Cold As Death (The Mira Morales Series Book 5)

by T. J. MacGregor

  “I’ll call Shep. He’ll come and get me.”

  Testing her, Mira thought. “Shep’s living in his office, Annie, and the Nichols case is his.”

  “So you’re working together?”

  Mira heard hope in her voice—hope that Sheppard would return to their lives, that everything would be as it had been before Danielle. “Yeah, but I was hired by Suki Nichols.”

  “Wow. Is she as cool as her movies?”

  “Cooler.”

  “If I wait till you can pick me up, will you introduce me?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Will you introduce me as your bright and talented daughter who kind of has acting aspirations of her own but who also has written a script? Would you?”

  “You’re working on a script?”

  “It’s called Doppelganger.”

  “That’s fantastic, Annie. How’d this come about?”

  “Nadine sent me to this acting camp. They have a screen-writing course. There were, like, seventy submissions, and mine was one of the two chosen. We’re shooting a movie of it. So when you pick me up, it’ll just be for the weekend. I have to be back for the rest of the shoot next week.”

  Hardly bored then, Mira thought with a smile. “Well, I’ll be sure that I introduce you as my talented and beautiful daughter, who has written this incredible script about a doppelganger.”

  “Eu coosi dao, Mom.”

  In their secret language, than meant I love you. “Ditto and bigger than Google.”

  An acting camp. A script. A movie of Doppelganger. Nadine might be misguided where Sheppard was concerned, but she was right on target with Annie.

  Mira pulled into the alley behind her store, parked, and dashed through the rain to the rear door. She got out her keys, but as she slipped the key into the lock, realized the door wasn’t locked. Odd. She was pretty sure she’d locked it last night, but she’d been spooked, rattled by a feeling that she was being watched, so maybe she hadn’t turned the key all the way.

  And even if it had been open all night, so what? There was nothing to steal inside. Even in her office, what could anyone possibly want? Her computer? She had backup files.

  She pulled the door open and stepped inside, out of the rain. The dry, quiet yoga room comforted her. But the boxes of books stacked against the wall did not. They were a constant reminder of everything she needed to do before she could open for business again. But by fall, she hoped the entire store would be like this room, as snug as a womb, fortified against the elements, everything rebuilt to the standards established after Hurricane Andrew.

  Her sandals clicked and echoed against the new floors. Tile floors. The tile had cost her a small fortune, but it would last longer than she would. She stood in the middle of the huge room and looked upward, at the blue FEMA tarps that still covered holes in the roof. She didn’t see any obvious leaks and there didn’t appear to be any water on the floors. She walked around to make sure, though, and checked the windows while she was at it. Here and there, she placed her palms against the walls, searching for cool, damp spots.

  Nothing. Everything had held.

  Maybe her life was on an upswing now.

  If she could just locate Adam, she would be in great shape.

  She unlocked her office door and went inside, intent on getting the generator started so she could turn on lights, the fan, her computer, and get down to work. She would work a couple of hours, then head over to Suki’s to see what else she could pick up on Adam.

  She felt uneasy as she crossed the room; her heart rate picked up, perspiration sprang from the pores in her palms. The same feeling she’d felt last night in the alley swept through her again and she spun around.

  Nothing there.

  Natural light from the other room spilled through the doorway. Dust particles floated in it. She listened, didn’t hear anything. Disgusted with her paranoia, she hurried over to the rear exit. It opened to a stoop, where she kept the generator, and a loading dock. Rain streamed off the roof, creating a shimmering veil between her and the dock. She started the generator, and the racket it made caused her to wince. She picked up the extension cord and set it on a pair of old plastic crates so it wouldn’t get wet from the rain. She backed toward the door, the remaining part of the cord in her hands, and twisted it around the knob as she stepped back into her office.

  She turned---and there, at her desk, sat a man with a gun. Square jaw. White teeth like luminous Chicklets. Cool, beautiful eyes.

  “The great Mira Morales.” He brought the gun up, aiming it at her. “What a pleasure to meet you at last.”

