But soon, after the news of the murder reached the spies of the Underground, the television was turned off.
And the vampires were forced into action, once again.
Seventeen
The Body
Caught in a limbo between reluctance and satisfaction, Dawn lay on the couch in Limpet’s office somewhere around midnight.
Newsflash: she’d been with The Voice again. Yeah, it was true. Dawn wasn’t about to admit to having a lot of restraint when it came to him or the way he made her feel with his talent for soothing her neuroses. He’d become something like a bed buddy, a comforting return to real life.
At least, sort of. If they’d actually been having flesh-to-flesh, wolf-howling sexsex, it would’ve been just like old times for her. But this kind of loving wasn’t so normal.
Even she knew that.
Still, there was one indisputable fact: instead of just entering her from the inside and working his way out tonight, The Voice had kept her overtime, switching from mystery luvah to mentor without intermission. Even during the aftermath of the Big O, he began coaching her on mind blocking, seeing to the fine details of what he called her “greatest weapon.”
It’d been a puzzling transition for Dawn, who couldn’t make heads or tails—literally, in a locker room sense—of what the hell was happening.
“Every time I’m with you,” The Voice was saying, “I realize how much you’ve repressed. You’ve shoved many things to the back of your mind, as though they’ve been packed into boxes and rarely opened, if at all.”
Kiko had obviously told him about the picture.
“And why can’t it just stay packed?” she asked, her gaze stuck on the painting that had caught her attention last time: the Elizabethan woman. The ageless beauty watched Dawn right back, a perceptive smile on her pink, parted lips.
What was even more odd, though, were the other paintings in there—the ones Dawn thought had contained women also. All they showed now were landscapes, backgrounds, just like the one with the fire setting.
But The Voice wasn’t exactly giving her much opportunity to gab about the difference in his décor.
“You cannot stay so tightly wound, because you will implode. A fine example of that was last night, at Bava, then again at the restaurant with that private investigator.”
At the mention of Matt Lonigan, his tone sounded scraped, rough with something that could’ve been the jealousy she was always hoping for. She couldn’t help being a little happy about that. Freaky girl.
“So I got nervous and threw a mind block at Lonigan.” Dawn turned her gaze from the Elizabethan painting to the speakers where The Voice was coming from. “He didn’t react to that, the garlic, or the crucifix. So, in effect, didn’t my blocking overkill actually result in getting even more information about his responses? Shouldn’t you be stoked about your growing dossier on him?”
“Perhaps. But you’re misdirecting our discussion again.”
“I sure am.” She grinned, but it was more about defensive cockiness than anything else.
As he sighed, she could almost see him tossing his hands up, done with her. “Dawn.”
“Limpet.”
There was a stretched pause. “At least there’s this: in spite of your amazing ability to consistently sass back, I’m at least satisfied that you’re now relaxed enough to go out there and function rationally.”
He was teasing her about the sex…or…whatever it was.
“Don’t sound so proud of yourself. We’ve got a good, symbiotic deal going. You get to tour the dark closets of my mind, and I leave happy. It’s not like you’ve become my personal savior because you’re diddling my noggin or something. Besides, if you ask me, whatever’s going on here is just one therapy session away from masturbation anyway.”
She could almost feel him get angry; his silence was that eloquent.
What—did he think he was actually helping her by mind screwing her? Dare to dream.
Out of the corner of her eye, Dawn thought she saw movement in the Elizabethan painting, a twitch from the lady. But when Dawn rounded on it, she only found the woman’s gaze to be locked on her again, unwavering and sympathetic.
When The Voice resumed speaking, it was with maddening calm. “I understand. So when another chance presents itself, we’ll practice your mind tricks again—but without the masturbation, as you call it.”
Dawn opened her mouth to protest, then shut it. She couldn’t bitch at him for entering her and then flip right around and say that it was okay for him to do it again. That would make her a cock-tease, and she’d always considered herself everything but. And hadn’t there been a time when she’d been pissed about him coming into her in the first place? Yeah, it’d lasted for about an hour, and then she’d gotten randy.
