Envy fa-3

by J. R. Ward

  “Like . . . what is it?”

  Her hesitation told him that she wanted to know, but didn’t at the same time. “Bits and pieces . . . if you get my drift.”

  Her voice dropped to a mere whisper. “Will you take me in there?”

  “To the Evidence room? Oh, yeah, no, I can’t. It’s only for authorized personnel.”

  “But you’re authorized, aren’t you.”

  “And I’d like to keep my job.”

  “Who would know?” She tilted forward even farther. To the point where he imagined that if he sat up a little straighter, they’d be kissing.

  Afraid of making a fool out of himself, he moved away, pushing his chair back.

  “I wouldn’t tell,” she whispered.

  “It’s not so simple. You have to sign in and out, and there are security cameras. It’s not like a break room.”

  He could hear the petulance in his own voice, and abruptly despised his balding, half-assed self. Maybe this was the reason he never got laid.

  “But you could get me in . . . if you wanted to.” Her lips were absolutely mesmerizing, moving slowly as she enunciated the words. “Right? I know you could, if you wanted to. And I wouldn’t touch anything.”

  God, how strange was this? He’d expected to come into work and just do his thing like he did every night. But here it was, this . . . crossroads.

  Did he Gary Peters it? Or did he grow a set and actually do something with this hot chick?

  “You know what? Let’s go.”

  He stood up and double-checked that his keys were on his belt—which, of course, they were. And what do you know, he had a reason to go up to the third floor. During the night shift, there was only a skeleton crew on at HQ, so he was the one responsible for walking any stuff upstairs—and Hicks and Rodriguez had just brought in two grams of pot that had been sealed and signed for.

  “Oh, my God,” she said, leaping off the desk. “For real?”

  His chest went back to feeling thick rather than hollow. “Yeah. Come on.”

  He put up his break sign, the one that told people to hit him up on his remote if they needed to book anyone or log in evidence, and then he opened the door for her.

  As she passed by and he smelled her perfume, he felt taller than he had been when he’d come into work, and it was great. And he knew there was a really good chance of getting away with this. The Evidence staff had been working around the clock for days on the Kroner stuff, but they’d finally decided they needed to sleep, so there would be no one up there. And damn right Britnae wasn’t going to touch anything—he was going to make sure of that—so there was going to be no need for anyone to check the security tapes.

  Risky? Little bit. But at worst, they’d reprimand him—he had the cleanest record for attendance and performance of anyone in intake. Because he had no life. And Britnae was never going to approach him again.

  Sometimes you just had to be something other than a Gary Peters behind the desk—

  Britnae jumped up and hugged him. “You are so cool!”

  “Ah . . . you’re welcome.”

  Shit, what a dumb ass he was. And thank God she didn’t hold onto him for long because he nearly fainted.

  Except you know what, he did feel cool as he led the way, taking her up in the elevator to the second floor and then insisting, like he was 007, that they hit the stairs for the rest of the way. At the top landing, he opened the fire exit, and listened. Nothing. Not even cleaning people. And down at the end of the hall, the lights in the forensics lab were off.

  “I’ve never been up here before,” Britnae whispered into his sleeve as she gripped his arm.

  “I’ll take care of you. Come on.”

  They tiptoed down the hall to a heavy steel door marked EVIDENCE—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Using his keys, he unlocked the thing and pushed the way into an anteroom where the check-in was. His nerves perked up as he went over to the desk where the receptionist sat during normal business hours, but as he logged in and registered, he knew he wasn’t going to turn back now.

  “Oh, my God, I’m so excited!” As Britnae put her hands on his upper arm and leaned into him, like he was her protector, he didn’t bother hiding his smile, because she couldn’t see his face.

  This was . . . very cool, he thought as he started to enter the cannabis into the system.

