Deadly Desires

by Ann Christopher

  Brady snorted with no real humor because: 1) they were in the middle of graveside prayers, and it wouldn’t do for the assorted feds watching the proceedings to express too much glee in front of the bereaved family; and 2) he was freezing his ass off.

  The sky was a mournful slate gray, perfect for the occasion, and the rain was holding off, at least for now, but the wind was sharp and relentless, weaving through the monuments here in the high-rent section of the cemetery with the ferocity of those nor’easters folks in Maine were always talking about. It’d be a miracle if he didn’t have a severe case of frostbitten fingers and/or toes by the time he left the cemetery.

  Jayne was right, though. In just three short days, using money that had, no doubt, come straight from the pockets of teens on the playground as they used their hard-earned allowance money to buy a little Mary Jane or blow to get them through those party-filled weekends, Wanda, Kareem’s mother, had thrown together a truly impressive memorial for her lamented son. The only things missing had been a caisson with riderless horse and bagpipers in full regalia, but, hell, it was early yet. Maybe they were on their way.

  There’d been shiny black limos, several hundred mourners in the church, flower arrangements the size of Volkswagen Beetles, and the best luxury coffin drug money could buy, bronze—yes, bronze—with, reputedly, a black silk lining. They’d all have to take the lining on faith, because the thing had been closed. But Wanda had thought of everything, providing a dignified but oversized portrait of a smirking Kareem, in one of his thousanddollar suits, looking down at them from an easel at the foot of the coffin, just so the heartbroken could remember Kareem at his vital best.

  The entire entourage had filed over to the cemetery in a traffic-stopping caravan complete with motorcycle cops and flashing lights, and they all huddled together for warmth, grouped loosely according to allegiance: family and friends in the inner circle, observing feds at a respectful distance in the outer circle.

  He and Jayne, along with a pair from the FBI and an ATF agent, were on the lookout for ... stuff: other suspected members of Kareem’s organization or rival organizations, potential suspects in the explosion, or any other suspicious activity they could sniff out. It was always fun to take down license plate numbers and see who they were dealing with and who they should look into, but so far the funeral had been just that. An impressive funeral, to be sure, but still just a funeral and not a hotbed of criminal activity.

  Dexter had never seen this kind of crowd at a graveside commitment ceremony, which usually only consisted of the family, but, hey. It wasn’t every day that the Midwest lost the rough equivalent of John Gotti or Tony Montana, and no one wanted to miss a second of the fun. The sight of all the mourners in black clustered together reminded Dexter of emperor penguins, a thousand deep, incubating their eggs at the South Pole.

  The coffin was now perched over the open but covered grave, waiting to be lowered, and there, off to the side, was the monument—a phallic black marble obelisk ten feet tall—that had presumably been a rush job so it’d be ready for today.

  KAREEM JASON GREGORY, said the inscription.

  LOVING SON AND HUSBAND(it hadn’t escaped Dexter’s notice that Wanda gave herself top billing over Kira)—SLEEPING WITH THE ANGELS.

  That’s right, sports fans. Kareem Gregory, murderer, rapist, and drug kingpin, was now, according to his tombstone, sleeping with the angels.

  Ah, yes. It had all been the picture of class. Dexter got emotional just thinking about it. And he’d make damn sure the IRS traced the funds that had paid for this little display. If they were dirty, maybe there was a way the government could seize that ugly-ass coffin right out from under Kareem’s charred body. The mere idea almost gave Dexter a hard-on with giddy excitement because, as far as he was concerned, no punishment was too great for that demon seed, and a little thing like death didn’t cancel the debt.

  “And did you see the latest addition to the grieving hordes?” Jayne continued, tipping her head toward a bare birch tree several hundred feet away, where a lone woman stood, watching. “What’s up with her? Why doesn’t the bereaved widow take her rightful place in front with the mother?”

  “Let’s ponder that for a moment,” Dexter murmured. “How bereaved would you be?”

