Devil in the Deadline

by Walker, LynDee

  I shot a glance at the cross on the wall and hoped I myself was blessed and favored of the Lord right then.

  I raised the lid, the broken lock offering no resistance, and emptied the contents carefully into the floor. Scanning it inside and out, I noticed a two-inch difference in the depth of the thing. Clever girl, that Jasmine.

  Raising the box to my ear, I shook it.

  Muffled clunking.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, examining the side for a telltale crack.

  No luck.

  I flipped it upside down.

  Nothing.

  But there was something in that two inches of space.

  If it didn’t open from the side, it had to open from the middle.

  I ran a fingernail around the edge of the fake bottom plate. And found a crack.

  Bingo.

  I stood and moved to the dresser, hunting a nail file. Maybe I could pry it loose.

  No dice. Searching the bathroom turned up a fat purple emery board. Ugh. I flopped onto the edge of the bed that had been Jasmine’s. So. Freaking. Close.

  I pulled open the little drawer in the nightstand. Three hair bands, a tube of honey-almond lotion, and a razor case.

  A silver one.

  I snatched it out of the drawer, my fingers shaking as I popped the tab on the side and watched it flip open.

  How on Earth had this woman gone from shaving her legs with something from Tiffany’s to living on the streets?

  Maybe Tiffany’s could help me find out.

  Wriggling a replacement blade from the top of the case, I turned back for the closet.

  Running the corner of the blade along the teensy crack, I found three catches. I went back to each in turn, working them with the sliver of steel. Two pushes on the third one, and the plate popped out like a jack-in-the-box.

  I flipped the razor aside, pulling three fabric-covered journals from the bottom of the box.

  Flipping the first open, I checked the dates. It covered Jasmine’s first year at Way of Life. The second covered her last.

  The first page of the third screamed “VICE” in all capital letters.

  I pulled my BlackBerry from my pocket and checked the time. Quarter to eleven. Elise said she wouldn’t be done ’til after five.

  I had time to start back in Wallingford, then. I added the older journals from the floor to my stack and settled myself on Jasmine’s bed, ready for some reading—and some answers.

  30.

  In her own words

  Ruth Galloway loved Jesus, puppies, and the smell of fresh cut roses.

  She also hated and feared her mother enough to keep Emily busy for the rest of her career.

  But not her father. She idolized him. Missed him.

  And pitied his inability to say boo to her mother.

  Tearstained pages held diatribes about Jesus being benevolent, and the Bible never being intended as a club to beat people into a certain way of thinking.

  Others were scarred with angry grooves from harsh pen strokes, labeling Wanda Galloway a “prude” and detailing beatings that would give Satan himself nightmares.

  She’d been sent to Way of Life as a pseudo-punishment, like Elise said.

  But the hope she’d arrived with poured from the pages.

  People were nice.

  Jesus was love.

  Everything was so beautiful, she changed her name to match the flowers that bloomed near the porch swing where she studied her Bible every night.

  I flipped pages as fast as my fingers could manage, so engrossed in the story I didn’t notice the hours slipping by.

  Halfway through the last journal, Jasmine went to work in the church offices. While a few passages here and there had echoed some of the doubts Elise voiced about the reverend and his mission, Jasmine was mostly happy. Ben Mathers’s music class was her favorite, Christian philosophy a close second.

  All of page fifty-eight was rimmed in haloed-cross-doodles. She’d been chosen. To work with the ministers. To help save souls.

  Her father would be so proud. Maybe her mother, too—those words were between the lines, but came through as clear as any on the page.

  On page sixty-three, Wolterhall hit on her for the first time.

  More tearstains spattered hurried scribbles that, best I could decipher, detailed Elise’s story about Wolterhall’s dalliances.

  Faith wounded, Jasmine turned him down. Again on page sixty-eight. A third time on seventy-two.

  How did she get pregnant? I flipped faster.

