She focused first on even breathing while staring at the shadow, the promise of light when she got out. Her heart rate shifted from full throttle to fast. They hadn’t tied her up, but she couldn’t find a release in the trunk to pop it open. She couldn’t hear Nicole and Pam in the front of the car; either the sound didn’t travel over the noise of the road, or they weren’t talking.
The car picked up speed and the exhaust fumes filled her lungs, making her gag and light-headed. Still, she felt around the trunk. Nothing except rough carpet on a board.
A board? Didn’t cars have a spare tire in the trunk? She didn’t know enough about cars-she’d never owned one, and none of the cars she’d stolen had a flat-but it made sense that the tire would be in the trunk. And with tires came things like tools and bolts. Anything that she could use as a weapon.
She shifted in the tight confines, the pain above her ear coupled with the movement and fumes making her nauseous. She waited a moment for it to pass, then rolled over to her stomach and felt along the carpet for a seam or handle or something that she could pull up.
There it was, a small chain. She tried to lift it up but the board didn’t budge-she was on top of it. No matter how she moved, she couldn’t find a way to pull up the floor to reach the spare tire and the possible tools inside.
The panic rose again, an overwhelming sense of helplessness that had her shaking uncontrollably. How could she let her claustrophobia defeat her? She was no shrinking violet. She was Moira O’Donnell, and dammit, that meant something! What would Rico say if he could see her now?
“Your fear will get you killed.”
But it wasn’t fear that would get her killed, it was inaction. Letting her emotions win over her training. Healthy fear was a good thing; healthy fear would keep her focused on what was important.
Stopping Wendy and Nicole. Meeting Rafe at Grace Harvest Church, saving Grant Nelson, trapping the demon Lust.
What would Rafe do? He’d tell her to have a plan. Be ready to improvise. Not to act blindly, but to act smart.
The car slowed. She didn’t know how much time had passed, but not more than fifteen, twenty minutes. She stretched as best she could, moving her ankles and wrists in circles, working out the kinks, shifting her arms over her head and touching her shoulder blades. She flexed and relaxed, not letting her muscles fall to sleep.
The car stopped, someone got out, but she didn’t hear a door close. A moment later it did and the car moved forward. Slowly. Excruciatingly.
Then it stopped one last time and the ignition turned off.
Moira waited. Her first reaction would be to come out kicking and fighting as soon as Nicole opened the trunk. But she didn’t know how many there were, where she was, and she would be off balance coming out of the trunk. Her head was still fuzzy, now more from the fumes than the attack.
She would bide her time, seizing the best opportunity to fight back.
Waiting. Definitely not her strength.
Velocity wouldn’t open to the public for another hour, and the main doors were locked. Rafe ran around to the alley but didn’t see Moira. As he approached the employee door he saw her knives on the ground, one partly obscured by the dumpster. He picked them up and pocketed them.
“Where is she, Julie?” he demanded of the spirit inside him. “Tell me or I’ll send your astral self back to your body so fast you won’t know what hit you.”
Don’t, please-I don’t know where they took her!
“You knew she was in danger.” Rafe kicked the dumpster, then tried the door.
No. Only that Wendy was luring Grant here. I didn’t want Moira to get caught in the middle! Please, you have to find him before Wendy!
“I need to find Moira first!” He took a deep breath. They hadn’t killed her-they likely wanted to turn her over to Fiona. He had time. He had to think, be smart. If he had Grant, he could offer an exchange. “She could be inside.”
The code to the door is 65601.
Rafe typed it in and cautiously entered the employee break room. Two women were putting on makeup and stared at him.
Tell them you’re subbing for Ike. They’re not witches.
Rafe smiled. “I’m filling in for the bartender. Is Wendy around? I was supposed to check in with her.”
The taller girl said, “We just got here. She’s not here yet.”
But she was here! Julie cried.
Rafe smiled and crossed the room as if he knew what he was doing. “Where’s your security tape?” he asked Julie.
