Dying Embers

by B. E. Sanderson

  She tossed her cards into the muck at the same time Owen’s target pushed his chips all in. Owen nodded and grinned—his great show of humility, no doubt—before he called. From her seat, she couldn’t see the cards themselves, but from the way he raked the chips across the table, he won. Owen always won.

  Until today.

  “I’m done here,” she said. Gathering her few remaining chips, she sauntered toward her prize.

  The distance couldn’t have been more than a few yards, but each step felt like it took an hour. A group of tourists blocked her path, gawking at the lights and colors of the casino. “Get out of my way.” Her hiss had no effect on them, but she couldn’t afford to cause a scene by shoving the morons out of the way.

  When they finally passed, her heart rose into her throat. Owen had disappeared.

  Ten seconds. It couldn’t have been more than ten seconds since she lost sight of him. Her eyes scanned the crowd looking for his mop of golden hair. “How can one man disappear so quickly?” she said aloud.

  “It’s Vegas, baby,” said a voice beside her. The sound was so familiar, she cringed. Not Will this time, but the sound of Studly.

  Her feet melded to the garish casino carpet. She needed to turn around, if only to assure herself Studly only lived in her head now—to verify a burnt husk didn’t tower over her shoulder.

  “How about you let me buy you a drink?” he said again. “I’m guessing you’re a Stoli and tonic. Am I right?”

  He couldn’t be further from the truth, and Studly knew it. He fixed her enough drinks during their short romance to know; she only drank gin. The slip finally gave her the courage to face her most recent ghost.

  Expecting to see open air, or at the most, a confused group of out-of-towners, her mouth fell open when she saw his face looking back at her. The face she herself had been studying only minutes before.

  Her mouth opened to breathe his name, but she swallowed it quickly. No light of recognition graced his features. If he didn’t know who she was, she wouldn’t cue him in. Not so soon.

  “Not Stoli?” Owen said, an abashed look on his face, but fire in his eyes. “Then how about champagne for the pretty lady?” Studly’s pet name for her shook her, but he couldn’t know. There is no way he knows. He was just the charmer he’d always been.

  Well, she could play that game, too.

  Forcing her mouth into its sweetest grin, she stared into his green eyes with an offer of her own. “Make it Tanqueray, and we just might have a deal.”

  #

  Morning came too soon, but Jace only had herself to blame. Another night of turning things over in her head as she thrashed in the sheets. The last thing she remembered when she finally drifted off was the clock flashing quarter to three. Now the phone jangled her awake at five. To make matters worse, the damn ringing had interrupted another beautiful, warm dream.

  Before she could raise her head to protest the rude interruption, Ben grabbed the phone. He sounded so well-rested and ready to face the day, she could’ve smacked him.

  “They’re at the site and ready to pull the car up,” he said. “Do you want them to wait until we get there?”

  Any other day, she would applaud their work ethic, but this morning she hated every last one of them. She tried to snatch the last bits of the dream, but as usual, the dream dissipated, leaving only memories of sweetness without even a fragment of substance. “Tell them to wait.” The car could be pulled up without her. If she had to feel frustrated and wanting first thing in the morning, then they could, too.

  Just as Ben began to pass along her reply, though, her conscience got the better of her. “Never mind. Tell them to pull it now and get started processing the scene. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  Her impromptu partner conveyed her orders and hung up. “Sounds like someone has wrong side of the bed syndrome.”

  Ignoring him, she made sure her sweatpants and t-shirt were in place before she climbed out from under the covers. The man didn’t even look rumpled. She didn’t want to know what she looked like. Hooking a thumb toward the restroom, she asked, “You want first dibs on the shower?”

  “I think you need it more than I do. I’ll have coffee waiting when you get out.”

  Now she really didn’t want to know how bad she looked. Her lovely dream disappeared and dropped her into the nightmare where the guy you have the hots for sees you in all your morning horror for the first time. “Make it to go,” she said. Maybe keeping it professional would save face here. “We need to hit the road.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until I’ve had my shower and my morning quota of coffee, lady. You owe me that.”

  She was halfway to the bathroom, but his comment made her stop. “Huh?”

  “After the sleepless night I had, you owe me at least a good caffeine buzz. It’s the least you can do.”

  Under the weak spray of the hotel’s shower, she pondered why his night had been as sleepless as hers, and the only thing she could come up with was her tossing kept him awake, too. Maybe she should’ve asked, but he wasn’t the only one who needed coffee to think straight this morning.

  Dragging a brush through her sodden hair while he took his own shower, she gave a longing look at the blow-dryer hanging on the wall. As much as Ben irritated her at the moment, she would give anything to have time to make herself pretty for him. So far, he’d seen her in work mode and scary-morning mode. She wanted to show him the rest of herself.

  She leaned against the counter and pressed her head against the mirror. How many years has it been since you showed anyone the rest of yourself? Ben seemed like a great guy, and he understood the job, which was a big plus in her view. The last man she tried to let into her life couldn’t wrap his brain around how much of a hold her work had on her. His jealousy of her commitment to the job had torn them apart.

  Ben knew the score. They could make something great happen.

