He gave me a skeptical look. “Why’d you check the trunk then?”
“Just a hunch.” I couldn’t necessarily tell him it was because I was pretty sure I smelled the decomposing, corpse, could I?
Peter came walking up as Peak and I exchanged words.
Peak gave me an annoyed look, but nodded. “Well, go on and see your boss. Hope he gives you an ass chewing for breaking and entering.”
“I’ll let him know your feelings on the subject,” I said as I turned to head down the stairs. Peak disappeared back into the apartment, presumably to take a closer look around. I turned my attention to Peter, who was now firmly planted at the bottom of the stairs.
“Jake.”
“Peter.”
“Mind telling me what the hell is going on?”
I took him back to my truck and began to give him the low-down. The unvarnished truth. I didn’t like having to lie to the cops, but I’d do it if I had to because there were certain things that just couldn’t go in the police report. Certain things they’d feel obligated to write down if they knew the truth.
Peter, on the other hand? No way I could lie to my boss, or my alpha. He knew the score with the cops, what parts to keep his mouth shut about.
I glanced over to Deputy Glick, taking Elise’s statement.
I just hoped she was handling this okay.
But the look on her face told me she wasn’t.
Chapter Eleven – Elise
“And you said y’all reckoned you heard something?”
“Yeah, that’s right. We thought we heard something.”
“Any idea what that might have been?”
“Crying? Whimpering? That’s what we thought, at least.”
“It wasn’t none of that, though, was it?”
“Nope. Sure wasn’t.”
“What were y’all coming by here for, again?”
I sighed, rolled my eyes. I’d already told this pissant, Glick, twice what we were doing here. I knew he was just trying to trip me up, to get me to retell my story again and again and again until he found something wrong with the way I’d told it the fifteenth time. “We were looking for my sister, Eve Moon. We’d heard from a bartender at The Nugget that she was staying with some guy here, but he hadn’t been to work in a week, and she told us where he lived.”
“And you say you’ve never met the victim before? Your sister’s boyfriend? Why is that?”
“We don’t really know if she was his girlfriend,” I corrected before answering him through gritted teeth. “And it’s because I’ve been taking care of my sick father in New Mexico.”
“You sound a little frustrated, ma’am. No need for that, now.”
“No,” I replied, my voice rising a little, “I sound like my sister is missing, and this guy she was with is dead.”
Jake glanced over and caught my eye. He shook his head.
I grimaced, trying to remind myself to blunt my tongue.
“Yes, ma’am, you’re right. Her boyfriend is dead. Any idea who might have had reason to kill him?”
“I just told you, Deputy, I never even met the guy. Seriously. How would I know who wants him dead?”
“Just find it strange, that’s all, you showing up in town looking for your sister who’s going under an assumed name and all. And first thing you do is find her dead boyfriend in the trunk of his car.”
“I didn’t find him,” I repeated, just like I had before at the beginning of the conversation. “That was all Jacob Wayne. He found the body, not me.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Look, do I need to get a lawyer or something, Deputy Glick?”
“Why would you do something like that? You think you need one?”
“No, I don’t. Because I didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Ma’am, you’ll excuse me, but none of this seems to really be adding up to much, here. Your story just–”
“Deputy,” I interjected, “if I’d murdered this guy a week ago, why the hell would I bring a private investigator here? And if Jake was involved, why the hell would we call you after we found the corpse?”
“Miss Moon,” the Deputy said, pronouncing the Miss with a z at the end, “you seem to be getting rather agitated.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You’re damn right I’m getting agitated. My sister is out there on the run and this guy she’s been with is dead!”
“Glick!” Sheriff Peak called from the foot of the stairs. Behind me, the gate creaked open, and the sheriff came tramping through. “A word?”
Glick gave me a tight smile and excused himself. “Yes, sir?”
They spoke back and forth in muffled tones, but I got the gist of it. “What the hell you thinking, deputy? She wasn’t even in town, she was at her daddy’s goddamn funeral.”
“But I –”
“No buts, boy. Now, I’m gonna go up to the house and talk to Reba. Stop bothering that girl, will you? Do something useful and get this place taped off.”
Glick came back over with a glare on his face. “Ma’am, uh, that’s all for my questions at the moment.”
“Just when it was starting to get interesting.” I hoped he caught the sarcasm.
He pulled a business card from his pocket and offered it to me. “You think of or hear anything, please let us know.”
“Sure thing,” I said, stuffing away the card as Glick made his way back to his old police cruiser. I turned and looked at Jake, but he was by the old Bronco that had driven up, deep in conversation with the handsome man I assumed was his boss. He looked older than Jake by several years, and he watched his employee with stern, discerning eyes as he laid out all the information. He glanced over at me with those cold eyes of his, and I realized there was just something about him. A small difference over other men that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
I shook my head and crossed my arms, trying to decide what I should do. I couldn’t exactly go back up to the apartment where it was warm. After all, it was a crime scene now. Besides, I couldn’t stand the smell.