Reggie’s office. He’s the bouncer, but he doesn’t come in until five.
Julie directed him to the bouncer’s small office. Several security screens showed the club inside and out from various angles. He focused on the screen that scrolled through four different angles of the alley. He looked at the equipment, noted it was digital, and replayed the last fifteen minutes.
He watched Moira stride slowly but purposefully down the alley, then she halted, on full alert. She appeared to be listening-with all of her senses. Nicole came out of the door a moment later. Moira had her knives out so fast Rafe almost missed it. They began to argue.
A voice behind him said, “You have some explaining to do, Mr. Cooper.”
He glanced over his shoulder at Detective Johnston, who had his hand on the butt of his gun.
“Watch this-Moira’s in trouble.”
“I think-” Johnston stopped, watching the silent replay. Moira moved her knives in front of her with surprising speed as Nicole held her hands up. Not in a defensive posture, but almost as if she were conducting an orchestra. Every step Nicole took toward Moira, Moira took a step back.
“What the fuck?” Johnston stared in disbelief at the screen. “O’Donnell is the one with the weapons, but the other woman is the aggressor?”
Rafe said, “Nicole Donovan is a witch. She’s using magic to attack Moira.”
He threw his hands up. “You think I’m an idiot? If-” He stopped midsentence as Pam Erickson walked onto the screen and hit Moira from behind while Moira was focused on defending herself from invisible energy waves. The women removed Moira’s gun and half carried, half dragged her from the alley.
“What’s going on?” Johnston asked, his voice low.
“You said Grant was coming here. Where is he?”
Johnston pulled out his phone and dialed. “Nelson, it’s me-” Johnston frowned, turning his back to Rafe. “Detective Jeffrey Johnston, Pacific Division, Badge number 455599.” A moment later, he said, “Nelson, what the hell is going on? … Tell me you didn’t hit a cop.… I’ll be there in twenty minutes. I-” he glanced at Rafe. “It appears Moira O’Donnell has been taken against her will by Nicole Donovan and Pamela Erickson. She seems to have been running her own investigation. Cooper is with me.… I don’t … Right … but … I don’t think you’re in the position to make demands right now. I’ll be there ASAP.”
He hung up, then whirled around to face Rafe. “What’s going on, Cooper? Grant is being detained for assaulting a police officer. He had a traffic accident and refused a field sobriety test. I need to get over there.”
“He’s sick,” Rafe said. “Not drunk. I need to get him to Grace Harvest Church.”
Johnston barked out a gruff laugh. “I doubt Nelson has ever stepped foot in a church.”
“I’ll tell you once, and you have to believe me. You saw that tape. Magic is real. Witches are real. There is a demon on the loose and it wants Grant’s soul. The marks on your dead bodies? Demon marks-Grant has one on his back right now.”
“You’re insane.”
“I’ve been called worse. But I’m not a liar. Julie Schroeder, Grant’s girlfriend, is a witch. Remember the image you saw of her on the YouTube video?”
“It was a reflection; it couldn’t have been her.”
“It was her astral projection.”
“Whatever. I have to get to Grant.” He turned around.
Rafe stepped forward and grabbed his arm. Johnston sla
pped his hand away and pulled his gun out. “Back off, Cooper.”
“Grant will die if you don’t believe me.”
“Keep your hands where I can see them.”
Rafe complied. “Julie, right now, is separate from her body, just like she was on the video. She’s right with me; ask me something only she would know about Grant. Like where they met or why they broke up-something!”
Johnston was skeptical, but Rafe had to convince him. He had to find Moira, dammit! He didn’t want to waste time arguing with a cop.
“Please!” Rafe pleaded.
“When is Grant’s birthday-and where did Grant and Julie go for his last birthday?”
Rafe listened to Julie, then said, “His birthday is July twenty-seventh. But they’d broken up a week before. She’d bought them tickets to Hawaii, and she went by herself. Grant showed up halfway into the week and said it was the best four days of his life. A month later, they broke up again.”
