Alone in the Dark

by Karen Rose

  With a slightly embarrassed glance at Deacon from the corner of his eye, Marcus cradled Scarlett’s hands in his and once again buried his face in her hair and drew a deep breath.

  Immediately some of the tension left his shoulders.

  Deacon met Scarlett’s eyes with an indulgent smile. ‘It’s not the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,’ he murmured, making her laugh. She covered her mouth, but it was too late. The happy sound wouldn’t be contained.

  Deacon realized he’d never heard his partner laugh. Not like this, so free and . . . young.

  A few seconds later, Marcus’s shoulders began to shake and he looked up at her with a grin. ‘This is supposed to be serious.’

  She cupped his cheek, stroking his skin with her thumb, the caress very . . . intimate. ‘Who says?’ she murmured. ‘It’s supposed to be whatever it needs to be for you to be relaxed.’

  ‘I don’t think Deacon is that understanding,’ he murmured back, and Scarlett choked on another laugh, her cheeks growing pink.

  All Deacon could think was that Faith better not have any evening appointments. He was getting awfully warm watching Scarlett gentle Marcus O’Bannion.

  Deacon cleared his throat and began the exercises again. Marcus followed along, drawing calming breaths from the scent of Scarlett’s hair. By the end of the first round, he was very chill.

  Not having a date or time to work from, Deacon had to start with Marcus’s state of mind at the time of the defining event. ‘So how are you, Marcus?’

  ‘A little scared, actually.’ It was a hesitant admission.

  ‘Let’s back up and do one more round,’ Deacon said softly. Once they’d completed another set of breathing exercises, he asked the question again. Marcus’s shoulders seemed broader somehow, and Deacon wondered if Marcus’s upper body might appear as wide as Stone’s if he wasn’t so uptight all the time. ‘You’re seeing this face.’ Deacon touched the sketch, watched Marcus recoil, but slowly, like he was moving through honey. Perfect. ‘How are you, Marcus?’

  ‘I couldn’t breathe.’ He made a face. ‘Antiseptic.’

  ‘So you were in the hospital?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘As a patient?’

  A slight tightening of his jaw. ‘Yeah.’

  All right. That could mean that this incident had occurred nine months before. He wished he had access to Marcus’s medical history, but that would have to be their plan B if this didn’t work. Scarlett opened her mouth to speak, but stopped herself before Deacon said anything. He gave her a nod of approval.

  ‘Were you cold, Marcus?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Too warm?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sad?’

  Marcus swallowed hard. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Floaty?’ Deacon asked, taking a chance that this had occurred while Marcus had been on very strong painkillers. He’d had a collapsed lung, after all.

  ‘Very. You came to me.’

  Deacon started to say that he’d been in the hospital at the same time and hadn’t visited Marcus, but he realized that he meant Scarlett.

  She caressed his cheek again. ‘I did,’ she murmured in a smooth voice Deacon hadn’t known she was capable of.

  ‘You stood guard, but then you left.’

  ‘I put a policeman at your door,’ she said quietly, sweetly.

  ‘He left.’

  Deacon knew that the guard had been dismissed because they’d caught the man who’d put Marcus in the hospital and killed so many others. They’d thought the danger was past. Apparently they’d been wrong.

  ‘And you were alone,’ she whispered. ‘In the dark?’

  He nodded. ‘He came.’

  ‘The man in the sketch?’ Deacon asked.

  ‘Yes. Sat in my room.’

  Scarlett’s mouth opened, her eyes growing frightened. But she kept her voice smooth. ‘What happened, baby?’

  Marcus’s body stiffened, his head snapping up to stare at Scarlett as he caught hold of the memory. ‘It was a pillow. He covered my face with it. I couldn’t breathe.’

  Her eyes had grown wide, her lips firm with anger. Her breathing had become choppy. Frightened. ‘He tried to kill you, Marcus.’

  Marcus straightened in his chair. ‘Why?’ he asked, frustrated and bewildered.

  Scarlett’s gaze drifted to the side, her brows furrowing. ‘Nine months ago. What was happening nine months ago? Who was angry with you then?’

  ‘Nobody was mad enough to suffocate me with a pillow,’ Marcus said. ‘There was the one cop that Diesel and I had to escort away from his family, but he died on his own. He never even put a threat in writing.’

  Scarlett went still. ‘Wait. That one threat. The one that was so bad that it made Gayle have her heart attack. Mc . . . McSomebody.’

