I hung the trash bag over the splintered wreckage of the door frame. One of the doors was still semi-intact and upright, so I closed it as best I could. I hoped that a trash bag would be enough of a legal barrier to prevent the cops from trying to come inside.
Then, in the midst of the cavalry charging in, I heard an unmistakable creak.
“Not this crap again,” I said, flicking out the Reaper’s Switch. Dried blood stuck to the blade. No time to scrub that clean. Footsteps pattered upstairs, coming from the abandoned master bedroom.
If it was the killer, he had a big gun. That meant I was pretty screwed. But running up the beach waving a murder weapon—albeit not the one they were looking for—at the cops much of an alternative. I could chuck the blade into the jungle on the way, but without it, I couldn’t harvest souls. And I had to take seven creature’s life forces before week’s end—otherwise I was out of a job. If tonight was any indication, Aldric didn’t believe in traditional severance packages.
There was a crash upstairs, and the intruder uttered a small string of curse words. I used this noise as cover, slinking into the living room. The worn leather couch that doubled as my bed sat alone in the center of the bamboo hardwood, untouched. Same with my clothing and the lamp—everything was just as I’d left it.
My gaze focused on the stainless steel second floor railing overlooking the living room area. Light slipped through the large, circular second floor windows. I squinted, searching for movements. Another clatter echoed off the high ceiling. My unwanted visitor hadn’t moved from the master bedroom.
Against my better judgement, I crept up the clear glass stairs. Their transparent nature gave one the sensation that they were walking on pure air. A cool trick that had lost its luster within the first week of home ownership. My damp shoes squished and squeaked softly as I reached the top. I glanced inside the guest room. The window was still open from when I’d jumped through earlier. It was empty.
The rustling stopped.
I swallowed and looked at the dried blood on the blade. Was I ready to double down? Lucille was certain to revoke our agreement for one death—that much was certain. But two? That was going to be a kind of hell I didn’t want to imagine.
Nothing moved in the quiet villa. Outside, the sirens grew louder, the off-road tires chewing up the beach.
Lacking better options, I said, “I know you’re in there, you son of a bitch.” My knuckles were white from gripping the knife so hard.
The silence extended for what seemed like an eternity. Then there were multiple loud thumps, followed by the splintering crash of glass. I rushed into the master bedroom just in time to see a well-polished shoe about to disappear through the high window. Definitely male. I sprinted and slashed at the footwear with the Reaper’s Switch, but missed. The thief crashed into the sand below with a massive thud.
I rushed to the sill, putting my hand on the broken pane without thinking, ready to vault out and pursue the intruder down the dark beach. But the man—young, brown haired, wearing a suit—was already disappearing into the pre-dawn jungle. The jagged glass sliced into my palm, and I brought my hand away, dripping blood across the empty floor.
I glanced around the large room. Nothing was missing, because there had been nothing to take. So why the hell had he come up here?
I would’ve searched for answers. But I didn’t get the opportunity to organize my thoughts before the thumping knocks at my one-half of a door announced a new problem.
The cops were here.
And they had a lot of questions about just what the hell had been going on tonight.
5
Well, if there was one silver lining to the police showing up on my doorstep, it was this: I’d finally found a bulletproof cure for exhaustion. Because any lingering fatigue had been replaced by a primal, shit-your-pants brand of fear.
What was that old saying? Out of the werewolf’s jaws, onto the vampire’s shitlist, and into the police’s cuffs? As long as Aldric could create his own interpretation of old clichés, so could I. And this one fit.
The cops pounded at the door like they were determined to make it cave in. I gave the master bedroom one final glance, but couldn’t find anything out of place. Then I rushed down the stairs. Hushed voices—belonging to a man and a woman—filtered through the flapping trash bag. The woman was arguing in favor of charging through, illegal searches be damned. Her partner, by contrast, was more interested in things like Constitutional rights.
That made me furrow my brow as I took the clear glass stairs three at a time. The police force on the island had always practiced its own brand of selective, Wild West law enforcement. A vestige of an age lost centuries ago, when the lawmen were as crooked as the criminals. These days, that kind of thing didn’t happen quite as much. Not because there were more good men, but because everyone had a cell phone. Harder to be a dick when everything was up on YouTube.
The woman didn’t seem to care about going viral, though. She was ready to storm the Bastille and take my head. I kind of liked her style, but I didn’t like being at the end of her bayonet.
But my thoughts were getting addled. Mentioning the Constitution meant only one thing: these weren’t cops from the Atheas PD. That meant the people combing over the beach, about to find a body on what amounted to my front law had to be the same folks who Aldric was very, very pissed about having on the island.
“FBI.” The man’s rich, mellow baritone floated through the air like a gentle breeze. “Anyone home?”
“I’m making coffee,” I called back.
“Is that an invitation?” the woman said, sounding eager to have me in cuffs.
“It’s not,” I said.
“The door’s missing,” the woman said. “That’s a clear sign of—”
“Remodeling.” I grabbed a semi-clean t-shirt from the single, sad lamp standing guard over the leather couch, immediately ruining it with a smear of blood from my wounded palm. So, instead of a change of clothes, I got a makeshift bandage. The Feds weren’t going away.
