She tightened her grip on the boot as the water around her warmed. The ink black was replaced by light red. She took this as her cue to begin swimming to the surface. She broke into warm, twilight air a moment later, breathing deeply.
This wasn’t the heaviest corpse she’d ever dragged to shore. After the forced rest and breakfast, she found the task easy enough. Every step took her out of the water onto the bank. She dropped the body at the water’s edge and looked toward the forest. Black trees and heart-shaped leaves.
La Loon.
Its eternal twilight had not changed in her absence. The two moons still hung in its sky. The white mountains in the distance remained covered in a dream-like haze.
The forest was still deceptively quiet. No sign of Jabbers. Had she moved on in Lou’s absence?
Lou left the corpse on the shore and entered the water again. Several trips she made like this. From one lake to another, dragging the weight of the men onto the shore.
As she surfaced in Alaska for the last time, she felt the tremor in her arms. It wasn’t only the unforgiving cold. It was also the labor of the work. Her hunger had returned again, and she was glad. She detested forcing herself to eat for strength alone when she didn’t want to.
Her mind wasn’t completely at ease, not by a long shot. But she did feel the shift in her. Last night’s kills had brought her some momentary relief. It had restored some equilibrium in her that had been lost. As long as she didn’t look at this victory too closely, she suspected it would hold. For now, at least.
“After you,” she said to the last corpse, hauling its leather clad body into the water. She thought of Konstantine’s grin. I see your humor in it.
She was considering her options for food when the Alaska waters began to turn red. A New York slice. Ramen from her favorite Tokyo noodle shop. Or perhaps gnocchi from Prag—
Jaws snapped. Rows of needle-like teeth closed down on the corpse, pinning her hand in the fold of its leather jacket.
The monstrous creature, part crocodile, part orca, twisted its body and pulled Lou down into the deeper, colder water. She caught a glimpse of its long, serpentine body and the spiky plates, erect along its dorsal side.
It took three hard tugs to wrench herself free.
And then she was floating in the dark. Lungs burning. Aware that she was much farther down in Blood Lake than she’d ever been before. She was also certain she had to get the hell out of there.
But the water would not take her.
Alaska, Alaska, Alaska, she thought. The waters didn’t darken. There was no pull toward her own world.
Fearing she could wait no longer, she surfaced as carefully as she could. Calmly, slowly, trying not to make herself seem panicky and prey-like, despite the thunderous hammer of her heart.
When she broke the surface, she was too far from shore, or at least, farther than she’d ever been. She didn’t pretend to understand the logic of this nightmare world, or why, whenever submerged in water, she was delivered here on a current of its own. But there were consistencies.
She always arrived in the same place, in the shallows, maybe only twenty yards from shore.
Since it was also from shallows she returned home, it dawned on her with horrible certainty that perhaps she couldn’t travel from this far out. Head finally above water, she spotted Jabbers.
Bounding up and down from corpse to corpse, delighting in her options, she seemed like a kid in a candy shore. She tore off a boot and spat it on the ground, only then dragging her long white tongue over the dead man’s foot.
Lou splashed as she paddled toward her, her movements clumsy from the cold. Jabbers hearing the splash, turned toward the sound.
Then the creature did something Lou had never seen before. The plates along her back rose up, arching like hair on a cat’s spine. She roared. Her white maw stretched wide and teeth gnashed.
For a moment, Lou feared she didn’t recognize her. In the water, only her head was visible, and it had been a while since she’d come to this place.
When Jabbers bounded into the water, she skimmed the surface like an anaconda, crossing to Lou in a few easy strides. The six legs and their webbed feet helped, no doubt.
“It’s me,” Lou said, spitting water out of her mouth. “It’s just me.”
She hoped Jabbers would recognize her voice. The creature had bitten her before. Fifteen years ago, when Jabbers was barely bigger than her ten-year-old self, she had pounced on her, and sunk her teeth into Lou’s shoulder. She still bore the shark-bite scar today.
But Jabbers didn’t grab her, drown her, or eat her. Jabbers dived.
Her body slid under Lou’s, cutting the water cold. It wasn’t until Jabbers swam beneath her that Lou realized how massive the creature was. Lou floated above her black, contracting body.
One hard push of the creature’s tail, and Lou was shoved up out of the water and thrown toward shore. At the same moment, she saw those dorsal fins rise again on her left. Too close.
Jabbers surfaced, snarling, and lunged for those fins. Her talons sank into the pale dorsal flesh.
Lou hit the water, ten yards from shore and sank.
Her feet connected with the top of a flat, slick surface.
A car. The submerged car that Lou had brought to this world along with Angelo Martinelli—the bastard who emptied his gun into her father’s chest and face.
It was still down there, would be down there forever perhaps.
Pushing hard, Lou bolted for the surface and broke air. This was her cue to swim. And swim hard.
She no longer bothered with trying not to look or sound like prey, she only swam as fast as she could manage, arm over ear until her knee scraped the silty floor, and she knew it was shallow enough to stand.
In ankle-deep water, she whirled back, trying to catch the last of the battle.
