Creatus Series Boxed Set

by Carmen DeSousa

  “Yes?” Vic pressed.

  Meghan shook her head. “Oh…sorry, I was thinking. My mind sometimes wanders .”

  “Your father tends to do that too. Must be the cooked foods.”

  Reece sighed. “Oh for heaven’s sake. I haven’t eaten popcorn in more than a week. I’m trying.”

  “What did you want to ask me, Meghan?” Vic asked, ignoring Reece.

  “Would you take me shopping? I don’t have any clothes.”

  “Of course—”

  Her father dropped his head and shook it. “I really suck at being a father, honey. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I don’t think of these things.”

  “No offense, Dad, but I’d rather Vic take me.”

  “Oh, yeah. Of course. That makes sense.” He dug his wallet out of his pocket and pulled out a few hundred dollar bills.”

  “I have money.”

  He pushed them toward her. “Just take it. Is that enough?”

  Vic shook her head. “When’s the last time you went shopping, country boy? Not even close. But I’ll take care of her.” Vic stood up with her plate. “When did you want to go?”

  “Now. I don’t have anything. I need toiletries too.”

  “Okay, we’ll take a shower here, then, change into the clothes I brought, and then drop Reece off at the house.”

  The large steel door slid open and a tall, taller than her father or Jonas, handsome man stepped inside.

  His eyes glided to her, and he smiled, but then his mouth fell to a frown. “I’m sorry, Meghan.” He closed the distance and offered her his hand. “Jonas was my best friend.”

  This was Mike, then.

  “Mike?” she asked.

  He leaned back. “Yeah…he mentioned me?”

  She nodded, feeling her eyes fill again. “A lot.”

  Vic stepped beside him. “We were like the Three Musketeers in college. The three of us were rarely apart from one another.” She smacked him on the arm. “Where’ve you been? I texted you ten times, and then finally just decided to use my key.” She looked down at her watch. “It’s late. You’re typically home hours earlier than this.”

  Mike walked off toward the kitchen and poured a glass of white wine. “I have a lot going on right now.”

  “Such as?”

  “For starters, I’m supposed to be running a political campaign, Kristina’s mother was killed by someone in our employ, and a building exploded yesterday with my best friend inside.”

  Vic looked between her and Mike, weighing whether to ask a question.

  Meghan remembered something Jonas had told her, that Mike’s job was to silence problems. He held some high-ranking position within the Creatus Government and had spies within the US Government. So Mike would know…the reason Vic wanted to ask the question that had been on all their minds. Meghan didn’t believe in pussyfootin’ around, and clearly, Vic would probably try to ask Mike in private.

  She decided to throw it out there before they could instruct him not to tell her. “Did…did they find his body?”

  Mike tossed back the wine and poured another one. He gulped it down too. “They found one John Doe.”

  Meghan looked to her father. “Does that mean…”

  “It means they found a body, honey, but they haven’t identified it.” Reece glared at Mike. “Couldn’t Rebecca find more information?”

  “The file is coded by the M.E.”

  Reece backed his chair away from the table. “Drop me off at the station, Victoria. I’ll find the damn file.”

  Vic’s eyes, as well as Meghan’s, widened. She’d never heard her father cuss in her entire life, even when he was furious with her, even a simple word. He wouldn’t even say heck or dang in front of a lady, as he’d told her that his mother said it meant the same thing. It was just a euphemism for the real word, so you meant the same thing if you said it.

  “Reece, if you go anywhere near that file, they’re going to question you. It has nothing to do with your case. There was nothing with the seal, the MO doesn’t match. But if they put together that he’s connected with our family, it’ll just be one more notch in their belt for us. You said so yourself that we are under suspicion. I don’t want to have to move my entire family to another country.”

  “My daughter needs closure. She has to know,” her father pleaded in her defense.

  So he understood the pain she was feeling. Of course, he did. He must have had to identify her mother, since he was the closest thing she’d had to a relative in Miami.

