Blood of Saints

by Maegan Beaumont

  Sabrina stood, clearing the table of the remaining dishes and carrying them to the sink. She scraped them clean before filling the sink with hot water and adding soap. Washing dishes, she watched Michael in the reflection of the kitchen window as he re-organized the gun cabinet, stacking boxes of ammo and making sure each rifle and handgun was in its proper place as if their lives depended on it. From the living room, Alex’s voice drifted in as he cautiously read The Mouse and the Motorcycle to Christina, his heavily accented words coming in stops and starts while she offered quiet words of encouragement.

  “She’s pretty amazing, isn’t she?” she said, still watching Michael in the refection of the window. Behind her he stopped what he was doing for a moment and listened.

  “She is,” he answered quietly, his attention refocused on the task at hand.

  “She must take after Lydia,” she said. They’d never really talked about Christina’s mother. What had happened to her. Sabrina knew Christina’s father had killed her and that Michael blamed himself, but they’d never talked about her. The kind of person she was. How he’d felt about her.

  “Not really,” he said while he re-fit .50-caliber bullets into their carton. “Lydia was softer. Quicker to see and believe the best in people. Christina’s been through too much to allow herself to be fooled.” Carton filled, he stacked it on top of the others inside the larder and shut the door. In the black of the window, she saw him check his watch. “I’m going out to the barn.”

  It wasn’t what he said—he went to the barn every night after dinner—it was his tone that bothered her. Removed. Controlled. Like her mind had already been made up. Like she was already gone.

  Sabrina turned away from his reflection, toward him. “Michael—”

  That was as far as she got before he passed through the door, pulling it shut behind him. She wanted to follow him. Force him to talk to her. To listen to her, make him believe her when she said she wasn’t going to leave him.

  Instead she finished the dishes, carefully washing each plate and fork before drying it and putting it away in the cupboard. Next she wiped out the cast iron skillet with a paper towel before hanging it back on its hook above the stove.

  In the living room, Alex finished reading and Christina praised him before asking if he wanted to watch a movie. It was their routine. Afterward, they’d go to bed and tomorrow, they’d do it all over again. The same, every day …

  Sabrina looked at the envelope. Its tab and the string that wound it closed as red as blood. She’d been wiping the counter around it for a while now. Circling. Stalling.

  Drying her hands on the seat of her cargos, she finally picked it up, carrying it to the table. She sat down, unwinding the string that closed it, and opened Pandora’s Box.

  Seven

  The barn wasn’t really a barn. Not anymore, anyway. Its fifteen hundred square feet had been converted into a multipurpose workspace long before they’d gotten here. Mechanic bays held the classic cars Michael had inherited from his father—the ’71 Challenger and his dad’s Roadster had been waiting for him when they’d arrived. Tinkering on them, even if he couldn’t drive them, staved off the restlessness that crept in. He strode past the cars without sparing them a glance. Grabbing a tire iron as he went, he headed for the long workbench stretched along the back wall.

  Right now, he wasn’t thinking about spark plugs or oil changes. Right now he was thinking of one thing and one thing only.

  Yanking the canvas drop cloth off the table, he stared at what was underneath. His fingers flexed around the hard length of metal in his hand, gripping it so tight he could feel the pull of it across his shoulders. He wanted to smash the thing, swing the iron into it again and again until it was nothing but a useless pile of plastic and wires.

  Instead, he tossed the tire iron onto the table beside it and switched it on.

  Like his cars, the ham radio had been here when they arrived. It was their contingency plan—his and Ben’s. A low-tech way to communicate if things went bad. A way that wouldn’t inadvertently trigger the microchip Ben’s father had grafted to his spine and kill him.

  Michael was to turn his radio on every night at seven o’clock sharp and leave it on for thirty minutes. That was the window—if there was a problem, Ben was supposed to use it to let him know. Warn him so he could get his family to safety in time. For a year, he’d tuned into the dedicated channel and listened to nothing but static.

  Last week, everything changed.

  “I’m sorry, man,” Ben’s voice reached through the speaker tonight, confirming Michael’s suspicions: Maddox had been sent here by Benjamin Shaw.

  “Only you would use a US Senator as an errand boy.”

  “I tried to do it the easy way but you ignored me … and he’s retired now.”

  A week ago, Ben’s voice had come through the speaker of his radio: Michael, I need to talk to Sabrina. It’s important. He’d listened for a few seconds, waiting for Ben to elaborate. To tell him what it was about. Why he needed to talk to her. When he didn’t, Michael switched off the radio and went back into the house. He hadn’t turned it on since.

  “Retired or not, I almost killed him,” he ground out. He could still see Maddox caught in the crosshairs of his scope. Feel the way his finger ached to squeeze the trigger when he realized who it was. What his being here meant.

  “But you didn’t—gold star for you,” Ben said. “Playing house must suit you.” Michael could tell from his tone he was only half joking. He was also right. Being here, filling his days with making grilled cheese sandwiches for dogs and rotating the tires on a car he hadn’t driven in years had made him soft. A year ago, he would’ve pulled the trigger without a second thought.

  “It was touch and go there for a minute.”

