“I should have known you’d be here, Detective. Thought I said you were off the case. You know I could have you both arrested for obstruction— ”
“We were just here visiting Hatter’s ex.” I shrugged, still aiming my weapon dead at his chest. So long as the men had their weapons up, there was no way in two hells I was lowering mine. “No crime against that, as far as I’ve heard.” I smiled venomously.
Taking off his mirrored sunglasses, he stared at me for several long heartbeats. He was still wearing that pompous smirk, but his eyes burned with fury. He wanted to book us. That I could see. But thanks to Hatter’s connection to Alice, there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to us.
“I want to see the order,” Hatter demanded, holding out his hand imperiously.
“Lower your weapons,” Crowley said with a weary sigh.
As one, the BS agents lowered their guns, forcing me to finally lower mine. But I felt the prickling of my skin and knew that my siren’s markings were glowing bright. Adrenaline made me look like a walking glowworm. I gritted my teeth.
Reaching into his vest, Crowley pulled out a folded sheet of paper and passed it over to Hatter, who snatched it up and quickly began scanning its contents. As he did so, his face looked more and more crestfallen.
“What the bloody hells is this?” he snapped and waved the paper.
“It’s an arrest warrant, as you can see, Constable.” Crowley’s smirk was arrogant. I would have loved to kick the smug prick in the jewels, just once.
“On superficial evidence at best. Hearsay. Complete and utter tittle tattle. This won’t hold up in court.”
“Not my concern.” Crowley shrugged and pointed to the agent nearest him. “Place her in cuffs, Agent.”
Hatter stood still, hands trembling, as the agents marched past him, unable to do a thing to stop them.
“Maddox?” Alice said with a quiver in her voice. “Maddox!” Her voice rose in pitch when the first agent reached for her elbow. “I didn’t do this! Unhand me at once!” Alice screamed. “Maddox? Maddox!” she screamed again as they manhandled her arms behind her back.
“Please, Alice,” I managed to say, “don’t fight this. Relax. Right now, you must relax.” I holstered my weapon, feeling as impotent as a baby and wishing like the two hells that I could stop this. But the order had been signed with the royal crest. There wasn’t a damned thing either Hatter or I could do.
Isa gasped, trembling like a leaf, as she and the rest of us watched Alice get handcuffed with a pair of irons dipped in dragon’s tears. The steam and sizzle of burning flesh wafted under our noses, making me wince in sympathy.
Alice jerked, but she’d stopped fighting them. One of the agents placed his hand on the center of her back.
“Move,” he ordered.
“Eat balls and die, you fecking bastard.”
Raising a hand, he slapped her right cheek so hard that the dull snap of flesh on flesh was a gruesome sound.
Hatter roared, dropping the order as he reached for the agent. “You bloody, goddessdamned— ”
But I shoved him back, getting between them, even as I glared at Crowley. “Check your men, Agent, or I swear to the goddess, I’ll unleash a hell the likes of which you’ve never known before.”
And I let my siren glow burn, let them witness the monster just barely checked beneath the façade, and I exposed teeth that looked more like fangs.
Crowley growled, the sound deep and animalistic in the back of his throat. His own skin bristled, growing dark with the shadow of shifter fur ready to break through.
I shook my head. “You know the bloody rules, you arrogant prick. I dare you. I just bloody dare you.” My voice was a terrible, sonorous thing that made the men closest to me, even the constable, moan as they swayed my way.
Crowley’s nostrils flared, and his pupils were dark pinpricks. I’d split his head open, and he damn well knew it.
After a tense second, he snapped. “No touching. Move out, men.”
Then, without looking back at us, he marched from the room. The agent that had smacked Alice shoved her from behind. She whimpered, and I said in a silky, deadly drawl, “If I find even a hair out of place on her pretty head, you won’t live to see another sunrise, Agent.”
I knew I was threatening an agent of the crown, but I wasn’t just a simple Detective of Grimm. I had political connections the plebs could only dream of. I was as untouchable as he was, and he knew it.
