by Lesley Davis
Daryl answered that with no problem. She smiled sadly when Trace wrote back Do a mile for me. Daryl assured her she would, and with renewed energy, ran. Buoyed by her discovery, Daryl switched routes again and added an extra side road to her routine. She noted the quiet street. It was almost too quiet. The hairs on the back of Daryl’s neck and arms rose as she was assailed by a sudden bone-penetrating chill. She stumbled in her steady pace. The sense of unease continued as she looked around, desperate to find what was wrong. Out of nowhere, a figure dressed head to toe in black appeared right in front of her. Daryl didn’t have a chance to pull up and braced for impact. Instead, she felt a fist drive into her chest. The blow didn’t so much connect as impact as an energy blast. The force of it blew Daryl completely off her feet, tossing her backward into a wrought iron gate. She bounced off the metal, falling forward onto her knees. She felt the harshness of the sidewalk cut into them and watched as blood began to seep across the concrete. When she looked up there was no sign of what had just materialized before her.
Like my world couldn’t get any weirder.
Gingerly, Daryl got to her feet, checking herself over for cuts and scrapes and wincing at the damage to her knees. She had no idea how she was going to explain what had happened to Blythe. She opened her water bottle she kept in her pack and washed away the grit and dirt from her cuts. Whatever had happened, Daryl had never felt or witnessed anything like it before. She didn’t think she could explain it to Blythe without sounding completely crazy. She didn’t want Blythe to see her that way. She needed Blythe to see her for herself without the added distractions she always had going on.
But this had been a first, even for Daryl.
*
It took her a while to get back on her street. She dutifully waved to the neighbors who were getting ready to leave for work and smiled at the ones who were dragging their reluctant children to school. Daryl entered the front door and was assailed by the delightful aroma of something toasting. Her stomach tightened in reaction. All I do on this assignment is eat.
“You’re just in time for bagels,” Blythe called from the kitchen. Daryl padded through to join her.
“Do I have time to wash up first? I’m kind of sweaty.”
Blythe blanched at the dried blood that covered Daryl’s arms and legs. “What happened?”
“I took a tumble. It looks worse than it is. I just need to get cleaned up and break out the Band-Aids.” She waved off Blythe’s concern. “I’m okay. The sidewalk, however, took quite a beating from my knees.”
“I can eat the first batch I’ve got toasting if you want to go shower.” Blythe finished liberally spreading some cream cheese on a hot bagel. A worried frown creased her forehead. “Put some ointment on those cuts to stop any infection.”
Daryl turned to head upstairs but remembered to hand Blythe her phone first. “Look who I met today.” She brought up the photo of the baby and then hurried up the stairs two at a time, pulling off her T-shirt as she went.
“Is this one of the other missing children?” Blythe’s incredulous voice followed after her.
“Yes, it’s Camille Weeks, now known as Stasia.”
“How on earth do you do that?” Blythe called after her, but Daryl pretended not to have heard her.
Daryl gathered up the clothes she’d left on her bed and hastened to her shower. Once in the room, with the water running, she asked herself the same question. She stared at herself in the mirror, but there was no answer there to be seen. There was, however, a large red mark in the center of her chest. She traced it gently. “Blessing or a curse, I can’t really tell,” Daryl muttered as she finished undressing and stepped under the warm water with a wince. “But as long as it means I can bring children home, or find some kind of closure for their family, then I’ll bear the burden gladly.” She grimaced as the water hit her battered skin. “No matter how much it hurts.”
*
Over breakfast, Blythe questioned Daryl about the latest development in their case. Daryl was going through the photos she’d taken on her cell phone.
“What are the odds of you taking a longer route today in your regular run and finding what you believe to be another kidnapped child?” Blythe was more than curious as to how Daryl recognized these children without any hesitation. She wondered what lay behind Daryl’s unwavering belief this was one of the children whose disappearance she’d been investigating.
