Bait & Switch (Driftwood Mystery Book 1)

by A. L. Tyler

  “I'm aware,” I said.

  “She's pretty convinced you’ve got the wrong guy,” Kane said. “You sure you don’t want to call in some help?”

  Nick’s eyes flashed back to me. He didn't say anything. On some level, I think he knew I was right. He stood up and started to pace.

  I nodded, looking down. I was an expert for the Bleak. I wasn't used to having people doubt my opinions, but apparently that was business as usual for criminals.

  Nick took a slow, deep breath. “We're going back to Joe's.”

  “What?” I asked. “Why?”

  Nick was already grabbing his coat and his keys from the door. I would never understand why vampires bothered with things like coats; the cold didn’t bother them the way it did normal people. But then, he did also have an original model microwave and a death trap of an ancient car. I supposed a coat wasn't too far outside my expectations of him.

  “Because Joe isn't answering his phone,” Nick said, as though it should be obvious. “We're going to go see where he is.”

  Kane gave an irritated shrug. “All right,” he sighed.

  “Not you.” Nick's eyes flashed.

  “What?” Kane asked.

  “You're staying here.” Nick open the door and nodded for me to exit. “You're a babysitter. Not a bad-ass criminal.”

  “But Sparky gets to go?” Kane said in a high voice.

  “Sparky is a bad-ass criminal,” Nick replied. He nodded again, this time impatient. “I might need her if I get into trouble.”

  “Well, hell.” Now Kane looked insulted. “I've seen more action than she has.”

  “She can blow shit up,” Nick said.

  Kane didn't blink. His eyes slowly moved to me. He sighed. “That is a true statement.”

  Kane grabbed the remote control off the kitchen bar before throwing himself down into the green chair that Nick had occupied.

  I walked out of the apartment as he flicked on the TV. Nick followed me, and I wasn’t a fan of the feeling. Maybe it was all a subconscious thing now that I knew he was a vampire, but it always felt like he was stalking me. He wanted to be alone with me. It made it about a hundred times harder to trust him.

  “You're worried about Joe?” I asked just to have an excuse to turn around and keep eyes on him.

  Nick glanced at me before turning back to the door. A sound like an orchestra warming up marked the resettling of his perimeter defenses. He put the key back in his pocket and straightened his jacket.

  “Yeah, I'm worried,” he said. He was aggravated, but I didn't think it was because of me.

  He was worried. I didn't need to be a con man to know that Joe was a reliable guy. The fact that he wasn't answering his phone had Nick spooked.

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” I said reassuringly.

  “Don’t!”

  I jumped when he snapped. Now he was aggravated with me.

  “Don’t ever—it’s bad luck.” He tugged uncomfortably at his coat.

  “You’re superstitious?” I said in disbelief.

  He glared.

  I held my silence as we went back down to Nick's car.

  “Are you supposed to be off this afternoon?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I was supposed to be in all day. I told them I have a family emergency.”

  “Anything new?”

  “The victim’s girlfriend’s been seen around the state border. No one has seen the little girl. I need to get into that crime scene to figure out what's happening here.”

  “Farrow's what's happening here,” Nick grumbled.

  “A little girl is missing,” I said. “We didn't find her at Farrow’s house. He can't be the guy. You’re wasting your time with him.”

  Nick spun on me.

  “Then why isn't Joe answering his phone?” he demanded.

  “I don't know,” I said, matching his strained tone. “But I know I'm going to know a hell of a lot more once I can get into that crime scene.”

  “After we figure out what's going on with Joe,” Nick snapped.

  I held up my hands in silent acquiescence.

  The car ride was both the longest and the shortest of my life. Things were never the same for me after.

  When we got out of that car and knocked on Joe’s door, no one answered. I made the mistake of peeking through a window.

  And I saw Joe lying there. Farrow was next to him. They were dead.

  Chapter 23

  I LET OUT A SHOCKED gasp.

  Nick leaned around me and gazed in the window. Putting a hand on my shoulder, he guided me out of the way with surprising speed and care given the curse words he was growling under his breath.

  He drew his gun and used it to smash open the window next to the door. Reaching in through the wreckage of shards, he unlocked the door.

  I was still taking stock of the situation. Nick had two fingers on Joe’s neck, checking for a pulse.

  It wasn't exactly shocking that he would be able to break into Joe's place so easily. All the wards and protections here were magical, and most magical folks didn't worry about the type of people a regular door and deadbolt could keep out. All of Joe’s threshold protections had died when he did, but their magical resonance remained, and the sleigh bells in my ears were suddenly as eerie as the corpses before me.

  The magic was still there, but without someone to tether it to the home, it would eventually dissipate. It was the same reason I needed to get into the crime scene before too long: whatever magical trace was there would eventually go silent at a variable rate, and I needed to investigate it before that time.

  But even so, what remained of the wards on Joe’s residence was enough to deter an attempt to use magic to jimmy the door. Forcing physical entry was easier.

  Of course, Nick was already way ahead of me. That’s why he worked the street and I was at a desk.

  “Damn it,” Nick hissed under his breath.

