Shadows & Surrender: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Detective Series (The Jezebel Files Book 3)

by Deborah Wilde

  “He lives in Antigua?”

  “Nearby.” I scrubbed at some hardened pastry before giving the tray a good rinse. “On a tiny island called Cariva Cay.”

  Levi pulled out his phone and began scrolling.

  I lunged for his phone with a wet hand, but he held it out of reach. “What are you doing?”

  “Checking for airstrips.” Levi frowned at the phone. “The island’s nickname is Inferno? Why have I heard that before?”

  I scooted past him to the drawer with the clean tea towels that was also helpfully near the door for a quick escape if necessary. “Beats me.”

  He clamped his hand down on my shoulder. I could have easily shaken him off, but taunting the beast was unwise. Levi’s eyebrows shot up, having found his answer online.

  Here we go.

  “Those months-long, drug-fueled parties going on about five years ago,” he said. “Where people died. Your uncle was behind them?”

  Grabbing a tea towel, I vigorously dried off the tray. “Paulie owns Cariva Cay, but those deaths were ruled an accident. He wasn’t even charged.”

  “At best, he’s a slippery fuck with good lawyers. At worst, he’s—” Levi threw up his hands. “Is this guy some cult leader? A criminal overlord?”

  “Petty criminal. He came from old money in the States, steeped in a stringent evangelical Christianity. Only kid, black sheep of his family, but he inherited everything when his parents died.” I tried to push Levi out of the way to reach the high cupboard that the tray belonged in, but he didn’t budge.

  He gripped the counter behind me, trapping me in place. “Well, his moral upbringing really led him astray. How did he end up doing that shit?”

  Heat poured off his body and his eyes bore into mine like blue crystals. Pressing the tray to my chest, I bit my lip against the urge to commit an HR violation and kiss the hell out of him.

  His gaze dropped to my mouth and he snatched the tray away, shoving it in the cupboard.

  “I don’t know because it happened long after Dad was gone,” I said to his back, “but I remember my parents talking about how Paulie was prone to a dark, self-destructive streak.”

  His hand tightened on the cupboard handle, but he closed the door gently. “You can’t be serious about going there.”

  “Look, he came to see me when I was in the hospital after the car crash and told me that if I ever needed him, that his door was always open. I never took him up on it because at first I was too angry and he was too close to Dad and then after that, well, he moved far away, and there was the Inferno business and it didn’t feel appropriate.”

  “Appropriate,” Levi said in a strangled voice. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “You’re banking on him being the same person as when you were a kid. People change.”

  I was about to protest that Paulie would never hurt me, but I didn’t, because the truth was I wasn’t sure. If I was being honest with myself, that was part of the reason I’d never gone to see him before, but finding Dad’s book had set a clock ticking and my options were limited. Paulie was a viable lead; I felt it in my gut.

  It didn’t mean I was going to be stupid about this.

  “What if I took Arkady?” I said.

  Levi relaxed a fraction of an inch. “Keep talking.”

  “He has military training and stone fists to keep me safe. Nothing has ever produced even the weakest lead about Adam’s whereabouts. Not cops, credit card statements, phone records, social media, or all the databases I have access to.” I ticked off the items on my fingers. “I think Paulie is worth a second try.”

  “Why?”

  “Time. Seeing me, his little Ash, might make him more amenable to spilling any secrets that Dad entrusted him with. Adam and him were tight. Check in with Miles. If the two of you don’t believe that Arkady and I will be safe, then I’ll respect that,” I said.

  My heart hammered in my chest. I’d relied on myself for so long, been the final arbiter of my actions. To open myself up and consider other people’s instincts and experiences was wise now that I had a team, but that didn’t make it easy.

  Levi turned the phone over a couple of times, then put it away. “I’m not giving you the jet.”

  I threw my arms around him. “Commercial airlines, here I come.”

  He returned the hug with a sigh. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

  “Only if it’s from a heart attack or stroke. But if it makes you feel better, you could get hit by a car tomorrow.”

  “Only marginally,” he said wryly. “I’ll have my travel agent call you when the ticket is ready.”