  ‘McCord,’ Marcus said grimly. ‘Woody McCord, high school teacher and collector of kiddie porn. He was the target of our investigation, but Leslie, his wife, wrote the letter. She was dead by then, though, remember? Gayle said she OD’d on sleeping pills.’

  ‘What are you two talking about?’ Deacon asked.

  Scarlett broke away from Marcus’s gaze to look at Deacon. ‘Last night I mentioned a list of threats. People who got mad at Ledger articles exposing things they’d done. Remember?’

  ‘Usually domestic abuse or child molestation,’ Deacon said. ‘Are you saying that Woody McCord was one of these threats?’

  ‘Yes,’ Scarlett said. ‘Well, his wife was. Leslie McCord wrote the letter after her husband committed suicide in jail – he hanged himself. Said she hoped that Marcus lost someone he loved. When Gayle read the letter, they were looking for Mikhail. At that point only Stone knew he was dead. Gayle thought Leslie McCord had something to do with Mikhail’s disappearance.’

  ‘It was such a shock, her heart failed,’ Marcus said. ‘She went into the hospital, and when she got out, she looked up Leslie and found the woman was no longer a threat because she’d OD’d on pills. Her death was ruled a suicide.’

  ‘But that’s where it doesn’t make sense,’ Scarlett said. ‘If Woody was dead and Leslie was dead, who is that guy’ – she pointed to the sketch – ‘and why did he try to kill you in the hospital?’

  ‘It doesn’t fit, Scarlett,’ Marcus said with a frown. ‘It doesn’t have to be anybody I pissed off nine months ago. It could have been somebody I pissed off five years ago who was just waiting for me to be a sitting duck in an ICU ward.’

  Scarlett sighed. ‘You’re right.’

  ‘Who actually wrote the article about this McCord guy?’ Deacon asked.

  ‘Stone did,’ Marcus said.

  ‘That doesn’t explain Phillip’s attack then, other than trying to lure you,’ Scarlett said, disappointed. ‘Damn.’

  ‘Phillip wasn’t even working that case,’ Marcus said. ‘That one was Stone and Diesel.’

  ‘Diesel is his IT wizard,’ Scarlett explained.

  Deacon leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowed. ‘How did you find McCord’s kiddie porn stash?’ he asked, and watched the other two exchange a glance. Then Marcus nodded.

  ‘Diesel has a knack for finding things on people’s computers,’ Scarlett said.

  ‘He’s a hacker,’ Deacon said flatly.

  ‘That’s such a pejorative term,’ Scarlett said. ‘He’s an . . . explorer.’

  Deacon stared her for a long moment, then chuckled. ‘Damn, girl. When you fall, you fall hard.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t care how he got the information. I just wondered why Marcus gets the threat if Stone wrote the article and Diesel the Explorer got the goods.’

  Scarlett turned in her chair to look up at Marcus’s face. ‘Yeah, I wonder that too.’

  Marcus drew a deep breath. ‘I may have gone to see McCord. In prison.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake.’ Scarlett rolled her eyes. ‘You gloated, didn’t you? Went right in there and said, “Hi, I’m Marcus.”’ She pitched her voice ridiculously low. ‘“And I’m the on
e who just fucked up your life.”’ She shook her head and her voice was back to normal. ‘You didn’t want anyone threatening your people. You told everyone on that list that you’d done the investigating, not just the McCords. You gave them all a face to hate. Yours.’

  Marcus’s eyes had grown wide. ‘Damn. You are scary good.’

  ‘I’m just plain scary,’ she snapped. ‘Especially when people I care about do stupid shit like that. Don’t do that anymore. Promise me.’

  Marcus grinned. ‘I promise. I won’t do that anymore.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, disgruntled. ‘So Woody and Leslie hated you, but they were both already dead when you were in the hospital. So who is Mr Pillow and how does he fit into the picture? You had to have crossed paths with him, either physically or during an investigation. And if this Demetrius guy is your Mr Pillow, then you’ve somehow managed to snag the attention of a ring of human traffickers – nine months before you met Tala.’

  ‘Nine months ago, you were dangerous to this guy somehow,’ Deacon said, tapping the sketch. ‘You still are. You saw something, heard something . . . maybe something you don’t even know you saw.’

