White Hot

by Elise Noble

  Bay gave everyone a quick recap, and Jed grinned.

  “I’m looking forward to this.”

  “I already told you, we’re skipping the first bit, and I’m only going down to my underwear.”

  “Spoilsport. If I’m getting knocked out, the least you could do is put out.”

  There was a point in Jed’s life when he might have been serious, but love had blindsided him, and he no longer chased anything with tits. He was only kidding.

  “No can do, big boy.”

  I dropped the zipper on the dress and stood there in boy shorts and a sports bra.

  He groaned. “Darlin’, you could have made an effort. Lace, silk, something crotchless… You look like you’re going to the gym.”

  I cracked my knuckles, slipped on a pair of elbow-length leather gloves, and held out one hand. “I’ll make an effort, don’t you worry.”

  Fia passed over the massage oil—scopolamine mixed with a carrier—and I poured some into my hands.

  “Ouch, that’s freezing,” Jed whined when I touched his skin.

  “Wait a few minutes, and you won’t even notice.”

  Emmy kept an eye on the time while I attacked Jed’s back and shoulders. Thank goodness he’d flipped onto his front, because I didn’t want to see what my back rub was doing to that part of him. After a couple of minutes, his lewd comments began to slur, and then they stopped altogether.

  “Twelve minutes,” Emmy announced.

  I picked up his arm and let it flop limply back to the bed. “I’d say that worked.”

  “Next step,” Emmy said while Kira checked Jed’s vital signs. “Xav?”

  “We’re assuming the killer was close by,” he said, stepping across from the doorway. “And that Christina recognised him, otherwise she would have tried to run or fight.”

  Xav stepped close enough for me to feel his body heat. “Hey, baby,” he murmured, then stabbed me under the ribs. Or at least, he pretended to. We had a plastic cover on the knife blade for safety.

  I went limp, and he held me up.

  “I’ll leave the knife in. Less blood that way.” He leaned closer, his lips brushing my earlobe. “Struggle, sweetheart. You still have some strength left.”

  I shivered involuntarily. Even though this was all an act, Xav scared the fuck out of me. I wriggled a bit more, and he easily held my hands behind my back in one of his. I’d had years of combat training, but against Xav and his kind, it was wasted. Useless. If the killer had even half his strength, Christina wouldn’t have stood a chance as the life leaked out of her.

  Xav half pushed, half lifted me over to the bed, laid me down, and pinned me in place with his body weight. I could barely move, and that was without having a genuine knife stuck in my chest.

  “So if he did rape her, my guess is it would be at this point,” he said. “She’s running out of energy, but with the knife still in her, there’s not too much mess.”

  “It fits with the ME’s report as well, where the lesser wounds came after the fatal one,” Bay said.

  That was sick. And if it really had gone down that way, I’d bet my favourite leather jacket Christina wasn’t the freak’s first victim.

  “Mack, I want you to expand the database search this afternoon. Anyone who was raped around the point of death and died from knife wounds.”

  She paled and nodded.

  “You don’t have your hand over my mouth. I could scream,” I said to Xav.

  “Nobody to hear. Probably turned him on. I’m not putting my hand near your mouth because I don’t want to get bitten.”

  Emmy checked her watch. “The bastard would have been excited, so let’s give him two minutes to shoot his load.”

  Kira poked at Jed again while we waited and gave us the thumbs up.

  “Now he stabs her,” Xav said, sitting up and miming the movement.

  “No, no, no,” Bay cut in. “He couldn’t have been sitting on her legs like that. There was blood on them. He must have been beside her.”

  Xav hopped off the bed and stood next to me, leaning over. Now he had to switch the knife to his left hand to get the right angle.

  “Interesting,” I said. “Unless he was sitting on Ethan when he stabbed Christina, he must have been a southpaw.”

  “It wouldn’t be natural for him to attack with his other hand,” Xav confirmed.

  “You’re dead now,” Emmy told me.

