by DC Malone
I hung up.
“Luka, I think you should call your niece.”
“I have already been trying,” he said, tossing his phone into the center console. “And before you ask, we’re on our way there now.”
“It may be nothing,” I said, trying to dispel his worry but not sounding convincing in the least. “Probably just Tompkins running off at the mouth.”
Luka remained silent.
“Do you happen to know how their marriage ended? Was there a lot of hostility between them?”
Luka grunted. “Makayla ended it. I know that much. She told me Carter was barely ever there, even when he was physically present. Work stuff—cop stuff—I’m sure. And she finally decided she wanted better. She deserved better.”
There was something cold and determined in Luka’s tone, and I knew two things immediately. One, Luka was the kind of person who would do anything he could to protect those he loved.
And two, even if we got to Carter’s ex-wife before Carter did, it was still going to take everything I could muster to keep Luka from killing him.
Chapter 13
Makayla Grimm, the former Makayla Carter, lived in the suburb of Fenton, less than fifteen minutes outside of the city. She had a condo in a little development of fifty or so identical places that lined both sides of the lanes that jutted out from a central roundabout like spokes on a wagon wheel. To my eyes, each of the condos looked exactly the same. The lanes, with their precise little cul-de-sacs, looked exactly the same, and even the minimal lawn decorations—a bird feeder here, a birdbath there—looked exactly the same. To say the area was cookie cutter was to do the uniqueness of cookie cutters a disservice. That uniformity probably appealed to some, but to me, it was a half-step away from The Stepford Wives. Not to mention how difficult it would be to find the right house after a night of general merrymaking.
We pulled up to unit 1008 just as the late winter sky was sucking the orange light of the sun down past the horizon. Luka had maintained his calm yet intense silence most of the way there, but I could tell he was nervous by the way he had gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make it creek and groan with every turn.
“Maybe she just forgot to charge her phone,” I suggested as we walked up to the door. “Happens to the best of us.” Some of the dread had worn off when we pulled up and Carter’s car wasn’t sitting out front. I supposed that he could have gotten here before us and already left, but that didn’t seem to offer enough time to do whatever it was he intended to do.
Instead of answering, Luka hammered his fist against the door, causing it to shake worryingly in its frame. He waited all of five seconds before repeating the process, only more violently.
“If she doesn’t answer in the next few seconds I’m going to rip—”
The door swung open, rendering the rest of his statement unnecessary. On the other side, a woman of about thirty or thirty-five—it was hard to say for sure because she had been gifted with a natural youthful glow that you typically saw only in magazine and television models—stared out at us with wide eyes. She was a few inches taller than me even without shoes and had her black hair tied up in a hasty ponytail. Sweat shined on the smooth, dark skin of her brow and cheek, deepening the gray of her sweatshirt in a neat little inverted triangle down from the collar.
“Unc?” Makayla asked. “Something wrong?”
“You did not answer your phone.”
“Sorry, had my earbuds in. I was exercising. What’s going on?”
“Have you heard from Carter?” I butted in.
“Not in a while.” She shot a questioning look toward Luka, then turned back to me. “I don’t want to sound rude, but who are you?”
“Sorry, probably should have led with that. My name’s Meredith,” I said. “I’m a colleague.”
“You’re a cop too?”
“Uh, more a colleague of your uncle’s, really.”
“Oh, I get it. You’re one of… I get it. You guys should come on in.” She moved out of the doorway, and we followed her through a small foyer and into a dining room.
“The place is a mess, but that’s what you get for showing up unannounced.” She said it with a smile and beckoned us to take a seat at her dining table. Maybe it was just the smile, but I really couldn’t make out the family resemblance between her and Luka.
The condo was not a mess. At least, not by any standard I was aware of. She still had a yoga mat and a few free weights laid out in the corner of the living room just beyond where we sat at her table. But other than that, her place could have been torn from the pages of Suburbia Today or something similar. Her tastes tended toward the monochromatic, with a mix of modern tables and a minimalist sofa and chair rounding out the furniture in the living room. There were several tasteful modern art prints on the walls, none of which I recognized, and the only real splash of color came from the green, broad-leafed vines that snaked out across several of the windows.
After we were seated, and Makayla had made certain we didn’t want anything to eat or drink, she turned her gaze on Luka. It was a steely, shrewd look, and I finally saw the familial similarity.
“Now, what’s all this with Joss? And don’t even think of giving me the watered-down version, Unc. I saw how you looked when I opened the door. Something’s wrong. Really wrong. I’ve never seen you scared in my whole life—didn’t think it was possible, to be honest.”
“He’s not exactly himself,” Luka said. “We thought he might come here if the two of you had any unresolved business.”
“Unresolved business?” Makayla rolled her eyes. “What was I, his accountant? And since when does talking to my ex-husband require a pair of bodyguards?”
Makayla held up a hand when Luka started to answer. “You had your chance, Unc. Let’s see if your girlfriend can do a better job.”
“She’s not—” Luka started.
A tilt of her head and a hand on her hip were enough to silence the big guy once again.
