Dying Embers

by B. E. Sanderson

  Poor Studly’s cries lasted longer than she expected. Between the pyrotechnics and the aria of his death, the whole night had turned into an amazing show. Too bad they didn’t last long enough for Douglas to arrive. That would’ve added a wonderful dimension to the drama she created.

  The thought of Douglas’ betrayal burned with almost as much heat as Studly’s Beemer. She hadn’t intended to be cruel. One gunshot, and then light the car—that was her plan—but after what the agent did, cruelty seemed the only recourse. Studly had to pay because Douglas couldn’t.

  But she would.

  It’s probably not her fault, Will said from deep within her. Some women just get drawn into it. I’m betting she couldn’t help herself any more than you could. She can’t help it. After all, she’s one of the weaker sex.

  She opened her mouth to silence her husband, but for once, his irritating jibes made sense. Douglas’ lapse in judgment wasn’t her fault, and if she couldn’t be blamed, then the culprit had to be the man who answered. Once she finished with Owen, and of course, Peter, she would find the man and deliver a little justice on behalf of her favorite agent. After all, it was the least she could do.

  #

  “…and then she said something that makes me rethink Fleming’s part in all this.” In the passenger seat, Ben’s breathing had long since steadied with slumber, but she kept going over the phone call aloud. Something didn’t sit right.

  The two of them came to an agreement hours before that Emma had no intention of getting help. The whole charade was just too melodramatic to be real. After Frank had the locale traced, Jace could see why. The location turned out to be too remote. She needed someone to find her latest victim, and Jace was that person.

  “How did she know my number?” she asked herself for the millionth time. “It’s not like the receptionist just gives them out to anyone who asks.”

  “It’s on your business card, isn’t it?” Ben mumbled.

  “I thought you were asleep.” Even now, his eyes remained closed, and his breathing still sounded deep and even.

  “Who can sleep with all that talking?”

  “You think I might’ve given my card to this gal somewhere along the way?”

  He opened one lid and gave her the stink-eye. “It’s possible, isn’t it?”

  “Possible, but not probable. I only give those out to witnesses, relatives… anyone who might think of new information in the middle of the night.”

  “Then she has to be one of those people.”

  She scanned back over the myriad of faces she saw during the course of her investigations, but none of them seemed to fit what little they knew about their killer. The names were fuzzy, but if any of them had given the name ‘Emma’, they’d surely stand out in her memory. Only no one stood out.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but stranger things have happened.”

  Ben sat up straight and readjusted his car seat. “Maybe you ran into her at one of the crime scenes. She could’ve been pretending to be a witness or even just a friendly onlooker who said she wanted to help. Back in Detroit, I’d hand my cards out like candy hoping one of them would land in the hands of a real lead.”

  So many faces. So many cards. Too many to think about each and every one. “That has to be it.” Her hands clenched tighter around the wheel. “I can’t believe I was close enough to touch her and she got away.”

  Continuing down I-15, she let her mind wander over six months worth of faces. Discounting any male witnesses, she still had hundreds of possible encounters to consider.

  And she missed the most important one entirely.

  As the lights of Mesquite, Nevada came closer, Ben nudged her arm. “Pull off here. I need a cup of coffee, and you need to catch some shut-eye.”

  But Jace knew even after Ben took the wheel, sleep wouldn’t welcome her. She had a killer to catch, and they were getting closer as the miles slipped beneath their wheels. She could feel it.

  “Emma’s still in Vegas,” she mumbled as they pulled into a gas station. “She’s still there, and I’m going to catch her.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The ravine still smoldered when they arrived at the scene. As dry as the mountains were on the leeward side, the flames had engulfed an untold number of acres, and firefighters were rushing to keep it contained.

  Jace stood next to their rental car, surveying the scorched landscape as if this were just another day on the job. Inside, her heart thundered so fast she feared her head would explode. Even though her conscious mind knew she was safe—the inferno had moved far enough away—she had to marshal every ounce of nerve to not run screaming.

