Shadows in the Water

by Kory M. Shrum

  In ankle deep water, the senator finally stopped screaming. Seeing Jabbers had rendered him speechless.

  “You like to have others do your dirty work for you,” she said into the man’s ear. She shoved him forward. Retribution rose to meet him. “So do I.”

  Epilogue

  King put his dollar bills on the counter in exchange for a coffee and a plate of beignets. Then he shuffled from the service counter to the table beneath the green Café du Monde umbrella. Lucy sat at one of the tables in the July heat, eating pralines from a white parchment bag and sucking the caramel chocolate off her fingers. She grinned when he spotted her.

  Her beauty was enough to kill him.

  “Is this seat taken?” he asked, surprised, but happy to see her. She’d been absent in the two weeks since Ryanson’s death. He assumed she was taking care of Louie because he hadn’t seen her either. In his heart of hearts, he hoped this meeting meant there was more to their relationship. That perhaps they wouldn’t disappear now that the case was over. Thorne women were hard to pin down.

  But he also knew this might be goodbye. So he’d better say his piece while he had the chance.

  “Please.” She grinned and nodded toward the opposite chair. “A girl hates to eat alone.”

  “Not all girls,” he said.

  Lucy’s smile softened. “Louie will come around. Give her time.”

  King squeezed himself into the chair. He put his coffee and fried donuts soaked in oil and powdered sugar on the table. They ate and let silence build between them. Fading sunlight sparkled across her face and the gray in her hair shined. He loved her more for those few gray strands.

  “How long?” he asked.

  She turned toward him smiling as if he’d said the magic words that she’d been waiting for. She waved a hand for him to go on.

  King sighed, mustering the courage to say what he feared most. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you sought me out now. So how long?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? Unfortunately, the doctors don’t know. No one knows.”

  “Is it bad?” he asked. He’d stopped breathing.

  “It’s metastasized from my breasts to my bones,” she said, sucking the chocolate off her thumb. “I’ve got anywhere from six months to twenty years.”

  He scowled, his appetite rapidly leaving him. “Weren’t they even a little specific?”

  She plucked another praline from the white parchment back and studied it. King could smell the sugar from here. The sweet richness of the chocolate. “Most survive two or three years once their cancer metastasizes. Twenty-five percent can make it more than five years, and some hit the ten or twenty-year mark.”

  “You’ll beat this,” he said. It was a heartfelt wish as much as it was a declaration.

  She spared him a weak smile. “We’ll see. But I didn’t come here to talk about being sick, Robert. I wanted to thank you for helping me with Louie.”

  He laughed. It was bitter. “You wanted me to be a positive role model. I think we can both agree I failed. Miserably.”

  She tilted her head. “You are a good man. I’m the one who needs work.”

  He barked a laugh. “How so?”

  When she looked up at him through dark lashes, his heart fluttered. She said, “There’s an idea in Buddhism that says nothing in this world is good or bad. It is only our thoughts that make it so. This is as true for cancer as it is for wayward nieces.”

  “It’s good wisdom.”

  “Is that so?” she said, grinning. “If only I could remember it.”

  She reached across the table and stole his coffee, sipping it with a mischievous smirk.

  He’d never buy her coffee again if she always promised to drink from his cup like this. Despite her coquettish flirtations, the truth unsettled him. Metastasized breast cancer. His grandmother had died of that, and it had not been pretty. It was a long, hard road out of that hell. And he wasn’t sure he had the strength to watch her suffer like that.

  “I see this as a win anyway,” she said, her tone light. “I don’t think you realize how withdrawn Lou was when I came to you. One case with you and something has changed. If not in her, then in me.”

  “How so?”

  “I have hope.”

  “Hope for what?” he asked, stealing his coffee back. He turned the cup so he could press his lips to the place she’d just pressed hers.

  “I have hope that she’ll find happiness. And if not happiness, then contentment. Peace.”

  “Then she is normal,” King said, touching his foot to hers under the table. “Happiness and peace—that’s what we’re all searching for.”

  After a moment of surveying his empty beignet plate he said, “So can I go with you?”

  Lucy arched an eyebrow. “To death? This isn’t Romeo and Juliet, Robert.”

  He smiled, but it was a sad smile. “To the doctor. I’m sure you’ve got appointments and treatments.” His face flushed. “I’m not saying you need me and maybe you don’t even want me there...”

  Lucy took his hand and squeezed it. “You’re the sweetest man alive, Robert. Do you know that?”

  Lou stood over Konstantine’s sleeping body with a gun in her hand. He was bare-chested and laying on top of his sheets. Italy slept outside the window behind her.

  She stood there and watched him, unsure for the first time in her life of what she wanted to do.

  “How old were you?” Konstantine asked. His lashes fluttered open, and he turned his head to look at her. “The first time?"

  She didn’t even need to ask what he meant. She traced his lips with her eyes, full and pretty like a girl’s mouth. She wanted to sock him in it, see the tender flesh split and bleed. Then maybe she would kiss it.

  “I think you were fourteen or fifteen,” he said, smiling. “Am I right?”

