Warner stopped writing and looked up, meeting her gaze. “Ma’am, for whatever reasons, you were disgruntled with your employer. You were also conspicuously absent at the time of the explosion. That makes you a person of interest in this investigation. It’s our responsibility to pursue all possible leads.”
“Right,” she said, her indignation growing by the second. “I might be unhappy with the way Angelo’s treating me, but I’m not mad enough to bomb the damn building. Why would I sabotage my own research? I poured two years worth of blood, sweat and tears into that project. It was set to go to trials in less than a week. If I really wanted to hurt Angelo, don’t you think I’d be smart enough to remove my own research from the lab first?”
“Well ma’am, I don’t—”
“And have you grilled any of those idiots who’ve been out protesting at the front gates for the past month and a half? If anyone had an axe to grind with Cava Tech, it would be them.”
“No, we haven’t had the opportunity to interview any of the protesters yet.” He glanced toward the main gates, where a group of protesters picketed. No bunny guy today. “We’re doing our best to be methodical with our investigation, so nothing gets missed.”
“You want methodical?” she asked, her patience exhausted. “Well then, why don’t I help you out and save you the time needed to get a warrant? You officially have my permission to search my car.” She fished her keys out of her purse and held them out to Warner. “Go ahead, knock yourself out. It’s the red Miata down on the second floor. Don’t forget to check under the seats.”
Warner’s face reddened, but he held his temper in check. “Ms. Griffith, I don’t think it’s necessary at this time to search your vehicle.”
“Why not? I don’t have anything to hide. You’re acting like I’m the Unabomber, so you might as well make sure I don’t have any blasting caps stashed in the glove box. Go ahead, search it now so you can cross me off your damn list.” She tossed the keys to Herrera. “Better look in the trunk while you’re at it. You know how us firebugs love to stash C4 under the spare.”
“That’s really not necessary, Ms. Griffith.”
“Then we’re done.” She held out a hand and Herrera returned her keys. “Next time you have questions, you can ask my attorney.”
chapter 20
“Dude, you are so fucked.”
David slanted his glare in Adam’s direction. “Thanks. It’s nice to know I can count on you for some kind words of encouragement.”
“Hey, I’m just saying. Don’t kill the messenger.”
In all fairness, the kid was right. He’d irrevocably painted himself into a corner with no means of escaping unscathed. Still, he’d been hoping for something, anything, to shed a positive light on the situation.
Needing the distraction, David’s focus shifted to the 2:47 appointment across the street. The middle-aged man worked beneath an old pickup truck, the front end propped up by a butterfly jack that had seen better days. The weather-beaten Ford rocked a little with each tug of the wrench as he tried to loosen a stubborn bolt near the front axle. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how this one was going to end.
“I knew Samuel was going to be pissed,” Adam added a few seconds later, a thick layer of “I told you so” in his voice.
“Do I have to punch you?”
“Sorry.” Adam’s expression sobered. “So what are you going to do?”
“Beats the hell out of me.” David tipped back the rest of his soda and tossed the empty can to the backseat.
Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place. Kill the woman he loves or damn his immortal soul? To him, they were two sides of the same coin. One was hell, while the other was the equivalent to Hell on earth. Either way, he was in for a world of hurt.
“What would you do?” David asked Adam, curious.
“I don’t know,” Adam replied with a shrug. “It’s not like deciding between boxers and briefs.”
Outside, the guy continued to work on his truck, his feet and legs the only parts visible. Every now and then a greasy hand would pop out from beneath the vehicle, groping for one of the tools laid out on the oil-stained driveway.
“You want me to do it for you?” Adam asked, his eyes fixed forward and his mouth set in a grim slash.
The question took David completely by surprise. “What? No!”
“Hey, it’s not like I’d enjoy doing it.” Adam shifted in his seat, the concern on his face obvious. “Don’t get me wrong. I like Sarah; she’s a great girl. But let’s face facts. She was supposed to die and there’s no way you’ll pull the trigger.”