  He headed back to my office and I followed close on his heels.

  “Thank you, Leviticus. Meantime, I’ll be safely engaged interviewing the support staff at the Lung Cancer Foundation. Receptionists and assistants are a fount of information.” Especially when a tiny bit of sleuthing had turned up some useful dirt on one that could be used to apply pressure to an otherwise closed-mouthed friend.

  Rafael was placing the last of the empty coffee cups on a tray. Ooh. Maybe I’d get him doing laundry yet.

  Levi retrieved his suit jacket from the chair. “Hey, Arkady? Grab your sunscreen. You’re going with Ash to see her uncle in the Caribbean.”

  “Sweet.” He punched the air.

  “The Midnight Madman?” Priya shot up out of her chair so fast it flew backward and bounced off the wall.

  I made a frantic shushing motion at her.

  Three sets of male eyes fell upon me. Even Mrs. Hudson regarded me with doggie disdain.

  “That was my dad’s nickname for him, not a legal description.” I sighed. “I meant what I said, Levi. I’ll stand by your decision.”

  “Go,” Levi said, resignedly. “Just come back in one piece.”

  “I will.”

  Once Levi left, Arkady and I hashed out the best approach, while Rafael and Priya worked on their respective tasks. We threw out Arkady posing as my bodyguard, because it was too overtly aggressive, and also, we didn’t want to tip our hand of his abilities if things went south.

  None of the other suggestions were viable until Arkady snapped his fingers. “You need a reason to go see him out of the blue and ask him about Adam. What if I go as your fiancé? If you were getting married, you’d want to know what happened to your father and if there was any way of contacting him to be there.”

  “That’s smart,” I said.

  Priya’s laptop binged. “Holy cow,” she said. “We got a hit.”

  I came around her desk. “On what?”

  “Moran’s real identity.”

  I’d asked Pri to look into it, but had given up on finding anything. “Seriously?”

  “It’s not his actual name, but it’s a start.” She showed me an old photo of a group of guys in their mid-teens posed in front of a bumper car ride. “One of them posted about the summer he worked for a traveling fair about thirty years ago. This guy?” She pointed out one with white-blond hair. “The poster mentioned his Russian accent.”

  “That’s pretty slim,” I said.

  “Ah. But I haven’t gotten to the best part. The fair was located just outside a ghost town in Northern California. Wonderland, California to be precise.”

  I sat down heavily on her desk. “Get me his contact information.”

  “Already on it.”

  After confirming that everyone had their to-do lists, I announced I was off to work another case. “Pri, can you lock up if I’m not back?”

  Priya waved me off. “I’m working from home for the rest of the day. Mrs. Hudson can stay with me.” She rarely worked at home. She had a few cafés she rotated, enjoying the social interaction with the employees and other regulars.

  I threw on my leather jacket. “Don’t change your routine on my account. I should run her over to the animal shelter.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Priya slipped Mrs. Hudson a doggie treat.

  “Pri—” She raised her eyebrows at me, her jaw tiltin
g up at a stubborn angle, and I stepped back from that line. “It’s not fair to keep pawning her off on you.”

  “Why not?” she said. “She’s family. My aunties watched me when mom had to work. How is this different?”

  “My family had the same deal when we moved back to Canada,” Arkady said, texting Levi for the travel agent’s contact info.

  The way everyone was rallying around the dog, around me, felt less like a team, with nice enforceable office hours, limited socializing, and okay, a professional dependence that I was only just getting used to, and more like a village. Sure, Priya and I were all up in each other’s lives, but she was one person. Talia and I maintained a carefully cultivated space at the best of times, and my life becoming this messy, rowdy, people-filled entity made my mouth go dry. Especially given Pri’s guardedness, Arkady’s secrets, this shitshow with Rafael, and my complicated status with Levi. My life was a house of cards.

  “We’ll discuss her status later.” I dangled my fingers, but the dog only spared me the most indifferent glance.

  “Her heart belongs to the cow,” Priya said.

  “Fickle dog.”