  But once again, the job sat in the way. Not in the same way it always had, but there it plopped its ass nonetheless. Keeping her focus meant she couldn’t lay a finger on Ben until this had ended.

  “You okay?” he said as he stepped from the tiny bathroom.

  She could feel her cheeks flush as she raised her head away from the mirror. “Just tired. Sorry if my tossing kept you awake last night.”

  To her surprise, he laughed. “Darlin’, that wasn’t what kept me awake.” Then, giving her a wink, he sauntered toward the door. “Ready?”

  She never thought of herself as a blusher, but she could feel her cheeks flush. You have no idea how ready I am, she thought as she gathered her things.

  #

  “Baby, that was the best,” Owen said, giving her butt a little pinch. “But I need coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. How about you call room service while I get cleaned up, and then after breakfast, we’ll do the town.” He rose, and Emma’s eyes followed his perfect posterior toward the suite’s bathroom. When he turned and caught her staring, he gave her a better view to admire. “If we make it past breakfast, that is.”

  “Man cannot live on sex alone,” she said, pushing each word past a faked smile and teeth she ached to grind together. “Go on. Get showered. I’m hungry.”

  “Baby, so am I.” The gleam in his eyes left no doubt as to what he hungered for.

  The sound of him singing in the shower brought back memories, but she couldn’t let her old feelings interfere with what she had to do. Cramming the sweet reminiscences away, she focused on the long ago day he told her he was leaving.

  “Baby,” he said, “I love what we have together, but it’s time to move on.”

  Emma pushed past the things he hadn’t said—that he didn’t want her anymore, that he never loved her. If she didn’t admit them to herself, they wouldn’t be true. “We don’t have to live together. You can still be free, but we can be free together.”

  Owen laughed at her. Not a two people sharing a joke sound, but that of one person joking at the other’s expense.
“Baby, that’s an oxymoron. Free and together don’t mix. I don’t want to be a couple. I just want to be a one.”

  “But we’re good together. We have fun, don’t we?”

  “Sure, baby. We have loads of fun. Shitloads. But the fun is over, and it’s time for me to hit the road.”

  “What about your job? Your home?”

  “Just things to tie me down, baby.” The lines he spoke were straight from a bad movie even then—a movie in which she only had a bit part.

  “Where will you go?”

  He jammed another pair of jeans into his worn duffle bag. “South. They’re hiring for the oil rigs somewhere down in Alabama, I think. I’ll be there… Or I won’t.”

  “But I love you.”

  His face grew tense. “Don’t ruin what we had with love, Emma. Just let it be a beautiful memory.”

  After a few final, hateful remarks, he’d left her sitting naked and confused in her room—leaving her with nothing but the memories, and they were anything but beautiful.

  “Hey baby,” he said, breaking into her reverie, “where’s that breakfast I asked for? A man needs energy after all that good lovin’.”

  She kicked herself for wasting all the time he was in the shower. Screw his breakfast; she had planning to do, and now she had no time to do it.

  “Sorry about that. I must’ve been dreaming about tonight. You promised to show me the town, but afterwards, I have some things I want to show you.” She kept her tone as light as she could to hide her dark thoughts. She had plenty of things to show Owen, starting with how much the past can hurt in the present.

  #

  The charred remains of a man and his BMW sat in a clearing made by the resulting fire. Its smell still permeated the air, filling Jace with an urge to run.

  “You don’t really have to be here, you know.” Ben touched her arm lightly. “These guys can process the scene and fill you in later.”

  Sucking up her surly mood, she shook her head. “Thanks, but I really do have to be here.”

  He stopped her from moving toward the wreckage. “You already know what’s in there, and let’s face it, if the guys in La Junta can process a crime scene, these big city techs can get it done.”

  “We’re already here, and these guys don’t know Emma like I do.” She wrinkled her nose and brushed his hand away. Even from here, she could sense a difference in the scene. “Do you smell that? She used another accelerant along with the gas this time, I think. Either that, or he had something irregular in that car.”

  Ben followed her lead, but ended up shaking his head. “The only difference I smell between this and the rest stop fire is sage.”

  She’d made enough turkey stuffing to know what sage smelled like. “This is sweeter. Almost as if…” Motioning at one of the techs, she nodded toward the car. “Pop the trunk.”

  As charred as the machine was, it took several minutes of prying to get the trunk open, but its contents confirmed her suspicions. “Looks like Emma did the D.E.A. a favor.”

  “Under the circumstances, I think they would’ve preferred doing it their own way.” Stepping closer, Ben gazed at the remains of a trunk full of scorched bundles. “There was probably enough pot in here to light up Woodstock.”

  “Agent Douglas?” said an approaching tech. “You want to look at the body before we start the extraction?”

  A few steps took her beside the ghastly scene. Whoever the guy was, Emma hadn’t done him the favor of killing him. She let the fire eat him alive. His face had been frozen in a perpetual scream Jace could still hear in her head.

  “Do you have an ID yet?”