Jabbers was on the surface, circling, her face under the water. Seemingly satisfied that the corpse-eating creature had retreated, she began to swim for shore.
Lou collapsed on the bank, putting some distance between herself and the nearest corpse, and awaited Jabbers’ arrival. The creature hauled herself out of the water, muscles dripping. Its gaze was unwavering as it regarded Lou with yellow serpentine eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Lou told the panting creature. She ran a hand down her soaked face, clearing it of water. “I guess a large haul gives it too much time to reach the shallows.”
But even as she said it, she knew the monster who’d dragged her out into dangerous depths had been aiming for the corpse, not for her. It could have latched onto her as easily as the body she’d been pulling along.
Perhaps its vision was terrible and it worked on the smell of blood alone. That would explain its aim. Then later, perhaps it was the movement of her body, the splashing that had drawn it closer.
Or a second one just like it. She had seen a pod of crooked dorsal fins cutting waves on the lake before.
It didn’t matter. Even if she didn’t fully understand the danger, it was clear Jabbers did. Her reaction had been visceral and immediate. She’d come into the water to rescue Lou the way a mother screamed at her child for playing in the street.
Jabbers sat back on her haunches, licking her right middle paw furiously. Lou saw the blood running down her arm into the water.
She wasn’t sure what she could do for it, or how to make amends.
The indignant way the creature eyed her made her feel like an apology was necessary for being stupid enough to almost get herself killed.
But I’m sorry was her language. How could she apologize in a way this creature would understand?
Lou reached over and grabbed the cold bare ankle of the nearest man. “I brought you this.”
The beast paused in her licking, her eyes widening, her black pupils dilating until no white remained. Lou took this for excitement or joy.
She shook the foot a little, the way one might initiate play with a dog and his toy.
The beast s
eized the foot, pulling it into her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” she said again as bones cracked and snapped. It sounded like someone biting an ice cube in half. “I’ll be more careful next time.”
A sound like purring began to emit from the creature’s throat.
Lou was forgiven.
14
King read the article for a second time, rubbing his thumb on the touch pad to scroll down the page. Unfortunately, this didn’t change the story. Richard Sikes reported a robbery in the Richland Hills Country Club two nights ago. He didn’t see his attacker because they’d first turned off the bathroom lights. Another woman from the same club reported a waitress who’d acted strangely before following Sikes out of the dining hall.
King sat back in his chair and sighed, tapping his foot against the wood floor.
“What’s wrong?” Piper asked, glancing up from her own furious typing.
“I need more coffee,” he said.
Piper pointed at the pot. “You want me to make more, or will you drink that?”
“I’ll drink it. We can’t throw away perfectly good coffee.”
“Okay, but if you finish it, start another. I need about three more cups to get through this afternoon.”
King emptied the remainder of the carafe into his white mug. This did indeed polish off the pot. He pulled out the soaked, cold filter, dropped it into the adjacent trash can and fished a new coffee filter from the box. He pulled the gallon of water from the fridge and refilled the reservoir. All of this was done without thinking, his body going through the motions as his brain remained fixated on what he had just read. And reread.
Lou almost kidnapped and killed Richard Sikes before he’d finished gathering enough information to confirm his guilt.
Granted, King was 95% sure that the man was garbage. Not only because of the reports of domestic violence from his first two wives. Nor because of the three DUIs he’d received, one of which crippled the other driver for the remainder of his life. And forget that these offenses had been somehow mysteriously expunged from his public record. It was his connections to known sex offenders and pedophiles in the area that made King truly hate the man. That a man like that was walking, talking, eating and shitting, while Lucy Thorne was only ash in an urn.
Still, Lou had been too close.
I’ll have to withhold the names going forward, he realized. I’ll only name a target once I’m damn sure justice will be served. Otherwise, there’s no guarantee she won’t hunt them anyway.
What a slippery slope that is, Robert, Lucy said. His dead wife’s voice in his mind made his stomach clench. Wife for only a few blessed hours on a Hawaiian beach, but his, nonetheless. How do you know you’re helping? How do you know what this world needs?
These were excellent questions that he didn’t have answers to.
But he needed only to think of Jack Thorne to find his self-righteousness fortified. Jack, his best pupil and friend, had been hunted and killed because he started asking questions about Senator Ryanson. His own partner, Chaz Brasso had set the dogs on Jack.
Ryanson had a good man killed and received no justice—except the justice Lou delivered him. The same was true of Brasso.
And King was too old not to know that Jack was probably one of a hundred such men. There were perhaps thousands of good men who had been wiped from this world prematurely by assholes who would do it again if the opportunity presented itself. All of this said nothing about the women and children, too.
“I’m tipping the scale,” he muttered to himself as the last of the new coffee dripped into the carafe and he poured it into his mug.
“What’s that?” Piper asked, looking up from her keyboard, her blue eyes bright.
“Nothing. Just an old man muttering to himself.”
“I bet you’re wishing you’d bought a beach house in the Caribbean,” Piper said, misreading his vacant expression. “You’re thinking, why am I shuffling all this paper and reading all these reports when I’m supposed to be retired?”
King snorted. “Retirement isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Some of us are made to work. I suspect I won’t stop until someone puts me in the grave.”
