by Lori Drake
“If there’s a three-day pattern,” Joey said, “Rachel might already be dead. And another witch might be missing.”
Harding nodded. “Speaking of which—pun not intended—an unusual number of women have been reported missing in the last few weeks.”
“How many is an unusual number?” Chris asked.
“Not counting Ms. Shaw and Ms. Ward, twelve. They don’t meet any particular profile beyond young and healthy.”
Joey blinked. “That’s good to know, but if they aren’t witches…”
“You’re sure there aren’t any other missing witches?” Harding asked.
“Just two,” Chris said firmly.
Cocking her head to one side, Joey said, “Only two coven witches. The coven absorbs new witches to the area or runs them off. But that doesn’t mean no one stuck around when they weren’t supposed to.”
“Maybe,” Chris said. “That sounds like an exceptionally large number to fly under the radar, though.”
Harding shrugged. “It’s a big city.”
Joey thought about that a moment, her eyes straying to the drawer where Naomi’s body lay. “The killer might even be a member of the coven. I’d bet my favorite dance shoes that magic is behind Naomi’s… deformities.” Suddenly, she saw Ethan’s adamant refusal of help in a new light. Could the High Priest have something to do with this?
Chris nodded and scratched his stubbly jaw. “Do you have any other leads on Rachel?”
Harding consulted his notes again. “Not to speak of. I want to stop by her office again, see if there’s anything Detective Robbins missed. Especially in light of”—his eyes cut toward the drawer—“recent developments.”
“I’d like to go with you, if that’s okay,” Joey said, then looked at Chris who was rubbing his chest absently. The faintest of smudge marks darkened the skin beneath his blue eyes, triggering her protective instincts. “Why don’t you drop in on our witch contact? Ask her about the other missing women and if they could be witches and maybe grab a nap? I love you, babe, but you look so tired I’m starting to feel like a few winks.”
Chris grunted. “I’m fine. We need to check on the loners too, and you can’t be in two places at once. Let’s meet up in Wallingford after our respective errands.”
Joey was tempted to press the issue, but since they’d only just reconciled from their last fight—or at least she hoped that’s where the conversation was going when Harding interrupted—she opted to keep her mouth shut about it. “Okay. I’ll call her on the way to Rachel’s office to give her a heads up. Hopefully she’ll pick up this time.” Now that the subject had come up, her worry about Cathy and Ben resurfaced with it.
Tucking his notepad away, Harding smirked. “I didn’t say you could come along yet.”
Joey smiled faintly and canted her head. “Good luck stopping me.”
11
Chris sprinted across the rainy parking lot for the cover of the awning. Six months in the Pacific Northwest, and he still forgot to bring a damn umbrella sometimes. At least the cool rain beading in his hair and spotting his T-shirt woke him up a little. Between his busy day, the previous night’s activities, and a poor night’s sleep—tormented by dreams of shadowy figures firing shadowy bullets, no less—he was already running on fumes, and it was barely three o’clock.
Tucked away in a strip mall on the northern fringes of Seattle proper, The Tavern was a bit of a seedy dive, but it was also the last stop on his trek around the city to check in on their resident lone wolves. There were less than a dozen, but he’d had to personally track down anyone who hadn’t answered their phone and remind them that part of the condition of being permitted in his and Joey’s territory was answering the damn phone when they called.
Everyone was accounted for and seemed to be in control of their wolves—and Ben and Cathy were once again accounted for, thank goodness—but Chris had a low-grade stress headache pulsing against the front of his skull and was ready to call it a day. Pulling open the smoky glass door, he stepped into pandemonium.
Techno music blared from the speakers, assaulting his tender eardrums and making his head throb all the more. He nearly turned right around and walked back out, but he was dumbstruck by the sight before him. The place was more dimly lit than usual, but lights glimmered off a disco ball hanging over the bar. Colorful streamers decorated the walls and ceiling, and balloons both littered the floor and floated up by the ceiling. A large banner covered the dart boards on the east wall, proclaiming, “Congratulations Jasmin and Davina!”
