Every Dark Corner (The Cincinnati Series Book 3)

by Karen Rose

  ‘We noticed,’ Kate said dryly. ‘You’re gonna need a spare shirt if you keep sweating.’

  ‘This was my spare,’ Diesel said heavily. ‘The ER nurse took the one I was wearing. Said it was a fucking biohazard. Dammit.’

  ‘Did you know about Dani’s status?’ Decker asked.

  Diesel shook his head. ‘We’ve never had an actual conversation.’ He glared at Decker. ‘How did you know? You’ve known her less time than I have.’

  ‘She told me when she arrived at the safe house yesterday. Told Trip, too. She figured we needed to know so that we could protect ourselves if something happened. She even gave us the option of firing her. Which was ridiculous, of course.’

  Diesel’s nod was shaky. ‘I carried her in and she was bleeding.’ He looked down at his huge hands. ‘All over me. All over the floor. She kept trying to talk while I was driving her here. I kept telling her to save her breath for staying the fuck alive. She was trying to tell me about the blood. The ER docs recognized her right away, of course. Y’know, the hair.’

  ‘It is unusual,’ Decker agreed. ‘Black with the white streaks in front. Like Rogue from X-Men.’

  Diesel grunted. ‘Prettier,’ he whispered, then shook himself back to attention. ‘They told me to stop. I didn’t know why. They double-gloved up and put her on a stretcher. Took her to a little room and took me to wash up. Examined me for open wounds. Asked if we’d been . . . intimate.’ He looked away, flushing bright red. ‘God.’

  ‘They were trying to protect you,’ Decker said quietly. ‘But it couldn’t have felt that way.’

  ‘It did not. They put my clothes in one of those red biohazard bags. Gave me scrubs to wear.’ He gripped his thighs so hard his knuckles went white. ‘Hell of a way to find out.’

  ‘She was managing it,’ Kate said, her needles clacking in the rhythm Decker had found so soothing when he’d been struggling to regain consciousness. He still found it soothing. ‘But it does complicate things for her surgery and recovery. She’ll need help. Deacon will, too.’

  Diesel nodded, steadier now. ‘Help afterward I can do. It’s hospitals that make me insane.’

  ‘Me too,’ Kate said, in a way that made Decker realize exactly what it had cost her to sit by his side for a week. ‘So tell us what happened, Diesel.’

  Diesel closed his eyes again, hands still gripping his thighs. ‘I was at the safe house, giving Decker something, when I heard that Dani had gone to the clinic by herself. Fool woman.’

  ‘No argument from me,’ Kate said mildly. ‘But then Decker left the safe house to go to the apartment of a woman who was a known killer.’ She shrugged. ‘Whatcha gonna do?’

  ‘I’d say tie ’em up for their own good, but that’s probably illegal,’ Diesel said bitterly.

  ‘Only if they don’t consent,’ Kate replied very dryly, and Diesel’s eyes flew open.

  Stunned, he stared at her for a moment, then barked out a laugh. ‘I pity you, Decker. She’ll keep you on your toes.’

  ‘Hopin’ so,’ Decker drawled, then sobered. ‘You need to tell us what happened,’ he said, because Diesel was stalling. ‘We need to find whoever did this.’

  ‘Why are you guys involved in this anyway?’ Diesel asked. ‘I thought CPD would be doing the questioning.’

  ‘They might still,’ Kate said. ‘But when I called Lieutenant Isenberg to get uniforms sent over to the clinic, she asked us to take your statement. If this is a simple mugging, then we’ll hand it off to CPD.’

  Diesel went very still. ‘You don’t think it was a mugging, do you?’

  Kate shrugged, her needles continuing their rhythmic clacking. ‘Don’t know. Won’t know till we get more information. The sooner you start talking, the sooner we’ll know.’

  Diesel drew a breath, squared his shoulders. And then started folding the paper Kate had given him into airplanes. But really cool airplanes. Huh, Decker thought. Who knew?

  ‘I left the safe house and I was . . . not myself. But not out of control,’ Diesel added hastily, then looked helplessly to Decker.

  ‘He’d viewed the files we discussed,’ Decker told Kate. ‘He was shaken. As was I when I viewed them later.’

  Kate nodded. ‘As was I when I viewed similar files taken from a pedophile’s computer this afternoon. Nobody’s going to judge you, Diesel. Not here.’

