The Departed

by Shiloh Walker

  As they disappeared, Taylor slipped back into the observation room, this time closing the door tightly behind him. He took up his former position at the window, staring at Brendan Moore, brooding.

  Brooding…and wondering.

  * * *

  GETTING Leon Beard out of the station was about as easy as pulling a tick off, Blake thought once he finally got the asshole out the door. He wasn’t overly surprised to see the old man show up, although he knew for a fact the mayor wouldn’t have been happy.

  There was no love lost between the mayor and his father-in-law. It had gotten public a time or two—thanks to Leon. Moore had handled it well enough and he did what he could to keep things civil, even though his wife—the kid, too—didn’t seem to want to have much to do with the old man.

  Nobody knew why, and Blake didn’t much care as long as Beard stayed out of his way and didn’t cause any problems. Today he’d almost caused problems. And damn it, Blake had wanted to watch the interviews—all of them. Muttering under his breath, he headed back down the long hallway, figuring he’d ask Jones to catch him up. Maybe they could grab a bite to eat.

  Blake wouldn’t mind needling the man about the FBI and shit. Had to be more exciting than working here in French Lick. It might be home, but it got damn boring sometimes.

  But he came back to a mostly empty room. Two other cops were in there.

  Jones, though, was gone.

  * * *

  DREAMS, so dark and ugly, haunted her sleep. Twisting on the bed, still clothed, Dez groaned as the images assaulted her. The girl, her name was Ivy, and she was crying…crying, even though her lifeless body was stretched out on a slab, cold and naked and dead.

  Her eyes, empty and accusatory, stared at Dez. “You were supposed to save me,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you?”

  “I tried.” Dez wrapped her arms around her middle and shook her head. “I tried.” Then she stopped, closed her eyes. “I did. You’re alive. This is just a dream…”

  When she opened her eyes and looked back, Ivy was gone. But there was another girl. Younger, so much younger—six? Perhaps seven? She had soft, buttery yellow hair, straight and wispy thin, framing a cute, elfin face. Her skin was bluish white in death and she looked at Dez sadly.

  “You can’t save me, either. I’ve been dead too long.”

  “I don’t save the dead,” Dez said, shaking her head. “I just try to help you move on. I can’t save anybody…”

  And the few times I’ve tried, I’ve failed…

  The little girl continued to stare at her solemnly. “Can’t you? What about him?”

  Dez blinked. “Who, Tristan? Sweetie, he’s already gone. He’s passed on. I can’t do anything more for him but keep my promise.”

  The little girl stared at her. Then she sighed and faded away.

  Dez reached out a hand. “Wait!”

  She took a step forward and in that way of dreams, everything shifted, faded.

  Changed.

  And she was in the cemetery, the one where she’d found Tristan. Standing at his grave. But when she reached out to touch the stone, the dream shifted. Changed. And she was in a field. It was empty, or so it seemed. When she looked down, she saw…a hole? What was that?

  She knelt to look, but found herself falling. Hurtling hard and fast. And then she hit. The breath was gone from her body and it was awful, because she wanted, so badly, to scream. Needed to scream, because what she was looking at…

  A broken doll.

  She resembled nothing so much as a broken doll.

  Except this doll had once been a living, breathing child…and as Dez stared at her, the girl’s eyes opened and life flooded them. She stared at Dez and whispered, “Find me…”

  As the girl’s presence wrapped around Dez, as Dez recognized the presence of one of the departed, some of the terror faded, replaced by rage and misery. Swallowing the scream, she opened her mouth, wondered if she could speak. But this was just a dream and she could do whatever she chose. Swallowing the tears, she said softly, “Tell me what you need me to do.”

  The girl’s eyes closed and tears of blood rolled down her cheeks.

  “Find me,” she whispered plaintively. Then she reached out a hand, thin and frail and streaked with blood. “Just find me…I don’t want to stay lost.”

  Dez reached out. As her fingers brushed the girl’s, the girl’s body began to crumble, first to skeleton, then to dust.

  Then the dream shattered…fell away.

