Drake frowned, no longer bothering to disguise his discomfort in the man’s presence.
“You said that already. Is he at his office? I’ll visit him there.”
Raul shook his head.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Drake’s frown deepened.
“I didn’t ask you if you thought it was a good idea,” he snapped back. With that, Drake turned to leave, except he didn’t make it very far. Raul’s hand came down on his forearm. Even through his jacket, the man’s grip was tight, iron-like.
Drake turned back around and violently shook Raul’s hand off.
“Don’t touch me,” he hissed, glaring at the little man before him. If the security guard had been nervous before, he was now sweating bullets.
“Why don’t you just—” the guard began, but stopped speaking when Drake took an aggressive step forward.
“Don’t touch me again,” he warned, aiming a finger at Raul’s chest.
Adrenaline flowed through Drake, and he felt his body primed to act, the fight impulse coursing through his veins.
But Raul dissolved this notion by smiling.
“My apologies, Damien. Please, come up to the penthouse. I’ll call Ken and see if he can come meet you.”
Even though his mouth was smiling, his eyes weren’t.
You weird little fucking man, Drake thought. What the hell is your deal?
“Is that fine?”
Drake nodded.
“Fine.”
The security guard exhaled audibly and Drake shot him a look.
“I’ll just go back to my desk,” he said, mostly to himself.
Raul, the creepy smile still on his face, turned and started toward the elevator.
Drake, adrenaline surging, followed.
***
“Ken said he can meet you in twenty minutes. Would you like a drink while you wait?”
Drake checked his watch. It was nearly one in the afternoon now.
“Make it a double,” he said. The way that Raul had switched from aggressive in the lobby to downright obedient upstairs, subservient, even, only added to the discomfort he felt in the pit of his stomach.
He didn’t feel like waiting for a minute, let alone twenty, especially not in the company of Raul.
The man returned with a heavy glass of Johnny Blue, and Drake took a sip.
It was like liquid honey cascading down his throat, and in that moment, a sort of bliss came over him and he forgot all about the creepy manservant, about the dead women with the blood on their lips, the books documenting their deaths.
Why can’t life just be like this all the time? Just sheer enjoyment that doesn’t involve sleeping with your dead partner’s wife?
Drake shook his head and put the drink down on the table more forcefully than he had intended.
The mirage was gone.
A pinging noise from inside his jacket, which he had refused to remove despite Raul insisting, drew his attention.
Brow furrowed, he pulled out the e-reader and turned it on.
“What the hell?” he muttered.
There was a third cover beside the other two now.
Red Smile Part III.
Drake swallowed hard, opened the file and started to read.
Chapter 36
“Goddammit!”
Colin threw up his hands as he stared at his computer screen.
The entire monitor had gone blue.
His eyes bulged.
“What the hell just happened?”
He had been in the middle of a chapter, just wrapping up what was to be his masterpiece, the one that would finally put him and his family in the black.
The one that would finally get Ryanne off his back.
And now this.
“What did you say, daddy?” Colby asked from the other room.
“Nothing,” Colin replied. “Just keep watching your cartoons.”
Colin tried jamming CTRL-ALT-DEL, but nothing happened. Eventually, he held his finger down on the power button.
He counted to three in his head and then turned the computer back on. It took longer than usual to start up, and when an image finally appeared on screen, he was surprised when the Windows logo and the words “Welcome to your new computer” floated by.
“What the fuck?”
Colin jammed the “Next” button in the right-hand corner and the image flicked to another welcome screen, one that asked him to name his computer.
His heart was pounding in his chest now.
“This can’t be happening.”
He pressed ESC a half-dozen times, but an error message popped up, stating that he had to enter a time zone.
It can’t all be gone… it can’t… the hard drive couldn’t have been completely erased. That’s impossible.
He turned the computer off and on a second time, but was met again with the Welcome to Windows screen.
Colin could feel his chest tightening, his breath coming in bursts.
I was… I was nearly done with the series, let alone the book. It can’t be gone… it can’t! Not after all the work I’ve put into it!
Sweat started to bead on his forehead, and Colin felt his limbs go numb. He tried to stand, but feared that he might collapse to the Parquet floor and remained seated.
The front door suddenly opened, and Ryanne burst through. She too was sweating, despite the cold air that she brought in with her from outside.
Wearing a purple, low cut top and tight black workout pants, she stormed into the entrance, scowling at the girls’ shoes that were strewn across the floor. She kicked them to one side and then pulled the yoga mat from beneath an arm and then tossed that to the ground.
She looked up, the glower still etched on her lips.
“What’s your problem?”
Colin’s face, which he assumed was as white as the snow outside, went blank. He barely recognized the woman before him.
She looked the same—same long brown hair, pulled up into a ponytail, same striking eyes—but there was something different deep down. Ryanne had taken their money problems to a whole other level.
Colin felt bile rising in his throat as the image of the landlord, his back to him, the gray hair on his shoulders standing up like dryer lint, flooded his mind.
