by Jory Strong
I have to do this. Of that she was certain.
Fighting for calm, she headed toward the front door. Reaching it she said, “You’re not going in with me.” Though of course he would, unseen, death hiding in shadow.
“Enter this building and you risk one of the humans you supposedly care about.”
Promise and threat combined. She shivered. “Harm him and there will be consequences.”
“His death wouldn’t create even a ripple in our world.”
“And your death?” she asked in defiance of the icy chill that settled in her core.
Liam laughed, the sound of his amusement like the scrape of barren branches against glass on a windy night. “I hope you survive, Lady.”
Twenty-three
Shit!” Sleepy said, banging his hands on the steering wheel. “Shit, shit, shit!”
“Sorry, ese.”
He took a deep breath, cutting Puppy a look. “It’s okay. No problem. Would have been nice, that’s all.”
A few minutes sooner and maybe he could have tailed Etaín to Cathal Dunne, or used her to get to him. “The dude inside will talk.”
“And then I get to finish him, right?” Puppy lifted his arm, tilting it sideways and holding a pretend gun. “After that, everybody starts calling me Trigger.”
“I don’t know, man. Drooler hasn’t spilled as much blood as you have. I’m thinking maybe this hit should be his, feel me?”
“Yeah. I feel you. Guess it’s fair since he’s the one that put us on to this dude. I thought you were going to get Drooler when you went to talk to Emilio.”
“Wanted to, but his uncle got busy and Drooler didn’t spin the bullshit about needing to meet up with his parole officer in time. No way was his uncle going to buy it with me there. I talked to Emilio, that’s all. Then I left. Drooler’s going to hook up with us here as soon as he can.”
“Emilio give you this guy’s address?”
“Yeah. I checked it out. Old one. Some neighbor told me she thought he was taking care of his sister’s place. So we’ll have to hang here. Walk past the shop, see if he looks like he’s getting done tattooing.”
Puppy climbed out of the car. Soon as the door was closed, Sleepy tugged Lucky’s phone out of his pocket, going to Jacko’s number, thumb hovering over it. He didn’t want to let on that somehow he’d been made, but this was his chance to get in with Jacko and prove himself.
When Jacko answered, Sleepy said, “I’ve been asking around. I got a connection between Cathal Dunne and a tattoo artist who might know what happened to Lucky. We’re grabbing him.”
“Good. That Irish asshole isn’t going to be talking to nobody.”
“He’s dead?”
“As good as. A friend of mine is waiting with a little surprise for him. Asshole won’t survive this time.”
Sleepy wanted in on it. But it sounded like Jacko was letting it ride too. Best he could do was try to pull Jacko in to his action.
“One of my crew is begging to earn his bones. I’m going to have him cap the guy we’re snagging. You good with showing up? Be our guest of honor. Afterward we could celebrate. I can get my hands on some good shit.”
“Call me when it’s ready to go down.”
*
Etaín stepped into the office, hands stuffed in the pockets of her jeans, fisted against possible use and to hide the trembling that had taken them when windowless hallways telescoped inward and sweat poured down her sides each time they passed a waiting interrogation room. The captain closed the door. Quietly, and somehow that was far more threatening than if he’d slammed it.
She couldn’t stop herself from noting the shadows in his office, and shivering with the question of how large an opening Liam needed in order to pass through it.
The captain moved around the desk, separating himself as though he realized the unseen menace she brought with her. Or maybe Laura or one of their daughters had already called him about what happened at Aesirs.
Yeah. That was probably it.
“Are you here to talk about your involvement with the Dunnes?” he asked.
“No.”
“Your choice in boys, and now men, hasn’t improved.”
And your choice of a wife is any better?
But she didn’t say it. She was tired of this dance, tired of being judged and found wanting even if that judgment had its roots in love.
“Did you know Eamon has forbidden your brother or me from asking you to help us?”
Her expression was answer enough.
“I believe his exact words were something to the effect that we wouldn’t be allowed access to you.”
Aggravation flared but faded quickly, because the encounter with the captain and Parker could only have happened days ago, before Eamon took her ink, before he’d eased up on the whole Lord of Elves thing. “Yeah, that sounds like something he’d say.”
Her flippant answer didn’t set well with the captain. His face tightened into austere and disapproving, a look she’d seen often enough since she’d first used needle and homemade ink to mark skin.
“You’ve moved in with him I take it? Or Cathal Dunne?”
“I’ve still got my apartment.” A place she was determined to go to next.
The captain’s expression altered. Pity? Victory?
“Parker said you’d cleared out of your apartment.”
“What?” The stuttered question matched the uneven beat of her heart.
“Parker got called back to DC after we left you the other night. He stopped by to leave a note when he realized your phone hadn’t been recovered.”
“I’ve got it back,” she said, rote response as the panic that had swelled into existence at Aesirs, along with the sense of having lost control of her life, returned in a wild rush.
“Let me put you into protective custody,” he said, voice gentled as if sensing weakness.
“There’s no place you could put me where I’d be safe. I need Cathal and Eamon for that.”