  With a gasp lodged in her throat, Dez jerked awake in the bed. Staring straight ahead, she pressed her fisted hand to her racing heart. “Shit,” she wheezed. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  She wanted to tell herself it was just a dream, one brought on by the day from hell. Who wouldn’t have a nightmare?…Who wouldn’t have a bad dream? And if it had only been about Ivy, she could have even accepted that.

  There was more to it, though.

  A lot more. It just had that feel to it. “Damn it,” she whispered as she huddled under the blankets. “Damn it.”

  She wouldn’t be leaving French Lick anytime soon, she didn’t think.

  * * *

  “SOMEBODY fucking talked,” Beau growled.

  Brendan glanced at him from the corner of his eye and muttered, “Shut the fuck up. We don’t talk about this here.”

  Not here.

  Beau grumbled but went quiet as they jogged down the steps and headed toward Beau’s ’73 Mustang. Once they were inside, though, Beau’s silence shattered and he snarled, “Who in the hell fucking talked?”

  Sitting in the back, Mark and Kyle both said the same crap—it wasn’t them. They didn’t know. Fucking assholes. Somebody had talked, he knew it. He’d figure it out. Brendan leaned back against the leather, his eyes staring out the window. Inside the car, he felt a little less exposed, so he knew he could probably relax a little. But he wasn’t going to—as of now, he trusted nobody but himself. Not Mark, not Kyle. Not even Beau, and normally he’d trust Beau with just about everything. “What did you tell the cops?” he asked.

  “Jack shit. Told them I didn’t know the girl, had no fucking clue what was going on.” Beau started the Mustang and pulled away from Brendan’s house. For a few minutes, silence fell. “What do we do, Brendan? We got to figure it out and figure out what we’re going to do.”

  Brendan knew that, hadn’t slept worth a shit the past night, trying to play things out in his head already. He even had a plan sketched out. But it would take a few days to get it in motion. A few days, some time.

  “Right now, we just shut the fuck up and wait. Nobody talks, you got that?” He shot Kyle and Mark a quick look and then shifted his attention back to the front, staring out the windshield. “See if we can figure out how that bitch figured things out.”

  “Yeah.” Beau frowned. “Where in the hell did she come from, anyway? She’s not from around here.”

  Brendan shook his head. He didn’t know. But she wasn’t the one who had him all that concerned. He was more worried about the blond guy—the one with the cold blue eyes. He’d gotten a name on that one. His name was Jones. As in Taylor Jones—owned the big manor just outside town. Not to mention half the fucking property in the area.

  Brendan knew enough about the Jones family to be worried once he’d heard that name. He wasn’t worried because the family was loaded—his own family wasn’t hurting for money. Wasn’t worried because of the freaky shit that had happened to the family years back.

  No, what had him worried was the rumors that had floated around about the sole surviving Jones. Taylor Jones—he’d joined the FBI out of college, Brendan remembered hearing. The FBI…did a lot of shit with missing children. Runaways, kidnapped kids. That sort of shit.

  And now he was here.

  The bitch didn’t worry him. But Taylor Jones…shit.

  “Kyle. You light up in here and I’m kicking your ass.” Beau glared at Kyle in the mirr
or as the other boy rolled a joint between his fingers. “I don’t want that shit stinking up my Mustang. That smell won’t ever come out and my folks will kill me if they smell it.”

  “Oh, kiss my ass,” Kyle snapped. “Like they’d ever notice. They’re too busy fucking everybody else in town to notice anything.”

  A dark, ugly look entered Beau’s eyes and his hands tightened on the wheel. “If you don’t want me to pound you into the fucking ground, you’ll just shut up, Kyle.”

  Kyle opened his mouth, but apparently something he saw in Beau’s face made him take those words seriously. Slumping in his seat, he mumbled, “Whatever.”

  “Fuck you.” Then Beau shot Brendan another look, his anger at Kyle bleeding back into nerves. His pupils were so huge, they all but swallowed his irises. “Nothing to worry about. You’re sure?”

