Several more awkward seconds of silence ensued before the girl bowed her head and started to turn. Screech almost let her go, but then he regained control of his faculties.
He reached for her arm, but when she recoiled from a simple touch, Screech withdrew his hand.
“Come in,” he said, stepping off to one side. “I’m Drake’s partner. I’m sure we can… I’m sure we help you.”
This was a lie, of course. After what had happened with the Skeleton King, and the whirlwind of death that Ray Reynolds had brought with him, Screech wasn’t sure that there was anything he or Drake could do to help this girl. After all, the only reason that Drake had gotten his PI license was because there was one person left in the NYPD who didn’t hate him and had helped expedite things. But after the farm… there was zero chance that it was still valid. As for Screech, he’d been hired as an analyst, and despite becoming part owner of Triple D and all of the shit he’d seen and done, he hadn’t bothered to apply for a license himself.
He swallowed hard.
“Can I… can I get you something to drink?”
The girl walked into the room and looked around marveling at the surroundings. This was ironic, of course, given that their surroundings were Anything but marvelous. In fact, there one step above derelict.
“Water,” she said at last. “Can I have a glass of water?”
As she spoke, Screech realized that she had an accent, one that he couldn’t place.
Where the hell did you come from?
Shaking his head in confusion, he filled a cup with water and offered it to the girl. With shaking hands, she brought the cup to her lips. Then she drank; she drank as if she’d never seen water in her entire life. When she was done, the girl held the cup out to Screech and he promptly filled it again.
She only sipped it this time.
“Please,” Screech said, waving an arm towards the row of chairs that were typically occupied by octogenarians. “Take a seat.”
The girl nodded and continued to sip her water in silence.
Screech eyed her curiously. He had no idea what to do, what to say, or what to think.
But Drake… Drake would know what to do. There was little guarantee that it would be the right thing, but anything would be better than sitting here in silence.
“My name’s Mandy,” the girl said without looking up. “My name’s Mandy and I need help. I need Drake’s help.”
Chapter 6
The lights in Jasmine Cuthbert’s home were off and the driveway was empty. Drake hadn’t seen movement from inside in the two hours that he’d been stationed in his rusted Crown Vic across the street. He had a key, of course, and provided that Jasmine hadn’t changed the locks, he could go right on in. Only, he wasn’t ready.
Drake couldn’t imagine what the woman was going through. First, she lost her husband at the hands of a pedophile janitor, and then she’d fallen for his partner who was obsessed with finding his true killer. In the process, Jasmine had ended up pregnant. Just as things had started to take a turn for the better, just when Drake thought that their lives could improve, adopt some semblance of normalcy, he’d gone and dragged everyone back down again.
Ray Reynolds might have been a deranged serial killer, but he had also been right.
Right about a lot of things.
Drake brought the mickey of Johnny Walker Black to his lips and took a sip. It tasted familiar on his tongue, but when the liquid hit his stomach he felt a sharp jab of pain that he was unaccustomed to. Drake grit his teeth and dealt with his discomfort the only way he knew how.
He took another sip. And then another.
With trembling hands, he put the cap back on the bottle and stared out the window.
In the time it had taken him to find his Crown Vic and then make his way to Jasmine’s House, more memories of what happened before he’d ended up at the Reynolds’s farm came flooding back.
And with these memories, had come questions. Unanswered questions.
Beckett said that Drake had caught the King, that Ray Reynolds was the true Skeleton King. But while Ray Reynolds may have been the head of the Church of Liberation and he and his minions called themselves the Skeleton King, they weren’t. They were Skeleton Princes, perhaps, or more likely just Pawns. But they weren’t the King. Drake had been in this game long enough to know that there was always someone behind the scenes pushing the buttons.
Drake’s hand started to ache and he was surprised to find that he was squeezing the plastic mickey so tightly that the top had started to bulge.
He took a deep breath and then placed the bottle on the passenger seat.
The King was still out there, and he had a name. His name was Ken Smith.
A set of headlights suddenly illuminated the dusk and Drake instinctively lowered himself into his car seat.
A black Volkswagen pulled into the driveway and idled for a few moments before the engine shut off.
And then Drake saw her and his breath caught in his throat. Jasmine was much bigger than he remembered; so big, in fact, that he considered that Beckett had lied to him, that he hadn’t been out for a week in a coma or whatever the methanol had done to him, but maybe a month.
Jasmine was so big that walking was clearly an issue for her. Drake wanted to go to her then, to put his arm around the woman’s waist and help her carry the groceries from the trunk to the porch. And he wanted to kiss her, too.
Most of all though, he just wanted to be normal.
In the end, Drake only sat in his car and watched.
