Heaven can Wait

by Nicola Lawson

  "This woman sneaked in through the window in the men's room. She seems to have taken a certain interest in our mysteriously blurred suspect. She was also one of the first to flee the club after everything started going off."

  I managed to keep my tone bland. "Is she a suspect?"

  Frost looked at me evenly. "I hoped you could tell me."

  I was saved from having to speak by someone else coming in to the office.

  "Agent Frost, I thought I had explained that this club is now the property of Delco, Diablo and Caine. The proper authorisations should be obtained prior to any further investigations taking place."

  The speaker was young and very smartly dressed. His youthful features and close cropped hair made the navy suit look that much more impressive.

  "Mr Thyme, this is the scene of an ongoing NIRU investigation and-"

  "Agent Frost, your investigators have been through this club and gathered all of the evidence you are going to find. This was the scene of an unexplained accident, not a premeditated murder. The partners have been more than accommodating, however unless you can explain why you need to be here right now," His arm waved at the screen that still showed a frozen Selene. "We will need to see about going to the courts to get this sorted. Your continued stalling could be considered harassment."

  The newcomer finished his speech and turned his attention to me. The next time he spoke his voice was smooth instead of holding a brooding threat.

  "I don't believe I have ever had the pleasure, Christopher Thyme."

  Thyme approached and held his hand out to me. I went to take it, to complete the handshake. Instead the lawyer took hold of my hand and brought the back of my hand to his lips. His eyes were locked on mine as he carefully placed the kiss on my knuckles.

  I don't know if my reaction to him would have been the same if I wasn't already . . . buttered up, so to speak. But when his mouth touched my hand I felt a clenching of things low on my body. If my reaction showed on my face he was being too much the gentleman to mention it.

  "Uh . . . Jones, Faith Jones."

  "Ms Jones, a pleasure. And what has Agent Frost dragged you down here for?"

  Thyme was staring at the display screen rather intently. For his part Frost was glaring at Thyme. Now he seemed to see where the lawyer had his attention focused. He hit a button and the screen went black. With nothing else to take his interest, Thyme’s eyes came back to me.

  "I think we are finished here." Frost said, his tone a match for his name. The NIRU agent seemed as bothered by having thyme focussing his interest on me as he had by the lawyer’s interest in the screen showing Selene.

  Thyme took his time taking his eyes off me and bringing them over to Frost, but he was never impolite in his attentions.

  "That is good, Agent Frost. Might I suggest that the next time you want to pay a visit you contact our offices beforehand?"

  "You can suggest whatever you wish, Mr Thyme."

  Frost removed the video cassette from the machine. He put the same hand at the small of my back to help usher me out of the office. "We can see ourselves out."

  "I am sure," Thyme said dryly. "It was nice to meet you Ms Jones. If you are ever in need of my services, or anything else, please don’t hesitate to give me a call."

  Thyme handed me a business card. For the barest moment our hands met and I was touching both of the men at once. I was glad it was only for that split-second in time because if the contact had lasted any longer I would have lost all of my control. As it was I felt a rush of heat wash across my skin. A light touch of sweat gathered on my back and there was a definite moisture in other areas.

  Should I spoil this right now by telling him I wasn’t exactly human?

  My breath had gone when the flush came over me. By the time I had it back, Frost had moved the two of us out of the office and halfway across the empty club. I was out of it just enough that I didn’t protest when he took Thyme’s card out of my hand. His hand went into his pocket and came back out with a pen. He clicked it on and wrote on the back of the card. He handed it back to me.

  "In case you ever need somebody to call. Now you have options."

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Selene had left a message for me on my answering machine. Nothing more than an address to meet her. My little runabout still managed to stall twice on the way over there. I felt almost ashamed to be driving my clunky vehicle along the road, making the streets look untidy. All of the other vehicles I passed were shiny things, all fully functional and devoid of personality. The buildings matched the cars, with their wide windows all properly intact, smooth stone and brickwork, they towered around me looming over me bathed in the midday sun. There were isolated pockets of greenery placed almost randomly around the streets, a shrub here a tree there.

  I parked up across the street from the building Selene’s address was listed as being based within. My car looked even more out of place now that it was stationary, I could almost imagine coming back to find it having been towed away by some busy-body official to keep the street looking neat. My car certainly didn’t look like it deserved to be parked being the rich plum pick-up truck that stood proudly in front of it. The chrome roll-bars and bumpers reflected the sunlight which glinted from the glossy surface of the smooth metallic paint. Even the thick tyres which surrounded matching chrome hubcaps looked clean. The number plate on the beefy modern truck was obviously personalised, it said ‘HUNT3R’.

  I had to present my ID in order to be let in to the building. The man at the door was overly polite, his subservient manner acting like grease on the surface of my skin. His conduct changed subtly as he took in the thick black border which surrounded the picture on the ID card, where my police ID simply stated my name and position a full ID carried more information. The thick black border was there to denote my non-human status, just to make sure it couldn’t be missed by a person who had to look at ID’s for hours at a time and would simply stop paying attention to the written information after a while. The doorman was still polite enough but his demeanour became forced, stiff. He directed me to the elevators and I could feel him watching me as I walked across the lobby. His gaze wasn’t friendly or admiring or even lecherous, it was suspicious. I almost couldn’t resist the desire to stick my tongue out at him as the elevator doors closed and cut us off from each others sight.