Since they’d stopped knocking, I took that as an invitation to actually make coffee. As the water boiled, and I stared at the broken door and waving black trash bag, I considered my next move. The first faint trickles of dawn were seeping through the cracks at the edges of the bag. No great answer to my multiplying problems presented itself, but I did take the opportunity to scrub the blood from the Reaper’s Switch. I also examined the wound on my palm, which wasn’t deep, but was bleeding at a prodigious rate.
I cleaned it and then tied the shirt around it. Not perfect, but it’d have to do. As for my shoulder, well, that looked like a biohazard. A burnt-looking crust was beginning to form where the wolf’s teeth had crunched into my shoulder.
“Ma’am?” The man sounded genuinely concerned about me, whereas his partner surely wanted to throw me in the Gulag as soon as possible and beat answers out of me.
“I told you, I’m making coffee.”
“Could you perhaps let us in?”
“I could,” I said. “But I won’t.”
“We can get a warrant,” the woman said. It was a good cop, bad cop type of riff, but I got the impression that it wasn’t actually a planned bit. Their natural personalities were just on display in the early morning hours.
“Then get a warrant,” I said. I dumped the instant coffee into the mug, watching it dissolve into something that resembled black tar heroin. “What the hell is the FBI doing here, anyway?”
“We’re asking the questions here,” the woman said.
“Suit yourself.” Lacking spoons, I just kind of shook the cup until the liquid looked safe to drink. I took a sip to test it out. Tasted like battery acid, and was strong enough to use as a paint thinner. Perfect.
I took the steaming mug toward the broken door. The smell of crappy generic roast drifting through the pre-dawn air. The remnants of the other half of the door still lay just inside the foyer, where the wolf had tossed it. Even if I’d wanted to
move it, the thick oak would’ve been way too heavy to deal with on my own. Guess I’d be getting some more visitors out here later to fix this mess. At least they’d be invited.
I glanced in the mirror hanging by the door. If I felt like shit, I looked about five times worse. I brushed the visible sand from my clumped up brown hair, pinched my cheeks and then angled my body so the werewolf claws weren’t the first thing visible.
The woman said, “Come on, Miss Hunter, I hear you beyond this—what the hell is this, a tarp? I don’t have all—”
“Day,” I said, swinging the door wide open with a bright smile. An attractive, broad-shouldered FBI agent blocked much of my view, but I could still see he was but one ant in a colony that had overtaken the beach. My stomach tightened into a knot. They must’ve found the body. The blackish-gray light beat into my tired eyes like bright morning sunshine, dissolving my smile into a scowl.
The woman cut in front of her partner, which only further dampened my mood. Up close, I could tell she was slightly older—maybe mid-thirties. She cut an imposing figure. Tall, attractive, in control. She was perched like a bird of prey on stiletto boots, just waiting to strike.
“We were out here for three minutes.” She checked her wristwatch. “Four minutes.”
“Sounds like a crime,” I said. “Better call the cops.”
Neither of them smiled. The three of us stood in an awkward silence. I took the opportunity to take a sip of coffee, trying to maintain an aura of disinterested nonchalance. Behind them, their fellow agents worked to set up spotlights and other crime scene accoutrements. I counted four vehicles, and at least eight other agents. The FBI was making a splash on the island with their first investigation. What a lucky girl I was to have it all unfold right in my backyard.
I rubbed my tongue over my teeth, feeling a day’s worth of film and grime on the surface. A cold shower and a quick sleep didn’t sound all that far off from heaven. Too bad I wouldn’t be getting any sleep.
“What happened to your door, Miss Hunter?” the man asked from behind his stern looking partner.
“Here you know so much about me, and I know nothing about you.” I gave him an unfriendly smile.
“We looked up who owned the property on the way over.” The man gestured toward the jungle and the ocean with his large arms. His long, black hair flowed over a casual, form-fitting oxford cloth shirt. Apparently this branch of FBI didn’t have a dress code. An entire sleeve of tattoos spiraled up his right arm, starting just beyond the wrist. I made out a spear on the inside of his forearm, rendered in traditional Polynesian style.
“What island are you from originally?” I asked, nodding toward the tattoo.
His eyebrows arched almost imperceptibly. “O’ahu.”
“So you dubbed yourself a warrior?”
“It was given to me by someone else,” the man said.
“And what would I be?” I smiled at him, curious at what the answer might be. He seemed to possess a wisdom beyond his years. His very presence was calming, even though it shouldn’t have been. After all, this was the FBI coming to haul me away.
He brushed his long hair over his shoulders. “I cannot say.”
“All right, all right,” the woman threw up her hands like she’d had enough. “You’re not going to bat your eyes out of this shitstorm, Hunter.”
She leaned on my name like it was the most important piece of evidence she had. Joke was on her, since she clearly had none. Back when I was running cons and had my own crew, my job had never been to look doe-eyed and pretty. My sister Sierra had always been the seductress. Nope—I’d always been the one with the marker and the white board, drawing up the plan, organizing the chess board just so.
Too bad this board was looking stacked against me.
