Stolen Redemption
Frozen, Book 3
Michel Prince
Published: 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62210-328-7
Published by Liquid Silver Books. Copyright © 2016, Michel Prince.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
Manufactured in the USA
Email [email protected] with questions, or inquiries about Liquid Silver Books.
Blurb
Esther, Vincent, and Pivane thought they knew what side they were on.
When Esther Benson became Frozen, she thought she’d spend the rest of her afterlife searching for salvation. She never thought she’d find it in the arms of a small town detective.
Detective Vincent DeTello thought a small town would be just the place to bury his past. Mount Pleasant, Iowa, is a sweet town on paper, the kind of town where a guy could forget his feelings and live to serve and protect. He didn’t count on meeting Esther and having the gates of his heart forced open again.
With all his rivals captured or injured, Pivane is poised to finally become leader of his demon clan and make all his dreams come true. However, even his black heart can be touched by love. A love he’d have to throw away everything for.
They thought they knew whose team they were on, but love changes everything.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to all of those with their eyes closed to the opportunities for redemption all around them. May you find it and forever be saved.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the fans of the Frozen series for keeping me going with requests for me. Liquid Silver for letting me put it back out there. And my family for always supporting me.
Chapter 1
Pivane
ANGER, hatred, and the smell of ass. What a way to start my day.
Checking into the four-story medium security correctional facility in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, I took in the aroma. With a swipe of my hand, my name was added to Warren Brown’s approved visitors list. Electronics were easy for me to manipulate. Maybe it was the electricity involved in powering them. I could walk on the wind. Was an electrical charge much different?
I had been tempted to hide something betwixt my ass cheeks just for fun, but I didn’t have that kind of time today. Instead I winked at the guard as he patted me down. You’d think being dressed as a respectable member of the bar would have gotten me through without the vulgarities, but then again, what’s the point of going to a prison if not to enjoy some naughty slap and tickle action?
The room with its small circular tables had vending machines, children’s games, and families attempting a semblance of normality for twenty minutes on a Saturday. At the far end of the room sat Warren Brown. His hair was shorn evenly around his head. His standard issue T-shirt, dark blue jeans, and dock shoes were worn-in as he sat with his hands folded on the table in front of him.
He never knew what I was and this was not the time to show him the powers I possessed. Not now, but maybe soon if he didn’t comply with my wishes. He stood the moment I made eye contact with him. With a firm hand to his shoulder I stopped him.
“You’re not on my approved visitor’s list.” A low growl came from his throat.
“Your attorney wasn’t feeling well, Mr. Brown. He sent me to go over your pending extradition cases.”
“Iowa gave me a life sentence.”
“Yeah, but California and Nevada still want to kill you.” I placed my almost empty briefcase on the table. “Sit.”
The guard eyed the two of us. Sure, Warren had the right to deny seeing me, but I knew him better than he thought. Curiosity would win him over. Sitting down in the hard plastic chair, the legs screeched across the faded beige linoleum as I sat across from my old pal Warren. He leaned his beefy arms on the table and snarled as soon as the guard walked out of earshot.
“How the hell are you my lawyer?”
“Make up a business card online and I can be anything.” I winked again and looked at my old friend. Well, not friend. Victim is the word I’m sure he’d use, but let’s not quibble. “How have you been? They treating you well?”
“The rapes are fewer and farther between.”
“Is that a good or bad thing?” I laughed. “It doesn’t matter, to each their own.”
“What happened when I was with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I don’t remember shit for six months, but I have dead bodies trailing me until I hit Des Moines.”
“Pam really threw me off. I never expected her to get through to you when I took off.” I shrugged. “Oh well, when you’re craving a Maid-Rite you gotta have it right? There aren’t any outside of Iowa really.”
“I lost my entire life and I don’t even remember it.”
“Oh, that’s simple. I asked you to take a hit of my meth, you said yes, then…Well, we ran into this one girl.”
“That’s it? I was so high I couldn’t remember raping and killing women?”
“I have video if you want,” I offered. “It’s on one of those mini-players you have to have the VHS tape you can put it in. Maybe I could see if they’d convert it to DVD for me.”
“You destroyed my life.” Warren slammed his hands down on the table and the whole room silenced. His evil glare was adorable in the way a snarling dog just seemed to want someone to pet it.
“I didn’t do a thing to you. What you did was always inside you. I just gave you the key. You didn’t have to walk through the door.”
“Why are you here?”
“Kiriana,” I said as I popped the latches on my briefcase and pulled out pictures of her. “Your daughter’s grown up to be a full-on hottie.”
Warren rifled through the pictures I’d taken over the past few months. A few with Damarion the fool, others with her and her mate.
“Stay away from her.”
“Oh, Warren, she’s in town and crosses my path quite regularly.” I sat back and crossed my arms as he traced Kiriana’s jawline. “The dark one there is her husband I believe.”