  It was moments before she found her voice. “And you must be Spenser C. Timble or Wickett or whatever name you go by now.”

  He lifted his brows, an expression of surprise, and it threw his forehead into a chaos of lines. “Hey, I’m impressed. You found bits of my past. Just call me Spenser. So here’s the deal. We’re going to walk to the back of the store, through the yoga room, and out into the alley to your car.”

  “I’m parked on the street out front.”

  He laughed and shook his finger at her. “It’s not nice to lie, Mira.”

  He pushed to his feet. She’d guessed from the DVD that he was slightly taller than six feet. He wasn’t quite Sheppard’s height of six four, but was certainly taller than she was.

  “Take off the pack and drop it on the floor. And no heroics. The safety is off and I’m an excellent shot. Especially at this distance. Do you know anything about guns?”

  “That they kill.” And that six months ago, she’d taken a gunshot to her thigh and it had taken several surgeries to repair the damage. She shrugged off the pack, dropped it on the floor. Her phone was in her back pocket. Her shirt covered it.

  “A sense of humor. How charming. And I bet you’re a hardcore fan of Bowling for Columbine and cheered when Fatso Moore reduced the great Charlton Heston to a blithering idiot.”

  It sounded like he’d broken in here to talk about movies, the NRA, and gun control. “I actually thought that scene was pretty sad.”

  “But you’re anti-NRA and guns.”

  “And you’re not.”

  He smiled at that, a smile that would dazzle, she thought, if the circumstances had been different.

  “Too bad we’re on opposite sides when it comes to guns,” he remarked.

  “I think we’re probably on opposite sides on just about any issue.”

  “Well, this beauty is a Walther P99. Think Die Another Day. You know, the 2002 James Bond movie with Pierce Brosnan. It weighs slightly over a pound, has a ten-round magazine. It’s a single-action trigger pull. Nice weapon, very accurate. Especially from this distance, which is about the distance from which I shot the Nicholses’ housekeeper.”

  “That’s something to be proud of? Shooting a sixty-nineyear-old woman?”

  “I told her to just turn around and leave the room. If she’d done that, she’d be alive. Instead, she tried to interfere. Kick the pack over here to me.”

  She nudged it with her foot.

  “You can do better than that, Mira. A hard kick. C’mon.”

  Mira crouched and pushed it across the floor toward him. He dropped to a crouch as well and for moments they were eye to eye, his as hard, beautiful, and intractable as stones. She had a sudden image of these eyes on a movie poster and wondered what it meant.

  He pulled her pack toward him, grabbed the strap, slung it over his shoulder. “Stand slowly,” he told her, and she did. “I love cooperative women.”

  “I detest bullies.”

  “It’s all a matter of perception. I’m really not such a bad guy.”

  “Pardon me while I gag. You shot a defenseless old woman and snatched a kid. And back in Seattle, you were a suspect in your father’s death. Then there was a young woman, an ex-girlfriend in Silicon Valley who claimed you tried to run her over. Just how does that fit into not being such a bad guy?”

  He twitched, as though his shirt had shrunk, a
nd a muscle twitched under his right eye. She thought he was about to lunge for her and she flinched, drawing her arms in closer to her body, and felt herself shut down psychically.

  “Car keys,” he snapped.

  “They’re in the pack.”

  Without taking his eyes from her, he set the pack on her desk, unzipped it, and dug around inside. Out came the keys. “Your phone.”

  “It’s in my car.”

  His eyes locked with hers. “Empty the pockets in your shorts. Fast.”

  She turned the side pockets inside out. Change clinked as it hit the floor. A couple of dollar bills drifted down.

  He strode over to her, jammed the gun up against her head, and leaned in so close to her she could feel the warmth of his breath against her face and smell the toothpaste he’d used. She recognized it as the organic toothpaste in the bathroom off her office.

