The Taken

by Vicki Pettersson

  You caused it, Shaw. Katherine Craig is fated to die because of you.

  He looked away, gazing out the window at where Craig had been parked, her tiny foreign car dark, her wide-eyed face white, as she stared up at the window where her friend had just died. Directly at him, he remembered.

  “More coffee?”

  Grif nodded at the waitress, silent. He couldn’t taste it but he needed the warmth.

  Yet the coffee didn’t ground him this time, and it sloshed onto the Formica as he tried to lift it. It was hot enough to burn his new flesh, and should have caused him to hiss, but he didn’t. The waitress noticed it, too. He looked back at her and noted a faint silvery outline to her silhouette.

  Plasma. He knew what it was, though it was usually gone by the time he arrived for his Takes. This was a shimmering thread, but growing dark at the edges.

  You can still see death coming.

  So blunted mortal senses, but a celestial sense for death.

  “You need to get that mole checked,” he said before she could comment on his burn. “It’s not too late, but it will be in another year.”

  The waitress’s eyes widened, but he said nothing more, and she scurried away. Sarge was probably stomping around the Everlast, muttering about sensitivity. So what. Those were the facts. Facts were bricks. Now she could do something about it.

  Grif, however, needed more facts, more bricks between him and this . . . this . . .

  Woman. Katherine.

  Case.

  Straightening, Grif flipped past the rap sheet until he came to the last page of the report, hoping to find an address . . . which he did. Right across the top of her autopsy report, dated two days from now. She would die at home, he saw, but most people did. Although they didn’t usually die from multiple stab wounds—she’d suffer thirty-two in all. He shouldn’t be surprised. Murderers were like superstitious ballplayers. They rarely deviated from a play that had worked well before.

  Grif hadn’t looked too closely at the placement of Rockwell’s wounds, but the coroner’s notes showed Craig’s deepest, deadliest cuts would be precise and controlled, no breaks in the incisions, no hesitation on the killer’s part as he stole her life. So Craig’s murderer wasn’t just skilled with a knife, he’d probably killed even before Rockwell. Could he be ex-military? A hired killer? A butcher?

  You are not a P.I. anymore. You’re not even human!

  Grif gave Sarge’s voice a mental shove and kept reading, saw that there were no lacerations on the finger or hands, meaning Craig would succumb easily to attack. So maybe it’ll be fast then, Grif thought, then caught himself. How pansy was it that he didn’t know if he wanted that more for her or for himself?

  Facts, Grif thought, as he started to sweat. He needed bricks. Reason and instinct. Mortar. He needed a wall if he was going to get through this.

  I need the Everlast, he thought desperately, reaching for his coffee. But as he lifted the cup, one last word on the autopsy report caught his attention, and the cosmic freeze he’d felt when relearning how to breathe wrapped its cold fingers around his throat again.

  Rape.

  So not like Nicole Rockwell, after all.

  The grease and coffee rebelled in his new stomach, and Grif bumped the table as he rose. Throwing too many bills onto the tabletop, he then stumbled out into the crisp, bright morning, the last of Katherine Craig’s life. He immediately turned his gaze directly into the fiery sun. How?

  How did Sarge expect him to do this? How was he supposed to watch a killer, a rapist, come to this smiling woman’s home, and do nothing to stop it?

  Take away a Centurion’s wings, and all they’re left with is an intimate acquaintance with death.

  “I can’t,” he said aloud, earning a look from a bleary-eyed woman just stepping from her room. Not a hint of plasma around her, he noted, panicking.

  How the hell was this supposed to help him heal, he wondered, as a crow cawed above him. Grif covered his ears, wincing. The animal was circling for the kill. Grif’s death senses caught that.

  “Where’s your infamous mercy?” he rasped, stumbling out of the lot and onto Boulder Highway, away from the crow, the half-dressed woman now watching him suspiciously . . . toward another who wouldn’t see him at all. And still, there was no answer from on high.

  In this question, it seemed, there never was.

  Craig.”

