Fallen Giant

by Monica Owens

  Levi let out a deep breath and looked back to the photos. “Yeah. This isn’t normal.”

  “You’ve never seen anything like this?” she asked.

  He grunted. “No, thank God.” He half-smiled. “Probably not what you wanted to hear.”

  “Yes and no,” she said with a shrug.

  He sighed. “So can we start over?”

  “Again? How many times can we do that?” She moved away from him and went to sit behind her desk. He watched as she pulled a notebook out and then grabbed some papers from a tray. “I have paperwork to do.”

  He sat down in front of her desk and hitched a thumb to her wall. “When did you do that?”

  She didn’t look up. “After the first one.”

  “Did you think there would be a second?”

  Her pen paused, but then moved swiftly across the page. “Yes.”

  “I can help you with this, Trish.”

  He sat silent as she stopped writing, eventually putting down her pen. If she’d put makeup on that morning, it had sweated off in the heat of the desert. Didn’t matter. She still had clear skin, deep blue eyes with thick lashes, and luscious lips. She looked up at him, her thick bangs still holding moisture, some strands of hair even sticking to her neck. Her head tilted to the side as she regarded him.

  “Why?”

  Levi leaned back in his chair. Wasn’t that always the question? Why did he do what he did? Why did he leave Curse and Sin and Ram and Bar alone to run off after murderers? Especially when Astaroth had asked him nicely to stay at home in Vegas. Especially when they realized that relics were being bought and sold. That the devil was looking for daughters and hopefully sons. That Lilith was also looking for daughters, but not to welcome them into her family, instead to kill them. So really. Why?

  “This is what I do,” he stated flatly.

  He’d done it the first go around on earth. Found murderers and flung them into hell, destroyed their souls. Then, after falling, he’d welcomed them to hell, gave them their souls back. This was penance. A chance to fix what he’d broken all those years ago.

  “It’s what I do, too,” Trish said softly. “The mayor thinks I can’t find the person responsible. But I will.”

  “I want to help.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. “You have to know that I’m capable.”

  “I know you are.”

  “Do you?”

  He leaned closer to her desk, his elbows resting on his knees. “Trish, you’re probably the most capable detective I’ve seen in years,” he told her honestly. “I think you could solve this thing yourself. But if I’m here, willing to help, maybe we can save some people from that fate,” he finished, hooking a thumb toward her wall. “Not for the mayor. Not for the sheriff. Not even for you.”

  Trish let out a puff of breath. Her big blue eyes dropped to her desk and the paper she’d been writing on. “For them,” she whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  She lifted her head and now her eyes were narrowed. “I don’t know if I like you yet. And I don’t like that you were brought in behind my back.”

  He held his hands up. “I’ll give you that.”

  “So you’ll have to prove yourself.”

  He lifted one eyebrow. “Prove myself?”

  She gave a curt nod, then shoved her chair back. Bemused, he watched her rattle around in a file cabinet, finally wrestling three big binders from a drawer. He could see papers hanging out the sides, papers slipping onto the floor, sticky notes covering the front of each binder. She heaved them onto the desk in front of them, one sliding off the stack and hitting the floor with a loud snap.

  “Not everything’s on my wall.”

  *****

  The hulking black dog nuzzled through the foliage in a long forgotten park. The parking lot was taken over with vines and cracked concrete. An old steel swing set and merry-go-round were rusted into silence. Wooden seats in picnic benches had split apart, some eaten by insects, most turned to dust. Yet the dog still snuffled through, his chain clicking, as he looked for anything to eat.

  Under one picnic table, the earth had turned black and hard. The dog paused, sniffed, and recoiled. He reached with one paw, scrubbing at the blackness, one nail digging into the hardened soil. A furrow appeared, scratched deep, and the dog leaned forward, sniffing the air above the groove. He sneezed. Sneezed again.