Recovering, Chris wove his way through the astonishing mid-afternoon crowd, which was almost as curious for its diversity as it was the fact that it had taken over an otherwise sleepy dive bar on a Tuesday afternoon. Men and women of all shapes and sizes congregated. A clean-cut man in a business suit leaned casually against a pillar, chatting with a man with glossy lips, a pink mohawk, and a rainbow-sequined jacket that sparkled like the disco ball whenever the light caught it. Two women sporting tiaras—Jasmin and Davina, he assumed—stood by a table, holding hands. No, not by the table. One of them, who couldn’t have been more than three-foot-five, was standing on the table. There were other little people scattered through the crowd, on and off the makeshift dance floor.
Chris caught sight of his quarry behind the bar as he crossed the room, a tall broad-shouldered woman with a shock of close-cropped bleach blond hair with neon purple tips. Delilah had her back turned as he approached, busy filling a few margarita glasses from a frozen margarita machine Chris had never seen back there before. Granted, he hadn’t visited for a while.
Delilah turned and nearly spilled the drinks when she spotted Chris perched on a stool directly behind her. But she recovered quickly, flashing him a smile and giving a small nod as she moved down the bar to deliver the drinks to her waiting thirsty patrons. They waved a few bills around until she laughed and stepped up on something behind the bar, leaning over to let them slide folded bills under the red suspenders bisecting her rainbow-hued tank top. Judging from the number of bills bristling from beneath her suspenders, this had become a popular party game.
By the time she made it down the bar to Chris, her cheeks were slightly flushed. She didn’t meet his eyes as she peeled a napkin from a stack and set it down in front of him, then grabbed a beer from the cooler and popped the top before setting it down on the napkin.
“Not crashing a private party, am I?” Chris asked, reaching for the bottle. Instinct made him press the cool glass to his forehead before he ventured a sip, but it didn’t do much to ease the pounding in his head.
Delilah shrugged. “They didn’t pay to shut us down. What’s up?”
“I guess I can see why you didn’t answer your phone.” He smiled to soften the words.
Her blue eyes, made all the bluer for the heavy blue eyeliner she wore, widened and she scrambled for the phone in her pocket. “Shit, I didn’t even hear it with all the racket. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I was just checking in. Everything okay with you?”
She glanced at her chest, eyes flicking from one suspender to the other. “Best tips I’ve made in weeks, so… yeah. But what’s up? You don’t just check in.”
“I don’t?” He canted his head to one side.
“No, you don’t. It’s one of the things I like about you.”
“You like me? I’m flattered.” He lifted the beer for a sip.
Delilah rolled her eyes and snatched the beer from his hand. “Talk, man.”
“Hey!”
“The beer fairy giveth, and the beer fairy taketh away.” She flashed him a toothy smile.
“You hear about the animal attacks downtown?”
“Yeah.” She set the bottle down in front of him again and glanced down the bar, but at the moment all the patrons were socializing or dancing. Fortunately, they didn’t have to raise their voices too loud to hear each other over the music. What their wolf ears could pick up, the humans wouldn’t be able to. �
�You thought it was me?”
“It wasn’t one of mine, so I wanted to check on you and the others.”
The line between her eyebrows deepened. “We might have a problem.”
Chris looked up from his contemplation of the label on his bottle. “How so?”
She lifted her phone, thumbs flying for a few moments. Chris’s phone buzzed in his pocket as she lowered hers. Lifting a brow, he fetched his phone and opened the text message she’d sent, then followed the link to the news article about a wolf being captured downtown by Animal Control. His head throbbed harder, and he took a large swallow from the bottle before setting it down again and standing from the stool.
“Guess I’d better go look into this,” he said. “Thanks.”
Delilah plucked the bottle and napkin from the bar and shifted her weight between her feet, lingering concern furrowing her brow. “No problem. And again, sorry about the missed call. I should’ve set it on vibrate before the party started. Won’t happen again.”
