For Love or Vengeance

by Caridad Piñeiro

  “Smith, I believe.”

  “Great,” Helene said with a shake of her head. Nothing about this case was going to come easily, was it?

  Miguel pushed away from the counter. “Thanks, Jeff. You’ve been very helpful. If you hear anything—”

  “I’ll be sure to call,” he said with a simper that set Helene’s teeth on edge.

  Which only confirmed her fears from this morning—that her feelings for Miguel were already proving to be a huge distraction. She needed to do something to get her unruly emotions under control.

  As they left the store, Miguel slung an arm around her shoulders and met her gaze. “Ready for a trip back to Stage Left?”

  Helene and Miguel had only gotten about halfway to Gold’s memorabilia shop when they spotted Andrew Smith walking into a café a few blocks away from Stage Left. According to their notes, it was one of the places on their list of spots where Broadway hopefuls gathered. They hurried after him.

  Miguel stayed by the entrance while she went inside and approached the tattooed man. She could already feel ripples of his slimy negative energy lap against her. She had to force herself to keep walking, but didn’t get too close.

  Smith didn’t notice her at first, but as he slung his backpack off his shoulder and reached for its zipper, he finally looked up and saw her coming toward him. His eyes opened wide. He jerked the backpack into place on his shoulder, tucked his head down, and quickly walked toward the opposite side of the café, where there was a second exit.

  Miguel signaled he was going around the building to head him off. She ran after Smith and called out for him to stop, identifying herself as an FBI agent. But the kid bolted out the door.

  And ran smack onto the sidewalk where he met up with the barrel of Miguel’s gun. He had it trained on Smith as he called out, “FBI! Put your hands in the air!”

  Smith cursed, but did as instructed. Beneath the extensive tattoos, his skin paled, making the multicolored designs even more prominent. Pulses of malevolence flowed from the images.

  Helene didn’t want to touch him, so she snared his arm by the sleeve of his hoodie, jerked it down, and slapped a handcuff on his wrist while reciting his Miranda rights. As she pulled his other arm around to cuff it, the backpack fell onto the floor. Smith glanced at it uneasily.

  Miguel narrowed his eyes at it, then at Smith. The kid had started to sweat, and the stench of evil came off him in waves. “What’s in the bag, Andrew?”

  He pretended not to hear.

  After she had secured the second cuff, Miguel put away his gun and picked up the knapsack. He glanced at the zipper, but it was zipped up tight. And they didn’t have a warrant.

  Helene met his gaze, and he said, “Let’s take Mr. Smith downtown and ask him a few questions.”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong. You have no right to arrest me,” Andrew whined, and yanked away from Helene’s grasp, glaring daggers at them. His negative energy swelled, nearly choking her, so she let him.

  “Then why did you rabbit?” she asked.

  More silence.

  She looked at Miguel, wanting to get him away from the malevolent aura. “You getting the car?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Back in a few.”

  Helene ordered Smith off to one side and let him lean against a brick wall while they waited. She stood as far away from him as she dared, staring fiercely at him. At first he sullenly met her gaze, but eventually glanced away.

  Despite the nausea that roiled in her stomach at what she might see, she reached out with her second sight to find out more about him. The murky, angry lines of his aura shifted and jerked around him like a knot of striking snakes, matching the disturbed psyche of their suspect. It was thick and viscous, impenetrable without intensifying her power, or touching him.

  Not a chance. Besides, she knew Miguel wouldn’t approve of her using otherworldly, possibly painful means to get information from him. Or a confession. But she stepped close to Smith, leaned into his face, and said, “You do not want to mess with me.”

  “I got nothing to say,” he mumbled, refusing to meet her gaze.

  “You have a lot of anger inside you. I can feel it surrounding you, swallowing you up in a sea of hatred. You’re pissed about life.”

  “Back off, you fuckin’ bitch,” he snarled. His head shot up and their noses nearly collided.

  She forced herself not to jerk away. “Hell, no. I live for breaking little pissants like you.”

