The Sabrina Vaughn series Set 1

by Maegan Beaumont

  Nickels lifted his shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I know what it is. It’s an envelope. What I don’t know is why you hid it in your desk drawer instead of tossing it on top of this pile ‘o crazy we’ve got going here.”

  “I don’t know why either,” she said. It was the truth. There was no real reason why the envelope bothered her. Because it smelled like roses? Because it was red? Saying it out loud would make her sound even crazier than she felt. “It just felt… different.” Right. Great, because saying that instead made her sound completely sane. She shook her head and stood. “Forget it. I’m gonna go home.”

  He let it go. “Okay. Can I interest you in an armed escort to your car?”

  She looked around the squad room. It was practically deserted, most of the other inspectors long gone, but there were a few diehards still hanging on. The two of them sitting at her desk, working together was bad enough. If they were seen leaving together… she shook her head again. “No,” she said, softening her rejection with a smile. Michael wouldn’t have asked. He would’ve just fallen into step with her as she headed for the elevator and ignored every protest she threw his way.

  The thought came out of nowhere. The moment she touched on it, Sabrina pushed it away. Michael couldn’t walk her anywhere because he was gone. He was gone and Nickels was here, sitting right in front of her. She deepened the smile on her face, forced it into her eyes. “But I’ll call you when I get home.”

  Nickels smiled back before he stood. “Alright then,” he said, reaching over to fit the lid onto the last box of letters. The gesture brought him a little too close, his fingertips brushing the back of her hand. “Talk to you later,” he said before walking away.

  She watched him leave; quelling the impulse to call after to him, to tell him that she’d changed her mind about the armed escort.

  She stacked the boxes on top of each other, using evidence tabs to seal them shut, initialing and dating each one before calling down to the evidence locker for a pick-up. While she waited for the uniform to make his way up to homicide, she collected her report and signed it before dropping it in the file holder mounted on the wall outside Mathews’ office.

  She realized that Mathews had never done that before. Made her actually open and catalog the letters she received at the station. Usually, making her lug the bag down to Evidence herself was enough to pacify his need to humiliate her. What made today so different?

  “This all you got, Inspector?”

  She turned to see a uniform standing next to her desk, a hand truck stacked with the three boxes she and Nickels filled to the top. The red envelope flashed in her mind. The smell of it seemed to fill her nose. The black wax seal on one side, elegant lettering on the other in rich, velvety ink.

  Calliope

  Mox

  ∞

  Sabrina didn’t know what the word meant—didn’t even know what language it was in, but the symbol was something she was familiar with. It meant infinity. Boundless. Without end.

  Forever.

  8

  Before she had long enough to think about what it could mean, the elevator doors slid open. Sabrina stepped out without even looking and collided with a very broad, very solid chest.

  “Sorry,” she said, looking up to excuse herself, she caught sight of Liam standing over her. When it rains…

  “What are you doing here?” she said, wincing a bit at her brusque tone but Liam just smiled, the light of it reaching his deep brown eyes.

  “I called your cell a half dozen times before I moved on to calling your house. Your roommate said you were working late so…” He zeroed in on the notecard in her hand. “What’s that? A love letter?” The smile held. “Do I have competition?”

  You have no idea. She looked down at the note card and opened her mouth, not sure what was about to come tumbling out but the elevator doors began to slide closed, giving her time to think. Liam stuck a hand out to stop it and she squeezed past him into the lobby. Somewhere, in the catacombs beyond the lobby, she could hear a desk phone ringing and the grumble that answered it—Central station, how can I help you?

  Turning back toward the elevator, she found Liam standing there, hands shoved awkwardly into the pockets of his jeans. He was already regretting the question.

  She smiled at him. “This?” she held up the card. “It’s nothing, I get about a thousand of them a day—one of the perks of being famous,” she said, tucking it back in its sleeve and sticking it in her pocket. “What are you doing here?” she said again, starting to walk toward the parking lot, forcing him to follow.