“We’re gonna come inside, Hunter. With or without a warrant.”
“I’ll take the former.” I felt the smile melt from my face. “If you don’t mind, I have some more shitty coffee I need to burn.”
I went to drop the trash bag.
“Stingray,” the man said, catching the bag. “You’d be a stingray.”
“Interesting choice,” I said. “Any reason why?”
“Because a stingray sits in the sand, using its guile to survive the ocean. But, when it’s necessary, it is willing to defend those things that matter.”
If he hadn’t been so earnest, I’d have thought he was running a scam on me. It was the type of thing you’d say to cut right to a person’s heart. Build rapport, give them compliments. Try to make them feel understood. But, in that moment, with the other agents milling over the beach, and the searchlights bleaching the black sand with their high-powered beams, it seemed genuine.
He was human. But, strangely, I could sense a heat coming off this guy’s being, almost magical, even though he was human as the day was long. I couldn’t quite feel his soul, but I could feel the sincerity in his words. He was a good man.
That’s where everyone goes wrong, right?
But I said, “Don’t you two need to announce yourselves or something?”
The man reached into his back pocket and draped his badge over his partner’s shoulder. “Agent Kai Taylor.”
His partner begrudgingly reached into the pocket of her expensive jeans. With a theatrical sweep of her blonde hair, she gave me an authoritative smile and said, “Agent Rayna Denton. Now, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Against my better judgement, I let them come inside. They both look surprised about the broken door, although they no doubt could see part of it past where I was standing in the doorway. Rayna headed toward the living room, and I whistled at her like an errant dog.
“Really like what you’ve done with the place,” she said, nodding at the almost empty living room.
“This isn’t free reign to search the premises.” I nodded toward the large kitchen a few steps away. “Just a couple people having shitty coffee. If I’d known I was having company, I’d have bought a fruit plate.”
Windows ringed the room, giving a perfect view of the beach and surrounding forest. There were no FBI agents on the other side of the villa—yet. Then again, there wasn’t much to find back here. All the evidence was on the shore-facing part of the residence, near the bushes.
“I love shitty coffee.” Rayna’s expression suggested she didn’t like anything at all. “But you know what I really enjoy, Miss Hunter?”
“I’m sure we’re all going to find out.” I put the water back on to boil.
“Honesty. So just do us all a favor.”
“Is this the part where you say 96% of murders that happen near a home are committed by the person inside, or some other statistic you make up on the spot?” Steam jetted out from the plastic boiling pot. “Maybe that you can cut me a deal if I just admit to killing the poor guy.”
Silence overtook the room. I glanced up from the stovetop to find both of them staring at me with stunned expressions.
“Is there something on my face?”
“We didn’t say anything about a murder,” Kai said. His brow was furrowed, like he was trying to figure me out. Rayna was having no such quandary, however. After being stunned by my accidental slip of the tongue, she now had a smug, self-satisfied look on her face. She bore the grin of an apex predator about ready to strike.
“That, Miss Hunter, is what we call probable cause.” Rayna reached out for the cup of coffee I’d just finished making. I dumped it down the drain in the middle of the kitchen island. Unperturbed, she reached for the dregs of mine and drank the rest with a catty glare. “You’re right about one thing, though.”
“What’s that?” I asked, even though I didn’t want to hear the answer.
“This is some goddamn awful coffee.” Rayna left out the door. Her partner lingered.
“If you know something about what happened outside…” Kai said, allowing me space to fill in the blanks. I didn’t take his baited hook, and silence settled in over the kitchen. Rayna returned a minute later, with th
ree more agents. She told them to search the premises. I would’ve protested, but I wasn’t really in a position to do so.
“I need to search you, too.” He gestured for me to hold out my arms.
“That must be how you get all the girls.”
Kai looked embarrassed, but didn’t respond. With graceful movements, he made his way around the island. Close, now, I could tell he was well over six feet. He seemed big enough to swallow me whole, or shield me from any harm that came. But that wasn’t true: he was the harm about to come down on my life.
“What happened to your shoulder, Eden?”
“Ran into a door,” I said.
He grinned with minor amusement as his strong fingers glided over the fabric. They stopped at my pockets, where he extracted my phone, keyrings and the Reaper’s Switch. He placed them all on the counter, then continued down to my ankles.
“And why does a nice-looking woman like you need to carry a blood covered knife like that, Eden?”
“And me what now?” My words failed me as I processed what he was saying. Blood? I’d washed it off in the sink. I turned to the knife, and my heart sank. The duct tape had caught some of the run-off, and its edges now carried a light crimson tint.
Kai gave me a funny look and said, “That wasn’t English.”
“There are bears and things out here,” I mumbled, giving no explanation at all for the bloody blade. Further conversation was cut short by a triumphant screech coming from upstairs. Somewhere that sounded suspiciously like the master bedroom.
I gave Kai a look, and we seemed to share a sort of psychic understanding that Rayna was insane. But she was also the one with the badge, the gun, and all the cards, while I was just the “nice girl” with a broken door, a bloody knife, and a whole lot of explaining to do.
Rain Dance (Sunshine & Scythes Book 1) Page 4