  Decker noticed that Diesel had begun to sway – minute movements, but in sync with Kate’s clacking. ‘Where did you go when you left the safe house?’ Decker asked.

  ‘To the shelter. I just needed to see her. To be sure she was okay.’ He looked up from the airplane he’d made and frowned at Kate. ‘I’m not a stalker.’

  ‘Of course you’re not,’ she said firmly. ‘You were concerned. So was I when I heard she’d gone out on her own. Did you go into the clinic?’

  ‘No. I . . . I couldn’t. Too many doctors.’ He swallowed hard. ‘And the smell. I hate the smell.’

  ‘You and me both,’ Kate said, then glanced up. Diesel’s hands had stilled and he was staring numbly into space. She paused her knitting and rapped hard on the table, making him jump. ‘Don’t go there,’ she ordered. ‘Wherever you just went, do not go there. It’s a bad place.’

  Diesel glared. ‘How would you know?’ he asked scathingly. ‘You don’t know jack.’

  Uh-oh, Decker thought. Wrong question and really wrong use of jack.

  Kate’s expression went cold. Ruthless. This was the woman who’d held a rifle to his back. ‘Because I sometimes go to my own bad place and I get stuck there. And the tape plays in my head over and over. I don’t know what your tapes look like. But mine are . . . disturbing. And they change with my mood or the situation or whatever has triggered them. Lately I keep seeing my brother-in-law’s brains spewing all over my living room because he ate my fucking gun.’

  Oh God. Decker hadn’t known it was her own gun. He wanted to comfort her, because there was pain in her eyes. Pain and guilt. But also fury, which she was currently unloading on Diesel.

  She leaned forward, pinning Diesel with her glare. ‘So don’t you tell me what I don’t know. Your tapes might be leftovers from the army. Yes, I know you served,’ she snapped when Diesel’s eyes widened, ‘and yes, I know you were a Ranger. And yes, I know you’re one fucked-up pup. I pay attention, Mr Kennedy, and I know how to do research. As soon as I knew you were a key player in that whole McCord mess, I looked you up. Maybe you see explosions and people getting blown up, or maybe somebody you couldn’t save. But you do not tell me that I don’t know. Don’t you even imply it. You do not have that right.’

  She was breathing hard now, her eyes shooting daggers. Slowly she resumed her knitting. ‘And this is why I knit,’ she said quietly. ‘Because I open my mouth and words come out. Sometimes not nice words. Sometimes words I have to apologize for.’

  Diesel was regarding her with respect, his demeanor calmer. ‘Are you apologizing?’

  She made a sound of scorn. ‘Fuck, no. Are you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Diesel said. ‘I am. I respectfully apologize, Special Agent Coppola, because you’re right. I don’t know what you’ve seen any more than you know what I’ve seen. But I was wrong to assume that you’ve had an easier life simply because you have your shit together.’

  Kate’s mouth fell open. ‘What the ever-lovin’ hell? Do you see this knitting, Diesel? This is compulsion. A crutch. This is not the behavior of a woman who has it together.’ She looked away. ‘And for the record, I’ve never had it together. I’m just really good at faking it.’

  Decker’s brows shot up and Diesel was unsuccessful in biting back a grin. Kate frowned for a second, then realized what she’d said and rolled her eyes at the two of them. ‘Oh, for the love of God. I didn’t mean faking that. Are you guys twelve?’

  ‘You sound like Marcus,’ Diesel sa
id. ‘He’s always asking me and Stone if we’re twelve.’

  Kate looked him in the eye. ‘And what is your reply?’

  ‘Not yet!’ His grin faded, leaving him looking sad. ‘We were both stunted back at six.’

  Decker and Kate shared a glance, a line of communication opening between them.

  Is he saying what I think he’s saying? she asked with a slight narrowing of her eyes.

  Yes, he told her. Diesel had admitted to having experience with the acts he’d forced himself to see when he’d reviewed McCord’s hard drive. He had definitely suffered abuse, something that had made him take up hacking to expose men like McCord, risking future censure by the FBI by admitting to possessing a cache of stored files that he’d stolen over the years. Stolen from perverts who molested kids, true, but still stolen. It didn’t take a certified therapist to guess what had happened to the man. Be gentle with him.