  Kit hadn’t been in her office more than five minutes before her doorway fell dark. Her boss’s tone had Kit glancing up with guilt, but Marin Wilson returned her pale-faced stare with eyes that were grim as well as sharp. Studying Kit’s atypically rumpled appearance, she allowed silence to sit between them before gesturing to her office with a jerk of her head.

  Kit sighed and stood, ignoring the stares from the main press room, Marin’s wake a defensive wall between her and their unspoken questions. When they reached Marin’s office, Kit shut the door behind her without being asked, took a seat, and waited.

  Marin dropped into an ergonomic chair on the other side of a desk so loaded with papers it belonged on Hoarders. She ran a hand through short, spiky hair, newly silver, a side effect of chemo. She didn’t care. Marin disdained pretense of any kind. She’d rather apply pressure than lipstick, and found Kit and Nicole’s love for fashion so bewildering she often studied them like they were exotic animals at the zoo.

  The look she gave Kit now was less baffled, but also a delay tactic. Marin believed most people found silence intolerable, a theory neatly backed up by the existence of tell-alls, the Kardashians, and Twitter. But when Kit only stared back, Marin broke the silence with a sigh. “Time off.”

  “No.”

  Marin’s nostrils flared. “Ms. Craig. One of our reporters has been murdered while pursuing a story. You need to trust that every person at this newspaper is going to do their best to discover how and why. Rockwell was one of our own. We’ll take care of it.”

  “I want to do it myself.”

  “You’re not a police officer.”

  And there, in Marin’s infamously caustic subtext, was the censure Kit had been dreading. She and Nic had pursued a story without a direct assignment from on high, proof that Kit was irresponsible, in over her head, and incapable of seeing this story—this tragedy—through to the end. Kit fought back tears. “No, but I’m the daughter of one.”

  “Kit.” Seeing the tears, Marin softened. But not much. “Go home.”

  “Auntie.”

  Marin rolled her eyes. “Stop. You only pull that ‘Auntie’ crap when you’re trying to weasel out of something. Just like—”

  “Don’t. Don’t make this about my mother.” She spoke sharply, but if anyone knew why, it was Marin. In ways, they both lived in Shirley Craig’s shadow. But Kit wasn’t going to get into that now.

  Leaning back, Marin folded her arms. “What do you have?”

  “A list of names.” Kit handed her the sheet she’d just printed, then told her about the anonymous contact. Marin’s expression narrowed further, and Kit rushed on. “I was writing my account of Nicole’s . . . of the crime scene when you came in. The lock on the motel door wasn’t damaged. The killer was already in the room. He had a key, maybe a contact at the motel, or the simple ability to pick locks. I don’t know.”

  “But you think the person who killed Rockwell is on this list?”

  “Would she be dead otherwise?”

  Marin tapped her chin. “What else were you two working on?”

  Kit shrugged. “She was helping John with a photo essay on the homeless living in the underground tunnels. I just finished an op-ed piece on the city’s backlog of rape kits, not exactly breaking news. There was a lifestyle piece on a new gallery opening downtown.”

  Marin squinted.

  “I swear. That’s all. I mean, the gallery’s devoted to nudes painted in neon and wearing animal heads, but I don’t see anyone killing for that.”

  Her aunt looked at the list, gaze snagging and widening on the last few
names. She finally put it down, where it disappeared in the sea of papers. “You’re going to run this entire newspaper someday, Katherine.”

  Now it was Kit’s turn to squint. “You only pull that ‘Katherine’ crap when you want something. And I told you before. Changing the world is more important to me than running it.”

  Marin sighed. “And now you sound like your father.”

  She did—because her mother might have taught her how to live, even while dying, but it was her father who’d taught Kit what to do—right up until the very last breath.

  Don’t just find the easy answer, Kitty-cat! Find the truth!

  But this, too, was an old argument, one neither of them had the energy to chase. “Well, you’re going to inherit it, in any case. Sooner rather than later, if this latest quack doesn’t get my dosage right.” She rubbed at the veins in her right arm in what had to be an unconscious gesture. “So you might try acting as you’d wish your employees to do in the future.”

