Bloody Vows

by Jones, Lisa Renee

  ***

  “Thomas Whitaker! Kevin is here! It’s time to leave for school.”

  At my mom’s shout, I grab my book bag and run downstairs. I head for the door only to have her call out, “Stop right there, young man!”

  “Oh, Mom,” I moan, slumping forward and turning to look at her.

  She wipes her hands on her apron and leans down, pointing at her cheek. I kiss her and she says, “Much better. Be safe and good.”

  “Yes, Mom,” I murmur, and she motions me onward, offering me my freedom.

  I don’t wait for her to change her mind. I launch myself toward the door and exit to the porch, where I find Kevin at the bottom of the steps, stuffing his face with a chocolate-covered glazed doughnut. Intending to take half of that beauty for myself, I dash down the steps and vault to a finish in front of him. He laughs and shoves the last bite into his mouth.

  Grimacing in disappointment, I watch him lick his fingers. “Dad made breakfast,” he announces, “which means he brought home doughnuts. I love when Mom goes to work early.”

  “Jerk,” I say.

  He hands me a bag. “One for you.”

  “Not a jerk,” I correct, hiking my bag on my shoulder and accepting my prize, while sirens scream in the distance. “Thank you.”

  We start walking and the sirens grow louder. “Wonder what that’s all about.” Kevin asks, looking over his shoulder and then back at me. “Maybe Old Man Michaels who owns that corner store is beating his wife again.”

  “Or the dog,” I suggest. “I heard he beats his dog, too.”

  “No way,” Kevin gasps. “The dog?”

  I nod and assure him it’s true. “That’s what I heard.”

  “Man,” he says. “That’s bad.”

  I pull my doughnut from the bag. “That stuff after school yesterday was bad, too, right?”

  “I know, right?” Kevin eyes me. “I wanted to help poor Henry, but I didn’t want to get beat up, too.”

  “Me too.” I test the chocolate with a lick of my tongue. “That new boy helped and he’s big.” I take a bite. It’s really good. “I love this doughnut.”

  “Right?” Kevin says. “Those are the best. So is the new girl,” he adds. “She’s pretty.”

  I shrug and take another bite. “I guess.”

  “Hey! Hey! Heyyyy!”

  We stop walking and turn to find our next best friend, Connor, running toward us, arms flying around wildly.

  “What’s his deal?” Kevin murmurs.

  “Probably mad because we didn’t ask him to walk to school with us,” I suggest.

  “I had only one extra doughnut,” Kevin whispers. “What do I say to him?”

  Connor screeches to a halt in front of us and leans forward, hands on his thighs, panting hard. “Class is cancelled.”

  I finish my doughnut. “Sister Marion sick or something?” Now I lick my fingers.

  “No,” Connor says, straightening, hands on his hips. “I heard my mom talking on the phone. One of the kids from class is dead. As in never coming to class again.”

  Kevin and I both drop our backpacks and together ask, “Who?”

  “Don’t know,” Connor says. “But they found him down by the creek.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  PRESENT DAY

  I sit in the back row of the theater-style Austin, Texas speakeasy, the air conditioner cranked on high, soothing the heat of a hot August night. A stage sits in the center of the room, and there is whiskey in my hand—an expensive pour of a high-end Macallan—my preferred drink. I’m loyal to what I believe to be quality in all things. There are other, more affordable whiskey choices, of course, but when I’m alone, without my family, I am no longer forced to play the frugal husband and father. A role that is cumbersome, but necessary to protect a higher purpose I must serve.

  I glance at the attendees of tonight’s poetry reading, counting twenty heads, the ages varied; one young woman can’t be more than sixteen, while one man’s shriveled skin ages to sixty-plus.

  This is a cozy little spot indeed, and I sip my Macallan, oaky with a hot lick on the tongue, as Michael Summer steps to the microphone. He has thick dark hair, much like the look I’ve created for myself in this persona. He’s tall, six-foot-two, I imagine, a good four inches above my five-foot-ten, with glasses and a bow tie accentuating his button-down. I appreciate the attention to detail, and considering his role as tonight’s poetry guide, I’ve now raised my expectations. Perhaps he’ll be good enough to continue in his role.