  On page eighty-four, she asked Brady to join her for coffee after work one day. She trusted him. She wanted to confide that Wolterhall’s advances were shaking her belief and ask for help.

  Page eighty-eight: Prayers answered. Pastor Brady is such a wonderful man. He loves having my help and will speak to Mr. Wolterhall.

  Page ninety-three: Pastor Brady’s hand brushed over my breast when he reached past me for a book this afternoon. I didn’t know a simple touch could make me feel that way.

  Page ninety-seven: Pastor Brady offered me a dinner out in Warrenton as a thank you for my help with this week’s sermon. We shared a bottle of wine, my first since I arrived here—I guess it went to my head, because I told him how attractive he was. But when I apologized and said no woman except his wife should say such things, he smiled and said feelings aren’t a sin. Because if they were, why would God give them to us? Then he said he felt the same way about me. That his marriage has been a sham for years.

  My breath stopped.

  Flip.

  On page ninety-nine, Jasmine slept with Brady for the first time.

  I skimmed the rest of the journal entries from that year—they read like an erotic Christian romance (if that were a real thing).

  They stopped the day her period was officially a month late.

  I opened the Vice book. The dates spanned a two-week period between the end of her last journal and the day she left the academy. The second page had only a quote from first John chapter one.

  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

  Each pastor and employee at Way of Life had a page, except Golightly.

  Each page listed different behaviors and labeled the person named at the top with a vice of some sort.

  I scanned for names I recognized.

  Wolterhall’s was lust.

  Pink Jenny’s was righteousness.

  Ben Mathers’s was envy.

  Brady’s was power.

  I closed the book, looking around and wishing there was an unobtrusive way to get the journals out of the room and into Aaron’s hands. Surely the killer’s M.O. and what was in those books was enough for a warrant to turn this joint upside down and shake it good. And if a few gun runners fell out with the riffraff, so much the better.

  But my button-down wasn’t baggy enough to smuggle six-hundred-plus pages out of the dorm without raising some eyebrows.

  Dammit.

  I took them back to the closet, tucking them into the lockbox. Picking up a photo of a laughing Jasmine and her friends, I stared into her happy green eyes. Eyes that looked nothing like the glassy ones haunting my nightmares.

  “What happened to you?” I whispered.

  She only smiled. I felt my own lips turn down, sorrow at the loss of the light in her eyes washing over me. She’d written such beautiful words about dreams and hope, despite the hopelessness of her situation.

  I would find the truth—she deserved it. Truth, and a proper burial. Reading her journals brought her to life. Made her a friend. No matter whether anybody else cared what happened to her, I did.

  I stowed the box back in its hidey-hole. Elise could help me get it to the car when she got through with work.

  In the meantime, I wanted to see if I could talk to anyone else without getting in too much trouble.

  Power, envy, lust, righteousness—people had killed for less.

  I moved the chai
r from in front of the door and opened it, my eyes taking a minute to adjust to the dim hallway. I turned to check the window, where solidly late-afternoon beams seeped through the sheers.

  I reached for my BlackBerry as I stepped into the hallway, blinking at the numbers on my screen. How in God’s name was it five-forty?

  Before I had time to ponder that, something round and blunt—and about an inch and a half across—poked into the small of my back, a large hand landing on my shoulder.

  “Snooping,” an accented, sandpapery bass murmured into my ear, “is the eighth deadly sin. Step into my office, and let’s pray for your soul.”

  It wasn’t Golightly. The voice didn’t match the smooth-as-warm-honey tenor that had flowed from the speakers in my car all week.

  Marching across the lawn to the church building, I cut my eyes side to side several times, not catching enough of the guy holding the gun in my back to ID him. People milled all around us, but the thought of what might happen to the Bible scholars if I called attention to my predicament was enough to keep me from trying it.

  Inside, my invisible friend opened a door almost hidden in a wood-paneled wall and hustled me through a labyrinth of hallways lined with offices. I scanned for names, but the plain brown doors were unmarked.

