Now You See It

by Cáit Donnelly

  Instead, he turned her and pressed her against the shower wall, as the tip of his tongue touched, then slid over hers to rim her lips lightly before he plunged deeper into the kiss, his mouth questioning, then demanding, taking, being taken.

  He broke the kiss and his lips moved along her jawline to the sensitive spot just below her ear, then lower to where neck met shoulder. His lips moved lightly across the top of her breast, the feathery movement created a tingling trail wherever he touched her. She couldn’t hold still under the tender, tantalizing assault. As his mouth drew closer to her straining nipple, he began to intersperse tiny nips, lightly scraping his teeth over her skin until he latched on and suckled, teasing with his tongue, and she could feel each flick and movement all the way to her core. After a few endless seconds, his mouth began to move again lower, lower, as he slowly sank to his knees so he could pleasure them both.

  As she gathered and broke, he rose and slid inside her, and they came together under the shower’s pounding heat.

  * * *

  Clean, wonderfully relaxed and turbaned in towels, Gemma checked her messages for the first time since the fire. She’d been wrong about Brady. He was definitely up to the challenge. Challenges. She’d lost count. She felt warm and loose and golden. The man certainly knew his way around a woman’s body. Okay, Gemma, concentrate, she told herself as the recorded voice began dumping information in her ear.

  “Oh, duh! Brady!” She could see him wiping the steam off the mirror, face full of soap. She smiled at the hominess of it before she blurted out the news. “Mike got a court order for the bank box. They won’t let us remove anything, but we can look. He’ll meet us there. You didn’t tell me you’d located the bank.”

  He came out, razor in hand. “Nothing to it. It’s the one you found the letter from, yesterday. I verified the account, and Mike was able to get the order. All I had to do was peek. He had the hard part. Give me five minutes,” he said. “Get your ID together—and your marriage certificate.” He held up the other hand. The safety deposit key was clasped between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Where was that?”

  “In my shaving cup. Your gremlin has a weird sense of humor.”

  * * *

  The bank branch in Canyon Park was too small to accommodate a separate area for customers to go through their valuables in privacy. Gemma and Brady stood close together inside the safety deposit vault. Mike took one look at the four-by-twelve-foot floor space and announced he’d wait for them in the bank lobby, since there obviously wasn’t enough room for his shoulders and Brady’s inside. The bank manager wanted to stay with them to assure they complied with the order, but there was no room for her, either, so she took station near Mike, where she could keep an uneasy eye on them.

  Gemma would happily have traded places with her. The walls of the vault crowded in on her, lined to the ceiling with steel boxes of varying sizes, with double locks and engraved numbers. The vault doors, though, as much as the narrow space, made Gemma’s heart skip a beat every few seconds. She had to tell herself to keep breathing, and kept glancing over to be sure the foot-thick steel door was still open.

  “You okay?” Brady asked.

  She nodded. “Fine. Just, this place makes me edgy.”

  “You should try a mini-sub, sometime.”

  Gemma perked up. “That would be cool,” she said.

  He stared at her.

  “I don’t know. Don’t ask. It’s just different. Okay?”

  He grinned as she lifted everything out onto the small Formica countertop. He slowly scanned the interior and exterior, ran his hand over surfaces all the way to the back of the box. “Okay,” he said, and set the box on the floor. The rear half was filled with stacks of hundred-dollar bills bound with rubber bands.

  Gemma set the money aside, and looked through the pile of papers and velvet jewelry boxes.

  “Anything?” Brady asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t get this. There’s nothing here I can see. The money, but...”

  “There’s nothing, period. Do you recognize the jewelry?”

  “Um hmm, most of it’s my grandmother’s. The watch he inherited. There wasn’t anything else?”

  “That’s it.”

  She shook her head. “Why hide the key, then, if this is all there was?”

  “Maybe to keep you or your attorney from finding the money, maybe just for the hell of it. Or maybe he was planning to put something in here, but never got the chance. There’s no way to know.”

  “So, now what?”

  “Now we start over again, from the beginning.” He grinned at her pained expression. “Cop work’s not your thing, huh?”

  Gemma slumped against the counter. “I’d rather build grant budgets.”

  “You said you hate building budgets.”

  “Exactly my point.”

  * * *

  Yeah, Lyons decided as Justin shambled into the small interrogation room and sat jumpily on the edge of the chair. The arresting officer had definitely made the right call. A couple of hours alone in a cell had reduced Justin to a blubbering mess of tears and snot, and he added insult to repulsiveness by wiping his nose and tears on the hem of his T-shirt. “So. Justin Falco?”

  The boy sniffed, nodded.

  “How old are you, son?”

  “Nineteen.” Justin’s heel beat a frantic tattoo up and down on the cement floor.

  “Nervous, Justin?”

  “Duh. Wouldn’t you be? I mean, sure, I’m nervous. I didn’t DO anything! What are you going to do to me?”

  “Me, personally? Not a thing except ask you some questions.”

