Defender (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 11)

by Christine Pope

  “Then I guess we’re good to go,” Caitlin said. “We’re out in one of the guest parking spots at the front of the complex.”

  “Okay.”

  She got out the spare key Jack had left for her, and locked up while Alex and Caitlin waited on the landing. Even just stepping outside felt better to her — a warm wind ruffled her hair, and the sky overhead was bright, bright blue, with only a few high cirrus clouds to break up the sapphire expanse. It was good to know that the world still existed out there, that for most people, life was continuing just as it always had.

  It was a bit of a hike to the guest parking lot, just because the apartment complex was large, a good bit bigger than the one where she lived. Newer, too, everything clean and bright and shiny. Well, she supposed detectives who’d been with the Scottsdale P.D. for a while probably earned a bit more than junior designers in the city’s planning department, even those who had master’s degrees. And that didn’t even take into account the money all witches and warlocks seemed to have at their disposal. She remembered how shocked she’d been at the casual way Jenny and Colin had purchased a home at the foot of the hill in Clarkdale. The flat where Jenny had been living was not really suited for children, so almost as soon as the pregnancy had been confirmed, the couple bought a brand-new four-bedroom, three-bath house in a new community just down the hill from Jerome. Kate knew there was no way they could have afforded such a place on Colin’s salary at the Verde Valley News, which meant most of the money had to have come from her sister-in-law.

  Alex had a shiny newish Pathfinder, which only seemed to confirm her musings about the relative affluence of witches and warlocks. Kate climbed into the back seat, while Caitlin and Alex took their places up front.

  “Any preferences?” Caitlin asked as they pulled out of the parking lot. She already had her phone out.

  “Not really,” Kate replied. “I guess check to see what’s in the shopping center down the street? Jack didn’t want us going any farther than that.”

  Caitlin bent her head over the phone and entered a few characters, then started scrolling. “There’s a diner that looks like it has both American and Mexican food, and it has four and a half stars. Sound okay?”

  “Sounds great. Do I need to have it give directions?”

  “Not if we’re only going down the street,” Alex said wryly as he backed the Pathfinder out of its parking space. “I think I can manage that much.”

  There was some traffic, but not too much, since they were past rush hour but not yet into the noontime crush when people would be trying to cram their meal into the one hour given them by their work. They drove for a few minutes, and then Alex pulled the Pathfinder into the shopping center’s parking lot. Their destination appeared to be at the far end. There were plenty of spaces, so they parked almost at the front door and headed in.

  Although Kate couldn’t help giving everyone around them the side-eye, wondering if anyone was a demon in disguise, the crowd seemed fairly innocuous, mostly retirees who could afford to be out at that hour of the morning, and a few harassed-looking mothers with their children.

  “Nothing from Lucinda,” Caitlin said after they’d slid into a booth in the corner. She still had her phone in her hand, and apparently had checked her Messenger app as they were walking in.

  “Well, it’s only been a half hour,” Alex told her, his tone soothing. “She could have gone to the store, or out for a walk. Yeah, she’s on the computer a lot, but it’s not like every second of every day.”

  “I know.” She went quiet as the waitress came up and asked if anyone wanted coffee.

  By that point, Kate had had enough coffee, so she asked for iced tea. The other two followed suit, and the waitress went off to fill their drink orders as the three of them opened their menus.

  “But still….” Caitlin continued, once their waitress was out of earshot. “I’m just….”

  “Getting a vision?”

  “No. Just a prickling of my thumbs. Something isn’t right.”

  That comment did nothing to soothe Kate’s unease, and apparently it rattled a little of Alex’s confidence as well, because he said, “Maybe it isn’t, but there isn’t much we can do about it from here. We’ll just have to wait and hope she gets back to you.”

  The waitress returned with their drinks and asked if they’d made up their minds about what they wanted to order. Of course, Kate had barely glanced at the menu she held, but a quick scan told her that huevos rancheros actually sounded better than a breakfast burrito, so she ordered that, while Alex asked for a burger and Caitlin requested a grilled cheese sandwich.