Piper shuddered. “Why you got to make it sound so ominous, man?”
He pointed at the coffee. “Three sugars and a bunch of cream, right?”
“I like my dessert brewed, yes,” she said, taking the cup. She took a sip and wrinkled her nose. “Blech. This is…coffee.”
“As opposed to…?”
“Caramel. Mocha. Toffee. God, toffee would be so good right now.”
“I’ll let you pick out the coffee next time,” he promised. “How are you doing on the Bronovitz case?”
“Good. I’ve got all the photos and info here.” She tapped the manila file folder on her desk. “And I’m halfway through the Russells case. Though you said he needs at least three eyewitnesses for his court appearance.”
“He does,” King agreed, taking his coffee back to his desk and easing his sore behind into the wobbly chair. He wasn’t used to sitting so much during the day, and his bones had begun to protest.
“Yeah, so I’ve got to make a few more phone calls on that. The names he gave us as possible witnesses are bailing left and right.” She scratched her nose. “If your friend robbed a 7-11, would you testify that he didn’t do it?”
“Allegedly robbed a 7-11,” King corrected before taking a sip of coffee. “And yes, if I thought he was innocent.”
“Maybe that’s the problem. Even if he didn’t do it, his friends are thinking, ‘That sounds like the John I know.’”
King smiled. He liked seeing Piper like this. Fully engaged. She was having fun. “You like this stuff?”
She grinned, bashfully. Color rose in her cheeks. “It’s pretty cool. I’ve got friends who babysit kids and wait tables. Which is perfectly fine, but I’m tracking criminals and building real life cases that will go to court. That is amazing.”
King sipped his coffee. “I’m glad you like it. Hopefully, if business keeps up, I can pay you more soon.”
“$13 an hour is awesome,” she said.
“It’s not enough,” he said, finding his opening to have a conversation he’d been dodging all day. “This job is much riskier than flipping burgers. If we stumble across the wrong guy, he could attack you or—”
“I’ll be careful.” She held up three fingers in a scout’s salute. “I saw what went down with your partner. I was the one wielding the cast iron skillet, remember?”
He’d forgotten about that.
“I’ll be careful,” she said again. “I won’t run my mouth or go looking for trouble. I promise. So don’t fire me. If I keep up my twenty hours for Mel, and twenty hours for you—that’s like $450 a week.”
The color in her face deepened as if she realized that she was rambling.
“I’m saving up for an apartment,” she said. “If you wonder why I’m going on about money. It’s not for drugs or anything.”
King put his mug on the desk and patted his pockets. “You know there’s an apartment up there.” He pointed at the ceiling. “I can rent it to you.”
“How much?” she asked, sitting up taller.
“$800, plus another $100 for utilities. $150 if you take hour-long showers like Mel.”
He knew damn well that a 600 sq. ft apartment in the Quarter ran at least $1500 plus utilities. He was giving her a hell of a deal. But he liked this kid, and he wanted her to see her do well.
“Shut up.” She laughed. “Is it gross or something?”
“No.” He found the key and fished it out of his pocket. “Go see for yourself.”
She practically leapt at the chance, all smiles as she snatched the key from his hand and ran to the back of the office.
“Other door,” he said. “That one’s a storage closet. And Lou’s personal entrance apparently.” Maybe he should put her name plate on the door. It would be like having a silent partner.
King didn�
�t think Piper had heard that last bit. Her feet were already pounding up the stairs. Then he heard the floorboards creak overhead.
She came down ten minutes later, and the jubilance was gone.
“You don’t like it?” he asked.
“No, it’s nice. Really nice, actually. I like the high ceilings and the big windows looking out back. The person on the opposite side has got some kind of rooftop garden with ferns and stuff. Anyway, it’s pretty.”
“Then what is it?”
She scratched the back of her head. “I was looking for something a little bigger. Maybe even two bedrooms.”
For whom? he wondered.
“If you need an office or something, you can always use this space if you want,” he said, searching her face for hints. “Just keep the doors locked after hours.”
She nodded, but King knew that look. She was already a hundred miles away.
“If it’s the price—”
“No,” she said, forcing a smile. “No, you’d be giving me a hell of a deal and you know it. It’s just…it’s just the space.”
The silence swelled between them.
“Well, think about it,” he said. “I’ve got to pay the rent on this place either way, and if you take it that’s $800-$900 less I have to think about every month.”
“Yeah, I’m sure your DEA pension isn’t much.”
He didn’t correct her. It was true enough, but he didn’t live on his pension alone. He’d paid max into his retirement account, had had a separate IRA and investments. Assuming he died before he was 95, King would die a comfortable man.
“And I could look after this place,” Piper added, working her bottom lip with her teeth.
“Yeah, that too,” he said, taking the key back from her and slipping it into his pocket.
Again he saw the conflict dance across her face.
“If you decide you don’t want to stay in the Quarter, that’s okay too,” he said. “I just thought you’d like to be close to work.” For all three of your jobs, he thought. Mel was around the corner. Jackson Square, where she sometimes did extra card readings for cash was at the end of the street.
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