by Marata Eros
“Her dead friend,” Ben says, a dark prediction.
“Yes,” Thad agrees, giving a sharp look at the door as the ballet instructor, Patrick Boel, enters.
Should have locked that, Thad muses with regret.
Ben bleeds into the shadows behind the door and Thad flicks his eyes in silent communication. Ben nods his understanding.
Thad finds Boel interesting. Boel’s eyes do not widen in surprise but narrow in distrust. Excellent timing, Thad thinks. Sometimes the most exciting things present themselves in unexpected ways.
“What are you doing with Miss Mackey’s things?” Boel asks like he owns the very air Thad breathes.
Which, of course, he does not.
Boel inadvertently confirms that the slippers Thad holds are Jewell’s. Jewell’s ballet mentor would know the slippers of his principal.
Which is what Jewell would be if Thad lets fate decide. But Thad will not; part of the joy found in the misery of life is manipulating destiny, and Thad will do that.
Pity, Thad thinks, giving a disappointed exhale. Boel would have been most fun to toy with.
He gives a subtle signal to Benjamin, who moves forward with a grace not unlike the dancer before them.
Thad’s brows pop as Ben wields the inch-thick PVC pipe, a plastic used extensively in construction for drainage. And very effective for bludgeoning with silence.
Boel sidesteps Ben and moves in a graceful pivot as his arms rise above his head, fingers laced, to deliver a deliberate blow to the back of Benjamin’s neck.
We can’t have that, Thad thinks, moving forward in a lunging prowl, grabbing the neck of the smaller man, a cord of sprung muscle as he uses his height for leverage, wrapping his fingers around Boel’s neck, startling him. Thad slides his arm down and makes a V with his elbow, Boel’s neck lying in the crook, and jerks it at an unnatural angle, hardly breaking a sweat.
He gives Ben a sardonic smile, allowing Boel’s cooling body to slide down his front. It crumples, and Thad jerks his feet from underneath the corpse.
“You can learn something here, Ben. There is a lesson if you were paying attention.”
“Surprise,” Ben spits out in disgust.
Thad nods. “That’s part of it, but you have to be the eye of the storm, brother . . . not the storm itself.”
Ben thinks about the words Thad speaks, his expression darkening. “The calm.”
Thad’s grin breaks through on his face like sun piercing clouds, pleased by Ben’s understanding. “Yes.”
They move the body into a little-used locker in the corner, breaking the corpse’s pliant arm to maneuver it inside.
“Isn’t this . . .” Ben begins, quietly shutting the locker, sequestering the gruesome cargo inside.
“Taking a chance?” Thad finishes Ben’s sentence. Ben nods.
“Yes.” Thad moves away from the locker and walks to the door, swinging it open, knowing the traffic of people is nonexistent on a Friday night.
“However, it will distract the feds, who are so easily led by a ring through their noses.”
Ben smirks as Thad brings the tracking beacon out of his pocket, the dot marking the progress of Shelby’s car as it makes its twenty-minute journey to the dorm.
“Five minutes to spare,” Thad remarks, opening the door for Ben, who moves through it and outside.
They make their way to Jewell’s room in companionable silence, the night stretching before them with endless possibilities. But always the beat of the inevitable kill blooms on the horizon of his mind like a sick sun that never sets.
I run to Clearwater, but Adams intercepts me. “No! Fuck . . . Steel . . . he’s gone . . .” I see nothing but a football huddle of medics, still working on him. Blood everywhere it shouldn’t be.
Fuck, fuck, fuck! A world without Clearwater doesn’t compute, short circuiting my head, and I compartmentalize it for later. “Jewell?”
Adams shakes his head and I feel like howling.
I spin away from my fellow agent’s murder site—the earbud whispering its secrets in my ear—and race in a dead sprint to where yellow tape spills and moves with the wind; beginning outside, it snakes into the locker room.
So close to the closet where Jewell and I came together I can barely breathe past the sensory memory. My hands tremble as I tear my eyes away from that damning door, the word JANITORIAL mocking me from the outside as I step into the locker room, still swampy and hot from a thousand showers.
