by L. K. Hill
Tyke’s mouth fell open. “What the hell?”
Gabe couldn’t agree more. He peered up at Cora. “Did her killer do this?”
Cora nodded. “The ME thinks so. He said it happened anti-mortem, but only by a few minutes. It had almost no time to heal before she died.” Cora took a deep breath. “This woman looking, and being dressed like Kyra is no coincidence, Gabe. The killer wanted you to think it was her. I mean, how many prostitutes do you know who wear baggy black sweats while working the Mire?”
Swallowing, Gabe stood with some effort. His legs felt wobbly. “What are you saying?”
“We need to find Kyra. If this is your key, the person who killed the vic and jammed it down her throat might have Kyra.”
Gabe hadn’t considered that it might not be his key. “It must be mine,” he said. “Because of the paint.”
“He made the vic look unmistakably like Kyra. Couldn’t he have duplicated the key, right down to the green paint?”
“How would he have known to do that?”
Cora shook her head. “Only you can answer that, Gabe.”
Gabe sighed, shaking his head. “No. I went to her hotel and gave it to her. She and I were the only ones there. No one else knows she has it, much less what it looks like. Even if he found it on her, how would he know it’s my key? One I would recognize?”
“You know,” Tyke said. “He'd have known the cut on this girl's belly wouldn’t match Kyra’s. That we’d figure out it wasn’t her. And Kyra doesn't go around flashing her scar. He must have seen it personally too."
The thought made Gabe's stomach constrict.
"Maybe she's a proxy," Tyke continued. "Some kind of warning. I think Cora’s right. Things point to him having her. The key is probably yours and he took it off her. Only she could have told him you'd recognize it.”
“We can't know for sure right now," Gabe said stubbornly. "Let’s go get the key. If it opens my back door, we’ll know it’s mine, not a fake.”
Tyke frowned. “Yeah, but he might have copied your key.”
“He’d still need the original first. If it opens my back door, we’ll know it’s mine and he probably has Kyra. If not, it’s a fake and he probably doesn’t.” He dropped his voice to a mutter. “Of course we'll be back to how-the-hell-would-he-know-about-the-key, but we need to know what we’re dealing with either way.”
“The key has already been sent to the lab, Gabe. We should wait until they’re done with it. If there’s any chance of getting evidence off it, we should do that first.”
Gabe sighed. What the hell did he do while waiting for the lab?
“Have you heard anything from Kyra?” Cora asked, her voice sounding desperate.
By now, several hours had passed since Gabe last checked his phone. He pulled it out and scanned his notifications. No texts. No voice mails, except one he recognized as his mother’s number. He checked his emails. Nothing from Kyra.
He sighed. Cora read the answer in his face. “I guess we wait.”
*******
Hours later, as darkness fell and Gabe’s real shift began, he sat starring at his computer. He couldn’t keep his mind on anything. So much work to do, and no brain power to do it. Whenever Shaun walked by his desk, Gabe tapped a few keys on his keyboard, trying to look busy. He doubted Shaun was fooled.
“Gabe,” Tyke rose from his desk. “I’m going to get a soda.”
“Okay,” Gabe said, not sure why Tyke thought he cared.
“Why don’t you come with me, man? You look like you need some air.”
Gabe glanced at Tyke, then back at his computer screen, which now held two paragraphs of absolute gibberish. He stood and followed his best friend down the hall to where the vending machines hunched. Tyke bought him a drink, unasked, and they trudged out into the chilly air to drink them.
Gabe stared up at the sky. So deep into the city, especially one like Abstreuse, the stars twinkled faintly high above, barely visible.
“I wanted to say,” Tyke said, “that I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Not going with you to the morgue yesterday.”
“Tyke—”
“I should have been there, like Cora said.”
“It’s not your job to babysit me, Tyke. I know Cora thinks it is, but it’s not. We couldn’t have known what we would find.”
Tyke nodded, looking unconvinced. “What’s going on with you and Kyra?”
Gabe glanced sideways at his friend. “Nothing really.”
