Fire Born (City of Dragons Book 5)

by Val St. Crowe

  Lachlan let go of it.

  I let go of it.

  But then it settled against my chest, and I shrieked. “Ouch. Get it off me! Get it off me.”

  Lachlan grabbed it and ripped it off my body. He tossed it on the sand.

  Instantly, it wasn’t any color at all. It lay there, dormant and dark.

  “Well,” said Connor, “I’d say it’s definitely the whiteflame increasing your powers.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Lachlan was sitting on the couch next to me. “I’m not sure we can trust it,” he whispered.

  “I know how you feel,” I said, still puzzling over it all. All this time, it was the whiteflame that made us powerful and crazy, not the blood sharing. All this time, we’d been keeping our hands off each other, sleeping in separate beds, both in our own private agonies. Had that been for nothing?

  No, it couldn’t have been. I didn’t trust the results, because I didn’t want to believe—

  “But there was evidence,” said Lachlan. “Real solid evidence that it’s okay for us to…” He reached for me. He brushed my cheek with the back of his hand.

  I smiled at him.

  And then we were kissing—long, slow, deep kisses.

  He pulled back. “Unless you think that drinking your blood now would charge up the whiteflame more? Maybe we shouldn’t…”

  I pulled him down to kiss him again. “We should.”

  He made a strangled noise, one of surrender, of release.

  I pressed close to him.

  * * *

  Later, we lay on the bed in the bedroom, both naked, Lachlan’s body wrapped around mine.

  I lay on my side, out of breath and happy. “I didn’t think that was going to work,” I gasped.

  “It was, uh, definitely a little more complicated than the last time we did it.” He was a little out of breath.

  “But worth it,” I said.

  “So worth it.” He kissed my bare shoulder, one arm snaking around to put his hand on my belly. “I love you, Penny.”

  “I love you too,” I whispered.

  We lay there, entwined in companionable silence.

  I felt very sleepy. I was going to drift off like this. Right here. With Lachlan close. With everything perfect.

  But then my hips started to hurt. I groaned and yanked a pillow up off the floor and tucked it between my legs.

  “You okay?” murmured Lachlan, his hand trailing over to my hip and then resting on my thigh.

  “Mmm hmm,” I said, snuggling back against him.

  “Good,” he whispered in my ear. “I missed this. I love falling asleep with you.”

  “I love it too,” I said.

  We were quiet again. I felt sleep starting to come for me, to lull me away…

  But then there was a sharp pain in my back. I wriggled a little, thinking maybe if I twisted…

  “What is it?” said Lachlan.

  “I need… I usually sleep with a pillow at my back,” I said.

  “Okay,” said Lachlan, grabbing one and putting it between us. “There?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He tried to wrap himself around me again, but it didn’t really work. He flailed around a minute, then seemed to get comfy and stopped.

  But I wasn’t comfortable. I tried moving the pillow a little, but Lachlan was in the way.

  He chuckled. “Hey, how about I move over here, huh? You get all the pillows you usually have. It’s fine.”

  I looked at him. “But I wanted us to be snugly.”

  “We were for a while.” He planted a kiss on the tip of my nose.

  I pouted, but then I nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense.” I started piling pillows around myself, everywhere I could. Finally, I was comfortable. I sighed. “Do you have room?”

  “Uh…” He sat up. “I think I’ll go back to the guest room.”

  “Lachlan! No. I’ll move pillows.”

  He climbed over the pillows and kissed me again. “It’s okay. It’s fine. We’ll get a bigger bed.”

  I grinned. “Yes. We will.”

  “But we’re not going to be any good on the serial killer case if we don’t get some sleep,” he said. He kissed me again, and then flounced off the bed.

  I burrowed into my nest of pillows. I was asleep in minutes.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “So,” said Lachlan to the uniformed officer, “he never went anywhere?”

  The officer shrugged at her partner. “Well, like we said, he went to the gym a few times. And he went grocery shopping.”

  “We followed him around in there,” offered the partner. “He got a lot of vegetables and some chicken breast. No junk or anything.”