  Marcus rubbed his forehead. ‘Fuck,’ he muttered. ‘Somehow I can’t see human traffickers biding their time for five years. Whatever it was, it most likely occurred nine months ago. And the only big story in play then was Woody McCord.’

  ‘So we’re back to the kiddie porn collector,’ Deacon said thoughtfully. ‘Somehow McCord and Demetrius connect and you’re the common denominator, Marcus.’

  ‘People started shooting you again when you met Tala,’ Scarlett murmured, ‘after nine months of nothing. You expose McCord in an article and Demetrius shows up a few days later in the hospital to kill you. You publish a story about saving Tala, and Demetrius shows up to kill you. The connection isn’t just between Demetrius and McCord. Tala’s in there too somewhere.’

  Marcus frowned. ‘But the stories are different. Tala was a victim of human trafficking. McCord was a collector of kiddie porn.’

  Scarlett stood up and began to pace. ‘But they were both the subject of stories published by you. Let’s assume that this Demetrius character was the one who killed Agent Spangler and took a shot at you at Chip Anders’s house, then later came after you at your apartment.’

  Marcus still looked unconvinced. ‘But Demetrius didn’t kill Tala, Drake did.’

  Scarlett stopped pacing. ‘But her murder put her in the spotlight, bringing Chip Anders into the picture by association. Tala was simply the trigger. Anders is the connection, not Tala.’

  ‘If you’re right,’ Deacon said, thinking through the various possibilities, ‘then Demetrius links to both Anders and McCord. How?’

  ‘I need to check Stone’s notes on the McCord story,’ Marcus said. ‘He’s over at the Ledger building now. He’ll have his notes in his desk. Come on.’

  Scarlett held up her hand. ‘Wait. First I have to change my clothes.’

  ‘Why are you wearing a dress?’ Deacon asked her.

  ‘Because I like her in it,’ Marcus said, smiling at her.

  She blushed. Deacon didn’t think he’d ever seen Scarlett Bishop blush.

  ‘It’s because my uncle wanted me to look as non-coppish as possible so we didn’t scare Mila and Erica away. Now, we have several places we need to be all at once. Let’s figure this out.’ Scarlett ticked off a finger. ‘First, we have the guys coming from the ankle tracker company. They’ll hopefully be able to tell us who was buying the trackers. That should be either Anders or the head traffickers. Hopefully the traffickers.’

  ‘Like Demetrius and Alice,’ Marcus said. ‘They met the Bautistas at the airport and drove them to Cincinnati.’

  Scarlett ticked off a second finger. ‘Then we have to find Tommy and Edna to find out if they can put that bastard Drake Connor on the street yesterday when Tala was shot. Third, we want to find out if Demetrius fits into the Woody McCord story.’

  Marcus’s cell phone buzzed against the table. He grabbed it, read it, then closed his eyes, his shoulders sagging. ‘Oh God,’ he breathed. ‘Thank you.’

  Scarlett looked over his shoulder, her smile bright. ‘It’s a text from Phillip’s sister, Lisette. Phillip just woke up and asked for Skyline Chili.’

  ‘You can take him a copy of the sketch,’ Deacon said to Scarlett while Marcus immediately called the victim’s sister. ‘See if he can ID his attacker.’

  ‘I’d rather wait till we have an ID and a photo we can put in an array,’ Scarlett said. ‘I don’t want any lawyers saying later that we led the witness.’

  Deacon frowned. ‘You’re right, but it would be tidy to have IDs for all of yesterday’s shootings.’

  Scarlett checked the time. ‘In another twelve hours or so we’ll have DNA on the shooter in Marcus’s apartment. The forensic vet got tissue from BB’s teeth. It won’t give us a name for this guy, but when we find him, it’ll give us corroboration.’

  Both Deacon and Scarlett’s cell phones buzzed at the same time. They grabbed them, then cursed in unison. ‘Fuck.’

  Marcus ended his call. ‘What? What’s happened?’

  ‘Someone took a shot at one of the ankle tracker makers as he was being taken into CPD,’ Scarlett told him. ‘He wasn’t hurt, but the agent next to him took a bullet in the arm when he pushed the tracker guy out of the way. No fatalities.’

  Deacon breathed a sigh of relief. He was still shaken by his notification of Agent Spangler’s wife yesterday. Then his and Scarlett’s phones buzzed with a second text. They read the incoming, then looked at each other with wide grins.