Tyke rolled his shoulders, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Okay. What’s going on with you, where she's concerned?”
“What?”
“Are you sleeping with her or what?”
Gabe frowned. “No. Why do you care?”
“I don’t. I only wish you'd told me you cared about this woman.”
“Why?”
“To help protect her. If she’s important to you, she’s important to me.”
“You couldn’t have helped Tyke. Anything you knew wouldn’t have stopped this from happening. She's,” he motioned out toward the city, not sure what he meant to point at. “Out there somewhere.”
“You don’t know that. She might be with her family, still.”
“She might,” Gabe admitted. “Or she might have come back and not told me. She’s done worse things. She might be out there, and I don’t know where. Or even where to start looking.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Tyke said. "If you don’t hear from her by tomorrow night, you and I will adopt some Kyra-esque disguises and go into the Mire. I’ll help you find her.”
“I couldn’t ask you to do that, Tyke.”
“It’s done.
“No, it isn’t. You know how dangerous this is. Take Kyra for example," he muttered. "You have a family.”
“Exactly my point, Gabe. Will Kyra become your family, when all this ends?”
“I don’t know.”
“But it’s possible?”
Gabe sighed. “It’s extremely possible.”
Tyke threw his hands up. “Geez, why haven’t you told me this before?”
“You’re barely present lately, Tyke.”
Hurt flickered across Tyke’s face, followed by self-consciousness.
“I didn’t mean it as a dig,” Gabe said. “You’ve obviously got a lot going on. I didn’t want to burden you with…anything.”
“You know it wouldn’t be a burden.”
“We aren’t exactly the heart-to-heart types, though, are we?”
Tyke shook his head. “We’re not. But your family is my family. If I need to bust some faces on Kyra’s behalf, I kinda need to know beforehand.”
Gabe didn’t answer, though he suppressed a smile.
“Look,” Tyke said. “If anything ever happens to me, will you take care of my family?”
Gabe's head came up in surprise. “Of course.”
“Would you need to be asked to do it?”
“No.”
“Well, there we are. If Kyra is yours, I’ll take care of her too. That’s all I’m saying.”
Gratitude and affection for Tyke surged in Gabe’s chest. He didn’t know what to say.
“Anyway,” Tyke said, taking the moment from him. “Gotta get back. She’ll call, Gabe. Try not to worry.” He clicked his soda can against Gabe's, spilling cold, sticky carbonation across both their hands. Tyke didn’t seem to notice. He slurped the rest out of his can, tossed it into a trashcan outside the door, and disappeared back into the station.
Don’t worry. Gabe doubted he'd ever not worry again. He threw the rest of his soda, still full, into the same trash can and followed Tyke back into the station.
Chapter 14
Kyra sighed deeply as she drove back into Abstreuse. She’d done nothing except sit in a hotel room for two days and talk. Not nearly as difficult as walking the streets of the Mire or taking beatings from Josie. Yet, she felt exhausted.
Jane, as she should have predicted, hijac
ked her, bringing both their parents and several cousins to gang up on her. They knew everything now. Well, not everything. Not about the killer or the details of the work she did for Josie. And not that Chris had visited her, though as she suspected they had known he was out of prison. Nothing that would send her parents to the ER with coronary embolisms. But they knew she searched Abstreuse for Manny and the danger it posed.
That much had been evident enough by her bruised face. She'd used makeup, but hadn't been able to completely hide the contusions.
She’d turned off her phone, just as she'd told Gabe she would. For two days, it lay buried, along with Supra's phone, in her glove box. She hadn't planned on being gone so long, but once she arrived in Mesquite, her family wouldn't let her leave, grilling her with questions and hurling threats, most of which were some variation of tying her up, throwing her into the trunk and taking her home.
When they'd successfully talked her into staying in Mesquite an extra day, Kyra sneaked out to her car to try and call Gabe. She found the phone with his number in it completely dead, and she hadn't brought a charger. She had one that would work in the car, but her family watched her like hawks and if they'd seen a second cell phone out, they would have been digging through it in record time.