  “Not very.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  The minister’s solemn and commanding baritone rose over the wind, which whipped around his robes, making for an impressive sight.

  “In hope of the resurrection into eternal life, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we commend to almighty God our brother Kareem, and we commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust... .”

  Right on cue, Wanda began to sob and wail, turning her face up to God and calling to him, which was a tricky maneuver because the brim of her feathered and ribboned black hat was roughly the size of a trash can lid. Unmoved by this display of raw maternal grief over the criminal she’d raised, Dexter checked his watch and wondered idly whether she’d do the whole throwing herself on the coffin thing. The people on either side of her seemed to be thinking along the same lines and took her by the arms, holding her upright.

  Over at the tree, Kira stood, still and rigid as Kareem’s obelisk, watching.

  “I’ve always wondered what kind of marriage they had.” Jayne rubbed her hands over her arms for warmth and frowned in Kira’s direction. “What kind of woman—”

  “Who knows?”

  Dexter shrugged, the topic making him wary and irritable. God knew he’d spent more than his allotted time thinking about Kira and her varied and mysterious motivations, but he couldn’t risk any of his colleagues suspecting that his feeling for or interactions with Kira had been anything other than professional and unremarkable. Developing a relationship with the kingpin’s widow certainly wouldn’t help him to a letter of commendation for his personnel file or a promotion.

  “Is this in your job description now?” he continued. “Government shrink?”

  Jayne paused in her contemplation of Kira to flash him a narrow-eyed look. “What’s got your panties in a bunch, Special Agent?”

  Kira Gregory, that’s what.

  “Nothing. Except that I’d like to eat sometime before I’m forced to gnaw off my own arm. And I’ve got frostbite in three toes. And I’d like to close the file on Kareem Gregory and his organization for good. You feel me?”

  “I feel you, my brother,” Jayne said. “Amen.”

  “Amen,” Dexter echoed, his gaze and thoughts inexorably drawn back to Kira.

  He’s here.

  Where is he?

  Here ... where ... here ... where ...

  The words swirled around Kira and through her, surging in her blood, beating in her heart, and luring her brain farther away from its fragile hold on reality and beckoning it toward insanity.

  Coming to Kareem’s funeral wasn’t the brightest idea she’d ever had, clearly. She wasn’t a grieving widow nor was she inclined to pretend otherwise, which was why she’d avoided Wanda and other family members who really were heartbroken. That being the case, she should have stayed her butt back at the hotel with Max, where they could’ve toasted the monster’s so-called death with champagne and carryout pizza.

  Except that she’d needed to be here. To see. To verify.

  But it had all gone wrong, and every second of this travesty of a funeral that passed without Kareem’s reappearance took five years off her life. Why? Because she was sure he was still alive and equally certain she was losing her mind.

  Nice psychological cocktail, eh?

  Her current mental condition could best be described as unstable, and even that term was unduly optimistic.

  It was as though she’d been snatched from her old world, the one ruled by all things Kareem, and placed into a new world that made no sense. Here, everyone said, there was no Kareem. He was dead and gone. Forever. Buh-bye.

  Yeah. Sure.

  Why was she the only on
e who was out of step with the rest of the world? Why couldn’t anyone else see what she saw?

  Because Kareem was here. Despite what Brady had told her about the coroner’s findings (which she’d wanted to believe, tried to believe), she just couldn’t accept that Kareem wasn’t here, somewhere, watching the proceedings and making notes about who’d been appropriately heartbroken and who’d been insincere and therefore needed to be punished later.

  Wasn’t it everyone’s fantasy to attend their own funeral and see what was what and who was loyal and who wasn’t? Kareem wouldn’t miss this kind of opportunity. He was here. Hiding among the mourners. Waiting. Planning. Seething.

  She knew because his malevolent presence electrified the air, and the scent of his cologne—wood and basil, earthy warmth—drifted closer on the wind, filling her nostrils.

  Was this proof scientific enough to stand up in a court of law?

  Absolutely not.