  Scarlett caught Marcus around the neck and pulled him down for a loud, smacking kiss on the mouth. ‘They caught the shooter who tried to kill the ankle tracker guy,’ she said.

  Deacon’s phone buzzed alone this time. ‘From Kate. She and Agent Troy were the ones who caught the shooter.’ His grin widened. ‘Go, Kate. Pretty good for her second day.’

  Deacon dialed Kate’s phone and put her on speaker. ‘It’s me. I’m here with Scarlett and Marcus. I hear congratulations are in order.’

  ‘Hell, yeah,’ Kate said. ‘Damn, I’m juiced right now. Shooter’s a female, blond, mid-twenties. She was on the roof of a building across the street from CPD. We surrounded her as she was squeezing the trigger. That’s why she missed the lab tech from Constant Global Surveillance. We yelled “Gun!” into the radio and the agents took the lab tech down. A few seconds different and we’d have been burying the guy. She had a direct bead on him.’

  ‘How did you know to look on the roof?’ Marcus asked.

  A long pause, then a sigh from Kate. ‘We had a tip. That’s all I can say, for now anyway. Sorry.’

  Scarlett looked at Deacon, her brows raised, and he knew they were both thinking the same thing – the man the Bureau had inside one of the organized crime operations had provided the tip.

  ‘Things are finally coming together,’ she told Kate. ‘We’re getting close to an ID on the shooter who took out Agent Spangler, the guard in Marcus’s building, who’s still unconscious, and Phillip Cauldwell, who’s just woken up.’

  ‘Excellent news about Cauldwell. I’m going to interview the quality tech right away. He’s so shaken up from almost getting shot that he should sing like a bird. So if you want to observe, you need to hurry. Deacon, I’d like you to do the interview with me. Like I said, I’m a little juiced.’

  Deacon smiled at his phone. ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’ He sobered then, thinking of Agent Spangler. ‘What about the roof shooter? Was she using the same kind of rifle as the sniper who took out Spangler and almost got Marcus?’

  ‘No,’ Kate said. ‘Different rifles, different bullets, different range. I have a feeling the chick will be a hard nut to crack. She’s got attitude to spare. I may save her for later. She hasn’t said a word other than the initial “Fuck!” when we spoiled her shot. She’s not giving her name. We printed her and I’d like to give Latent a li
ttle time to put ’em through AFIS. I want to know who I’m dealing with when I go into interview with her.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Scarlett said, looking torn. ‘I really want to be part of the interview, but we have other priorities.’

  ‘We’ll record it,’ Deacon promised. ‘Go. Wear body armor.’

  ‘I absolutely will,’ Scarlett said fervently. ‘What with snipers shooting off roofs. Shit. Let’s plan on a debrief in Isenberg’s conference room at eighteen hundred. I’m going to check on the Bautistas before we head out. Bye, Kate.’

  Cincinnati, Ohio

  Wednesday 5 August, 2.30 P.M.

  Alice was gone. Taken. In custody. Standing in the middle of his living room, Ken stared at the shattered picture window that had been the target of his immediate rage. Now he was numb. Drained. What now? What do I do now?

  Hearing the crash, Decker ran from the upstairs bedroom, where he’d been tending Demetrius, to peer over the balustrade that ran between the twin spiral staircases.

  ‘Mr Sweeney!’ Decker shouted, running down the stairs as Ken stood unmoving. ‘Get down.’ He took Ken down in a tackle that was reminiscent of the time the young man had saved him a year ago. Except this time there were no bullets. No danger. Not here. Nothing to see except the destruction Ken had caused himself. Literally and figuratively.

  After a second of dead silence, Decker lifted his head and frowned. ‘Wait. The glass is broken out. Not in. Crap.’ He leaped to his feet in a graceful movement and held his hand out to pull Ken up. ‘I’m so sorry, sir. Did I hurt you?’

  Ken rolled to sit up, too spent from his tantrum to stand. He waved Decker’s helping hand aside. ‘No, Decker. I’m perfectly fine.’ Yep, he thought sourly, I’m perfectly fine, perfectly protected, while my daughter sits in jail.

  ‘I thought someone was shooting at you. What happened here?’ Decker checked out the window that Ken had smashed to smithereens. A pedestal that used to hold a five-hundred-year-old Chinese vase was empty, pieces of ceramic strewn on the floor. The antique chair his mother had once loved now lay on the ground outside, covered in glass.