“Look, Brian.” She took a breath and started again. “I know you and I don’t have a lot in common right now. I know your friends mean a lot to you, but I have certain obligations. There are things we need to talk about that I think would ease your transition.”
He didn’t say anything. Soldiers on the screen, planted in an urban setting, crept around crumbling buildings and burned cars. She wondered if it was meant to look like Beirut. It looked like Beirut.
“Brian?” she said after a rather long pause.
“I told you before. I don’t want to talk. I’m not ready to talk, and if I am, I’ll talk to Kaleigh or one of the guys.”
She brushed her hair off her forehead. It felt long. It was getting in her eyes. She needed a haircut. “I don’t understand why you don’t want to talk to me. I . . . know you don’t exactly remember the details, but I’m your wife, Brian.”
“I don’t care.” He snapped his head around, looking at her for just a second before returning his attention to the game. “Don’t you get it? I don’t give a shit about who you are or who I’m supposed to be. I don’t want to be an effin’ vampire!”
“Neither do I,” Aedan said from behind, startling Peigi.
She’d been so intent on her conversation with Brian that she hadn’t heard Aedan come in the front door or felt his presence. She chuckled at his comment. This was one of the things she wanted to talk to Brian about. About how none of them wanted to be vampires, but God hadn’t given them a choice. It wasn’t optional. That was the whole point of a curse.
“You want me to work him over?” Aedan asked Peigi, acting as if Brian wasn’t in the room. “Because I can jack up his punk ass.” He made a fist and punched it into his palm.
Brian actually looked in their direction long enough to allow himself to get shot, and the word DEFEAT appeared up on the screen in bold red letters.
“You need to pay attention, duuude.” Aedan pointed to the TV screen. “Man, you suck at this game.” He sounded just like Brian and his friends when they talked to each other.
Peigi laughed out loud, grabbed Aedan’s arm, and led him out of the den. Leave it to Aedan to alter her perspective. “Come on, have a whiskey with me.”
“I don’t want anything to drink,” he told her.
“Fine. You can watch me drink.”
Chapter 4
Interviews with victims and their families were always hard. No matter how many times Aedan did it, he always felt awkward, and he found it difficult to keep his own emotions in check while others poured out theirs. Peigi said the fact that he could still feel for the humans after all these years of doing what he did was what made him so good at his job as a key investigator. Some days he wished he wasn’t so good at his job. Days like today.
“Thanks for seeing me, Miss Jones,” he said, making a point to look directly at her. In order to make Teesha more comfortable, he had shifted into a woman: mid-thirties, long, brown hair pulled into a ponytail, a nondescript blue suit a female detective might wear. And kind, blue eyes. “Mind if I sit down?” He indicated the chair beside the hospital bed.
“I’ll be out in the hall making some phone calls, if you need me,” Mark said to her. He looked to Aedan. You look cute in blue, he telepathed. Matches those pretty eyes. Make it snappy. I’ve got a rookie shadowing me today. I sent him for coffee, but eventually he’ll find his way back up here. Obviously, I’m not supposed to be letting civilians interview the victim. And the sept hasn’t put you on the case yet, either. I don’t want to get my ass in a jam with Peigi again.
Just a friend stopping by to say hello, Aedan telepathed back. He returned his attention to Teesha Jones.
“Sure. Sit down,” she said in a tiny voice.
She was a tall, slender girl, but she looked small in the bed, lost in the sheet, in the tubes and the wires, and the bandages that covered much of her face and both arms. Her speech was slightly slurred, perhaps from the painkiller being administered through her IV, but most likely due to the severe damage done to her face by Jay’s razor.
“I know Detective Karr has asked you a million questions. I got a lot of the details from him this morning.” Aedan already had the basics: She’d left work early, interviewed at Brew, met her friends at the Irish pub, lost track of them, and left the bar alone. Her intention had been to rejoin her pals, but when she couldn’t get any of her friends on their cells, she’d decided to run into Dogfish Head, just to tell them good night. She’d taken a shortcut through an alley, between two buildings. Jay had attacked her in the alley. What Aedan was hoping was that she could tell him something about Jay that he didn’t already know.