  Joe was certainly dead. No one could survive that much blood loss. And on the ground next to him, with similar injuries, was Farrow. Beads of sweat formed on Nick’s brow.

  Then he shot to his feet, slapping the dampening cuffs on my nearest wrist and aiming his gun at my face before kicking the door shut behind me.

  “Whoa!” I said loudly. I put up both hands and stumbled backward. “Whoa, I didn’t do this!”

  “I trained him,” Nick said, pointing to Joe’s corpse. “He got into this business because of me. I taught him everything he knew. I've known him since he was a kid.”

  Nick was shaking. I was shaking. My legs threatened to give out and I slowly lowered myself to the ground, kneeling before him. My leg hit a pile of old soda cans that had been stacked up by the wall, and their hollow echoes only reminded me of my suppressed magic as they skittered on the floor around me. With that cuff on my wrist, I knew my magic wouldn't answer my call.

  “I didn't do this,” I pleaded again quietly. The total silence caused by the cuffs rang in my ears, and it didn’t do anything to quiet my nerves. “I didn't do this.”

  “You're the only witch in a town where someone was just killed with magic,” Nick said. “Now my friend and my lead suspect are dead. And the only thing connecting them to the original murder is you. You're telling me that's all coincidence?”

  “It is. It's all coincidence,” I swore. I closed my eyes, trying to figure out how to get out of this. His logic was completely sound. Were our roles reversed, I wouldn’t trust me, either.

  But maybe logic could still save me.

  “When would I have done this?” I asked. “You've had Kane following me all day. There are security cameras where I work you can check those. And before I was at work, I was in your apartment. It's warded. There was no way for me to get out. And even if I managed to get out, why would I come back? And why would I follow you back here if I killed them?”

  The next moments were frozen in time as I stayed there on the ground, on my knees, begging for my life while Nick stood before me with a g
un in his hand. He was as cool and collected as I had ever known, and I could practically see him working over the scenarios in his mind.

  “Look at me,” he said quietly. “And tell me you didn't do this.”

  I closed my eyes. Even with the logic of it staring him in the face, this still came down to what he would see in my eyes. I met his gaze without blinking.

  “I didn't do this,” I said calmly.

  He lowered his gun. Then he offered me a hand to help me stand.

  I didn’t accept.

  I put my hands on the ground in front of me, breathing hard as I felt the sweat on my brow turn to ice. I was still shaking.

  And even though I couldn’t hear it, I was contaminating an evidence scene.

  I pulled my hands back on my lap and very carefully got to my feet. Nick had already moved on. He was looking around the room, without walking, his eyes scanning for anything that could help us.

  “Stay here,” he mumbled.

  Given that the man had a gun and had already threatened to shoot me more than once, I obliged. Nick wandered the house. In the deadly calm and unsettling silence, I had nothing to do but stare at the bodies.

  So much blood. And here I was, once again alone with a vampire.

  Not part of the plan.

  Joe's home was a simple two-story construct. The kitchen was in the back and the living space in the front. Joe had taken what was probably supposed to be a dining area and turned it into a CIA-esque technical wonderland. Computers, monitors, cords, and keyboards were strewn about every surface. They went across an entire dining table, two card tables, and right down onto the floor in front of a recessed bay window. Anywhere there wasn't tech, there was garbage. Not the messy sort with rotting food and dripping fluids, but a good amount of food wrappers, pizza boxes, and empty soda cans were obsessively sorted into piles that covered most of the floor. Either by enchantment or hidden air fresheners, the place smelled pretty good, though.

  Five different chairs had been set up around the arrangement of computers, and I could see the pathways through the mess that showed where Joe frequently moved around.

  All of the shades and blinds had been drawn, but it wasn't dark inside the house. He had set up some sort of enchantment to keep the dark out.

  Both Joe and Farrow had been laid on the ground in front of the stairs by the front door. Their throats were slit, and a massive amount of blood pooled around them. I had to admire Nick’s skill, because even in his haste to check Joe and Farrow for a pulse, he’d managed not to touch any of the mess.

  I furrowed my brow. Even standing still, I was afraid of knocking something over and into the blood on the floor. It was a miracle that the stack I had toppled when I got on my knees hadn’t strayed into the bodies.

  There were no signs of struggle here from Farrow or Joe. None.

  It looked almost as though they had just decided to lie down at the foot of the stairs and go to sleep, and someone had snuck up on them and managed to kill them both simultaneously.

  It made no sense.

  But yet there they were. They hadn't fought at all. Even after their throats had been cut. I would have expected adrenaline or some other involuntary life-saving response to kick in, but no—they had just lain there and bled out. Farrow was still wearing a set of the magical handcuffs that Nick was so fond of slapping on me. He would have been completely defenseless against this attack.

  Or whatever this was. I had never seen anything like this in the Bleak’s case files.

  Both of their throats were cut from ear to ear. Just like Travis Gregory, but this time the killer had taken the knife with him, and he had moved the bodies before drawing blood. A cleaner scene.

  Was he evolving? My eyes swept over the scene again.

  No. Gregory’s murder was messy because it was driven by passion. These were coldly systematic. Why?

  I turned to look at the front door.