  A black bug burrowed through the firm soil, appearing on the surface with blackened wings and legs. Its body shook excess dirt off and the little insect turned around three times before finally facing the dog.

  The creature hissed.

  The dog jumped back.

  Wings opened on the bug’s back and flapped at the dog. More hissing. All six legs stomped. The cacophony shook the small furrow the dog had created, pieces of soil breaking off and zigzagging through the black area like a mini-earthquake. More bugs poked their heads out of the cracks, pulled their little bodies through the earth and joined the first creature on the surface.

  The dog watched first in wonderment. Then all the insects hissed at him.

  He turned and ran.

  Some gave chase.

  The dog flew through the undergrowth, the hissing and spitting insects nipping at his heels. He heard several hit trees, splattering against bark, but not dying, digging deep into the wood. Even small, the wings made a hearty sound and the dog kept running and running until he could hear them no more.

  Now further away from the abandoned park, he stopped, listening, his black ear twitching every which way. When he didn’t hear the bugs anymore, he trotted back to where he’d been spending his nights, deep in the forest.

  In a sparse clearing, a green tent stood, held securely to the ground with thick rope. The dog entered the clearing and approached the tent. A fire smoldered near him, but he ignored it. He shook his big body, arching his back, straining. The chain around his neck clinked louder, covering the sound of snapping bones and rupturing muscles. The dog growled, the sound reverberating through the trees, until it turned into a high-pitched whine and finally, a man’s scream.

  After it was all over, Orrie lay on his side on the ground, his chest heaving, his skin covered in sweat, the dog gone. A cold breeze blew over him and he shivered, but he didn’t get up.

  He closed his eyes, breathing deeply, getting his bearings, before he gently lifted himself to his hands and knees. He reached out with a shaking hand and unzipped the tent, crawling inside.

  Once there, he flopped over and then onto his back. He gazed up at the sloped sides of the tent. What the fuck were those little bugs?

  Briefly, he closed his eyes and let that breeze, once cold, ruffle over him again. He’d spent most of the day as his dog, but now he had to call in. Tell what he’d seen.

  He sat up and leaned forward to zip the tent. No need to have anyone find him here, naked as a jaybird, making an important phone call. He plopped back down on his ass and dug through the dirt by the entrance. He’d buried his money and cell phone in a black box when he first got here, knowing that he’d be spending most of his time as his dog.

  He pulled the box out, shaking off the dirt, and carefully put in the combo. Not like he could carry a key around. He flipped the lid and scooped out his cell phone.

  As he made his call, he shook his hair out, the blond strands full of leaves and grass. He scuffed a hand down his face and felt the beard growth. It had been a while since he’d been in the company of other people.

  The phone on the other end of the line clicked and someone answered.

  “It’s Orrie. We got a problem.”

  Chapter Five

  Trish lived in a bungalow four blocks away from the sheriff’s office. When she’d first come to Magnolia, she’d rented the one bedroom renovated home. After solving a cold case within three hours of arriving, she figured she could probably put a down payment on the structure.

  Now she regretted even coming out here.

  She’d left Levi p
oring over her binders in the conference room. He’d barely grunted at her when she left. The sun had gone down, her paperwork was mostly done, and now she had a few hours to rest before going back at the case in the morning.

  The street she lived on stretched for miles, heading back toward the desert. As far as she knew, she had no neighbors in that direction and only one, an elderly woman, that she passed on her way home.

  She pulled into the driveway and shut the car off. And sat there.

  She’d seen things. Bad things. How could you not when you were a homicide detective? All her training was in big cities and in big cities, people did a lot of things to each other. Lots of shootings, stabbings, even murder with an ax once. But nothing like this. Nothing.

  Trish shoved open her car door and crunched through her driveway to the door. The real estate agent proudly proclaimed that Trish would never have to lock her door, the town was just that safe. Trish not only locked her door, but had a dead bolt installed.