  Opening a corner one, he shoved me inside and closed it behind him. “Please have a seat.” The way he waved the gun said it wasn’t a request. I did, fixing a neutral expression on my face before I looked up to study his.

  “So nice to meet you, Miss Clarke.” Silver hair. Olive skin. Straight nose. Strong jaw. Slight belly bulge. Lines around the eyes. Impeccably tailored suit.

  Crap hell.

  Joey’s “friend” paced the floor gracefully, tucking the black semi-automatic back under his jacket and shaking his head at my stoic once-over. “I admit, I rather hoped this wouldn’t happen. I have an associate who’s going to be sorry to lose you.”

  The temperature in the room plummeted thirty degrees on the last two words, the needle on my creep radar buried in the far end of “murderer.”

  Maybe not as sorry as he thought, but he didn’t need to know that. Hopefully, I could work Joey to my advantage.

  “I don’t think I’d want him upset with me.” My voice sounded controlled. Amazing, since my emotional state bordered on hysteria.

  The chuckle and hand wave told me this guy wasn’t impressed. If I thought too hard about what kind of man wasn’t afraid of Joey, my toes went numb. So I refused.

  “Work around the edges of the law, he said. Use the media.” Don Hugo Boss clicked his tongue in disapproval. “I told him it wouldn’t work. Told him to stay away from you when he started getting that damned lovesick dog look every time he went anywhere near Richmond. Should’ve listened.”

  Gear switch. “Actually, I’m pretty sure he’s not speaking to me.” If I couldn’t save myself, maybe I could save Joey’s…whatever appendage they broke for insubordination in the Mafia these days.

  “He’s not?” One brow rose in a casual I’m-not-interested-but-tell-me-anyway.

  “We had a fight.”

  “Since last Sunday?”

  Yikes. “People don’t get a lot of privacy around here,” I said.

  “I suppose in that respect, Simon and I aren’t so different.”

  “I suspect that’s not the only similarity,” I said.

  “Touché,” he said. “You’re a smart lady, Miss Clarke. And I admire determination. I am sorry it’s come to this, but we’re dealing with a lot of money. And some very sensitive people. You wandered into the middle of the wrong thing.”

  One question for all the marbles. “Why kill the girl?”

  “Which girl?”

  “Jasmine. The one who’d rather live on the streets of Shockoe Bottom than stay here. She’s the reason I’m here.”

  His pacing paused midstep. He whirled on tiptoe, facing me but not looking at me. “I didn’t.” The words didn’t even sound like they were directed my way. He touched a finger to his chin. “The girl you’ve been writing about for the past couple of weeks. That’s who you’re talking about? I could swear I read the police made an arrest.”

  Nice to know someone still reads the paper. I opened my mouth to reply and gunfire split the air outside.

  Just like that, I was the least of the Don’s worries. Gun back in his hand, he disappeared through the door. And left it open.

  What kind of church has a firefight on a random Saturday evening?

  The kind of church where the Mafia has an office.

  I jumped to my feet and scurried out behind him.

  “Don’t die first. Get the story second. That’s what Bob would say,” I muttered under my breath, looking around a corner in the maze of hallways. I didn’t even have my shoes to use as a weapon—the worst I could do with a sneaker was piss someone off flinging it at them.

  I paused halfway to the back door. “Dammit.”

  The killer was in this building. Every goosebump pricking on my arms was sure of it.

  “Because it’s Brady.” I wasn’t sure who I was talking to, but my inner Lois Lane screamed that the minister’s easy charm had skated under my radar somehow. Maybe I was too busy wondering if we shared a family tree.

  The first journals. It seemed like months since I’d read them, but the answer was there—Mister B.

  For Brady. Who told her she’d be free if she ran away.

  She had an abortion, because he got her pregnant. And then scooted her out the door. Why wait a year to track her down and butcher her? Because she came back looking for money. From him, not Golightly. I nodded to myself. It all fit.