He watched even as his vision blurred with tears, even after Jasmine had long since entered the house, even after he’d finished the entire mickey of Johnny Black, despite Dr. Ramsey’s warning.
Drake didn’t know how long he could wait there, but might have very well stayed rooted in place until his car was towed or he died—whichever came first.
But that was before the knock on his window.
Drake shouted in surprise and instinctively reached for the gun that had been sitting on his lap.
But when he turned, he didn’t see a masked vigilante or even a local hoodlum. No, he saw the familiar face of a young woman.
With a painful swallow, Drake rolled down his window.
“What?” Suzan Cuthbert snapped. “Are you going to shoot me now? You pretty much killed my mom already… are you just back to finish off the rest of the family?”
Chapter 7
Screech rubbed his eyes, but when he pulled his hands away, Mandy was still sitting across from him. The tale that the girl had woven was so horrific, so disturbing, so frankly unbelievable, that Screech wasn’t sure that it hadn’t been him who’d consumed the methanol and was having a hallucination on his way to the afterlife.
“And… and how did you hear about Drake again?” he asked, reaching into the top drawer of Drake’s desk and pulling out a bottle of Johnny Walker Black. He wasn’t accustomed to drinking during the day — in fact, he’d barely touched the stuff ever since returning from the Virgin Gorda — but it suddenly felt appropriate.
He poured himself a glass and was about to offer one to Mandy, before hesitating. When she’d arrived at the door, he’d pegged her as seventeen. When she told her story, Screech thought that she might be in her mid-thirties. Now, as she leveled her raw eyes at him, she could have been nine.
Screech decided to keep the booze to himself unless she asked for it.
“When I was in the shipping crate, right before I managed to escape, I heard them talking—”
“The one with the thick Spanish accent, that one?” Screech asked.
Mandy nodded.
“He was talking to someone — a Russian, maybe — and I heard him mention Damien Drake’s name.”
Screech took another sip of Scotch and mulled this over. While he had no reason to doubt the rest of the girl’s story, this part wasn’t sitting right with him. If Mandy had simply overheard Drake’s name, and if this happened just a few days ago, then
how the hell did she find Triple D so quickly? Hell, there must be hundreds of Drake’s living in Manhattan alone.
“And what did these men say about Drake?”
Mandy hesitated before answering.
“They said… they said…” her sentence trailed off into nothingness.
Screech watched Mandy’s face closely, wondering if he should either press harder or stop questioning her at all. If he should fire off a second text to Drake or just give in and call the cops.
He took a mouthful of Scotch.
“It’s okay if you want to stop. Are you hungry? Do you want to go somewhere to eat? I can buy you dinner,” Screech cringed at his own words. He sounded like he was asking Mandy on a date. “What I mean is, we can go eat if you want, if you’re hungry. Or if you want to use the phone… is there someone in Colombia that you want to call? Or do you want me to get the police over here?”
When Mandy spoke again, it wasn’t clear that she hadn’t been paying attention to his ramblings.
“They said that Drake was making things hard for them, something about how he was getting closer to figuring out what was really going on.” She paused to catch her breath, and Screech became acutely aware of just how frail she actually was. It didn’t look as if Mandy had eaten in days. “They said that he was going to catch the King…? Rey Esqueleto?”
The glass of Scotch almost slipped from Screech’s hand. He was gaping now, but couldn’t help it.
His Spanish was rudimentary at best but he was fairly certain that Rey Esqueleto meant Skeleton King.
Why the hell would people packing drug mules from Colombia in shipping containers know about the Skeleton King?
Screech tightened his grip on the glass and finished what was left.
“Is there anything… anything else you can remember?”
Mandy lowered her eyes again and shook her head.
“It was dark… they gave us this stuff to drink, said it was important. It tasted horrible, like so bitter. But I drank it. The other girls… I think they might have been drinking sea water and that made them sick. And they started… they started to scream. And then, after a while, it was quiet. Then it was only me.”
Thinking that Mandy was going to burst into tears again, Screech stood and walked over to her. He laid a comforting hand on the girl’s back, but when she shied away from his touch, he pulled away.
“Sorry,” he grumbled. And then he just stood there for the better part of a minute staring off into space
Screech didn’t know what to do, but he knew he had to do something. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed Drake’s number, silently pleading for the man to pick up.
It went directly to voicemail.
After grumbling a curse, he finally made a decision. He wasn’t going to the police. That idea had been shot down the second Mandy had mentioned the Skeleton King. There were just too many connections between Deputy Inspector Palmer and ANGUIS Holdings and the Church of Liberation and Ray Reynolds and Ken Smith and Raul and Dane Drake and —
Screech bit the inside of his cheek so hard that he drew blood.
