Inked Magic

by Jory Strong

  She set the bike helmet on the counter as she passed it, anticipating the teasing she would have to endure when Bryce and Derrick got together. Tonight she was sleeping at her own place, or at least planning ahead well enough to have a change of clothes with her instead of having to swap them out somewhere else.

  “Hey,” she said, stepping into Bryce’s office. “Where is everyone?”

  He looked up from his sketchpad. “Starting late today, including yours truly. Lot of lunchtime appointments, then some after hours. What are you doing here?”

  Not much point in trying to hide the reason, given what she needed was in his office closet. “Changing clothes.”

  He whistled. “Got laid two nights in a row? Cathal?”

  She just smiled and crossed over to the closet, knowing it’d drive him crazy. He cursed while she went through the small stack of choices, picking out what she wanted.

  As she closed the closet door he finally ended his rant. “If you’re not going to share, then at least tell me the magic words you used on Derrick so I can use them the next time he crashes and burns. He showed up for work yesterday afternoon with a smile on his face and an ‘I live to serve’ attitude. Burst out and started singing at one point. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s back in love.”

  “Oh shit,” Etaín said, borrowing Bryce’s favorite word.

  “What was that?”

  She crossed to lean against his desk. “I introduced him to someone. Casual. A one-nighter I thought.” Though if Quinn was serious about taking a job as a PI . . .

  “Who’d you introduce him to?”

  “A law-enforcement type.”

  “Sweet.”

  “We’ll see.”

  She pulled the copy of the Harlequin Rapist’s tat out of a pocket, unfolded it before handing it to Bryce. “You know who might have done this artwork? Or seen anyone wearing it?”

  He studied it for a long moment, then refolded it and gave it back to her. “No. Does this have anything to do with your asshole brother stopping by the shop a couple of days ago?”

  That was the trouble with Bryce, he was too perceptive, which was one of the reasons she hadn’t made more of an effort to show him the drawing before now. “Can’t say it does,” she answered. Like the importance of keeping a promise, the importance of avoiding a lie was another of her mother’s often repeated mantras.

  “Cute, Etaín. In other words, ‘Yes, Bryce, it does, but I’m not allowed to tell anyone what I’m doing for the Feds.’”

  Deflection seemed the best way to deal with him. “So when will Jamaal be in?”

  “Won’t. Not today. He’s spending the day with DaWanda. They’re going to a funeral. Scheduled to start at three, at DaWanda’s church. It’s being held for someone who goes there and was in Narc Anon with DaWanda’s sister. Tyra Nelson, ring any bells with you?”

  Etaín froze inside, an instinctive reaction against opening the floodgates of memory. “I know who she is. Was.”

  “Tell me the truth, Etaín. Is your brother using you as bait for the Harlequin Rapist?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “So it’s possible.”

  Would Parker go that far? Her stomach twisted but the conversations she’d had with Trent about the Harlequin Rapist’s likely behavior kept it from knotting. “It’s possible, but I don’t think he is.”

  “Be careful.”

  “You’re the second person who’s told me that today.”

  “Cathal the first?”

  She smiled and turned away from the desk. A colored pencil bounced off the wall next to the doorway as she stepped through it. “Goddamn tease,” Bryce yelled.

  She changed in the bathroom and returned to her bike. Straddling it, she thought of her promise to Cathal. Technically she wasn’t done, so a call wasn’t owed, but she wanted to hear his voice, wanted to feel the warm hum of electric desire she’d come to associate with him. A warding against facing Brianna’s memories.

  “I’m not finished yet,” she told him when he answered.

  “When will you be?”

  If ice had a voice, it would sound like Cathal’s. Her stomach cramped at the curtness of his response and the way it was delivered.

  She’d planned on telling him she was heading to his uncle’s house for another session with Brianna. Instead she said, “Soon. You’ll know when I am,” and ended the call, pocketing the phone.

  It rang as she was putting her helmet on. She hesitated then started the Harley. She wanted to get this done.