“Agent Steel.” My name comes to me through a fog of consciousness.
She’ll die.
I walk toward the forensic technician, bent and silent with his duster, fingerprints that aren’t Thad’s showing up like black smoke on the lockers.
They’re hurting her.
My gut clenches.
Luke lays a hand on my shoulder. “We’ve got everyone on it, Cas.” His face says what he can’t communicate with words. “I’m sorry about the girl . . .”
I dismiss his sympathy, I can’t handle it right now, maintaining focus is critical. “They’ve killed Clearwater, they’ve been on to us for a while. That fucker, MacLeod . . . he’s a wily sucker.”
“And loaded, getting funded by Daddy,” Adams says.
“Yeah.” I exhale in disgust. “Isn’t this a can of worms.”
Adams nods in sage agreement. “The presidential hopeful’s psychotic spawn. Fuck. Yeah,” Luke says, running a hand up and down his face in irritation.
I know the stats. Every minute that ticks by steals Jewell’s chances. I swallow past what is left of Shelby Lynne Richards. The pure rage found in the massacre of her body speaks to who we’re dealing with. My mind touches on Thad. It doesn’t seem to fit. His modus operandi is so controlled, so planned and methodical. My mind skitters over Faith, then away. That was also violent, but not all the murders have been. Another idea begins to take shape . . .
My cell phone buzzes. My hand moves as if by slow motion through water banked by quicksand to my ear.
“Steel.” One word.
Records, the unknown face on the other end of the phone, relays the details of a background check in a drone of indifference.
My reaction isn’t indifferent as my cell goes slack in my hand.
I’ve been right all along. It’s a fucking twofer. Some cops have a keen sense of smell and I’ve ignored mine. I’ve allowed myself to be nose-blind. Like a hound with a cold.
I come up for air out of the drowning waters of my mind, gasping like a fish who finally gets tossed back into the water.
In my case, I’m free of the deep lethargy that’s been wrapping cotton on my brain.
“People!” I yell into the sharpness of the locker room that flings the echoes of my voice back at me.
A sea of the best in the Bureau raise their faces, some cautiously hopeful, others resigned. In the end, we’re death dealers. Fate calls us too late.
Maybe not this time.
I tell them what we’re looking for and who.
Now it’s two for the price of one, and they’re going to fucking pay.
Forensics knows what’s riding on this and takes the small fiber that’s been collected from Shelby’s locker to be analyzed in the rolling lab truck.
We have a murdered dancer who’s being swept, even as I think it, like a broken doll into a black zippered shroud of death, and another who’s in a tug-of-war between a serial killer pair.
I pace my boots off, waiting as the minutes become an hour.
A fucking hour of lead time.
They’ve broken Jewell, they’re . . . fuck. I throw my hands on my head, lacing them together, and walk the length of that courtyard where Maverick made Jewell defend that she isn’t a whore.
Now he’s in the position to make her one. And it won’t be her choice.
I fall to my knees, my dinner rising in my throat. This is beyond my coping skills. I actually can’t stand myself right now, it feels like my skin’s slipping, I’m coming apart.
I
see Adams from a distance, bursting through the forensics lab stuffed in an unmarked truck, and I stand. The water that’s leached through the denim of my knees ices as I meet him halfway.
Luke shakes the paper in his fist, eyes bright, eager.
Hopeful.
“What the fuck, Luke?” I grate in a low voice, my eyes searching his face.
He tells me, and I’m so grateful to have something to pin my hopes on I suck in air to keep from falling apart right then.
Jewell needs me now, I can be a pussy later.
“Let’s go,” Adams says, and we jog to our transports.
I move through the black ribbon of road like a torpedo, ignoring my partners, save one.
Agent Luke Adams follows me like a second skin, his bike a match for mine. He’s got my back as we make our way to a remote summer camp for the pampered, the privileged.
This is the fateful place where two minds came together with the same ideas. And like seeds that germinate, they’ve been planted in the fertile ground of each other and flourished.