  His gaze scans the crowd and finds me, “the professor,” as he knows me from a prior event, one that led me to an invitation to this one.

  He clears his throat and then says, “Good evening. I’m Michael Summer. Welcome to our poetry night, a night of literary delight. Now, to get started, I’ve placed a book of poems under your seat.” I hear nothing else. Poetry is the bible of words, not meant to lie on the ground, not meant to be dirtied and disrespected. Poetry is history to be protected, lessons to be learned, a path to change our society or prevent its demise.

  And I am the chosen master—not the original, of course, but the chosen one nevertheless.

  I sit back, sipping the luxurious whiskey that I now know to be a mismatch to a night where I watch one person after another step to the microphone to butcher the great works: Frost, Shakespeare, Poe. The list goes on, but I don’t blame the students. I blame the teacher, and the teacher must pay. He will not continue in his role, but he will serve a purpose.

  I down my drink and slide my glass into my bag on the floor. The only part of me I ever leave behind is words, and my decision is made. Tonight is the night. Summer is the one. He’s the one who will let her know it’s time to fulfill her destiny. It’s time for her to train, to prove her worth, to be tested. He’s the one who will bring her to me, my perfect student, the future master.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Detective Samantha Jazz!”

  At Captain Moore’s bellow, my gaze jerks across my desk to Detective Ethan Langford, my sometimes partner and desk mate. “What did you do, Lang?”

  He laughs, a big hearty laugh appropriate for a man of six-foot-three who believes in “go big or go home,” and too often drags me along for the bumpy ride. The man doesn’t understand the principles of research and preparation. He holds up his hands. “I did nothing. Just say that. It’s perfect.”

  I scowl because he enjoys batting back and forth with the captain. I do not, and with good reason. Every encounter for me with Moore includes a ghost in the room: the former captain, my father, whom we buried only three months ago today, and not with the honor I would have liked. “Seriously, Lang?”

  “I didn’t do anything.” He wiggles an eyebrow. “Not that he knows about.”

  I plop my hands on my hips and glare.

  “Oh come on, brains,” he chides, “you were the youngest detective in the precinct, at twenty-five, with the highest scores on record. You had some crazy-high IQ test. You can handle the captain.”

  “You’re enjoying this,” I accuse.

  “I kind of am. Maybe he wants to know why you’re thirty-two and won’t take the sergeant’s test.”

  “You’re forty and you haven’t taken the test,” I counter.

  “Because I’m a fuckup.”

  I love him, but he kind of is a fuckup, and it’s always been interesting to me that my father partnered us so often. “Well then,” I say. “I haven’t taken the test because I don’t want to manage people like you.”

  “Jazz!” the captain shouts. “Now!”

  I shove strands of my long, light brown hair behind my ears, and do so for no good reason. To a detective like myself, it might seem like a nervous gesture. So would the way I stand up and run my hands over my blazer, the likes of which I often pair with a silk blouse and dress pants. The jacket hides my weapon and badge, and the silk says: “I’m female, hear me roar.”

  I’m not
roaring now, though. My spine is stiff, and when I glance at the spot on my desk that once sported a photo of my father—tall and handsome, with green eyes that matched mine, and thick brown hair—I’m sick to my stomach. I’m also ready to get this over with.

  Turning away from Lang, I tune out his, “Good luck!” that starts a symphony of the same from various detectives in the pit of desks. The captain isn’t going to press me to take the sergeant’s test. I’m the daughter of his dirty predecessor, only three months in the grave, for God’s sake. And apparently, my desire to join Internal Affairs to be the better Jazz made me a worse traitor than my father.

  Captain Moore doesn’t trust me. The fact that my godfather is Chief of Police and my father’s ex-best friend doesn’t help matters.

