Michael traded the towel for jeans and pulled on a shirt. “What makes you think that’s where I’m going?”
“Because you’re a fuckin’ Boy Scout,” Ben said. “You’ve had your eye on the Cordova situation for a while now. You think you’re responsible for making Reyes into what he is.”
He slammed the dresser drawer home, the bang of it drowning out the last of Ben’s words. “I am responsible.”
“Please. Just because you were there doesn’t make it your fault,” Ben said with a shrug. “Reyes is a climber—he was gonna get to the top, with or without you.”
“Maybe,” Michael said, but he didn’t really believe it.
“Not maybe. Abso-freakin’-lutely. But, whatever—go to Colombia. Take Reyes’s toys and piss in his sandbox. Nothing I say is gonna change your mind anyway,” Ben said with a grin. “But at least let me give you a ride to work.”
He just shook his head. “I get on that plane with you, I wake up on the Vegas strip in a revolving bed with mirrors on the ceiling and some chick in the next room dry humping a stripper pole. No thanks.”
“That happened one time—”
Michael cut his partner a look that did its job. “No. Thanks.”
Ben dropped all four on the floor and stood. “You never spend time with me anymore.”
“Sorry, honey, daddy’s gotta work.” Michael ushered him through the door before following him into the living room.
He watched Ben shoulder his duffle. “You want some company? I could come with you,” the kid said halfway to the door.
It was a tempting offer. If things got messy with Reyes, he could use the backup, but Michael just shook his head. “No. Go waste your father’s money on strippers and booze. I’ll see you in a month.”
“Okay … but if you need a spotter, call me,” Ben said, using his thumb and pinky to mimic a phone as he headed out the door.
There was a commercial flight leaving for Cartagena in a few hours. If he hurried he’d be able—
Michael’s phone rang. Retrieving it from the kitchen counter, he gave the screen a glance. He recognized the number. Not one he’d heard from in a while. Not one he’d ever expected to hear from again.
“Hello?”
“You’re a bit too hard to get a hold of these days, Mikey,” Tom said, sounding more than a little frustrated. “I’ve left about a thousand messages.”
And he’d erased them all without even listening. He hadn’t seen Tom in eight months. Not since that day at the diner when he’d been half out of his mind, looking for Sabrina and willing to do anything and kill anyone to find her. Not since he’d admitted to Tom and Carson who Sabrina really was and that he’d known the whole time.
Is it her? Is she Melissa? Please, just tell me …
Yes.
He ran a rough hand over his face. If he’d been Tom, he’d have killed him for keeping something like that from him. Why Tom felt the need to keep in touch was something he didn’t understand. “I was on a job.”
Tom rolled over him like he hadn’t said a word. “You been keeping up with the papers? The articles on Meliss—Sabrina?” Tom said. Of course he’d still think of her as Melissa. That’s who Sabrina was supposed to be. Who Tom knew her as. She was supposed to have married Tom and raised a bunch of kids while helping him run his uncle’s diner in Jessup, the town they all lived in. Instead, she’d been kidnapped and tortured by her psychotic half-brother and left for dead a thousand miles from home. Life had not turned out the way it was supposed to for any of them.
“No,” he said, and he hadn’t, although he wasn’t surprised to hear that Sabrina’s story had grabbed a headline or two.
“Well, the reporter writing most of them came here about a week ago. Asked a lot of questions about her … and then he started asking questions about you.”
Michael’s hand tightened around his cell. “What’s his name?” Michael said, heading for the elevator. If he hurried, he’d be able to catch Ben before he left.
“Croft. Jaxon Croft.”
The name rang a bell, far off in the distance. “Croft … he say what he wanted with me?”
“No. Just asked if Sabrina knew you. If you’d been involved at all in what happened between her and Wade,” Tom said.
