt with it.

  Hunt must’ve seen I was alone, and like a predator spotting the opportunity to kill off its prey away from the safety of the herd, he stalked up to me.

  “Another person in your circles turns up dead, Ms. Avery.”

  I scanned his craggy features, every detail tough and dangerous. A sun-weathered face that lacked an ounce of fat to soften it, an ex-military, steel-gray buzz cut with a matching prickly mustache, and a swagger that’d make
a western gunslinger wet their pants.

  But so far I’d managed to maintain my bladder control during our acquaintanceship, and while he liked me no more than he ever had, we’d come to a bit of an understanding a month ago. So I was pretty sure his accusation had no weight behind it.

  “Then either I’m a killer who’s great at framing others for murder, or I’m moving in the wrong circles.”

  He huffed. Hopefully in an amused way. “I suppose you’ll be working with Stiles on this case then? Unofficially, I mean.” He didn’t sound pleased, but there was less menace than there would’ve been before we’d come to that understanding.

  The question made my brain hiccup. Would I be working with Connor on this? I’d been too preoccupied with the immediate circumstances to consider what might come next.

  Would teaming up on a case help or hinder my efforts to win Connor back? Given how much trouble I’d had even seeing him, maybe it would be a positive thing…

  Hunt was waiting for a response.

  “Most probably,” I agreed.

  Connor returned to the room, and I was struck again by how much I missed him. That cemented my decision.

  “I think we should work this case together,” I told him as soon as he was near enough to hear me.

  Although his features barely moved, he looked pained. “Really?” A full second passed before he added, “Why?”

  Because I can’t stand not seeing you every day. Because I want you to remember how good we are together. Because your mom told me you’re struggling as much as I am with this breakup. Because I want you back. Duh.

  “Because it’s a complicated case and my insights might prove useful,” I said.

  He wiped a hand across his gorgeous face and exhaled slowly. “I’m going to get some sleep. I’ll pick you up at eight.”

  4

  Six hours later, I was dressed, upright, and mostly awake. A good beginning to any investigation. Now I just had to hope that Connor would pick me up as agreed rather than think better of the whole idea after a night’s sleep.