  Would she stake her life on it anyway? You betcha.

  This absolute conviction of hers was irrational bordering on paranoid. Kira knew that. She understood, in her brain, that Kareem couldn’t pull off a phony death and make it look this good, the coroner wouldn’t fake her findings, and Kira had absolutely no logical reason to suspect, much less believe, that Kareem was still alive.

  Her soul, on the other hand, understood that if Kareem really were dead, she’d feel light and free rather than persecuted and exposed.

  And she felt exposed standing here under this tree and watching the services. As though she’d pulled back her collar to expose her jugular to a starving vampire.

  If she could just find him. That was the thing. If she could just rope off the cemetery and search every male face before he left, she would find him. Oh, yes, she would. If she could—

  “I am the resurrection, and the life,” the minister was saying, his voice booming now to be heard over Wanda’s ongoing histrionics.

  Wait. Was that it, then? Was the service almost over, and with it her chance to find and expose Kareem? She hadn’t had the chance to look that closely into the faces, and once everyone left here, there’d be nothing she could do—

  “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live—”

  Kira’s frustration level rose with each word. Maybe she should just go up the hill and join the others. Then she could see the faces more clearly, and she’d have the chance to—

  “And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die... .”

  Wait! Was that Kareem? There in the brown wool coat, with the fedora pulled so low over his eyes? Kareem had a coat like that, and the guy was certainly the right height and build! His skin was about the same shade of brown as Kareem’s, and he stood with that same sure footing that was almost a swagger, as though he owned the world and always would.

  Could that be him?

  Powered by desperation and growing hysteria, Kira charged through the frozen grass and up the hill, beyond caring who saw her or what they thought about it. Screw it. They wouldn’t think she was insane once she exposed Kareem for the lying bastard he was, putting them all through this charade—

  “Amen.”

  The minister raised his head, finished at last. Everyone else followed his lead and began to murmur their good-byes and disperse to their cars.

  Kira watched the crowd spread and thin, taking her chances along with it, and she tried to keep that man in sight. Where was that brown coat now? How had he disappeared that quickly?

  “Sister Wanda.” The minister’s tone now was hushed and tragic, perfect for this oh-so-solemn occasion. “Would you like some flowers from the bouquet to press in your Bible?”

  “Thank you, Pastor.” Sniffling, Wanda took a brave step forward, reached for the huge spray of lilies, and withdrew several stems, which she passed to some of the nearby women.

  At the top of the hill now, Kira wheeled around, panting and searching. Was he still here? Was he over there? She plowed through the crowd, shoving a man—Kareem’s Uncle Claude, wasn’t it?—between the shoulder blades when he didn’t get out of her way fast enough and nearly toppling another man with a cane.

  “Kira?” someone said. “Is that you, honey?”

  A murmur of interest rippled through the crowd, but she ignored everyone except that man, who was the key to everything.

  “Stop!” she yelled. “You’re not going to do this to me, Kareem! I know it’s you! You’re not going to get away with this!”

  With a final triumphant lunge, she grabbed the man’s sleeve and jerked it, stopping him, but the man was already turning, lured by all her frantic commotion, and he looked her in the face.

  It wasn’t Kareem.

  The skin tone was right, but the face was too broad, the nose too long, the brows too shaggy. And these eyes were kindly and understanding of the poor widow, who was so clearly unhinged by her grief, and Kareem didn’t have a kindly bone in his body.

  She blinked several times, bewildered and not daring to trust her lying eyes.

  But—?

  Wasn’t that him? Hadn’t she seen him?

  Her head chose that moment to renew its ongoing throbbing, and she floundered, taking a second to rub her temple and regroup. It was so hard to think since the concussion, so hard to keep her thoughts straight, but she could do it.

  Okay. Okay. So that hadn’t been Kareem, obviously, but that didn’t mean that Kareem wasn’t here, somewhere. And all these stupid people, meanwhile, were standing in her way, blocking her from seeing where he might have—

  “Kira ?” A woman touched her shoulder, trying to calm her down. “Why don’t you come—”

  “No.”