  Panic seized Cathal. “Fuck!” He was out of control.

  He’d thought he’d come to terms with knowing she was with Eamon. But when she’d said she wasn’t finished drawing, he’d imagined her naked, in Eamon’s arms, playing instead of following through on her promise to help Brianna.

  He’d reacted without thought. Given her cold to offset the heat of the emotions festering inside him because he was trapped in his own subterfuge.

  Three more attempts, going straight to voicemail, and he dialed Sean instead.

  “Didn’t we just talk?” Sean asked. “Fair warning, I’m going to start charging you three times the usual rate. The first bump to keep you out of the pain-in-the-ass category of client, the second for not walking away from this woman if you can’t handle the idea of sharing her.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Give me a second, why don’t you.”

  There was a muffled thud, as if Sean had jumped from the dock to the deck of his boat.

  Time seemed to crawl. He heard the click of a mouse and keys typed.

  “She’s on the move. Looks like she just left Stylin’ Ink.”

  He cursed his own lack of control, hand tightening on the phone. He didn’t hang up. Neither did Sean.

  Long moments passed. Agony ended by Sean saying, “At a guess, I’d say she’s heading to Pacific Heights. Your call whether it’s to Eamon’s estate or your uncle’s.”

  I’m not finished yet.

  He felt a jolt of fear. Fierce anger directed at himself.

  “She’s going to see Brianna again.” It was the only thing that made sense to him.

  “You’re at home?”

  “Yes.”

  “You won’t beat her there, but you might make it on her heels.”

  “I’m gone,” he said, shoving the phone into his pocket.

  * * *

  Denis sat next to the bed, the nurse hovering behind him. “Have you seen any change in her, Clara?”

  “No, sir.”

  He hadn’t either and he’d desperately wanted to after Cathal passed on what Etaín had told him. He wanted Brianna to forget, to have what had happened erased from her mind. But maybe he was going to have to settle for erasing the ones responsible.

  A knock on the open door had him looking up at one of the men he used for protection work. “There’s a woman at the gate, name’s Etaín.”

  “Cathal’s not with her?”

  “No.”

  Denis didn’t like it. It told him Cathal wasn’t in control of the situation. It told him Cathal probably couldn’t guarantee she hadn’t talked and hadn’t shown whatever pictures she came up with to someone. If she’d been able to come up with anything at all. And that was a big if in his mind.

  Rushing out of the room and puking her guts out in the hallway bathroom could have been an act put on for their benefit—which would make things a whole lot worse for her down the road. Clara didn’t believe there was any way Brianna had beat the drugs long enough to talk to Etaín.

  “Let her in, Matt,” he said, rising from his chair, pausing to lean down and kiss his daughter’s forehead. She was lightly sedated but she still whimpered and jerked away from the contact, curling into a ball at his touch.

  Even though it had happened before, it felt like a fist plunging into his chest and trying to rip his heart out. He straightened and left the room.

  Etaín had better deliver results. He wasn’t a man to jerk
around.

  * * *

  Etaín was met in the driveway by a guy who looked like a bodyguard instead of a personal assistant. His eyes were emotionless and everything about him screamed lethal despite the suit he wore.

  She followed him into the house and found Denis waiting in the foyer. He didn’t offer either a smile or a handshake.

  The first didn’t matter to her. The second she was grateful for.

  “I want to know what you know,” he said after the bodyguard had made himself scarce. Rage and pain simmered in Denis’s voice despite the external show of containment.

  “I don’t have the full story. I need to visit with Brianna again, alone, if I’m going to get the rest of it.”

  “I want what you do have.”

  He was a dark lion at the gate. She wouldn’t get past him, wouldn’t get this finished and behind her if she didn’t give him the drawings she’d already done.

  She crouched and opened the sketchpad, carefully tearing out pages without looking at what was on them. It made her appreciate how Parker or the captain served as a buffer between her and a victim’s family, slipping her in under one pretext or another and always making it clear the success of her work depended on her being left alone to do it.