“Alright, “I said with a sigh. “But this is going to sound a little bizarre.”
“Not my first time.”
I filled her in on the situation as best as I understood it, not sugarcoating any of the details. A demon, murderous parishioners, and an ex-husband who may or may not have been on his way to try to strangle her to death at that very minute. Through my whole story, Makayla only moved once to cross her arms across her chest. When I finished, she nodded.
“Okay, I get it,” she said.
“That’s it? You get it?”
“What did you want me to do, swoon back into one of those chairs? Work myself up into a panic? I told you, this ain’t my first rodeo, hon. In case you haven’t notice, my uncle—who irritatingly looks about five or ten years younger than me, but who’s actually ten years older than my daddy—can lift SUVs and move faster than a wildcat. I may not be part of your strange little world, but my toes have been dipped in the water too long for me to feel the shock of the cold. So, what’s the plan?”
I looked to Luka, slightly at a loss. “Well, so far, this was the plan. We’re kind of working in the dark at the moment. Our best guess was that he’d come for you, but with each passing moment, that’s seeming less and less likely.”
“Why exactly did you think Joss would want to kill me?” she asked. “Just because of the divorce? We’re actually on pretty good terms, all things considered. Don’t get me wrong, it was a sad thing, and neither of us was totally okay with it. But it was never a bitter or hostile kind of situation.”
I rubbed my eyes. The day was starting to feel at least a week long. “It was the best we had to go on. I talked with Carter’s partner, Tompkins, and he made it seem like Carter had been fixated on you lately.”
Makayla made a harsh sound in her throat. “Al Tompkins, now there’s a guy I wouldn’t be surprised to see on a few hit lists.”
I smiled. I was beginning to like Makayla.
“But if Joss had been pining over me lately,” she continu
ed, “it’s news to me. I mean, we don’t talk every day or anything, but he’s never mentioned…”
“What is it?” I asked. A sudden look of concentration had come over her.
“Probably nothing. It’s just the last time I talked with Joss was when he asked me to contact Luka for him a few days ago. Up until then, we hadn’t spoken in a couple of weeks, and I had thought it might be a good time to broach a matter with him. He’d been asking me for a favor, so it seemed like the perfect time to piggyback on that.”
“Piggyback how exactly?” I had a sinking feeling, even though I had no idea what she was talking about.
Luka leaned forward in his chair. I could tell that he could feel it too.
Makayla sighed. “I’ve been seeing someone for a couple of months. It wasn’t a big deal or anything, but I wanted to be the one to tell Joss. It’s an awkward thing, but he was cool with it. I mainly didn’t want him to hear it from someone else. We still have quite a few mutual friends, as you’d imagine. I thought he deserved hearing it from me rather than through some gossip.”
I was on my feet before she even finished speaking. Luka was too.
“How specific were you when you told him?” I asked.
“I don’t understand.”
“Did you give him the guy’s name? Was it someone he already knew? Anything. I need to know if Carter can track him down.”
Makayla shook her head. “No, I didn’t say who it was.”
“But.” I could see the gears turning in her mind.
“I did say it was someone from work, but that doesn’t really narrow it down very much. I work at a marketing firm. There are hundreds of people there.”
“Call him,” Luka grumbled. “Now.”
“You don’t think—” She walked into the living room and grabbed her phone from one of the tables. She tapped it a few times, then held it to her ear. After a few moments, she pulled it away and began tapping the screen again. “He’s not answering. I’m going to send him a text. Sometimes he seems to notice those before—”
There was a sudden, thunderous boom from the direction of the front door. It was followed closely by the crunch of wood splintering and the sharp tinkle of shattered glass.
“Honey, we’re home!”
It was Carter’s voice.
Chapter 14
There was a moment of complete silence, the kind that can only follow a jarringly loud sound. It didn’t last long. The sounds of boots crunching over broken glass and wood filled the void.
“Behind me!” Luka sprung in front of Makayla too quickly to give her a choice in the matter, shielding her with the immensity of his body. If Carter planned to harm her, he’d have had to go through Luka to do it. And that simply wasn’t going to happen.
The first figure to enter the room with us was not Carter. A young and terrified-looking man, naked from the waist up and gagged with what looked like one of his own socks, came stumbling into the dining room with Carter close behind, gun at the ready.
“Hey, Meredith. Hey, Luka.” Carter’s voice was the height of casualness, not at all what you’d expect from a man parading another half-naked man around at gunpoint. “Didn’t expect this much of an audience. Won’t take long, though.”
Carter drove one booted foot into the back of his prisoner’s legs, knocking the man down to his knees in front of him. He raised his gun.
“Joss!” Makayla tried to lunge in the direction of her ex-husband, but Luka stopped her before she’d moved an inch.
“I want you to see this, Makayla, so watch closely.” If Carter was at all aware of his ex-wife’s anguish, it didn’t register in his tone of voice. “You can let her go, Luka. I just need her to understand this—need her to watch.”