“I’m going to try not to repeat all those questions. I know this is hard for you. I just need some details about your attacker. If you can answer, great. If you can’t, don’t worry about it.” He kept his tone light, but businesslike, as if they were discussing the details of a fender-bender, rather than a brutal crime.
Teesha had been looking at him. She had big, beautiful cinnamon-brown eyes. When he mentioned Jay, she glanced away; a tear drifted down to be absorbed by a gauze bandage.
Aedan waited a moment, then went on, using the female detective’s voice. “Had you seen your attacker earlier that evening? In the bar? On the street maybe?”
She shook her head “no” slowly, as if truly considering the question. That was good. She was thinking. And she obviously had at least some memory of the events leading up to the attack. Often, victims not only could not remember the violence, they lost hours or even days leading up to the attack.
“Think back on the customers you had that day in your shop. Do you remember seeing him there?”
Again she responded with a slight shake of her head. Her face was so swollen from the attack and subsequent surgeries that she barely looked human. Her beautiful face, so disfigured, made Aedan ache for all she had suffered. For all the suffering yet to come.
“One of your friends said you were talking with a guy at the Irish pub across the street from where you work. It wasn’t him?”
“No.” Her voice was raspy.
Jay liked to strangle victims—not enough to kill them, just enough to cut the oxygen off to their brain long enough to subdue them. Aedan suspected there would be strangulation bruises on her neck if he looked. He’d check with Mark later.
“His name was Alex,” she continued. “The guy I was talking to. He seemed really sweet. He works at Blue Moon. You know, the restaurant. He’s a bar-back. He . . . he asked for my number, and I gave it to him.” She was obviously trying to be strong, but a little sob escaped her throat. “He asked me out. We talked about going kayaking because we both like outdoor sports.” She bit down on her swollen lip. “I guess that won’t be happening, will it?”
Aedan knew that, at this stage, there was no sense in arguing with the victim. Right now, her wounds were so raw, emotionally and physically, that there was no way for her to see through to the other side. From where she lay, there was no future, no hope. This close to the assault, the best thing he could do was just listen.
Teesha sniffed and looked up at the harsh fluorescent light over her head. “It wasn’t Alex.”
“Did you see the man who attacked you?”
“He came from behind me. He must have followed me into the alley. Maybe from the bar?”
He could tell by her tone of voice that she was just guessing. “But you don’t remember being followed?”
“No.”
“Could you identify your attacker’s race?”
She thought for a second, then turned her head. Even the slightest movement caused her pain. “He was Caucasian. Brown hair. Average height. Five-nine, five-ten, maybe. That’s how tall I am. Five-ten. Average looking. He was wearing a black hoodie, so I didn’t really see much of his face.”
That was part of the problem. Jay was good at blending in. Women who could remember anything about him gave slightly different descriptions of him, but never so different that all t
he descriptions couldn’t have been of the same man. Jay was, according to his victims, Mr. Average: average height, average weight, brown hair, brown eyes. And he always wore common clothing; when Aedan had morphed the previous night into the young woman, he’d worn a black hoodie. So had 25 percent of the people on Rehoboth Avenue on a cold April night.
“Was there anything that stood out about him, anything at all you remember?”
She thought for a moment. “He was wearing gloves. Not like cotton ones or wool. Medical gloves. Like they use here in the hospital.”
That wasn’t unusual; many rapists did. It prevented them from leaving fingerprints. But it was a new detail for Jay. Of course, fifty years ago, when he’d last reared his ugly head, gloves hadn’t been as readily available as they were today. Now, anyone could walk into a drugstore and buy a box of a hundred.
“And a condom.” Her voice cracked.
“Did he say anything?”