  “You mean run everything by you beforehand.”

  “I wish Ms. Rockwell had.”

  Kit winced, and looked away.

  “Oh, Katherine,” Marin said, more softly. “Come stay with me. Just for a time.”

  And be watched over at home as well as at work, Kit thought, shaking her head. No thanks. Her aunt was pragmatic, dogged, kind . . . and a total control freak. “I appreciate the offer. I do, but—”

  “I don’t want you alone. There’s a killer out there. One with the potential ability to pick locks.”

  Kit lifted her chin. “My locks aren’t simple. My security system was installed by one of Dad’s old cronies. And my dog has sharp teeth.”

  “You don’t have a dog.”

  Kit shrugged. “I’ll feel better surrounded by my things.”

  “They’ll remind you of Nicole.”

  “Breathing reminds me of Nicole.”

  Her aunt heard the crack in her voice and snapped her mouth shut on whatever she was about to say. Tilting her head, she waited a moment, then spoke quickly, sharply. “Your stubbornness is annoying.”

  “I come by it honestly,” Kit said evenly, because now she sounded like her aunt.

  Marin tapped one stubby finger on her chair arm. “Fine,” she finally said, leaning back. “Then here’s how this is going to work, and I won’t take no for an answer. I’m still your boss.”

  Kit tensed.

  “Drop everything else you’re working on, hand it to John or Ed, and focus that innate stubbornness on winnowing down that list. You find that damned contact of yours.” Marin leaned forward, sharp eyes honed. “You write down every damned detail about that crime scene, hound the detectives, and drive this damned story into the ground. Then we bury the murdering bastard that stole our reporter, our girl, with it.”

  Kit found herself unexpectedly smiling. Yes, this was what she’d needed. This was why she’d come here instead of going home. She stood.

  “Copy me on everything, I don’t care how small or seemingly insignificant. I want an update on your work to date, and daily reports after that.”

  “Thank you, Auntie.”

  “Don’t thank me.” Marin stood, too. “I’ve known Nicole since she was fourteen years old and you dragged her home like some flea-bitten stray. I don’t think I ever saw her without a camera under her arm. I definitely never saw her without you.”

  She looked at Kit like she was wearing one of her more outrageous outfits . . . or nothing at all. And that’s how Kit felt standing in this office without Nicole. Naked. Like something vital was missing.

  “The thing is,” Marin continued, chin wobbling, “if I ever had a child, a daughter, I’d want her to be . . .” She waved one arm, and shook her head. “Well . . . nothing like either of you. But I cared for that girl. I still care. So go out there and get me the goddamned truth.”

  “I’ll get you your truth,” Kit swore, with identical familial passion. “And a goddamned murderer.”

  Marin smiled briefly, eyes turning up at the corners like a cat considering a three-legged mouse. “Have that report on my desk by morning. I’ll be your personal research assistant and an extra pair of eyes. Meanwhile, I’d like you to reconsider staying with me. The circumstances surrounding Ms. Rockwell’s death are . . . unsettling.”

  “Your stubbornness is annoying,” Kit said, but reached over to place a hand on her aunt’s arm.

  Marin grazed Kit’s knuckles with her own before letting her hand fall away. “Runs in the family.”

  Chapter Five

  In addition to the death senses, Grif was relieved to find he’d retained his celestial ability to unlock things. He entered Craig’s ranch house without even having to touch the keyhole, bypassing the red blink of a security camera with the wave of his hand. Yet he’d already discovered the ability was clearly meant only for use in locating Katherine Craig. The one time he’d tried to open the back door of a gentlemen’s club—just to ask for directions, of course—he’d been yelled at and chased by the owner’s dog. Briefly caught, too, he thought, scowling at the ripped hem of his pant leg. He’d have given the fleabag a mouthful of feathered daggers if he’d had his wings. As it was, he had to stick to the plan. He couldn’t shield himself from attack, never mind Craig.

