A Kiss of Revenge (Entangled Ignite)

by Natalie Damschroder

  Small hope, since her secrets kept her from truly becoming part of the community. It wasn’t just because she was searching their homes when they weren’t there. If they knew she’d become a kind of bizarre magnet for electricity, they’d consider her a freak. Sure, some of them might think it was cool that on a good day, she could draw power into her body and channel it back out. Others would be frightened, and they should be. Static and latent energy went haywire all around her whenever her emotions did. So far she hadn’t hurt anyone, but the risk was there. A risk most wouldn’t entertain, which made her friendship with Griff even more special. Because he knew, and didn’t judge.

  Her gift, or curse, or power, or whatever anyone wanted to call it, hadn’t been apparent right away. Reese blamed the drugs they’d had her on during her initial recovery. Broken bones, lacerations, and bruised organs healed while she lay sedated, working out her plan. Then she’d started rehab and her investigation on the same day. At first, she’d been thrilled to be clear-headed for once. She’d spent some time using her smartphone to research detective agencies and called Griff for an interview. He’d visited her on her second day of physical therapy. While he looked on, waiting to talk, her frustration with atrophied muscles and overly perky therapy assistants resulted in a blown-out computer monitor. A few more incidents like that, and Reese realized the prickling she felt throughout her body, the rising hair and low buzz, weren’t emotional or symptoms of nerve impingement. However it had happened, the lightning had somehow turned her into a conductor, but instead of scuffing her feet across a rug and touching something to create a spark, she attracted electricity without doing anything at all.

  Thank God for Griff. She never would have told anyone. She’d been on the verge of running far, far away but was still too physically weak. Plus, the authorities’d had an eye on her during their investigation of the crash, since she wasn’t supposed to be on the flight and they could find no proof that Brian had a partner. Running would have amped up their suspicion, and Griff convinced her that she could get control of the electricity thing. That it was just another part of her rehabilitation. And one day, she could turn it into an asset.

  He’d been with her every step of the way since.

  At the end of the day, she waved good-bye to the last customer and locked the door, cleaning up and preparing the deposit as quickly as possible. She probably wouldn’t find anything at the Snakewells’ and even considered letting this one go. Hugh seemed to be a typical working father. His wife was president of the PTA, and his two younger kids came in for ice cream on soccer Saturdays. Still, that was all surface, and Reese knew how much could lie underneath. Hugh traveled a lot, and there was an older son she had never met. Either one could be the man she was searching for.

  Despite feeling guilty for spying on people she liked, being treated like a friend wouldn’t stop her. Her target had no conscience, so she couldn’t allow herself to have one, either. If she couldn’t eradicate the guilt, she’d ignore it.

  The evening light had started to fade when she left the shop. Only a few tardy birds whistled and chirped in the oaks lining Sycamore Street during the two-block walk to the bank. Dinnertime in Crestview emptied the streets, except for three blocks over, where the hotel restaurant would still be hopping. Reese appreciated the quiet every night.

  After dropping the deposit in the bank bin, she walked to her new house around the corner. She’d been pleased to find the little bungalow so close to downtown. It made things much more efficient.

  She frowned as she approached the brown-painted structure that crouched in the shaggy lawn. One of these evenings she’d have to skip breaking and entering to mow…before the neighbor-with-a-superiority-complex started sending her anonymous notes again.

  But not tonight. She went inside and took a few minutes to change into a black catsuit and hoodie, covering most of her light blond hair with a black band that also went over her ears. She shoved her feet into black sneakers, tucked her keys into her black fanny pack, and went out the back door to start jogging toward the outskirts of town.

