by Kate Baray
Jack nodded.
Marin started a countdown from three.
Chapter Three
“One.” Marin pulled the shop door open.
Jack slipped in and dipped right.
A gasp revealed the exact location of a very large man cowering low in the corner.
Jack ducked down beside him—just as a shot echoed through the room.
Shaking his head as his ears rang, Jack leaned close to the man and said, “Braithwaite?”
The guy looked at Jack like he’d gone mad.
A thin line of flame streamed through the still-open door. An agonized scream followed.
“I hope you’re Braithwaite, and those guys are actually robbing you, because my partner just torched one of them.”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”
Jack had to put his hand on the guy’s arm to get him to stop repeating the word. “I’m your twelve-thirty appointment.” He flashed the terrified man a grin. “We’re a little early.”
The shop owner breathed out a barely audible “Thank God.”
Jack could see a thin strip, a slice of the shop between the register he’d hunkered down behind and the scattered bookshelves. He flipped his gaze from that narrow view to the door, then back again. Waiting.
He really had too much shit going on in his life. Someone was shooting at him, and he barely felt a rush. That was messed up.
Marin appeared in the doorway before he could get too philosophical.
Her movements were smooth and economical as she moved to join them. “Looks like they’ve moved to a back room.”
“Mr. Braithwaite?” Jack touched the man’s arm again. “You have a back room?”
Braithwaite fell from his crouch to sit on the floor, as if the air had suddenly left him. He nodded furiously.
Jack guessed at the reason for the sudden release of tension. “There’s another exit, isn’t there?”
Another nod from Braithwaite was followed by a massive crash from the back of the store.
“Shit.” Marin ran to the back.
“You stored the auction book in the back room?” Jack touched the man’s arm when he didn’t respond. “Mr. Braithwaite, the book?”
“Yes, yes. The back room.”
Several seconds passed, then the front door opened. Jack raised his gun—not that he doubted Marin’s ability to kick two guys’ asses and walk away.
He lowered his gun as Marin walked in.
“They’re long gone.” She lifted her phone. “I got a shot of their license plate, but I doubt it’ll help. I texted it to my dad—the license, and some other info on the book. Figured we’d use his contacts to pull the registration and a police report if it was stolen.”
Jack nodded. He turned to consider the pale countenance of the shop owner.
They could hardly leave Braithwaite here to report an uncontrolled story to the police.
“Mr. Braithwaite.” Jack offered him a hand up. “Let’s talk expenses. We’d very much like to cover the costs of this incident…in exchange for a few small considerations.”
Chapter Four
When Jack left the shop, he clutched a receipt for a compendium of home remedies in his hand. While possession would have been infinitely better, IPPC now held legal claim to the book.
Mr. Braithwaite had been rather surprised by the generous offer for a book that he had said was “a very nicely preserved example, but otherwise unremarkable.”
Mr. Braithwaite happened to be one of the few honest men left in the world, a fact that became painfully obvious when they’d begun negotiations for the book and his cooperation. He claimed the excellent condition of the book and a resurgence of interest in natural remedies had slightly elevated the value, but he stressed that the value could never rise to the level Jack was offering to pay.
“Let’s hope Mr. Braithwaite’s memory remains suitably vague after his vacation in Belize, and that Harrington doesn’t have a heart attack when he gets the tab.” Marin pulled the truck keys from her pocket. After she hopped in the driver’s seat, she said, “And what was with the whole laser thing?”
“What else would you call a thin blue flame?” Jack shrugged. “I was in the moment. High-tech seemed a better choice than magic. And speaking of pinpoint laser flames, your control of fire in human form has improved, or the neighbors got an eyeful of scaly lizard lady.”
She turned to him with a bland expression then backed the car out of the space.
No. She’d have to be insane to flash her elephant-sized self in a strip mall parking lot. He examined her face…and she looked too innocent.
“You’re shitting me. How do we explain that away? Cutting-edge laser tech is bad enough. What, PCP exposure? Uh, filming a commercial…with hidden cameras?”
“How about a rip in time allowing dinosaurs into our world.” Marin readjusted her rearview mirror slightly. “Besides, it’s only a problem if there’s a witness.”
Jack snorted. “And you ate them before you came inside, so no worries?”
“Don’t be an ass. Would you rather have been shot?”
“Not really.”
She waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the parking lot behind them. “And look around; there isn’t a soul. I’ve no idea how Elliot Braithwaite was making a living with that place. Especially in this area. It’s been hit hard recently.”
“The recently unemployed and underemployed are not our Mr. Braithwaite’s bread and butter. If you had more respect for vintage comics, you’d probably have spotted them in the shop.” Jack had caught sight of a handful in the backroom when they’d verified the book’s theft. He gave her almost pristine car a hard look. “Come to think of it, you have a distinct lack of respect for all things vintage. But vintage comics might bring in some cash for him.”
“Dragons live in the now. I’ve told you that. And sometimes it’s easier surrounded by new things.” Glancing out of the corner of her eye, she said, “And your Jeep isn’t vintage. It’s a piece of shit you need to replace.”