  She suddenly knew he had hidden in her office last night when he’d fled the woods, had used the generator, had fallen asleep in here, and that her arrival had surprised him. He hadn’t planned for it. He had hoped to be out and gone by sunrise.

  His fingers closed around her throat. “I think you’ve got back pockets, Mira, and that the phone is there. Or maybe it’s here.” He ran his hand over the front of her T-shirt, across her breasts. “Oops, there’s something here, but not a gun. No bra either. I like that. I like women who don’t wear bras. It’s sexy, especially with tits like yours. Bet your skin is real soft too.” He thrust his hand up under her shirt.

  She held her breath, didn’t move. The urge to squeeze her eyes shut nearly overwhelmed her. But she knew if she showed fear or horror or any of the other terrifying emotions she felt just then, he would shoot her. She was expendable. His presence here was about last night. He was proving that although she had escaped him then, it hadn’t made any difference at all, now had it?

  “Nice skin, soft, just like I thought.” He reached behind her, patting the back pockets of her shorts, and pulled out the phone. He wagged it in front of her face. “Just like I thought. I’m really very disappointed in you, Mira. I sort of equate psychics with, you know, spiritual types. And spiritual types don’t lie. But you lied.” He stepped back, away from her, and pocketed her phone. “So what’d you pick up on me?”

  That’s what the touchy-feely was about? Good God. She had figured this guy all wrong. “Nothing. I can’t pick up anything when a gun’s jammed to my head. I shut down as soon as I saw the gun.”

  “You have control over it that way?”

  “It’s automatic. I see a gun, everything shuts down.” She didn’t intend to tell him too much, just enough to keep herself alive. “Fatigue, illness, guns, Those are some of the triggers that turn me off. It’s like someone yanks the power cord and I don’t have a battery backup.”

  “How long’s it take for you to power up again?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t had a gun pointed at me that often.”

  “Well, then. We’ll go with the original plan.” He motioned toward the door with the gun. “Move. We’re taking your car.”

  “Taking it where?”

  “You’re the psychic, tell me.”

  “Like I said, I’ve been unplugged.”

  On their way out of the office, he grabbed an umbrella hanging from a hook on the wall. And while he was distracted, she removed one of her earrings, a delicate pearl Sheppard had given her, and dropped it on the floor.

  “You’re going to drive,” he said.

  “You won’t get off the island. People are looking for you.”

  “People.” He snorted. “What people? Cops? Feds? Give me a fucking break. They don’t know anything. They’re so inept they didn’t figure the obvious, that I came here last night, that I hid here.” He patted his pack. “That I have your hard drive. You’re going to get us off the island, Mira, because Adam’s life depends on it.”

  On their way through the store, Mira slipped out the other pearl earring. At the first opportunity, she let her hand brush a shelf and left the earring there.

  “Just for the record,” he said. “What did you think of Fahrenheit 9/11?”

  So now they would have a conversation. Okay, fine, she could play this game. “That it was ironic Ray Bradbury got all huffy about the title. Even if it had been the exact title, it wouldn’t matter, since titles aren’t copyrighted.”

  He laughed. “That’s clever. You give an opinion without answering the question. That’s what journalists do these days. C’mon, answer the question.”

  “It was a documentary, angry and biased, shot through the lens of Moore’s opinions and beliefs. But at the end, I cheered. Happy?”

  “Personally, I think that Fahrenheit and The Passion of the Christ captured the schizophrenia of the country in the early part of the decade,”“

  She felt Spenser’s hunger for discourse, and wondered what he and his redheaded girlfriend talked about. The price of condoms?

  “So, as a psychic, who do you think will win the election in 2016?”

  “Not you or me.”

  “You’re playing with me, Mira.”

  “It’s the other way around, Spenser.” Keep him talking. Distract him. “You don’t really want answers to questions.”

  “Then what do I want?”

  “Publicity? Revenge?”

  No snappy comeback. He jabbed the gun into the small of her back and she pushed through the door of the yoga room.

  Before they stepped out of the rear door and into the alley, he opened the umbrella and dug the gun a little harder against her spine. “If I pull the trigger, you’ll be a cripple. Got it?”