Valid points, but ones he refused to consider. David’s jaw locked, yet he still managed to ground out a definitive “No.”
“Okay, just thought I’d put it out there,” Adam said with a look of relief. He redirected his attention to the scene across the street. The jack was tilted at an odd angle now, the metal straining to keep the truck on its perch. It wouldn’t be much longer before Death added to its collection.
“Thanks anyway,” David murmured, oddly touched by the kid’s offer. He knew it couldn’t have been easy for Adam to make such a suggestion. Would he have gone through with it, if David had taken him up on the offer? Probably, even though it would have haunted him for the rest of his days.
David slumped back in his seat, realizing he’d made his decision long before Samuel even laid out the options. Actually, the choice had been made the moment he altered fate. There was no way he’d sacrifice Sarah’s life for his own. She was his heart and soul, a part of him he simply could not bear to extinguish. Now the only thing left was to follow through with his convictions and accept the consequences.
“So what now?”
“Now I take one for the team.” On the bright side, at least he had the luxury of planning out his final hours on terra firma. It was a token consolation, but at this point he’d take anything he could get.
Across the street the jack snapped, sending two tons of metal crashing to the ground. The man let out a muffled cry, his legs thrashing wildly against the pavement. Then the thrashing stopped, and another soul was ripe for the picking.
“What do you mean, gone?” Sarah asked the computer tech working on the remains of her hard drive.
It was a wonder the IT guys had been able to salvage anything from the charred remains of Lab Two. The explosion had taken out a huge chunk of the main lab facility, leaving a ten-foot crater and destroying years of dedicated research. But by some miracle her hard drive escaped serious damage and the boys from the tech department had managed to hook it up to another computer.
“Just what I said.” The tech turned back toward his monitor, the soft glow of the screen casting an odd tint to his pale skin. “I was able to retrieve the hard drive, but everything on it’s corrupted. If I had to guess, I’d say someone uploaded a virus. From what I heard, the same thing happened to Chenevert’s files in Lab One.”
Sarah peered over his shoulder, taking in the lines of garbled data on the computer screen. Two years of painstaking research, useless.
The news left her sick to her stomach. If someone had taken the time to upload a virus, then the explosion was no accident. Someone meant to destroy the facility, and in the process two lives had been lost. What would have happened if she’d worked that day instead of calling in sick? Was there any way she could have stopped the sabotage, or would she have been amongst the casualties? She’d never know the answer, but her mind still reeled with the possibilities.
“What about the backups in Minneapolis?” she asked, redirecting her thoughts to the disaster at hand. “We can still download the information from those files, right?”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” the tech replied, sounding confident. He unplugged her hard drive and reconnected his own computer to the monitor. “Give me a minute and I’ll see if I can pull it down for you.”
His fingers flew across the keyboard, typing out a series of commands i
n rapid-fire succession. Finished, he leaned back in his chair, drumming his fingers against the desk. “It’ll take a couple minutes for the information to download.”
In actuality, it took less than thirty seconds.
“What the hell?” Leaning forward, he typed in another command and got an error message in return. He tried it again, got the same message.
“What’s wrong?” Sarah asked, a cold sense of dread chilling her blood.
The tech didn’t answer. Instead, he picked up the phone and called the Minneapolis office, where he spent the next five minutes in a heated discussion with some guy named Beaner. Judging from his side of the conversation, things were not looking good.
“Please tell me my research isn’t gone,” she said as soon as he hung up.
The tech dragged both of his hands through his hair, making the ends stick up like a frightened hedgehog. “Someone uploaded a virus to the Minneapolis facility’s main server last night. It’s going to be another day or two before they know the full extent of the damage.”
The sick feeling in her stomach got worse. Good thing she’d been too busy to eat lunch. “This isn’t a coincidence, is it?” she asked, suspecting she already knew the answer.
