city of dragons 07 - fire and flood

by Val St. Crowe

  “Why should that make a difference?” said Lachlan.

  “Well, Adam was different than we were, you know? He was more… suave. People liked him. Girls liked him. He was cool, and he said cool things, and me and Tim could never really figure out why he wanted us to be his friends, but he did. And we were kind of like, I don’t know, in awe of him. We agreed with whatever he said. So, after Faith broke up with him—”

  “Faith was his girlfriend?”

  “Yeah, Faith Wilson,” said Carlos. “Uh, anyway, she broke up with him, and Adam started getting on this kick about how you couldn’t count on women anyway, and how they were all worthless, and that the only true bond was between friends.”

  “Bros before hos,” said Lachlan blandly.

  “Only he was really serious about it,” said Carlos. “He said that secrets bonded friends better than anything, and only the darkest secrets could be kept. He wanted us all to make this pact, and we were all supposed to…” Carlos sucked on his cigarette, looking wildly around. “If he knew I was telling you this, he’d probably kill me.”

  “Literally?” said Lachlan.

  Carlos dragged a hand over his face. “I was supposed to shoot my stepdad too. We all planned it out. How we would get weapons, what we would do. It was like… really deadly serious. Adam was really into it. It was all Adam’s idea.”

  “Was Adam going to kill his stepfather?” said Lachlan.

  “No,” said Carlos. “Adam was going to kill Faith. And… I think maybe he did, because she disappeared. But nobody was paying any attention to that, because Tim shot his kid sister.”

  Lachlan’s jaw twitched. “Was Hallie part of the plan?”

  Carlos took a drag from his cigarette. He nodded, but he wouldn’t meet either of our eyes.

  Lachlan was quiet. He massaged the bridge of his nose. Then he lifted his head. “Why didn’t you ever say anything about this before?”

  “Man, I don’t even know why I’m saying anything about it now,” said Carlos. “I mean, Tim’s dead, right? He was probably going to tell, and Adam probably found out, and now that I have told—”

  “We’ll protect you,” said Lachlan.

  “Like in police custody or something? No thanks,” said Carlos. “Just leave me out of it. You go and talk to Adam, don’t mention me, okay?”

  I cleared my throat. “So, you didn’t shoot your stepfather?”

  “No, I couldn’t,” said Carlos. “I didn’t want to kill anyone, not really. And it wasn’t like he was that bad of a guy, when it came down to it. He’s always been decent to me. I guess in the end, I’m not a killer, no matter how much peer pressure is on the table.”

  “I see,” I said.

  Carlos flicked his cigarette on the ground. “If Tim said it was because of his friends, he’s lying. There was something in him that did it. Something dark enough to go there.”

  Lachlan nodded. “I know that. I don’t blame anyone but him.”

  * * *

  “I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand,” said Helen Wilson, who was standing in her kitchen, just inside the doorway. Her husband Robert stood behind her, his arm around her shoulders. She had let us inside the house, but the minute that Lachlan brought up her daughter Faith’s name, she’d called for Robert, and now the two of them were immobile, staring at us. I didn’t think they wanted to let us further into the house.

  “We think we may have some information about Faith’s disappearance,” said Lachlan.

  “But who are you?” said Helen. Behind her, the kitchen stretched out, decorated with blue checks.

  “I’m Detective Lachlan Flint. This is my associate, Penny Caspian.”

  Robert cleared his throat. “Excuse me, but aren’t you the stepfather of that Tim boy? I remember you because Faith started spending time with those boys, with Tim and Adam and Carlos, right before she ran away.”

  “Yes,” said Lachlan. “That’s me.”

  “I thought you left town,” said Robert. “

  “I did,” said Lachlan. “This is… a special arrangement, my working on this case.”

  “Which case is that?” said Helen. “Faith’s case? Does Faith have a case?”

  Lachlan took a deep breath. “It’s a little complicated. I’m not directly involved with investigating Faith, but I may have come across some information about her.”