  As Devina rubbed herself against the officer’s body, she did this sad sack Gary Peters guy a favor by putting the security camera in the corner to sleep. It was fun to pretend to be the office ditz, and the idiot desk jockey was eating up the lie, but the ruse needed to begin and end with the pair of them tonight.

  He wasn’t going to remember this tomorrow morning: In order for this to work, the status quo had to be preserved.

  “Okay, let’s go in,” the guy said as he logged off the computer.

  Using Britnae’s high-pitched voice and Kardashian, fake-ass, California pronunciation, she said, “Oh, my God, I’m soooo psyched. This is too real!”

  Blah, blah, blah . . .but she got the tone right, because she’d been casing headquarters for quite a while now. And it wasn’t like the vocabulary was a stretch—add OMG to any one noun and one verb and that was that.

  Over at the second bolted steel door, Gary Peters swiped his pass card through the reader on the wall, and then the lock disengaged with a clunk.

  “You ready?” he said, all Big Man.

  “I don’t know . . . I mean, yes!”

  She bounced a couple of times and then resumed breasticulating on his arm as she held his hand. And while he soaked up the show, she thought, What a dumbass.

  The instant they walked inside the massive storage facility, the cat-and-mouse routine took a backseat to her mission. On some level, she was pissed off at this diversion, but then again, she supposed she would have had to do something like this anyway.

  Jim Heron’s disappearance was forcing her hand, though, and she hated that.

  She just couldn’t fucking believe there was no sign of him. First time that had happened with an angel, and she knew only one thing for sure—he hadn’t backed out, or given up. Not in his nature. The war was still going on, and she had a soul to take over—and there were ways of guaranteeing that he showed himself.

  The guard led her down the long rows of floor-to-ceiling shelving that were set at various heights and filled with boxes and bags of an incalculable variety of shapes and sizes. Everything was clearly cataloged and indexed, little hanging tags and mounted alpha-numerical signs delineating some sort of system.

  What a collection. What organization . . .

  Devina had to stop and take it all in. “This is amazing.”

  The idiot officer got all proud and shit, even though he was just a cog that worked in the larger machine. “There are tens of thousands of pieces of evidence here at any given time. Everything is referenced by case number and logged into the computer so we can find things efficiently.” He started walking again, heading for the recesses of the place. “There are exceptions, though, like with Kroner, because there’s just so much associated with the case.”

  As she followed, she stared up and around at all the objects. What. A. Turn-on.

  All the way in the back, there was a bank of empty tables with chairs, like the place was a cafeteria serving up inanimate objects for consumption.

  “Detectives and officers are allowed to come in and take more pictures or reexamine things or pull evidence for court. The lab also takes the objects down the hall from time to time, but they have to return the evidence. Kroner’s stuff is over here. Do not touch anything.”

  Around the back of a six-foot-tall partition, there was a temporary workstation set up with tables, chairs, computer and photographic equipment, as well as bins of empty plastic bags and rolls of adhesive labels. But that wasn’t the interesting stuff. Running along low-slung shelves that were eight or nine feet long, there was a lineup of bar-coded bags that had jars and jewelry and other things in them.
>
  Her little minion had been a busy, busy boy, hadn’t he.

  “Usually, evidence is logged in down at intake, or in the lab if it’s human remains, but there was so much taken from that impounded truck, they had to set up a temporary processing unit here. All the tissue samples were done first, because they were worried about preserving them—but it turned out Kroner knew exactly what to keep the stuff in.”

  Of course he had. He wanted to have parts of his victims with him always.

  “There’s a lot of other objects here.” The officer lifted a white sheet that covered a huge, shallow box.

  Ah, yes, exactly what she had hoped to find—a tangle of T-shirts, jewelry, purses, hair ties, and other personal effects.

  Taking it all in, she felt truly, deeply sorry for Kroner. She knew exactly where his obsession was coming from, the way you didn’t want to lose what you had worked so hard for, the way you treasured your connection with the objects. And it was even more difficult for him, because unlike herself, he didn’t have a way to keep his victims forever—and now he had lost his collection.