“You the only person he talked to?” Michael wasn’t exactly Jessup’s Prodigal Son. Town pariah was more like it. If Croft was looking for someone to turn on him, he’d have his pick of blabbermouths. One in particular came to mind. “What about Carson? Croft talked to him?”
“He tried. Croft rolled up in here, started pestering my customers, so I asked him to leave before someone said too much. Things got … heated, and I punched him. Carson was there,” Tom said, sounding like just thinking of the incident made him angry all over again.
Great. There was no love lost between Jessup’s Chief of Police, Jed Carson, and him. Last time they’d seen each other Michael had put a bullet in his shoulder and threatened to torture him for information about where Wade was holding Sabrina. Carson would see it as payback to tell Croft all about it.
That’s why what Tom said next surprised the shit out of him. “Carson pulled us apart and hauled Croft off to jail and held him overnight before driving his ass back to Dallas the next day. I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think Carson told him anything worth knowing—about you or anything else.”
That wasn’t good enough. He had to know for sure. If Croft was trying to connect Sabrina to him, she was in deep shit. “Give my number to Carson and tell him to call me. I need to know what he said to Croft before I decide what to do about it,” he said. Carson had always been a terrible liar. Michael would be able to tell if he’d told Croft about his involvement with Sabrina. If he had, Croft was living on borrowed time.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Sabrina followed Croft into the room and shut the door. Strickland was crouched next to the bed, looking at something that clung to the side of the pale pink duvet. Whatever it was, it wasn’t blood. From what she could see, there was no visible blood evidence. Lack of blood told her that whatever had happened to Bethany Edwards, it hadn’t been done here.
“Find something?” she said to her partner, and he looked at her before shooting Croft a withering glare.
“Maybe.” He tipped his chin at her. “Might be semen. Might be something else,” he said, scraping a few flakes into an evidence envelope, carefully not to disturb the rose petals scattered across the bed. “I’ll let CSU tell me, ’cause I ain’t smelling it.” He cracked a smile. “You do that?” he said, tipping his chin toward Croft’s face.
She glanced at Croft. Most of the damage was hidden by the hat, but she could still see some bumps and bruises. “Yes.”
“Coulda called—I’d have liked to see it happen.”
“Check YouTube.”
Strickland laughed, the sound causing Croft’s shoulders to go stiff. He wasn’t happy about being laughed at, but he kept quiet about it. Sabrina watched her partner poke around in the nightstand drawer and remove a couple of items. An expensive tube of lotion. A television remote. A box of tissue. She looked around. No personal items belonging to Bethany Edwards were visible. No clothes on the floor. No magazines or textbooks. Nothing to tell her that this was a room belonging to a nineteen-year-old college student. Nothing. Just the roses. He’d set the stage—made everything just so in order to feed his fantasy …
“Bag it. It’s a long shot for prints, but he might’ve touched them,” Sabrina said to Strickland, and he nodded, having learned to not question her instincts.
She turned to Croft, studying him for a few seconds before speaking. “So … what do you think? Who is she?” she said to him, watching his face for signs.
Excitement. Arousal. Disgust. Remorse. She saw none of them. All she saw was a kind of detached curiosity that made her slightly uncomfortable.
“Clio.”
Strickland stood, his head tilted to the side a fraction of an inch, asking her if she’d told Croft about the phone call she’d gotten that led her here. She shook her head, telling him that she hadn’t. Strickland dropped his free hand to the grip of his service weapon. Croft’s shoulders tensed as if he sensed Strickland’s intentions, but he remained focused on her.
“At least that’s what it says,” Croft said, looking at her a second longer before dropping his gaze to the young woman on the bed, his eyes locked on her face.
Sabrina followed his gaze, took in the scene. She was nude, posed with her hands resting demurely on her stomach. Every inch of her pale skin was covered in writing, the ink a muddy rust against the milky white of it. The same word over and over:
Κλέος
“You can read that?” Strickland said. His hand was still on his gun. “Is it Latin?”