Man, she was confused.
“In the meantime, Dawn, practice what we went over tonight—how to relax, how to sense when you’re in true danger. I don’t want you wasting your precious energy on blocking everyone you meet. Also, try doing it in a mirror, so you can perfect your facade. During your attempts to block, we want to hide it. We don’t want to give the impression that you’re…”
He searched for a phrase.
“Giving birth to a bowling ball?” she finished.
“Earth-shatteringly poetic, but yes.”
A knock on the door brought things to a close. Kiko poked his head inside. “Is it safe in here?”
Without waiting for an answer, he bounded into the room, giving Dawn a better look at him. His eyes were wide and his face was red, so her systems went on alert.
“Breisi just got a call from our cop source,” he said. “She’d asked Sergeant Brighton to keep an eye out for anyone connected with this case and—”
“Kiko,” The Voice said.
Uncharacteristically, the psychic huffed out a long breath, unable to talk. Was he nervous?
“Kik?” Dawn asked.
Finally, he chilled out. “Klara Monaghan’s dead.”
“What?” Dawn sprang off the couch.
“They got a call on her body a few minutes ago. She’s already been identified.”
“How?” The Voice quietly asked—quiet in a bad way.
“Looks like a big neck wound, a blood drain.” Suddenly back in action, Kiko motioned for Dawn to leave with him. “We’re on our way, Boss. She’s just down Highland. Sergeant Brighton is making sure we’ll at least get a peek, if we can get there before things go nuts.”
“Be careful,” The Voice said.
Having grabbed her weapons, Dawn was already halfway out of the room, strapping on her shoulder holster then a jacket as Kiko jogged to catch up with her long strides.
When they got downstairs, Breisi was just coming out of her dungeon. A dull blue light shone behind her, casting her in shadow. A grinding hum made Dawn wonder just exactly what the hell Breisi was up to, what she was hiding behind that door.
But this wasn’t the time for that.
They all sprinted to the 4Runner, Breisi popping it into high gear, engaging the antiradar gadgets and a very illegal opticom that would manipulate the traffic lights so they could get to Klara’s location ASAP. Breisi insisted that the boss would take care of matters if they were caught with the emergency vehicle equipment, so it was no skin off Dawn’s back.
On the way, Kiko caught her up on what she’d missed during her tutorial with The Voice: he and Breisi had made a late-night visit to Marla Pennybaker, who was just as concerned about the missing Nathan as they were. Based on recordings from the bugs in Marla’s house that The Voice and “Friends” had monitored, they now had evidence confirming the woman’s innocence in not knowing where her husband was. Even though he’d called her a time or two to tell her he was safe, he never revealed his location.
Her veracity was further supported by The Voice’s “Friends,” who were watching over the Pennybaker home and had been ordered to remain there as protection against the red-eyes. God knew who these buddi
es were, but they’d seen Mr. P. leave the premises shortly after they’d been assigned there. And he hadn’t returned since.
Dawn groaned at the news. They were almost back to square one with Nathan Pennybaker. But, in the hopes of turning things around again, Breisi had planted more locators in the home, thinking that would pay off once more. In fact, she’d adjusted one of the tools to pick up on Robby’s presence inside the house.
When Kiko started telling Dawn about how Breisi had again broached the red-eye vamp visit with Marla, Dawn could empathize with Marla’s continued reluctance to hear any of it.
Repression, right? It had its uses.
“And what about tonight?” Dawn asked. “How’re we going to get into the murder scene?”
Kiko crossed his fingers. “Connections. Brighton is the patrol sergeant in charge, so he’s got someone waiting there for us. I doubt we’ll get beyond the crime-scene tape because of contamination issues and all that. But just a gander at Klara will help, and we’ve got pals in the coroner’s office who can give us autopsy reports and photos.”
“And a secret visit, if we’re lucky,” Breisi added.
Thanks to the traffic-cheating equipment, they arrived at Klara’s apartment complex without much fuss. It was a stucco-tan bundle of buildings, unremarkable except for a couple of broken streetlights around a parking lot littered with neon-green flyers and fast-food wrappers.