  While they waited, they talked about innocuous subjects — whether the McAllisters and Wilcoxes were going to combine their big family gatherings that summer, and, if so, where they would hold the event. Alex’s family’s plans for when his little sister graduated from the University of Arizona that May. Things like that. It all sounded very normal, which Kate supposed was the whole point. Anyone trying to eavesdrop on their conversation wouldn’t hear anything terribly out of the ordinary.

  The food came, and they all plowed in, even Caitlin, who supposedly hadn’t been all that hungry. With each bite, Kate felt slightly better. It was entirely possible that she’d made matters worse by eating that little bit of cereal earlier rather than just waiting until she could have something more substantial. Now, though, she felt more restored, better able to face whatever happened next. After this, they could all go back to the apartment and digest, hang out and watch Netflix or whatever. And soon enough Jack would be home, and Caitlin and Alex could go back to Tucson and their own lives. Yes, Kate would have to deal with once again trying to hide her growing attraction to Jack, but she’d still rather be with him.

  Despite her improved outlook on the world, she couldn’t help but notice the way Caitlin kept glancing surreptitiously at her phone when she thought Alex wasn’t paying attention. Even though Kate had never met this Lucinda person, it sounded as if she’d already had enough crap to deal with in her life, and she hoped that everything was okay, that Lucinda had, as Alex said, simply gone out shopping or on some other errand. Surely her father couldn’t prevent her from doing something so completely mundane?

  Eventually they finished their meal, just as more people began to show up for lunch. Kate pulled out her own phone to check the time. Eleven fifty-six. Well, they’d managed to get out and kill an hour or so, which was better than nothing.

  When the check came, Alex pounced on it, and no amount of arguing would convince him to let her chip in for the meal.

  “I’ll bill my cousin Jack,” he said with a grin. “After all, it’s his fault that there isn’t anything decent to eat at his place.”

  “I think you should,” Kate replied, all seriousness. “Maybe that’ll shock him into going grocery shopping.”

  “Doubtful,” Caitlin put in as she grimly shoved her phone back in her purse. “Jack loves his takeout. When they have de la Paz get-togethers, he always shows up with egg rolls or won tons or something, which of course makes all the purists in the family gasp in horror. Can’t say as I blame them, though — why anyone would want takeout when people like Alex’s cousin Liza make such sublime tamales, I have no idea.”

  Homemade tamales. Even though Kate was almost full to bursting after her brunch, she could still feel her mouth water at the thought. Someone had brought a huge batch to the office Christmas party this past December, and she could still remember how amazing they had been — pork, and chicken, and beef, and cheese with green chile.

  They were all smiling, sharing the joke at Jack’s expense, as they headed back out to the parking lot and Alex’s SUV. While he was backing out of their parking space, Kate wished she could come up with an excuse for why they needed to stay out longer, maybe a TJ’s run to get some snacks for later this afternoon, after the meal they’d just consumed had begun to wear off. Was there even a Trader Joe’s around here? She wasn’t super-familiar with this part of Scot
tsdale, since she lived at nearly the opposite end. She thought there were three in the city altogether, but she couldn’t remember for sure. Too late, though, because now they were back on the road and headed toward Jack’s apartment complex.

  All of a sudden, Caitlin said, “Oh, my God!” — so sharply that Alex swerved and then quickly recovered. He probably thought that she’d seen something in the road, but actually, her head was bent down over her phone.

  “What is it?” he asked, his voice sharp with worry.

  “I just got a PM from Lucinda. She said, ‘Help me — she’s gone. They’re both gone.’”

  Kate’s meal seemed to congeal into a heavy lump at the bottom of her gut. “‘She’? ‘They’? Who’s gone? Who’s she talking about?”

  “I don’t know!” Caitlin replied, clearly distraught. Her face was pale. “I — ”

  And she stopped there, the phone falling from her fingers onto the seat.