  “You wouldn’t kill the messenger, Michael,” Ben said, his tone confident. “It’s not your style.”

  “Don’t be so sure, kid. I’ve done a lot worse for a lot less.”

  “You haven’t been that guy for a long time,” Ben said, trying to convince himself he hadn’t miscalculated.

  Michael felt the weight of him—El Cartero, the man he used to be­—settle across his shoulders. The heaviness of him, the things he’d done, seeped into his bones. He almost welcomed the feeling. “You’d be surprised how easy he is to find, given the right circumstances.”

  Ben made a sound, like he was suddenly uneasy with the turn the conversation had taken. “Like I said, I’m sorry, but—”

  “I don’t want an apology. Whatever it is, whatever you want her for …” His hands cranked tight, fisting themselves against his thighs. “I want you to make it go away.”

  Ben sighed into the static. “I can’t do that. You know I would if I could, but—”

  “Bullshit.” Laughter, harsh and hoarse, barked out of him. “You’re Benjamin Shaw. Making things go away is what you do.”

  “Under normal circumstances, you’d be right,” Ben said. “But these circumstances are anything but normal.”

  “I don’t believe you. I think you’re bored without us to push around like chess pieces.” Even as he said it, Michael knew he was being unfair—cruel even—to the one person besides Sabrina who’d ever been willing to risk his life for him.

  Now it was Ben’s turn to laugh. “You have no idea what pulling off your disappearance has cost me so don’t—just don’t.” He didn’t sound uneasy anymore. He sounded pissed.

  “Like what? Did Daddy take your Lear away?”

  “You know what? Fuck you, O’Shea.” Silence charged with anger hissed between them and for a second, Michael was sure he’d killed the transmission. Ben cleared his throat. “Look, it doesn’t matter. That’s not what this is about,” he said, sounding resigned. “I’ve got my father handled. What’s going on has nothing to do with him.”

  Handled. No one handled Livingston Shaw—and if t
hey did, it wasn’t for long. Michael was suddenly sure whatever Ben had given to placate his father, it had been far more than his friend could afford to give.

  “I still owe you one, you know.”

  “Bro, you owe me about fifty,” Ben said and Michael was relieved to hear the smile in his voice. “I miss you guys.”

  Michael could hear the truth in his admission. The loneliness. The isolation. Ben was surrounded by people—people who would follow any order he gave without a moment’s hesitation—and he didn’t trust any of them. Didn’t count a single one of them among his friends.

  “Will you be there with her?” Michael said, suddenly realizing he had no idea where Sabrina was going. What was being asked of her or why. “Can I count on that, at least?” They both knew Sabrina was leaving, that she would allow herself to be drawn into whatever mess Ben had laid at her feet. That even if he could, he wouldn’t try to stop her. It would be pointless to pretend otherwise.

  More silence before Ben cleared his throat again. “No. My days of playing guardian angel are over. Been over for a while now … but I’ll do what I can for her. I promise.”

  Before Michael could ask what he meant, Ben switched off, leaving nothing but dead air in his place.

  Eight

  She’d known what they were even before she’d reached inside but that didn’t stop her fingers from jerking against the envelope. Instantly rejecting the cool, slick paper as soon as she touched it.

  Photographs.

  Sabrina forced herself to pull the stack free and spread them across the kitchen table. Forced herself to look at what Ben wanted her to see. Blood and death—so much of both that for a moment, she felt dizzy.

  She closed her eyes, splayed her hand across the pictures in front of her. In the neighboring room, she could hear the movie Christina and Alex had chosen for the evening. Pacific Rim, one of her favorites. Under normal circumstances, she’d pop some popcorn on the stovetop and join them while waiting for Michael to come back in from the barn.

  Her current circumstances were anything but normal. But they used to be. Once upon a time, what laid on the table had been as normal as breathing to her …

  Just another case. Just another body.

  Her old mantra came back to her. Pulled her in and calmed her. She opened her eyes and looked at the photos beneath her hand.

  Three known victims in the space of twelve months. All showing signs of dehydration. Malnourishment. Rape. Torture. They’d been kept before they’d been killed. Ligature marks and antemortem injuries suggested for several days, one for as long as a month, before being executed.

  Victimology was all over the place. The first victim, Danielle Watson, was forty years old. Another victim, Stephanie Adams, had been in her twenties. The latest victim, Isla Talbert—found two weeks ago—had been only twelve. She’d disappeared while on a bike ride to a convenience store, two blocks from her house. Found two weeks later inside a roadside shrine, naked, bound with bailing wire, and posed as if she were praying. Like the rest, cause of death had been a quarter-sized hole punched into the base of her skull.

  Sabrina pushed the photos to the side, concentrating on the ME and investigation reports that accompanied them. Mixed in with official reports were full backgrounds on each of the victims. Scattered throughout the reports were highlighted portions that wove the victims together.

  Still, she couldn’t find a reason Ben would feel the need to drop this case in her lap. It took her nearly an hour of combing before she found it—to anyone else the notation would mean nothing. Less than nothing. A few sentences at the end of a lab report marked Stephanie Adams. An oddity chalked up to an almost crippling backlog at the lab and not enough manpower.