  Don’t worry. I will.

  Kate’s needles began clacking once again. ‘So, Diesel, you went to the shelter, but you didn’t go inside. Did Dani know you were there?’

  ‘No. I don’t think anyone did. I can stay hidden when I need to. Even though I’m big.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Kate said. ‘I assume you could see Dani, even if she didn’t see you?’

  ‘Of course. It’s why I went there to begin with.’

  She nodded. ‘Fair enough. Was anyone hanging around her? Bothering her?’

  ‘No. She was upset, though. She’d been called in to see a patient who’d had trouble last week and who’d relapsed when Dani was still in the safe house. The woman apparently told the nurse on duty that she’d only see Dani and she’d be back later. But she never showed. Dani was worried that she’d become too sick to return. The nurse said she’d call the woman’s house, but an hour passed and she didn’t make the call. I knew the sick woman too, and I was worried. She didn’t look good last week, or the week before that.’

  Kate looked up, brows raised. ‘Where exactly were you hiding?’

  ‘Around the back of the building, watching her through one of the windows – it looks out onto an alley.’

  ‘Why would someone put a window looking onto an alley?’ Decker asked.

  Diesel shrugged. ‘It’s an old building. There probably wasn’t anything next to it when it was built. Anyway, it’s a good hiding place. You can see the whole waiting area through that window. I couldn’t see into the patient rooms, but mostly she was seeing older people and little kids, so I didn’t worry too much.’

  Kate nodded. ‘So I get how you saw everything, but how did you hear all of that?’

  Diesel looked embarrassed. ‘I have a kit. Kind of a . . . spy kit. It has a listening device. We all had them, all of us on Marcus’s team at the Ledger. Never knew when we’d need to hear what was going on inside a house.’

  Kate sighed. ‘If you tapped phones, I do not want to know. So what was the nurse’s name? The one who was supposed to call the patient’s house?’

  ‘Belinda. I didn’t hear a last name. People just called her Nurse Belinda.’

  Kate put her knitting aside and took a notebook from her bag. ‘Can you describe her?’

  ‘She was much shorter than Dani. Maybe five-two? Dark hair. Really tired face, even though she didn’t seem tired. I think she was new. She didn’t know where things were supposed to go. She might have been a volunteer. She kept thanking Dani for coming in, saying that she hadn’t figured it all out yet.’

  Kate looked up from the notes she was taking. ‘How did you know the patient?’

  ‘Her grandson is on my pee wee soccer team. I had his home number in my phone, so I called. Grandma answered and said she was fine. That it must have been a misunderstanding, that she’d been feeling much better and hadn’t come to the clinic today. That got me more worried.’

  ‘Me too,’ Kate murmured.

  Agitated, Diesel thrust his fingers against his scalp like he still had hair, then flinched when he remembered he didn’t. ‘Fuck,’ he muttered and started to fold another paper airplane. ‘This shit is addictive, y’know?’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Kate said wryly. ‘Go on. Please.’

  ‘I’d hung up from talking to Grandma and was about to go inside and tell Dani, but then she said to hell with waiting for the woman to come in and she was going to pay a house call. I ran around to the side of the building where she’d parked her car to stop her, but . . . he was already on her.’ His hands clenched, crunching the paper he was folding. ‘Five-ten. Dressed in black. Gloves. Ski mask.’ He scrubbed his palms over his face. ‘I don’t know where he came from. He was just all of a sudden there, grabbing her.’

  ‘Dani was stabbed,’ Kate said, her tone matter-of-fact. ‘Did you see a knife?’

  Diesel nodded, his body beginning to tremble again. ‘In his hand. He was holding it to her throat. He had his other hand in her hair, pulling it so hard she was walking on her toes. He was trying to force her into a car. Crappy old sedan. Chevy Impala. Lots of rust.’

  Kate looked up abruptly. ‘With a primer-painted back bumper?’

  Decker’s mind searched frantically for the connection, nodding when he found it. The girl’s car. The one Officer Kendra Cullen had seen in the Kroger parking lot the Saturday before.

  Shit. It was what he had feared. This wasn’t a mugging. This was a failed abduction – and an attempted murder. And the only reason anyone could want to abduct Dani . . . He closed his eyes. Is me. To get to me. Goddamn this all to fucking hell.