  “I’ll keep trying,” Mike said. “Just wait until things cool down some. They haven’t announced the cause of the fire. If it was a gas line, maybe it’ll come back as accidental, not arson, and they’ll close the case.”

  Reece kneaded his temples, as he’d done last night. He was worried about her. She almost hated that after tonight she’d never see him again. Wouldn’t be able to. After all, she’d be wanted for murder.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Casey leaned back in his chair, his hand stretched out in front of him as he clicked the mouse forward to the next image on the screen, and the next, and the next.

  He continued to advance forward, actually backward, through every vicious crime throughout the Boston area. He’d already flicked through Janelle Heskin’s murder, but he kept searching for anyone else with a connection to Dr. Derrick Ashton.

  Derrick had been twenty-five when Janelle had been murdered. Was it possible that he’d known her? They’d gone to the same college. Her murder had been fourteen years ago. Dr. Ashton was now thirty-nine, but he didn’t look it. He barely looked thirty. Actually, he and Reece Buckley looked about the same age, and Reece was supposedly forty-nine.

  And why had every single person that he’d interviewed the other night thought that Janelle was Kristina’s mother, when all his online sources confirmed that Janelle and Kristina were sisters?

  Was it possible Derrick could have been in love with Janelle, and when her sister turned twenty-two, their paths had just crossed? Or had Derrick been a vigilante of some sort. Had he been there the night Janelle was murdered… Is that why Roy Baler had stepped off the roof, because he thought Michael Ashton was Derrick?

  Casey had known all along that the vigilante who’d been committing all these crimes had been a loved one who’d lost someone. That was almost always the case. He continued to click, knowing he was getting to murders before Derrick’s birth, but the rest of the family…they all were so similar in looks and demeanor, physical shape, even his father. Were they part of some group?

  He stopped. The case on the page was more than fifty years ago…but those eyes.

  Casey tabbed to a new screen and pulled up birth statistics on Dr. Ashton. Mother: Sabrina McGuire Ashton. He tabbed back to the case file on Sabrina McGuire. Sabrina was the only survivor after a house raid. Her mother and brother had been brutally murdered.

  Motive. Derrick Ashton had motive. First his mother, then a woman who went to the same college as he did.

  He needed more information on Kristina Heskin. He pulled up her file. The case number for her mother’s murder. Eight years later. Assault. College student was expelled for disorderly conduct.

  Wondering what he’d find on Derrick’s father, he pulled up his affidavit from the other night and looked up his first name. It was an uncommon name, he remembered. Lynford Ashton.

  Casey ran a search for Lynford Ashton’s DL. He scanned the info, and then double-checked his DOB. Ninety? No way was the man he’d seen on the roof the other night ninety years old. He barely looked fifty. And his hair…the man had had a full head of hair with only a sprinkling of gray.

  “Casey, I found something.” Detective Mills approached his desk, carrying several printed pages. “You’re going to love this. The John Doe you gave me to work…the explosion.”

  Casey perked up. “Yeah?” He hadn’t expected anything exciting from that case. It’d been a gas line. A few casualties from the top floor and one John Doe.”
>
  Mills plopped down across from him, holding up one of his printed sheets of paper. “Guess whose name is listed as the resident where the fire started?”

  He didn’t like to play guessing games; he only wanted the facts. But Mills was young and still loved his job. Truthfully, he wasn’t much younger than he was. He just acted young.

  Casey lifted his mug, but realizing he’d already finished his coffee, set it back down. “I give up. Who?”

  “Roy Baler’s mother.”

  He reached across the desk and snatched the paper out of Mill’s hand. “You’re kidding me.”

  “Nope. It took me a little digging to find it, since she’d apparently remarried. But I’d remembered seeing the name somewhere, and it just kept eating at me. You know how I am with details.”

  Scanning the page, Casey smiled. He did know. Mills may be squeamish, but he was a damn good detective. No one else wanted to work with him because they thought he was goofy, but he had an eye for details.