Kyra knew that first hand because, at one point, Jane took her regular phone and scrolled through it. Kyra's real phone had none of Supra’s contact information in it, and not even Gabe's. Jane found no smoking guns. Kyra wondered vaguely what she'd hoped to find.
“What if the cops arrest you?" Jane had demanded.
"I'm working with the cops," Kyra said calmly.
“The cops know what you’re doing?” Her father chimed in.
“Yes. Completely.” She felt how much it mollified them, so she’d built on it subtly over the next few days, allowing them to believe Abstreuse's finest protected her and wouldn’t let any harm come to her. A hard sell, given the bruises. She could tell they didn’t believe everything she told them. After two days, they seemed to realize they wouldn't be able to convince her to come home or stop her search for Manny.
With promises to call every week, and let them know the instant she heard something about Manny, they’d allowed her to go, foreboding in their eyes.
She’d also left out the detail about seeing Manny in the warehouse. The entire warehouse situation remained absent from her story. Her parents didn’t need that kind of reality weighing on them.
Pulling off the interstate and into the city, Kyra headed for her hotel. When she stopped at a red light, she reached over and pulled the phone Gabe had the number to out of her glove compartment, glad Jane hadn't found it. She imagined how the conversation would have gone.
“Who the hell is Gabe? Is he cute? Did he do that to your face?”
Kyra plugged the phone into the car charger and waited for it to turn on. When it did, she looked down and gasped. It showed twelve missed calls from Gabe and eight messages. Tendrils of fear writhed in her stomach. She could only think of one reason for such a plethora of calls. Something bad must have happened and, although he knew her phone would be off, he still tried to call her.
With a groan, she listened to the first message. It sounded fairly calm. Simply him checking in when she hadn’t called right away. The first two messages sounded calm. The third one did not. He said nothing more than to call him immediately, but his voice sounded freaked out.
She groaned again. She should have found some way to call him. She hadn't thought it would be a big deal. He knew she was in Mesquite. Why wouldn't he just assume she'd stayed longer? She'd as much as told him she might.
The fourth one was the same way. The final two sounded calmer.
“Kyra, something happened. If you couldn’t tell by my messages, I totally freak-out. It’s better now, but I need to know where you are. That you’re okay. If you don’t call me by tomorrow, I’m filing a missing person's report.
The message came in six hours ago. Gabe’s “days” were actually nights. Midnight had come and gone, which meant he'd already gone to work. He might have filed that report already or be filing it now.
Kyra went to her contacts to call him when she realized the precinct sat only a few blocks away. She eased her foot down on the accelerator.
The station sounded quieter than normal tonight. Fewer cars than usual graced the parking lot. Of course, that didn’t mean a slow night. They could all be out on homicide calls. She winced at the thought.
The lobby stood as still as she’d ever heard it. Doug sat behind the desk next to another woman. Though it wasn't obvious when he sat, Doug had long legs and an imposing stance. Kyra ran from him once and went to ground to escape. Though she was a good runner, her short legs couldn't match his long ones.
As soon as she entered the lobby, the dark-skinned man looked up. His eyes widened in recognition and he stood as she approached the front desk. The woman wore a blue police uniform and sat beside him, typing away on an ancient-looking computer that must have weighed 20 pounds.
Kyra and Doug locked gazes. His looked both serious and penetrating.
“Gabe’s been looking for me,” Kyra said. Not a question.
“We all have been, Ms. Roberts.” He turned to a unie walking past the desk who looked like a twelve-year-old. “Cooper, go get Detective Nichols.” The man child disappeared down a hallway to Kyra’s left.
She studied Doug's face. “Something happened. How bad is it?”
Doug shook his head, though his serious expression didn’t change. “Looks like a big misunderstanding. Nothing to laugh at, though. Gabe’s been through hell today.”