It was a mistake to admit as much. She knew it the instant the words left her mouth, but some little girl part of her wanted him to understand, to stop pushing for something impossible.
“They’re going to destroy you, Etaín. If you’re lucky, you’ll just end up in jail.”
“Nothing I say will make you believe they’re not criminals.”
“Look what you’re involved in because of them! The murder of four boys!”
Who drugged, raped, and tried to cover what they’d done by overdosing two girls, succeeding in killing one of them.
Even though the federal agents had told her as much, any argument she made would only confirm for him what the surveillance pictures hinted at, that she’d touched Brianna Dunne and afterward drawn her memories.
“I can’t say what you want me to say. Just like I can’t be who you want me to be.” She pulled her hands from their hiding place, turning them and opening the fists to reveal the stylized eyes, the ink that marked the beginning of their estrangement. Though for his brand of justice, he’d been willing to keep her in his life. “This is who I am.”
He sat heavily in his chair. “Why are you here, Etaín?”
“You’ve got a two-sided picture of my mother. I need to see it.”
She spared him the knowledge that his wife apparently had him watched by a PI when he went out of town.
Or she meant to.
His lack of surprise had additional questions tumbling out of her mouth. “Did she tell you I’d come looking for it? Did she give you a message for me?”
Dread sunk into her at his expression. It arrived in a heart clawing instant before he asked, “How do you know I saw her?”
She shrugged, hoping casual would deflect. “I just know.”
His attention lingered on the necklace that clearly didn’t go with the jeans and shirt then dropped to her hands, a detective’s mind sorting possibilities. Hurt came, clouding his eyes. Resignation followed, deep-seated and painful for her to witness.<
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His gaze lifted, meeting hers, and there was only condemnation, an accusation that echoed Liam’s insinuation that she was out of control. “You assaulted Laura.”
Further evidence no doubt of her spiral downward into full criminality thanks to the Dunnes. It was childish. Etaín knew it was but she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Laura started it. And she was on my turf.”
The ridiculousness of that last bit nearly made her laugh. “I’m surprised you haven’t forbidden her from Aesirs.”
He rose from his seat and turned away, a fist squeezed her heart at the weight of his movement, the age and weariness he’d gained since meeting her downstairs and escorting her to his office. Was this what happened when humans got tangled in Elven affairs? Had her mother even cared about him? Or had she slept with him only so he’d believe later that he’d fathered the child presented to him?
The questions stung her, filling her eyes with tears she wiped away while his back was to her. And yet still her hands tingled with the desire to use her gift to capture his recent memories of her mother. She imagined herself reaching out, touching. Taking.
No! No! She refused to be controlled by gift or magic or Dragon.
With ferocious concentration she envisioned one of the complex sigils Eamon had taught her. She imagined herself completely surrounded by the glyph meant to become a personal ward, a shield against more than physical danger.
It was enough to deaden temptation, though she wasn’t entirely certain whether she’d actually created a barrier or if the captain’s opening a cabinet drawer beneath the window refocused her desire.
Her mouth became dry. And in her heart, hurt and longing and hope clashed like tumultuous cymbals in the hands of a manic-depressive.
“We spoke briefly,” he said. “About inconsequential things. I’m not sure why she asked to see me at all.”
But Etaín knew. And her eyes grew wet again on his behalf.
She took the picture when he offered it, noting the way he’d carefully patched the torn pieces back together, her mother standing in front of an emerald green lake. And on the other side, the image she’d come here for.
Her mother stood in the doorway of a bookstore specializing in the occult, one hand resting on the jamb, the other at her side. Etaín recognized the store immediately, remembered the day they’d gone there because the shop was so out of the ordinary, so unlike the bookstores they’d haunted in each of the cities they’d temporarily called home.
It’d scared and thrilled her, going to this place specializing in things occult, though with adult eyes the exterior of the store was worn and dusty and faded, entirely nondescript and unworthy of even a first glance except for the woman about to enter it.
What do you think? Is this a good place to find answers? her mother had asked, and those long-ago questions were a beautiful, wrenching melody in Etaín’s mind.
Was it? It hadn’t been then, not to an eight-year-old, though she’d loved looking at all the tarot cards and had re-created some of them from memory when her mother refused to purchase a deck for her.
But now? Did her mother mean for her to go to New York? To this store they’d visited shortly before Seattle?
Etaín tensed at the prospect, causing the necklace to feel like a choke chain against her throat. Her gaze traveled down her mother’s arm to the doorjamb in a search for glyphs, some tangible proof of magic or a connection to the Elven world.
Not finding it in old wood and cracked paint, she moved to the tomes visible in the front window, and a jolt went through her at discovering a Dragon among the images there. Not a book, but a tarot-sized card seemingly dropped haphazardly in the back corner and not retrieved.
A hooded woman stood in front of a great dark beast with its wings spread. Only the gold trim on her cape kept her from merging into the Dragon and becoming indistinguishable from it. In the upper left corner, there was a sigil rather than a card name.
“Take it and go, Etaín,” the captain said, his tone full of weariness, making her regret.