  Only a light in the kitchen spread a soft glow throughout the open floor plan. Trish automatically locked everything behind her and blew out a breath. So good to be home. She pulled her shoes off, then her socks, wiggled her toes against the hard wood floor, then went barefoot into the bedroom.

  Here she flipped a light on and moved slowly around the room, stripping off her jacket and tossing it toward the hamper. She tugged her pants off, too, left them lying on the floor and headed straight for the bathroom.

  A shower. Just a nice, cool shower.

  She pulled the elastic out of her hair and stripped the rest of her clothes off while the water began blasting from the pipes. Whoever had owned the bungalow before her had converted the smaller, second bedroom into an en suite bathroom to die for. There was a massive walk in shower, a huge tub for bubble baths, a double vanity, and even a smaller room that held the toilet.

  Trish stepped into the stream of water and let it hit her in the face.

  What a shit day.

  The body, what was left of the body, still turned her stomach. Like the first had. Like the second had. The thought that someone gnawed on the bones, not a coyote, but a someone, made her gag reflex almost kick in. And if the body wasn’t bad enough…

  Levi. Big, hulking, stupid Levi. Levi who probably wasn’t stupid at all.

  She ducked her head under the water and held there, letting the tears that built all afternoon come to crest on her lashes. Here she could pretend that it was water rolling down her cheeks, not tears. She wished, God how she wished, that these tears were for the victim and not herself.

  Coming here from Atlanta had been a huge mistake.

  Back in the bedroom, she heard a soft tinkling sound.

  “Shit.” She wrenched the water off and grabbed a towel, hurriedly wrapping it around herself. She dripped all the way into the bedroom, wiping the tears away, putting on her game face. The medical examiner hadn’t called her that afternoon, this had to be him.

  But when she pulled her phone out, she saw a number from the station.

  She frowned and answered. “Redding.”

  “The first body was missing a kidney. The second was missing a lung. When were you going to tell me?”

  Levi. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “It’s all there.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. Yet you can’t just tell me?”

  “Fine. The first body was missing a kidney. The second body—”

  “Yeah, yeah, smart ass. It’s not on your wall. Why the fuck not?”

  His growl pattered through the phone and skittered down her spine. She had to remember this was the enemy, that he couldn’t make her feel anything unless it was anger. She wouldn’t let him. “Up until today, I was under the impression that coyotes had gotten to the bodies—”

  “Bullshit. You saw the marks on these bones just like we all did. Teeth. Human teeth. And so a missing lung and a missing kidney didn’t mean anything?”

  Anger spurted through Trish, real live anger that made her want to scream. “How dare you? How dare you call me and insinuate—”

  “I’m not insinuating anything. I’m saying it point blank. You didn’t put this on your wall. I want to know why.”

  “You need to stop interrupting me!”

  “You need to stop hiding things from me!”

  “I wasn’t hiding it from you!” Trish shouted. She took a deep breath and padded over to the bed, dropping onto it in a heap. “Can we just talk about this tomorrow?”

  “No.”

  His stern voice made her eyes narrow. She ran a hand through her barely wet hair. “You won’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  She sighed and looked around her comfy bedroom. When she came out here, she’d wanted to build a life. Build a career. Now the mayor wanted her gone. And she didn’t know why, other than he hated women. But maybe he just hated her. Her past. Her everything.

  “The mayor wanted this to be Satanic.”

  The line hummed but Levi said nothing.

  “So you want me to slap up on my wall that these bodies are missing organs? The bones have human teeth marks? That man is in my office every day.”

  “You have to do your job,” Levi pointed out.

  “That’s why I have the binders,” Trish said. “Look, we can talk about this tomorrow. I’ll be there at five—”

  “No. Who does he want you to arrest?”

  Ah. There was the crux of the matter. The mayor had his enemies, didn’t he?

  “I’m not his personal jailer,” Trish spat. “I’m not going to start dragging people in because he says so.”

  “Who?”

  Trish didn’t answer.