“Come on,” he said at last. “Let’s get you cleaned up and see if we can get you something to eat. By then, Drake’ll be around to help.”
If he’s still alive, that is.
Chapter 8
Drake was so startled by Suzan’s presence that he almost failed to react.
“So?” she demanded. “Are you going to shoot me or not? Because if you aren’t, I suggest you get out of the car and come inside. Oh, and leave your gun on the seat just in case I decide to use it on you, instead.”
Drake, still in a daze, opened the door and stepped out of the car.
Once outside, Suzan did the unthinkable. She reared back and slapped him. The blow was hard enough to cause Drake’s eyes to water and his cheek to sting, but wasn’t hard enough to do any real damage.
And then Suzan proceeded to do the second most unexpected thing: she leaned forward and hugged Drake tightly around the waist. As she did, she whispered, “You’re a fucking asshole, you know that? But as much as it pains me to say this, I’m glad you’re okay.”
Drake, still confused and a little buzzed, hugged her back.
“I… I don’t know what to say,” he managed at last. Suzan pulled away and guided him towards the house. Drake was apprehensive of seeing Jasmine — everyone you try to help, everyone you ever try to help, ends up getting fucked in the end — but judging by what had just happened, he doubted his ability to weasel his way out of it.
And if he did, it wouldn’t surprise him if Suzan actually grabbed his gun and shot him.
“Well, you better figure it out quick, Drake. Because Jasmine’s going to have a lot of questions.”
***
All three of them were sitting at the kitchen table with tears in their eyes. Jasmine’s reaction had been much like Suzan’s, minus the slap, of course. She’d been overjoyed with the fact that Drake was okay, that he wasn’t hurt, but she was also confused.
“I don’t understand… I called all the hospitals, Drake — all of them. And you weren’t registered.”
Drake took a sip of his scalding black coffee and wished he hadn’t sucked back the entire bottle of Johnny in the car. His head was still foggy, and his guts roiled something fierce.
“I was there. I was in—” his eyes fell on the hospital bracelet that was wrapped around his wrist. “See? I still have the bracelet.”
But as Drake turned the bracelet, he realized why neither Jasmine nor Suzan had been able to find him. While the typed name had his initials, instead of reading Damien Drake, the bracelet read Dirk Diggler. Beckett must have changed his name to keep DI Palmer and his goons away.
“I was under a different name,” he said, but this explanation did little to clear up the confusion.
“But why, Drake? I don’t understand. One minute you’re sitting here beside me watching TV and the next you’re up and gone. I don’t hear from you, I can’t get a hold of you, none of your friends answer their phones. Two weeks later you show up looking like hell, saying you been in the hospital under a different name. And then there’s all the stuff on the TV, the news about the Skeleton King. About… Oh God, Drake, they’re talking about Clay again.”
Drake bit his lip in frustration. He’d wanted to keep Jasmine out of this. Even though he had been certain that Peter Kellington wasn’t the man responsible for killing her husband, and this had proven to be the case, the last thing Drake wanted was to drag her back into this. To grieve a second time for the same person was a horrible thing. And yet, that’s exactly what had happened.
“Is this all connected?” Suzan demanded. “And you better tell me the truth, because I swear to God I’ll just go to Dr. Campbell and you know he’ll tell me everything. So, for once in your life, Drake, just tell us the goddamn truth.”
Drake sighed and lowered his eyes to the coffee cup clutched in his hands.
He couldn’t tell them the truth, could he?
Drake swallowed hard and then began speaking.
Chapter 9
Screech took Mandy to his apartment. It wasn’t his first choice, but just sitting in the car beside her for a few minutes was enough to curdle his stomach.
She desperately needed a shower.
He politely led her to the bathroom and then made sure to tell her several times that he would be on the couch not twenty paces away. He even went as far as to say that he wouldn’t move, unless she wanted him for anything. Screech regretted saying that last part. In fact, every time he opened his mouth he sounded like some sick pervert just trying to get in her pants. Speaking of which, the only thing that he had to offer her was a pair of sweatpants with a tight drawstring and a plain white T-shirt.
“We can get you real clothes from the store later… for now, it’s just something clean to put on.”
Mandy nodded at this and then retreated to the bathroom.
Screech grabbed a bee
r and plopped down in front of the TV. He had just changed to the news when he heard a strange series of sounds from the bathroom. It was hard to hear clearly with the shower running, but it sounded like Mandy was gagging.
He opened his mouth to ask if she was okay, but knew that something stupid would come out — are you gagging? I can help you with that. I was a lifeguard in middle school — and decided against it. The sound lasted only a minute or so before he heard the shower curtain being pulled back.
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