  “Your English is better.” She still wasn’t putting her full weight on her leg, but she didn’t need to. Her shoulders, elbows, and hands worked. She didn’t need her leg to pull the trigger and wipe the last trace of Martinelli off the face of the world.

  He came up on one elbow and patted the empty bed beside him. “Would you like to lie down? For old time’s sake?”

  She raised the gun.

  He jutted out his lower lip in an exaggerated pout. “Or are you here to put a bullet in my head?”

  You’re a Martinelli. You’re a criminal. I want to kill you—But each statement sounded more pathetic than the last.

  Instead, she said, “He never claimed you.”

  “No. To him, I was not his son. He only spared my life for the sake of his pride.”

  “Do you hate him?”

  Konstantine looked away, and Lou’s gaze slid to his neck. She watched the muscle move as he swallowed. Saw the throat jump with his words. “I hate what he did to my mother. She was a wonderful woman. She didn’t deserve to be discarded that way.”

  Silence swelled between them. Finally, he looked at her again. “Do you hate your father?”

  “No,” Lou said too quickly. She caught herself and in a controlled voice said, “Not at all.”

  Konstantine nodded. “I am sorry for what Angelo did.”

  Her finger twitched on the trigger. “Why did you go after Ryanson?”

  Konstantine looked at the barrel for a moment and then he reached out, slowly, and pulled the gun forward, pressing it under his chin. If she pulled the trigger, it would blow off the top of his skull. Easily.

  “I understand drive,” he said. His eyes never left hers. “I know how hard it is to stop before a thing is done. If you need this, take it.”

  Lou pressed the barrel against his chin so hard it would bruise.

  She waited. She waited for the rage to fill her up. To roll her like a wave and pull her down with it. But the fury never came.

  Then he was talking again. And she was listening.

  “When I saw you on the boat, dropping one man after another, I almost laughed.”

&nbs
p; She arched an eyebrow. “Do you find murder amusing?”

  He snorted. “No. But Ryanson had called the gathering an auction. Once he realized I was after him, he was going to sell me to the highest bidder. As a Martinelli and as a Ravenger, there were many bidders. But there you were, killing them all. It was...poetic. If I belong to anyone it’s you. Of course, you should win any auction for my life.”

  She shifted her weight. The gun grew heavy.

  “I am not your enemy,” he said. “I believe we are drawn together for a reason. You came to me when you were dreaming. Did you dream of killing me?”

  No. Her heart hammered. But the gun remained perfectly steady against his chin. She’d dreamed of feeling whole again. Dreamed of having someone who understood her as surely as her father did. Someone as steady and immovable as that mountain of a man. Someone to replace what had been taken from her.

  And she still needed it—something to replace the revenge.

  Her gaze bore into his, but she found no deception. She saw only dark eyes as deep as nighttime waters. An escape. Possibility.

  “I wanted you to know the truth of Ryanson.” He didn’t push her gun away. Didn’t try to pull her close. He laid there, belly up and vulnerable as he spoke. “I couldn’t return your father to you, but I could give you the truth.”

  “The truth died with Ryanson.”

  Konstantine grinned. “Did it? We live in a new age, Louie. Now the truth cannot die.”

  Her battle-drum heart beat, relentless. The gun came alive in her palm again.

  “What do you want in return?” she asked. Because nothing was without price, no matter how pretty the packaging.

  “My mother,” he said. His eyes shone. “I want to bring her home.”

  King had never seen the shop so busy. It was like a rave. Sweaty bodies were crammed in on one another. The place was alive with the excited chatter of amateur ghost hunters. News of Lou’s disappearing act had spread through the quarter like a gasoline fire. Melandra’s money problems disappeared in the rearview just as fast. And however heartbroken Piper might have been over Lou’s disinterest, she seemed as chatty as ever. She showed a customer with a green Mohawk a voodoo candle with a wick where its penis should be. Piper said something and the girl laughed riotously.

  All around the mood had improved.

  King himself was there as crowd control, one enormous body to remind all others to behave. It was pretty much the only gig he had since Venetti was saved and the senator dispatched. Without Brasso, no one else was turning up to offer him the chase of a lifetime.

  He wasn’t complaining.

  There was so much commotion in the shop he probably wouldn’t have seen Lou if the movement hadn’t caught his eye. He looked up and saw her on the landing outside his apartment. She didn’t wave. Didn’t call out hello. She stood there in front of his apartment door waiting to be acknowledged.

  King shuffled her way.

  Mel touched his arm as he pushed past. She followed his gaze.

  “You going up to talk to her? Tell her that I’ll give her $100 for every night that she does her ghost trick for me. If she says no, negotiate. I’m willing to go up to $500, but good Lord, don’t offer her that unless you have to.”

  “I’m not sure she’s interested in performing carnival tricks on demand.”

  Mel slapped his shoulder then shoved him in the direction of the staircase. “It doesn’t hurt to ask! Tell her I’ll be up until closing if she wants to stop by and negotiate. Anytime! Anytime is fine by me!”