  “I haven’t heard from you in a few days,” Liam said, running a hand over his dark blonde hair, still damp from the shower he must’ve taken. He wore it a bit long. She liked the way it curled over the collar of his cable-knit sweater. It was about as un-Michael as you could get. “I was able to slide out of the hospital early so I thought maybe if you aren’t busy, we could grab a bite.” He gave her a sidelong glance as they walked side-by-side, the corner of his mouth lifted in a wicked grin she assumed he’d perfected on med-school coeds. “I know ambush dinner dates aren’t your thing but I’m hoping I get points for spontaneity and over-all cuteness.”

  They reached the set of heavy glass doors that led to the station lot and he pulled one open, held it for her so she could go first. Something else she appreciated about him. He was a gentleman. A real one—not someone who opened doors and ordered wine because he thought it would get him laid. It made her feel like a woman. A real woman. The kind who carried lipstick in her purse and didn’t flinch when her date placed his hand on the small of her back. He made her feel like a different version of herself. Someone she could’ve been before Wade…

  She smiled at him, forcing the warmth of it into her eyes. “Oh, you get points for both,” she said. “But I can’t. I promised Jason I’d help him with a science experiment.”

  “It’s the middle of June,” he said, trying to sound good-natured but not quite managing to pull it off. He stopped at the hood of her car and she continued on toward the drivers’ side door on her own.

  She rolled her eyes as she fit her key into the lock. “I know, but the kid is an overachiever. He’s bucking for some scholarship… maybe you’ve heard of it—The Henry-Pryce Foundation Fellowship.”

  The mention of the foundation created by his father, Congressman James Henry, and the handful of full-ride scholarships to state schools it offered stained his cheeks red, turning that grin from wicked to sheepish. He took the few steps that separated them and opened her car door for her. “I really need to talk to my dad about banning summer course work.”

  She laughed because she knew she was supposed to and leaned over to plant a quick kiss on his cheek. He smelled like Betadine and expensive aftershave. “Some other time.”

  He watched her slide behind the wheel. “I’m going to hold you to that,” he said, shutting the door for her and taking a step back to watch her drive away.

  “You’re late,” Val called out to her the second Sabrina slammed the front door closed. It was Tuesday. Tuesday meant Italian. The tang of tomatoes and garlic reached out to greet her, Dean Martin’s croon filled her ears. Tension and doubt leeched from her bones and she took her first easy breath since she strapped on her gun that morning.

  She was home.

  “You do understand that the security alarm only works if you actually turn it on, right?” she said, flipping the panel open to punch in the code to arm it. “It isn’t a sentient being. It can’t set itself.”

  “No? Damn it and I had today circled on my calendar as the Rise of the Machines,” Val snarked back and Sabrina sighed.

  “Sorry,” she said, hanging up her jacket and bag before unclipping her holster, placing her SIG P220 in the wooden box on the foyer table. “I’m in a mood. Mathews was feeling especially dickish today.” Picking up a stack of mail, she riffled through it. Nothing in the pile stuck out at her as odd. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath
until she let it out in a rush. The word and infinity symbol on the note card had been all she thought about on the way home—a puzzle she wasn’t sure she wanted to solve.

  She dropped the mail back on the table and headed for the kitchen. “Hey, do you know what the word mox means?”

  “Mox? No… did you Google it?”

  The suggestion made Sabrina smile. As far as Val was concerned, Google was the answer to every question faced by humankind. “No. To tell the truth, I hadn’t even—”

  Her smile dried up, cracked and split into a million pieces before it blew away, leaving her face feeling tight and hot. Val stood with her back to the doorway, stirring whatever she had going in the big pot on the stove. But this wasn’t what seized her with the sudden urge to kill.

  It was the fact that Jaxon Croft was sitting at her kitchen table.

  9

  After the kind of day she’d had, finding Jaxon Croft in her kitchen made perfect sense.