  I reach his doorway and without hesitation, I enter his office. That’s the thing about being a homicide detective and my father’s daughter. Even in the midst of uncomfortable situations, I haven’t been bred to timidity. I know how to dive right in to the bloody moment. And every moment with the captain, at least for me, is a bloody moment.

  He’s behind his desk, a Black man in his forties who is big in all ways; his presence is large and confident. His energy commanding. His office is cold, like the man, free of family photos. He’s also a man who clearly enjoys the gym, and I know from my history with him that he does so far more than he ever enjoyed a day at the ice cream parlor. I, on the other hand, enjoy the gym and the ice cream parlor, but he’s just not that divided on anything. He doesn’t see the gray that I believe solves crimes. There is only black and white, which to me explains why, my father aside, I prickle every nerve Moore owns. We both know that I learned to see that gray from my father, who was inarguably a damn good detective in his day. He simply saw a little too much gray.

  “Shut the door,” Moore orders without looking up from his file.

  Wonderful. A shut door is not good.

  I do as I’m told and once I’m sealed in the rather small office with this extremely large man, he lifts his intelligent, brown, always-cranky stare to mine, judgment in its depths. Always the judgment, but that’s not what comes out of his mouth. “I hear that you know something about poetry.” He taps his computer screen. “That’s what your employment record says. You ran a poetry club in college.”

  I frown. Maybe this is about the sergeant’s test. “Why exactly are you looking up my college record?”

  “I wasn’t looking at you, Detective Jazz. I was looking for someone who knows poetry, even if it meant searching outside the department, but it turns out I got a hit with you.” He slides a file across the desk and sets it in front of me. “This should explain.”

  My defenses lower, and the detective in me, the one who thrives on impossible puzzles, sits down, eager to work. Work is good. Work keeps me sane. It took me sixty days after my father died to convince the department shrink just how true that is. A month later, she’s seen me solve cases and perform at my best. Now, she believes me. Now, I’m rid of her.

  I open the file and I’m staring at a naked man tied to a chair by his ankles and waist, but interestingly enough, his hands dangle freely by his sides. His head is dropped forward, a mop of dark hair draping his face. Vomit forms an unevenly edged pool on the floor to his right. In my mind, I imagine the moment that sickness overcame him, imagine that he tried to escape that chair, and noting the burn marks by his ribcage, perhaps violently. When unable to untie himself, in desperation, it appears that he most likely leaned forward and heaved.

  I scan the information sheet on the inside flap of the file.

  Cause of death: Poison. Substance undetermined. Pending toxicology reports.

  My memory conjures up an old case. A husband who’d forced his wife to ingest a cyanide pill under threat of her children’s deaths. She’d never had a chance of survival. There’s no turning back from a substantial intake of cyanide, no chance of being saved. You’re dead in two to five brutal minutes. That mother was dead in two to five brutal minutes, never to see her children again.

  That woman, that mother protecting her children, hadn’t been tied to a chair like this man, but her monster of a husband later confessed to having given her a choice. He’d told her to take a cyanide pill he’d snapped up from the dark web or he’d kill the kids. He’d wanted her life insurance. She’d taken the pill to save her kids, but he’d given the kids pills as well and then tried to make it look like a murder-suicide that left him alone and devastated.

  I shove aside that morbid memory to focus on this new case, already forming a hypothesis. Perhaps something similar to what happened to that mother happened to this man. That’s why his hands are free. He was given a choice—freely submit to a poison-flavored death or an alternative that one can assume to have been worse.

  For a moment, I believe that old case, and my history with a poison murder weapon, is why I’m looking at this file, but then I remember the captain’s reference to my knowledge of poetry. I flip the page and find a photo of a typed poem, much like an oversized fortune in a fortune cookie. There’s a note that indicates the poem had been shoved inside the victim’s mouth, and yet it’s free of the victim’s vomit. That’s interesting.