  “Anyway,” Mills continued, offering him a second sheet of paper. “It’s on the info we got from that sushi place where he worked. She’s listed as next of kin. She hasn’t lived there in a few weeks, though. She’s living in some nursing home.”

  “And the John Doe wasn’t Roy Baler, since he’s in the morgue,” Casey offered. “So…who was looking for information on Roy Baler? Got the info sheet on your John Doe?”

  Mills handed him the sheet from the coroner’s office. “Figured you’d ask for that next.”

  Casey read off the stats:

  Gender: Male

  Ethnicity: Believed to be Caucasian

  Age: 25-40 years

  Height: Estimated range of 6 feet 1 inches to 6 feet 4 inches

  Hair: Black

  Weight: Estimated range of 190 to 210 pounds

  Distinguishing marks: No tattoos, no signs of any previous surgeries, no dental work completed

  Clothing: Black jeans, black hooded jacket

  COD: Smoke inhalation

  “Hmm…” Casey said aloud, not really meaning to. “Mills…give me a few minutes. I have to look up some stuff, but then you and I need to go talk. Somewhere away from here.”

  Mills nodded and walked back to his desk.

  The John Doe could have fit any of the men he’d met the other night with Reece on the rooftop. Except the one guy, Mike, who’d stood a couple inches above all of them. Black jeans and black hooded jacket too.

  Was it possible that this upstanding group of professionals were vigilantes? Why? What did they have to gain? And why did every one of them look years younger than their age. And in the case of the oldest Ashton, decades younger. What had he stumbled on, and who would believe him if he said what he was thinking.

  Something he’d overheard his uncle mention to his father tickled at his brain. It’d been a little over five years ago. His parents’ thirtieth wedding anniversary. Murphy’d had a few too many shots of whiskey in him, he remembered, so like his father, Casey had blown off his rambling, but now his uncle’s drunken balderdash seemed plausible.

  “I tell ya, Jim. I’ve seen him wit’ my own ayes. He likes to hunt on the bad part of town. I was dis close.” Murphy held up his hand, indicating an inch. The witnesses…they say he’s like Batman. Dressed in black and then just disappears, right up to the roof a ten-story building. And then others, like that little girl I told you about, call him the Dark Angel. I’ve been chasing him for years, and then all of a sudden. Nothing. It’s like he just disappeared.”

  My father poured Uncle Murphy another shot of Jameson. “Have another drink, brother. You’re just like our father with your tall tales of superheroes. I should’a been a copper too.”

  And then right after the crimes had started again, his uncle had been murdered…in Kristina Heskin’s apartment.

  Casey pulled up one of the cases Frank Cooper had been working. A little girl had witnessed the vigilante. He’d given the file to Mills to run a background check of the girl’s estranged father. Casey skimmed through scanned notes Frank had scribbled. Mills was good about scanning every single document on a case, whether it was a phone number written on a paper napkin, a fast-food receipt, or a business card. If it was something he could scan into the file, he did.

  He stopped on the girl’s quote.

  “He flew ’cross the yard. He must be an angel. But he was all black. Angels wear white, right?”

  Casey didn’t believe in the supernatural, but he didn’t believe in coincidences either. In his opinion, the one was just as unlikely as the other was.

  And he knew the person who had the answers, and oddly enough, his SEAL brothers had called him Eidolon. A phantom, an apparition…or maybe something else.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Meghan saw nothing but a blur of colors as she shadowed Victoria through her favorite store.

  The fabrics, the styles, the price tags…everything appeared fuzzy, as though she were looking through the stained and cracked window tinting on her grandmother’s windows.

  The only outfit that she’d liked had actually made her sad.

  When Victoria had held up the tiny black leather skirt and top, and then a set of leather boots, Meghan immediately remembered the night she’d fallen in love. Really fell in love.

  The moment Jonas had hushed her by pressing his lips against hers in that safe room, she’d known she was toast. She would forever be his.