  Dressing in head-to-toe black made her feel like a movie cliché, but she’d learned the hard way how white sneakers or blond hair stood out in a shadowed yard. During her second break-in, the family had come home early from a weekend wedding, interrupting her coming out of the house. One of the kids insisted he saw her leap off the porch, but the grumpy parents had dismissed it. After that, she hadn’t taken any chances. Mimsie Wallace, who bought day-olds by the bagful to feed the squirrels in the town square, had reprimanded her once for not being easily seen on the dark shoulder as she jogged. Mimsie was at least eighty-five and shouldn’t be driving at night, anyway, so Reese took extra care whenever she went out.

  Previous research told her the Snakewells’ house had been built two years ago in The Charms. Each house was worth a minimum of a million dollars, and situated on a large lot. All had privacy fences, some high security. Not unusual, even in a small town. Nor was it unusual for many of the residents to be reclusive and mysterious. But it was rare for a community like The Charms to be known outside of its region.

  When Reese decided to find the man who’d attempted to murder her husband, her best clue had been a slip of paper taped into a ledger, referencing The Charms. The ledger itself had been no help at all, just a few lists of numbers, some of which were obviously money, others quantity, but with no way to connect them to anything.

  Some of the rumors she found said Jimmy Hoffa started the community. Others said a young heiress burned by a lover who only wanted her money built the first home. Reese didn’t care how it began. She only cared that, somehow, over the years The Charms had attracted a whole group of people who had a need or desire to hide. It had built slowly, so it wasn’t—luckily for her—a fully gated community with guards and cameras on the streets. Some of the homeowners were like the Snakewells. But many were completely invisible, and one of those could be her husband’s partner.

  She slowed as she approached the Snakewells’ house. Yellow security lamps created pools of light in the empty street, and stone posts at the entries to many driveways held flashing security panels. The pink stone blocks at her target house were no exception.

  Glancing around to make sure the street was still deserted, she jogged up to the barred gate and pressed the buzzer on the vox box. A recording clicked on.

  “Welcome to the Snakewell residence. Visitors are not expected at this time and entry is not permitted.” Clever. Not revealing they weren’t home. It could be inferred but not assumed. “Please lean close to the box to record your message, and we’ll contact you to schedule a visit. Thank you!” the voice sang. A beep like an answering machine sounded, but she ignored it. A second later the box beeped again, and the hiss of the open connection cut off.

  She examined the security panel. High quality, but not the best she’d seen. Bypassing it would be easy. Even though she’d developed some measure of control in those early weeks of rehab and learned how to block out the electricity when she was calm, the process was ongoing. On her first break-in, she’d been so nervous she shorted more than the security system. Rumor had it all the wiring in the house had to be replaced. She’d spent more time practicing, learning not only how to sense the electricity, but how to control its flow. And now she knew more about electrical wiring than a professional contractor.

  Closing her eyes, she tuned out all her other senses and concentrated on the security panel beneath her palm. She imagined an insulator lifting away, allowing the electricity powering the system to change course and enter her receptive body. After a small amount collected, she sent it zipping back into the machine. With a loud pop, the panel shorted out and the indicator lights went dark.

  Hoping the shock had damaged the whole system and not just the panel, she slid behind the freestanding post and along the property wall. She couldn’t enter through the main gate without lock-picking skills she didn’t have. Electricity did nothing to iron lock
s, even those operated electronically. They just stayed locked.

  Several yards from the drive, she found a way over the wall. A screen of young trees grew too far from the wall to help her climb over, but one flexible trunk curved close, probably partially uprooted in the summer’s thunderstorms. She pressed on it until the top branches hooked over the wall. Speed and agility would keep her from breaking the slender tree. She hoped.

  She peered through the foliage one more time, checking for dog-walkers or after-dinner strollers. Still nothing. Bracing one hand on the little tree, she bounced up to land on it with both feet and immediately ran up it to the wall. It creaked and sagged, but held. She landed in a crouch on the wall and scanned the expanse of grass ahead of her. Then she turned with her hands gripping the stone, dropped over the side, hung, and let go to land on the balls of her feet.