  For emphasis, she emptied a bottle of theatrical blood all over my chest. It smelled sweet and sickly, and I touched a drop to my lips.

  “Tastes like corn syrup.”

  Now it was time for Xav to earn his money. Well, not money exactly. I’d promised to babysit Libi, his daughter, while he took Georgia away for a grubby weekend, even though the prospect filled me with dread. Immersion therapy, right?

  “You need to get Jed dressed. And smile—you’re on camera.”

  We tried not to laugh as Xav squashed Jed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, which was what Ethan had been wearing when he was found. Jed’s arms wouldn’t behave, and he kept flopping about. It took almost ten minutes for Xav to finish dressing him, sneakers included.

  “Jed’s got no blood on his front,” Emmy said. “Ethan was covered in it. So much it soaked through to his skin.”

  Bay consulted his iPad. “It was smeared on the shirt. Like someone wiped it on him.”

  “I don’t want to get covered in it myself,” Xav said. “I still have to get home unnoticed.” He picked me up and dragged me on top of Jed. “How about this?”

  Bay shook his head. “Christina didn’t move. It would have to be the other way around. You’ll have to get another shirt and try again.”

  I wriggled back to my original position while Xav re-dressed Jed with Emmy’s help, then Xav pulled him over on top of me.

  “Any good?” he asked, shoving Jed back to his side.

  Bay checked the photos again, comparing them to Jed. “Close enough. He probably smushed Ethan around more, but it’ll do.”

  “Okay, what’s next?”

  “The car,” Emmy told Xav. “But you can’t find the keys. You run around the house looking in the obvious places.”

  “And finally find them on a hook in the kitchen cupboard,” Ana said. “The blood I saw in there was above an empty hook.”

  “Okay, so let’s assume delay of, say, ten minutes? We’ve already used five while we re-dressed Jed.”

  We waited some more. Emmy poked Jed with her foot, but he didn’t stir.

  “Now I need to get him downstairs,” Xav said.

  He pulled Jed off the bed with his hands under his armpits and started dragging him across the room.

  “Do you reckon that corn syrup will come out of the carpet?” Emmy asked.

  “I doubt it,” Bay said. “But those marks are similar to the ones on Ethan’s floor.”

  He was right. It wasn’t anything Ethan owned that was dragged out of the room; it was Ethan himself.

  Xav bumped Jed down the stairs and into the hallway, leaving him in a heap while he opened the front door.

  “Gonna have to carry him for this last bit, or he’ll get dust and shit on him. That wasn’t in the report, right?”

  He looked to Bay for confirmation, and Bay shook his head.

  Xav leaned down and picked Jed up, slinging Jed’s hundred and seventy-pound deadweight over his shoulder. I couldn’t see anyone much smaller than Xav managing that, not unless they spent a serious amount of time in the gym.

  He went to drop him in the trunk of Georgia’s Mustang, but Bay stopped him.

  “Hold on. Either there would have been more bloodstains in there, or our victim must have been wrapped in something.”

  “There was a bed sheet missing from one of Ethan’s spare rooms,” Ana said. “I noticed when I checked under the mattress.”

  Emmy ran back inside and fetched one, then Xav wrapped Jed up like a mummy.

  “He was found, what, a five-minute drive from his house?” />
  “About that. Let’s see if the blood seeps through.”

  It was into this little scene that Emmy’s husband drove, fresh from a trip to Europe. He paused his Porsche Cayenne and wound down the window, his eyes settling on me as I stood there in my underwear, drenched in fake blood.

  “Do I want to know?”

  Emmy leaned forward and kissed him. “Probably not.”

  He rolled his eyes, wound up the window, and drove off. If only all men were that understanding.

  “Five minutes is up,” Ana announced.

  I peered in at Jed. “No blood on the outside of the sheet.”

  “It’d dried a bit before Xav wrapped him,” Bay said. “Plus some rubbed off on the carpet.”

  Xav leaned in and unrolled our pseudo-victim. “Last challenge. I need to put him in the front.”