It took Chris a moment to puzzle out the source of her anxiety. He really didn’t know Delilah—or any of the loners in Seattle—all that well. They were loners, after all. But the previous Alpha of Seattle had a reputation for bullish behavior and brutality that had left its mark on the city in ways that Chris was still uncovering—a legacy of bruised egos and broken spirits.
Sighing, Chris leaned an elbow on the bar, lingering a moment more. “I’m not Eric. Neither is Joey. We respect your desire for independence, but just so you know… we’re here, if you ever need us. Okay?”
She hesitated but nodded. “Gotcha.”
With that, Chris headed for the door, slipping outside and holding it for a man in biker leathers who paused on the threshold, turned around, and went back to his Harley. Chuckling inwardly, Chris let the door swing shut and lingered under the awning long enough to send Joey a quick message, letting her know he was going to pay Animal Control a visit on his way to Cathy’s.
Was it too much to hope that the wolf they’d captured was really just a wolf? Because he didn’t think even Jon could get this one out from behind bars.
Joey looked around the tidy lobby of Ray Stubbs’s insurance office while she waited for the harried man behind the receptionist’s desk to fumble his way through answering a call and putting it on hold to go back to another call.
“Be right with you,” he said, covering the mouthpiece with one hand and motioning to a cart tucked between six reception chairs across the room with the other. “Feel free to grab coffee or a snack.”
While he went back to the call, Joey followed Detective Harding across the room and fetched a tiny bottle of water from the mini-fridge on the bottom of the cart while the cop eyed the rotating caddy with its selection of single-serve coffee pods dubiously.
“Caramel crème, dark mocha roast, coconut espresso… what’s everyone got against plain ol’ coffee these days?”
Biting her cheek so as to not grin quite so widely, Joey twisted the cap off her water bottle and leaned over to glance at the selection. “I see a medium roast down there.”
Harding grunted and opted for a pack of cheese crackers instead. “Probably shouldn’t be having it this late in the day, anyway.” The foil crinkled noisily as he opened the bag and held it out to her in offering.
The scent of salt and processed cheese tickled her nostrils, and Joey suppressed a shudder. She may have missed lunch, but she wasn’t that hard up for calories. Waving him off, she took a swig from the water bottle, turning her attention to the office at large once more. Tastefully decorated bordering on bland, it had the usual thin gray carpet, mauve-cushioned chairs, and inoffensive art so common in corporate America. Sometimes Joey wondered what her life would have been like if it’d gone a different direction. Would she have ended up working somewhere like this, a going-nowhere day job in a gentrified neighborhood? Eh. Probably not.
It took several minutes for the man at the desk to extract himself from the phone and call them over. Joey and the detective ambled back to the desk.
“Sorry about the wait,” the man said. “Can I help you?”
“First day?” Joey asked, flashing a sympathetic smile.
“Not exactly. Temp called in sick. Ray Stubbs, at your service.”
Joey’s brows lifted. The guy must’ve been really hard up for help if he was working the desk himself.
“We won’t take up too much of your time, Mr. Stubbs.” Harding showed him his badge. “Detective James Harding, Seattle PD. This is my associate, Ms. Grant. We just have a few questions for you.”
Ray’s expression clouded, his lined forehead wrinkling further as he reached up to rub the back of his head. “Is this about Rachel?”
“Yes, sir. I know someone’s already been to see you, but Rachel’s case was just transferred to me and there’s some new information that’s come to light.”
“That doesn’t sound good.” Ray leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together atop his head.
Harding retrieved a small tablet from his coat pocket and brought up Naomi’s photo. “Can you tell me if you recognize this woman?”
Ray rocked forward again in his chair, retrieving a pair of reading glasses from the desk and putting them on before studying the picture. “No, not at all.”
“What about the name Naomi Shaw. Does that ring a bell?” Joey asked, uncomfortable just standing there like a lump.