  The blast of a horn broke their staring match. She swung around. Miguel had pulled the sedan up to the curb.

  “Move,” she said, took hold of Smith’s upper sleeve, twisting it tight as a tourniquet, and pushed him through the door and toward the back seat.

  He resisted at first but she tightened a little more, earning a strangled yelp from him.

  Shoving him into the car, she bent over and whispered, “Just wait till I get you alone.”

  Helene, Miguel, and ADIC Hernandez stood behind the one-way mirror looking into the interrogation room where Smith sat in a chair, fidgeting nervously. They’d taken off his handcuffs, and his fingers drummed spastically on the scarred interview table. His gaze jumped all around the room before settling back each time on the mirror.

  He had been in there for close to an hour while they finished running his name through the various databases and drafted up a search warrant for the contents of his backpack. Diana had left with the warrant request a few minutes ago to track down a friendly judge.

  “He’s too jumpy not to be guilty of something,” Helene said, her arms tucked across her abdomen to tame the circus of nasties in her stomach. His bad energy had gotten under her skin. She needed to shake it off and stay well away from the twitchy creep.

  Miguel grunted. “You’d be jumpy, too, if you had his rap sheet. Possession. Assault and battery. Hate crimes.”

  “Don’t forget the peeping Tom charge they dropped,” Hernandez added.

  Helene glanced from one man to the other. “Escalating crimes of violence. History of a dysfunctional family life. He fits the basic pattern for a serial killer.”

  “Except for his IQ. Andrew Smith is dumb as a post,” Miguel said.

  “So maybe he’s the muscle and not the mastermind,” ADIC Hernandez suggested.

  Helene mulled over the possibility that the kid was just a pawn. It fit with the weird vibes and images she had pulled from the victims, photos, and locations. That sense that maybe there were two distinct energies engaged in the killings. Maybe Andrew was just following orders, playing someone else’s game.

  But whose?

  Miguel read her thoughts, as usual. “Do you suppose Tim Gold is the one calling the shots?”

  Hernandez shook his head. “We’ve got nothing on him. Everything came up clean when Reyes ran his name.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s not a sociopath. It just means he’s good at hiding what he does,” Helene said, frustrated she couldn’t make sense of the images her second sight had revealed. Wishing she dared lay hands on Andrew Smith and probe the hell out of him. Delve into his black energies to decipher what was really going on.

  They stood there in silence for a few more minutes, contemplating their suspect. Then ADIC Hernandez said, “Go in there and sweat him. Make him think we’ve got something on him, and he needs to deal with us.”

  Miguel glanced at her. “Good cop or bad cop?”

  She laughed and shook her head. “There’s no way I can do good cop.”

  Miguel grinned and motioned her toward the door. “Let’s go break this guy.”

  At the interrogation room door, she paused. “We will break him. I promise.”

  His eyes narrowed, his earlier playfulness gone. “I don’t doubt it. But by the book, Helene. It’s the only way I do things.”

  She nodded to appease him, but she had her own book of rules to follow. Rules that had only one purpose—to secure justice. She couldn’t let her feelings for Miguel, her need to please him, interfere wi
th what she had to do.

  They walked into the room and Smith jumped up from his chair. “I want a lawyer. My rights say I can have a lawyer.”

  Helene stifled a huff of irritation. It was always harder when they decided to lawyer up. They needed to watch what they said, so they couldn’t be accused of questioning him after his request. “No need for that, Mr. Smith. You’re free to leave at any time. But it would be better if you talked to us.”

  A wary look crept onto his pierced face and he glanced at Miguel, who was standing a step behind her. “Is she bullshitting me? You’d let me walk out of here?”

  Miguel walked around her and sat down kitty-corner to Smith at the table. Leaning his chair back on two legs, he laced his fingers together and brought them to the back of his head in a deceptively casual pose. “If Special Agent Alexander says you can go, you can go. But I sure as hell wouldn’t want her watching my ass every hour of every day if I were you.”