“M—m—my computer,” Colin stammered. “It just broke.”
Ryanne stormed over to him, and up close he realized that while she smelled strongly like sweat, there was something else underlying the funk. Something muskier.
“Did you try restarting it?” she asked.
“Of course I did.”
Ryanne leaned over and held down the power button anyway. When she pressed it a second, the Welcome screen appeared.
“See? It’s like a brand-new computer?”
Ryanne shrugged and leaned away from the table.
“You lose any work?”
Colin gaped.
“Did I lose any work? Seriously? I lost everything! Everything was on there. All of my books.”
Ryanne shrugged again, and Colin felt his blood pressure reaching dangerous levels.
“Should have backed it up. I told you to back it up.”
“Thanks, Ryanne. Thanks for the fucking tip. I should have backed things up, but I didn’t. And now it’s all gone.”
To make things worse, Colin would be damned if he didn’t detect a hint of pleasure in his wife’s voice.
Nonplussed, Ryanne turned her back to Colin and then made her way into the other room to where the girls were sitting watching TV.
“Turn this crap off. I want to watch the news.”
Neither girl looked up.
“Colby! Juliette! I said, turn this off!”
“Ryanne,” Colin said almost absently. “I need to get my files back. I have a book to publish.”
Ryanne’s posture stiffened, but she didn’t look at him. Instead, she reached down and swatted Colby in the back of the head.
“Ow!” Colby cried.
“Why’d you do that?”
“Answer me next time I speak to you!”
Colin’s legs finally felt strong enough to stand, and he did.
“Ryanne, leave them alone,” he ordered. “They haven’t eaten yet. I’ve been trying to get my computer to work.”
Ryanne spun around, eyes blazing.
“You want your computer fixed? Huh? You want me to get it fixed?”
Colin recoiled from the unexpected anger in his wife’s face and voice.
“Yeah, I want—”
She smiled.
“Oh, I can get it fixed; Gary can fix it. He’s good with computers.”
And there it was again, the image of the man who had just had sex with his wife, his back to him, pulling his white underwear up to his waist.
He thought he was going to be sick.
“Well? You want me to get him to fix it or what?” Ryanne demanded, her smile growing.
Colin hated her in that moment. He hated her, and he wanted to hurt her.
Badly.
Instead, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought that she had planned this whole thing.
Either way, he was trapped, and Ryanne knew it.
He opened his eyes and realized that his wife looked watery.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Please get it fixed.”
Chapter 37
“Chase? You okay? It sounds like you’re running,” Drake asked.
“I’m just walking fast. Did you catch the news? My press conference?”
Drake shook his head, glancing around Ken’s penthouse, his eyes moving from the wood fireplace, which Drake was ninety-percent certain was illegal in a new building such as this one, to the gold-framed oil paintings on the walls.
He didn’t see a TV.
“No, haven’t seen it. How did—”
“Don’t. Do yourself a favor and don’t watch it.”
The exasperation in Chase’s voice caused him to sit upright and to stop slouching in the ultra-comfortable chair.
“What happened?”
“Nothing. I just went off the rails a bit. If you’re not calling about that debacle, what’s up?”
Drake picked up the e-reader in his free hand and turned it on.
With a sigh, he said, “I got another story… Part III was delivered right to my tablet thingy.”
There was a pause. When Chase spoke again, she was no longer breathing heavily, and her voice was muted.
“Seriously? Jesus, Drake, what does it say? Is there another body?”
Drake frowned and turned the reader on by pressing the button that had been hidden until Screech had showed him. He scrolled to the third image of the woman’s face, blood smeared across her lips. He clicked on it and read the first few lines out loud.
“The girl’s wrists were tightly bound to the goalpost, her body forming a cross shape. She was naked, and even from a distance, Sergeant Cristin Allan knew that rigor mortis had set in. She reached up and moved a few strands of frozen hair from her face. The woman’s eyes were wide, her lips covered in scarlet blood.”
Drake’s heart was racing as he read the words.
Sergeant Cristin Allan… Sergeant Chase Adams.
“Fuck,” Chase whispered. “I—hold on a sec.”
Drake heard her hand cover the mouthpiece, then in a muffled voice, she said, “Hey, Officer, any homicides checked in yet? In the last hour or so?”
There was an exchange that he didn’t pick up, then Chase spoke again, clearly this time.
“Nothing—no new bodies. Goddammit, does it say where the body is? Goalposts… like at a soccer field? Schoolyard, maybe? It can’t be at the barn… I have two officers there day and night, on rotation. And there are no goalposts there. Drake? Drake?”
The door to the elevator suddenly pinged, drawing Drake’s attention. Ken Smith stepped out, immaculately dressed as always, his silver hair perfectly coiffed. Only he looked different this time, and it took Drake a moment to realize why.
The man was frowning.
“Drake? You still there?”
“I have to go,” Drake said quietly into the phone.
“What? What do you mean you have to go? Drake? Dra—”
Drake hung up and stood. He finished his drink and put the empty glass on the table beside the chair.
