Innocent Prey (A Brown and de Luca Novel)

by Maggie Shayne

  Okay, not his dream job. My dream job for him. Because as much as I didn’t want to get overly attached to the guy, I’d be pretty damned devastated if anything happened to him. And in his current job, that was a constant threat. Day in, day out.

  And yeah, I was breaking one of my own multi-published cardinal rules of life here by thinking I’d feel better if only he would... Doesn’t matter what you use to fill in that blank, it’s always the same result. In my case, the blank was filled with “get a nice, safe desk job.”

  One of my other cardinal rules for living was to do what you loved, not what you felt you should. Yet I was expecting him to do what he should, what would be better for the boys and better for me, though I hadn’t mentioned that part. I was pushing him—subtly, but still pushing him—to do what we wanted him to do, rather than what his own soul wanted. And it wasn’t because I didn’t agree 100 percent with my public stance on the matter. No, in this case what I wrote wasn’t bullshit at all, and I knew it. My happiness was my job, no one else’s, and the notion of “I’d be happy if only he would” was a false one anyway.

  And still I was feeling like I’d be happier if he would take the nice safe chief’s job. Because I was scared he’d get himself killed, and I didn’t think I could handle that.

  I looked at him sitting there with the fire making his face look harsher and tougher than it did in daylight. Josh had claimed a stick and stuffed multiple marshmallows onto the end of it. He was toasting them now, leaning forward from his chair. Myrtle was, predictably, right by his side, waiting for handouts. Her nose was twitching like crazy with the smells of the campfire and the water and the rapidly charring marshmallows. Jeremy had wandered out to the end of the dock with his fishing pole, cast it into the water and then sat in one of the white wicker chairs. He was too cool to hang with the adults eating chocolate. Mason was looking at me, had been watching me survey the entire idyllic scene. I read his eyes. They were smiling, and saying, Not so bad, huh?

  I gave him a slight nod. Not so bad. Not bad at all.

  13

  The Asshole had lowered a radio down with the latest meal. Once he’d gotten his pictures he hadn’t ventured down into the hole with the girls again. But the radio was good. The radio was just what Stephanie had been waiting for.

  She turned it on nice and loud, then gathered the girls around the coffee table, over a board game, and tilted her head downward, as if she were staring at the game board.

  “Sit just like I’m sitting.”

  “What?” Lexus asked. “What the hell you staring at, girl? You can’t even see.”

  “Do what she says,” Sissy said. And Stevie heard and felt her sit on the other end of the couch. Lexi heaved a sigh, and dragged a chair closer to the table and the game board.

  “I don’t really think they’re listening to us or even watching us,” Stephanie said softly. “But just in case, pretend we’re playing the game and keep your heads down so they can’t read our lips.”

  Lexus popped the popper in the middle of the game board, then moved a plastic token. “Happy?”

  “I heard something the other day when I was in the bathroom changing.”

  That got the other girls’ attention. “What do you mean, you heard something?” Lexus asked.

  “Just what I said. There was another guy. He was up top. The water must be piped down from up there. I could hear everything he said.”

  “Holy shit. Who was he talkin’ to? What he say?”

  “Lexi, shut up and let her talk,” Sissy whispered loudly.

  “Ssshh.” Stevie reached out for the popper, and pressed it down, then felt for a plastic token and had Sissy help her move it around the board. “I don’t know who he was talking to. But I do know he’s planning to get another girl. Just one more, to replace Venora.”

  “What good does it do us to know that?” Lexus asked. “Jeez, girl, it’s not like we can do anything about it, and anyway, we always figured there was going to be four of us.”

  “Once he has all four, we’re going somewhere else,” Stevie said. “When they move us again, that’ll be our chance. Maybe our last chance.”

  “But...but I thought you said it was too dangerous, Stevie?” Sissy’s voice came from an angle that told Stevie she was looking directly at her.

  “Head down, Sissy,” she said.

  The other girl sniffled but obeyed. Stevie could tell when Sissy spoke again. “Last time you tried to escape, your friend got shot.”