  King climbed the stairs to his loft and wasn’t surprised to see that Lou no longer stood on the landing. He found her on the couch instead, scanning the first page of the Louisiana Times. Hero Agent’s Honor Restored, the headline read. A picture of Jack smiling, two thumbs up filled the top half of the page.

  “I was wondering when you’d turn up,” King said. “Can I offer you a Coke? A beer?”

  “Lucy wouldn’t shut up until I came to see you,” Lou said.

  They were talking then. Good. He wondered if Lou knew about the cancer. If she didn’t, she would soon enough, one way or the other.

  King leaned against the doorway, looking down on her. “She’s your aunt. She loves you. Though why she thinks you should waste your time on this old fool is beyond me.”

  Lou gave him a weak smile. “Maybe she feels pity for both of us.”

  King snorted, got a Coke for himself and returned to the living room. He sat beside her on the sofa with an empty cushion between them. They said nothing.

  “What did you do with Brasso?” King asked, taking another sip of his Coke.

  Lou smiled. “Who?”

  King ran a hand over his face. “You left him there?”

  “I gave him a one-way trip to La Loon.”

  King’s eyes fell on the scarred shoulder in the moonlight. “That’s the place where you keep your pet Jabberwocky.” He was having a hard time understanding such a place existed. And even if seeing was believing, he thought he’d be okay if this one remained fantasy.

  “And Venetti?”

  “Enjoying her new life as a hotel manager in the Keys. But if you repeat that, I’ll have to kill you.”

  He had no doubts she would kill him, if she wanted to.

  He shook his head. “You know, when you jumped overboard with Ryanson, I thought that was it. The truth would die with him. No one was going to know what really happened to your dad.”

  Lou stilled on the sofa beside him.

  “But lo and behold, your father is a hero again.” King tried to read her face but saw nothing she wouldn’t let him see. “Did you have anything to do with that?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer but her shoulders relaxed. The hard lines on her face softened. She looked ten years younger. How much youth was she hiding under Kevlar and bad dreams?

  “All right, all right,” he conceded. “Keep your secrets. But what will you do now? Your father is avenged. You’ve killed a lot of bad guys. The ones that are left are running like rats. You must be bored stiff.”

  “I’ll think of something.” She grinned and the resemblance to Jack struck him, a bittersweet blow to the heart.

  “In that case, kid, come back anytime you want. I’m always looking for trouble.”

  Did you enjoy this book? You can make a BIG difference.

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  Keep reading for a special preview of Dying for a Living, the first installment in a seven-book urban fantasy series.

  Good morning, Mr. Reynolds.” I used my best sing-song voice. “Are you ready to die today?”

  “I don’t think we should stand so close to him,” Ally said, pulling me away from the bed. “And don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  Mr. Reynolds still didn’t respond when I turned on the bedside lamp, illuminating his bedroom in a butter-yellow glow. I nudged him. “Good morning.”

  His eyes flew open as he jolted upright and pressed his back against the wooden headboard. Crushing the comforter to his chest, he fumbled an earplug from each ear. His darting eyes searched our faces. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.

  His graying brown hair was disheveled and thinning in front. His blue eyes squinted against the onslaugh
t of light. He was an enormous man, six feet tall and nearly 300 pounds according to our profile.

  I flashed Ally a look. Beside me, my personal assistant was taller by a few inches, making her 5’8” or so. We’d taken the stairs and Reynolds’s apartment was warm. She unbuttoned her red A-line coat, revealing her off-white ruffled blouse and dress pants underneath. Her straightened blond hair, chocolate-eyes and tiny diamond nose stud, caught and held the soft light of Reynolds’s lamp.

  She flashed the photo attached to the front of the file folder at me, and then nodded twice. We were in the right place on the right day.

  Of course, I could still have fun with this.

  “Burglars,” I said with my mouth full of muffin, chewing. “If you could just strip those pillowcases off and fill them with your valuables, we’ll be on our way.”

  His eyes fixed on the half-devoured sugar bomb in my hand. “Is that mine?”

  I slowed my chewing, thinking of how best to answer this inquiry. “Could be. It was on your kitchen counter.”

  “So you took it?” He pushed the comforter off his chest. The disorientation of sleep was wearing off.

  “Mr. Reynolds.” Ally leaned toward him, pushing her hair behind her ear as it fell forward. Her tone was professional and kind. She was good at dealing with clients. Me? Not so much. “We’re here about your death-replacement.”

  His face remained pinched. One of the problems with letting hospitals orchestrate death-replacements was that clients didn’t meet their agents until their actual death-day.

  “At the hospital, remember? Your physician helped you schedule a replacement last April,” Ally continued. “This is Ms. Jesse Sullivan. She’ll be your agent today.”

  He turned his narrowing eyes to me. “She’s the zombie?”

  Was it my job to remind him “zombie” was a derogatory term? No, but I did it anyway.

  “Necronite,” I corrected. I tossed the muffin wrapper into the bedside trashcan. “I’m the necronite here to die so you can keep on a-livin’.”