“Sh—she…she’s married?”
“Married and living in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Didn’t you know? Hasn’t she come to visit?”
“No, her mother cut off all communication after I was convicted.”
“That’s too bad. Maybe that’s why she moved here in June.”
“June? She’s been here that long?”
“A few months after her mother passed. You think she’s trying to form a connection with her estranged father?”
“Kalista’s dead?”
“I guess news travels slowly when you’re in prison.”
“Depends on the news.” Warren pushed the pictures away from him. “I will tell you one thing I learned in here.”
“What’s that?”
“No one walks through that door without an agenda. I doubt pouring salt in my wounds was your goal. So, what is it?”
* * * *
Detective Vincent DeTello
Standing over a woman’s dead body still made my stomach flip. Not that I could show it though. Instead I reached for my phantom pack of cigarettes and came to the crushing realization I had given the damn things up two months ago. Instead of finding the sweet release from smoke filling my lungs, I had to s
ettle for a Dum Dum. I pulled off the waxy white paper wrapping, stuck the coconut flavored sugary confection in my mouth, and pressed the nicotine patch on my shoulder. It wasn’t like it actually dispensed more of the necessary medicine to my bloodstream, but the placebo effect was enough to stop the trampoline last night’s chicken was using in my gut.
A flash of light went off as Officer Wenzel took images of the scene. The woman appeared to be in her early thirties. Her perfectly manicured nails were now chipped, breaking the line of the light pink nail polish disturbed with black dirt and dark red dried blood. Her pale skin had already started to get the bluish hue of death.
Blonde hair swept back in a now-disheveled ponytail was matted to her forehead on the right side.
“Just like the others, huh?” Marz said, coming up behind me.
“Yep,” I replied, pulling out my sucker. “You know what that means.”
“N.O.P.,” he replied with the standard Not-Our-Problem. It definitely wasn’t his problem, but I wasn’t so sure I was off the hook. “Wonder how long before they show up and we can leave?” he asked, stretching out and unkinking the last of the night from his back.
Another flash went off.
“It’s only the second murder. The rest of the blondes are missing.”
“We all know they’re dead.”
“She looks different than the last one,” I said as I kneeled, but examined her body from a distance. “Cleaner.”
“Maybe she’s new to the stroll.”
“Maybe she wasn’t hooking. We’re downtown, not by the truck stop.”
I looked up at the two-story brick buildings on either side of me. No windows, just the solid back doors of local establishments. A few parking spaces were vacant and not because either side of the alleyway was blocked by two of the seven cars our force had. Mount Pleasant Iowa wasn’t a hot bed of crime. There was just enough for us to afford a detective. Unlike those lazy big city cops, I was the burglary, homicide, narcotics, missing persons, and sexual crimes departments all rolled up in one underpaid and underutilized detective.
I took in the night as flashes from Wenzel’s camera filled the darkness. Crisp winter air filled my lungs, telling of impending flurries. In less than an hour the flakes would fly.
“You think she came from Benny’s?” Marz asked, naming a bar nearby.
I leaned down close to her blue lips and inhaled the scent of hops and barley. “When do you think Fred will be in to open up?”
“Close to ten.” Marz kicked rocks toward the street.
The sun was beginning to crest as light pinks and purples reached through the clouds. Traffic picked up on either side of the alley as school buses and first shift workers started their day. The backside of the local paper was in this alley and as much as I wished I could brush this under the rug, even Carlton Trembly, the worst reporter for the Mount Pleasant Gazette, could ferret this story out. And wouldn’t you know…standing on the other side of the police car was Meegan Yap.
Fresh from the University Of Iowa School Of Journalism, Meegan seemed to think every town had enough secrets to win her a Pulitzer. She’d watched too many dramatic movies.
“Detective DeTello,” she called, and I grumbled. “Detective.”
“Don’t give in for anything less than a blowjob,” Marz advised.
“I’ll take that under advisement.” Running my fingers through my hair I steadied myself for the onslaught of questions. I could wuss out and say she had to contact the chief—he was probably still asleep. Waking him up might just scare her away for a few hours.
“Detective DeTello, can you tell me what’s going on down there?”
“No ‘morning, Vince’?” I responded. “How’s it going? Anything new?”
Meegan was not impressed and the scowl on her face was evident. Her unnatural strawberry-blonde hair was pulled back into a tight bun. Although from obvious Asian descent she was still in the experimental phase of life, which explained the hair. A navy peacoat hugged her slender frame while her high-heeled boots helped her reach five-feet.
“We found a dead body, that’s all.”
“Body? Male? Female? How old?” Meegan’s pen stood poised at the ready as questions shot from her mouth like an AK-47 unleashing its magazine.