  She’d never had to decide whether family members were better off with the horror they imagined or the reality captured on paper. She wasn’t going to decide this time, either. Denis wasn’t going to give her the choice.

  Standing, she passed the sheaf of papers to him. He rolled them up, expression grim as he escorted her to Brianna’s bedroom.

  “Clara,” he said, and it was enough for the nurse to exit the room.

  “I’ll see you out when you’re ready to leave,” Denis said, before closing the door to his daughter’s room.

  He found Matt. “Wait outside Brianna’s room. After Etaín’s gone, we sweep for bugs from there to the front gate, and anywhere else she’s been.”

  “Yes, sir.” Matt straightened, touching his earpiece. “Cathal’s at the gate.”

  Denis frowned. Etaín hadn’t mentioned Cathal following her.

  His suspicion Cathal didn’t have control of the situation, or Etaín, deepened, though the rolled drawings were proof Cathal was getting results. The jury was still out about what to do with Etaín when this was over.

  “Open the gate for him. Tell him where she is. He can wait for her. But she doesn’t leave until I say so. Pass that word on to Cathal.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  In his office Denis slowly sank into his chair. His heart pounded in his chest like he’d run a four-minute mile. It drowned out the background noise coming from the small TV at the corner of his desk.

  He put the rolled-up sketches on his desk. The paper flattened on its own, revealing a picture of Caitlyn with a boy on top of her. Close up, the perspective making it seem as though he was lying on the bed not far away, seeing it through his daughter’s eyes.

  His guts burned looking at it, sickness joining his fury as he turned the page over, and then the next and the next. Rifling through them as the hair rose on his arms and the back of his neck.

  A chill settled deep inside him with the last picture, Brianna returning to consciousness that first time in the hospital. Creepy. The guy who’d passed on Etaín’s name wasn’t kidding.

  Denis picked up a burner phone and called the one Niall was carrying, though he still decided to play it safe and cautious when his brother answered.

  “Cathal’s girlfriend showed up a little while ago wanting to visit with Brianna. I let her in. Brianna’s still got me closed out, but she’s opening up to her.”

  “Cathal’s not there?”

  “He is now. Came in a few minutes behind her.”

  “I’ll stop by later.”

  Denis glanced down at the small stack of drawings. “That’d be good.”

  Twenty-one

  Etaín stood next to Brianna’s bed with a sense of déjà vu. Cathal’s cousin was curled into a fetal position, whimpering.

  “Brianna,” she said, reaching out and lightly touching a shoulder to determine if Brianna slept or was drugged.

  Brianna cringed away, but not before leaving an impression of despair so deep there was only one way to escape it. Death.

  Etaín opened and closed her hands, the eyes flashing as if they winked. She’d contemplated the morality of using her gift before, and her stomach roiled now despite the lack of physical contact. A warning Eamon had guessed, but to her it seemed a confirmation that the nausea was self-administered punishment, because this was a violation, some would say, a mental rape.

  The acknowledgment of it made her cringe, though she didn’t allow herself to turn away from Brianna. She silenced moral and ethical questions by picturing some of the children the captain and Parker had taken her to see in the past. It helped.

  “Just do it,” she whispered. “Get it done.” She rubbed slick palms against her jeans before curling her fingers around Brianna’s wrists.

  Brianna cried out and began struggling, pouring emotion into Etaín, so thick with suffering it choked her. Eradicated her own sense of self, filling her mind with the desire to die, with the determination to get to one of the guns she knew was in the house.

  Only the sensation of writhing, thrashing vines along her forearms jerked Etaín clear of Brianna’s mind. Fear slammed into her at this new twist to her gift.

  She backed away from Brianna, Eamon’s words chasing her, an admonition that it was the nature of her gift to want to see everything, to know everything about anyone she touched. To consume them, she thought, sweat turning cold on her skin, the vines suddenly seeming like some horror-movie rendition of carnivorous plants.