  Chapter 14

  Any plan to ask Olivia, the front desk receptionist at the Lung Cancer Foundation, if she’d heard from Mayan was rendered moot when I showed up to find Mayan herself in the lobby, leaning against the large reception desk and signing off on some file.

  It was a large, airy space. On one side hung lung cancer prevention posters, while the other was taken up with framed photos of the Black and White Ball that the Foundation put on every year as its big fundraiser.

  I studied Mayan as I approached—before she saw me and tensed up. Her body language was relaxed. She was comfortable in her element, laughing with the receptionist as she handed the folder back.

  “Mayan Shapiro,” I said, my boot heels thudding against the floor.

  “Yes?” Her polite smile faltered and she stepped back. “Ash? What brings you here?” She lowered her voice. “Oh my God. Does your mother have cancer?”

  “It’s a business matter.” I pulled out my P.I. license. “Can we speak privately?”

  Mayan swallowed, one hand playing with the thin gold chain still minus the diamond heart pendant around her threat.

  What prompted that reaction?

  Olivia’s eyes gleamed behind her red-framed glasses before she busied herself with a stack of phone messages.

  Fun as it was to make Mayan uncomfortable, I had no desire to blow her professional reputation. “I’m looking for an old camp alum and was hoping you might know what had happened to her.”

  Olivia visibly lost interest.

  “Certainly,” Mayan said. “Should we go up to my office?”

  “Nah. Let’s just step outside. This’ll just take a moment.” I wasn’t giving her home court advantage. I wanted her off-balance. Levi had handled her with kid gloves and gotten nowhere.

  The gloves were off.

  I led her outside to a bench out in the front plaza.

  She sat down and smoothed out her skirt. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “How horrible I was to you. It, well, it doesn’t matter why. My teen years weren’t great, but that doesn’t excuse how I behaved and I apologize.” She folded her hands in her lap.

  I’d never actually imagined this exact scenario. Revenge fantasies by the dozens, sure, but not a freely offered up apology. Especially not one delivered so perfunctorily. It was as if she’d followed some kind of script. Had I been a betting woman, I’d have laid odds on Mayan never acknowledging our past.

  Rule one of a con: create rapport with your mark.

  And always get the jump on them. What did she feel the need to stay a step ahead of me on? I leaned back, my arms outstretched along the top of the bench. This was becoming almost fun.

  “You want to really make it up to me? Tell me what you were doing in Hedon.”

  “Hedon?” She didn’t break eye contact but her still-folded hands twisted. “What’s that?”

  “Cut the crap. I saw you in the Green Olive. Made you a lot more interesting than I ever would have given you credit for.”

  “Excuse me?” she said, frostily.

  “Oh.” I wrinkled my brow. “Have you not replaced spinning class with frequenting criminal dives? My bad.”

  “At least I have two working legs. Whereas you’ve added crime to all your other pathetic affectations in hopes of being ‘interesting.’”

  Ah, there was the Mayan I knew and dreamed of inflicting torturous humiliation upon. If Levi thought she’d changed, he was easily snowed. Except he wasn’t. He was as suspicious as I was. Was Mayan his weak spot, because if not, how’d she convince him she was nice now? I’d seen her in camp plays and she wasn’t that good an actress. Porn stars trod the boards as Shakespearean thespians in comparison.

  Unless being around me brought out her best teen bitch. Also an option.

  Mayan reached into the pocket of her blazer and pulled out a package of Gitanes. She flicked it open, and put one of the short, stubby cigarettes to her lips.

  My brows rose for a second before I smoothed out my expression. Why would a woman whose mother died of lung cancer and who worked for a foundation dedicated to research and prevention of the disease take up smoking?

  “Why were you in Hedon?” I said. “Maybe there’s a way we can mutually benefit. It’s smart having someone watch your back over there and at least with the two of us, we know who’d be wielding the knife that stabbed us.”

  That got a laugh. She patted her pockets, and I moved in with a lighter. I let my fingers brush against her skin, carefully sending my magic inside her.