Now she was just trying to piss him off. He opened up his laptop—then remembered her comment about the book. “What other information did you get on the book?”
“Oh, shit, that’s right. Death magic. The shop, the back room especially. The book is obviously the source. Even the parking lot reeked after our shooters made off with the book.”
“Death magic, as in dead people juicing up the book and powering its magic?” When she tipped her head once in affirmation, he asked, “How in the hell did you spot that before we even went in the back room?”
“If death magic were a smell, it was stinking up the entire store.”
“That’s a lot of death.”
She glanced at him and raised her eyebrows. “That’s a powerful book.”
Jack couldn’t help but dwell on exactly how powerful. The little experience he had with death magic had given him a healthy respect for the sheer magnitude of magical power it generated. One death had powered a containment ward for more than a hundred years—that was serious shit.
He forced himself to turn his attention to his laptop. He wanted another look at the book’s provenance, as well as the research done by the in-house IPPC librarian, and freaking out like a kid who’d just watched his first horror flick wouldn’t help.
By the time he’d settled into his research, several minutes had passed and he realized he had no clue where they were headed. “Where are we going?”
“Are you going to tell me what you’re doing?”
Maybe the partnership offer had been premature. Then again, she had just dragon-lasered a bad guy. That was pretty badass. And probably partner-worthy.
“Hey, how’d your flame victim manage to get away?” Jack asked.
“Ah. I aimed to disable—figured we wanted to question them. But his buddy just dragged him along. That was enough experimentation with non-lethal force for this decade.”
Once he had the relevant docs open, he pulled up his
old research buddy Christine’s contact information. Married and with some unknown number of kids running around, she’d done very little freelance research for him lately. But this was an emergency. He tapped call.
“Hey, Chris. How’s my favorite research assistant?” He spent five minutes updating her on the request and skirting questions about the case. The client was another matter; he asked her to copy Ewan on the results. When he ended the call, he realized they were pulling up to a cheap hotel they’d passed on the way into town.
“More private than a restaurant, and we can order pizza when we get hungry.” Marin pulled into the covered temporary parking area for registering guests. “You’re paying for the pizza and the hotel.”
“What, like I wouldn’t? Chris says give her a few hours and she should have a list of suspicious deaths and disappearances near the last owner’s home town. It’s a little place about an hour southeast of Austin.”
Marin got out of the car and waited for him to join her. As he rounded the front of the truck, she said, “You remember that back during the 2011 drought, he bought out a number of struggling family-owned farms? Not in and of itself terrible, but he managed to profit immensely by installing or upgrading irrigation systems and implementing more modern farming practices.”
Jack paused. “But where’d the water come from?”
“Right. Thinking about all of those bankrupt farmers…it makes me curious to know how he died.”
“Wishing a horrible and lingering illness on someone might make you a bad person.” Jack opened the lobby door for her.
She shrugged. “Not if he deserved it.”
Out of perverse curiosity, Jack popped off a text to Chris asking her how Albright had died. That information hadn’t been included in the file.
And if the successful Mr. Albright had murdered a bunch of locals to power his water-divining book, then, yeah, the guy might have deserved a horrible and lingering illness.
And that was why they’d make decent partners: they agreed on the important shit.
Chapter Five
Jack was in the middle of eating a piece of almost-hot pizza when Christine returned his call. He still hadn’t heard from Ewan, but Marin hadn’t seemed surprised when he mentioned it earlier.
Jack answered and tapped speaker. “Hey, Chris. I’ve got Marin with me.”
“Color me shocked. How have you not flame-broiled him yet, Marin? And, Jack, I say that with love in my heart.”
Marin grabbed another slice and dropped down on the bed. “He’s an angel. A cheap, sentimental, slightly sleazy angel.”
Chris laughed. “You guys are spending way too much time together.”
Jack couldn’t help noticing his longtime buddy didn’t bother to deny a word of Marin’s criticism. Cheap, sleazy… “Since when am I sentimental?”
Marin swallowed a bite of pizza. “The Jeep.”
Almost at the same time, Chris said, “Your car.”
“Enough about Jack and his many failings.” The laughter had died from Chris’s voice. She was suddenly all business. “Open the zip file I sent you. There’s a photo compilation inside.”
“Got it.” Jack clicked the file labeled “montage,” then blew up the image. “Holy shit.”
Marin flipped his computer around, greasy fingers and all, so she could see the screen. She shoved the last bite of her pizza into her mouth and belatedly looked around for something to wipe her fingers on.
Jack handed her a handful of paper napkins.
Marin snatched the napkins but then her attention immediately pivoted to the screen. “These look like crime scene photos. Is that legit?”
“Jack and I have a don’t ask, don’t tell agreement. So—no comment. You see the pattern?”
“How could anyone miss it?” One photo after another of slashed victims jumped off the screen at Jack. “How could the FBI miss it?”
“Excellent question,” Chris said. “Creative wording, failing to report—but I don’t have a good answer. The kids are about to get home—have to run. I’ll keep poking around and will check in with additional information.”