Deputy Glick came back from his squad car with a roll of yellow crime scene tape in hand. I stepped away from where I was standing and headed over to Jake’s truck. I climbed into the passenger’s side, trying to get out of the frigid cold.
That warm smell of my pops’ truck filled my nose again as I settled in. It was cold in here, but still warmer than outside. I looked over at Jake, to him and his boss going back and forth.
I still wasn’t sure why this ex-cop from LA was helping me—whether it was because of some altruistic streak of his, or if my joke at the diner earlier about him trying to get into my pants was more accurate. Not that I would have minded all that much. Eve wasn’t the only one in the family who liked a good-looking man, one with strong arms, strong hands, and a nice smile. Just like his boss, though, there was something about this guy that was different. Maybe it was because he was from the west coast? Maybe it was because he was a cop? After all, he had that swagger to him, that confidence all the people with guns and badges I’d ever met seemed to have.
Most of the time, I detested it as just cockiness. You could scratch your nail on the surface of their personality and realize that, nope, that was all the reason for their over-confidence. A badge.
But not Jake. Jake hadn’t been a cop for a few years, the way he talked about it. So maybe it was just a confidence in himself? In his own convictions?
Whatever the case, I was quickly realizing that I probably needed him here by my side, whether I wanted it or not. This shit with Eve, or Lilith, or whatever my sister was calling herself, was getting out of hand. Assumed names? Business cards for pill mills at the place where she was staying? Her disappearing again? Guys showing up where she lived, carting off and murdering her boyfriend? I didn’t even want to think about all the drug paraphernalia in the apartment and what she could’ve been up to.
I shook my head, tucking a wavy bang back beneath my beanie.
What was going on? Was she on
drugs? Was she running from drug dealers? Or was she still trying to deal with Mom and Pops’ deaths in some crazy way of hers?
No matter the truth of it, though, I was scared. I knew enough to realize that whatever circles my baby sister was running in, they were not full of nice people. And I knew, too, I needed Jake to help me get to the heart of the matter. He knew this area and knew how to take care of himself. He had a truck and a gun. And, deep down, I knew he’d help me.
I bit my thumb’s cuticle as I tried to put myself in her shoes, tried to consider why she’d run, why she’d made the choice she had.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t.
Chapter Twelve – Jake
“Listen, Peter, I’ve been thinking. I just don’t think this job is what I signed on for.”
“Signed on for, huh?” Peter said, his breath coming out in big puffs of steam like Smaug sitting in his mountain keep. “Knew you were signing on for private security work.”
I’d realized as I was standing there explaining to Frost how I found the victim in the trunk of the car, that there’d been a feeling creeping below the surface of my life for the last few months or so. Just an annoying little sensation that seemed to be coming to a head, like all the problems I had with my life were just about to surface.
“Maybe I didn’t word that right. What I mean is, I thought we were going to be doing different kinds of work, Cap. Come on, I left homicide in LA for this. All I did there was solve murders—try to, at least. Here, though, what do I do? Investigate the occasional break-in? Interview employees for loss prevention cases? Do a little fraud investigation?”
“You defend people, Jake. You helped us with Frank’s girl’s case just a few months ago. If you hadn’t spotted where that guy would have been camped out, we’d have had no idea who he was when we were trying to save her.”
I shook my head. “That’s still not the kind of case I used to handle. I used to deliver justice to victims. Would you look at this shit? At Glick fumbling all over the crime scene with his dick in his hands? Trying to blame Elise for this shit?”
Peter shook his head. “Maybe you should join the sheriff’s office, then?”
I almost burst out laughing. “And catch an interesting case once every two years?”
“This why you want the vacation time? To help Elise?”
“Would’ve made a good detective, Cap.”
He didn’t smile.
“Seriously, yeah. That’s the major reason. She needs help. I mean, I’m not exactly the best in the business at tracking people down, but I can follow a clue like a bloodhound. And, besides, I’d like to find the guys that did this.”
“To your guy in the trunk, you mean?”
“Think anyone else is going to? Got a feeling the only one who’s going to miss him is Granny in there.”
Peter looked down at the icy street. “What are you thinking after this? You coming back?”
I sighed. “I dunno.”
“The pack, though?”
I paused, and thought about all the guys. They were like my brothers, even after such a short amount of time.
Back when I was a soldier, you got closer to your buddies than anyone else in the world. Getting shot at, getting blown up. You fought for the guy next to you even if you couldn’t stand him. Because he was your comrade. That was it. Only they understood what you were going through, and only you understood what they were going through. You were in it together.
Afterwards, when I was a cop, you had the badge. You had the brotherhood. Backing the blue, turning an eye to what sometimes needed to be done to get the job done. It was us versus the scum, the people who wanted to make a life by stealing the lives of others. When it came down to it, they were your brothers, too.
But my pack mates? Frank, Richard, Matt, Peter, and even Mary?
God, I’d never had anyone like them before. They were something different. Like both fraternities of my life rolled into one. Soldiers, investigators, shifters. Nothing like my earlier pack, either. They were family.
Just thinking about them, and the thought of maybe leaving them, made my stomach bottom out and hit the slush.