“Detective Drake,” Ken said, unsmiling.
Drake scowled.
I wish you wouldn’t call me that.
“This better be important—I’m a busy man. Tell me you have some good news… a video of the doctor with his manager.”
Drake shook his head.
“No. I have everything in place, but—”
Ken’s frowned deepened.
“What do you want then?”
Raul, as if responding to the change in pitch of Ken’s voice, suddenly appeared at Drake’s left.
He instinctively took a step back.
“Everything okay here?” Raul asked in his thick accent.
Ken nodded.
“Fine. Drake was just about to tell me why he’s interrupted my afternoon.”
Drake decided it was best to just come out with it.
“I need cash. A loan.”
Ken’s eyes flicked over to Raul for a split-second, and it dawned on him that the man wasn’t angry so much as he was surprised.
And his glance over at Raul…
They’re following me, Drake thought suddenly. That’s why this is a surprise. They’ve been following me, and they didn’t expect me to come here. Not like this, anyway.
Ken’s eyes narrowed.
“What do you need the money for?”
Drake ignored the question.
“I’ll get it back to you—it’s a loan, not a gift. I just need a few weeks.”
An uncomfortable silence ensued, and Drake feared that Ken was going to press him for why he needed the money. And those were details that he didn’t feel like getting into with anyone, let alone him.
But, instead, he said, “how much.”
“Twenty.”
Ken nodded, then turned to Raul.
“Go get him the money.”
Raul bowed his head and left through the kitchen and out of sight. When he was gone, Ken focused his eyes on Drake.
“The report on the doctor was a trade for the information I gave you about Craig Sloan, about Dr. Moorfield and the tribunal. The package Raul handed you last time was for the video that you will provide me shortly. But this—”
As if on cue, Raul reappeared in the foyer and handed a plain yellow envelope to Ken, who tapped it against his palm.
“This one is for the Sergeant.”
Drake felt his heart rate quicken.
“What about her?”
“The press conference—you need to tell her to keep a wrap on whatever she—whatever you—are dealing with… the dead women. Another serial killer, panic in the city, that doesn’t work for me. Not now, anyway.”
Ken held the envelope out to Drake, who grabbed it. When he tried to pull away, however, Ken held fast.
“Ten is to keep this case, and the Sergeant, under control. The other ten… that’s for something else.”
Drake raised an eyebrow.
“Something else?”
Ken let go of the envelope, and Drake slipped it into his jacket pocket.
“I’ll tell you when I need you again. In the meantime, get the footage of the doctor. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to work.”
With that, the man spun on his heels, then left in the elevator without another word, once again leaving Drake with Raul. Only this time, he was twenty thousand dollars richer.
Chapter 38
Chase was furious.
There was another book, another murder, and Drake had the nerve to hang up on her.
I should never have brought him on board, she thought.
But it dawned on her that even if she hadn’t made Drake a Special Con
sultant on the case, he would have been involved anyway, given that someone had delivered the mysterious e-reader to him.
Somebody wants Drake to remain involved with the NYPD. But who? And why?
Chase shook her head. She had little time for these questions when there was a body out there somewhere, hanging from goalposts.
She hurried out of her office, moving toward the one that she had once shared with Drake, and leaned inside.
Agent Stitts sat in front of his computer, punching away at the keys. She knocked once to get his attention, and he looked up at her, a startled expression on his face. When he realized that it was her, however, his eyes narrowed.
“What’s up?”
Chase wasn’t sure if it was her body language or something else, but the man somehow knew that this wasn’t a social call, that she wasn’t going to ask him to grab a late lunch.
“Come with me,” she said curtly. “We have to visit Dunbar.”
Stitts nodded and stood, making his way to her side without saying a word.
“Drake was sent another book,” Chase said quietly as they made their way down the dimly lit staircase toward the Records room.
Agent Stitts stopped and turned to face her, eyes wide.
“Already? So soon after Charlotte?”
Chase nodded.
“This—”
“I know,” Chase said, cutting him off. She knew what he was going to say, and it would do neither of them any good to say it out loud.
Too many perked ears, even here, in the basement of 62nd precinct.
The killer was moving quickly now, so quickly that he wasn’t even waiting for them to find the body before publishing the story—at least to Drake’s device.
Which posed a significant problem for Chase and her team: mainly, what might happen if the author, if L. Wiley, suddenly flooded the market with books? How were they to know which ones were real, where they should focus their efforts, and which were just made up?
And if the public found out? If there were suddenly hundreds of books called Scarlet Grin or Maroon Sneer or Crimson Smirk? Then what?
This case, unlike all of the others, had to be solved as soon as possible. They had to catch the killer before he struck again.
“What does it say? Where’s the body located?”
Chase shook her head, thinking back to the way that Drake had just suddenly hung up on her. She had brought him on board to help with the case, but so far the only thing he had done is provide them with the stories—which had simply been delivered to him.
Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 1 Page 64