“Tell me, Daryl, how can you single this baby out of all the babies you’ve no doubt jogged past every morning since we’ve lived here?” Blythe reached over to pluck the phone out of Daryl’s hand and studied the photo on the screen. “I mean, all babies look the same to me. They’re all small, wrinkly, and prone to be noisy.”
Daryl picked up her coffee cup and took a drink. To Blythe’s professional eye, she knew Daryl was applying a delaying tactic. It only served to raise warning flags in Blythe’s mind.
“I’ve studied the pictures of all the missing children until they are all but imprinted on my brain. These cases have been with me every waking hour since the files landed on my desk.”
“But children change, Daryl. Their faces alter as they grow and lose their baby looks and start becoming little people.”
Daryl smiled at Blythe’s description. For a moment, Blythe was distracted by how attractive that small lift to her lips made Daryl look. Daryl nodded toward her phone.
“Camille Weeks had a Latino father. Her coloring set her apart from all the other babies who were predominantly white. Her new mother looks Latino to my eye. If I’m right and this child is Camille Weeks, then tell me that baby wasn’t stolen to order.”
Blythe noticed Daryl hadn’t exactly answered her question. For a moment, the investigator in her wanted to delve even more until she knew what lay behind Daryl’s conviction that she could confidently pick one child out of many. The other side of Blythe wondered if she was pushing too hard for an explanation because suddenly her world wasn’t as clear-cut as before. Rafe’s got me looking for demons around every corner.
“Hey, are you all right?”
Daryl’s voice cut through Blythe’s racing thoughts and she looked up to find Daryl’s concerned eyes on her.
“Sorry, I’m just…” Just what? Trying to reconcile the world I thought I lived in with the world I’m now aware exists around me? “I didn’t get much sleep last night.” She couldn’t look at Daryl after that lie, and her eyes fell again to the laughing baby’s face on the phone. Maybe Daryl had some kind of photographic memory. “Lake told me you had an unorthodox way of investigating.” She saw an unguarded look of alarm momentarily flash on Daryl’s face before she hid it.
“Did he now? Well, he’s known me for many years. He’s watched my investigative style evolve. I still do all the same boring investigatory stuff you do. I fill in the same seemingly endless reams of paperwork.”
“But what makes you so attuned to these kids, Daryl? I mean, come on, you go out for a jog and just happen to stumble on one of the children we’re looking for. Look at it from my point of view. Either you’re the most amazing detective ever to wear a badge—”
Daryl interrupted her. “Or I’m imbued with superpowers, and when I’m not pretending to be your mild mannered spouse I’m leaping over tall buildings in one bound and saving the planet from evildoers. Sorry to disappoint you, Lois, but my superpowers weren’t in action today.” She pointed to her leg covered in Band-Aids.
At Daryl’s lazy grin, Blythe felt herself relax for the first time since she’d come back from seeing Rafe and Ashley. She let herself be warmed by the humor she saw in Daryl’s eyes.
“What do you think you possess, Detective?” Her chest tightened as Daryl began to laugh. The sound delighted her so much it was almost too painful to bear.
“I should have known that breakfast with a profiler would entail more than ‘please pass the sugar.’” She put down her mug and stared at Blythe. “I’m not psychic and I don’t converse with the dead. I ju
st am drawn to certain places and people and instinctively know that’s where I need to be.”
She bit at her lip and Blythe had to resist the urge to lean over the table to kiss her. That small sign of insecurity weakened Blythe’s resolve to be strictly professional. Having to put the job first was killing her. “You know when you’re knee-deep in a case and you find that final clue that just makes everything fall into place?” Blythe nodded at her. “That’s what I get around these kids. That certainty that this is where they are, this is who they are. I just know it deep down inside.”
“You’re amazing, do you know that?” She thrilled at the blush that colored Daryl’s face.
“I’m just doing my job, and if that brings these missing kids back to their mothers’ arms then it’s a job well done.”
Blythe squeezed Daryl’s hand gently. “You know I’m going to add my voice to Lake’s to get you to come work on our team. Because however you do it, your success rate shows it works.”
