by Angie Sandro
I glance at my broken fingernails and sigh. “Certainly not of preserving my manicure.” I struggle not to grin. Damn, these drugs are good. I’m doped up, but not foggy. The pain, both physical and emotional, is tolerable with distraction. Teasing Gabriella should do the trick. I give her a lopsided grin. “I’d ask the court to make him pay for a touch-up, except he’s dead.”
Gabriella’s face crumbles. She falls on top of me and wails, “Oh my Gawd, stop making jokes. You’re not funny. Never have been, except in your own twisted little head.” She wipes her tears on my chest, and I wince. “Sorry, didn’t mean to hurt you. I feel awful, and I can’t pretend that everything is all right. You almost died, Dee. Dr. Estrada said that even though your injuries are pretty minor, you would’ve bled to death if the deputy arrived five minutes later.”
Pretty minor? Guess to Dr. Estrada getting stabbed in chest is no big deal compared to getting shot in the head.
I grab the remote and raise the headboard until I’m upright. Nothing’s worse than being scolded while lying flat on my back. I feel like a little kid being reprimanded by my mother, not that Pepper Acker stuck around long enough to try. I’m not in the best mood to cheer Gabriella up, but if I can’t get her to change the subject soon, I’ll lose it.
“Well, that’s depressing.” I force a wicked smile across numb lips. “Not the dying part. I always handle that with grace and dignity. I’m talking about how your face has gone all splotchy.”
Gabriella balls her tiny hands into fists instead of wringing my neck. “Stop using my vanity as a distraction. What’s the matter with you? This is serious.”
“She’s right,” a deep, male voice announces from the doorway.
I jump in surprise. Pain blossoms in my chest, making my response sharp. “Haven’t you heard of knocking?”
The man enters the room with the air of one used to commanding attention. He looms, appearing huge in comparison to me. I’d estimate my head would only reach his shoulders, but I’ll have to stand next to him to be sure. Speaking of—his dark brown jacket nicely accents his broad shoulders and biceps. He combines the wiry strength of a long distance runner with the upper body of a swimmer, all in one nicely tailored package that makes my mouth water, until I meet his eyes.
His cold, assessing gaze cuts through the druggy haze and saves me from the seriously lustful thoughts about him wearing nothing but an itty-bitty Speedo. I shiver, feeling like he poured a bucket of ice water over my head, but refuse to break my gaze. He glides over to the bed—really, who does that? His feet don’t make a sound on the tiled floor, and with each step, my heart rate increases.
“When I knock, I miss out on spontaneous confessions of guilt,” he says, studying me as if I’m a dung beetle under a magnifying glass. Maybe he wants to see me squirm. The question is why? I’m the victim. When he finally smiles, it doesn’t reach his dark eyes. “I admit, Dena Acker, you aren’t what I expected when I learned the details of this case.”
“That makes two of us,” I mutter, staring at the badge pinned to his pocket. Not that I expected anyone quite like him interviewing me about my attack. I thought I’d speak to someone I knew, like George Dubois or Bessie Caine. I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad about him being assigned to my case. At least I assume he’s here about the alley. He still hasn’t introduced himself.
His dark-hooded eyes slide down my body, cataloguing my injuries. A frown creases his forehead when his gaze touches on the bandage wrapped around my shoulder and chest, but vanishes so quickly that, if I blinked, I would have missed it. I pull the blanket up to my neck, shielding my body. Of all the times I fantasized about a handsome man standing over my bed, I never pictured it being at a moment when my eye’s half swollen shut and the rest of my face is probably black and blue from being slammed into a wall.
No, I refuse to think like this. I’m not a victim. I’m a survivor. These bruises are a badge of honor, and I won’t be ashamed of them. I fought my attacker with everything I had. I faced my fear and won. No matter what, I’m proud of myself. He can’t make me feel ashamed if I don’t allow it.
The blanket drops. “You make it sound like I’ve done something wrong.” The cut on my lower lip reopens when I scowl. My gaze lifts to catch his, fixed on my mouth. I slowly trace the tip of my tongue over the cut to remove the drop of blood, hiding my wince at the sting. “Am I guilty of something, Deputy?”