  “Jaylinda?” her mother called through the crackling underbrush. “Jacey!” her sister screamed over the rush of the backdraft. Her brain wanted her to run—to find them, to save them—but as always, her feet didn’t obey. She remained bolted to where she stood.

  A hand gripped her shoulder, and she flinched, almost expecting to see the charred remains of her family back to reclaim her.

  “Okay,” a voice said. “The good news is they’ve almost got it under control. The bad news is it will probably be at least a day or so before we can get the car out.”

  She heard the words, but her eyes were still focused on a point where the smoke lingered above the wooded landscape. Her mind stayed locked on the screams in her head. Only now, the latest victim’s voice joined the ones she’d lived with most of her life.

  “Jace?”

  She turned finally, afraid of what she would see, but unable to stop herself from looking.

  “You okay?”

  Ben’s eyes were full of concern, but they were whole. His forehead creased as he stared down at her, but other than a slight sunburn, his skin was unblemished by the ravages of heat.

  Shaking off the last of her waking nightmare, she nodded. “I’m fine.”

  “Ri-ight. And I’m Batman.” His demeanor invited her to tell him the truth, but the terror still lay too fresh in her mind to share. Maybe at whatever motel they crashed in for the night, but not now. He seemed to accept her decision without speaking a word.

  “When can we get to the body?” One exhaled breath told her if she’d been listening, she would already know, but he repeated it just the same. “We don’t have a day,” she snapped. “The fire looks like it’s out where the car is. Why can’t we just tow the car up now and get it over with?”

  “Because right now, the metal on that thing is hotter than bluebilly blazes. No one can get close enough to it to hook it to a tow truck. And they aren’t willing to risk it just to drag someone out they can’t help anymore.”

  “But don’t they understand—”

  “They understand, and so do I. I’m not exactly thrilled about the idea of harming a live person to look at a dead one. Besides, the chief said the fire burned so hot, we’ll be lucky to make an ID without dental records. Everything is toast. No pun intended.”

  A tentative step away from the security of the car would show Ben exactly how important a dead body was to her investigation, but the fear overrode her commitment to the job. Just one step sent shivers of terror through her. All the other crime scenes had long been extinguished by the time she arrived, and even then, it had been reliving a nightmare in order to do her job. Still, getting to the evidence hadn’t been impossible for her. Hard? Yes, but she could overcome the smell of smoke to get to the evidence. Overcoming the heat and the flames of this new crime scene proved more than her phobia would allow.

  “First thing tomorrow, then,” she told Ben with a tremble in her voice she hoped he didn’t notice. “We need that car towed up and waiting for us before ten. I’ll have the crime scene techs out here waiting, and we’ll get to work processing the…” Her words fell away.

  “Processing the what?” Ben grasped her hand and pulled her toward him. Looking into her eyes, he tucked her hair behind one ear. “I’m sorry, Jace. There’s nothing left to process. Even the cell phone she left
for us is a glob of plastic embedded in the rock she set it on.”

  She shook her head against his fingers. “There has to be something.”

  “There will be, but not here. Once we ID the guy, we might be able to find her—”

  “But by then it’ll be too late,” she said on a whisper. Ben didn’t bother refuting what they both knew was the truth. If Emma was still in town, she wouldn’t be for long.

  “Maybe not. Something feels wrong with this one. It’s like the kid at the rest stop. I don’t think she had this one on her original list…”

  His words should’ve made sense, but between the fire no more than a hundred yards away and the frustration rushing through her veins, she couldn’t follow his logic.