“We haven’t even solved this case yet. For all my convictions, I could still be totally off base.”
Blythe scoffed at her. “You? Not when it comes to your kids; that’s what you’ve said. And your record speaks for itself. You’d be invaluable on our team.”
“And what about us?”
“I want this case solved and out of the way so we can concentrate on what we really feel as opposed to what we have to pretend to be for the sake of our cover.” Blythe ran her fingers lightly over the top of Daryl’s hand. She loved the strength she could feel, the long length of her fingers, the blunt fingernails. “You know you have a certainty in your investigation?” Daryl nodded, but she was watching Blythe’s fingers tracing the top of her hand. “Well, I feel the same where you’re concerned. I know what I feel isn’t just emotions projected from our cover stories.”
“Good, because I feel it too.” Daryl lifted Blythe’s hand to her lips and brushed a kiss across her knuckles.
Blythe’s body warmed to the sweet touch, and she tried to lose herself in the peace Daryl wrapped around her. Here I was thinking that the hardest thing I’d ever have to tell her is that I think I’m falling in love with her. But there’s this little matter of demons and maybe even demon baby snatchers. Suddenly, the whole love dilemma seems so simple compared to the waking nightmare I find myself in. She shivered.
“You okay?” Daryl asked.
“With you by my side, how could I ever not be?” Blythe caught a look on Daryl’s face. “What are you thinking, Detective?”
“That I want to phone Miller and press her for another meeting. I want her to know that money is no object and we’ll do anything to cut through the red tape and get us a child.”
“You want to all but tell her we know she has a secret baby selling gig as a side line?”
“I’d try to not let her know that we’re aware she is extorting money off those desperate to have a child by any means possible. Including, it appears, paying for stolen babies.”
“You know we can’t show our hand. We have to wait to get called back, if we get called back.” Blythe shook her head gently at her. “Patience, Detective, this investigation has to go by the book so that we can catch the ones behind the baby snatching. If we charge in, guns a-blazing, we might scare away our only chance of solving this.”
Daryl blew out an exasperated puff of breath. “I can’t stand the waiting. I know those kids are here all around me. It’s driving me crazy having to cool my heels and not knock on every door to find them and get them back.”
Blythe squeezed Daryl’s hand. “You’ll get that chance, Daryl, I promise you that. But we have to wait on Miller to call us to take that next giant step into parenthood.”
“Waiting sucks.”
Blythe laughed at her, charmed by how cute Daryl looked with that particular moody pout on her lips. “Well, let’s hope we’re not going to have to wait the usual nine months for a baby of our own.”
The horrified widening of Daryl’s eyes only made Blythe laugh more.
Chapter Eighteen
Rafe scoured the area through her night vision binoculars and let out an exasperated sigh.
“I’ve never known a demon hunter so impatient,” Ashley said, taking a bite from her sub sandwich.
“I don’t like lengthy stakeouts. I’m an all action kind of gal.”
Ashley chucked softly. “Yes, you are, and in the right settings I love that about you.”
Rafe lowered the binoculars. “Do not start with the sexual innuendos when we’re camped out on a parking garage roof with nothing but two camping chairs and a cooler.”
“I had Eli turn the security cameras off so we wouldn’t get caught. We could use that to our advantage…” Ashley waggled her eyebrows suggestively.
Rafe stared at her for a long moment then put the binoculars back to her eyes. “Sorry, sweetheart, but sex in a deserted parking garage is not my idea of fun.”
“Did you see that?” Ashley pointed toward the ground level.
“See what?” Rafe trained her sight on the building below. “What did you see?”
“I thought I saw movement in one of the windows on the bottom floor.” Ashley pointed at the exact spot, and Rafe focused in. She waited for something to move.
“There’s nothing there now. Was it something glittering or just cleaners do you think?”
“You know full well the cleaning staff left hours ago.”
“Actually, I didn’t. Was that before or after you’d sent me on a food gathering mission?”