Reaching for another sucker I made sure to offer one to Meegan as well as Officer Reynolds. Kimber took hers with a smirk. Meegan kept the scowl in place. Cherry this time mixed well with the coconut flavor from the last one.
“Well? Are you going to answer me or just stand there like a moron sucking on your lollipop?”
“It’s a sucker actually,” I corrected as I pulled the stick out. “See a lollipop is traditionally bigger and round.”
“Someone is dead. That’s news. Are you refusing to give details to the press?”
“There is no legal precedent that says I need to share the details of a crime with you.”
“So it is a crime?” Meegan arched an eyebrow as if she’d just uncovered the Watergate scandal.
“Not yet, I’m just sharing a little journalistic information. We put out our public record calls after…” I put the sucker back in my mouth, then pulled it back out. “Not before and not during.”
“What are you hiding? I know you’re hiding something.”
“You need to have more faith in people.”
“No. No, I don’t.”
“Then you’ll never find love or be happy, but if that works for you keep it up.”
The chief pulled up in his classic Cadillac and poured out of his seat. A taller man, Chief Carlson at one point in time had been an intimidating officer. Now his former muscle had turned into a bulk of a gelatinous mold. Huffing from walking the twenty yards to where I stood, he kept his back to Meegan.
“What do we have here?”
I looked at Meegan again with her pen at the ready and walked Chief Carlson down the alley and out of earshot.
“She was beaten, probably sexually assaulted,” I reported, and the chief spat from the plug of tobacco he always seemed to have pinched between his gums and lips. “The girls working the truck stop have been teaming up lately. That might be why he moved into the city.”
“Tell me how this is a good thing? Now we got Yappy back there hounding us when she didn’t even know there was an issue.”
“We have to tell her something.”
“Do we? I miss Trembly.”
“He’s still around, only he’s covering community events.”
Terry Knutson finished loading the body on his gurney and looked at the two of us.
“So, I’ll send you the bill,” the mortician confirmed as he shut the door on his hearse.
“Yes.” Chief sighed, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “Any more bodies and we’re going to have to call in the feds.”
“We should have done that with the ten girls that are missing,” I grumbled.
I was over my head and knew it, but convincing ourselves Mount Pleasant was a sleepy little town with none of the negatives of the city was the department’s favorite pastime. In truth we had drugs, rape, assaults, unmarried teenage mothers, and now murder. Guess we’d graduated to the big time.
* * * *
Esther Benson
“Will you tell me about Dubai?” I asked as I sat at the small table in Bruce Kertz’s trailer.
“It’s dry, hot, and modern.”
“I suppose as a man you had less to fear.”
“They were hospitable,” Bruce replied as he passed me a cup of tea. “You’re not like the other Frozen, are you?”
“How do you mean?” I blew into the cup.
“Well, besides Zarmina, I never meet any of the…what do you call yourself, an Other?”
“Zarmina is an Other, I am not betrothed.”
“You aren’t? So you’re a fighter?”
“Yes.” I cooled at the words.
Separating myself from the downtim
e-me and the fighter-me kept me balanced. They were two sides that may be from the same coin, but they were two different worlds. I’d regained more of myself coming to this compound. The extended downtime made me dread the return to fighting. I’d been finding the solace I lost decades ago.
Bruce quirked his lip up and then took a sip of his tea.
“I can’t see you as a scary demon slayer.” Bruce raised one of his gray eyebrows and scanned my outfit. “You look like you should be running down a hill toward the Soddy on the prairie.”
“I’m not that bad, am I?” I asked as I smoothed my cornflower blue skirt with the tiny daisies. “Maybe I am a bit conservative, but that was how I was raised.”
“You are fine. I’ve seen every walk of life come out of that barn. It’s nice to see a lady.”
There was no telling all the things Bruce had seen over the years. Being the front man to our whole demon-hunting sect was very profitable to the Screen, and to be a Screen one needs to ignore the strange and inhuman.
A knock at the door caused me to jump.
“You’re popular today,” I said as I settled myself and dabbed the tea I’d spilt.
“Probably just Nye stopping in with my stipend and to make sure I have everything I need.”
Bruce crossed to the door and opened it as a cold wind cut through the small opening. Cologne traveled on the wind, and I turned sharply to see the outline of a man who wasn’t a member of our compound. He was wearing a roughed-in brown leather coat, crisp jeans, and a button-up shirt with a tan tie. I wasn’t sure who he could be or why he’d be interacting with our Screen. The flash of gold from his badge had me gripping the table. Outside of Screens, I hadn’t been around a human since I was one.
“How can I help you, Officer?” Bruce asked.
“Detective, actually. Detective DeTello. I’m looking for Kiriana George.”
“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
“I figured. She gave your number as one where she could be reached, but you don’t look like you’re related to her husband,” the detective said. “Could I come in for a minute? It was quite a drive out here and my heater’s on the fritz.”
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