I smirked, blowing him an air kiss. He growled but didn’t touch her again. Instead he barked, “Move.”
Alice started walking, and Hatter called out to her, “We’ll make this right, Alice. I swear it.”
She glanced at him, her cheek already blossoming with scarlet. “The tapes, Maddox. Find the tapes.” Then she was gone.
Hatter and I stood there, both of us silent for a moment. Isa, who’d been a non-factor the entire time, didn’t glance at either of us as she hugged her arms to her belly and moved with a quickness I’d not expected from one so heavily pregnant.
Hatter swallowed.
“We will fix this, Maddox,” I promised him. “Now, where are those bloody tapes she’s talking about?”
CHAPTER 15
CONSTABLE MADDOX
THEY’D FRAMED HER, and it was bloody galling that even taking the ribbon hadn’t been enough to stop the circus that had become their case.
But worse was that, not only had they framed Alice, but her trial was set to happen in less than two hours. Never in his life had he witnessed anything move with the quickness that this had.
He’d had no choice but to close the Crypt. He and the detective had taken all the tapes back to the station. They’d already gone through three hours of mind-numbing sex upon sex upon sex.
Neither of them spoke as they combed the grainy images for anything that would prove Alice had been telling him the truth.
That particular night had been a busy one, and Alice had been playing hostess through it all. His eyes were growing blurry from doing nothing but staring. He’d not slept in days, and the stress of this sudden arrest was too damn bloody much for him.
In the next room, he heard Harry’s movements. The sun was just starting to rise.
“You need to sleep,” Elle said softly, glancing at him with worried frown lines.
He looked at her, noting the pallor of her skin. What she’d done at the Crypt hadn’t gone unnoticed by him. He blinked, knuckling the sleep-deprivation tears from his eyes. They burned like the bloody devil, and anytime he blinked, it felt like they were full of sand and grit.
He shook his head. “They’re going to bloody nail her for a crime she didn’t commit.”
She sighed. “Maddox, have you stopped to think that maybe Alice— ”
“No!” he barked.
At her startled look, he shook his head softer.
“Goddess, Elle. No. She didn’t. She… she just didn’t. I know her. Alice isn’t capable of murder. She’s ruthless and even cruel sometimes, but she’s not a murderer. You saw her. What does your gut tell you?”
He held his breath, waiting, not sure what he was hoping for, only knowing that he needed to have Elle on his side for this one. He needed her to believe in him.
Sighing, she leaned her head back and stared up at the ceiling. “We’ve been going over these tapes for hours. They’ve pushed the hearing up so fast that it’s made me dizzy. But Alice’s ribbons have been found in two realms. That’s a near impossibility, unless of course…”
He clenched his jaw and steepled his fingers.
“Alice has made her share of enemies. It goes with the territory, I suppose. There are many people with a vendetta against her.”
“Such as?”
He flicked a glance back at the screens, keenly disappointed that all there was to see was bodies on bodies on bodies. The Deedles were rich bastards who could afford almost anything this realm had to offer. Balding and morbidly obese, the both of them, they were impossible t
o miss.
“Jilted lovers. Angry wives. Husbands. Partners. You name it. Discretion is the name of the game in this business, but sometimes a client’s partner finds out, and they like to make Alice’s life hell. She’s been sued I don’t know how many times. Threatened. Once, our house was even set on fire.”
An image of his daughter flitted through his mind, and he squeezed his eyes shut as his throat spasmed with heat.
Maddox had to swallow several times before he trusted himself to speak.
“And there’s been worse.”
Elle sighed deeply, looking at the screen with a tight frown. “I’d imagine a business such as hers would attract a particular set of clients. I’ll grant you that some of them might even have the means of traveling the realms. But this is a fine kettle of fish, and I’m not sure how we can save her from the guillotine. Whoever’s behind this wants the case closed, and they want it closed now, to hells with who gets burned in the end.”