“No. I remember thinking that was weird. That he didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. I was sure he was going to kill me. I tried everything, you know, what they say you should do if it happens. I begged; I cried; I told him my name. He cut me when I screamed. Then he stuffed a handkerchief in my mouth.”
Mark said the police had found a plain, new, men’s white handkerchief in the alley. Teesha had already identified it as what she had pulled out of her mouth when he left her to die.
“He didn’t act like he was in a hurry. He didn’t seem to be afraid anyone would see us. He took his time.” She met Aedan’s gaze, then looked away, embarrassed. “He took his time with the condom, too.”
Aedan would double-check with Mark, but he would bet no used condom had been found at the scene. In fact, Jay was so clean, so careful that the police had had a hard time finding exactly where the attack had begun. They’d had to follow the blood trail from the parking lot where Teesha was found, backwards to the scene of the crime.
“You said you knew he wanted to kill you?” Aedan said thoughtfully. “Do you think he meant to? Was that his intention when he attacked you?”
She thought for a moment, then shifted in the bed ever so slightly. What he could see of her face grimaced in pain. “I thought at the time that he was going to kill me, but I know now he never meant to.” She clasped her bandaged fingers. “Other wise, I’d be dead.”
They were quiet for a minute. Aedan sometimes wished he had Kaleigh’s power to read humans’ minds—it would have made investigations so much easier, for him and the victims—but he didn’t. “You’ve been a lot of help, Teesha. I appreciate your willingness to talk with me. I’ll be back in a few days to check on you, and probably ask some more questions.” He paused. “Can you think of anything about your attacker that might help us find him? Any details? Even the smallest, most insignificant detail? The kind of shoes he was wearing? Any tattoos? Body piercings? Cologne?”
“I can’t think of anything distinguishing about him. Which is weird, because it seemed like I laid on the ground under him for hours.” She was quiet long enough that Aedan thought she was done, then she spoke again. “He was cold.”
He met her gaze. “The ground was cold?”
“It was, but that’s not what I meant. He was cold. His body. You know”—again she teared up—“where he touched me.”
There was a knock on the door, and it swung open. Incoming, Mark telepathed.
“I’ve stayed too long, Miss Jones.” Aedan stood. “I’m going to go, but would it be all right if I came back?”
“Sure. Whatever it takes.” She stared at the ceiling and pushed a button on a handheld device that he knew administered more painkiller. The machine beeped. “I’ll do anything to help you catch him.” She was getting teary again. “To keep this from happening to someone else.”
“You take care, Miss Jones.”
“Call me Teesha. I don’t mind.” Her eyes drifted shut.
Aedan walked out into the hall, leaned against the wall, and closed his own eyes.
All evening, Dallas glanced in the direction of the door every time it opened. She’d pretty much kicked Aedan Brigid out of her bar; she doubted he’d be back. So why did she keep looking for him? Why was she disappointed he hadn’t returned?
She swept up several empty pilsners off the bar top, hitting them together a little harder than she should have. She carried them to a dishpan under the bar.
She’d checked up on him just as she had said she would. She’d called the state police first thing this morning after she dropped Kenzie off at a friend’s. That really was his name—Aedan Brigid. The detective she had spoken to had confirmed that he really was a private investigator and sort of talked him up, though not in an obvious way. Detective Karr had stopped by midday and asked her a few questions about her job interview with Teesha Jones. Dallas wasn’t entirely sure why the detective had come downtown to question her personally. The interview had taken less than ten minutes. Dallas knew nothing about where the girl had been before she had come to the interview or where she had gone afterward. The detective could have asked his questions over the phone . . . unless of course he was scoping her out for his ginger friend, which would be totally weird. But she wouldn’t put it past a bunch of cops.
It was getting late. Things were beginning to wind down in the bar, though last call wasn’t for another hour. As Dallas scooped up a tip and dropped it into a mug, she seriously considered letting Tat close and going upstairs to bed early. She’d hired two college students, twin sisters, to watch Kenzie. That way she always had coverage. Ashley was here tonight. Dallas was sure she’d appreciate an early night. There was no reason why Tat couldn’t close. He knew the routine. He offered to do it all the time, but she rarely let him.