His shoulders tense then drop. He lifts his gaze from my lips to my eyes. They’re like lasers, digging through the shield I put up. He sees more than I want to reveal.
My eyes lower to the blanket. Curse him. He won this round.
“Detective.” He practically purrs. “And I don’t remember saying anything of the sort. Funny you should focus on that word…guilt.” He pronounces the word as if savoring the taste on his tongue.
I cut a grimace in Gabriella’s direction. Has she noticed the same ominous vibe I’m picking up from this guy? She stares at the detective with wide, slightly glazed eyes. Guess that answers my question. She must still have a hangover from the bachelorette party. Normally she wouldn’t allow drool to leak from her open mouth. If I say anything, it’ll just draw attention to her, and the detective’s attention is currently focused on me.
Time to move this interrogation along. Things are about to get nasty, given the direction we seem to be headed in, and I’m not in the mood. “What do you want to know, Detective…ah?”
“Anders,” he says, pulling out a business card and dropping it on my lap before I can reach for it. Asshole. “Just tell me what happened, Ms. Acker.”
I scowl at his impersonal tone. It feels like I’ve been judged and found lacking. I can’t believe I’ve never met him, but I’m kind of glad I haven’t. It’s a small town. Gossip about a new detective should’ve made the rounds by now. Either he must be really new to the area or he isn’t who he says he is.
My face tightens, and I wince. In the corner of my eye, Gabriella stiffens. She knows what the dark look I send Anders means—the wrath of Dena will be descending upon his pretty little head. Too bad for him. He brought it on himself with his shitty attitude. I force a strained smile. “I told the deputy who found me what happened. Don’t you guys share notes?”
“As a matter of fact, I do have Deputy Winters’s notes.”
I shrug nonchalantly, seething, then wince as pain fills my shoulder. My fingers clench the blanket. “What more do you need to know? After ending my shift at Munchies, I took out the trash; then I was going to pick up Gabriella.” I wave in her direction. “The same creep who caused a commotion at the diner earlier grabbed me from behind. I fought back. He threw me against the wall. I hit my head. He slashed my arm with a knife and then stabbed me in the chest.”
Gabriella gasps, and her hand flies up to cover her mouth. She runs out of the room, sobbing.
I take a deep breath, feeling a little dizzy from spitting all that out without breathing, before continuing. “I passed out and woke when the deputy found me. I don’t remember anything else.”
“I find that difficult to believe, Ms. Acker,” Anders says, voice lowering. It vibrates in my chest, full of unspoken reproach. And I feel bad for lying.
Startled, I meet his eyes. Seeing his misgivings reflected back, my mouth folds downward. “What? That some creep would try to take advantage of a woman?”
He places his hand on the upraised mattress beside my right shoulder. The heat of his skin warms mine. He leans forward, head cocked to the side to watch my reaction. “What I find difficult to believe is how a strong woman, one who survived a similar attack half a year ago and had the fortitude to fight off an armed assailant, came out of the experience with no memory of how the man died.”
Don’t panic.
He puts all his weight on his arm until he looms over the bed—so close I can see his eyes aren’t brown like I thought, but jade. The light touches his sable hair, and the reddish tint catches fire. It complements a light dusting of fre
ckles sprinkled across his nose. Bet getting teased about those as a child explains his surly attitude. ’Course, I could just be projecting my own freckle insecurities onto him.
He frowns slightly, noticing my inspection. “Explain waking up next to a burned corpse, Ms. Acker.”
Hell no! I’m not explaining the part where I begged Death for help. That’s locked in the do-not-go-there vault. He wouldn’t believe me even if I told him the truth. He doesn’t seem like the imaginative sort.
Play it cool. If he knew anything he wouldn’t be grilling me. After several seconds of practicing my yoga breaths, I regain my composure and shrug. “Spontaneous combustion?”
He jerks back, hands fisted at his sides. “Is this a joke to you, Ms. Acker? Because I assure you, I take murder seriously.” His voice deepens, and the tension in the room thickens.