  Miguel sent his gaze up and down Helene’s body. With a low whistle, he said, “On second thought, don’t say a word. Maybe I wouldn’t mind so much after all.”

  His comment only earned a sneer from Smith, so Miguel held up a hand. “Sorry, dude. Didn’t realize you drove stick.”

  Smith erupted, his face bright red as he slammed his hands on the table. “I’m no fuckin’ homo!”

  Helene buried a smile. As an interrogator, Miguel definitely had skills. She casually perched a hip on the edge of the table, exposing a length of leg. “I know that, Andrew. May I call you Andrew? I saw pictures of what you did to those gays down in the Village. Beat them up pretty bad. You had a knife, didn’t you? Too bad you didn’t get to use it.”

  “The knife was just for protection,” Smith said automatically, as though he’d recited the words many times before. He dropped back down in his chair and slouched back, looking away from her.

  Bracing herself, she opened her middle eye, and sensed his unease—around her, especially. The color of his aura changed and muddied as he grew more anxious. Although she hated the thought of touching all that dirty nasty ugly energy, she would to accomplish her mission.

  She leaned close to his face. “You had the knife because you like to carve people up. Especially women. Just like the Butcher carves people up.”

  He started shaking his head, his actions growing more agitated the longer she stared him down. She hadn’t even released any of her power, or touched him.

  She was holding back for now. But when she released her full wrath on him, the bastard would know the true meaning of punishment.

  She could feel Miguel’s alertness as he sat next to her, keeping a careful eye on their suspect—and on her. A spike of irritation stabbed through her. He didn’t trust her. Didn’t believe she knew where the line was, how far they could go before violating Smith’s rights. She knew. This wasn’t her first interrogation.

  But she would go right up to that line if it meant getting what she needed. And maybe even cross it.

  She leaned in closer, ignoring the spill of hatred oozing over her. He put an arm up to ward her off, and she clamped her fingers around his wrist. “I’ll bet it makes you feel so powerful, Andrew. When the knife slips in. And the blood—”

  “I want a lawyer,” he shot back, and tried to pull out from her grip, but she held firm and called on her powers to project images into his mind.

  “We have an agent on the way back with a warrant for your backpack. But you already know what we’ll find in there,” Helene pressed, flashing pictures into his brain of the fake casting call papers and the faces of the dead.

  “There’s nothing in there. I haven’t done anything!” he shouted, spittle flying from his lips.

  Helene kept her hold on him and fought how his evil energies wanted to slip into her. To battle that, she shoved back at the forces and showed him visions of the hurt that awaited him in jail.

  His protests grew more forceful. “Let go! You’re hurting me!”

  “But you like the pain. You like making other people hurt,” she said, tightening her grip even more.

  The air in the room shifted, charged with energy, as she summoned even more of her power, wanting to reach into him, past the muck and the swirling, rage-filled malevolence, and see right to his black soul. Read the truth written there by his actions, and sear into his mind the agonies of hell.

  Miguel had kept quiet up until now, letting Helene run with her bad cop act. But she’d gone too far, and now he was angry. And he suddenly wondered if it really was an act. With her prior record—

  “What are you doing? Let me go,” Smith screeched at her, struggling vainly to jerk his arm free. He reared back from the table in an effort to break her grip, knocking over his chair.

  “Agent Alexander!” Miguel jumped up and grabbed Helene’s other arm to make her let go. Instantly, a weird heat shot up his arm and a sharp pain jabbed him in the center of his brain. Wincing, he yanked her off Smith and shook his own arm to quell the stinging sensation. What the hell was that?

  Smith stumbled backward. Wild-eyed, he pressed himself against the wall, his gaze darting back and forth between them before locking on the mirror. He pointed a shaky finger at it. “You saw what she did to me. She’s crazy. She’s the one who should be behind bars. She assaulted—”

  A knock at the door halted Smith’s tirade. It opened and Special Agent Reyes looked in, her face set in stern lines. She beckoned the two of them over. Miguel was sure Reyes would pull his partner out for a lecture, but she only said in a low tone, “Cut him loose. Judge wouldn’t give us a warrant.”