  She hoped like hell they didn’t have dogs. The houses out here were too far apart for barking to be an issue, but teeth were something else. She stood for a moment, listening. Many properties had a loud alarm tripped by motion detectors at the lot’s perimeter. These were connected to the police station, of course, but were also meant to deter the intruder. She heard nothing and didn’t sense any operational electronics.

  Most people could hear or feel the hum of a television or stereo, or even some smaller electronics, sensing when they were on even if they weren’t conscious of it until they turned them off. Since the plane crash, Reese had gained a hyper-awareness that came in handy.

  No alarm, no hum, no dogs. Because lights lit the lawn like a golf course, she circled the property, staying close to the wall, until she reached the garage. The side window was wired on the inside, and she couldn’t tell if they’d kept the residential and perimeter systems separate. She couldn’t access it through the glass, so she’d have to find an exposed wire or control panel.

  She found what she needed at the rear entry of the garage. A plastic-coated wire crossed the top corner of the door on the hinge side. She slid a pair of cutters from her fanny pack and eased through the coating, careful not to cut the wire. When she’d exposed it, she pinched it between two fingers, drew off a slight amount of electricity, and sent a quick jolt into it. A shudder went through her as the current surged, then went dead.

  That should do it. She pulled a pair of thin latex gloves from her fanny pack, now that she didn’t need direct contact with the wiring. She tried the handle of the door, unsurprised to find it locked. The Snakewells put too much stock in their electronics, though, and she got through the door with the slide of a credit card. The inside door was unlocked, and in seconds she’d entered the kitchen.

  She was never sure exactly what to look for when she broke into someone’s house or office. It wasn’t as though they’d have a big sign in the dining room saying, “I betrayed and tried to kill Brian Treget…oh, and his wife, too.” Nor would evidence be lying out on the desk. But once she was in the right place, there had to be something connecting the occupant to the accident and the job Brian had been doing.

  The police hadn’t put much stock in her story. The plane had clearly been tampered with, so they’d had to investigate why. But Brian was unresponsive and unlikely ever to recover and tell them anything. They’d claimed they found nothing in his personal or business papers to indicate he was working with someone, though they’d agreed with her that his activities had been suspicious. Their theories leaned toward marital infidelity, which was ironic because that was what Reese had thought, too, at first. Long, unexplained absences? Check. An overly familiar tone on phone calls he never let her hear clearly? Check. But none of the other classic signs had been there, and then she’d discovered money that didn’t connect to their regular incomes. By the time she got the information to the authorities, the account was gone. They’d looked even harder at Reese after that, sure she’d tampered with the plane herself, or hired someone to do it, and tried to make it look like someone else was involved.

  She had spent long weeks stressing about their focus. Her first husband had been a rookie cop, still wide-eyed and full of optimism when he was killed by a cop on the take when Joey stumbled across a payoff. She knew cops weren’t all rotten—Andrew, for example, epitomized the nobility of a small-town chief of police—but it was safer to trust no one, and she couldn’t help expecting the worst. Pinning the crash on her might not hold in the long run, but getting locked up would still ruin her life.

  When they couldn’t find anything to support their theories they seemed to stop looking anywhere at all, and the investigation stalled, abandoned for newer, more serious cases.

  But the partner existed, and he was still out there. He might have enough records to pin everything on Brian, and maybe even some that would implicate her. She and Brian remained in a frightening, indefinite limbo. Even if he died, she’d be unable to move on. And she desperately wanted to move on.

  Besides the reference to The Charms, her only clue was the way Brian talked to and about his partner. He had to be someone he knew well. But Griff had looked into every name she gave him and every one of them—all their friends, all the people listed in Brian’s address book, and every friend on Facebook—came up clean.

  This was the only path she had left, no matter how much Griff disagreed. So far, she’d found nothing, despite searching six houses since moving to Crestview. But six out of three dozen was barely scraping the surface, a fact that both bolstered her and filled her with despair that this would ever be over.