  My eyes searched the hallways. It was quiet. Too quiet. I moved toward a red exit sign, eyes darting between the doors all around me, half expecting Brady to pop out like an arcade game and shoot me himself.

  I needed to get back to the dorm and get the lockbox. Surely with that, Aaron would have enough to get a warrant.

  And I would have the exclusive of a lifetime.

  I opened the door and stepped into a warm breeze.

  Just in time to see Kyle duck behind a tree, a gun with a long silencer in his hand. His eyes widened as far as mine did when our gazes locked. “Nichelle! Get back inside!” He stepped toward me, his trigger hand crossed over the arm he stretched my way. “Now!”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I stared, my sneakers morphing into cinderblocks.

  “I knew you were coming—” The rest of that was lost in a scream—his or mine, I didn’t know—as a splash of deep red exploded across his upper arm. Half a second later, his jeans got a matching splotch. I rushed forward, and he shouted something I couldn’t hear over the sudden hail of bullets. I didn’t care who was shooting. Or why. Kyle was bleeding.

  My heart twisted in my chest.

  Kyle was bleeding because of me.

  He stumbled forward three steps and fell into me. “Get. Down.” He breathed, his eyes fluttering shut. I staggered backward, but kept my feet under me. One arm around him, I reached back for the doorknob, half-dragging my friend into the church.

  Collapsing, I eased him to the floor. “You’re hurt.”

  “It’s just a flesh wound.”

  I glanced at his arm. Probably. But the leg gushed blood too quickly. There was an artery there somewhere. Shit.

  I looked around for a cloth. Nothing, of course. Unbuttoning my oxford, I whipped it off. Kyle tried to smile. “I appreciate the gesture, but I don’t think I’m in the mood. For once.”

  I managed a tight smile. “You keep making jokes, so I know you’re not dying,” I said, tugging at the sleeves of the shirt. Not cheap, this one. It wouldn’t tear. And the whole thing was too big to cinch around his leg. I glanced down.

  “Close your eyes,” I said.

  He obliged, raising his brows. “Why?”

  “Not telling.” I slipped my bra off, pulling the shirt back on and fastening a few buttons in the front before I wrapped my favorite p
urple Victoria’s Secret around his leg in a messy knot, pulling the ends tight. Kyle winced, opening his eyes. I kept mine on his wound. The bleeding slowed by more than half.

  “Thank God,” I sighed.

  He tried to raise his head, then moved the fingers of his uninjured arm to his thigh, running them over the lace.

  “Did you make me a tourniquet out of your bra?” He grinned. “Next time, I won’t close my eyes.”

  “Hardy har. What are you doing here?”

  “You said you were coming here. We got a tip something was going down today. A money run with the mob. I couldn’t let you get caught in the middle, so I brought a team to serve a search warrant.”

  “How on Earth did you get a search warrant?”

  “I told the judge I suspected a hostage situation.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I needed in.”

  “You lied to a judge for me?” There was something almost better than chocolate in there somewhere.

  “Not technically. If they’d caught you, you’d be a hostage. Or a corpse. I just went with the hopeful scenario.” He smiled. “We made it five steps toward the front door before their security guys started shooting.”

  “They have security guys?” I couldn’t recall seeing one.

  “Of course they do. We took out the first two and then this old guy in a suit came out and opened fire. I think it was him who got me. Wasn’t the preacher, though.”

  The Don.

  A money run.

  The feed bags.

  I smoothed Kyle’s hair back. “I have to get you some help.” No way he could make it to my car. It was a half-mile or more across the compound.

  I stood, hooking my hands under his arms and apologizing with every step as I pulled him into a doorway. By the time I lowered his shoulders back to the floor, every drop of color had drained from his face and his lips were a thin white line.

  “Stay here.” I tried to look stern.

  “I don’t think I’m going anywhere.” He gestured with his nine-millimeter. “I hope they stay out there. At least until we’ve secured the building. My guys will find me.”

  “You’ve saved me twice now.” I stood. “My turn.”