  What didn’t make sense was that Val seemed to be the one who let him in. The fact of it was evidenced by the dessert plate and coffee cup on the table in front of him.2

  “What’s he doing here?” Sabrina stood in the doorway, leaning a shoulder against the frame, not trusting herself to venture any farther into the room.

  Val stood at the stove, her back turned to the two of them. She threw a casual look over her shoulder, giving Croft the up down before flicking her gaze in Sabrina’s direction. “He’s eating cake.”

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before she spoke. “Knock it off, Val. What is he doing here?”

  Val turned back to whatever she had going on the stove. “He’s been parked outside the house all afternoon—as usual,” she said to the pot she was stirring. “When I got home from the store, I decided to put him to use and asked him to carry a couple of bags.”

  “You asked him to help you in with the groceries?” she said, her eyes nailed to the back of her friend’s head. “Have you been huffing paint?”

  Val sighed. “I just thought—”

  “You thought what? That today would be a good day to hamstring me?” Her voice climbed with each word until she was practically shouting.

  Val dropped the spoon and finally turned. “It’s been eight months, Sabrina. This isn’t going away—he isn’t going away.”

  “Why would he go away? You’re feeding him cake off my dead grandmother’s china,” she said. The anger in her gut wadded itself up into a tight little ball, poisoning her like lead. They glared at each other over Croft’s head. Dean Martin’s croon gave way to Sinatra.

  “You guys can see me, right? I’m sitting right here,” Croft said into the silence, pulling Sabrina’s gaze to his face.

  “He’s lucky I disarmed myself before coming into this room or he wouldn’t need to interview me to get a first-person account of what it’s like to be shot in the leg,” she said to him, that wad of anger growing bigger, chewing into her belly.

  “I was a freelance war correspondent in Afghanistan for three years. I’ve already been shot. Twice,” he said, seemingly unimpressed with her threat.

  She pulled her shoulder off the doorframe, her spine stiffening so fast the pop of it sounded like knuckles cracking in her ears. “Oh, well—maybe third time will be the charm. Be right back.” She turned on her heel, but Val’s voice stopped her in her tracks.

  “Don’t,” she said. Sabrina could feel her friend’s eyes drilling into the back of her head. Probably trying to gauge just how serious she was about shooting a reporter in their kitchen.

  “You’d better go, Mr. Croft. She isn’t kidding,” Val said. She heard the push and scrape of a chair and turned just in time to see Croft raise himself from her table. He picked up the plate and cup and walked both to the sink where Val took them, setting them on the counter.

  “Thank you for trying, Ms. Hernandez,” he said with a small smile. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a set of keys before turning toward the door. He dropped a hand on the knob but turned toward her before he opened it. “Last count, Wade Bauer killed nineteen people and they’re still pulling bodies out of those woods. The families of his victims have a right to hear your story,” he said.

  He wanted to make her feel guilty. What he didn’t understand was that guilt was something she lived with every day. “My grandmother. My mother. My father… Wade killed them all. I am the family of his victims.”

  “You aren’t the only one Bauer hurt,” he said quietly, his dark-colored eyes locked on her face.

  “Bauer? Don’t you mean The Bible Belt Butcher? That is the nifty little serial killer name you gave him in your newspaper, isn’t it?”

  Croft had the sense to look contrite. “A ploy to sell papers.Not mine but I allowed it. A bad choice on my part.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “This whole thing is a ploy to sell papers. You don’t care about any of his victims past what you can fit above the front page fold of your column. I know that so, please stop pretending otherwise.”

  He didn’t deny it, just shook his head. “Mox. It’s Latin. It means soon,” Croft said.

  “And Ms. Hernandez is right. None of this is going away and neither am I. I want to know what happened in those woods.” With that, he pulled the door open and walked out the door, leaving her and Val alone.

  Soon. The word dropped, hard and heavy, on the tight knot of anger in her belly, flattening it out with its weight. Crushing it. Stamping out its heat, leaving her feeling cold and hollow.