  “I know, Sissy. I know that, and I regret it right to my bones, but—”

  “What choice do we have?” Lexus demanded. “You tell me that, Sissy. What choice do we have? Are we gonna spend our lives in this hole or some other one? In chains, maybe? Who knows where we end up? Dead, most likely. Sooner or later, dead and dumped like poor Venora. It’s not like they can let us go. Ever. We’d tell, right? We’d tell what happened here. Even if we swear up and down we won’t, they can’t risk it. They gonna keep us till they done with us, and then we dead.” Lexus paused for a breath, then, more softly, asked, “Right, Stevie?”

  “Probably. I have to admit, I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

  “Oh, God.” There were tears in Sissy’s voice.

  “They gonna kill me anyway,” Lexi said. “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna make it easy for them. I’m gonna go out fighting. And I’m gonna make them sorry sons of bitches before I do.”

  Stevie nodded. “I’m right with you, Lexus. A hundred percent.” Then she waited, but she only heard soft, shallow breaths coming from the newer girl. “Sissy?” she prompted.

  “I’m scared.”

  “I know. I know you’re scared, Sissy.” Stevie reached out to run a hand over the girl’s hair. It was curly and short and she wished she could see it. “But I’ve also been thinking that once we leave here, we can’t be sure they won’t split us up.”

  “No!”

  “Shhh.”

  “They try that shit, I...” But Lexus didn’t finish the thought.

  Probably, Stevie thought, because there wouldn’t be much she could do about it if it happened. “We have a better chance together than we ever will apart,” she said.

  Sissy was crying softly, but finally she seemed to pull herself together. “Okay. I’ll do whatever you think we should do,” she said.

  “Somebody else might get killed,” Lexus said. “That’s gotta be said right up front. We gotta know what we risking.”

  “You’re right.” Stevie nodded hard. “But what’s the alternative? Just give up? Let them take us wherever they want? Do whatever they want to us? We’re being held prisoner, Lexi.”

  “I know.” Lexus gave a heavy sigh. “Move your game piece, Sissy.”

  Sissy popped the popper and moved a piece accordingly. “What’s the plan?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Stevie said. “But I think we start by being cooperative. We make them think we’re resigned to our fate. That we’ve given up. We act beaten, you understand? Submissive. No mouthing back. No resistance. Like the weakest dogs in the pack.”

  “So they don’t expect no trouble,” Lexus said slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, that make sense. Maybe they get lazy, don’t bother drugging us the next time we gotta move.”

  “Exactly. They don’t drug us, we wait for a chance to run for it, and then we do,” Stevie said.

  “I think we might be better off waiting for a chance to cut their throats,” Lexi said.

  Stevie reached out, felt for the popper and popped it. “What’d I get?”

  “Six,” Sissy told her. “You get to go twice.”

  Stevie found her game piece, and Sissy helped her count six spaces with it, tapping each one. “If we get the chance to kill them, then yeah, I think we have to kill them. I don’t think we have a choice.”

  She stopped after she said that, just sitting there and feeling the disconnect in her mind. When, in her wildest dreams, had she ever imagined she would say something like that? Much less that when
she did, she would mean every word of it?

  But she did, she realized. She meant it. And she didn’t feel like it was going to be all that hard, either. She didn’t think she’d even hesitate.

  Then she popped again. The game of Trouble was easy enough without eyesight. Getting out of trouble, maybe not quite so much.

  * * *

  They slept over. The boys in two of my five guest rooms, and Mason with me, in the master suite that was kind of my notion of a royal palace. Before my transplant, everything in it had been cream-colored. I’d redecorated it in a style I liked to call Early Jeannie’s Bottle, because I just loved the rich bright jewel tones. I’d done it in February, when the dull blahs of an upstate New York winter grew too dull even for my innocent recently reborn eyes. Grays and whites, grays and whites, grays and whites. I was going to need a winter home, I decided. Someplace colorful.