He nodded. “If we can just find proof that she was where she said she was, then maybe— ”
“Yes.” She leaned forward and grabbed his hands. “But that only proves her innocence in your murder. Not in mine. No doubt the powers that be have found just enough to tie her to those as well. And as cold as my case is, it would be a miracle if I could get her off the hook.”
Her hands were soft and silky, like the petal of a rose, and he turned their joined hands over, heart hammering violently in his chest.
He was exhausted. He was bloody tired of feeling like everything was spinning out of control. He needed a release. He needed… her.
But Alice’s panicked eyes filled his thoughts, and he yanked his hands back, feeling scalded by Elle’s touch.
She frowned, but set her hands on her knees, thinking, no doubt, that he didn’t want her when he wanted her too damned much.
With a disgusted sigh, she stood up and stretched. “Look, I can’t function this way. I need at least a swim to take the edge off. If we can’t find the Deedles on the tapes, then at the very least, we can pay them a visit, no?”
He looked up at her.
“They’re not always on the right side of the law, and if they suspect that they could hang for this, they’d let Alice burn before they told us the truth. We need to prove they were there, or it’s done,” Hatter said.
Weariness was etched into every line of her face. He wanted to apologize, but he didn’t.
The door to Harry’s room opened.
“Harry,” Elle called.
A second later, the deputy popped his head into the office.
“Aye, Detective?”
“You’ve got fresh eyes,” she said and pointed to the screen. “Watch the tapes, please, and tell us if you happen to spot Alice and the Deedles together.”
“Aye, sounds good. Sorry I am ‘bout Alice, Constable,” he said with a sad glance at Hatter.
He shrugged, not knowing what in the two hells to say.
“You.” Elle pointed at Hatter with a crooked finger. “Are going to bed. Even an hour of rest will do you good.”
“I don’t need— ”
She glowered, and though her skin didn’t glow with the siren’s lure, and her eyes were the clear blue of lucidity and not madness, he caught a glimpse of the powerful woman she was.
“You’ll get some bloody sleep, or I’ll make you. You want to help Alice, then you’ll get some damned rest. That’s an order.”
Technically, she outranked him. He stood, bristling, hands fisting open and shut.
But her peaked brows and no-nonsense demeanor let him know, in no uncertain terms, that this wasn’t a battle he’d win.
“Dammit all to the twin hells!” he snapped, then pivoted on his feet and marched to his room, slamming the door behind him with a jarring rattle.
Detective Elle
I DIDN’T TAKE any of what he’d done since Alice’s arrest personally. If that had been Hook and not Alice, I’m sure I’d have been far worse. I swam the length of the miles-long fairy river in short, quick bursts of my flukes, powering through the water as I worked out the particulars in my head.
My gut told me Alice was innocent.
But my gut had lied to me before, and I’d paid dearly for it. I couldn’t risk being wrong this time. Everything hinged on solving this case in less than twenty-four hours. It seemed impossible.
But here in Wonderland, it was easy to believe in the impossible, especially when I had a partner who could see the past and even sometimes, the future.
I paused, my head breaking the surface as I looked back at where Hatter’s room would be. Was there some way, any way , to activate the sight and make him see exactly what we needed? Maybe the key to solving all of this was his madness.
Without thinking, I shoved from the water, transforming just before my feet hit land. I didn’t bother with my pants, but I snatched up the shirt and slipped it on, breathing easier when I felt the press of my waters upon my flesh.
I jogged down the garden path, glancing ahead toward the office. Harry was slouched in his seat, eating chocolate truffles, but dutifully watching. He might not be the world’s best detective, but the deputy had his uses.
Moving toward Hatter’s clock-face door, I didn’t bother knocking. Just pushed it open.
There he was, in the center of the large bed, clothes still on, eyes closed, and mouth open, gone to the world. But even in sleep, his brows were pinched, the furrows of worry evident in every line.
He’d been without sleep far too long, and I hated to wake him. I didn’t suffer as Hatter did, mainly because swimming was almost as good as sleep for me. I wasn’t completely rested, but I was alert.