Johnston was swayed by the details.
“You can ask me anything, Detective-but let’s get going. We have no more time to waste. We have until sunset before the demon will attack your partner.”
“Sunset? Thought that was vampires who can’t go out in daylight.”
Rafe despised being ridiculed. “It’s an ancient ritual, and I don’t care if you believe me, but sunset is only ninety minutes from now and if we don’t get Grant to safety, he’s a dead man.”
Johnston stared.
Rafe added, “Julie just told me where Grant is right now. He’s on Washington Boulevard approaching the Santa Monica Freeway.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because Julie was with him when he crashed. She forced him off the road to stop him from walking into a trap.”
“I’m driving.”
“I need my supplies. And Detective-”
“Call me Jeff. I think we can be on a first-name basis about now.”
“Do you have a Taser?”
“Why?”
“You might have to subdue your partner. He’s not himself.”
Jeff’s jaw tightened. “I was aware of something different about him this morning, but I didn’t do anything.”
“This isn’t your fault. But you can help stop it.”
Nina Hardwick was pleased with herself. It helped being a staff attorney for the Board of Supervisors-one call and most county employees were willing to work on a Saturday getting her information. By five Saturday evening, she had a complete dossier on Wendy Donovan, Nicole Donovan, and even their mother, Susan. If they weren’t responsible for killing George, she might have felt a sliver of sympathy for the children of Susan-that woman was a nutcase. To be raised in such a horrid manner … but Nina didn’t allow herself sympathy for the mother or her children. Someone’s upbringing, no matter how horrific, didn’t justify murder.
It reminded her, however, that she needed to push the Board of Supervisors to conduct a complete audit of the troubled foster care system. It wouldn’t solve the problems, but if Nina could help a few children who’d slipped through the cracks, she’d feel that she’d done something.
She drove toward the hotel where Moira had told her they were staying, and tried Moira on her cell phone. No answer. She flipped over the card where she’d scrawled an emergency number.
Jackson Moreno 818-555-8860
Grace Harvest, Burbank
No one picked up that phone, either, but Nina knew that church. It was near the Warner Bros. Studio. She was closer to the church than to the Palomar.
She made a quick decision as the ramp to the Ventura Freeway came up. She merged onto it, then took the second exit into Toluca Lake and Burbank.
Rafe Cooper had asked her to send along anything she could find that would help them take down Wendy Donovan. Knowing they were dealing with a woman who’d been institutionalized on and off most of her childhood-and then killed her mother when she was sixteen-was important. Nina was set on getting Rafe that information.
THIRTY
Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust,
like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.
— JOHN WEBSTER
Grant sat in the backseat of a patrol car on Washington Boulevard, waiting to be bailed out of this mess. He wasn’t drunk, he wasn’t high, the baby-faced uniformed cop had no fucking right to ask him to come down to the station for a blood test simply because he’d refused a field sobriety test. His word should mean something-he was a near-twenty-year veteran of the LAPD! Who was this uniform, anyway? A rookie? A year under his belt? The baseball hit his car-he hadn’t been driving drunk.
If he didn’t have the sick sensation that his brain was melting and about to leak out of his ears, he’d have been able to talk himself out of the situation. A ball hit his windshield. He swerved, hit a parked car. End of story. He’d been furious and in pain and the patrolman had rubbed him the wrong way. But he hadn’t decked him until the novice had called in the incident-on an unsecured channel where everyone and the press could hear. The gawking bystanders had finally left, but passersby kept looking into the car, watching him.
Worse, the longer he sat here doing nothing, the more apprehensive he became about Julie. What if she pressed charges against him? He’d bruised her-sure, the sex was consensual, it had always been wild between them, but he’d never left marks like he’d given her last night. He hadn’t meant to hurt her-he didn’t even remember, only flashes of screwing her and the disturbing feeling that he was losing his mind.
Grant caught a glimpse of himself in the patrol car’s rearview mirror. Hair matted from sweat. Blood on his scalp from when the young cop had thrown him against the hood after Grant had hit him. His eyes were more red than white, and his pupils were dilated.