  “Huh,” said Lachlan. “So, he’s like a weird health nut who stays home all the time. He didn’t go to a job?”

  “Nope,” said the female officer.

  “That’s so weird,” said Lachlan.

  “You want us to keep tailing him?” asked the male uniform.

  “Nah, that’s okay,” said Lachlan. “You guys did good. Thanks for the information.”

  We watched them leave.

  “Well, what now?” I said.

  Lachlan shrugged. “Yeah, we didn’t get much information about that Silas guy from that, did we?”

  “You say follow the trail of the case, right? Well, I think we have to go to the gym. See if anyone knows him there.”

  “Yeah, I think you’re right,” said Lachlan. “Good eye.”

  I grinned at him.

  He grinned back.

  * * *

  “Uh, that guy never talks to anyone,” said Gary White, who was working the front desk at Silas Gordon’s gym. “I mean, he’s not rude exactly, but if you try to strike up a conversation with him, he’s monosyllabic.”

  “Right,” said Sandra Smith, who was working with him. The two had been happy to introduce themselves to us. Lachlan hadn’t even had to flash his badge and they were chatty. I figured they must be bored. “And usually, with regulars like that, you start to build up a little rapport.” She looked at Gary. “Right?”

  “Oh, totally,” said Gary. “I’m not saying that we’d say hi if I saw him in line at Starbucks… well, I don’t know. Maybe I am.” He looked back at Sandra.

  “Yeah, I think you would,” said Sandra. “If I saw one of the regulars from the gym out and about, I’d say hi. They’d say hi to me.”

  “We wouldn’t talk for ages or anything,” said Gary.

  “Oh, no,” said Sandra. “We wouldn’t have like an in-depth conversation.”

  “No,” said Gary. “But we’d be friendly.”

  “Yeah, but that Silas guy is never friendly. Not even here at the gym. Where you might have a little conversation. You know, ask about the kids or the job or the house or whatever. That kind of thing. If you ask Silas stuff, he says nothing.”

  “He’s real private,” said Gary.

  “But he’s in here all the time,” said Sandra.

  “All the time, yeah.” Gary nodded.

  There was actually a pause. The two looked at us, both questioning smiles on their faces, as if they wondered if we wanted anything further.

  “So, he always comes alone?” said Lachlan.

  “Yeah, always alone,” said Gary. “Never seen him with anyone else. Never even seen him talk to someone else.”

  Sandra nodded. Then she frowned.

  “What?” said Gary.

  “I was thinking that there was that one time he brought a girl.”

  “A girl?” said Lachlan.

  “Yeah, do you remember that?” said Sandra.

  “No,” said Gary.

  “Maybe you weren’t working that day. Maybe it was the day that you had the flu real bad.”

  “Oh,” said Gary, remembering. “That was the worst.”

  Sandra nodded sympathetically. “You were miserable. You were out for days.

  “I was,” said Gary.

  Lachlan spoke up. “The girl?”
/>   “Oh, yeah, the girl,” said Sandra. “She was here with him. They looked kind of cozy, too, and I thought maybe she was his girlfriend, even though I could hardly imagine someone like him even having a girlfriend in the first place.”

  “Yeah, he’s not really the kind of person you would think of as romantic,” said Gary.

  “Did you get a name for this girl?” said Lachlan.

  “Like I said, I didn’t much talk to him. He’s not very friendly,” said Sandra. “And anyway, she never came back, so it would have been wasted effort anyway.”

  “What did she look like?” asked Lachlan.

  “Um, she had dark hair,” said Sandra. “She was pretty. She didn’t do much exercise, though. She bought a smoothie from the little smoothie stand over there.” Sandra pointed. “And then she watched Silas work out. And basically drooled.”

  “Hmm,” said Lachlan.

  “How’d she pay for that smoothie?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” said Sandra.

  “You think maybe she paid by credit card?” I said. “Then we could get her name.”

  “Maybe,” said Sandra. “But I don’t see how that would help. We don’t even know what day it was.”