  Between the pushing, shoving, and cursing, it was no wonder the killer had forgotten to readjust the seat position. Xav had just strapped Jed in when he started to stir.

  “Perfect timing,” I said. “Welcome back.”

  Fia nodded and smiled. Job well done. When I’d asked how she worked out the dosage, she’d spouted figures and lost me, but I should have known to trust her. Ethan had been out for longer, but the trauma of the accident probably had something to do with that.

  “How’d I do?” Jed asked.

  “I’d give you an Oscar.”

  Once Jed came around properly, we sat in the conservatory and had a conference. Emmy’s housekeeper served us afternoon tea—crustless sandwiches, scones with jam and cream, and petits-fours. So jolly civilised for a discussion about blood and murder.

  “You reckon Christina put the drugs in the oil herself?” Emmy asked.

  I shook my head. “Whoever booked her to give Ethan the massage supplied her with the goods. Now all we need to do is find him.”

  “All we have to do…”

  “Yeah, I know, the hard part’s only just beginning. You don’t need to tell me that. At least things are moving now. We know more than we did yesterday.”

  “Indeed,” Oliver said. “We know staging the scene is possible, likely even, but the question is, how do we prove it actually happened?”

  “Step one,” Bay said, “is to test Ethan for scopolamine.”

  “Isn’t it a bit late for that?”

  “In his blood and urine, yes. But you can test a hair sample a month after the incident, and we’re just coming into that window. It won’t give an exact date, but it would show whether Ethan had it in his system recently.”

  Oliver scrawled across his pad. “It’s going to be a fight to get the police to do that. Skinner won’t want to jeopardise his case.” Oliver’s lips curved into a half-smirk, half-smile. “I look forward to watching the proceedings.”

  “And if the test comes back positive? Then what?”

  His smile widened. “I vote we go for bail with the circumstantial evidence. It’ll be high, but Ethan’s got the money.

  “Skinner’s gonna be furious.”

  A fact that made me oddly happy.

  “Then we’d better get Lyle fitted for body armour.”

  CHAPTER 30

  ON MY DAY to visit Ethan, I woke with the same anticipation kids have on Christmas morning as they hurry downstairs to see what Santa’s brought. Or at least that was what I imagined. The most my mother gave me on that special day was a black eye and a cigarette burn. I still had the scar.

  My excitement was purely because of the case, you understand. The prospect of getting justice, of seeing the real killer locked up in Ethan’s place. Then I pictured his blue-green eyes locked on mine and my traitorous pussy throbbed. Fuck. I slammed the shower door shut behind me and turned the water on cold. Ethan’s off limits, Dan. Just thinking of him that way was a sure recipe for disaster.

  Be a good girl for once in your life.

  I felt upbeat as I landed the helicopter at Redding’s Gap, and I even managed a polite nod to Otis. Today, the old man’s constant moaning couldn’t put a dent in my mood because for once, I had some good news for Ethan.

  The bitch who searched me regarded me through slit eyes. My smile obviously gave her grounds for suspicion, because she made me strip completely and examined me in minute detail. I bet she got a kick out of it, too, the pervert.

  That delayed me getting to Ethan, and he looked nervous as a lamb in a slaughterhouse when I arrived, his hands shackled to the table once again.

  “I was scared you changed your mind. I’ve been in here for half an hour,” he said.

  “I’m not going to change my mind. I’ll always come. How have things been?”

  He shook his head, unable to speak at first. “Not good,” he finally got out.

  “Did anyone try to hurt you again?”

  “No. It’s just spending so much time on my own; it’s driving me crazy. I was always a solitary person, but now… There’s nothing to do but stare at the wall. I asked again if I could have a radio, and they said I couldn’t because I was a suicide risk. How the hell do they think I’m gonna kill myself with a radio?”

  He slumped forward, defeated.

  “Don’t lose hope.”

  “Easy for you to say. In less than an hour, you’ll walk out of here and get on with your life. This is my life.”