No wonder the uniform thought he was on drugs. He looked like he’d been on a bender for a week. He should have listened to Jeff this morning and gone home to sleep off this headache. But sleep was the last thing on his mind. He had to find Julie.
An unmarked black pool car pulled up behind the black-and-white. Jeff got out of the driver’s seat, and-Grant almost couldn’t believe Johnston’s audacity! — Raphael Cooper stepped out of the passenger seat.
What was his partner doing with that prick? Where was Moira O’Donnell? In the back of his mind Grant remembered Jeff saying that the Donovan sisters had kidnapped her. Kidnapped? Ludicrous. As ridiculous as Nina Hardwick’s accusation that Pamela Erickson was a witch. Or Moira O’Donnell’s claim that she was a psychic.
He reached for the handle only to remember he was in the back of the patrol car and trapped. He saw his partner talking-arguing-with the cop, but he could hear only indistinct voices and isolated words.
Stress. Difficult case. Girlfriend.
“Ex-girlfriend,” Grant mumbled.
He didn’t know why he insisted that Julie was his ex. He still slept with her. He still sought out her company. He still called her in the middle of the night when he had insomnia. When he’d had a rough day. When he had to tell a mother that her son was dead.
He stared at his hands. He’d calmed down enough to convince the uniform not to cuff him, even though he was still trapped in the back of the patrol car. He’d been there the day the sheriff had come to the house and told his mother that Brian had died. That Brian had died a hero defending an elderly couple in a twenty-four-hour convenience store during a holdup didn’t matter. He was dead. Grant’s little brother was dead, and his mother had never recovered. And she never wanted to look at Grant again, since Grant was the one who had told Brian to go to the store. Brian always did what Grant said. And Brian was dead.
Julie had listened. God, he missed talking to her. He just wanted to make everything up to her. Maybe there was more to them than he’d realized. Maybe he should have tried harder to make the relationship work. He didn’t want to be with her 24/7, but when he wasn’t, he missed her.
He wanted to fix everything. With Julie. With them. With their future.
The door opened and the uniform said, “You can go. But I’m writing this up.”
He wanted to deck the prick-again-but relief over getting out of this damn car won over vengeance.
Grant stepped out, saw Cooper again. “What’s he doing here?”
He hadn’t meant to sound so gruff or ungrateful-he was damn humiliated, but he couldn’t think about that now. Raphael Cooper stared at him as if he were a problem. He was a cop.
Jeff put a hand on his forearm. “Grant, let’s go back-”
Grant shook Jeff off. “I need to find Julie.”
“All right,” Jeff said, then glanced at Cooper.
“Why are you looking at him?” Grant asked. “Is he in charge now? Is he your senior officer?”
“Detective,” Jeff said, sounding stern but looking uncertain, “I think we should talk about this in private.”
“Fuck that. I’m going to Velocity-Julie is waiting for me, and I need to talk to her about this case.” That sounded lame, but he couldn’t think of another reason for this overwhelming need to see Julie. Now. Passing cars on Washington Boulevard slowed as the drivers turned their necks to see what the commotion was about. The kids from the park were watching from the field. Grant’s humiliation made him want to fight, to regain ground. To do something to fix this. But the only thing that would fix it was Julie. He had to see her. Only thinking about her made the pain fade enough so he didn’t think he was dying.
“I’ll take you,” Jeff said quickly. Too quickly.
“What’s going on?”
“I could ask the same about you,” Jeff said.
Jeff was acting like he was the problem. “Shit, Jeff, I have a migraine the size of Dodger Stadium, that’s what’s wrong. Why the fuck is Cooper here? Why’d you bring him? Where’s O’Donnell?”
“We’ll talk in the car,” Jeff said.
“I’m not going anywhere with you. There’s nothing wrong with the engine in my car. I’m getting my keys-”
“I have your keys, Grant. You’re in no condition to drive.”
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