  “Jace?” he said, pushing her away from his chest far enough to see her face. “This isn’t over. She’s making mistakes she hasn’t made before. Six kills before you even knew she was a woman. Seven before we knew her name. Each time she’s getting a little bit sloppier. Think about it. She’s starting to come apart at the seams. This wasn’t one of her clean kills. You know what those look like. This was—”

  “A distraction,” she finished. Whatever else raged through Jace’s mind had to be pushed aside. There wasn’t time. There was never enough time. “Emma came to Vegas for a reason, but this guy interrupted her. Like the kid at the rest stop…” She nodded to herself. Her fears drifted away as she focused on the case. Just like Ben planned.

  “She broke from her plan to get this one,” she said, “which means she may still have business she needs to take care of.”

  “If I’m right, you mean.”

  Pushing away from Ben’s broad chest, she let her mind mull over his theory. “You haven’t steered me wrong yet. Emma didn’t have time to plan this one, or she wouldn’t need to arrange for me to find the body. Every other crime scene pointed to how deliberate she is, except that one at the rest stop and this one. She didn’t come to Vegas for this guy. He might have pissed her off in some way—goaded her into killing him even—but he wasn’t her original target.” The more she talked it through, the better it sounded, but a little voice in the back of her head told her she was rationalizing, that most likely Emma had disappeared again.

  She slapped her doubts away. She would deal with them later. Much, much later.

  “But without knowing who our vic is,” Ben added, “how are we going to find her in a town teeming with tourists?”

  “We can’t yet. Time to play the waiting game again.”

  “You realize what that means, don’t you?”

  “Once we get to a hotel, I’m making the coffee?”

  “And make it strong. It’s gonna be another long night.”

  #

  The drive into the city felt longer than it actually took. Jace’s eyes wavered over the latest stretch of pavement until Ben decided she’d had enough and took her place behind the wheel. She knew he had to be beat to hell, too, but then again, she was too tired to argue. All she wanted was a nice soft bed and room service. Maybe a dip in one of the city’s incredible pools. Too bad they didn’t have the time or the expense account for any of it.

  “When this is over, I’m going to spend a week lounging at the Tropic Sun,” he said, reading her thoughts. “It’s not the newest or the best, but they make an amazing margarita.”

  “Mmm. And their pool is heavenly, if I remember correctly. You know,” she said as she closed her eyes for just a moment, “they used to keep exotic animals in the walkway over the pool. They used to have the cutest little—marmosets, I think… So small but with such wise little faces… But the last time I was there… the last time I was there…” She tried to remember what the last time she stayed at the hotel had been like, but her mind felt so fragmented. All she could focus on were the marmosets.

  Minutes later, she awoke from a nightmare of being lost amidst a maze of flaming marmosets.

  #

  It wasn’t the Trop, but it would have to do. The S.C.I.U. number crunchers were already groaning over her mounting expenses. Even though it was no longer one of the ritziest hotels on the Strip, the Trop still would’ve been pushing it. The motor lodge gave them a room as close as they could get to the action without giving the boss conniptions.

  “Lovely décor,” Ben said, his eyes twinkling with amusement. “Almost as good as the Laze E. Daze back in—”

  “Don’t remind me. I’m trying to repress that experience.”

  “Add this place to your list of repressions.” He hooked a thumb toward the shower area. “By the way, next time you head for the rest room, make sure you say ‘Hi’ to Butch.”

  “Butch?” she said. “Should I ask or do I not want to know?”

  Ben laughed, and she was tired enough to want to forget work in favor of snuggling with him all night. “Just the friendly resident cockroach. He’s kinda cute, in a disgusting sorta way.” Or maybe staying up working would be better than sleeping somewhere cockroaches had their own address.

  “There’s got to be somewhere better than this.”

  “About a mile south. I’m betting this place stays in business luring out-of-towners looking for a cheap room.”

  Butch picked that moment to saunter out of the bathroom. Jace could almost swear it smirked at her. “Either kill it, or find us somewhere else to stay.”

  “Your wish is my—” Before he could finish his attempt at humor, Butch skittered across the floor toward her feet.

  “Now!”