  “About what?” Justin sniffed hard and made a sucking noise in his throat.

  “What were you doing when the officers picked you up last night?”

  “Nothing. Sitting. Sitting in my car. Look, I told the other officers what happened. These guys shined a light in my face and threatened me.”

  “Did you see them?”

  “Uh-uh. I mean, no. I couldn’t see sh—anything with that light in my eyes.”

  “But there were two of them?”

  “I’m not sure. It seemed like more than one, though.”

  “Would you recognize the voice if you heard it again?”

  “I think he was doing something to it—it was kind of growly, you know?”

  “Did they rob you?”

  “No.”

  “Did they assault you?”

  “I’m not sure. They threatened me, and they cut my upholstery. Does that count as assault?”

  “Threatened you with what?”

  “With getting killed like Mr. Carrow.”

  “They said that? Used his name?”

  Justin nodded, and the foot sped up. “Yeah. They know where I work, what I do.” He dropped his head into both hands. “They’re gonna kill me, dude. I know they will as soon as I do what they told me to.”

  “Which is what, exactly?”

  Justin told him, laying it all out, the email file, his brilliant business idea, his terror when he saw the knife. “One thing I need to know here,” he said at the end.

  “What’s that?”

  “Just, um, how—how did Mr. Carrow die? Exactly.”

  Lyons told him, in some detail.

  Justin’s face went dead white and his bladder let go as his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped forward in the chair.

  Lyons jumped to cushion Justin’s head before it struck the table, but was too late to save his shoes from the growing puddle on the floor. Oh, this was going to be just lovely.

  “Come on, Justin. Wake up, son.” Lyons carefully put Justin’s head down onto the table with his face against the cool metal surface. The boy began to revive almost imme
diately. Lyons could tell the exact moment Justin realized he’d wet himself, and mortification pushed aside his fear for a few seconds. Lyons pounced.

  “You work for Wheeler, Epstein and Carrow.”

  Justin cleared his throat, and wouldn’t meet Lyons’s eyes. “Yeah. I mean, yes, sir. I’m their computer and systems tech. Until they find out I got busted again.”

  “So you knew Ned Carrow.”

  Something flickered across Justin’s face. Disgust? Contempt? It was too brief to tell for sure.

  “Yeah. Sure. He’s one of my bosses. Was.”

  “I didn’t see you at the memorial service.”

  “I was there.” Justin’s eyes slid to one side. “People never see me.” Again, a flicker of something, gone too fast. “I was there, though.”

  “How did you get along with him?”

  “Mr. Carrow? He was okay, I guess. All the people at the firm think I’m some kind of servant, or plumber, or something, and they’re hot shit.”

  “Was Carrow like that?”

  Justin shrugged. “Pretty much, yeah. He was kind of a shit, but the money’s pretty good there.”

  “Okay, Justin. Where were you weekend before last?”

  “Over the weekend?” Justin looked up and he broke into a smile. “I was at hacker camp.”

  “Hacker camp?” That was a new one. What in the hell was “hacker camp”? Lyons was almost afraid to ask.

  “Yeah. It was shiny. The firm sent me because I’m in charge of system security, too, along with everything else. We’ve been hacked a couple of times lately—pretty seriously, once, that was from China.”

  “So, you learned to do what, exactly?”

  “Cool stuff. Security, reverse engineering, that sort of thing. Not a lot of new information, but I got this Hacker’s Handbook out of the weekend.”

  “Was it here in town?”

  “Yeah. Well, Bellevue. They put us up in a hotel for the weekend. Even paid for room service. It was cool.”

  “And Saturday night?” Lyons watched Justin carefully, but the day and time didn’t seem to register, except for a big grin.

  “Oh, man. A bunch of us got into an all-night session of World of Warcraft. I was so tired next morning I could hardly stay awake through the presentations. Came home and crashed—nearly didn’t get to work next morning.”

  “You didn’t know Ned Carrow was dead?”

  “No.” Justin shook his head. “Not until Wheeler came blasting out of his office and announced it.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Late. Maybe five, five-thirty.”

  “Who was there at the time?”

  “Everybody. Dude, it’s summertime. We work four-tens, get a three-day weekend. Pretty sweet, actually.”

  Something niggled at Lyons, but he couldn’t put a finger on it.

  “And how did Mr. Wheeler seem?”

  “Scared shitless. His face was, like, dead white. Seriously. He looked like somebody’d shot him.”

  “How did you feel about Carrow’s death?”

  “Surprised, but not surprised, you know? Carrow was into some freaky shit.” Justin’s eyes flickered.

  “What kind of freaky shit was he into?” Lyons asked.

  Justin looked away, then back. He squirmed briefly before answering. His wet jeans were probably beginning to chafe. “I’m not supposed to check on what the attorneys have on their hard drives. I mean, they’ve always got lots of privileged stuff.”

  “But you do.”

  Silence.

  “Justin?”

  “Yeah. Mr. Wheeler asked me to keep an eye on Mr. Carrow’s surfing.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t see how the guy had time to work. He watched porn for hours at a time. Hard-core stuff. I mean, no kids, or anything, but, dude.”