  “Shit, you need to relax,” Kyle said from the backseat. He closed his eyes and tucked away his joint. “We’ve got to play it cool, remember? And would you quit being such a damn pussy? You got any idea what water will do to evidence? Any evidence there might have been? It’s gone now.”

  Mark was quiet, staring out the window.

  Casually, Brendan flipped the visor down, checked his hair, then shot Mark a look, noticed the sweat beading on the other guy’s brow, the signs of a sleepless night. Yeah, it was entirely possible Mark was just stressed, the way all of them were. But he wasn’t so sure.

  Out of all of them, Mark was the one he could see breaking the easiest. “What do you think, Mark? Any way they can link this back to us? Video shit, evidence? Anything?”

  Mark glanced at him in the visor’s mirror and then looked away. “I dunno. There’s no way I could recover anything and I got better equipment than anybody around here for miles, including the cops.” He shrugged. “But I’m not the forensics freak—that’s Kyle.”

  “Yeah.” Narrowing his eyes, he said, “You say you can’t recover anything. What about the feds? Like FBI or CIA shit?”

  Kyle sniggered. “This isn’t CIA territory, Brendan. FBI, maybe—

  kidnapping and shit. But CIA? Not unless you been spying and shit on top of kidnapping girls and groping their tits.”

  Brendan looked back over his shoulder. Softly, he said, “I wasn’t the only one who took her, man. Remember that.”

  “You were the only one getting his rocks off groping her.” Kyle stared at him, smirking. “Hey, she’s got nice tits, what do I care?” He went back to staring out the window.

  Brendan decided he’d ignore the fucker for now. Ignore him, because Mark was a bigger problem. Looking into the mirror, he studied the pale, sweating prick.

  Mark stared right back.

  * * *

  NORMALLY, Mark would have felt like bolting. He saw something ugly and evil in Brendan’s eyes and it was more than just anger—he knew. Somehow Brendan was piecing things together and he was piecing them together in a way that involved Mark, even though Mark hadn’t really done much. Except stay out of the woman’s way.

  That was enough for Brendan, though—people who might fuck with his plans were to be stopped, period. Mark hadn’t stopped the woman, and if Brendan discovered Mark’s part in this? Then Mark was due to get royally fucked over.

  He could see the suspicion there, the wondering, the doubt…all of that simmering along with the rage. But Mark also saw something else.

  Brendan was afraid.

  For some reason that Mark wasn’t going to look at too closely, that gave him some strength—enough strength to meet Brendan’s gaze and not look away as Brendan asked, “So the FBI, then? Could they find anything?”

  His gut clenched even thinking about that. The fucking FBI? “FBI—shit.” He passed a hand over his mouth and shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?” Beau shouted, slamming his fist into the steering wheel. “You’re the fucking hacker genius, aren’t you? Can they find the shit or not? What do you mean by I don’t know?”

  “I mean I don’t know,” Mark bit off. “It’s not like I’ve ever been into the fucking FBI headquarters. Contrary to what you might think, Sherlock, I really have no idea what they are capable of.” He collapsed back against the seat, all too aware that they were staring at him. Watching. All too aware of the doubt, the growing distrust and anger in their eyes.

  Fear was an ugly, rasping whisper in the back of his mind. Instinct screamed at him to run…run hard, run fast. But the last thing he needed to do was draw their attention like that.

  Especially when he didn’t have a place to run to. Especially when he had nobody to trust.

  “Dude. There she is.” Kyle punched him in the arm and leaned over, staring out through the window.

  Mark turned his head and found himself staring at the woman, watching as she lugged a suitcase out of the resort. Leaving—she wasn’t leaving, was she? No. Shit, no. She couldn’t leave—

  The air in his lungs felt like it was disappearing, being squeezed out of him by some giant fist. “You think she’s leaving?” he asked, trying to keep his voice casual.

  “Shit, she can’t,” Kyle said, shaking his head. “She’s, like, got to be a material witness or something, I’d think.”

  Or something…

  Something. Shit. She couldn’t leave. If he wanted to talk to anybody, maybe the first person he should try talking to was her. Half the cops around here were too busy kissing Brendan’s ass—or his father’s ass. But that woman…somehow…she had connections or something.