Distance hasn’t stopped them, it’s made their hearts grow fonder. Together.
I pull up a half mile outside the camp, the huge secondgrowth trees adding cover, hiding problems. I silence my Harley, and it goes quiet in a smooth contented purr. I tap the kickstand with a practiced sweep of my boot and dismount. Luke pulls up beside me.
We look at each other, and he opens his mouth.
“No,” I say.
“Fuck me . . . Steel . . .” Luke tries to insert reason where there is none.
I cut him off. “Jewell doesn’t have time, Adams.”
We stare at each other and I break my gaze when I see he’s deferred to my insanity. I pull my Glock 23 out of its holster and Luke says nothing, his actions a mirror of my own. We weave through the trees, the chilled air sweeping past us, evading the trunks of the trees where it finds the gaps of our clothing.
I nod at Luke and he moves, then I go. A waltz of sorts begins as we slowly make our way to the group of cabins that hug the top of a knoll, the trees stabbing a sky with clouds that pass over the moon, giving us cover.
We hear the agonized feminine shriek—terrified. The birds leave the trees, and a well of silence fills the forest as if every living thing has been silenced by that scream of desperation.
I break cover, my arms pumping, the grip of the Glock buried inside my dominant hand in grim comfort.
“Fuck!” Adams hisses, taking after me.
I barrel up the hill like a reverse avalanche, landing on the deck of the nearest cabin. I flatten myself against the wall. Every ounce of training is all I think of.
It’s all I allow myself.
Luke gets on the other side of the door and takes the time to flip me off. His expression says dickhead as clearly as words. If it wasn’t so desperate, it’d be funny.
But humor’s in short supply and I give the signal.
He kicks in the door and I follow.
I think I’m having trouble speculating about what they’re doing to Jewell.
The reality is worse than any imaginings could ever be.
My heart gives a sick stutter at the sight of the three of them. Jewell is without pants, her knee a swollen disaster, and my eyes find the weapon used on her just a few paces away from an undone Mitch Maverick.
Or should I say Ben Miller.
Don’t look at Jewell, my mind warns.
But I do. Her face is swollen, her nose a bloody mess. My hands tighten around the butt of my gun.
Fuck, I’m going to queer my shot.
Ben gives Jewell a long lick on the side of her face, his tongue rasping over the wound I’m now certain he’s caused, and she gives a low mewling sound like a wounded animal.
It does something terrible—and also beautiful—to my senses. A focus so profound, so astute, so otherworldly descends over me.
My vision crystallizes—all I see is him. The sweat that runs into my eyes burns, time slows down to some kind of surreal crawl. I tramp down on premature trigger finger that will make me miss the target, which is high on the brow, my imaginary target dot hovers over Ben Miller’s pale eyes.
I control my breath, taking one . . . then two deep inhales and let them out in an unhurried measure of air. I gauge the wind that might be present inside the tomblike quiet of the cabin and will screw the bullet’s trajectory. When all the air leaves my body and I am still like a statue . . .
I depress the trigger.
It takes seconds but feels like an hour has passed since I catch sight of Jewell.
Pale eyes widen with knowledge. Death stares him in the face and finds him worthy.
Ben Miller’s skull shatters, brain matter and blood flying like food in a blender without a lid, spraying Jewell from the side, covering the upper third of her body, the glitter of the top I admired at the club now covered in bits and pieces of her assailant.
“Cas!” Luke says.
“Got it!” I swing my gun to Thaddeus MacLeod, and he drags a stunned Jewell in front of his body.
“Not too good to spread your legs for Castile,” Thad says loud enough to carry to our ears, and he puts his hand over the part of Jewell I’ve loved with my mouth, my hands, my cock.
She’s mine! my mind roars in a primal rage. It reverberates inside me and I level my gun, the imaginary dot finding his forehead with unnerving precision, my anxiety gone.
Thad squeezes his palm over Jewell’s softness in a vicious twist, and she gives a painful cry.