  The door opened up on the thirteenth floor and I stepped out into a neatly decorated corridor. It was finely carpeted and the wallpaper matched the colour scheme. All of the light fittings looked to be in good repair. There was no need for them to be switched on because there was plenty of illumination streaming in through the windows at either end of the corridor.

  I took a look at the brass plaques at the side of the frosted glass doors to find the one I wanted. Most of them proclaimed the office to belong to Dr’s or other professionals with an alphabet of letters following their name. This was definitely an upscale part of town.

  The office I wanted only had a number on the plaque, there was no name. I pressed the button at the side of the doorframe and hoped Selene was still here, if she wasn’t I didn’t know how I was going to explain myself to whoever answered the door. A silhouette approached darkening the inside of the frosted glass, and I prepared to explain myself to whoever this office belonged to.

  The door came open and whatever I had had in mind to introduce myself promptly fled and left me standing there like some sort of mute. The reason for my sudden attack of being dumbstruck was standing there tall in the doorframe. I felt pretty poorly dressed in my basic skirt and sweater combination.

  The sharp lines of deep purple trousers traced up from the pointed toes of patent leather boots with silver buckles, they ended at the figures waist in a matching black leather belt whose large silver buckle managed to be more elegant than gaudy. A black silk shirt was tucked into those trousers and I could tell by the way it hung that the body underneath was slender and toned. My estimation was confirmed when I noticed the way hi
s pale skin was stretched tightly across the muscles in his chest in the gap that had been left open at the top of the shirt for just such a purpose. A jacket to match the trousers was draped across his broad shoulders. And then I was up to his head.

  Highly attractive people, physically at least, abound where I come from and this figure wouldn’t have been shown up amongst their company. His raven hair was so dark it had navy-blue highlights, it hung in straight curtains which were just long enough to frame his narrow face and stopped short of brushing his shoulders. His face was the same pale complexion as his chest and his thin red lips were bright below a perfectly straight nose. Piercing eyes looked out from above that nose and were highlighted by long curving lashes.

  I watched him take my appearance in in a moment and couldn’t help but blush when I realised he had spent the remainder of the time watching me evaluate him. When he smiled it was enough to make my body react. Someone must have put something in the water this morning. Were they adding Spanish-fly along with the fluoride?

  “Ah, . . .” I stammered, aren’t I eloquent?

  “You would be Ms Jones.” His voice was as smooth as his hairless chest and slick with a latino-type accent.

  “I would be she.” I would be she? What the heck was that supposed to be?

  He stepped back and opened the door more fully, at the same time he presented me his hand. “Ciriaco DeLuca.” He introduced himself.

  I took the proffered hand, his nails looked like they were regularly manicured. To my surprise he lowered his head and brought my hand up so that he could place a feather-light kiss on the back of my hand. Oh my. The vibrant red of his lips must have been all his own because there were no tell-tale marks on my skin when he eventually released it following a lingering hold.

  “Quit playing with her and bring her in here.” Selene’s voice calling from somewhere further inside.

  DeLuca sighed with an almost smile playing at his lips, “Ah well, back to business. If you would step this way?”

  He put his back to the door and stepped away so that I could move past him. He left me just enough room so that I wouldn’t have to brush against him to get by, but it was tempting to take just that little bit extra room and slide my body . . .

  I gave myself a bit of a mental slapping and got myself back in control. It was getting easier to control the urges but they seemed to be coming across me much more frequently lately, or perhaps I had just had a rush on meeting attractive men recently. As I stepped into DeLuca’s office and saw Selene sitting there in her customarily casual style I had to remember it wasn’t only attractive men who had been having an effect on me.

  DeLuca’s office was a much more professional set up than mine. The décor matched what was out in the corridor and it was all in perfect repair. The desk was made of proper pieces of wood professionally put together rather than a DIY job. There was a large bookcase with many leather-bound volumes standing orderly on the shelves. A wide-screen flat-panel monitor stood on top of the desk next to a keyboard and mouse, the main unit of the computer must have been under the other side of the desk where I couldn’t see. There were another two doors leading to other rooms and on another wall a wide window looked out on the city.

  Selene smiled at me when I entered and jerked her head towards DeLuca who I could feel coming into the room behind me. Maybe if I stayed standing here he would come up closer behind me and . . .

  “Faith, meet Ciriaco DeLuca . . .” she said.

  I could sense DeLuca closing the gap between us now. I could almost imagine that I felt the heat of his body on my back. I was getting heat from somewhere.

  “. . . The only other person I can think of who could have killed your victims as dispassionately as I could.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A chill replaced the heat running up my spine. I whirled around to find DeLuca oppressively close, before Selene’s comment I might have described him as being intimately close, the carefree smile he was sporting likewise being transformed to sinister in my mind. When he looked on my face and saw the fear there the smile stretched his lips into thin lines. I didn’t want to risk looking away from him as I backed away so I was bracing myself for contact with something while I put distance between us, it didn’t stop me almost jumping out of my skin when I touched the tall standing lamp with my back. DeLuca took advantage of the momentary distraction and darted towards me. I almost screamed.