  “You found her?” Helen’s voice cracked.

  Lachlan shook his head. “No, I’m sorry.”

  Everyone was quiet.

  “So, she ran away?” said Lachlan.

  “Well, there was a record of her buying a train ticket on her credit card,” said Helen. “And then found her car at the train station. She had a ticket to New York City, and she always did talk about going there…”

  “But we’ve never been able to find her.” Robert tightened his grip around Helen’s shoulders. “I even took off months from work, rented an apartment in New York. Spent my days combing the streets, putting up flyers, looking everywhere for my baby girl.”

  “I was at home with our son,” said Helen, her eyes filling with tears. “Eventually, I told Robert to come home. We needed him here.”

  It was quiet again.

  Lachlan squared his shoulders. “Was there any other reason you had to believe that she had run away?”

  “Well, she texted us,” said Robert.

  “Really?” said Lachlan. “From New York City?”

  “No, it was before she got on the train,” said Helen. “She sent us a message that she was leaving and we shouldn’t look for her.” Her lower lip trembled. “She sounded so angry. It wasn’t like our little girl at all.”

  “You can’t really tell from a text,” said Robert, “but Helen’s right. The tone wasn’t quite right. But then, running away from home was out of character for her. She wasn’t the kind of girl who would do that either.”

  Lachlan swallowed. “Have you considered the possibility that she didn’t run away? That she didn’t write the text either?”

  Helen furrowed her brow. “What do you mean? Who else could have written the text? Who would have had her phone?”

  Robert’s face changed as he put it together. “You mean someone… hurt her, and that’s the person who sent the texts.”

  “To throw you off,” said Lachlan. He drew in a deep breath. “I have something to show you, and it’s a bit of a long shot. I don’t know if you’ll know from this photo, but…” He took out his phone and scrolled through it until he found the picture he had taken in Adam’s apartment, of the girl’s underwear, phone, and lock of hair. He handed the phone to Robert. “Could that belong to her?”

  Robert wordlessly handed the phone to Helen, who looked at the picture, let out a little cry, and dropped the phone.

  Then she picked it up. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She was crying.

  Lachlan knelt down to take the phone from her. “It’s all right. No damage done.”

  “The butterfly decal on the back of the phone,” she said. “We printed them out special ourselves. It’s unique. That’s her phone.”

  “Where did you get this picture?” said Robert.

  “Adam Day’s house,” said Lachlan. “Now, we don’t have concrete evidence yet, but I think there’s enough here to point to the idea that he killed your daughter.”

  “No,” whispered Helen. “No.”

  “I’m very, very sorry.”

  Tears leaked out of Helen’s eyes.

  Robert grabbed her shoulders again, drew her close.

  “I just… I want to know for sure,” Helen murmured, tears coming faster. “I want to know for sure.”

  Lachlan nodded. “We’ll find out for sure, then. We’ll do everything we can.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  It was late afternoon, and the sun beat down on us, but we’d been standing outside in the heat anyway. We were outside Adam Day’s apartment. We couldn’t go in, because we weren’t the police. We’d already interfered too much,
and we needed to stay clear to make sure the evidence was admissible.

  Lachlan had called Steve to help us, however. Considering what we knew about Adam’s roommate, we were fairly sure she’d give Steve permission to search the premises. Steve had agreed to come out and look to see what he could find.

  Sure enough, we had watched Steve be admitted to the house by the roommate. Then, fifteen minutes later, other police cars started to show up. Right now, the parking lot was full of police cars. It seemed that something like this drew a crowd.

  We felt like we’d been waiting for a long time.

  But finally, Steve appeared in the door. He bounded down the steps outside of the apartment and crossed the parking lot, heading straight for us.

  Both Lachlan and I held our breath.

  Steve halted in front of us, expression stony. “You got a lot of nerve, Flint.”

  “Was it there?” said Lachlan. “Or did the bastard move it? I don’t think he saw me messing with the stuff, but you never know what he saw. He’s smart, and if he knew that I saw his trophies, maybe he moved them.”