  He rattled the cuffs against the table, and the metallic clang echoed around the tiny room.

  “I’m working on things. Don’t get upset.”

  “Sorry, Dani. I’m not upset with you. You’re the only good thing in my life at the moment. If you didn’t come, I’d…I’d… I don’t know.”

  His eyes glistened, and I willed him to hold it together.

  “Things are happening; I promise. We want to run a test on you, but we have to get the judge to authorise it first.”

  “What kind of test? A lie detector or something? I’ll take it, but what happens when I say I can’t remember? I won’t even know if anything they ask me’s true or not.”

  “No, not a lie detector. This is a test on your hair. We’re working on the theory that you were drugged on the night of the murder, and it’ll show us if anything unusual’s been in your system recently.”

  His eyes widened. “Drugged? Like with roofies?”

  “Not roofies, but something similar.”

  “But I’m always careful in clubs. I drink out of a bottle, and I keep it with me.”

  “We think it happened at your house.”

  “By the girl?”

  “Sort of. Well, yes, but she didn’t know she was doing it. We know she was hired to give you a massage, and we think whoever booked her gave her the oil to use. It was laced with a sedative that took effect through your skin.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “A massage?”

  “If she’d offered, would you have taken her up on that?”

  “Probably. Like any other red-blooded male. But you said someone hired her? Who in hell would want to do that?”

  “That’s the part we’re struggling with. Someone carried you out of your bedroom and all the way down to your car, so most likely a guy was involved. And we think he was taller than you. The cops found a short grey hair on the bed.” I shrugged. “That’s pretty much all we have right now.”

  “He wanted to ruin my life. Don’t forget that part.”

  “We haven’t. Trouble is, you don’t seem to have pissed that many people off.”

  “Quality over quantity, huh?”

  “You got that right. I did find two nasty letters alongside Lavinia’s, though. Whoever wrote those seemed pissed with you.”

  “And everybody else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Half of the people in the music industry got those letters. The guy seemed to hate anyone with lyrics about sex, guns, women, money… The list went on.”

  “Did you report it to the police?”

  “Along with fifty other people. They just asked for sc
anned copies, and a few weeks later, a cop called to say they’d arrested somebody.”

  Ethan smiled at me, just for a second. A proper smile, eyes and fucking dimples. It was the first time I’d seen those baby blues look anything other than haunted, and my heart did an involuntary flip even as another lead faded away.

  “I’ll check into it, but…”

  “When will they be able to do the test?” he asked.

  “Lyle’s sorting out the court application as we speak.”

  His mouth twisted. “Is Lyle capable? When I thought I did it, I couldn’t see the point in hiring a different lawyer, but he seems kind of…nervous. He never says much when he’s here, just looks at his hands a lot.”

  “I’ve got the best trial attorney in Virginia giving him legal lessons.”

  “Can’t I hire him to represent me instead?”

  “If only. Oliver doesn’t do trials anymore, but he’s agreed to help Lyle out as a favour. It’s your decision if you want to change, but I’d suggest keeping Lyle until after the bail hearing. At the moment, Skinner thinks he’s up against an inexperienced public defender. He doesn’t realise Lyle’s speaking for Oliver, and I’m hoping Skinner’ll underestimate him.”

  “What do you mean, bail?”

  “If this test comes back positive, that’s what we’re going for.”

  Ethan’s next words were shaky, as if he didn’t dare to hope. “Do you think there’s a chance it’ll be granted?”

  “We’re doing everything we can to make it happen.”

  “You know, I never used to pray, but I think I’m going to start.”

  “Another question… What’s in your safe? Anything interesting?”

  “Nothing much, just some cash. The safe came with the house; I didn’t install it.”

  “And where did you keep your spare car keys?”

  “On a hook in the pantry. Why?”

  Fuck. Another point to Ana.

  “They’re not there now.” I glanced at the clock. Ten minutes left. “Can we go through a list of your associates? Anyone big, over six feet two, and strong.”