  Lyons decided to go with his gut, which was telling him this kid had plenty of problems, but he hadn’t murdered anybody. “Anything else I need to know?”

  Justin stared into space, and then hung his head, the picture of misery. “No. No, sir. Can I stay here? They can’t get me here, right?”

  Lyons sighed and stood to take him back to his cell.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I was able to talk to Tran briefly today,” Brady said as he handed mugs of coffee to Mike and Gemma and took one for himself. There were no windows in his apartment, situated as it was in the center of the building, but he didn’t need to see the slanting sunlight to know it was late afternoon. He hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, and the last few days were catching up to him. I am definitely getting too old for this shit. A deep swallow of coffee helped a little. “He confirmed some of what I thought, what we’d both said earlier. Ned’s murder is way over-the-top for a personal vendetta. But not if he was supposed to be an example. Tran and his task force are working a really nasty sex slave operation centering out of the South Sound, somewhere. What if the two are tied in together, some way? It makes sense. It works better than anything else we’ve been able to come up with.”

  “Yeah, for Ned and what happened to him,” Mike said. “But the kinds of shit happening to Gemma aren’t consistent with that scenario.”

  “We’ve been assuming it’s all the same doers. But what if it isn’t?” Brady asked.

  “Two separate sets of attacks, one on Ned, one on Gemma? Sorry. I don’t buy that kind of coincidence.”

  “Neither do I. But if Ned had a partner—”

  “If we’d had the key sooner we’d have known the bank was a dead end, and wouldn’t have wasted so much time,” Mike began.

  “Tell your sister. She’s the one who sent the key into the Eleventh Dimension or wherever.”

  Mike’s eyebrows shot up nearly to his hairline. “She told you about that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s a surprise.”

  “I saw it happen, so she didn’t have a lot of wiggle room.”

  “Still—” Mike glanced over at Gemma. “I wonder who else knows what you can do.”

  “Ned knew,” she said, “but he didn’t believe it. He thought it was some kind of sleight-of-hand.”

  “A lot of people can’t get their brains around something like that.”

  Brady didn’t answer.

  “So,” Mike said, “where are we? Where are all these leads taking us?”

  “Nowhere,” Gemma said. “Every time we follow one it trails off into a false cue. The key led to nothing but a bunch of papers, and a lot of money, but no help in figuring out why Ned was murdered, or who did it.”

  “Yes,” Mike answered, “but that was our fault. We just assumed it was a big clue, because he’d stashed it.”

  “True,” Brady said. “Now the pictures turn out to be—I don’t know what they are, but the women in them, even the really young ones, are all professionals. The photos are twisted, but nobody is going to look for revenge for the women in them. The one exception is the young girl in Gemma’s picture. The cops have one just like it they’re not showing around, because the girl was a suicide a few months back. Tran has been in touch with her family. They’re not close relatives, and they’re not brooding over her death.”

  “You heard this from Tran?”

  Brady nodded. “He’s convinced they’re for real.”

  Mike chewed his lower lip. “The police know some of the women were clients at the shelter Ned worked for. The bastard was a predator.”

  Gemma looked over at Mike. “It’s okay, Mike. When you set your jaw like that, even I quake in my boots.”

  That got the smile she was hoping for, and seemed to calm Mike down a notch.

  “But it still doesn’t answer any of our questions,” she said, rummaging through her purse for a pen and t
ablet. “Who broke into the house? What were they looking for?”

  “What are you doing, Gemma?” Brady asked.

  “Taking notes. Maybe we’ll see something if we go through it all again.” She was getting the hang of this. “I wish...”

  “What?”

  “You don’t have a whiteboard handy, do you? And some colored pens for it?”

  Brady said, “Sure, down in the office.” He jerked his head toward Mike. “It’ll be easier with two of us.”

  He and Mike were back in less than five minutes, each carrying one end of a portable whiteboard. While Mike put it against a wall, Brady began pulling dry erase markers out of various pockets.

  “Cool,” Gemma said, and took up a position in front of the board. “Now I think again, with a marker in my hand. Once a teacher, always a teacher.” With the black marker, she divided the space into columns, heading them Ned, Computer, Break-In, Sam, Fire.

  In the columns she started writing elements of each incident, using specific colors: red for fire, green for organized, blue for search, purple for murder.

  “This was a good idea.” Brady looked a little less grim. “Okay. First was Ned’s murder. Whoever did it planned it out pretty carefully—they had to get him there alone, had to bring the photos, get everything set up. Lot of prep work.”

  Gemma wrote “Organized” in green under the Ned column, then switched pens and wrote “Murder” in purple.

  Mike nodded. “Agreed.”

  “The second one was Gemma’s computer,” Brady said.

  “Organized, again,” Mike said.

  “Right. Came with keys or tools, gloves, nothing disturbed. Very controlled. If he’d been a little more computer-savvy, we’d never have known he was there.”