The irritation building inside rises to a level I can no longer mask with sarcasm. A sharp pain spikes behind my swollen eye, cutting through the fuzz from the meds. Oh, it’s on now!
“And I assure you, Detective Asshole, I take almost being murdered, for the second fucking time, extremely seriously myself. That the creep who attacked me died before I did is what I call poetic justice. So, do us both a favor and get out.”
“This is my investigation and I dictate the terms, Ms. Acker, not you,” Anders manages to reply calmly, but his expression says he’s not as unaffected by the argument as he wants me to believe. “You’re hiding something. I’ve got three unexplained deaths by your artfully described ‘spontaneous combustion.’ I can’t even rationally explain how or why these men died. The only apparent lead is you.”
“He hurt me. I don’t care that he’s dead. I hope he’s burning in hell!” I yell. “And you can go to hell, too!”
I meet Anders’s eyes and flinch at the censure reflected in his gaze. Sure, my refusal to help him solve this case is wrong, but I can’t control my reaction. I flash back to the fear and overwhelming helplessness I felt during and after the attack. When I woke up from my coma, I promised to never again be so weak. Now a lunatic has made me break that promise. I thought I was going to die. No, I knew I was a dead woman…I’d lost too much blood. After spending the last four months wrestling with depression, who knew almost dying again would slap the apathy right out of me.
Returning to the present, I blink up at Anders. I take a deep breath to calm my racing heart and wipe my sweaty palms across the blanket. “His death is not my problem and neither are those other murders you’re talking about. Maybe if you worked on your interrogation skills and didn’t make the victim feel like a suspect, you’d get the information you need to solve this case.”
“Maybe if you explained why your attacker had your picture, I could bypass you as a suspect and focus on someone else.” Anders pulls a wadded-up photograph from his coat pocket and thrusts it in my face.
I snatch the photo from his hand and stare at the image of me walking out of Munchies. Was that nasty old man stalking me?
“You said you’d never seen your attacker before, but he knew you, Ms. Acker. He’d been waiting for you.”
“Impossible.” I hold my hand to my chest, struggling to keep air flowing through my straining lungs. My head wags in denial. “He was just some crazy old homeless man who wandered into the diner.” With a deep breath, I focus on Anders with narrowed eyes, searching his chiseled features for any sign of deceit. “You’re trying to trick me!”
Anders shakes his head. Hair falls across his eyes, leaving them shadowed. “I’ll tell you what I think. This man had your picture because he knew you. For some reason, you agreed to meet him, and you killed him. I just don’t know why. Was he blackmailing you?”
“To blackmail, he’d need something over me. I’ve done nothing wrong.” I stare down at my own face, then crumple the picture and throw it on the floor. “You’re making this shit up as you go along, aren’t you?”
“Then give me a better explanation,” Anders says, voice softening. Even his green eyes lighten. He sits on the edge of the bed and leans close, laying a hand on my thigh, and I flinch, feeling my attacker’s hand.
“Don’t touch me.” I slide my leg away. “I told you what happened.”
“He had your picture, Dena. He knew who you were. He was waiting for you.”
Watching and waiting. Why? A stabbing pain flares in my head, and I cry out, falling back onto the pillow. My eyes snap shut. Stars dance across my vision. It feels like someone’s jabbing an icepick in my brain. Could it be the bullet? Did my head wound somehow dislodge it? It hurts.
Breathing deeply, I attempt to focus on anything other than the agony which has me clutching my head. Any sympathy I had for my attacker vanished upon seeing that picture, but I do feel sad for the other victims. If Anders hadn’t just made me his prime suspect, I’d ask how they died. What if there are similarities between what happened to my attacker and the other murdered men?
I thought I’d been rescued. But maybe I got lucky. If my attacker hadn’t been closer to the smoke shadow, I could be the one lying in the morgue, nothing but a pile o’ ashes. I also don’t have an explanation for why I woke up being licked like a rack of BBQ sauce-slathered baby-back ribs, or the way the guy disappeared into thin air.
Gabriella returns with Nurse Susan who, upon seeing me, rushes over to the bed and begins checking my vitals. But what’s left of my attention focuses solely on my cousin, who enters after them.
