“Sí. If you look closely enough, you can still see her spell work in the paint.”
I twisted in my seat to look back through the rear window, hoping to find evidence of Camila’s handiwork on the trunk. Instead, it seemed I was just in time to watch a squad car creep up behind us; the cop inside flicked on his lights with a tell-tale whoop whoop that made Max jump.
“What was that ye said about invisibility?” I drawled.
“It only works when we are moving.”
“Well, I don’t know about ye, but that sure seems like a design flaw right about now.”
“Shame you were not there to say so at the time,” Max replied, sarcastically. “Maybe then we could have avoided this.”
Unfortunately, the rap of a knuckle against the rear window interrupted whatever exceedingly witty retort I might have come up with. Max and I held up our hands to show we weren’t armed, but that was as far as either of us could get; neither window would roll down with the engine off, and no one in their right mind hops out of their car after being pulled over.
The cop bent over at the waist and peered at us through the glass like we were some sort of zoological exhibit. Then again, maybe we were: a man and a woman in the backseat of a vehicle on the side of the road in the wee hours of the morning almost guaranteed a spectacle. Fortunately for us, we had all our clothes on—a fact which seemed to surprise the officer. His bushy eyebrows climbed towards a receding hairline that matched his protruding gut, misshapen nose, and greying mustache.
“You two screwing, or sleeping?” the officer barked, his voice twangy and an octave higher than I’d expected it to be.
“Sleeping,” Max called back.
The cop nodded absentmindedly before peering up and down the road. “You know there’s a whole town along the way. Lots of hotels. A few motels, too.”
“I was too tired,” Max confessed, ignoring the implication. “I did not want to risk causing an accident, so I pulled over. It was a long overnight drive.”
“Yeah, I see the plates. Massachusetts. That’s a lot of ground to cover.” The cop’s eyes flicked to my face. “Couldn’t you have taken over for him?”
“Took a sleepin’ pill,” I explained.
“Right. Well, I’ll tell you what. Let me check your licenses and registration. Then I’ll let you be on your way.”
“I have my license, but my registration is up front,” Max explained. “Can I get it?”
The cop narrowed his eyes but nodded, stepping clear of the door with a hand resting on the pistol he wore at his hip. “Keep your hands where I can see them at all times, alright? You too, miss.”
“Aye, sir.” I wiggled my fingers for emphasis.
Once in the driver’s seat, Max handed over the requisite documents. The officer thumbed through the contents, then gave the brujo’s license a good looking over. He handed it all back, and frankly, I thought that would be the end of it until the cop spoke to me.
“Alright, ma’am. Your turn.”
“Me turn for what?”
“Your license.” The cop gestured for me to hand it over. “Let me see it.”
“Oh,” I replied, feeling foolish for not having realized what he’d wanted sooner. “I don’t have one. Or rather, I lost it.”
“You lost it?” His fingers curled into a meaty fist. “And when was that?”
“What’s it matter to ye? I wasn’t even drivin’ the car.”
“It matters because I say it matters. Fact is, we’ve had some trouble around these parts over the past couple weeks, so when I find two people who ain’t from around here, it makes me suspicious. And when one of those two refuses to show identification, it makes me more suspicious.”
“Officer, I—” Max began.
“No, sir, I wasn’t talking to you. I’m talking with the young lady, here. She was about to tell me a very plausible story about when and how she lost her license.”
I opened my mouth, closed it, and opened it again without a single word spilling out. Deep down, I knew I should have lied—a stolen purse, or a drunken night out, or even claiming I’d left it at home by mistake would have sufficed. But I couldn’t think fast enough—arguably the worst side effect of the potion.
“Well?”
“Wait…” I began replaying what he’d said on a loop in my head. “D’ye say you’ve been havin’ trouble? How much trouble are we talkin’ about, exactly?”
“That’s none of your business.”
I decided to take a shot in the dark. “Ye don’t happen to know Special Agent Leo Jeffries, by chance?”
“Excuse me?”
“He’s an FBI agent. Hispanic guy, average height, tan. Probably north of fifty, though you’d never know it.”