“Hmm. No, but she could be a client. I deal with most of my clients on the phone or online these days.” Ray pulled the keyboard closer and began pecking at it as slow as a geriatric rooster.
Joey leaned against the counter and resigned herself to a bit of a wait. But after about thirty seconds, the bells on the front door jingled and a fair-haired woman swept in carrying a bag from a local sandwich shop. She had a long red scarf knotted at her throat and wore a creamy blouse and gray skirt under a lightweight raincoat.
“Oh, thank God,” Ray said. “Farrow, honey, can you come help me with this thing?”
Farrow breezed across the room in a rose-scented cloud. Joey wrinkled her nose, but smiled politely when the woman looked her way.
“What’s up, Dad?”
“I’m trying to do a policy holder search, but I think I did something wrong.”
The two put their heads together, and before long determined that Naomi was indeed one of their clients, but only as of a couple of weeks prior. When Detective Harding showed her Naomi’s picture, she gasped, recognition all over her face.
“Ohhh! I remember her, now. She’s Rachel’s friend.”
Joey stood a little straighter. Something about Farrow’s tone told her there was more to the story, but she wasn’t sure how to ask. Fortunately, Harding had no such problem.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Ms. Shaw is dead. Her body was discovered two days ago.”
Pressing a hand over her heart, Farrow rocked back on her spike heels. “You don’t think… Rachel…?”
Ray reached up and caught his daughter’s other hand, squeezing gently. But he didn’t offer any words of comfort, no ‘I’m sure she’s fine’ or ‘don’t worry.’ Joey respected that.
“We don’t know, but the fact that they both knew each other and went missing within days of one another is certainly suspicious,” Harding said.
“You want suspicious?” Ray said, “How about this?” He tapped the screen, like they could see it from the other side of the desk.
“What do you mean?” Joey asked.
Farrow lifted her hand to her pale throat. “Her… her policy.”
“What about it?” Harding said.
“She purchased it two weeks ago. Life insurance.”
A frog took up residence in Joey’s throat. A crackle of plastic warned her she was squeezing her water bottle, so fortunately she was able to stop before crushing it.
“Naomi Shaw took out a life insurance policy two weeks ago?” Harding said, brows lifted. “For how much?”
Whi
le Farrow stood there mutely, Ray looked down his nose through his glasses at the screen, then over the tops of them at Harding. “Two hundred thousand dollars.”
Harding pulled out his notebook and began scribbling. “Beneficiary?”
“Isaac Connelly, primary.”
If there was a secondary, Joey didn’t hear it. Her blood ran cold. Naomi’s boyfriend’s grief had seemed so real. Was it possible he had killed her for the payout? No. She shook her head. That didn’t explain Rachel. Why would he have gone after Rachel too?
“Is there anything else you might remember about the day Rachel went missing that you didn’t tell the detective that was here before?” Harding asked as Joey tuned back in to the conversation.
Father and daughter shook their heads.
“Did Rachel bring any other friends in to buy insurance?” Joey wondered.
They shook their heads again, but then Farrow paused. “Wait. I mean… no, she didn’t bring anyone else in. But there was this guy.”
“Guy?” Joey and Harding said in unison, then chuckled.
“Yeah. He picked her up from work a few times. Never came in, just waited outside for her. She said he was a friend of a friend.”
“Can you describe him?” Harding asked, pen poised to take notes.
“Um, yeah, I think…” Farrow closed her eyes as if visualizing. “Short. Slim. Dark hair, goatee…” She opened her eyes. “I really only saw him from a distance.”
“Would you recognize him again if you saw him?” Joey asked. Isaac had brown hair, but no goatee. While he could’ve shaved it off, she wouldn’t have described him as short. He was probably a few inches shorter than Chris, who topped out right around six feet.
“Yeah, maybe.” She bit her lip.
“Any distinguishing features that you noticed?” Harding asked. “Piercings, tattoos, scars?”
“No. Wait. Yes. I think he had a nose piercing.”
“What kind?” Joey asked.
“A hoop in one nostril.”