  “It was when Gary was out with the flu,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Gary. “You know, that transaction might not be that hard to find. After all, most of the members here charge smoothies to their accounts. So, if she straight-up bought one, it would be tallied differently.”

  Sandra’s eyes lit up. She went over to the computer screen and started typing. “Okay, let’s see… What day were you out with the flu, Gary?”

  * * *

  Armed with the name of a woman who’d purchased a banana-strawberry-coconut-milk smoothie with her credit card, we left the gym. From the name, we were able to find an address, and we traveled there after lunch that day.

  We weren’t sure she’d actually be at home. Lots of people were at work at this time of the day. We might have to come back in the evening.

  But Rhonda Russell opened the door. She was a pretty brunette. Hopefully, we had the right girl. She looked back and forth between the two of us. “Uh, can I help you?”

  Lachlan flashed his badge. “Hi there. I’m Detective Lachlan Flint, and this is my associate, Penny Caspian. We were wondering if we could ask you a few questions.”

  She looked surprised. “Um, yeah, of course. You want to come in?”

  We stepped inside her place, which was tidy but sparsely decorated.

  She turned in a circle, seemingly flustered. “I, uh, don’t really have anything to offer you to eat or drink.”

  “It’s fine,” said Lachlan. “This will only take a few minutes. Did you happen to go to the Sea City Fitness Center and Gym with a man named Silas Gordon a few months back?”

  Rhonda’s eyes got big. “Oh, God, what did he do?”

  Lachlan folded his arms over his chest. “Why would you say that?”

  Rhonda swallowed. “No reason. No reason at all.”

  We both regarded her, not saying anything.

  She started to fiddle with the hem of her shirt. “Um, I don’t really talk to him anymore. It was a fling.”

  “A fling?” I said. “So, you were involved romantically with him?”

  “I don’t know if it was romantic.” She shrugged. “I think maybe he wanted it to be. He comes off all tough and guarded and impenetrable, but I think deep down he’s lonely.”

  We both waited.

  When she didn’t say anything else, Lachlan spoke up. “You had a relationship with him.”

  “I had a… couple weeks of really hot sex,” she said. “Maybe I thought it was going to be more, but then I found out what he was, and I couldn’t be with him anymore.”

  “What he was?” I said. “What do you mean?”

  She flinched. “I didn’t mean it like that. I, um…” She shook her head.

  “Ms. Russell,” said Lachlan, “what is he?”

  “He’s a guy.” She tried to laugh it off.

  Lachlan looked around the living room, which only contained one couch, and it wasn’t big enough for all of us to sit down on. He crossed the room and went through a doorway.

  “Where are you going?” said Rhonda.

  “Come into the kitchen,” called Lachlan’s voice. “Have a seat.”

  Rhonda went after him, and I did too.

  There was a table in there with four chairs. We all sat down, and I was glad of it, because my feet were killing me.

  Lachlan settled down across the table from Rhonda, smiling reassuringly at her. His voice was gentle. “You’re not going to be in any trouble, Rhonda, but if you know something about Silas, you need to tell us. People’s lives could be at stake.”

  Her face turned white. “Oh, God. Oh, God.” She put her fingers to her lips. “What did he do?”

  “We don’t know anything for sure,” said Lachlan. “Why don’t you tell us what you know?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did you find something in his apartment?” Lachlan said. “Maybe things that belonged to other people? A collection of belts or car keys or even something macabre like locks of hair?”

  “No.” She wrinkled up her nose. “Nothing like that. He’s not that kind of… That’s not what he is.”

  “What is he?” I said.

  She lifted her chin. “An alcoholic.”

  My lips parted. “What?”

  “Yeah,” said Rhonda, seeming to warm up to the idea. “He’s an alcoholic. I found out that he drank way too much, and I couldn’t be with a guy like that.” She leaned back in her chair, her face a challenge for us to call out her lie.

  * * *

  “Bullshit, he’s an alcoholic,” said Lachlan. “She made that up.”