  “Who?” Levi asked again, this time more forcefully.

  “We’ll talk about this tomorrow,” she said through gritted teeth. “And I mean it. Let me get some sleep and we’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “Trish…”

  “No,” she retorted. “Just…no. We’ll talk tomorrow.” She ended the call and tossed the phone on the bed. She half expected him to call back. She kind of wanted him to. But the phone remained silent even after she stared at it for a moment.

  Why did Levi have to be so handsome? Why couldn’t he have been a fat former FBI agent who left most of his lunch on the front of his shirt? Why did he have to be so goddamn fuckable?

  Trish dropped back on the bed, the intensity of the day thrumming her body. Seeing Levi step out of that car had destroyed her. Her libido went into overtime and she hated every second of it. Something about him called to her in the most basic way possible. Probably because she hadn’t gotten laid since moving here. Probably because getting laid in Atlanta hadn’t been a priority either.

  She wanted to take out all her anger on Levi. Use him to focus her rage on. Instead she felt the anger turn to liquid in her veins. His huge muscles would feel good against her skin. She bet that beard would feel good against her thighs.

  Trish moaned. Her legs slid apart, the towel sliding off her hip. Exposing her.

  She thought about Levi. About those strong shoulders, his handsome face, his deep voice. All the things she’d craved in a man for so long. She wondered what it would be like to have his strong fingers caress her breasts, her legs, her belly.

  Her fingers tripped along the places she thought of, pretending it was him. She rubbed her palm against her pussy, feeling the heat and the wet. She squeezed and parted her lips, finding her clit immediately and flicking it with her finger. But she wasn’t ready to come just yet. She wanted this fantasy to play out. Because no doubt that’s all she’d ever have was this fantasy.

  She closed her eyes and imagined him coming in her room, pulling her towel off and looking his fill of her. With her other hand she reached up and cupped a breast, pinching her nipple, then moving to the other one.

  And when he saw her do that, he’d love it, of course. He’d let her play, let her pinch and pull on her own nipples. Maybe soothe them with thick licks of his tongue, drenching her
pussy further. Then he’d lower down to his knees, pushing her legs up and out, putting her feet on his shoulders. And he’d bend that gorgeous head of his and lick once, twice, then plunge that beautiful tongue of his deep inside her. He’d do that, then follow with his thick fingers, the rings cold against her flesh. He’d run a finger over her entrance, collecting the moisture, then shove deep inside, curling his fingers up into her G-spot. She’d be soaked, of course, what with all the licking, the sucking, the anticipation. Then he’d take one of those big, bold fingers, already dripping with her juices, and he’d swipe behind her, feeling her out. And even though she’d never wanted to have anyone near her ass, his thick index finger would swirl inside of her while his tongue sucked her clit and his middle finger lodged deep inside her pussy…

  Trish choked out a cry, her legs shaking. Her eyes opened to see her ceiling, the popcorn she so hated, the ceiling fan spinning lazily.

  Her fingers deep inside her set off shock waves through her body. More than anything she wished it had really been Levi down on her. Licking her. She wished this orgasm hadn’t been like all the others she’d had, lonely and self-imposed.

  She lay there a moment, getting her breathing back to normal, wishing that there had been no fantasy, but also wishing that Levi was here, over her, spilling his come on her belly.

  Then she remembered who she was. Where she was. What the events of the day had held. Not only would Levi never be her lover, but it was foolish to use him as a fantasy. A great fantasy, but a fantasy nonetheless.

  She sat up, her head spinning a little with the force of her orgasm. Her shoulders slumped and she headed back to the bathroom, tossing her towel on the vanity. None of this meant anything. Tomorrow was going to be a horrible day. Tomorrow she had to spill this town’s secrets.

  *****

  Mayor Bernard Charles Elliott sat back in his leather chair and regarded the sheriff. The latter sat in a ladder back chair across from the mayor, his spine rigidly straight and his hat in his lap.