“What does that have to do with your license?”
“So, ye do know who I’m talkin’ about, then. D’ye work for him?”
“I work with Jeffries, not for him,” the cop clarified, coolly. He made a face that I recognized well: he knew the Sickos. Only cops who’d met them could look that perturbed. “Anyway, what’s he got to do with you?”
“He’s why we’re here,” I lied, realizing I’d have to pull some shit out of thin air if we wanted to get this guy off our case long enough to find Hilde and the others. “Leo asked us to come. He wants our help.”
“You’re not Feds.”
“No, of course not. We’re more like consultants, actually. I helped with the Boston murders, if Leo has mentioned those at all.”
“He hasn’t. But in a city that big, I’d wager murders are pretty common.”
“Not these ones. These were serial killin’s that started on the west coast and ended in Boston. Real ugly stuff.”
“Christ, you’re talking about the Christmas Carol Killer, aren’t you?” The officer shook his head so violently it made my neck hurt. “They kept it out of the news, but cops talk. I didn’t know Jeffries worked that one, or that they had a civilian on that case.”
“They brought me in late,” I explained. “I’m from Boston. Pretty sure they wanted some fresh eyes, that’s all.”
Funnily enough, that was largely true. What I left out was that the serial killer Leo and his people had been after—the one responsible for dozens of deaths linked to the English Christmas jingle—had been a Faeling who went by the name Jack Frost. Oh, and that I was the one who shot and killed him. But then, cops tend to frown on that sort of thing, and I was playing nice.
“So, what’s your area of expertise?”
“Huh?”
“You said you were consultants,” the officer clarified. “What is it you two do?”
“Antiquities,” I replied, without thinking.
“Like antiques?”
I bristled at his tone. “Like artifacts. Relics with cultural significance. Old weapons most coroners wouldn’t recognize. You’d be surprised how often that sort of t’ing comes up.”
“Uh huh. And what about you?” he asked Max.
“I work at an occult shop.”
For some reason, that seemed to mollify the officer; a tension I hadn’t noticed left his body in a rush. He sighed and scratched idly at a patch of razor burn. “Guess you two will be headed to the crime scene, then.”
“Is that where Leo is?” I asked. “We rushed down here, so he wouldn’t be expectin’ us just yet.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure what Jeffries has told you, and I wouldn’t want to give anything away in case it’s your fresh eyes he’s looking for…” The officer let that hang in the air for a moment before continuing, “But if you’re here to help clear this mess up, I’d be happy to play escort. None of us have seen anything like this. Branson isn’t as small as some people think. We have trouble with drug trafficking. Mostly opiates, maybe some meth. But mass murders? People dumping bodies all over the Ozarks like trash? Not a chance.”
I fought to keep a straight face, pretending I knew exactly what the officer was referring to. “We’d really appreciated that, Officer.
..”
“It’s Deputy. Deputy Holt. But you can call me Holt.”
“Holt,” I echoed, nodding. “I’m Quinn. This is Max.”
“Pleasure’s all mine,” Deputy Holt grunted. “You good to follow me, son?”
“Sí. I mean, yes, sir.”
The deputy waved that off. “I took enough Spanish in high school to know that much. Try not to get lost. I’ll go slow, but the roads out here are a real pain in the ass.”
“I will do my best.”
The deputy slapped the door of the Jeep, turned, and headed back to his patrol car without saying another word. I let out a long sigh and settled into the backseat, aware of Max’s eyes on me through the rear-view mirror.
“What?” I asked.
“Why are we following a policeman to a crime scene? And did he say mass murders?”
“Aye...” I put my seatbelt back on while I decided how much to tell Max about who we were meeting and why. “So, the friend I’m here to see is sort of on loan to a branch of the FBI that investigates supernatural crimes. I mean, the other cops don’t know that’s what they do, obviously. But that’s sort of the point.”
“Uh huh…” Max looked like he had a dozen questions, but eventually settled on a practical one. “Does your friend know you are coming?”