  Anyway, my bedspread and drapes were matching red velvet with gold brocade accent pillows and tiebacks, and short fringy trim. I’d painted the walls a creamy white, and the carpet and woodwork were emerald-green. Then I’d chosen blue glass pieces for the dresser, and artwork with rich Hindu themes, lots of ruby and gold, emerald and sapphire. The theme carried through to the attached bathroom, and I loved it.

  Mason said it looked like a Valentine card on crack. I wanted to add a canopy and draping wispy bed curtains. Yet another reason we could never be together. You know, under the same roof.

  Holy shit, when had I even entertained the thought of cohabitation before?

  Mason had planned to go to bed in another guest room, wait for the boys to fall asleep and then sneak into my room, like we did on my frequent visits to his place. But Jeremy called him on it when he said good-night, and I was lucky enough to be standing nearby when he did.

  “You can quit playing games with us, Uncle Mace. We both know you’re gonna go sleep with Rachel.”

  “Yeah, Uncle Mace,” Josh added. He was in bed, under the covers, hugging my bulldog. “You always do that after you think we’ve gone to sleep. But it’s okay. We understand.”

  Mason had been stunned by such an observation coming from an eleven-year-old and asked, “You do?”

  “Yeah. Whenever I’m around, Myrtle sleeps with me instead of her.” He hugged my traitorous little bulldog closer. “Rache must get lonely all by herself.”

  “Yeah,” Jeremy said. “She must get lonely.”

  I poked my head in through the doorway. “Watch it, Jere. She’s standing right here.”

  Jeremy shrugged but had the good manners to blush a little. Mason sighed, gave Josh a final tuck and a kiss on the forehead, then squeezed Jeremy’s shoulder, because apparently that one was too old to appreciate being kissed on the forehead. Jeremy rolled his eyes and headed next door to his own assigned room.

  When he’d closed the door behind him, Mason slung an arm around me and we headed down the hall to my room.

  “So it looks like we haven’t been fooling anyone,” I said. “Guess they inherited your detective genes.”

  “My brother was adopted, remember?”

  “Then they got them by osmosis.”

  He nodded. “You know, I really thought they’d believe me. I mean, they’ve seen the inside of your bedroom. The colors alone ought to keep me from sleeping in there.”

  “I’ll change it again in six months.”

  “To something I’ll hate even more?”

  “Possibly. I was thinking maybe a jungle theme. Will that drive you away?”

  “Only if I don’t get to be Tarzan.” He swept me close for a passionate, walking kiss, and stumbled me backward right through my bedroom doorway and across the bed, kicking said door closed behind us.

  And I thought to myself, this really isn’t so bad at all.

  And it wasn’t. Not until the dream came. It was about Vanessa Cantone, of all people. And that didn’t make any sense at all, if this new connection of mine was to the dead. Because Vanessa wasn’t dead at all.

  At first.

  She was in some kind of big industrial-looking room that might’ve been round, with three girls and two men. One of the girls was Stephanie Mattheson. I knew her right away. Hell, I’d been looking at her face for days now on the Missing posters and police files. The other two, I had only seen in the photos with their files. Cecelia “Sissy” Dunham was a beautiful black girl, and Lexus Carmichael was as white as anyone I’d ever seen. She had short, sassy platinum-blond hair and eyebrows so pale she damn near looked albino. There were two men, too, both wearing ski masks. One of them was pointing a gun at Cantone.

  No, no. No no no.

  He pulled the hammer back. Cantone looked him dead in the eye. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t beg.

  I don’t want to see this. Wake up, wake up, dammit!

  But I didn’t wake up. The gunshot exploded. So did Agent Cantone’s head. She was dead before she hit the floor.

  I sat up in bed with my heart choking me, gasping for breath and feeling like I wasn’t getting any.

  “Rache?” Mason was there. I knew he was there, but I couldn’t rip my brain away from that vision of Cantone hitting the floor with her head blown apart.

  “Rachel, come on, look at me.” He patted my face a little.

  It worked. I blinked the dream away and locked on to his eyes.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened?”

  “I dreamed...I saw...”