  Abruptly, Devina struggled for breath.

  He had lost his precious objects, and here they were, under the aegis of humans who touched them and recataloged them and might possibly, someday in the far future, throw them away.

  “Britnae? Are you okay?”

  The officer appeared right by her side, hitching a hold on the image of the secretary’s arm.

  “Sit down,” she heard him say from a distance.

  As the room started to spin, Devina did what she was told and put her head between the knees that were not her own. Throwing out a palm, she gripped the edge of the table as if she could hold on to consciousness that way.

  “Shit, shit . . . here, let me get you some cool water.”

  As the officer shot off, his footfalls went at a dead run down the stacks, and she knew she didn’t have a lot of time. With a shaking, clammy hand, she took out the gold earring she had brought with her from her own collection. Tears waved across her vision as she realized anew that she was going to have to give the thing up if she wanted to progress this round with Heron—and DelVecchio.

  The prospect had seemed so reasonable, so dealable, back when she’d been in her private place, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of trophies. What was one earring from a dead virgin? She was keeping the other half of the set—and she had more objects to remember that fucking Sissy Barten with.

  Now, though, sitting next to the carnage of Kroner’s keepsakes, she felt like she was sending one of her very souls out into a sea of unknown and permanent loss. But what choice did she have? She had to flush out Heron, and just as important, she had to set up the endgame—

  Abruptly, the image of the hot blond secretary-type began to disintegrate, Devina’s true form emerging through the slipcover of young and pink and human, her dead, ropy flesh and curled gray claws cradling the cheap-ass bird earring.

  For a moment, she didn’t care. Too shaken by her own hoarding instinct, she couldn’t marshal any urgency at the fact that the officer would soon be returning and then she’d have to either infect him or kill him—neither of which she had the energy for.

  Except she had to pull herself together.

  Forcing herself to think, she called up a vision of her therapist, picturing that roly-poly, fully actualized, postmenopausal tree hugger who not only had an answer for everything . . . but seemed to know what the fuck she was talking about.

  Devina, the anxiety is not about the things. It’s about your place in this world. . . . You must remember that you don’t need objects to justify your existence or make yourself feel safe and secure.

  More to the point, unless she got her shit together, and planted the earring, she was going to compromise her larger goals even further.

  You’ve already lost once, she reminded herself.

  Two deep breaths . . . and another. Then she looked down at her hand and willed the image of young, dewy flesh back into place. The concentration required gave her a headache that lingered after she was back to being who she wasn’t, but there was no time to dwell on the thumping at her temples. Standing up on legs that were about as solid as soda straws, she stumbled over to the box of objects. Flipping up the corner of the drape, she planted the dove earring and then skated back to the seat the officer had put her in.

  Just in time, too.

  “Here, drink this.”

  She looked up at the guy. Going by his face, it appeared as if the Britnae ruse was still working: One thing you could guarantee about humans was a total freak-out if they got a gander at the real her.

  “Thank you,” she said hoarsely as she reached forward . . . with a hand that had pink-polished fake nails. But how long was that going to last?

  She drank the cold water, crumpled the paper cup, and tossed the thing into a trash bin under the table. “Please . . . can you help me out of here? Now?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He dragged her up from the chair, throwing a surprisingly sturdy arm around her waist and bearing most of her weight.

  Down the long rows. Out through the locked door thanks to that pass card. Into the corridor beyond.

  The elevator was a blessing, even if the descent made her feel even dizzier.

  The plan, she told herself. Work the plan. This was the sacrifice that was necessary to bring everything back where it needed be.

  When they were in his office, he seated her in one of the plastic chairs next to his desk, and brought her a second glass of water. Which helped clear her head a little more.

  Focusing on the officer, she decided she would not only let him live; she would give him a little present.

  “Thank you,” she said to him, meaning it.