  “For God’s sake, Faith, take a chill pill.” Selene was laughing.

  I held myself rigidly as DeLuca lifted the lamp he had caught on its plummet to the floor and set it right. I may have only just met him but I could tell he was holding in a laugh that would have rivalled Selene’s, he sketched a half-bow in my direction and then left me to my fright.

  “He didn’t do it either,” Selene said.

  “Much too . . . inelegant for my tastes,” DeLuca elaborated perching himself on the end of the desk in the middle of the office. He hooked one leg up over the other pulling the material of his trousers taut. “And by the sounds of things it was much too messy.” His eyes seemed to be peering through me as he absorbed my reaction.

  I scowled at Selene, because I couldn’t shout at her until I had my panic-induced breathing back under control, she had known exactly what she was doing letting me think DeLuca was the killer. I didn’t appreciate being played with.

  It was almost as though Selene could read my mind because she interrupted before my tirade had even begun. “Oh come on, Faith. Did you seriously believe I would get you to come all of the way down here to introduce you to a killer like that? What’s happened to get you wound so tight all of a sudden?”

  “Nothing.” Perhaps I sounded a tad defensive.

  “Oh come on.” Selene got to her feet. “You’re acting like someone has inserted a steel rod in your ass. Did something happen during your rendezvous with young Agent Frost? I never would have pegged you as the kinky kind.”

  I flicked my eyes over to where Ciriaco DeLuca was pointedly watching us have this conversation. He caught the look.

  “Don’t mind me.” His accent continued to do its best work melting my insides, and lower places, but there was something else in the way he was watching me and taking everything in. I had the impression that this must be how it felt to be some insect pinned down and examined by a naturalist. He was evaluating me, dissecting me with a look as if to discover what made me tick. It isn’t the way a woman wants to be looked at by a man.

  “Something did happen?” I couldn’t tell if Selene sounded jealous or intrigued.

  “Nothing like that.” I didn’t know if I was disappointing her or pleasing her. “What happened with Alex was business.”

  Selene waited for me to elaborate. Since DeLuca had caught the supposedly subtle glance I had used earlier I didn’t bother to try and cover this one up.

  “Seriously, don’t mind him, the reason we are here is because I’ve asked him to help with both of our problems.”

  I took a breath and plunged in. “I think both our problems might be part of the same problem.”

  I gave her a quick run-through of the events at Andrew Jacobs’ house, starting with the intrusion of the dead demon Selene had killed a few nights ago up until we were rushed out of the house by the lawyer Christopher Thyme. I left out my fantasies and near indiscretions. Nothing had happened so there was no need to share, that I would handle on my own.

  “You were warned off by the remnant of a dead demon?” DeLuca’s sculpted eyebrows were raised a little. He wasn’t showing it much but I guess I had him intrigued.

  I nodded.

  “Does that sort of thing happen often?” I had definitely intrigued him but his expression was crafted to give nothing away.

  I shook my head.

  “So you think these recent killings and what I am looking into could be connected?” Selene asked.

  “Don’t you? I mean it’s pretty coincidental otherwise.”

  Selene shrugged. “Coinc
idences happen, that’s why there is a word for them.”

  “I don’t buy that this is coincidental, that demon wanted to make sure I didn’t make contact with Andrew Jacobs, it told me that he is somewhere where I can’t reach him. Whatever it is we’ve ended up in the middle of, it’s big, tangled and complicated, and both of us are stuck in the same thing.”

  “You do remember that I killed the particular demon in question about two days before the first of these killings, right?”

  “Was that the Drazi outfit down next to the industrial sector?” DeLuca’s calm voice sounded flat after our exchange.

  Selene nodded curtly.

  “I had been tracking that group for over a week, I was close to locating that den but you got to them first.”

  “I like it best when you finish second,” Selene said, tossing him a wink.

  I gave a small cough. “Aren’t we straying from the point a little here?”

  DeLuca conceded the point with a nod, Selene didn’t.

  “My point being that the demon could hardly have anything to do with the killings since it was already dead at the time,” she said.

  They both looked at me and I had the distinct impression that they weren’t expecting me to continue pressing the point, as far as they were concerned dead was dead. Selene had worked with me often enough that she at least should have known better, I didn’t know enough about Ciriaco yet to say whether he should have known better as well. He seemed to think the argument was over because he brought a hand up and started studying the nails on the end of his slender fingers. Or perhaps we just hadn’t said anything to interest him yet, maybe he was waiting for Selene to explain to us both just where he fit in.

  “I’ve spoken with this demon on two separate occasions since you killed it. Major demons only ever manifest on this plane in temporary physical shells, I’m not saying this Drazi was anywhere near as powerful as that but what’s to say that this thing couldn’t keep some part of itself intact on another plane? You said yourself that this thing was working for something else. What if you forced whatever had been controlling the demon to change it’s methods?”