  The tech shrugged. “If that guy owns the car, we do. In that case, we could be looking at Edgar Wilson of Henderson, Nevada. Even though the license plate took a lot of heat, we managed to get the numbers. The contents of the glove compartment are irretrievable. We’re hoping once we get him out, his wallet will be intact underneath him. If this isn’t Wilson, we’ll have to wait for DNA or dental records.”

  They couldn’t afford the time it would take to identify him that way, but unless someone reported Mr. Wilson missing, that’s the route they’d have to take.

  “He could have family.” Ben offered, but the look on his face told her he didn’t believe anyone would be able to identify the body visually.

  “Can we take him out now?” another tech asked.

  She nodded and turned away. The last removal she watched close-up had been too gruesome. Seeing Tom White break apart mid-extrication wasn’t a vision she wanted to repeat.

  “Got him!” Inhaling one long breath to steady herself, she turned back toward the sight she didn’t want to see again. She let it out when a white sheet covered him on a stretcher. “If this driver’s license is correct, it’s Edgar Wilson all right.”

  “Get everything processed,” she said. “We’ll run a check on the guy and see if we can find out where Emma hooked up with him.”

  “Emma?” said the tech.

  She didn’t bother filling him in. Already she had her cell phone pressed to her ear listening to Frank’s phone ring on the other end. He picked up without greeting her, and she began filling him in on the details. When she was through, neither said goodbye.

  “He’s got Lynn pulling everything on Wilson,” she told Ben, “and looking for any place Emma might have met him. He was a local, but I’m betting she didn’t meet him in Henderson.”

  He nodded. “She probably found him sitting in a bar or a casino, and he made the mistake of hitting on her.”

  Jace climbed into their rental, forcing herself take one last lingering view of the blackened scene. Criminal or not, whatever Wilson had done, he sure as hell didn’t deserve to burn alive.

  Before Ben even got the car turned around and headed back toward the road, Frank came back on the line.

  “Wilson owns a house in Henderson, but he doesn’t live there. From the charges on his credit cards, he stays around Vegas. Only an occasional weekend without a hotel somewhere. And check this out—looks like Mr. Wilson might’ve been up to more than smuggling drugs to supplement his income. Vegas P.D. questioned him in a rash of tourist robberies. Rich women hooked up with a man matching his description and then suddenly found themselves several thousand short. You think maybe he tried that on our suspect, and she gave him her special treatment?”

  “I don’t know what happened, and I don’t want to speculate on her reasons. All that matters now is that she killed him. Where was the last place he stayed?”

  “Rome. In fact, from the looks of it, he’s still got a room there.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “For what it’s worth, Wilson sure knew how to treat a lady.” Ben held a copy of the hotel’s bill, and from its length, Jace knew the man had been spending money like a granny at a flea market. “Lobster…Champagne… three magnums? Who the hell needs three magnums of champagne? Caviar… Pizza?” He gave his head a shake. “All of this ordered into the room over the last few days.”

  “He was keeping her in the room so he wouldn’t be seen with her. Housekeeping already cleaned up, but I would bet if we ran the mattress we’d find traces of both of them.”

  “You sound like you know the game.”

  “I ran a case like this a few years back. Only that guy wasn’t just ripping off rich ladies, he was killing them, too.” She thought back over that case. “That guy got a lifetime membership at one of the federal government’s finest facilities.”

  While the techs went over the room, she stood by the window, gazing out over the Strip. “So, if our friend here decided to target Emma Parkkonen—”

  “It means she’s either got money or she looks like she does,” Ben said.

  “Exactly. Another piece of the puzzle falls into place. We know from Wendy’s description that she’s an attractive woman, but that would only be icing for Wilson. She walks around looking like a million dollars—”

  “Running into men who find her attractive—”


  “And then killing them for it.”

  “It’s as good a theory as any we’ve had yet, I guess.” Jace tapped her fingernails on the glass. Far below, thousands strolled along the sidewalks. Their killer could be any one of them, stalking her real prey while the men around her offered themselves up like lemmings rushing toward the sea.

  “Who’s next?” she whispered to the crowd. “Are you preparing to take the next on your list, or has a new victim made it into your sights?”

  Ben’s breath whispered through her hair as he stepped behind her. “She’s ready for the next guy on her list. Wilson was another distraction, and I have a feeling she won’t allow anything to distract her for too long.”

  Distractions were the last thing Jace needed to think about, and her biggest one was standing too close. The heat from his chest blazed into her back, even though the air conditioner cranked out glacial gusts.

  “We don’t have much time then.” She pushed the words out between harsh breaths. If Ben got any closer, she wouldn’t be able to breathe at all, let alone speak. With one gentle shove, she pushed away from the window and Ben’s broad figure. Near the corridor, she located the hotel employee who’d escorted them into the room. “I need you to take me to security. I need to see any tapes you have from the last few days.”

  Ben stepped up behind her. “You think she’s on there?”

  “It’s a long shot,” she told him. “I think neither our killer nor her last victim were all that anxious to pose for the camera, but we have to try it.”

  He nodded. “We could get lucky. Vegas is a town built on luck, after all.”

  “Right,” she said. “Most of it bad.”

  He laughed. “Well, look at it this way, with all the bad luck floating around, maybe we’ll be the ones to catch the elusive good luck.”