Croft looked up at him. “No, it’s Greek. And yes, I can read it. And to answer your next questions, I can also speak it and write it.”
“You’re fluent in both Latin and Greek—you know what that makes you, right?” Strickland said, his hand still on his gun.
“Aside from a multilingual douchebag with an overpriced education? I suppose it makes me a suspect,” Croft said, delivering the last of his revelation directly at Sabrina.
Strickland took a step forward. “No … coupled with the fact that you just happen to keep turning up when shit gets weird, it makes you the suspect.”
Croft turned to face Strickland, head on. “I’m here because she brought me here,” he said, tipping his head at Mandy.
“Don’t get it twisted—you’re here because you have a thing for following my partner,” Strickland said. She wasn’t sure when he’d done it, but the safety snap that secured his gun inside its holster had been thumbed open.
“The only thing I’m following is a story—”
“Who is Clio?” Mandy said, bringing what was shaping up to be an epic throwdown in the middle of a crime scene to a screeching halt.
Croft spared her a glance, shoving his hands back into the pockets of his jacket. “She’s the muse of history and art. One of the nine daughters of Zeus.”
Strickland looked at her for a second and suddenly remembered what he’d told her in the elevator. Bethany Edwards had been a history major at Berkeley. From the look he gave her, he’d caught that too. “What’s with the book and the horn?” Strickland said, tilting his head at the items cradled in the victim’s arms.
“The horn is a clarion, a Greek instrument. The book is … just a book. Both are used to symbolize Clio.” Now Croft looked back at Sabrina. “Even without the writing, I’d know who she was supposed to be.”
“I bet,” Strickland said under his breath.
“And the coins?” Sabrina said, cutting her partner a shut-up look.
Croft leaned in and studied them, one placed over each of the victim’s eyes. “They’re drachmas. Ancient Greeks placed one on each eye to pay Charon, the ferryman, to usher their loved ones across the River Styx and into Hades,” he said, sounding like he was teaching a class on Greek Mythology.
“You seem to know a lot about Greek death rituals,” Strickland said.
“Enough to know that isn’t a part of them.” Croft pointed a finger at the victim’s chest. “Organ removal was never practiced by the Greeks.”
“What’s that?” Sabrina pointed toward the victim’s left shoulder. There was a letter burned into her skin, as big as her fist. A bright angry red, the edges of her white skin charred black from the iron used to brand her. It looked like a lowercase A, but she had a feeling it was something else.
Croft looked at her, his expression unreadable. “It’s the symbol for Alpha. It means the beginning.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Again. It was happening again.
Sabrina felt the walls slam inward, crashing down on her so fast and hard she felt her knees buckle a bit under their weight. She glanced at the windows. The curtains were drawn, blocking her view of the outside world. Reaching out, she laid what she hoped was a casual hand on the doorframe.
Keep breathing. Keep upright.
“Why don’t you get him the fuck outta here before I lose my cool, huh?” Strickland said to her, finally dropping his hand off the grip of his gun. She looked up at him. His tone was hard, angry even, but his eyes told a different story. He saw what was happening to her and was trying to save her from a complete meltdown. “I’m serious, Vaughn. Get him out of here. Go back to the station and start the paperwork. Black and I’ll finish up here.”
Start paperwork. Right. Strickland still didn’t know that she wasn’t even supposed to be here. She’d meant to tell him—instead she snagged Croft by the sleeve and pulled him toward the door. Suddenly getting out was all she cared about.
She was in the hall before she even realized she was moving. Outside the apartment. Moving down the building’s corridor. Bypassing the bank of elevators in favor of the stairwell. Her thigh spasmed in protest, but she took them fast. Out. She had to get out.
See the sky. Feel the sun. Breathe free air.
“Wait up.” Croft’s hand gripped her elbow and pulled, trying to slow her down.