  For Sabrina, it changed everything.

  –––––

  She’d gone to bed alone, though she’d waited for what felt like hours for Michael to come back inside. It’d been long enough for the movie to run its course and the kids to put themselves to bed before she finally gave up and closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep.

  He’d come in sometime afterward, the weight of him sinking into the bed beside her. He reached for her, whispered her name against the nape of her neck and she’d turned toward him. Let him pull her under. His mouth and hands on her skin. Let herself believe, at least for a while, that none of it had happened. That the pictures and reports she’d been poring over just a few hours before had been nothing more than a bad dream.

  She woke just before dawn to find him sitting in the chair he kept by the window, staring out into the dense gray beyond it. It was nothing new. More often than not, she’d wake to find him like this, half dressed, watching the night sky like he was waiting. Like he knew it was only a matter of time before someone came and took it all away.

  The manila envelope Maddox brought her rested almost casually on his knee.

  “Can we talk about it now?”

  He’d known she was awake and he nodded at her like he’d been waiting for her to ask. “Yeah, we can talk about it.” He swiped a hand over his face, nodding his head. “When are you leaving?”

  The question, the finality in his voice scared her. Sent panic clawing up her spine. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I’m not leaving. I’m staying right here.”

  “There’s an active serial killer in Yuma, Sabrina,” he said with a look that told her he thought she was being ridiculous and stubborn. “He’s killed four women in the past year.”

  “So what?” she said. Sitting up, she fumbled for her tank, searching for it in the tangle of sheet and blankets. “It’s got nothing to do with me.”

  “Okay, let’s ignore the obvious—that the killing started less than a month after your very public and very tragic demise.” He tossed the envelope onto the bed where it landed less than a foot from her hand. “We’ll focus on the fact that the second victim was found with traces of Melissa Walker’s DNA under her fingernails. That means it has everything to do with you.”

  Melissa Walker. The girl she used to be. The girl who’d fled to Yuma when she was just sixteen, her twin siblings in tow. She’d left Jessup, the small Texas town where she’d grown up, in a desperate attempt to start her life over. To protect her grandmother, protect Tommy, the boy she’d been in love with … In the end all she’d done was manage to get herself killed. She’d been abducted. Tortured and raped for eighty-three days before being left for dead in a churchyard. When she woke up, Melissa Walker was gone—the person she was now was all that was left of her.

  That’d been nearly twenty years ago, when DNA evidence had been in its adolescence. And like most adolescents, it’d been unreliable and fickle. Most cops back then had been too old-school, too skeptical to trust it, relying rather on what they considered real police work. Will Santos, the detective assigned to her case, had not been one of them.

  He’d insisted on collecting and cataloging every scraping and swab they’d taken from her and entering them into the system in hopes of someday finding the man who raped and tortured her. But not even Santos could have predicted that her DNA profile would somehow wind up in the results of a report generated almost twenty years later.

  “Like you said, I’m dead.” She found her tank and pulled it on. It’d been too much to hope for that he’d miss the notation buried in the stack of reports. Michael was too meticulous, too exact to miss something like that. “And thanks to Croft, everyone knows it.” Jaxon Croft, the reporter who’d taken her whole sordid story public, had made her death national news. A few years ago, his constant hounding had been a nightmare, but when Ben had faked her death and Michael’s, it had been a godsend. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t—”

  “Sure you could,” he said, still watching her. Appraising her. “You’ve gained a good twenty pounds. You’re softer. Fuller. You’d definitely need colored contacts. Different hair color. Maybe a cut. But with Ben c
learing the way, you could slip back into the world without even a ripple.”

  He was right. She knew he was right. Instead of admitting it she just shook her head. “Why are you pushing this?”

  “Because,” he said, cutting his gaze back to the window, “I think you’re staying here because you’re afraid.”

  “Afraid?” Laughter scraped against her throat, erupting from her mouth, rusty and cold. “Afraid of what?”

  “Not what,” he said without looking at her, his hands fisted against his knees. “Who.”

  Wade.

  Neither one of them had said his name out loud in what felt like forever. Not since she’d told him the truth—that after she’d killed him, Wade had started talking to her. That the only thing that made him go away was Michael. In the year they’d been together, Wade had faded away into nothing more than a vague and unpleasant memory. Leaving Michael would change that. It would open a door. The panic that had clawed up her spine started chewing into her throat, making it hard to breathe.

  “I’m not afraid of him and fuck you for thinking otherwise.” Fishing her underwear from the foot of the bed, she swung her legs over the side, yanking them up before she stood. “And the only place I’m going is the bathroom.”

  “We both know how this ends, Sabrina,” he said quietly. “We both know you were never meant to stay here forever.”

  The words nailed her feet to the floor. Stopped her in her tracks. Stole her breath, had her pressing her fist into her sternum, trying to find it.

  We both know how this ends …

  She turned toward the window to find him standing in front of it, arms loose, shoulders slumped. The manila folder was on the floor between them. “Marry me.” The words tumbled out, rash and impulsive, but she meant them. As soon as she said them, she knew. Rushing forward, she closed the space between them. “Marry me.”