I twisted to look up at him. "I have no idea what you're saying, Gabriel."
He nodded, a little curtly, and started to pull away.
Goddamn it, no. What was I supposed to say?
He stopped withdrawing and stayed still for a moment. Then he settled in, awkwardly now, as if he wasn't quite sure how he'd done it before.
"Let me simplify that," he said. "I'm going to tell you something you may not want to hear, and I hope I'm not doing it merely to assuage a guilty conscience, but if I am, I apologize."
"Noted."
"It's about your fall into the river. When I rescued you, you were cold, as you say. Very cold. Also unconscious, and as I was trying to warm you up, you--" He cut himself off and shook his head. "No. Not you. It was me. I may have..." Another head shake, sharper now. "There's no may about it. No equivocating. I did. That is to say, I..."
He trailed off.
"I kissed you, didn't I?" I said. "I was dreaming of swimming with Gwynn, to this place he had with Matilda, a cavern under the lake. I dreamed of that, and I kissed you."
After a moment, he said, carefully, "You may have started it, but that's no excuse. I did not...I didn't stop you. I..." He cleared his throat. "I thought you had regained consciousness, and I was having difficulty organizing my thoughts."
"Hypothermia causes mental confusion. I wasn't the only one freezing in that water."
"Yes." A pause. "I mean, no. While there may have been some of that, I'm not making excuses, Olivia. Once I was certain you were not conscious enough to know what you were doing, I stopped. But I let it proceed longer than I should have. I thought you knew what you were doing and I wasn't thinking straight and..."
He squeezed his eyes shut. "And that's more excuses, which dull an apology. Which is what this is. An apology. You were very clearly not aware of what you were doing, and I took advantage of that, however inadvertently, and I want to apologize."
"There's no need."
"Yes, there--"
"No." I twisted on his lap and looked him square in the face. "I'm not trying to deny you an apology, Gabriel. I'm saying it honestly isn't necessary."
Because the dream may have started with Gwynn and Matilda, but when I was kissing Gabriel, I'd been dreaming of kissing him.
Now I just needed to say that. One tiny step.
It should be so easy. He'd admitted to returning my kiss, therefore my advance, however unintentional, had not been unwelcome. Yet I'd spent so long analyzing that I couldn't help doing it even here.
Screw it. Just screw it. If I waited for every damn omen to align, I'd grow old and gray.
"I actually wasn't--" I began.
Gabriel's phone sounded. We both jumped.
"So...apparently we have cell service," I said.
He went to hit a button--Ignore, I hoped--but the phone stopped before he could.
"All right," I said. "Full speed ahead. It wasn't Gwynn I was--"
The phone rang again. Gabriel went to hit it again, harder, and then he stopped. I saw the screen, showing a division of the Chicago Police Department. He moved his finger over Ignore, slower now.
"You need to answer that," I said. "Or we're both going to spend the night wondering which client has gotten himself in trouble."
"I'll be quick."
He rose to take the call inside, away from the pounding surf. I followed and stoked the fire, hearing only the crackle and snap of that as he talked. Then there was a crash behind me, and I leapt up to see Gabriel's cell phone at the foot of the wall...where he'd thrown it.
He unclenched his fists, blinked, and stared at the phone as if not knowing how it got there. When he saw me watching, he looked down at his hand.
"It..." he began, and then trailed off, as if he'd been about to say it had slipped before realizing that was logistically impossible. "I'm sorry," he said.
"For what? Getting angry and throwing your phone? Not an indictable offense, Gabriel." I walked over and bent to pick up his cell. "It's an inanimate object, easily replaced. It doesn't even look that badly damaged. Try harder next time."
I quirked a smile at him, but he didn't seem to notice, just stood there, frozen and wide-eyed. In his face, I saw a much younger Gabriel, a boy who'd let his roiling anger spill over, instantly regretting it, terrified of the consequences.
I set the phone on the table. "Was the call about Seanna?"
"Yes."
I winced. "She's in trouble."