The switch from strangulation to execution by gun was inconvenient to say the least, and it felt like things were happening too quickly and in slow motion at the same time. I couldn’t see any way to get between Carter and his intended victim. Even Luka’s incredible speed wasn’t fast enough to outrun a bullet. Besides, the big guy wasn’t going to move an inch if it meant leaving his niece unprotected. No, this one was up to me, which didn’t leave a lot of options.
Carter waited another moment, making sure Makayla had a good viewing angle from behind Luka, then leveled his weapon again.
“Wrong guy!” I practically screamed the words, startling even myself a little.
Carter’s gaze flitted toward me. “It’s not the wrong guy.” He said it like he was explaining something to a small child. “I checked with one of her friends from work—she’s been with him for almost two months. Devon Marcus of two-two-nine-eight Oak Avenue. He identified himself when I confronted him at his home.”
“No,” I said, taking a tentative step forward, “she just finished telling us that they broke it off more than two weeks ago.”
“You’re lying,” Carter said. “Makayla told me about him when we spoke. That was less than a week ago. I see what you’re trying to do, Meredith, but you don’t need to. I just want her to watch—to see. She has to understand.”
“She’s not going to understand anything with you killing a guy she called the biggest mistake of her life.” I was standing directly over Devon now and could see that his whole body was shaking. “She explained it all to us, Carter. She only told you about him because she hoped you’d get jealous—hoped you would fight for her.”
Demon or no demon, I knew it was still Carter in there, and part of me felt horrible for lying to him about something like that. The man was clearly struggling with his divorce, and it wasn’t his fault he was being baited into this bizarre showdown.
“That’s—that’s not true. Right, Makayla?” There was something horrible in the man’s tone as he searched his ex-wife’s eyes. “She’s lying, right?”
“I’m not,” I said gently, stepping to Carter’s side. “She loves you, Carter. She hasn’t ever stopped loving you. And being with Devon here only made her see that more clearly. You can see that, right? Look at her.”
I placed a hand on Carter’s shoulder as he looked at Makayla. It was a simple act, just a friend comforting a friend.
As soon as I was certain his finger wasn’t on the trigger, I pushed the full force of my will out against Carter’s shade. There was an audible crackle, something like an intense static shock, and he dropped hard to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. A wave of dizziness and intense fatigue hit me like a bolt of lightning. It was the first time I’d ever felt anything like that as the result of using my gift, and I wanted nothing more than to curl up under Makayla’s dining table and go to sleep.
Unfortunately, the world kept on moving.
Luka had Carter’s gun almost before the man hit the hardwood floor. He snapped the piece cleanly down the middle and threw both halves onto Makayla’s dining table.
“Is—is he dead?” Makayla crept forward to peer at her ex.
“No, he’s just unconscious,” I said, trying to keep the weariness from my voice. “He should be just fine when he wakes up.” I wasn’t entirely sure that was true, but I couldn’t see any reason to worry Makayla any more than she already was. I had only ever tried that maneuver—a soul shock as Hiram affectionately put it—on Nic from the bar, and that had been a purely experimental kind of thing. I had hit Carter with everything I could muster and then some, and the result had been considerably more violent. For both of us.
With the Carter situation seemingly under control, Makayla turned her attention to her wide-eyed and visibly frightened beau. She kneeled down beside him and pulled the balled sock loose from his mouth. As the man spat and sputtered away the residual discomfort from his gag, Makayla saw to his bound wrists, and then helped him to his feet.
For several moments, Devon seemed utterly speechless, but eventually, some of the focus returned to his eyes, and they latched onto Makayla with a wild intensity.
“What?” The man whispered. “Just what!?”
“This is going to be a lit
tle hard to explain,” Makayla cooed.
I caught her attention and motioned toward Carter’s still-unconscious body. “Why don’t you take your friend and get him cleaned up. We’ll deal with this.”
Makayla nodded her agreement and ushered Devon off toward the back of the house. I didn’t know what story she’d make up—probably something about her disgruntled ex-husband having a psychotic break, which wasn’t that far from the truth—but I couldn’t imagine how her relationship with that man could be salvaged. The guy was going to have a hard enough time just going to sleep at night, and I doubted he’d ever want to step foot in Makayla’s house again.
I didn’t envy her, but I had my own fish to fry.
“Alright,” I said as Luka loomed over Carter, “we should take care of him before he has time to wake back up. I would love it if that little jolt I gave him were enough to break the demon’s hold over him, but when have I ever been that lucky?
“Agreed. We should leave nothing to chance.” Luka stooped and pulled the unconscious man upright and off the floor. He let him dangle there like a life-size scarecrow, apparently not at all troubled by the man’s weight.
“Just what I was thinking,” I said. “We can’t know for sure if or when the demon’s hold will be broken. Not until I manage to send the thing back to where it came from, at least.” I still didn’t have a clue as to how I was going to pull that particular feat off, but I could only worry about one thing at a time.
“Indeed. I am glad we are of a similar mind. Do you want to be present for this?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, sure, I figured I could give you a hand if you want. Any ideas about what we can use? If Makayla doesn’t have something lying around here, I’m sure we can find something that will work in Carter’s car.”