Kyra nodded. Sound and movement came from her left and she turned to see Gabe striding down the hallway toward her. Something twisted in her gut at the intense look on his face. She turned fully toward him with concern. When he reached her, he swept her up in his arms so forcefully, it took her breath away. She felt his relief as he crushed her against his chest.
Wrapping her arms around his shoulders, she rested her face in his neck, wondering what on earth had happened. Over Gabe’s shoulder, Doug observed them a moment before suddenly finding the papers on his desk fascinating. Cora had followed Gabe into the lobby and stood behind him. She gave Kyra a brief, tight smile before looking away.
“What happened?” Kyra asked softly.
Gabe released her and pulled back. Though his eyes were dry, she saw emotion in his face. “We,” he seemed to fight for the words, “found a body.”
Kyra frowned, but Gabe didn’t bother to explain. She raised an eyebrow at Doug and Cora. Neither looked predisposed to answer.
“I don’t mean to be morbid,” Kyra said, “but…isn’t that a pretty common occurrence around here?”
Gabe took on a pleading look. He still seemed to have trouble finding the words. He searched the ground, his mouth moving, but not forming words or making sounds.
The fear in Kyra’s stomach tightened. For Gabe to be so distraught, he couldn’t even yell at her? Yeah, something awful must have happened.
Cora put a hand on Gabe’s arm and addressed Kyra. “We thought it was you,” she said.
Kyra registered shock. “Why? Couldn’t you see the face?”
The tension immediately ratcheted as both Gabe and Cora cringed.
“No,” Cora said quietly. “We couldn’t. The killer mutilated it beyond recognition.”
Kyra’s eyes flew wide. She felt the shock on her face, but couldn’t get rid of it.
“Otherwise, she looked a lot like you. Hair, body type, even her clothes looked like the ones you wear into the Mire. We found a key—”
She cut off as the front doors of the station opened and two unies escorted in a suspect in cuffs. By his colors and tattoos, Kyra identified him as a member of the Sons of Ares, though she didn’t recognize him. Even had she known him, he wouldn’t have recognized her either without her Supra guise. Kyra still automatically turned away, hunching her shoulders.
Gabe glanced a
t the gang member and understanding came into his face. Murmuring his thanks to Doug, who nodded as he turned to help the unies book the gangbanger, Gabe took Kyra’s arm and led her down the hallway toward where his, Cora’s, and Tyke’s desks sat.
Halfway to the bull pen, Cora put hand on Gabe's arm. "Why don't you two take a moment." She nodded toward a door on their right. "I'll tell Shaun she's here. You can meet me at his office in five minutes."
Kyra frowned, but Gabe nodded. He opened the door on the right and pulled Kyra through it. The door shut loudly behind them. Gabe didn't bother to switch on the lights. He pulled her into his arms again and kissed her. Both deep and gentle, his mouth covered hers with warmth. She felt the urgency in his body as he pressed her against the cool wall. Wrapping her arms around his shoulders, she kissed him back, feeling his concern for her. Wanting to return it.
When his lips left hers, she felt breathless, her cheeks too warm.
Gabe rested is forehead against her cheek. "Sorry," he murmured.
"Don't be. You went through hell today. I'm so sorry, Gabe."
"Don't ever do that to me again," he said, sounding more like himself.
I won't. I promise. It wasn't a promise she could make, so she kissed him again instead. Gabe pulled her against him and wrapped his arms tightly around her, pressing his face into her shoulder. Their bodies fit together like two puzzle pieces. He ran his hands up and down her back, his knuckles making it feel like a massage, and chills tingled through her entire body.
"You all right?" she asked when he finally loosened his grip.
"As long as you are, yes."
She nodded. "I am. I promise. I just drove back into the city."
Gabe barked a humorless laugh. "Thank goodness for that. I guess I totally overreacted."
"It's understandable, Gabe," she said softly.
He held her there another ten seconds before pulling back. "Cora and Shaun are waiting."
She nodded, sensing his reluctance as he opened the door of what turned out to be a supply closet of some kind. The lights of the corridor were too bright after the dark of the closet.