She rounded on him, grabbing a fistful of shirt, using it to shove him hard into the wall. “You don’t learn, do you?” She practically snarled the words, inches from his face. “The next time you touch me, I swear to Christ I’ll break your neck. Got it?”
Croft’s hands went up. “Sorry. I think that knee to the head you gave me must’ve caused brain damage. Hands off from now on,” he said, letting out a relieved breath when she took a step back. She slumped against the railing. Beads of cold sweat pricked the back of her neck, sliding a chilly trail between her shoulder blades. Her stomach churned around the remnants of the cinnamon roll she’d forced herself to eat that morning. She looked at him, aiming every ounce of anger and hatred she felt his way. If he’d just left her alone, let her story die along with Wade—
“You blame me,” he said to her, reading her perfectly.
“Yes.”
Croft shifted uncomfortably. “It was never my intention—”
“Fuck your intentions.” She glared at him for a few more seconds before straightening her frame off the railing. “That is what the truth costs, Croft. People die.” She jabbed a finger up the stairs. “Don’t for one minute think you’re not responsible for what happened in there,” she said, unsure if she was talking to him or to herself.
His expression wavered for a moment before it hardened. Whatever glimmer of emotion he’d let himself feel about what she’d just said was gone, hidden behind a thick wall of resolve.
“Is that why you lied to me about knowing Michael O’Shea?” he said. “To protect your family? Did he threaten you?”
“Wow, you don’t even care, do you?” She swiped a hand over her face, trying to scrub away the anger that crowded her features. “I agreed to talk to you about what happened with Wade and in return, you keep your mouth shut about the ass-kicking I gave you today. That’s the arrangement,” she said.
“No. You agreed to answer my questions honestly. All of them. I think we both know you didn’t do that,” he said quietly.
She took a step closer and looked him in the eye. “I’ll talk to you about what happened between Wade and me. I’ll give you every gory detail. I’ll even tell you about what happened the first time he took me … but that’s it,” she said in a low tone. “That’s all you’re going to get from me. Ever.”
“So, you’re admitting that you know Michael O’Shea. That he was there that day in the woods?” he said, pushing back.
Rocking back on her heels, she shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “I’ll say this one time, and one time only, so listen up,” she said. “I grew up with a Michael O�
��Shea. His family lived on a farm between Jessup and Marshall. He was a year or two older than me … we briefly went to the same high school, attended the same church. But we barely knew each other. The year I moved back to Jessup, I was fifteen and he was seventeen—a few months later his parents died in a car accident. Less than a week after he graduated, he left his baby sister with his aunt and uncle and joined the army—and that is the last time I ever heard from or saw him.”
“You’re lying,” he said forcefully, closing the gap between them until they were practically nose to nose.
She smiled at him and took a step back in an effort to curb the urge to make him bleed again. “Prove it,” she said.
“Maybe I’ll go ahead and file that police brutality complaint after all,” Croft said.
Hearing him say it tied her stomach in knots, but she was suddenly sure he’d never do it. Not because he was decent but because what he wanted from her was far bigger than an exclusive about how she’d survived her sadistic half-brother. She called his bluff. “Be my guest, just make sure you spell my name right,” she said and turned, starting down the stairs again.
This time Croft didn’t follow.
TWENTY-NINE
Sabrina shoved the door at the bottom of the stairwell open onto the light-filled lobby. Air rushed into her lungs, brushed against her damp skin, turning the cool sweat to ice. She’d go back to the station, throw the rest of her shit in a box, and go home. Have dinner with Jason and Riley and do her level best to not fight with Val. Go back to Miss Ettie’s and try to get some sleep. She had to requalify for SWAT—
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she fished it out. She recognized the prefix; it was coming from the station.
“This is Vaughn.”
“Hi, Inspector, it’s Anderson,” he said in a low voice. “I ran the trace like you said.”
She stopped walking. “And?”
Sacrificial Muse (A Sabrina Vaughn Novel) Page 11