“Thanks, Chris.” Jack ended the call and then set his phone on the nightstand, well away from any pizza grease.
“I’d like to know what local law enforcement have to say.” Marin barely kept bits of food from flying as she spoke around the pizza in her mouth. “Similar knife wounds that would have all caused massive blood loss.”
Jack winced. “I’d ask if you were raised by wolves, but the ones I’ve met have better table manners than you.”
Marin swallowed, wiped her mouth, and then chucked the wadded-up napkins onto the nightstand. “Brachial, carotid, and femoral arteries cut—all injuries that would have caused massive blood loss. And the injuries appear to have been made with some sort of blade—a clear pattern. How could the locals not have seen it?”
She lifted a finger toward the screen.
“Hey, not the screen.”
Yanking her hand back, she scowled at him. “Something’s off. These should have been recognized as possibly the work of one person.”
“First, there were seven murders in ten years. Second, look at the locations.” Jack pulled up a county map on his computer. Pointing to the area just southeast of Austin, he circled the relevant area with his fingertip. “They’re spread over four, maybe five, counties.”
“Even so, seven murders in such a low population density area… Something’s hinky. And where’s the news coverage? Serial killer on the loose in Central Texas—that kind of thing. Someone’s hushed these up.” Marin rolled off the bed and disappeared into the bathroom.
Jack could hear the water in the sink running. He pitched his voice to be heard above the water. “If they didn’t want the murders discovered, why a cover-up? I’d make sure no one found the bodies.”
She came back drying her hands on a small towel. “We both know I’d just incinerate them. Did you get the files as well, or just the pictures?”
“We’ve got the files. Give me a sec, and I’ll forward them.” When he was done, he said, “Code red files.”
“Is code red the one where I get fired if the info leaks, or the one where I have to clean your car?” She glanced at the little blue telephone box replica in her hand, and then frowned at him.
He gave her a blank stare. “The one where I leave old French fries to petrify under the driver’s seat of your car. But I’ll also consider firing you.”
“I will be very careful.”
The two of them spent some time familiarizing themselves with the files. But it was only an hour or so later that Chris sent them an update with Mr. Stanley Albright’s cause of death—and then they changed the focus. Albright’s death had been ruled a suicide. The sixty-five-year-old farmer turned businessman had slashed his wrists vertically. No history of previous attempts was documented in his medical files. In fact, there was no record of depression at all.
For the next several hours, they dug through the files looking for some connection between the victims, something beyond Albright to tie them together. Albright may or may not have orchestrated what were looking more and more like sacrificial murders—but it looked like he wasn’t the linchpin. The man could hardly be the linchpin if he was also a victim.
Jack’s phone chirped as a new text message came in. He blinked and rubbed his burning eyes. Too much reading and not enough blinking. He opened the message: Church of the Book. And tell Chris she’d like working for us.
He replied: I don’t work with clients who steal my contractors. As an afterthought, he added: Thanks
“Hey, your dad just texted me. Have you seen anything about a Church of the Book?”
“No, but…hold on.” Marin pulled her laptop closer and started clicking and tapping. “Here. It looks like a woman was questioned closely because of a previous assault against her husband. She was discounted based upon a confirmed alibi—provided by her church.”
“Well, they would give h
er an alibi if one of them slit her husband’s throat, wouldn’t they?”
“Just because they use the word ‘book’ in the name, it doesn’t mean anything. That could easily be a reference to the Bible.” Marin tapped a few keys and then said, “Ouch. Her husband’s injury was to the femoral artery. Sliced in the groin—now that sounds like something an angry wife might either do or have done to her husband.”
“And a fantastic way to torture a guy. Don’t move, buddy, or we might miss.” Jack resisted the urge to cover his junk.
“Sure. The guy was worried about his dick right before he was brutally murdered.” She didn’t look up, just kept scrolling through the file. “I don’t see any reference to the name of the church in here. That’s odd, right?”
“Uh, yeah. Hey, I found a website.” Jack flipped the screen around for her. “Like all good nonprofits, they’ve ensured there’s an easy way to donate online. Three physical locations…” Jack switched back to the county map. “Yeah, all three church locations are well within that five-county region I showed you before. And there’s only one pastor for all three branches. Road trip?”
“Sounds like a plan.” She snapped her laptop shut. “You’re driving. I read faster, and I want one more look through those files for any hint of a church or a religious group. But try not to drive like a little old lady.”
Chapter Six
“Where’s all the blood?” Jack had been driving about an hour now, and it had been bugging him for several miles.
“What?” Marin pulled her attention away from her laptop. “What blood?”
“Exactly—what blood? The crime scene photos show no blood from wounds that would have bled profusely. So where is it? And going with your local law enforcement involvement theory, the missing blood from each scene should also have tied the murders together.”
Marin turned off the music. “Since only about half of the victims appear to have been moved, according to the case files, and there’s no sign the scenes have been tidied when the victims weren’t moved, the murderer or murderers must have collected the blood. My vote’s for the blood being integral to the sacrifice.”