“Not exactly. I kind of need her to quit her job and return home with me so I don’t get deported back to the Norse realm to serve as a glorified foot soldier for the rest of time.”
“That,” Max said as he cranked the engine, “sounds easier said than done.”
“Aye, it does,” I admitted after hearing it out loud. “Good t’ing I’m so persuasive.”
Max snorted a laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nada,” he replied as we pulled out after the deputy. “Nothing at all.”
Chapter 17
Max pulled in behind the deputy, parking along the opposite side of the road from an additional squad car and one of those fuel efficient, cookie-cutter rentals. The ridge beyond appeared to be a steep climb, though it was hard to tell for sure with such dense forest blanketing damn near everything in sight. To be honest, I was surprised; I’d expected a flatter, browner Missouri, and said as much.
“Yeah, you’ll find that, too,” Holt said as we hiked that ridge several minutes later, angling towards a crime scene which was at least a mile out by his reckoning. “The Ozarks ain’t like that, though. This area here’s called the Springfield Plateau. Over that way, you have the Boston Mountains, which extend from Oklahoma to Arkansas.”
I watched the deputy’s finger as it worked from right to left, impressed by his sense of direction. “D’ye say Boston Mountains?”
“I did,” Holt replied, puffing a bit as we ascended, his eyes scanning the rocky, overgrown terrain ahead as though afraid he might lose his footing. “Way back when, settlers used to call it pulling ‘a Boston’ whenever they did something tough. No idea why. But those mountains are a real pain in the ass to climb, so I guess the name stuck.”
“Huh,” I said, struck by the coincidence. “I guess that makes sense.”
“You get all sorts of stuff like that out here. You’ve got towns like Cuba and Lebanon back east. Then there’s the Salem Plateau up in the St. Francois Mountains. But I’m sure you heard that already from Agent Jeffries. That was the worst of the lot if you ask me.”
“Oh, aye, the Salem Plateau,” I echoed, pretending I had at least some idea what he was talking about. Max shot me a look over the deputy’s head, trying to communicate something with his eyes. When I could only shrug in response, however, the brujo addressed Holt directly.
“Could you remind us what happened there, Deputy?” Max asked.
“Didn’t Jeffries fax over the crime scene photos?”
“He did,” Max replied, hurriedly, “but it would be better coming from someone who was there.”
Holt was already shaking his head. “Happened before I got on the case. It’s some three hours east of us, way outside our jurisdiction. Far as I know, that was the first. The others have all been out here.”
Max fell silent, for which I was grateful; we needed information, but the more questions we asked the less it sounded like we knew. Worse, Holt struck me as a clever guy. Cops like him weren’t easy to fool to begin with.
“Looks like it’s just Agent Jeffries up ahead,” Holt remarked, squinting up at a dark smudge atop a flat crest some thirty yards away. “Sheriff won’t like that. Come on.”
As we drew closer, that smudge became a trim, middle-aged Hispanic man dressed in a polo and moleskin trousers with a windbreaker curled over one forearm. Special Agent Leo Jeffries stared down at a notebook, tapping his lips with a pen, looking older than I remembered; his hair was more silver than black, now, and the lines of his face were carved that much deeper.
“Hello there, Deputy,” Leo called, still scribbling. “Who’s that you’ve got with you?”
“It’s us, Leo!” I shouted back, hoping to prevent the agent from outing us on the spot by saying the wrong thing.
Leo jerked as though he’d been slapped, looking downright stunned as he turned to us. “Quinn? Is that really you?”
“Aye, we came, just like ye asked us to,” I replied evenly, willing him to play along. “Sorry I didn’t call ahead. We made better time than we expected. Anyway, Deputy Holt here was kind enough to escort us and fill us in on our case.”
Leo blinked at me in surprise but recovered far more quickly than most would have given the circumstances; he slipped the notepad into the pocket of his windbreaker and slung it back over one arm. “That so? Well, I’m glad you made it here so fast.”
“Agent Jeffries,” Holt interjected. “Where’s Sam? He was supposed to be keeping an eye on things until the Sheriff got here.”