The tech shook his head. “I seriously doubt it.”
It was the perfectly crappy ending to a perfectly crappy day. First, her lab was destroyed. Then Angelo casts aspersions against her reputation. Now came the possibility that her research might be irretrievably corrupted. Christ, could her day get any worse?
A few seconds after the thought crossed her mind, Jackie poked her head through the doorway.
“Sarah, you have a call on line three. Something about your grandmother.”
Sudden cardiac death. From all accounts, Pearl died in her sleep sometime after lunch and a tarot card reading with Mrs. Denning. She’d gone back to her room to read and was found by a nurse a few hours later. By then it was too late to do anything but contact the next of kin.
“Is there anything we can do to help?” Dr. Patel asked for the third time, his face marked with sympathy.
“No, but thank you,” Sarah said, grateful for the doctor’s compassion. After breaking the news of her grandmother’s death, Dr. Patel had stayed with her while she cried, offering comforting words, a glass of water, and a box of Kleenex. At this point she didn’t think she had any tears left, though the knot in her stomach showed no signs of easing.
Patel nodded but didn’t look convinced. “Very well. But please call if you change your mind. Will you need any assistance making the final arrangements?”
“No,” Sarah replied with a shake of her head. “Grandma planned everything out ahead of time. Thank God she did, because I don’t know how I could have gotten it all done on my own.”
Which was probably why she had done it in the first place. Sarah had thought Pearl was being overly morbid at the time, but now she was grateful for her grandmother’s foresight. She’d covered every angle, right down to the music selections for the service and what kinds of flowers she wanted planted on her gravesite.
Her gaze settled on the cardboard box containing her grandmother’s possessions. It was all she had left of her grandmother now, the only tangible reminders of the woman who raised her and acted as parent, mentor, and friend.
So much for not having any more tears.
“Is there somebody I can call for you?” Patel offered her the box of Kleenex. “Parents, siblings?”
“No,” Sarah said, shaking her head. She took a tissue from the box and blew her nose. If she didn’t stop crying soon her nose would be redder than Rudolph’s. “It’s just me now.”
Well, that wasn’t completely true anymore. She had David. She thought about calling him but quickly decided against it. It was getting late, and if she remembered correctly he had a job tonight. She’d tell him tomorrow, when she could get it all out without crying. Then she’d lean on him during the funeral, and for however long it took to piece the rest of her life back together.
She smiled a little, thinking about how fortunate she was to have someone like David in her life. Amazing, how he’d come to mean so much to her in such a short period of time. He was her friend, her lover, the first person she thought of in the morning and the last one she thought about at night. With him by her side, she could do anything.
It wasn’t every day a man charted a one-way trip to the land of fire and brimstone. The plans were relatively simple, which in a way showed how shallow his life had become. Change the lease for his apartment over to Adam’s name. Ditto for the title to his car. Cancel his subscription to the Orlando Sentinel.
The only thing left was to make his final round of good-byes. He met with his fellow reapers at Shackles just as Happy Hour ended. Overall, they took the news in stride.
“Have you lost your mind?” Dmitri shook his head and muttered something in Russian. “Fucking bleeding heart.”
“I thought you’d be happy, comrade,” David said, right before tossing back his second shot of Crown. The alcohol ripped a trail down his throat, giving him a quick boost of liquid fortitude but doing little to settle the overall feeling of doom. He set the shot glass on the table and signaled the waitress for another. “With me out of the way, you become top dog around here.”
“You think I give a flying fuck about advancement?” Dmitri didn’t bother to hide the contempt in his voice. “I’m just clocking time until my debt is paid.”
David sat silent while he contemplated the truth in Dmitri’s statement. While the big Russian had been born and bred to serve the motherland, he was still a man, and most men relished a step up the ladder.