  She forced a smile as Victoria held up another article of clothing for her inspection. “Vic, I really don’t care. I just need something to cover my body. Other than that, it doesn’t matter what I wear. We already have enough.”

  “Okay… Let’s pay for these, then get something to drink and sit down for a second. The clothes we found will hold you over until we have more time. I love the black leather skirt and triangle tank. I don’t think your dad will approve, though. Especially the boots. But I know you like to go out, and at your age, you should be able to have some fun.”

  Fun? It’d be a long time before she could ever have fun. Had Victoria forgotten that her husband had just been murdered? Or was she trying to make her forget? The only reason Meghan was here was so that she could be away from her father. And get her weapon back. The first chance she got, she was out of here. Not that Victoria wasn’t nice, but she had a job to do.

  Victoria led her to the small café at the front of the store. She grabbed a bottle of water, and Meghan opted for a bottled coffee drink. The caffeine would definitely be a plus.

  Vic pulled out a chair for Meghan, and then pulled out one for herself and sat. “I’m sorry. I understand. I know this isn’t a pleasure trip. I just don’t do this very often…” She stopped and sighed. “Jonas was a really good friend. I’ve known him since grade school. It just…I don’t know. It doesn’t feel real to me. It doesn’t seem as though he could actually be gone.”

  “You heard Mike. You know him better than I do. Was he telling the truth?”

  Victoria shrugged. “What he knew of the truth, I guess. He seemed rather vague, but Mike likes to put on his James Bond demeanor. Everything’s a big conspiracy with him.” She lowered her voice so low that Meghan could hardly hear her. “Sometimes I don’t know if he’s for or against humans. I know he says he hates them sometimes, but then… Sorry, I’m talking too much, another thing I rarely do. Your father must be rubbing off on me.”

  Meghan offered her a faint smile. Her grandmother had said that her father would talk to a fence post if it’d listen to him. “Yeah…he’s friendly. Most of the time.”

  Victoria shook her head, releasing a soft chuckle. “I’ve never seen him unfriendly. Even when we kidnapped him, he’d been joking and playing cards.”

  Meghan nodded. “Yeah…he told me a story once. How even the criminals liked him. How one guy in Miami that the cops called Beat-em-up Bill would only talk to him. Evidently, Bill was forever getting arrested for stuff, but the officers always had to take him down to bring him in. But one time
he had a warrant out for his arrest, and he’d hidden himself in the attic of his mother’s house. He said he’d only speak to Reece. When my dad got there, he called to Bill before he climbed the stairs, warning him that he was coming up. When he popped his head through the attic entry, Bill had a shotgun aimed at his head.” Meghan picked at the label on her bottled drink. “Just like that, my father could have been gone, and I would’ve been parentless. Amusing story on the surface, but it wasn’t really funny. Sometimes I wonder why he even told me.”

  “He loves you, Meghan. He’s been walking the streets every day since you’ve gone missing. He has a grid laid out of all the places you could be, working out from the club. He would have found you or worn a trench through Boston.”

  “I know. And I don’t mean to be so cold to him.”

  “He knows you love him.” Victoria reached across the table and patted her hand. “Believe it or not, we have something in common. I lost my mother when I was very young to a drunk driver. My dad… He’s never been able to be a father to my brother and me. He’s with us physically, but he’s a walking corpse. He breathes and eats, goes to work, but he’s like a zombie. Now that Eric is back from school, my father will probably retire and move away, so he can spend the rest of his life in solitude. Thankfully, we’ve always had my Uncle Dean and the Ashtons. They’ve been my family.”

  Meghan thought about what Vic had said about her father…that basically he’d died after her mother died.

  So, why was she still functioning without Jonas? Revenge? What would happen once she exacted her vengeance on Tag and the mysterious benefactor?

  She tipped up her bottle, draining every drop of the double espresso. “Vic, can I have my baton back. It’s the only weapon I have, and if they come after me…”