The room was long with shadows, and moonlight spilled softly through its windowless space. This wasn’t natural moonlight. It was already morning outside the cottage. But nothing had to make much sense in Wonderland.
Hatter had kicked off his shoes and removed his cravat. His hair was a dark, shadowy spill over his olive-toned skin.
My fingers curled. I couldn’t solve this case without him, but I’d never seen him so unguarded before, either. I should go, give him an opportunity to catch whatever rest he could while we still had a few minutes to burn, but my feet were rooted to the floor. I couldn’t seem to move.
Wetting my lips, I glanced over my shoulder, eyeing the door and debating internally with myself. But then I heard a small puff of air, and once again, I was staring down at him, confused by my own emotions and unsure why I was even still there. Sure, I couldn’t just traipse through Wonderland alone, but at the moment, I could be in the office with Harry. I could still be doing something.
His chest rose and fell in steady intervals. He had to be tired to be so unaware of my presence. I saw the way Hatter looked at things when we were together. He was always wary, cautious, and exceedingly aware of his surroundings. I highly doubted that he was normally this relaxed. I really, really should go.
I glanced at the end table beside his bed and noticed an empty bottle of brandy. I remembered that bottle and thought it had been full. How much of the stuff had he drunk? And why? What demons had plagued him to make him resort to a drugged sleep?
I suspected it had something to do with Alice, more specifically, with what had happened to her tonight. It was funny that, in all the years I’d worked with Ichabod, I’d never really wondered about his personal life. But I wondered about Hatter’s far more than I should.
I frowned. This job was hard, and regardless of which realm we detectives hailed from, over time, we each developed our own vices to deal with the stressors of the occupation. It was just that some of our vices were worse for us than others. Some of them could actually kill us quicker than the job could.
Biting the inside of my cheek as my pulse thumped unsteadily in my chest, I leaned back on my heels, determined this time to leave him to his rest.
But that was when the board beneath my foot squealed in loud protest. Wincing and knowing I’d woken him up for su
re, I murmured an apology. Sure enough, his eyes fluttered open just a second later, and I felt like a bloody fool.
“Elle?” he asked in a rasping voice, looking at me in confusion, eyes slightly glazed over with sleep.
I shook my head. “Sorry. Sorry.”
He waved off my words and shimmied up to a sitting position, leaning against the headboard as he scrubbed a hand down his face. He had a full six o’ clock shadow.
“I slept.” He sounded shocked by that. “Did Harry find— ”
“No,” I whispered. Glancing over my shoulder, I tiptoed in, gently closing the door behind me. “No, I just…” I shrugged, feeling a little stupid. “I just had a thought, was all. But you know what, you need sleep, and I really should not have come in like this. It was rude and— ”
Nocking his leg, he wrapped an arm around it and gestured for me to come to him. “No, come here. Sit. Tell me what you were thinking.”
His collar was open, exposing the hollow of his throat. He looked disheveled and rumpled and far sexier than I’d ever seen him. This wasn’t an uptight constable staring back at me, but a man. My stomach feathered with nerves, and I realized I’d made a colossal mistake in coming here.
The silence between us was palpable.
“Detective,” he grumped, “you’ve woken me. The least you can do is tell me why.” He cleared his throat loudly.
“No, you’re right. I just… well, I got to thinking about what you said back in the office, and I agree with you. Alice didn’t do this. It makes no sense. She had no reason to kill my folk, and the little I know of your Jane Doe, I’d say the same would apply there too. But she is connected. She absolutely is.”
His brows dipped, and his lips pursed. He didn’t look pleased, and I couldn’t say I blamed him.
Walking over to the edge of his bed, I took a seat and crossed my legs at the ankles in front of me.
His eyes raked like hot coals down their naked lengths, making my skin feel tight and hot. My stomach was flooded with thousands of razor-tipped butterfly wings. The way he looked at me sometimes… goddess, it was enough to make me spontaneously combust.
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