"The detective wouldn't tell me over the phone. She only said I need to go there. And I..." Gabriel swallowed. "I don't want to."
"You don't have to. I'll handle this. Lloe? Time for a ride."
Gabriel shook his head. "You can't--"
"Yep, I absolutely can. Let me do this for you. I'll gather the data as if Seanna were any other potential client. Then she can sit in a jail cell until morning. Hell, with a little help from Lydia, we can make sure she sits there until Monday, meaning you and I can continue our weekend away."
He hesitated.
"There's no reason you need to do this," I said.
"And what should I do instead? Pace the floor? Wait for you to come back and tell me what happened?" He lowered his voice. "That doesn't help, Olivia. I know you mean well, but the best way for me to take this weekend off is to tackle this first. Get it out of the way. We'll come back tomorrow night and start again."
"Promise?"
"Yes. No matter what she's done, we'll be back."
CHAPTER TEN
When Gabriel phoned the detective to say we'd reached the city, he was directed to an address. It was not a police station address. The detective still refused to explain, and Gabriel's grumbling protests didn't change anything. She was giving him the runaround for purely sadistic fun, and Gabriel threatening to complain to her superior was like the brattiest kid in school threatening to tell the principal that a teacher was being mean to him.
"Any chance we're being set up?" I said as Gabriel drove through the city. "Some fae pretending to be a Chicago detective, luring you to an out-of-the-way location?"
"I know Detective Fahy. We've had dealings before."
"Uh-huh. What'd you do to her?"
He glanced over. "Is it not possible I simply mean she worked a case I defended?"
"Nope. Spill."
"I may have inadvertently prevented her from getting a promotion."
"Inadvertently?"
"I had evidence thrown out in a case, on the grounds she'd contaminated it at the scene. At the time, she'd been up for promotion, and when the judge ruled in my favor, she lost that promotion. I could hardly foresee the repercussions."
"Did she contaminate evidence?"
"The judge thought it was a strong possibility, given the persuasiveness of my argument."
"In other words, no."
"I could not have been expected to foresee--"
"If you'd known it would cost her a promotion, would you have done differently?"
"Of course not. My job is to defend my client to the best of my ability. It is the responsibility of the police and prosecution to protect their case. Any repercussions from their failure to do so cannot be laid at my feet, as I told Detective Fahy when she complained. She must simply do a better job next time, and if she cannot, then perhaps she didn't deserve the promotion."
"And you're surprised she's giving you a hassle now?"
"Yes, I am. A strike within the realm of the professional never justifies retribution in the realm of the personal."
He slowed at the address, an upscale chain hotel. As we walked in, an anxious-looking manager was waiting.
"Can you tell me what this is about?" Gabriel asked as the manager led us along the main hall.
"Nothing," he said. "Nothing at all. A misunderstanding. An accident. An unfortunate accident. These things happen." He cast a nervous glance at a middle-aged couple and steered us away, saying, "This way, please. The service elevator is quicker."
He whisked us up to th
e fourth floor, and we passed a member of a crime scene team heading for the main elevator.
"The stairs," the manager said to her. "Please use the stairs. And if you could be more discreet..."
The young woman kept walking. Two hotel guests peered out of their doors to watch her pass, forensics kit in hand.
"An accident," the manager whimpered, as if to himself. "They happen. We can't help that."
When we reached the room, he asked us to "Please hurry," and then shut the door behind us.
We walked in and...saw blood. Droplets dappled the hall. In the bedroom, an arc drenched the wall like a red rainbow.
Arterial spray.
I glanced at Gabriel. He processed the spray, no expression on his face. Then he stepped into the bedroom, where a blond woman in her late thirties looked up from her phone.
"Where's the manager?" she asked.
"Left us and fled," I replied, and walked in, my hand extended. "Liv Jones."
She ignored my hand, her gaze fixed on Gabriel. She had a gleam in her eye, like she was watching an enemy run a gauntlet of spears, praying one of them sliced through him.