  Diesel had sucked in a breath. ‘You know who did this?’

  Decker opened his eyes to find Kate waiting for him to look at her. Again the unspoken link between them flared to life.

  Not your fault, she told him.

  Yes. Decker swallowed hard. Yes, it is.

  You could not have stopped her from going to the clinic. Remember that. Kate turned to Diesel. ‘I know of the car,’ she said levelly, then tilted her head. ‘Does the nickname “the Professor” ring any bells for you?’

  Diesel’s chest expanded and froze there for long seconds before he let the breath out slowly. ‘I know the name. I’ve never done business with him personally. What would a drug dealer want with Dani? She’s not a user. Was he trying to steal drugs from the clinic?’

  ‘We think the owner of that car is tied to the computer files you found,’ Kate said.

  Diesel shook his head. ‘But why hurt Dani? She isn’t involved in this. She’s a doctor, for God’s sake. Not a cop. She didn’t know anything. She never hurt anyone.’

  ‘She knew where I was,’ Decker said quietly.

  Diesel’s mouth fell open. ‘Then the grandmother emergency really was just a lure.’

  ‘Very likely,’ Kate said. ‘Okay, he had a knife to her throat. He was forcing her toward a car. Was the car’s engine running?’

  Diesel’s brow furrowed. ‘No. I heard it start after I chased him away from her.’

  ‘All right.’ Kate’s voice was calm and the clacking of her needles soothed once more. ‘How did you chase him away?’

  ‘I didn’t see the knife at first. His back was to me. I could just see him forcing her to the car. So I yelled her name.’ Diesel scrubbed his palms down his face again. ‘I startled him, because he whipped around, eyes wide.’

  ‘What color were his eyes?’

  ‘Blue,’ he said quickly. ‘His eyes were blue.’

  ‘Like Decker’s?’

  Decker turned to Diesel, opening his eyes wide. Diesel stared a moment, then shook his head. ‘More gray. But I only saw them for a second. Because Dani was bleeding already. He’d cut her. When he spun around to face me, he’d cut her. Here.’ He pointed to his collarbone.

  ‘Could have been worse,’ Kate said brusquely. ‘He could have slit her throat. Then there would
have been nothing that any of us could have done.’

  Strangely enough, this seemed to settle Diesel, who nodded. ‘True. That’s true. He looked at me and said, “Fuck!” and then he did try to slit her throat. But I had a knife too,’ he said grimly. ‘I always have a knife. I practice throwing it. And I’m damn good.’

  Of that Decker had no doubt. ‘Where’d you hit him?’ he asked.

  ‘His knife arm. He dropped her. His arm just went limp.’

  Kate’s brows lifted slightly. ‘You didn’t worry you’d hit Dani?’

  Diesel made a scoffing noise. ‘I hit where I aim.’

  ‘Good to know,’ Kate said simply. ‘So then?’

  ‘He pulled my knife out of his arm . . .’ Diesel’s eyes screwed shut. ‘He stabbed her again with it. In the gut. Then he took his knife, left mine in Dani, and ran. By then, I was on my knees next to Dani and he was in his car. The engine started and he drove away.’

  ‘How did the engine sound?’ Decker asked him. ‘Rusty or smooth?’

  ‘Smooth,’ Diesel answered automatically. ‘Powerful. That car looked like a piece of shit, but it’d had some serious work done under its hood. Maybe a V8.’

  ‘Good,’ Kate said, approval in her voice. ‘Did Dani say anything to you?’

  ‘No. She couldn’t speak. She just gasped. So I picked her up and ran with her into the clinic. The nurse was there and she went white when she saw Dani bleeding. She said she wasn’t a doctor, that she couldn’t sew her up, but she’d call 911. I figured I could get her there faster than waiting for the medics, so I put her in my car and brought her here, to the ER. I . . . I left the knife in her. I was afraid to take it out. They said it was good I didn’t take it out, because she might have bled out before I got her here.’

  ‘Did you tell the nurse at the clinic what you’d heard?’ Decker asked.

  ‘No. I was too . . . All I could think of was getting Dani help. That nurse – if she was one at all – didn’t even try to help her,’ he added bitterly.

  ‘Would you remember the way the man sounded if you heard him say “Fuck” again?’ Kate asked, and Diesel bared his teeth.