  “Caitlin!” Alex twisted in his seat, turning to see what the problem was. “Oh, shit — she’s having a vision. I’m going to pull over.”

  All Kate could do was nod as Alex turned sharply into the parking lot of a small business complex, one with computer repair places and a mailbox store. At the edge of the lot were a number of empty spaces, and he pulled into one of them and put the vehicle in park.

  During all this, Caitlin had gone stock still, her blue eyes wide and staring, although they didn’t seem to be fixed on any one thing in particular.

  “Is she okay?” Kate whispered from the back seat. “Is there anything we should do?”

  “Just wait it out,” Alex said in a low tone. “Once she comes out of it, she’ll be able to tell us what she saw.”

  “How long will it last?”

  His shoulders lifted. “Depends. Sometimes her visions hit and are over with in just a few seconds. Other times, it can be a few minutes.”

  That sounded awful, to have such a thing come over you with no way of controlling it. For the first time, Kate realized that having supernatural powers wasn’t all excitement, that they could have negative consequences on living one’s life.

  Then Caitlin let out a horrible rattling gasp, and she reached up to grab the “Jesus” handle above her head. “Oh, God,” she moaned.

  “Water?” Alex asked gently, lifting a plastic bottle from one of the cup holders in the center console.

  She shook her head. “I’m all right. It’s just — I saw it. I saw what was happening to Lucinda. They were all at their house in Pasadena — her and her parents’ house, I mean. A man came in through the front door without knocking, just walked in like he owned the place.”

  “What man? Did you recognize him?”

  “No. He was older. Not as old as Simón. Maybe in his late forties? Dark…Hispanic, I’m pretty sure. He went up to Simón, took him by the throat, and — and lifted him. Straight up in the air, like, like Darth Vader or something. Broke his neck.” Caitlin paused there and put a hand to her throat, as if she could feel the echoes of the killing blow in her own neck. Her breath came and went, harsh. She sounded like she’d just run a mile, rather than sitting stock still in the passenger seat of an SUV.

  “It’s okay,” Alex began, his tone reassuring, but she only shook her head again.

  “No, it’s not okay. Because next he, he….” She stopped there, eyes nearly as wide and strained as they had been while she was suffering the vision. “He went up to the prima and snapped her neck as well. Just like that. She slumped over in her wheelchair, and then he went up the stairs, like he was going to look for Lucinda. That’s where it ended. I couldn’t see what happened next.”

  “Wait,” Kate said. She hated to interrupt, despite the horrors that Caitlin had described, and yet she couldn’t quite figure out what the young witch was getting at. “I thought the prima was, like, all-powerful or something. How could this man just go up to the Santiagos’ prima and attack her like that? Why didn’t she stop him?”

  Caitlin shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know. How could any of this happen?” She picked up her phone and opened the Messenger app, but clearly there wasn’t anything new from Lucinda, because Caitlin let out a hiccupy little noise that sounded like a barely repressed sob and dropped it into her lap.

  Alex reached over to touch her shoulder, offering what comfort he could, even as he said, “Beatriz Santiago was weak from spending years as an invalid. We’re not talking about a prima like Angela, or my mother. Beatriz might not have been able to react quickly enough to even try to defend herself. But this is bad…really bad. I need to call my mother. And Kate, you’d better call Jack, see if we can all meet at my mother’s house to talk about this.”

  “Sure,” she said, and got her own phone out of her purse. With shaking fingers, she navigated to her “recent calls” list and found the number for Jack’s cell phone, then pressed the little phone icon. As it rang, she listened to Alex make his own call, while at the same time maneuvering the Pathfinder out of its parking space so he could head for home.

  No, not home. She didn’t think Alex had ever lived in the house where Luz now held sway as the prima of the de la Paz clan, and he certainly didn’t live there now.

  Her own call rolled into Jack’s voicemail. Shit. Voice shaking, she left him a brief message, saying only that Caitlin had just had a terrible vision about the Santiago clan’s prima, that she had been killed, and that the three of them were now headed up to Luz’s place and he should join them there as soon as he could.