  Flash! The same scene blazed into my head, only this time Mason played the role of Vanessa, and it was him on the floor in a pool of blood and brain matter.

  “Jesus,” I said softly. And I wasn’t cussing, I was praying.

  “Rache, come on. Talk to me. What did you see?”

  “I...” I looked at him, sitting up in bed beside me, shirtless and alive and perfect, and tears blurred my vision. I slid my arms around his waist and laid my head on his hard chest. He hugged me close, rocked me slowly. “I don’t remember,” I whispered.

  I hated lying to him. But what was I gonna tell him? That Cantone was in danger? So he could get in the way of that and get his brains blown out instead? Because it was pretty clear that was what was going to happen. And there was no fucking way I was going to help it happen. Not to him. There had to be a better answer than that. I’d just damn well better hurry up and find it.

  * * *

  Mason was sure that Rachel remembered whatever the dream had been. He would have turned in his shield if he hadn’t been able to tell that much. But if she wouldn’t tell him, there wasn’t much he could do to find out.

  She was shaken up by it, that much was obvious. And for the moment, he thought the best thing he could do was give her a little time to work through it. She would tell him when she was ready.

  His cell phone rang. He looked at the time—3:37 a.m. Shit, calls at this hour were never good news. He answered the phone. “Brown.”

  “Detective?”

  “Yeah, who is this?”

  “I—I need to talk to you.”

  “And I repeat, who is this?”

  “Rodney Carr, sir. From Social Services? We spoke in my office...about Venora and the—”

  “Yeah, okay. I know who you are. What’s going on, Mr. Carr?”

  “I need to see you. Alone. I have... Something happened.”

  Mason sighed, pushed a hand through his hair. Rachel was looking up at him now, curious and blinking tears from her eyes. Tears. Damn, she didn’t cry easily. That must’ve been some dream.

  “I know you were checking on the other girls who’d aged out, Mr. Carr. I’m sorry we didn’t contact you to tell you that we got that information already.”

  “That’s not why I’m calling. I think...I think I have information that can help. I need you to come here. But be careful. I think I’m being watched.”

  That got Mason’s attention. He sat up straighter, and turned on the bedside lamp. “Where are you right now?”

  Rachel sat
up straighter, too, watching him with eyes so perceptive he almost thought she could hear both sides of the conversation.

  “I’m at my apartment. I’m using my partner’s cell.”

  “Okay. I’m writing the number down. I’m gonna call you back when I get close. Gimme your address.”

  Rodney rattled it off, and Mason winced a little at the neighborhood as he scribbled it down. “Don’t go anywhere, and don’t talk to anybody until you hear from me. Okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “All right. I’ll be...ah, jeez, a half hour. You want me to send someone who’s closer? Do you feel like you’re in danger?”

  “No, they won’t hurt me. They need me. Half hour.”

  “Yeah. Less if I can.”

  “Thanks, Detective Brown.”

  “See you soon.” Mason disconnected and rolled out of bed, pulling on his jeans and pocketing the phone practically in one motion. He grabbed his shirt as Rachel got out of bed on the other side.

  “What’s going on with Rodney?” she asked.

  “He thinks he’s being watched. Thinks he knows something about what was going on with the case and wants to talk in person.”

  “I knew he was a good guy.” She grabbed a pair of jeans from a drawer.

  “Rache, what’re you doing?”

  “Getting dressed. We have to hur—”

  “Not we, babe. Me.”

  She blinked, and he thought she was probably wondering if he had really just called her “babe.” It had slid out naturally, and he was a little embarrassed.

  “You’ve got to stay here, Rache. There are the kids, and the dog—”

  “Hey, the kids are yours,” she said teasingly. He thought. “How about you stay and I’ll go?”

  “Because he called me. Because I’m the cop and you’re the self-help writer. Because of a thousand other things, Rache, and just because—” He grabbed her and kissed her hard. “Because that. Okay? I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  He turned around and left, grabbing his wallet and keys off the nightstand, buttoning his shirt on the way down the stairs.

  * * *

  Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!