  I set that thought aside for now and read the poem:

  Who laugh in the teeth of disaster,

  Yet hope through the darkness to find

  A road past the stars to a Master

  “We googled the poem,” the captain says, obviously following my review of the file. “It’s by—”

  “Arthur Guiterman,” I supply.

  His brows furrow. “The poem’s eight paragraphs. You have three lines. How did you know that?”

  “Isn’t that why you called me in here? Because I have a knowledge of poetry?”

  “Indeed,” he agrees. “I just didn’t expect—”

  “That I really did? Well, I do.”

  His eyes narrow. “What does the poem mean?”

  “You could ask a handful of scholars that question and get a handful of disagreements.”

  His lips press together. He doesn’t like my honesty, which is relevant to how impossible the question is to answer. “What does it mean to you?”

  “My interpretation: it’s about destiny.”

  Apparently, I passed the knowledge test, because he moves on. “The detective on this case made an abrupt decision to transfer to Houston, which leaves me reassigning the case.”

  My brows dip in confusion, my mind focused on the detective departing, not the case that’s obviously going to land with me. We’re a small department of twelve detectives who know one another at least reasonably well. No one has said a peep about transferring. “Who’s leaving?”

  “Roberts.”

  Now I’m really confused. I mean, Roberts and I aren’t close, but I’ve known the man for years and he has roots here—a house, friends, an ex-wife he lives to fight with, a weekend football league. I shake my head with that confusion. “Why would he do that, Captain?”

  “Personal decision.” He offers no further explanation. “I’ll let him know that he’ll be briefing you on this case. You’re taking it over. It’s your decision to either pull in Detective Langford or fly solo. This case, as far as I’m concerned, is your destiny, Detective Jazz.”

  ALSO BY LISA RENEE JONES

  THE INSIDE OUT SERIES

  If I Were You

  Being Me

  Revealing Us

  His Secrets*

  Rebecca’s Lost Journals

  The Master Undone*

  My Hunger*

  No In Between

  My Control*

  I Belong to You

  All of Me*

  THE SECRET LIFE OF AMY BENSEN

  Escaping Reality

  Infinite Possibilities

  Forsaken

  Unbroken*

  CARELESS WHISPERS

  Denial

  Demand

  Surrender

>   WHITE LIES

  Provocative

  Shameless

  TALL, DARK & DEADLY

  Hot Secrets

  Dangerous Secrets

  Beneath the Secrets

  WALKER SECURITY

  Deep Under

  Pulled Under

  Falling Under

  LILAH LOVE

  Murder Notes

  Murder Girl

  Love Me Dead

  Love Kills

  Bloody Vows

  Bloody Love (June 2021)

  DIRTY RICH

  Dirty Rich One Night Stand

  Dirty Rich Cinderella Story

  Dirty Rich Obsession

  Dirty Rich Betrayal

  Dirty Rich Cinderella Story: Ever After

  Dirty Rich One Night Stand: Two Years Later

  Dirty Rich Obsession: All Mine

  Dirty Rich Secrets

  Dirty Rich Betrayal: Love Me Forever

  THE FILTHY TRILOGY

  The Bastard

  The Princess

  The Empire

  THE NAKED TRILOGY

  One Man

  One Woman

  Two Together

  THE SAVAGE SERIES

  Savage Hunger

  Savage Burn

  Savage Love

  Savage Ending (April 2021)

  THE BRILLIANCE TRILOGY

  A Reckless Note

  A Wicked Song

  A Sinful Encore

  ADRIAN’S TRILOGY

  When He’s Dirty

  When He’s Bad

  When He’s Wild (March 2021)

  *eBook only

  ABOUT LISA RENEE JONES

  New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Lisa Renee Jones writes dark, edgy fiction to include the highly acclaimed Inside Out series and the upcoming, crime thriller The Poet. Suzanne Todd (producer of Alice in Wonderland and Bad Moms) on the Inside Out series: Lisa has created a beautiful, complicated, and sensual world that is filled with intrigue and suspense.