Steady . . . steady.
“No!” Jewell pleads. Thad’s hands wrap the delicate column of Jewell’s throat, tightening. “I’ll break her neck, heroes.”
A burning trail of sweat runs from my forehead into the crevices of my face, my eyes. My vision gets fuzzy. I jerk my head. The sweat droplets fall around me like wet terror.
For Jewell.
My gaze narrows on the target.
My eyes flick to Jewell’s, then back to the target. Because that’s all Thaddeus MacLeod is to me, a target.
To be eliminated.
I don’t think. My body stills like it did with Maverick seconds before, and I level my sights on his head, those brutal eyes regarding mine for a split second.
In that last moment, Thad jerks Jewell up higher, but my shot’s gone, heading for them both. It makes a smoothly perfect black dot appear on Thad’s forehead, the back of his head like a gutted pumpkin rind. I can’t take the bullet back as I watch blood spill from Jewell’s forehead.
So bright.
Her blood is so bright. Like a waterfall of rubies.
20
I fly without wings, my feet driving the twenty feet to where Jewell lies in a delicate pile of injury, the brightness of her blood mixing with that of the dead criminals who flank her.
Every tactile and sensory input is crawling like fire ants of pain, biting, stinging, as I slide in next to Jewell’s body, the gore parting at my entrance.
Jesus, God . . . don’t let her be dead.
Jewell’s so injured I don’t know where to touch her first. My eyes sweep her crooked nose, dried blood crusting as she wheezes for air, her knee the size of a balloon.
The hell with it. I scoop her into my arms, and her head rolls against me as those beautiful eyes flutter to opening, her mouth trying to move to form words.
Her small hand reaches up and fists my shirt. My gun falls to the ground with a dull clatter and I cup the uninjured side of her face as the blood throbs and rushes in my ears.
“Don’t you leave me, Jewell,” I say in urgent command, my voice coming from far away to my own ears, like someone else is speaking.
Jewell’s hand slips off my shirt and falls against her chest. Her eyes softly shut.
Something falls on Jewell’s face.
My sadness drops like rain, mixing with her blood.
I weep over this girl, my heart in pieces of glass that slice me. I bleed inside while she does in my arms.
I lo
ve her.
“Agent Steel,” the medic calls me.
I cling to Jewell, my strong arms holding her against me. “Cas, let them in,” I hear Luke say.
The paramedic steps away from me when I turn to look at
him.
“Man, do something. I have to help the patient. She’s the
only live one here . . .”
“Steel!” Adams yells.
I take a deep breath. Two. I stand, Jewell in my arms. “Well, shit,” the medic mutters.
I carry Jewell to the spine board, laying her down. I
straighten, swiping at my leaking fucking eyes. The two
paramedics come in, sparing me not a glance. Adams puts a
hand on my arm and I bite the inside of my lip—hard. “She’s going to be okay, big guy.”
“Fuck,” I say.
“Yeah,” Adams whispers, handing me my piece, butt first.
It’s got blood embedded in the handle, the textured grip
holding the proof of life that’s no more. I stuff it in my holster,
walking after the medics as they put Jewell in the ambulance. I meet the eyes of the lead medic.
He gives a reassuring nod, one hand on the clear sack of
fluid, the other end of the IV piercing Jewell’s vein.
I blast my hand over my skull, rubbing it without mercy as I
move toward the ambulance.
“No, Cas, let them take her,” Adams says. I shake off his
hand, swinging in the opposite direction as I jog to my bike.
Adams runs after me.
“Hey, fuck . . . Steel!”
I turn, my ass already on the seat of the Harley. “Are you
okay . . . I mean . . .”
He’s so against guy-code asking if I’m all right.
I’m fucking peachy.
Luke scowls, giving up. “I’ll follow you.”
“Yeah.”
We ride there, the opposite direction we came, ahead of the
ambulance.
I haven’t had a chance to think about what I’ve done, what
it’ll mean for me that I killed not one but two serial killers. It’s my job.
But I didn’t do it for that.