  She started in the Snakewells’ den, just off the kitchen. Riffled through files, broke into the desk’s locked drawer, and examined bank records, mortgage information, and a record of adoption of the oldest boy, Chad. He was twenty-two. A little young to be her guy, but the ledger showed checks made out to him dating back three years. When she booted up the computer—unprotected by password—she found three addresses for him in the family address book. None were even close to DC, where she and Brian had been living at the time, or Miami, where they’d stopped to refuel shortly before the crash.

  She skimmed the other files and found nothing. If Daddy Snakewell brought work home, he did it on a laptop or a computer elsewhere in the house. This one was strictly family business.

  She moved quickly through the rest of the first floor. Bored, and certain this would be yet another fruitless search, she ran upstairs and peeked into all the bedrooms before going back to the one papered with supermodel posters. Chad had his own computer, this one coded, but his password wasn’t hard to guess—it was the name of the model in the third poster. He had lots of porn—typical—and kept logs of sexually oriented chats with what were probably giggling teenaged girls. Games loaded the system, and the .doc files held a couple of term papers. The e-mail archives were mostly communication about hotties, booze, and the next party.

  She sighed. Nothing here. The master bedroom would probably be a bust, too, but she had to be thorough, so she went down the hall and opened the door to the biggest bedroom.

  She’d barely registered the absence of a desk or any kind of non-clothing storage unit when the crackle and voice of a police radio sounded outside the house. Cursing, she moved to the window and peered through the sheers without touching them, so they wouldn’t move and reveal her presence. A police officer stood in the yard, his head bent to talk into his shoulder mike. The security company must have registered the loss of power to the system and called the cops. The phone hadn’t rung, which would have alerted her they were calling to check on the house, but either her power surge had taken out the phones or they knew the Snakewells were gone and hadn’t bothered to call.

  Shit. So much for a leisurely search and easy getaway. But she sure as hell wouldn’t get caught, either. Her odds were better if the cop didn’t see the cut casing on the garage door wire. But Chief Laine had a well-trained crew, so she had to assume he would spot the breach, call it in, and wait for someone to contact the owners for permission to enter the premises. That would take a few minutes, assumi
ng he hadn’t started already. So she had a little time. Maybe very little.

  She left the bedroom and closed the door behind her, the way she’d found it, then raced to the end of the hall. A window there overlooked the wraparound porch roof. She twisted the lock only far enough to clear the latch, lifted the window, and climbed through. She closed it again and hoped they would assume the window just hadn’t been locked properly.

  She couldn’t go to the right, to the front of the house, because the cop’s partner was probably there. He’d looked like he’d been coming from the backyard. As silently as possible, she ran in a crouch to the end of the roof and flattened on her belly to look down.

  The backyard was empty. She grabbed the edge of the roof and flipped off, barely clearing the hedge, and losing her balance as she landed. Rolling with the fall, she popped up and raced toward the back of the property. Her speed gave her momentum, and she leaped for the top of the stone wall, reached as high as she could—

  And missed.

  Her right knee banged hard against the rock, making her gasp and sending a shockwave of pain into her hip as she landed, still inside the yard. She curled against the wall, biting back moans. Shitshitshit. God damn it. She didn’t have time for this crap. She swallowed hard as the pain subsided into a slow throb, and tilted her head back. The top of the wall looked very high from here. Futility bore down on her, weakening her limbs and boosting fatigue. This random search strategy was getting her nowhere, and every close call threatened to end it. She needed a new plan, and soon. The longer it took to find this guy, the less likely justice became.

  But first, she had to get out of this damned yard.

  Jumping wouldn’t work, and she hadn’t brought rope. But the stone blocks back here were rougher than on the outside of the wall, more uneven. She pushed to her feet and reached high. Yes, she could get a handhold. She lifted her good leg and found a toehold, then another with the bad leg. Her thigh quivered and sharpened the pain in her knee. She had to pause a second, easing her weight to the other side, until the pain ebbed. Her breath rasped, and she struggled to quiet it.