  “You call me out of the blue,” said Steve. “Ask for a favor. And you know I’m not inclined to do you any favors.”

  Lachlan drew himself up. “Yeah, it’s like I said, you owe me. So, was it there or not?”

  Steve leaned close. “I don’t owe you shit. This was over and above, what I did here. And I only did it because I want to catch a bastard killer as much as you do.”

  “You owe me,” said Lachlan in a quiet voice, “because you turned me into a vampire and you screwed my wife, so—”

  “You turned yourself into a damned vampire. I never offered you that drink.”

  “I can’t believe you weren’t kicked off the force for stealing that blood,” said Lachlan. “You must have got it from evidence lock up. And everyone knows you were trying to get high. You thought it was like dice, but it’s not.”

  “You don’t know anything about why I did it,” said Steve. “Maybe I heard vampire blood has healing properties.”

  “It doesn’t,” said Lachlan.

  “Yeah, maybe I figured that out. At least, it doesn’t unless you get killed.”

  “Well, there is that,” said Lachlan. “What did you want to heal?”

  “Maybe I have really bad eczema,” said Steve.

  Lachlan raised his eyebrows. “Eczema? That’s what you’re going to try to say it was all about. You were a drinker and a partyer—”

  “I was a single man,” said Steve. “Lonely and single. And sometimes I drowned my sorrows. But I didn’t take that blood to get high. That’s not me. You know that’s not me.”

  Lachlan folded his arms over his chest.

  Steve looked down at the ground. “And the shit with Debra—”

  “You were lonely?”

  “She needed someone,” said Steve. “You were all messed up over Hallie and you were a vampire. She was afraid of you.”

  “What?” said Lachlan.

  “You have fangs, man,” said Steve. “You suck people’s blood.”

  “I would never have hurt—”

  “Maybe so, maybe not. You were pretty messed up back then.”

  Lachlan sighed.

  Steve shrugged. “Ah, hell… Fine. I’m sorry, okay?”

  Lachlan snorted. “That’s some apology there.”

  Steve just stared him down.

  Lachlan shook his head. He sighed. “Did you find anything in there or not?”

  Steve’s face broke into a smile. “Oh, yeah, it was all there. Right where you said it would be. We’re bagging and tagging it, and someone’s already on their way to go and arrest the damned kid. Little bastard got away with it for far too long, but he’s not going to get away with it for any longer.”

  Lachlan’s shoulders slumped. “Why couldn’t you have just led with that? Seriously?”

  Steve gestured. “You think all these other cops are here because we didn’t find anything? I thought you were a detective, Flint. Can’t you figure anything out from observation?”

  Lachlan gave him a sour look.

  Steve just laughed.

  * * *

  After that, there was nothing to do but wait. The evidence had been taken in, and an arrest warrant was being issued for Adam. Until they had him in custody, there was nothing that we could do.

  Lachlan and I discussed the possibility that Adam did it, and we both thought it was pretty likely. We hadn’t found direct evidence of that crime, but we’d proved both that he was capable of murder, and that he had a motive to kill Tim. He wanted to ensure the boy’s silence. It was a wonder he hadn’t come for Carlos after all.

  Despite Carlos’s claim that he didn’t want to be part of anything, Lachlan had put a bug in Steve’s ear about protecting the guy, because it was important that nothing happen to the witness. With any luck, they’d pick Adam up pretty quickly and Carlos wouldn’t be in any danger, but we wanted to be cautious.

  Following their little blowup in the parking lot, Lachlan and Steve seemed to be getting along just fine in that odd way that men seemed to get over arguments after a fight with each other. It was so different from the way women worked, I mused. When two women had a beef with each other, they’d do anything within their power to keep from actually having a confrontation. That was probably because women knew that after a confrontation, something would be irreparably broken in the relationship. Actually fighting wasn’t something women liked to do.