  “I think you should talk to him,” Val said, leaning her hip against the counter, her arms crossed over her chest. “It’s the only way you’re going to be able to move past whatever it is that happened in those woods. You need to talk about it.”

  Sabrina ignored her, waited for the sound of Croft’s car driving away. Once she was sure he was gone, she walked into the kitchen, toward the counter.

  Soon.

  “I mean, you won’t talk to me about it. Strickland’s tries but you just shut him out. Devon too,” she said. Hearing Nickels’ first name was always strange, but the way Val said it sounded almost intimate. Like he was a completely different person than the man Sabrina knew. When she’d asked him earlier if he’d been wrangled into babysitting duty she’d been kidding but Val’s sudden mention of him told her that’s exactly what’d happened.

  “You ignore Riley and Jason.” Val kept at it, refusing to let it go. “They walk on eggshells around you—we all do.”

  Sabrina reached past her friend, picking up the cup and plate. She moved toward the sink and turned on the water, letting it run as hot as she could stand. Beside her, Val’s pot bubbled on the stove, little pops of red splattered on the counter and stovetop, like blood. She soaped the sponge and ran it around the lip of the cup, thinking of Riley and Jason—her brother and sister.

  They’d be seventeen in a matter of weeks. The same age she had been when Wade had dragged her into the dark. Eighty-three days. That’s how long he kept her, and she couldn’t look at Riley without remembering every single one of them.

  Soon.

  “We don’t know what to do anymore, Sabrina,” Val said, her voice catching on her words. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Sabrina concentrated on washing the dishes. Nothing else mattered. Steam filled the sink, the heat of the water scalding her hands, turning them a bright, shiny red. She kept at it, her eyes locked on the delicate ring of rosebuds that danced along the rim of the cup and plate. She’d always loved these dishes—they’d been a wedding gift to her grandparents. Lucy had let her use them for tea parties when she was a girl. The memory dug itself into her chest, sharp claws locked around her ribcage, pulling her—

  Val reached across the sink and shut the water off, leaving her hand on the faucet. “I thought that killing Wade would fix it, but you’re worse than before. You won’t eat. You don’t sleep. Your leg—” She swallowed hard, her voice scraping against what sounded like a r
ock in her throat. “I love you, I do… but I don’t know how long I can keep doing this.” She was crying now. Sabrina ignored that too.

  Soon.

  For some reason her memory flashed back to the night Ben had come to her in the hospital, watching the small circle of blood grow wider and wider against the white gauze wrapped around her thigh. This time, there was no feeling of being grounded. No centered calm. All she felt was the pain of a freshly healed wound being ripped open.

  She dried the cup and plate, put both back where they belonged and finally looked at her friend. “Your sauce is burning,” she said before she turned and left.

  10

  Clio was still sleeping.

  Moving around the marble slab that served as his altar, he lit the candles, dozens of them, one by one, until their soft glow filled the chamber, joining that of the small fire he kept burning low in the hearth, their combined heat lifting the chill from the cool, damp air. Finished, he stood next to her, watched the soft light play across her smooth, tanned skin. Admired the contrast of her pale golden hair against the black satin he’d draped across the altar.

  He took off his clothes. Each slip of the button made him feel powerful. Each subtle movement bringing him closer to his true form. His destiny.

  Watching her, his sex began to throb between his legs, heavy and thick. He began to imagine it was Clio who pulled his clothes from his body—that his hands were hers as they touched and grazed his skin.

  Her mouth twitched, as if feeling the weight of his gaze and he looked away, ashamed of the thoughts that came to him. It disturbed him that she could affect him so greatly. That he could be so easily led astray. He folded his clothes carefully and stacked them on the wooden stool in the corner, using the time to remind himself that he was a vessel of The Fates, fulfilling his divine destiny. She was a muse—a goddess. He would not desecrate her.