“An eye on me, you mean,” Leo replied, his eyes twinkling with something between amusement and anger. The question was uncharacteristically blunt, but then the federal agent had a unique talent for parsing out lies from truth. A magical talent, in fact, which probably made it hard to put up with the territorial disputes and bureaucratic bullshit that came with the job.
“It’s nothing personal,” Holt insisted.
“I can tell you mean that, but I am not so sure the same would hold true for your Sheriff.”
“Terry’s had a tough time of things lately. He isn’t usually so…” Holt waved a hand about as if searching for the right word but gave up. “Anyway, he’s not usually like this.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” Leo replied, looking thoughtful. “Officer Nelson and Agent Collins are in the valley, checking for tracks. Doubt they’ll find any, but your Sheriff will want proof.”
“He will. And he’ll want to know what these two civilians are doing here, so you might want to come up with something a bit more plausible than what she did.” Holt jerked a thumb at me as he strode past the federal agent. “I’m going to go see if Sam needs help.”
“Shit,” I muttered under my breath so Holt wouldn’t hear me. “Busted.”
“What makes you think Miss MacKenna was lying, Deputy?” Leo called after the man, ignoring me.
Holt halted, glancing back at me before ultimately addressing Leo. “Just a hunch. Maybe I’m wrong, but if these two aren’t who they say they are, it would be best if they were gone before I get back.”
“Why lead them here, if you weren’t sure?”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass how the job gets done so long as the bodies stop falling, but I’m not in charge. I don’t make the rules. Doesn’t mean I can’t bend them from time to time, though.”
“Appreciate the honesty, Deputy,” Leo replied.
“Don’t mention it.”
Leo waited until the deputy was well out of earshot before wheeling on me, his expression oscillating between amazement and outrage. “What the hell did you tell him, MacKenna?”
I opened my mouth to explain but didn’t get a chance before I felt the age
nt’s arms wrap around me in a hug so fierce that it drove the breath from my lungs. It also put the man’s face uncomfortably close to my breasts. Of course, as short as Leo was, that was bound to happen; the man’s head barely crested my chin on a good day, which meant I could smell the minty shampoo he’d used that morning. I coughed out a nervous laugh and patted his back. “Missed ye, too, Leo.”
Leo pulled away, shaking his head. “We looked for you for over a year, chasing down any leads we could find. We thought you were dead, Quinn. We really did.”
“I’m sorry, Leo,” I said before drawing him in for another, less awkward hug. “I never intended to be gone for so long.”
“Do I get one of those, too?” a voice called.
I glanced past Leo to find a man staring at me from a half dozen yards down the ridge.
“Well,” I said, breathily, “if it isn’t Jimmy Collins.”
Chapter 18
Jimmy was so unchanged, he might as well have stepped directly out of my memories. Imposingly tall and built like a cross between a basketball player and an NFL linebacker, the former detective was arguably one of the most beautiful humans I’d ever met. For most men, that boiled down to great bone structure and the lustrous, ageless skin that keep dermatologists up at night. But there was also something in the eyes, in the tilt of the mouth, which set Jimmy apart from the rest—a confidence that bordered on swagger.
Frankly, if it weren’t for the gold band wrapped around his ring finger, I’d never have known a year and a half had passed since we last saw each other. If Jimmy noticed me eyeing his newfound bling, however, he gave no sign. Instead, the man stood looking still as the grave and chiseled as a tombstone, hiding behind a placid, pleasant expression that might have fooled someone who knew him less intimately than I did.
Of course, I wasn’t behaving much better. I found myself smiling down at my childhood friend with a degree of warmth I wasn’t certain I felt. It was one thing to hear he’d gotten married, but another thing entirely to see proof. My mind began plaguing me with questions I wasn’t sure I wanted answers to. Half-formed queries such as what’s she like? or where did you honeymoon? or, most troubling of all, would I have been invited to the wedding?
Moonshine: Phantom Queen Book 11—A Temple Verse Series (The Phantom Queen Diaries) Page 12