  Well… maybe I was over generalizing. Truthfully, I’d been brought up in a culture of rich, affected women who were often very polite to a person’s face but horrible behind her back. I wasn’t sure if the avoidance of direct confrontation amongst women was a hard-and-fast gender rule or a rule of my own culture.

  Anyway, I still found it bemusing that Lachlan and Steve were so easy in each other’s company, but what did I know? Having Steve help us out was a good thing, because we needed him as a liaison to the police department. He was keeping us in the loop as to what was going on, and the fact that he and Lachlan had patched things up seemed to be going a long way to making sure that Lachlan and I had access to what was going on with the case.

  So, we waited.

  While we did, we went home. When we got there, both of the boys were still napping, and there was nothing else to do.

  Lachlan suggested again that we go flying. He gave me a little grin. “Because we’ve never done that before.”

  I couldn’t help but smile back. He was right, of course. We’d never flown together, because it hadn’t been possible before. It brought back memories for me of flying with dragon friends when I was younger. As teenagers (once our shifting was under control), even as young adults, we’d all get together in a pack and go soaring through the air together. We had so much fun, swooping and diving, striving for altitude, playing together in the air.

  All that had stopped with Alastair. He hadn’t liked my having any friends at all, and he’d put a stop to any activities like that.

  So, I agreed.

  Lachlan guzzled some blood, and he shifted. It wasn’t nearly as difficult for him to do it now. He was much more smooth now, gliding in between his regular shape and the dragon shape.

  I dove into the lake and let the change flow over me. When I surfaced from the water, Lachlan was already overhead, and the rogue dragons were following him.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about flying with them, but I told myself that they were practically a part of Lachlan now, and I wanted to fly with Lachlan, so I wouldn’t worry about it.

  The sun was bright and warm. The sky was a brilliant blue. The leaves of the trees below us were deep, deep green. Up here, the world was perfect and small. And looking down on it, I had the strangest flash of association. This was like the way it felt when Lachlan drank my blood. Our intimacy always made me feel as if I was floating above the earth, higher than I’d ever been, looking down on everything as if we were transcendent and one with the universe.
This was the same sort of visual—except it was real. We were really here. We were really flying together.

  And I wondered if that was what that imagery meant, why we saw it when we joined together. Because we were always meant for this? Meant to be soaring side by side in the sun?

  But no, because Lachlan was never meant to be a dragon. Wyatt had been destined for this. Lachlan had taken that burden from our son, though.

  Still, in some way, it seemed a culmination of everything that we’d been through together, as if that first moment we’d touched had always been bringing us here. As we banked and turned, the wind against our wings, I thought about that first moment. We’d been trapped by the Brotherhood, terrified, and Lachlan had tasted my blood for the first time. Immediately, we’d been connected in an inexplicable way. Immediately, we’d been joined.

  Lachlan flapped his red, red wings, climbing higher into the sky.

  I followed him.

  And I mused that it was better if it hadn’t been destined, because destiny had brought me nothing but hurt and agony. Lachlan was a choice—my choice. We had found each other and worked against the odds to be together. We had fought our own darkness and our own pain and we had come out stronger.

  The fact that we could fly together—it should never have happened. And yet it was. Here we were, pushing through the cloud cover, streaming through the air, moving together.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Adam Day had a sullen expression on his face as he regarded the unopened can of soda he’d been given. He was downtown in one of the interrogation rooms at the local police station. The police had picked him up when he came back to the apartment.

  Adam was a drake, which meant he wouldn’t be held at the local prison. After initial interrogation, he was going to be transported to the magical jail in this region.

  Because of Lachlan’s connection with the department and the fact that Steve was vouching for him, we’d been granted the chance to try and take the first interrogating crack at Adam. But Lachlan’s reputation as an excellent interrogator preceded him, and there was a crowd gathered on the other side of the two-way mirror. Knowing all those people were there made me nervous, even though I figured my role in the interrogation would be minimal. I’d follow Lachlan’s lead and do what I could.