Dallas was a bona fide workaholic. She was either with her daughter or working. She worked days from midmorning ’til three, when she left to pick Kenzie up from school, then she spent time with her daughter until bedtime at nine when one of the sisters took over for her. Dallas didn’t usually mind working those evening hours. It was better than sitting in front of the TV thinking about all the ways she’d screwed up her life. All the ways things could have been different if she hadn’t inherited her mother’s gift. But those thoughts just led to making friends with a bottle of Grey Goose. Being a bona fide workaholic, she had decided, was better than being a bona fide alcoholic.
It might be nice to go to bed early, for once. Tomorrow she and Kenzie had a big day planned: Kenzie’s horseback riding lesson, a birthday party for a classmate, a trip to the grocery store, and they were going to make chicken enchiladas. Dallas didn’t intend to step back into the bar until tomorrow night at nine . . . unless she and Kenzie stopped by for a few minutes in the afternoon to check the produce delivery. Kids didn’t belong in bars, but Kenzie loved to sit in the kitchen with Miguel or his cousin Carlos, and “help” with prep work. And they’d help her with her Spanish. Miguel and Carlos were beyond patient with Kenzie; for that reason, Dallas would never fire either of them.
The bar door opened behind her. She heard a couple of guys leaving; they were horsing around, shoving each other and laughing loudly. Typical bar behavior at midnight on a Saturday night. She didn’t turn around. She popped the pour-top off an empty bourbon bottle and dropped the bottle into the recycling bin. From under the bar, she produced a new bottle of Jack.
“How about if we start all over?”
It was a male voice. It was his voice. Aedan Brigid’s.
Dallas spun around, gripping the bourbon bottle in one hand, the pour-top in the other. He must have come in the door at the same time the rowdy guys were leaving.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, sliding onto the barstool.
She swung her hair over her shoulder. She usually wore it pulled back in a knot or a ponytail. Often a little dirty. She’d showered before she came down to work tonight, had had wet hair, and had left it down. She hoped to God not, in some subconscious way, for his sake. “You didn’t startle
me,” she said defensively, sounding totally unconvincing. She set the bottle and the pour-top on the bar, looked at him and then back at the bottle, like a complete idiot.
“I wanted to apologize for my behavior,” he said. “Coming in here under the pretense of something like that.”
She couldn’t help herself. She felt a smile tug at the corners of her mouth. She tried to twist the top off the Jack Daniels. It didn’t budge. “It’s all right. Pretty creative pick-up line. I’ll give you that.” She twisted again. Still nothing.
“Want me to do that?” He put out his hand.
“You know how many of these I open a week?” He drew back his hand, but he was watching her intently. He was quiet long enough for her to give the cap two more tries before she finally gave up and slid the bottle across the polished wood to him, quickly withdrawing her hand. She had to make sure they wouldn’t accidently touch.
Still watching her, he twisted the cap and broke the seal. He slid the bottle back to her, making a show of pulling his own hands back, so they didn’t touch.
He knew. She didn’t know what he knew, but he knew something. About her. About what she could do.
The metal cap was still warm from his touch, and the warmth radiated through her. She missed the warmth of a man’s touch. With John, after a while, she had known all his memories. Eventually they sort of faded until they were barely present when they touched. That, and apparently his brain had been so hazy with the drugs she hadn’t known he was doing, that he hadn’t been retaining much. It had made their relationship possible. Before that, Dallas had rarely had sex, and when she did, she had mixed in plenty of alcohol. Alcohol dulled the gift.
Dallas concentrated on removing the cap and placing the pour-top in it just so. When Aedan spoke again, his voice was very low, its timbre reverberating in her head. In her entire body.
“I had to come back, Dallas. I had to know what that was.”
Voracious - (Claire Point Vampire 5) Page 5