  She forced fear and revulsion away by reminding herself the bands around her wrist had been started by her mother, and the rest had grown from her own dreams. If she lost faith in herself, let panic destroy her confidence or turn her away from the call to ink she wouldn’t survive.

  Power of suggestion, that’s all, she told herself, wondering if the changes that had come since meeting Eamon had come because of the things he’d told her.

  Ignorance is deadly, Etaín. Never believe otherwise.

  “Enough already,” she muttered, refusing to think about Eamon or anything else but getting the task that had brought her here done.

  She took Brianna’s wrists, not releasing them as the girl struggled, and the vines felt like living things that didn’t quiet until Brianna lay still, curled once again into a fetal ball as if her mind and body mirrored each other.

  Etaín concentrated on where the eyes touched Brianna, making herself ignore the barrier of skin. She focused her will with razor sharp intention.

  “Start at the beginning, Brianna, show me what happened the last time you spent the night with Caitlyn.”

  She repeated it over and over again. Verbally. Mentally. Not a movie camera, not still-life photos, but a melding, the memories becoming a part of her as they always had, a reality she’d relive over and over again if the barrier between her life and Brianna’s fell away as it did then.

  “Come on, Caitlyn. Just for a little while. We can take your mom’s car. We’ll be back before your parents get home. It’s not like we’re going to do anything at the party anyway.”

  Caitlyn bit her lip in indecision. Her parents were way strict, totally overprotective, the same way Dad was, and he was worse now than when Mom and Brian were alive.

  Guilt and sorrow almost made her back away from the idea of going to the party. She forced herself to ignore them. She didn’t want to think about the last year, or what would happen if her father found out she went without his permission or one of his watchdogs.

  “Please, Caitlyn. I just want Adam to see me there so he’ll know I’m not boring.”

  Maybe then he’d notice her more often. He was so cute and nice. Everyone liked him and his smile . . .

  She touched a hand to her chest. Underneath it her heart was doing
flip-flops.

  “Just for a few minutes, Caitlyn. I promise.”

  “Okay.”

  They left Caitlyn’s room and went downstairs. A thrill went through her at watching Caitlyn access the security room and turn off the cameras so there would be no record of the car leaving.

  Caitlyn was a total brain who happened to play first chair violin. “I wish I could figure out how to do this at my house. My Dad is totally paranoid when it comes to security.”

  “I’d help you, but it’s not like we’re ever really alone there. There’s always someone around.”

  “I know. Like I said, Dad’s paranoid. So is Uncle Niall. I think it’s because they spend time in places where kidnapping for ransom is just another way to make money.”

  She tried not to talk about Adam the whole time they were driving, but she couldn’t help herself. She kept thinking of things, Tweets and stuff on Facebook. He’d friended her though he didn’t follow her on Twitter.

  He would after tonight. She tingled as she imagined dancing with him.

  She’d ask him if he didn’t ask her.

  Lie.

  The thought of him saying no made her stomach sink. She’d never have the nerve to ask him, not with other people around and watching.

  The house came into sight and she saw him. It felt like a bird was trapped in her chest with its wings flapping crazily.

  “There’s Adam,” Caitlyn said before she could. “He’s getting in the car with Jordão.”

  “Let’s follow them!”

  “Okay.”

  She knew Caitlyn was relieved not to have to go in to the party. She was kind of glad, too.

  They followed Jordão’s car into the Sunset District. She recognized some of the houses and streets, from times she’d been there with Brian.

  Ahead of them Jordão stopped in front of a house. There was no place to turn around, but it was dark and it wasn’t like he and Adam knew they were being followed.

  She started to hunch over then stopped when Adam’s door opened. Just one little peek . . .

  “Slow down,” she said.

  Caitlyn did, probably hoping Adam and Jordão would be going up the walkway when they passed.

  Adam got out of the car. Seeing him made her ache inside.