  An hour later, Butch was presumably doing whatever any young roach in Vegas would do, and the two weary travelers were settling into a nicer room. If Graham complained, she wouldn’t bother turning in the receipt for reimbursement. She figured spending a little of her own cash would be worth it, just to avoid worrying whether Butch had made a nursery in her luggage.

  “You want something to eat? We could do the buffet—”

  She held up a hand. “Let’s just order something and have it sent up. I don’t think I could be in a crowd without wondering whether she’s standing next to me. With my luck, someone would say or do something, and I’d have them up against the slots before they could blink.”

  “I see what you mean. Not the best PR for the S.C.I.U.”

  “Exactly.” She waited while he called down for some sandwiches and coffee. “Now where were we?”

  “Contacting Frank and Lynn? Maybe they have something for us.”

  She shook her head. “Not since yesterday. If anything important came up, he would’ve called. I’m at the point where we need to rethink this anyway. I feel like a damn gerbil running on a wheel to nowhere—except I’m not enjoying it nearly as much.” She stood and paced while they waited for their food. “What are you doing, Emma?” she said to the space where the whiteboard would’ve stood, if they had one. In her mind, she could still see the last one, and her memory would have to do for now.

  The names of nine victims were imprinted on her mind’s eye. Eight lives ended and one possibly destroyed. She’d put a star next to the young man from the rest stop. Mentally she wrote Victim #10 on the board, and put a star next to him, too. Number eight and number ten were not part of Emma’s original plan; if Jace was a gambler, she would’ve laid cash on that.

  Ben stood next to her, looking first at her and then following her line of sight to the blank wall. “See another Butch?”

  “I’m visualizing the whiteboard.”

  He turned her to face him and drew a gentle finger under her chin. “Give it a rest for a while. You said yourself they’d call if anything new popped up. I know for certain we don’t have anything new here.” Gesturing toward the two beds in their one room, he said, “Let’s get a whole night’s sleep for a change and see what tomorrow has to say for itself.”

  Every cell of her workaholic self wanted to scream ‘No’, but her body had different ideas. Her hands started shaking after the second night with too little sleep, and she was well past that now. If she didn’t get some sleep soon,
she’d be useless to the case, and to Ben.

  “I get the bed near the window.” At the sound of her claim, Ben’s face fell. Suddenly the possibility of them sleeping in the same bed jumped up and slapped her in the face. But she couldn’t. Maybe when this was all over, she could give in to the urges she felt, but now was not the time, and this was not the place.

  What happens in Vegas… a little voice from the back of her mind said, but she didn’t let it finish. Whatever happened in Vegas wouldn’t stay there—not as long as Ben traveled with her.

  “Damn,” he said, making a gallant recovery, “I was gonna call that one. It looks like the less lumpy of the two.”

  “You snooze; you lose.” She let out a tiny giggle born from too little sleep. “Or should I say, you lose, you don’t snooze.”

  As she snuggled into a bed so full of lumps she could’ve named them after mountain ranges, one thought boiled through her mind: If she chose to sleep with Ben, she wouldn’t have cared whether the bed was uncomfortable. She could’ve laid atop his broad chest, with his breathing rocking her to sleep and his warm arms keeping her safe.

  “Damn this job,” she muttered.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The table’s green felt top tickled the tips of Emma’s fingers, but she couldn’t let that distract her any more than the fact she had lost stacks of chips with every hand. Her losses were negligible. Just being at the table provided good cover while she stalked her prey.

  Seated across the poker room was the one she’d been looking for. She was sure of it. Even if she had waited another fifteen years to see him, she would still know him on sight. No one had Owen’s cock-sure attitude. He sported that same rakish smile. As she watched, he tossed another couple thousand dollars into the pot, smooth like he once tossed a stone into the stream they’d made love next to. Long beautiful fingers—a pianist’s fingers, though he couldn’t play a note—shuffled his chip stack; bright beautiful eyes shined because he knew he had the hand won.