“Jake?” Peter asked. “You alright?”
I shook my head. “I dunno, Peter. What I do know, though, is that I need to carry through on this one. I need to take the time off and help her find her sister. And I gotta find out who killed this kid and see justice done.”
“That important to you?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
Peter nodded. “Alright. Take the time off. We’re pretty clear since it’s just after the holidays. Probably won’t pick up till after Valentine’s Day.”
We shook hands. “Thanks, Cap.”
“You care about her already, don’t you?”
“Who?”
“Girl in your truck. Elise.”
I glanced back at the beautiful woman sitting in the cab of my old truck, just staring out the window as Deputy Glick finished cordoning off the crime scene. I watched as she brushed a long curl from her face, finally getting frustrated enough to just stick it up below her beanie.
“She’s just a girl who needs help, Cap. That’s all.”
Peter gave me a brief smile and a nod. “Sure, Jake. Request for leave is granted. Why don’t you get her out of here so she doesn’t have to see the corpse again when the coroner arrives?”
“Probably a good idea.”
“And, hey, Jake,” Peter called to my back as I was walking to my truck, “don’t worry. Whatever you decide, we’ll understand.”
I turned back to Peter and gave him a nod.
What were those old lyrics? Something about staying, or going?
“Guess you can just call me Joe,” I mumbled as I climbed into the cab.
Chapter Thirteen - Elise
“Sure you don’t want me to just stick around while you get ready?” Jake asked.
“Nope. Get showered and changed at your place, swing back around. After today, I want a long, hot shower to try and wash some of this grime off. Both of us take one, we won’t be able to head to Yellow Rose till the morning.”
He nodded. “You doing okay?” he asked before I could close the door.
I stopped. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about my baby sister, or her little boyfriend stuffed into his trunk. “Why wouldn’t I be, Jake? I grew up on a farm. Things die, things smell bad. The living keep moving.”
He gave me a look and a short nod. “Alright. See you in a couple hours.”
The parking lot at the little shitty motel had at least been plowed, so there wasn’t any ice or snow to worry about. I made my way up to my room on the second floor as Jake pulled his old truck and turned right on the highway, headed back up north. As he drove away, he turned on his headlights. It was insane how early it got dark here. The mountains blocked all the sun from the west, and plunged the little town into some kind of premature night.
The place I’d gotten last night was right next to the Greyhound terminal, and it looked about as run-down as you would expect. I wasn’t sure when the sheets were last cleaned, the room had an odd musty smell of mold and sweat, and I thought I could rent it by the hour if I really wanted. But all the other places I’d pulled up around here were charging five or six times the nightly rate and geared more to tourists.
How it was still open, I had no idea.
I fitted my key into the lock and pushed the door open and walked inside. I fumbled with my hand on the wall, trying to find the light switch.
“No, no, Lilith,” said a man in a raspy voice from behind me. “Lights can stay off.”
My heart leapt into my throat as I swallowed hard, my hand frozen against the wall. Holy shit. Who was this guy? How did he get in here?
“Go ahead, shut the door.”
A chill went down my spine as I closed the door slowly. “I don’t know you are–”
“Shut up, Lilith. Surprised you came back to The Rock. Why don’t you go sit in that chair there, the
one at the table?”
Mechanically, I turned and went over to the table, and sat down in the chair. I glanced over at the source of the voice, and saw a man sitting in the shadows on the foot of the bed. “No, you don’t understand. I’m not Lilith. You’ve got me confused with someone else.”
He just sat there for a moment, a silhouette of a man, like a shadow of a living person given its own dark form of twisted life. He tapped something against his leg as he turned his head to me. “Not Lilith, huh?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone. “Clerk said you got into town late last night. Same black hair, same build. Same eyes. Same everything.”
“I did come in last night,” I admitted. “But just because I have black hair doesn’t mean I’m some girl named Lilith. I’m Elise.”
“Got an ID on you, Elise?” He shifted on the bed, and the object he’d been tapping his thigh with glinted in a shaft of light coming from in between the drawn curtains. A pistol. He had a chrome pistol. Fuck.
I swallowed hard. Please don’t ask my anything about Eve, I prayed. Please don’t ask me if I know her. I was a terrible liar and wasn’t sure if I could pull it off in the face of a pistol. “Yeah,” I said, my voice cracking. “I have some ID. Want me to get it?”
“Slowly,” the figure said as he rose from the end of my bed, the springs groaning with release. He loomed in front of me, a long overcoat hanging from him like the wings of some black beast as he stretched nearly to the ceiling. “Carefully. Not that I don’t trust you, but, well, I don’t.”
I held my breath as I shifted in my seat and took my ID from wallet, and held it out for him.
He took it one big hand and brought it up to his eyes.
“D-d-don’t you need a light?” I asked in a stutter. My mouth was dry, my teeth nearly chattering as the adrenaline pumped harder and faster.
“Stay in the dark long enough, your eyes begin to adjust to it. Elise Moon, huh? From New Mexico?”
Frost Security: The Complete 5 Books Series Page 57