  Shaking her off, Kira pivoted in another circle, searching all the avid faces now turned in her direction ... looking ... looking ... there! There he was! Just past the clump of scandalized church ladies with their fancy hats was a broad-shouldered man in a wheelchair, his back to her. He wore a black knit cap pulled low, so it was hard to tell by his face, but his puffy blue ski jacket looked exactly like Kareem’s, and she wouldn’t put it past that bastard to impersonate a disabled person if he thought he could get away with it.

  “Mrs. Gregory.”

  That warning voice calling her name again belonged to a man this time—she knew that voice, didn’t she?—but no one would interfere with her mission. If she didn’t expose Kareem, who would? If she let him slip away from the cemetery and escape, hiding among the general populace, how could she ever live her life without looking over her shoulder every second of every single day?

  It was as if she knew there was a cobra loose in her bedroom but she couldn’t find it. How on earth was she supposed to lay down her head at night and go to sleep?

  “Kareem.” Screeching now, she darted through the crowd and around the wheelchair to confront that lying bastard. “Kareem, you cannot get away with—”

  Christ Jesus. That wasn’t Kareem either. It was a teenager, no more than fifteen, looking up at her with startled eyes the color of warm syrup.

  Not Kareem’s eyes, then. Not Kareem’s eyes at all.

  “Oh, God.”

  Staggering back a step and closing her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see all these people staring at her like the three-armed woman at the freak show, she pressed that hand to her head again, trying to squeeze away the ache. Had she truly lost her mind? Couldn’t someone leave her a trail of breadcrumbs or something so she could find her way out of this nightmare and back into a world that made sense?

  “God. Please help me.” If only the throbbing would let up, just for one freaking second, so she could think about what she needed to do, where she needed to look next—

  “Mrs. Gregory.”

  That male voice spoke again, inexorable now. Opening her eyes, she realized that it was Brady, looking very forbidding today with his lowered brows, flashing eyes, and dark topcoat, and yet his calm presence was exactly what she needed. If Brady was here, then things were under control. If Brady w
as here, then she wasn’t the only one on the lookout for fiends in the shadows.

  “I know this is a very difficult day for you, but your husband is dead. You should let someone take you home so you can rest.”

  “But—”

  “He’s gone.” Brady’s gaze held hers, and it didn’t waver with uncertainty. Though he had on his gruff special agent persona for all the onlookers, she knew him well enough now to see beneath the surface to what he was really trying to tell her.

  It’s okay, Kira. Trust me.

  And, just like that, she trusted him.

  Kareem was dead and locked safely inside that coffin. In a few minutes, they’d lower that coffin into the ground, and that would be that.

  He was dead. His reign of terror was over. She was free.

  Staring into Brady’s eyes, she felt, for the first time, those feelings she’d needed, the ones she’d been waiting for:

  Lightness. Hope. Quiet joy.

  It was over and her life was now hers to live as she saw fit.

  “I understand, Special Agent,” she said, trying to match his aloof formality with her own. “Thank you.”

  Brady gave a sharp nod and melted away into the crowd, his expression shadowed.

  Wanda appeared in his place, and the women’s gazes locked. Poor thing, Kira thought, studying the puffy eyes, deep grooves that seemed to have appeared overnight in her forehead and bracketing her mouth, and stooped shoulders. Wanda was, suddenly, an ancient woman whose sole reason for living was now gone. If she lasted five years without Kareem, Kira would be surprised.

  “Will you be coming to the church for dinner?” Wanda asked, her voice raw from sobbing.

  Wow. There, finally, was an invitation into the inner sanctum, the one that had been barred against Kira all these years. Kareem’s death had apparently moved her beyond all that pettiness, but it was way past too late as far as Kira was concerned. Wanda had been kind to her the other night after the rape, true, but the women had never been friends and now never would be. Anyway, these were Wanda and Kareem’s people, not Kira’s. Kira didn’t have people.