“I’m sorry—”
His raised hand stopped her. “My offer of protective custody stands.”
“No.”
“Then enough has been said today.”
She couldn’t let it go. “Laura wanted me to promise I’d stay completely out of Parker’s life. And yours. No calls. No contact.”
“Let it go, Etaín. Just let it go.”
But hand on the doorknob she hesitated, fighting the urge to look back, to admit that it hurt, to have this relationship based only on her using her gift, on his accepting just a sliver of who she was, that the ache for more couldn’t fade when hope existed.
Maybe it’d be better to let Eamon win this argument. To stop touching victims when asked, to not see either Parker or the captain unless it was a social visit.
Words her heart didn’t believe. She cared about justice for the innocent even if her vision of it was closer to the Dunnes’. But then she’d lived the memory of every victim she’d touched. She left the office with focus, a purpose, calling Anton as soon as she stood beneath open skies.
“You got a tattoo for me?”
“I need to see you in person. Can we meet up?”
“Where you at?”
She gave him the name of a café a couple of blocks away.
“I’ll send someone to get you.” And a short time later a sports car pulled to the curb ahead of where she stood waiting, sipping a mocha that went down smooth but churned in her stomach.
She took a step toward the car as the door opened and a lean, attractive black man got out far enough to flash a smile and say, “Your chauffeur has arrived.”
The voice kicked her memory. He was one of Jamaal’s clients. He had devotional ink from shoulder to wrist on his left arm. Jesus. Mary. A cross that was beautiful.
“Greg, right?”
“Good memory.”
“Haven’t seen you in a while.”
He laughed. “Wife says I’m sporting enough ink. Besides that, I’ve got a new kid on the way. Got to be thinking about college funds. Hop in and I’ll take you to see my cousin.”
“Cousin? Small world.”
“True enough.” She didn’t miss the way the smile left his eyes and lips.
Getting into the car, she inhaled the scent of leather and care. “New?”
“Had it a couple of years. Writing is on the wall though.”
“College fund?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll look good driving a soccer mom van.”
“You mean the coach’s wheels, doubling as the team equipment vehicle.”
He got on 101, heading out of the city. She experienced a brush of fear, wondering where Eamon’s territory ended, her gaze flicking to the rearview mirror and pulse skittering when she could almost believe she saw Liam about to materialize there.
“How far are we going?” she asked.
“Foster City.”
Not too far then.
She caught Greg staring at her, as if he’d picked up on her fear. Saw his hands tighten on the steering wheel like he was arguing with himself. Finally he said, “Anton did me favor years back, a life-changing one. I owe him. Otherwise he wouldn’t be staying with me.”
“I owe him a favor too.” Truth, but not the purpose of this visit.
Twenty-four
Home sweet home, Cathal thought. It’d been that when he was growing up, despite where the money came from, despite the presence of his father’s mobbed-up soldiers and his mother’s fixation with society and her place in it.
He couldn’t shake the family loyalty, couldn’t shake the lessons learned here. Scratch the surface and he could be what his father and uncle were, a stone-cold killer. He’d almost become that very thing in the presence of the Harlequin Rapist.
He parked across from his parents’ house rather than having the gate opened so he could pull around back. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually seen his mot
her or father enter or exit through the front door, though given his father’s security, the chance of being attacked here was slim. He doubted the neighbors had as much of a handle on their own schedules and routines as the Dunne personnel did.
Paranoia? Deterrent? Or necessity? Because he didn’t know the details of his father’s business, he couldn’t be certain which it was.
“Hold,” Heath said, getting out as down the street a car door opened and a woman emerged, long, curling black hair shielding her face.
A glint of sunlight drew Cathal’s attention to the ring she wore, the red flare of it as unnatural today as it had been at Saoirse. She twisted it on her thumb, hiding it in a fist as she turned toward him, steps faltering at seeing Heath approaching with rapid, smoothly menacing strides.
Her chin lifted in defiant courage and surprise hit Cathal at how much she resembled Brianna from a distance. Remaining in the car became impossible.
He got out and jogged forward, unsure what Heath was capable of if he determined the woman was a threat. He was there seconds after Heath intercepted her.
Jesus. Up close and personal it was more than something as tame as a resemblance. With her blue eyes and thick, black lashes, she could pass for a female version of Brian, the cousin who’d died less than a year ago in a car wreck, not a twin, but a sister one of his uncle’s affairs had resulted in.
Christ. What was she doing here?
There was only one possible reason. She’d come to find out where her father was.
Did Denis even know she existed?
Heath grabbed her wrist. She tensed, shooting a look at Cathal, fear and defiance combined in blue eyes that were far too familiar.
“Let her go,” he ordered.
“It would be best if I see the ring first.”
Magic. It didn’t even surprise him.
“Do you mind?” he asked this stranger who was probably his cousin.
She remained stiff but turned her wrist in Heath’s grip, opening her fingers to reveal the ring.
Heath’s eyebrows went up. He released her. “An interesting artifact,” he said and walked away after having apparently decided there was nothing to worry about.
Fuck, if only that were true. “I’m Cathal.”