  There. Kate knew she couldn’t do much more than that. She didn’t put her phone away, though, but held it clutched in both hands, as though the contact might somehow make Jack call her back more quickly. In the front seat, both Alex and Caitlin were silent. She was bent over her phone, typing away, probably trying to send another message to Lucinda, even though Kate had a feeling it was a wasted effort. Was there anyone else they could call? She was kind of hazy on how that worked, because in general it seemed as if the clans here in Arizona didn’t have much to do with the Santiagos.

  Alex drove fast, faster than Kate would have considered safe, but she sure wasn’t going to say anything about it. His driving wasn’t reckless, and maybe he had a “get out of jail free” card because his cousin was with the Scottsdale P.D. She sure couldn’t fault him for wanting to get to his mother’s house as quickly as possible.

  Problem was, Kate really didn’t see what Luz — or Jack, or anyone else — could do to change the tragedy that had already occurred, what might still be occurring. And that was the worst feeling of all.

  Being helpless.

  11

  Jack could feel his phone buzz in his pocket, but he ignored it because right then he was getting an ass-chewing from his supervisor.

  “You let them go?” Larry asked, his normally ruddy complexion redder than ever at the moment because of his irritation.

  “They all had alibis, Larry,” Jack replied. Even Bret Harkins, who was probably guilty of a lot of things, but not, unfortunately, Jeff Nichols’ murder. “You think I don’t want to get this thing buttoned up as soon as I can? I get why you had them brought in for a closer look, but none of them were our guy.”

  “You sure spent a lot of time talking to Harkins, though.”

  “Because I thought he might have some information. No,” Jack went on quickly, when it looked as if Larry intended to interject some kind of comment, “not because he actually committed the crime — Harkins is no saint, but I don’t think he’s capable of the kind of violence we saw in Nichols’ murder — but because he said a few things that made my spider sense tingle. Unfortunately, it was all a dead end. I’m pretty sure our murderer is someone who’s not on the radar at all, someone without a record.”

  “Great,” Larry groused. “Because right now we have shit-all when it comes to leads. The killer didn’t leave behind a single shred of physical evidence, so we have nothing to go on from that angle. No witnesses. No nothing.”

  A
ll Jack could do was give a sympathy shrug, because Larry only spoke the truth. Of course, Jack did have slightly more to work with, just because he had the whole warlock angle to explore, but he couldn’t mention that to his boss. He walked a fine line here and he knew it, but at the end of the day, his loyalty was to his clan and to the witching world as a whole, not the Scottsdale police department. Most of the time, those loyalties weren’t in conflict. This time…well, his path was clear enough when it came to either obliging his supervisor or making sure nothing about the de la Paz clan or any other witches or warlocks ever saw the light of day.

  “Something will turn up,” he said, trying to sound as reassuring as possible. “It’s early days yet. You know how sometimes these things break wide open, seemingly out of nowhere.”

  “Sometimes,” Larry said. “On the other hand, sometimes they just add to the cold case files that keep stacking up. Anyway, what’s the word on the widow? You think you need to talk to her again?”

  “I doubt it,” Jack replied. One thing he had to do was make sure that Kate was absolutely cleared of any suspicion. Some might have wanted to make her the bad guy, just because that was the easiest route, but he would not allow that to happen. No matter what. “She had nothing to do with any of it. Just bad luck that she went by that particular day to drop off her divorce papers. It’s clear from Jeff Nichols’ phone records that the last time they’d spoken before that night was nearly a week earlier. She was doing her best to maintain her distance. Anyway, she’s down at her parents’ house in Tempe, lying low. She let me know that she got harassed by some reporters and didn’t want to stick around her apartment, and so decided to get out for a while.”

  “Well, as long as she’s around,” Larry grumbled, clearly not thrilled by the situation, but not annoyed enough that he would require Kate to return home. After all, Tempe wasn’t that far away. It wasn’t as if she’d taken her passport and made a run for Mexico or something.