“I watched them leave around eleven p.m. so yes; I guess that was after you’d very kindly gone to get me something more to eat. That office is supposed to be empty now.”
“What do you think you saw?”
“A very brief glow, like something passed the window and glimmered. But it was too damn fast.”
“Well, Blythe said this was the agency that seemed to be doing the questionable dealing in the baby trade. If the baby broker and the demon you’re after are linked, then it stands to reason the demon would have access to the offices.” Rafe lowered the high-powered binoculars and nudged Ashley gently. “I told you we did right telling Blythe about everything.”
“Her text was a surprise. I didn’t think she’d get a lead first. I had expected us to find the demon, banish the thing, and get out of Blythe’s hair before anyone noticed us.”
“It helps they got so friendly with one of the mothers that has a stolen kid. Mothers like to talk. I think it comes from having to listen to a kid babble all day. They’ll run off at the mouth to any adult the second they get the chance.”
Ashley chuckled. “You are so bad. Don’t think I haven’t heard you cooing in baby talk to Trinity.”
Rafe stiffened. “It’s not baby talk. It’s coaxing for when the little bugger has coughed up a hair ball somewhere and I’m trying to get out of her where it is before I step on it.”
“You interrogate your cat?” Ashley was laughing at her now.
“I’m a detective. It’s ingrained on my soul. You dare tell anyone I coo at my cat and I’ll have you sleeping on the sofa.”
“Your secret is safe with me, Detective. All of them are.” Ashley tugged Rafe’s head down and kissed her gently.
Rafe smiled at the touch of Ashley’s lips against her own. “Why were stakeouts never this much fun before you came into my life?”
“Because you were partnered with Dean, and you’d better not have been kissing him when on the job.”
“You have nothing to worry about, sweetheart. Kissing on the job is something I’ve only discovered since being partnered with you.”
“See that it remains so,” Ashley said.
“I intend to.” Rafe tugged Ashley to her and hugged her tight. “Back to the job at hand, P.I. Scott. Do you really think there’s a demon hiding in the bowels of that adoption agency?”
“Nothing surprises me anymore. I’m just intrigued as to what a demon would be doing working in such an en
vironment. They’re not known for wanting to be around kids.”
“Your father did, kind of.” Rafe was still angry at Ashley’s father who had looked after her only until his wandering eye had caught another woman in his sights. Then he had pretty much left Ashley to raise herself alone. Rafe’s family hadn’t been exactly picture perfect either, but she had still had their support until she was old enough to make her own way in the world.
“My dad was one of a kind,” Ashley said wryly.
“True, but he created you, and I shall always be grateful for that.”
Ashley burrowed more into Rafe and wrapped her arms about her waist. Rafe held on to her just as strongly.
“I’m the daughter of a demon.”
“You’re the daughter of a fallen angel. You can’t argue that you came from perfection. I only have to look at you to see that. Your dad turned demonic later as his fate set in. But you, my love, are a child of light.”
Ashley rubbed her cheek on Rafe’s chest. “You’ve been talking to Eli.”
“Maybe I have and maybe you need reminding that although you spend most of your life in the darkness hunting down demons, you are not one of them.”
“My brother was.”
“Your half brother wasn’t born of the love your dad had for your mother. He gave up heaven for her. He was a fallen angel when he met her. You are a product of that love.” Rafe squeezed Ashley to her.
“What would I do without you?”
“You’d eat less because I’m the only one you can send to get your midnight snacks.” Rafe yelped as Ashley pinched her side. “Yow!” The sharp ache was quickly dispelled by Ashley’s hand slipping between Rafe’s shirt buttons and rubbing her stomach. Rafe gave herself up to the loving touch.
Ashley spoke softly into Rafe’s ear. “You are so much like your damned cat it’s a wonder you aren’t purring.” She spread a line of tender kisses down Rafe’s jawline and then nipped her chin gently. “Before that hand of yours finishes what it’s starting,” she removed Rafe’s hand from off her belt, “we’d better at least pretend we’re staking out that place.”