They exited the 4Runner, passed three lone cop cars, then approached the yellow crime-scene tape that established a perimeter near a carport. The tape circled around a Dumpster that blocked their view and ended on the opposite side of the roofed structure.
“You can’t go any farther,” a young officer near the Dumpster said. He had an accent tinted with Mexican flavor like Breisi’s, a caterpillar mustache, sunglasses, close-cropped black hair, and a chewing-gum habit.
“Hold up, Santos,” said a female whose voice made her sound like she ate nails for breakfast. A patrolwoman came to stand next to him. “I’ll take care of them.”
She wore her long, curly blond hair back in a haphazard bun, her uniform clinging to an athletically slim body, her nametag telling them that she was Burks. Sunglasses were perched on her head, and there was a beauty spot near her upper lip, adding some femininity.
Santos gave Kiko a curious you’re-not-very-tall look while he wandered to another area of the tape, where some neighbors had gathered, craning their necks to get a better look.
When he was out of earshot, Burks whispered, “Her roommate found her under here.” She sent a subtle nod to the carport. “She says that Klara had been taking out some foul trash that couldn’t wait until morning. When Klara didn’t come back, the roommate checked by the Dumpster to see what was happening. No one was around, so we don’t have a suspect description yet.”
Walking toward the spot of the murder, Burks motioned them to follow. “Hurry up with your rubbernecking. Detectives are on their way, and I’ll be watching to see that you don’t go in. No matter who your boss knows on the force, I have some pride in upholding my reputation.”
They reached the morbid location to find one other uniform comforting a woman who was sitting on the sidewalk, hunched over, weeping. The roommate? Burks talked to the other cop for a moment, and he took her original position on the other side of the Dumpster. Then she signaled that it was clear, and Breisi took out a digital camera while Kiko opened up his phone.
For her part, Dawn watched the crying woman, noting that her face was purposely turned away from the sight of a body lying prone on the white pavement.
God.
Under the blinking lights of the carport, its arms were open, palms to the sky. One leg was bent back like the corpse was about to kick, its hair a cotton-candy mess melting in a pool of blood, its neck torn to shreds, its skin bled of color, its mouth open in a scream that would never be heard.
It was Klara Monaghan.
Breisi pressed a camera button, extending its lens to close-range. A flash shed pricks of white over the body.
Sn-a-nnnzzz.
Next to Dawn, Kiko was taking pictures with his phone.
Dawn couldn’t tear her eyes away. Blood…red haloed Klara Monaghan’s body.
Red on white.
Sn-a-nnnzzz, went Breisi’s camera. Sn-a-nnnzzz.
Nausea crashed through Dawn, and she closed her eyes, wanting to blank it out. She’d never seen a neck ripped open like this, had never imagined it could happen to someone she’d talked to only yesterday.
A plain white car roared into the lot, and Breisi and Kiko hid their cameras. Two men in rumpled suits got out. Detectives.
Breisi and Kiko made like gawkers, launching into an unscripted lament about the dead woman. An acting class coach would’ve been proud. They ambled off to the left, near some bushes, then slyly crouched down for a better view.
But Dawn went to the right, ignoring the corpse, trying to get herself together. That’s when she heard a whisper.
“Dawn.”
She told herself it was just a sputter, a wheeze from the exhaust of the dying engine that was her body. A brain burp. But then she heard it again.
“Dawn.”
Hands darting toward her revolver and pocket-bound crucifix, she moved closer, near a wall that separated Klara’s apartments from another complex.
She glanced back at her partners, caught Kiko’s eye and motioned toward the wall to show them that there might be something back there. At the same instant, one of the detectives pointed to Breisi and Kiko.
“Hey, you’re too close!” he yelled.
Beyond the crime-scene tape, Burks made her way over, probably intending to distract the detective and earn her kickback.
But just as Kiko and Breisi stood to greet the detective, someone grabbed Dawn’s arm.