While I'd understood Gabriel's reasoning for not feeling any remorse over "inadvertently" costing Detective Fahy a promotion, I'd sympathized with her. It would be tough enough to rise through the ranks as a female detective. You sure as hell didn't need an arrogant defense attorney shredding your credibility. Seeing that look on her face, though, I decided I didn't feel bad for her after all. She'd brought Gabriel to a blood-drenched scene, telling him only that it involved his mother. That went beyond petty personal retaliation.
"May I ask what this is about, Detective Fahy?" Gabriel said. "You mentioned my mother, but I fail to see the connection."
"This is her hotel room."
His brow furrowed. "Are you quite certain? It seems beyond her budget."
She paused, as if unsure where to go with that. "I think the question of how she afforded it should be the least of your concerns, Walsh. Your mother is missing, and her hotel room is covered in blood."
"Missing?" More furrowing. "If this is your idea of a joke, Detective, it is in very poor taste. I thought you meant she'd once rented this room. My mother has been dead for fifteen years."
Another pause. "If someone told you that, they're mistaken. She's--"
"Dead. Very much so, according to the Chicago Police Department. She died of a drug overdose and was discovered in an abandoned building fifteen years ago. She'd been buried as a Jane Doe because the CPD failed to do the most basic investigation and discover she had both a name and a teenaged son. That's not surprising. A drug addict--particularly a woman--is never worth the department's notice, a fact which I am still considering bringing to the attention of the taxpayers by way of a lawsuit. However, that aside, it was my investigator here, Ms. Taylor-Jones, who discovered the autopsy photos. I confirmed six months ago that the deceased was indeed my mother. The case is closed."
Fahy stared at him. Then she lifted her phone and looked down at it.
"Yes," Gabriel said. "Please check on that. I'll wait."
She pocketed her phone. "I don't know what bullshit you two tried to pull, but your mother was alive a few hours ago. She had a drink with a guy in the lounge downstairs, where she mentioned that she was your mother. She seemed very proud of you, God only knows why. She gave the guest her room key. When he followed her up a half hour later, he found this."
"And?" Gabriel said.
"And what?"
"I'm sure you have more than a woman in a bar trying to impress a man by claiming kinship with a known local figure. I'm guessing she also registered as Seanna Walsh?"
"Another guy paid for her room. He managed to convince the clerk to let him pay cash for a two-night stay, despite that being very clearly against the hotel's policies. The guy was in his mid-twenties. Dark-haired. Handsome. Charming and manipulative." Fahy shot Gabriel a look. "Sound familiar?"
"Dark-haired, yes. Manipulative? I'll accept that. While I'm more often mistaken for being older than my age, I suppose someone could mistake me for younger. But I'm hardly attractive enough to persuade a woman to risk her job. Nor has anyone ever accused me of being charming. However, I'm quite happy to speak to this employee and see whether she recognizes me. I'm certain you'll agree that if any adjective might be aptly applied to me, it is memorable."
"Is that really all you've got, Detective?" I asked. "The word of some dude in a hotel bar? I doubt you'll even get a proper statement from him. By now he's deeply regretting taking that woman's keycard and has already formulated a bizarre and implausible story for his wife."
She scowled at me. Good guess, apparently.
"A blood test will clear this up," Fahy said. "And we have plenty to use. Walsh? You can provide a sample."
"Yes, I will. When I am court-ordered to do so."
"About the blood on the walls," I said. "I'm sure you've already asked your crime techs to do a wide sampling, to ensure it all comes from a single and fresh source."
One of the techs looked over, his expression saying he'd been told to do no such thing.
"Fresh?" Fahy said.
"The scene could be faked, right?" I said. "Multiple sources or stored blood used to provide enough to make you suspect a fatal incident. You've got a woman who was checked in with no ID, and told some random dude in the hotel bar that she was Gabriel Walsh's mother. Then she invites this guy up, presumably telling him to wait a half hour before following her. And he just happens to walk into an apparent crime scene? It screams setup."
"To what purpose?"