  “You’re welcome. Do you have to drive home?”

  She gave that a pass, and leaned forward. Mentally reaching through the stale air, she grabbed onto his eyes and wheedled into his brain, strolling along the metaphorical hallways of his mind, viewing casually the evidence on his private shelves.

  Just as she had planted the earring, she inserted a knowledge in his brain that he was a Casanova beyond compare, a guy who, in spite of his modest looks, was wanted by women and therefore confident and manly around them.

  It was the kind of thing that was going to get him laid. Because unlike men, who were visual creatures, women tended to go more for what was in between the ears.

  And self-possession was sexy.

  Devina left shortly thereafter, taking with her the memories of what they’d done and where they’d gone.r act of charity both disgusted her and made her want to thumb her nose at the insufferable Nigel.

  Just as a nun with the purest heart imaginable could still curse on occasion, a demon could in rare instances be moved to show compassion.

  But it made her feel like she needed a shower to get the stank off.

  CHAPTER 21

  “I think I’m in heaven.”

  Reilly hid a smile as Veck stared with awe at the slice of apple pie her mother had put in front of him.

  “You really made this?” he said as he looked up.

  “From scratch, including the crust,” her dad announced.

  “And not only that, she can do your taxes with her eyes closed and one arm tied behind her back.”

  “I think I’m in love.”

  “Sorry, she’s taken.” Her dad pulled her mom in for a quick kiss as he got his plate of dessert. “Right?”

  “Right,” was the answer spoken against his mouth. Reilly passed a quart of vanilla ice cream to Veck. “À la mode?”

  “You betcha.”

  Turned out Detective DelVecchio was a good little eater. He’d had seconds on the Vitello Saltimbocca and the Linguine con Pomodoro. Not a big salad guy, but that was not a surprise. And it looked like dessert might well be a twofer also.

  Although his capacity to savor her mother’s cooking wasn’t all she was impressed with: He’d held his own against her da
d. Jokingly and with respect, he’d made it clear he wasn’t a pushover, even though Tom Reilly had been known to scare elected public officials half to death. As a result?

  “And, yeah, Veck, I agree with you,” her father announced. “There’s a lot out there that needs changing in the system. It’s a hard balance between prosecution and persecution—especially among certain racial and ethnic groups. Socioeconomic, too.”

  Yup, the full approval had been bestowed on her partner.

  As talk sprang up around the subject of profiling in law enforcement, she sat back and watched Veck. He seemed so much more relaxed than she’d ever seen him.

  And man, he was handsome.

  A half hour and another serving of pie later, Veck helped bring the plates to the sink and hopped on drying duty. Then it was time to coat up and head for the exit.

  “Thanks, Mom,” she said, hugging the woman who had always been there for her. “And Dad.”

  Going over to her father, she had to tiptoe it to put her arms around him, stretching high and not making it even halfway around his shoulders.

  “I love you,” he said, holding her tight. And then in her ear, he whispered, “Nice guy you got there.”

  Before she could return a he’s-not-actually-mine, handshakes were being passed around and she and Veck were out the door.

  As she was backing out into the street, they both waved and then it was all over.

  “Your parents are incredible,” he said, as she drove them away.

  A flush of pride in her family de her smile. “They are.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking . . .”

  When he didn’t turn to look at her, and he didn’t finish the sentence, she had the sense her answer was important to him, but that he wasn’t going to force her to reply.

  “I’m more than happy to talk about it.” As rain started to fall, she pulled up to a stop sign and put her wipers on. “My parents had always worked with at-risk youth and crisis centers—starting before they’d even met. There’s one run by the Catholic Church downtown, and after they were married, they used to spend Saturdays there, crunching the books, soliciting donations, helping with the displaced families. The woman who gave birth to me and I came into the place after her and one of her three boyfriends got into a fight and she lost the sight in her left eye.” Reilly glanced over. “I saw it happen. It’s my first memory, actually.”