  And though he still felt vulnerable without his full celestial powers, the limitations were also a comfort. Like a rainbow, their absence was an intangible promise. He’d be back in the protective lap of the Everlast in a few short hours’ time. Just an angel’s blink, really.

  Though still long enough for a woman to die.

  Pulling the autopsy papers from his breast pocket, he looked up Katherine Craig’s time of death. Ten fifteen at night. Just over two hours from now, and not even a full twenty-four since Rockwell’s murder. At least Craig wouldn’t have to live with her grief for long, Grif thought, tucking the papers away.

  He looked up, squinting into a darkened hallway. Outside the home, the chalky white walls had gleamed beneath the full moon, the Spanish tile roof a red convex helmet above shuttered eyes. Inside, the dark wood floors creaked under Grif’s weight as he moved out of the foyer, pausing at the entry of a sunken living room with ceiling beams in matching black chocolate. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something both comforting and disturbing about the room. He liked it, though he knew he shouldn’t.

  A chandelier sat in one corner, a cascade of translucent capiz shells falling nearly to the floor, and a floor screen divided the large room in half, though a giant free-form sofa was the real focus. Grif could almost see Craig lounging there, sable curls thrown back against the silk brocade pillows, creamy neck bowed in a revealing arch. But he shook himself of the image as soon as he imagined her smiling, tilting that jet-black head his way.

  A boxy television anchored the north-facing bay windows, and Grif crossed to it. How about that? It was the same model he’d bought for Evie right before he’d died. She’d wanted the most modern available, of course. Said it was important to show that he was a thriving independent contractor. Success, she claimed, made people want to trust you.

  Because the thought of Evie made him smile, he reached for the knob next to the television screen and gave it a hard twist to the right. Black-and-white static immediately filled the room, but the sound was off, which Grif gave thanks for a moment later when the static cleared and a woman’s image popped on the screen.

  Grif jolted as Katherine Craig emerged from the same foyer he just had, dropping her bag and briefcase onto the sofa and kicking off her shoes. She disappeared into the room behind him, then emerged moments later with a tumbler in one hand, climbing the short steps with slumped shoulders, then turned in to a hallway.

  The shot cut off there, and the next image was of Craig entering a darkened bedroom, but time had clearly passed. She was wrapped in a bathrobe, hair wet, tumbler empty. She was headed back into the kitchen with her glass when the shadow rose up behind her.

  The first blow was just to
stun. After all, rapists didn’t generally want to roll in blood. Craig lifted her right hand, as if to fend off the punch that had already come, but a second fist flew from nowhere and the crystal tumbler shattered. Strong fists ripped at that shining mane of glossy black hair, pulling Craig up even as she fell. Two attackers, Grif realized, as Katherine Craig disappeared beneath a relentless onslaught of grabbing hands and pummeling knees.

  Grif turned off the television. He didn’t need to see it twice.

  He didn’t go directly to the bedroom. He couldn’t, so soon after what he’d just seen. Instead he crossed to the fireplace, red brick lacquered white, and stared into an antique mirror with scrollwork that swirled up like gold smoke. Unable to meet his own reflected gaze, he studied the snapshots that’d been tucked haphazardly into the ornate frame, a casual juxtaposition that somehow worked.

  He was immediately drawn to a woman who reminded him more than a little of Veronica Lake. She had a cascade of glossy blond hair that obscured one side of her face while revealing a long neck that looked translucent. The dim light gave it the blue-white aspect of a still-developing negative.

  But it was the wide smile that caught Grif’s breath—the smile within a smile, he thought, touching the photo’s side—and that was how he recognized Katherine Craig. How many incarnations did she have? he wondered, eyes skimming photos, finding others. Her face was painted differently in all, her hair dyed in colors that defied nature’s rainbow. She was even clearly bewigged in some, but in each she still wore that trademark smile, a radiant blast that warmed even the sepia tones.

  She had a lot of friends, Grif saw. His Evie had always said she was a man’s woman, that boys were simpler and made better sense. “Like solid corner pieces of the world’s puzzle,” she’d explained, and Grif couldn’t argue. But Craig was obviously a woman well liked by other women.