  Nothing. She was totally Mundane with no invasive magic, though in my limited experience, if she was compelled in some way, there wouldn’t be evidence of that.

  Mayan coughed a bit when she inhaled. The cigarettes had a distinctive aroma. “I didn’t have business there,” she said.

  I flicked the lighter on and off. “Of all the gin joints in all the world, you didn’t just stumble into that one.”

  Mayan watched the glowing tip turn to a funnel of ash, before she shook her head sharply and tapped it off. “There was a guy who I hooked up with. He brought me.”

  My gut said she told the truth, but the Queen of Hearts said that Mayan hadn’t come through for her first time recently. “Damn. There goes your interesting factor.”

  She shot me the finger.

  “Maybe he’s the one I should be speaking to. Got a name?”

  “Is there actually an alum you’re trying to find?” She fanned the smoke in front of her face, with a moue of distaste.

  “What do you think?”

  “In that case, my personal life is none of your business. Whatever you’re up to? I want no part of it, and I pray I never go back there.” Her voice shook with conviction. Taking one last drag, she stood up and ground the cigarette out under her boot heel. “I have work to do.”

  She strode off, jerked the front doors to the building open, and was lost to view.

  I flicked the lighter on, running my finger through the bottom of the flame as I eliminated the impossible. Clone? While a showdown with multiple Mayans where I had to guess who the real one was by systematically destroying them would be a hell of a Saturday night, science had not yet advanced that far.

  When I was about fourteen, I’d gone to the wedding of a distant cousin with my grandparents. Bubbe hated the bride and couldn’t understand how these two were a couple. Her working theory was that the bride was a demonic double. This was a bit of Jewish lore that said everyone at birth has a demon created in their exact image. Forty days before a person’s birth, a voice from the heavens proclaims who that person is destined to marry. This voice, heard by angels and devils alike allows the devils to marry off the demonic double instead of the real thing. Doom ensues. Of course, Bubbe also said I was a demonic double, so there was that.

  Who was I kidding? Maya
n was already the demonic double version and she certainly hadn’t been replaced with the nice version.

  Was she compelled? She didn’t behave like she was. Compulsions resulted in a one-track mind. Mayan didn’t have that.

  Drugs?

  I grabbed a napkin from the grilled cheese sandwich food truck parked at the curb and, picking her cigarette butt up by the tip, wrapped it up and carefully put it in my pocket. Cigarettes were a phenomenal source of latent evidence. Our skin was constantly regenerating with newer layers. Skin cells around the hands, face, and feet, especially, had high levels of cell removal. It was likely that cells were left on the cigarette, while each puff left traces of saliva. It was a goldmine of DNA, with both saliva and epithelial cells to test.

  I didn’t have anyone at a forensic crime lab who owed me a favor, but I did have a direct line to the Head of House Security. Since Miles was already looped in on this case, I wasn’t breaking client confidentiality. I fired off a text asking for help.

  There was one other possibility: Mayan’s mystery man. “Hooked up with” sounded very past tense and casual, but words meant nothing. Experience had taught me that people believing themselves in love did stupid things. If that was the case here, Mayan might have taken up smoking to impress the dude or bond, but she’d have to be massively head-over-heels for it to override the tragedy that smoking had wrought in her life.

  Depending on his agenda, he might provide the surprise value to cement my alliance with the Queen.

  My gut said he wasn’t out of her life; therefore, my next order of business was to learn his identity. The officer that Levi had reached out to had canvassed friends on that front, and there hadn’t been any mention of a boyfriend.

  If he was the reason Mayan had taken off that heart pendant, started smoking, and hanging out in Hedon, then he might not be the kind of man she told her friends about. Or knowing he was a bad-boy fling, but not a physical threat to Mayan, they may have kept mum about him.

  Something had happened when Mayan was over there. She wasn’t so easily shocked that just going to a bar would upset her enough to never want to go back. Her friends might not recognize him as a threat—that was my job. I’d promised Levi I’d find out what happened to her, and if I had to engage in some morally gray activities to keep Mayan safe, like low-key blackmail, then I could live with that.