  Yeah.

  She was the one he needed to talk to—he hadn’t missed the look that had passed between her and that mean-looking dude yesterday. Either she’d brought him with her or she’d called him here or something. If she left…

  Keeping his voice bored and easy, he looked away from her and stared at the back of the seat in front of him. “You know, for the hotshot forensics expert, you aren’t showing a lot of smarts.” He shoved Kyle back. “People can still see in here, you know. Don’t go staring at her so fucking hard, dumb-ass.”

  Kyle shoved back but settled in the seat. “Why the hell not? Everybody around here stares at everybody else—and she’s new.”

  “You still don’t want anybody noticing you doing anything different,” Mark muttered. Then he leaned forward, watching as Beau kept shooting glances out the window toward the lady. “We picking up the others or what? I ain’t got all day. Dad’s riding my ass and he’ll be calling me in an hour or so.”

  “Why?” Brendan twisted around and looked at him, his eyes cold and hard.

  “Because of this shit.” Mark jerked a shoulder in a shrug. “You know how he is. He’s going to want to check up on me nonstop and he already told me he wants me home by three. If I’m not, he’ll be hounding me until I get there.”

  It was a bald-faced lie but to his surprise, he managed to get it out without stuttering. His dad had been surprisingly calm about things when he came to the station the day before. When Mark had babbled an apology, he had just said, in that easy, quiet voice, “Now, Mark, it’s okay. It’s not like I think you’d ever have anything to do with this.”

  That solid, simple faith had all but gutted him.

  “Shit, just blow him off,” Kyle said.

  Mark opened his mouth to answer but Brendan beat him to it. “Fuck, Kyle, get your head out of your ass. This isn’t the time for any of us to change how we do things. Mark’s the ‘good’ boy,” Brendan said, his voice heavy with mockery. “If he doesn’t show up, what do you think his dad is going to do? He’s going to fucking call the cops. And what’s that going to do?”

  Mark slumped back in his seat, the adrenaline draining out of him, his heart banging erratically against his ribs.

  “Mark, we all need to get together and talk, though.” Brendan stared at him in the mirror and, try as he might, Mark couldn’t look away. “Maybe you should see if you can come over tonight.”

 
Mark gave him a strained smile. “I’ll see what I can do. But you know how my folks are about Saturdays and shit. I’m supposed to be at church bright and early. Maybe next week.”

  “It could be too late then. We all got to do some talking.”

  “Then we try to meet and do it tomorrow,” Mark said, his voice flat. There was no fucking way he was putting himself in Brendan’s hands for the night. No fucking way. “I’m not pissing my dad off, upsetting my mom, all because you got your panties in a twist, Brendan. Deal with it.”

  Brendan’s eyes narrowed. Then, slowly, he turned around in the seat, staring at Mark. “What the fuck did you say?”

  “You heard me.” This time, his voice shook a little, but he’d be damned if he backed down. Where in the hell this inner strength had come from, he didn’t know, but he knew one thing—Brendan was scared. And if Brendan was scared, he was going to try fixing things. But Brendan’s fixes were bad for others. Brendan’s fixes involved things like killing Tristan.

  Shit. Shit. And fuck.

  No way.

  And for some inexplicable reason, a strange sense of peace washed over him, flooding him with not just confidence but resolution, as he met Brendan’s gaze and held it.

  He knew what he was going to do once he got home, too. He was going to try to find that woman—see if she had left the hotel, left town. If she hadn’t left town, he’d be able to find her. If he couldn’t find her, he’d just go to the police. Or maybe Luther. Luther would know what to do.

  One thing was damn certain—Mark was not going to spend the rest of his life like he’d spent the last few months.

  No way.

  CHAPTER NINE

  TAYLOR had two stops that morning. The first was easy. It was the florist shop where Leon Beard worked. He was just curious about the man’s rather violent reaction—though, granted, most people wouldn’t be pleased to hear their grandkid had to talk to the cops.