  Helene looked ready to explode. Miguel urged the two women out into the hallway and shut the door behind them. “What happened?”

  “The judge said we didn’t have probable cause,” Reyes said with disgust.

  “But the guy ran,” he said.

  “And it’s obvious he’s hiding something he doesn’t want us to see,” Helene protested.

  But Reyes just shook her head and dragged her hand through her short-cropped hair. “Not enough for the judge. Especially on a high-profile case like this one. She said she didn’t want the search tossed by the grand jury and have everything that comes from it declared fruit of the poison tree. Then we’d have nothing.”

  “Shit,” Helene said and fisted her hands on her hips. “Unless he talks—”

  “He won’t talk,” Miguel replied angrily. “Especially after your little show in there. What the fuck were you doing?”

  Reyes raised her hands. “You two settle this on your own time. Meanwhile, I’m going to keep on running Smith and Gold through our sources. See what else I can find.”

  Reyes walked down the hall and Helene turned to him. “We can’t let this asshole go, Miguel. He’s the key to finding the Butcher.”

  “Were you not listening? We’ve got nothing to hold him on.”

  “Just a few more minutes in there and I can break him.”

  “And violate the law. I can’t allow you to do that,” he said, his muscles so tense they were practically cramping. He took a deep, calming breath to control his anger and forced his body to unknot. “I thought I had gotten to know the real you, but now I’m not so sure.”

  She glared at him, her jaw tight. “My only goal is to see that justice is done.”

  Miguel shook his head and jerked a thumb back at the interrogation room. “What I saw in there had nothing to do with justice. We want the truth, not a forced confession. What if the creep is actually innocent? We’ve got no real evidence. All we’ve got is circumstantial, and gut instinct based solely out of—” he made air quotes—“feelings.”

  “You’re wrong,” she fumed. “I know the man is guilty. He’s—”

  He ground his teeth.“No, Helene. That is not seeking justice. What you’re after is vengeance, plain and simple.”

  “But—”

  “There’s a difference. A dangerous difference. And I don’t know if I can continue to partner with someone who doesn’t unde
rstand that.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “ADIC Hernandez wants to see both of you in his office.”

  Helene spun, ready to lash out at the messenger. But Miguel put a stiff hand on her shoulder and said, “We’ll be right there.”

  She jerked it off and glowered at him. How dare he lecture her about justice? She was Nemesis! Goddess of Vengeance! She would have justice, or these lowly humans would suffer the consequences!

  He stared back at her uncertainly, his mouth opening slightly, and he actually took a step back from her.

  As well he should.

  “Fine,” she bit out. “As soon as this case is over, I’ll find myself a new partner.” With that, she stalked down the hall, heading for their boss’s office, no doubt to be handed her ass for a second time.

  What the hell did they know?

  When she and Miguel arrived, ADIC Hernandez was pacing the carpet, and Diana Reyes was sitting in a chair in front of his desk.

  “Sit down,” he commanded as soon as they walked in.

  “Sir—” Helene began, but he cut her off with a forceful slash of his hand.

  “Not another word, Alexander. I don’t know what you were doing in there, but that doesn’t happen again on my watch. Understood?”

  She reined in her churning emotions and slammed up the old shields that had kept them at bay for so many centuries—until Miguel had brought them down with a crash. She couldn’t believe she’d allowed it. Just see where that had gotten her.

  “Understood,” she told the ADIC. Not that she agreed with him. If she thought it necessary again, she wouldn’t hesitate to use whatever means were needed to find their man. And Andrew Smith was the right man. He was involved in these killings. She was certain of it.

  “We can continue to hold Smith for a while longer, but that’s not going to accomplish anything,” ADIC Hernandez clipped out.

  “If you release him, he may lead you to something,” Diana chimed in.

  Which earned a grunt of agreement from Miguel. “Like maybe his hiding place, or his accomplice.”