  Someone had managed to get inside the house without tripping some damn fine magical sensors, and then he’d murdered two well-versed magic users without even making a mess.

  Whoever this maniac was, he was the best I had ever seen. Better than Alex. Better than me. Better than me, even after stealing several hundred years of magic, because I couldn’t fathom how this had been done.

  I quieted my mind and tried to hone in on the sounds of magic around me before I remembered the cuff on my wrist. I itched at it and tried to recall the sounds before Nick had muzzled me. There had been a slight whine of protest from the wards when we broke the door, but outside of our forced entry, nothing had sounded amiss. I would have noticed.

  I briefly considered that maybe the murderer had done something to cover their magical signature after the fact, but to what end? Anyone capable of doing that could have disposed of the bodies much easier, leaving no sign that a murder had ever happened. We would be searching for missing people right now instead.

  None of this made sense. Why Joe and Farrow? If we had picked up the wrong guy, and Farrow was about to be nailed for the murder, why would the real murderer kill his free pass?

  Nick returned. The baffled look on his face told me everything, but I still asked.

  “No signs of forced entry?”

  “No,” he said. “Back door was unlocked, but that’s nothing weird for Joe. His gun’s gone, but they didn’t manage to break into his safe.”

  “His gun?” My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Like, a gun loaded with magic-suppressant bullets? That’s a fun development in this case.”

  Nick glared at me in response. “Did anything set off the wards?”

  I held up my wrist, dangling the cuff in front of Nick.

  He narrowed his eyes. “I think we’ll keep that on for now. Just tell me what you already know.”

  “I didn’t hear anything weird,” I said testily. “Nothing was off to a casual listen.”

  Nick's eyes wandered, resting on Joe. “What the hell is going on here?”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t sure if he was asking me or his slain friend. “I don't know. Could somebody have followed him last night? Or already have been waiting for him?”

  Nick kicked at a stack of pizza boxes in the corner and I jumped as it crashed into a pile of soda cans and sent them scattering. “No! Unless someone knew we’d go after Farrow and bring him back here before we did it. No one knew that. This happened after. He was already sealed inside. He didn't like to leave the house when he had a suspect in custody. He didn't like to leave the house much at all. And he always called to let me know where he was going.” He turned face me frankly. “What kind of person could do something like this?” he demanded. “What kind of magic can do this?”

  “I don't know,” I said, more than a little irritated with his tone.

  “You're an expert!” he yelled. “How can you not know?”

  “I don't know!” I yelled back at him.

  We stared at each other, both trying to figure out what came next. If Nick decided to turn me in, I was more than completely screwed at that point.

  Chapter 24

  “I TRIED TO TELL YOU,” I said, keeping a forced calm in my voice. “I tried to help. I told you I didn't think he was the right guy—”

  Something changed in his face. He pushed past me and out the front door. Still wearing one cuff and dumbfounded, I followed him out.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  Nick turned around and thrust his hand out toward me. The sound of shattering glass raining down around me made me duck for cover. But when I turned around to look, all of the windows were still intact.

  Nick had put a spell on the house. Something powerful enough that not even his cuffs could fully dampen the effects. Listening to the undertones, it seemed to be some sort of combination of magical dampening spell, something to freeze the scene, and something to hide it from the Bleak.

  The last part wasn't exactly smiled upon.

  “This one is mine,” Nick snarled at me. I didn’t know
why he thought I would turn him in. Maybe he just needed a desk rider to vent at. “And you're not going anywhere. Not with me. A man is dead because of you.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “I tried to tell you—”

  “If you were so sure,” Nick took two steps towards me. I fell back one. “Maybe you should have tried a little harder.”

  “I tried!”

  He waved me off. A small, derisive laugh escaped his lips. “I have a murderer to catch and you're not helping. You're just a child who got caught up in something too big to handle. Go back to work. Or leave town. Try to save your life. I don't care anymore. I'm going to handle this. And when I'm done, I am coming after you. Do what you want with that.”

  “This is not my fault,” I said again. “But I can still help—”

  “Of course it's your fault,” Nick muttered. “You were the best breaker the Bleak ever had. And then you broke the law. If you were still working on our side, Joe wouldn't be dead right now. Because if you were working on our side, I would have trusted you when you said Farrow wasn't our guy.”

  His logic was completely off, because if I were still working for the Bleak, I never would have been assigned the case like this. I didn't do murder investigations. I did breaking, restoration, and repairs.

  There was nothing to break, restore, or repair in this case. That was what made it so incredibly frustrating.

  This wasn't my fault. I knew it wasn't. Nick probably knew it wasn't either. So why did his words hurt so badly?

  “That's the dumbest thing I ever heard,” I said.

  Nick scoffed and got back into the car, slamming the door as he went. He chucked the key to the cuffs at me through a window. The car revved and he left me standing there in front of the house.

  I turned back to stare at the house, trying to push away feelings of guilt that I knew I shouldn’t be feeling. This murder wasn't my fault. I was trying to help solve it. Why Nick had to be such a jerk about it...

  Why did I suddenly believe this was all my fault?

  The house was closed to me. I didn't know what I thought I was going to get from it now that I hadn't gotten from it when I was already inside.