  “Got it,” she murmured, and they stepped out into the alley and the driving rain, the umbrella obscuring their faces from any security cameras.

  Once they were both inside the car, Mira in the driver’s seat, he pressed the gun to her temple. “Let’s test your movie skills, Mira.” His voice slipped around and through her, a cool, seductive liquid. “This is the decisive question. If you don’t answer it correctly, I pull the trigger.”

  Beads of perspiration erupted on her forehead, her upper lip. The pressure of the gun against her temple became more intense. Unbearable. She could hardly swallow, much less speak. “It’s like the Taliban. You’re both interrogator and judge.”

  “Fuck the Taliban. Right this second, Mira, I’m God. Okay, here’s the question. 1987, vampire film, directed by a woman. What was the film?”

  Panic. She rarely watched vampire movies. “Can’t you give me a little more information? I’m not a vampire fan.”

  “One of the stars, who played a character named Severen, was also in Titanic and Mighty Joe Young.”

  Her mind had emptied. She and Annie and Sheppard had seen both movies, but she couldn’t remember who had acted in either of them. It was the ultimate game of Trivial Pursuit.

  Stall for time. “I… I can’t remember.” Maybe she imagined it, but the pressure of the gun against her temple seemed to ease. “Why those movies?”

  Spenser leaned toward her and whispered in her ears, his breath warm, putrid. “Why not? I know the answer and you don’t. And you’re the psychic. You’re supposed to have access to that kind of information.”

  “I access emotions.”

  “And I’m emoting.”

  “And I’m unplugged, remember?”

  “Watch the clock on the dashboard, Mira.” The pressure against her temple increased as he leaned in closer to her. She felt the warmth of his breath against her cheek, smelled the mint that he now sucked on. “Tick-tock. You have thirty seconds.”

  Where were all these helpful spirits when she needed them? Where was Hepburn? Tom? Joy Longwood? Hey, hello, someone help me out, please. “I don’t know if I even saw that movie.”

  “Tick-tock,” he whispered, and ten seconds had vanished. Her tongue slid along her lower lip. “The game. That’s your adrenaline kik. The God game.”

  “Wrong answer. Tick.” He paused and breathe
d, “Tock. Ten seconds.”

  “I… I don’t know the answer.”

  “… seven… six…”

  “I don’t know the flicking answer.” She nearly choked on the words.

  The pressure on her temple eased and Spenser laughed and laughed. “And that was the right answer, Mira. The movie was Near Dark, directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Bill Paxton played Severen.”

  Mira turned her head toward him, aware that sweat beaded her face, that her throat was dry, that she looked as shocked and terrified as she felt. He seemed inordinately pleased with himself, and she suddenly understood that the whole purpose of this little game was to drive home the point that he could end her life at any second, that for her, right now, he really was God.

  “Now drive,” he said.

  Chapter 17

  Revelations

  The shimmering curtain of rain made Glen Kartauks modest Spanish-style home in the Tango hills resemble a bastion of peace. It sat on a secluded acre that backed up to woods, its broad front windows bordered by dark blue wooden shutters. The only obvious signs of damage from the hurricane were a collapsed wooden fence at the sides of the house, trees stripped of leaves, and missing tiles at the right front corner of the house.

  “This neighborhood seems to have fared better than Mira’s,” Goot remarked.

  “Probably because of the hills and the woods,” said Sheppard.

  “Frankly, amigo, I’m starting to think it was all the luck of the draw. You know, karma or something.”

  Given his reconciliation with Mira, Sheppard figured his karma was on the rise. But then, his karma had been so bad lately that it had nowhere to go but up.

  As Sheppard started to ring the bell, the door opened, and a plump, jolly-looking man stood there, leaning on a crutch, his right leg encased in a cast that reached just above his knee. He wore a shorts and a Minnesota Vikings T-shirt and was barefoot. Sheppard pegged him to be about sixty.