The tainted shrimp didn’t kill her, but Mala’s still a bit green around the gills and looks ready to bite Anders’s pretty little head off. She storms across the room like a hurricane. Sparks of lightning shoot from her dark brown eyes, and her voice holds an ominous rumble, “I should’ve known it was you acting a fool, Anders.” Mala plants her hands on her hips and stares him down. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“I should ask you the same question, Ms. LaCroix. Why exactly are you here? It’s not official business since, as far as I can tell, you’re not an employee of the sheriff’s office,” he counterattacks, voice cool. His dark gaze travels over her, giving her the same bug-under-glass treatment he gave me earlier. Hmm, I no longer feel special.
Mala’s chin lifts. “Lieutenant Caine told you that I’m consulting on this case.”
“Yes, but in what capacity? You’re not a law enforcement officer. A simple background check shows you’re unfit to testify in a court of law. You’re a defense attorney’s dream with your history of mental instability. Plus, your relationship with Ms. Acker is a conflict of interest.”
My cousin’s face clouds with every word. “You did a background check on me?”
“I’d be a fool not to.”
“I see.” Her shoulders stiffen. “Well, I’ve heard about you, too. You left New Orleans PD under suspicious circumstances. Everyone says Bertrand Parish Sheriff’s Office is lucky to have someone of your caliber and experience, but—I’m not convinced. Especially since there are qualified deputies who aren’t stuck-up assholes who look down on us small-town folk, who are better suited to the job.”
Anders glances in my direction before answering. “Since we both have trust issues, I guess it’s a good thing we won’t be working together on this case.”
“What do you mean?”
“As of tonight, your services are no longer needed.”
“Hold on a minute…y-you’re firing me?” Mala’s eyes flash. “You can’t…”
“Lodge a protest with Sheriff Keyes if you’re so inclined. It won’t change anything. Not having a partner was a condition of my hire. I’ve been assigned to this case, and I’ll do my due diligence by interviewing Ms. Acker, the only witness to what happened last night.”
Oh hell. Anders isn’t afraid to play hardball. Whatever special privilege Mala operates under at the sheriff’s office, Anders just stripped it away. And it’s shocked my cousin to the core. What’s his game? Why is he toying with her, us, like this?
Mala draws herself up. “Perhaps
things are different in New Orleans, but here your jurisdiction doesn’t extend to harassing the victim. Or if she’s a potential suspect, interrogating her when it’s obvious she’s not mentally stable enough to answer your questions.” She places her hand on my shoulder. I wince at the pain, but keep my mouth shut. “I’m advising my cousin not to speak with you without an attorney present.”
I jump on that like a frog on a log. “Sounds cool to me.”
“So, if there’s nothing more, good-bye.” Mala waves him to the door.
At first, I think Anders will get in the last word. His eyes flicker as if he’s got another salvo on his mind, but he restrains himself. He exudes strength of will and self-control in every movement. His gestures seem designed to elicit a particular response, like how he crowded me by laying his hand on the bed. He tried to manipulate me into spilling what I knew.
But Mala’s handled him like a pro. I don’t know when she decided to grow up, but when I finally do, I want to be just like her. Listening to her almost makes me smile, which would ruin a perfectly good escape from Anders. But I can’t resist peeking at his face, and it’s at the exact moment when his eyes slide in my direction. I stare at him, waiting to see what he’ll say. He simply apologizes to Susan and Gabriella, ignores me and Mala like we’re invisible, and exits the room.
“What a jerk,” I say, before gasping at another stab of pain. “Mala, what the hell happened? Is he telling the truth about firing you?”
“He can’t fire me,” she says, voice full of bravado, but the slight crinkle to her caramel-brown brow shows her worry. “Whatever happens, I’ll protect you. I was serious about you getting a lawyer. I don’t trust that guy farther than I can throw him.”
* * *
I dream, but I can’t wake up.
A man leans over my bed, his hot breath blowing in my face. I want to turn away, but I’m frozen. He pulls a knife—a huge knife, bigger than the one drilled into my chest—from the pocket of his robe. What in the world do men with knives have against me?