She couldn’t do much more than gasp as she was tugged behind the wall. A big shadow greeted her.
Without thinking, Dawn swung at her attacker. He raised his palm, caught her fist in his hand.
But she’d already whipped her body around the opposite way, twisting, leg flying out to connect with his knee.
Hellelujah. He keeled sideways, thudding against the wall.
“Dawn!” His familiar voice was muddled with pain.
Breath rasping, she held back, took a good look at her assailant.
“Matt?” She relaxed out of her fighter’s stance. Anger turned her fear inside out, exposing her nerves. “You dipshit. What’re you doing here?”
He was pushing himself away from the wall. Something—a cat?—scuttled past them, setting Dawn on edge again.
“I wanted…to ask you the…same question.” He touched his knee, then frowned, tested it. Took a few seconds to compose himself. “Not that I should be worried about you.”
She started to be glad to see him, recalling what had happened this afternoon at Chez Rose. The kiss. Mmmm.
It reminded her, though, that one kiss didn’t mean he could tell her where she could be and couldn’t be. Or that he could grab her and yank her behind walls when he felt like it.
“You couldn’t just come out to say hi?” she asked.
“Trying to keep a low profile.”
A tame fog grew golden under the clank and fizz of a streetlight that was struggling to stay on. Groaning and favoring his knee, Matt leaned back against the wall, his light blue eyes narrowing, containing a low fire—the deepest part of a flame. Nearby, a cat yowled.
Dawn stayed on guard, arms curved at her sides. She felt the night tingling at her back, up her spine.
“I’m wondering,” she said. “If you’re on my dad’s case, why’re you at Klara Monaghan’s murder scene?”
He clenched his jaw, immovable.
A terrible thought hit her. “Are they connected? What do you think Frank did?”
Again, not a word.
Furious, Dawn reared back her fist again, ready to strike out at anyone, anything. Just as her hand hurled toward his tight lips, she pulled
her punch, keeping her wrath contained.
“Damn it. Damn it.” She pressed her fists against her forehead.
Frank. What did you do, Frank?
“Hey…”
She felt Matt’s hands on her shoulders, heard him sniff at her eau de garlic. Too drained to brush him off, she sank against him, used him to regain her strength so she could fight her doubts. Meanwhile, she took in the scent of his shirt: musk, spice, unidentifiable headiness.
Spreading her palms against his chest, she parted her lips, breathed against him, tasted him with every intake of oxygen. As he talked, she felt the vibrations of his words run over her skin.
“Still wearing that garlic,” he said. “What do you think you’re protecting yourself from?”
“Maybe I just had a nice Italian dinner.”
“Dawn, go home. It’s safer. You don’t need to be around all this.”
Tell that to Kiko, The Voice, and their predictions, she thought. Hell, even this PI who she barely knew realized she was out of her league.
Yet…Dawn exhaled against Matt. She hadn’t even told Frank “I love you” back when he’d said it to her during their last phone call a month ago. They’d been arguing about some dumb thing—take your pick—and she’d hung up on him.
As if pushing away from the thought, Dawn distanced herself from Matt, building herself back up to the big girl she’d trained herself to be. He just stood there, his arms awkward, like she’d robbed him of something.
“When you said you wanted to get together again, I was picturing a whole other scenario,” Dawn said, trying desperately to get back her emotional footing.
“I’m not joking around here.”
“And what do you mean by ‘all this’? What do you know?”
Behind the wall, a car peeled out of the lot as a few more peeled in, ushering in a collage of red-blue cop car lights on the face of the apartment buildings. Closer, another cat screeched, its cry strangled to a fading wince.
“You and your partners saw the body.” His mouth curled down at the corners. Anger? “Tell me why you’re here and I just might share my theories.”
A devil’s bargain. Even if it was tempting, she knew that Limpet would kill her if she sang the tune of their investigative details. But…hell, what if she broke this wall of silence between the two parties? What if, in spite of all this game playing and secrecy, Matt Lonigan really was an ally?
Night Rising Page 18