The waitress sauntered over with another shot of Crown and a bucket full of bottles of Budweiser. She was young and perky with plenty of curves and a skirt so short he could tell she wore a thong. Her gaze shifted from Adam to David to Dmitri before settling on Adam, a thousand-watt smile never leaving her face.
“You boys need anything else?” She shifted her weight, thrusting her cleavage in Adam’s direction.
Always on the hunt, Adam gave her a wink and a smile. “Maybe later, darling. We’re good for now, but check back with us in a couple, okay?” He handed her a twenty and she tucked it into her pocket, hips swaying as she sashayed to the next table in her station.
“I cannot believe you’d sacrifice yourself for some woman,” Dmitri said with a snort of disgust.
“Hey, come on, give the guy a break.” Adam reached into the bucket and pulled out a beer. He unscrewed the cap and tossed it into the empty ashtray at the center of the table. “It’s not like the guy has much choice in the matter.”
“Bullshit. ‘No choice’ is an excuse people use to justify decisions they’ve already made.” Dmitri leaned forward, his forearms braced against the edge of the table. “Has this woman committed mortal sin?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” David replied, knowing where Dmitri was going and not liking it one bit.
“Then she is not damned.” Dmitri took another pull from his drink, his eyes never leaving David. His tone sounded crisp and matter-of-fact, reflecting his opinion that the proper decision was blatantly obvious. “Set her back on her course with Fate, and no harm is done.”
“Yeah, but wouldn’t the whole killing business cause her harm?” Adam asked, a sarcastic edge to his voice.
“Not if you do it right,” Dmitri countered, his mouth curved up in a smug smile. He placed his bottle on the table and made a fast twisting motion with both hands. “One quick snap, and the neck breaks. Do it while she sleeps, and she won’t even wake up. Or, you can use poison or pills if you prefer a more … passive approach.” A nostalgic look crossed his face. “There are so many ways to take a life without causing pain. If that is the problem, I can give you pointers.”
With all the blood on Dmitri’s hands, it was a miracle he hadn’t gone straight to Hell when he died. How on earth had he earned a second chance for salvation? It was a question David had always w
ondered about but never bothered to ask. Dmitri was notoriously tight-lipped about his past; getting details about his mortal life was about as easy as getting blood from a turnip.
“No,” David said through clenched teeth. “I will not kill her.”
“Why not?” Dmitri looked genuinely perplexed. Then his features shifted, as if he just solved some great mystery. “Ah. Don’t have the stones to kill a woman, eh?” Before David could answer, he added, “If you want, I will take care of it for you.” He smiled, as if relishing the opportunity. “I promise, she will feel no pain.”
Temper flaring, David shot up from his chair, leaned across the table, and two-fisted the front of Dmitri’s shirt. He dragged the big Russian halfway across the table until their noses came close to touching.
“Listen to me, you cold-blooded son of a bitch. You so much as look in her general direction and I’ll rip your goddamn head off.”
Dmitri’s expression never faltered as he reached over and wrapped a hand around David’s wrist. His fingers dug into a pressure point, sending spears of pain up David’s arm. David let out a low hiss in response but refused to loosen his grip.
The two stared at each other for a full minute, each waiting for the other to yield. Adam sat in between, eyes wide and unblinking.
“Fine, have it your way,” Dmitri growled, letting go of David’s arm. In turn, David released his grip on Dmitri and settled back in his chair.
“Thank you.”
“I still think you’re making a big mistake.” Dmitri put up his hand and the waitress magically reappeared. “Three Stolis. Neat.” He shot a dark look in David’s direction. “We must send our friend off appropriately.”
The waitress turned to David. “Oh? Where you going, honey?”
“Someplace warm.”
As the evening wore on, it took on the tone of an Irish wake, the main difference being the deceased was very much alive and getting sloshed alongside the mourners. Reapers came and went, buying shots and swapping tales from the dead side. At last call the table was covered with empty beer bottles and shot glasses and David was three sheets to the wind.
Grave Intentions Page 26