  “Obviously,” I said. We were back at the station, sitting at Lachlan’s desk. He was still sulking over the fact that we hadn’t been able to get Rhonda to crack. No matter what he’d said or done, she’d stuck to that story about Silas drinking too much.

  “I don’t even think he drinks,” said Lachlan. “Guy seems like a total health nut. Probably wouldn’t be putting something poisonous in his body.”

  “Too many carbs,” I agreed.

  Lachlan rubbed his forehead. “I wonder what it was that I said that made her clam up like that. Because before, she was about to crack. I could feel it. She was really worried about what he’d done.”

  “Yeah, she knows he’s a criminal. You could tell that from her reaction when we came in.”

  “But then something stopped her,” said Lachlan.

  “Well, she wanted to protect him. She said that she had feelings for him, but that after she found out what he was, she couldn’t be with him anymore. But maybe she still cares about him.”

  “Well, she’s obviously hiding something,” said Lachlan. “But I don’t know what to think of this guy now. If he had a sexual relationship with this girl, one that she describes as positive, and he seemed to want a relationship with her, then why is he performing these very homosexual murders?”

  I furrowed my brow. “Oh, that doesn’t make sense. Shouldn’t he be gay?”

  “It would seem so,” said Lachlan, “especially since the murders are all straight men. I figured there was an element of sexual frustration to all of it.”

  “Like he wanted those men, but couldn’t have them, so he humiliated and killed them.”

  “And probably forced them to do sexual favors for him before they died,” said Lachlan.

  “There’s no evidence of that,” said a voice.

  We both looked up.

  There was Dirk, standing in front of Lachlan’s desk. “We’ve been through everything collected from every scene, and there’s no semen.”

  “Too bad,” said Lachlan.

  “But we did find something else,” said Dirk.

  “What?” said Lachlan.

  “DNA,” she said.

  Lachlan raised his eyebrows. “
Seriously?”

  “Found it on the victim’s clothes,” she said. “They’re running it through the database now, looking for a match.”

  “Okay,” said Lachlan, sitting up straight, “so if they find one, then we can’t keep doing this separate thing. We’ll have to interrogate him together.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “You can’t keep us out,” said Lachlan. “This is our case. We discovered it.”

  She pressed her lips together.

  “Come on, Dirk,” Lachlan growled.

  “You can come along,” she said. “But I run the interrogation, got it?”

  Lachlan shut his eyes.

  “That’s the deal,” she said. “You haven’t even been looking into the DNA side of things, so I think it’s more than fair.”

  He glared at her. “All right, fine. Fine. We’ll see what you can do. Assuming they find a match at all.”

  My cell phone started vibrating in my pocket. I was happy to have a break from this pissing match between Dirk and Lachlan. I answered it. “Hello?”

  “Penny?” said a voice. “It’s Vivica.”

  “Hey,” I said. “Everything okay?”

  “Um… Gran and Gramps are here?”

  “What?” I stood up. “Where?”

  “At the hotel,” she said.

  “I’ll be right there,” I said.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Well, we heard that you were stirring up trouble with the Foxworths,” said Gran. She was in her late two hundred twenties, so she hadn’t really started to show age yet. Dragons didn’t start with the graying hair and the wrinkly skin until around two hundred forty or so. Instead, she appeared to be an imperious looking woman who wore her hair in a severe bun at the nape of her neck and had her makeup artfully applied. “You were calling and asking about their Luke, who’s gone missing.”

  I was standing in the hotel lobby, arms folded across my chest, staring her and Gramps down. I had called the Foxworths. I’d been trying to find a connection to that rogue. I’d forgotten that Gran and Gramps were so close to that family.

  “Honestly, Penelope, I don’t know what it is that you’re thinking,” said Gramps. He was wearing a cashmere sweater over a collared shirt. He was angry, but I wouldn’t have known it from his expression. My grandparents didn’t hold with overt shows of emotion. “When we heard that you were working with the… the police, we were appalled, of course, but to be calling people out of the blue and bringing up their deepest pain, it’s simply not done.”