I waited a moment, to be sure she was serious. "What's the first thing you did? Called Gabriel. The next thing you'd have done, I'm sure, is blame him. Six months ago Gabriel Walsh was charged with the murder of my fiance. Now he's investigated in the suspicious disappearance of his long-lost drug addict mother? Once that hit the news, he'd undoubtedly get a phone call from his supposed mother, offering to rectify this terrible misunderstanding...for a price."
"I'll take multiple samples of the blood," the tech called over. "And I'll make a note to check for freshness."
"Thank you," I said.
"Olivia's theory is almost certainly the answer to your puzzle, Detective," Gabriel said. "She shouldn't have needed to reach it first. You're a seasoned investigator. She's only had her license for a few months."
"Might also explain why you got passed over for that promotion," I said.
Gabriel's look of mild reproach said I didn't need to bring that into it.
"Do you drive a red Maserati, Ms. Jones?" Fahy asked. "One of my dad's old cars, yes."
"Do you know what was seen parked on the street out front earlier this evening? After Ms. Walsh checked in?"
"Let me guess...a red Maserati? What time was that?"
She checked her notes. "Seven p.m."
"At which time I was an hour outside the city, picking up dinner with Gabriel. I'll give you the details. The guy at the restaurant will remember us--he recognized me from newspaper photos and said he never thought my parents were guilty."
"A Maserati is not terribly rare in a city the size of Chicago," Gabriel said. "And red must be the most common color. You have a license number, I'm sure?"
Her silence said she didn't.
"If that's all..." Gabriel said.
"This stinks, Walsh. It really stinks."
"I would agree, and I believe Olivia is correct that I am about to be the victim of extortion. I'll expect to have the full support of the CPD in countering this attack."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The manager, understandably eager not to let guests know they had a potential murder scene, didn't object when Gabriel said we wanted to speak to him. He scooted us into an office and answered everything we asked. Then he produced the employee who'd checked Seanna in, and she gave enough detail to confirm our suspicion on who'd been responsible for that. Next the manager brought the man Seanna picked up in the bar, w
ho'd been told by the police not to leave and was anxiously awaiting the go-ahead to escape. If he spoke to us because he mistakenly thought we could grant his reprieve, that was hardly our fault.
As we left the hotel, Lloergan appeared and fell in at my side. Our first stop was the presumed point of egress: the fourth-floor window.
Despite what I'd said to Detective Fahy, we weren't absolutely convinced this was a setup. It seemed likely. The scheme was classic Seanna--clever enough, but overly complicated. Yet we couldn't rule out the possibility she had been murdered. There was certainly no shortage of suspects. I was only glad Gabriel and I had been an hour's drive up the lake.
We found blood below the window. It was a small pool, as if the person climbed down to the second floor and then hung off the balcony before dropping to the ground. A partial shoe print marred the edge. I took a photo of the imprint, but there wasn't enough to identify the shoe size.
The blood dripped for a few yards south, headed into an alley, and then stopped, as if the person had paused to bind the wound. We were examining the blood trail when Lloergan gave a jowl-shuddering sigh.
"Getting bored, girl?" I said. "You can go wander if you like."
Her look oozed reproach, and she glanced to the side just as two figures rounded the corner. It was the dryads from the abandoned amusement park.
"Blood!" the boy said.
"A clue!" the girl said, jogging over to us.
"Wrong crime," I said.
"You have more than one?" she said. "That's hardly fair. You ought to share."
"They are," he said. "They're sharing with us. Even if they don't want to."
"Can we switch mysteries?" she asked. "Please?"
Lloergan sighed again and lowered herself to the ground, as if to wait out what was sure to be a long conversation.
"How did you find us?" I asked.
The girl lifted a brow in what was probably meant to be a crafty look, but she managed it as well as a three-year-old trying to be mysterious. "We have our ways."
"Secret fae ways," the boy said.
"We came to speak to you because we have a problem," she said. "A lack of clues."
"Complete lack."
"Utter lack." She held out a notebook. "We've tried. See? We went through the fun house with a fine-toothed comb."
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