“In mortem, et est soror tua.”
Croft pulled his hands out of his pockets and took a look around the apartment as if just now realizing where he was. “He killed someone? The guy who left that note in your car—he killed a woman?”
She nodded. “Are you still willing to help?”
He didn’t answer, just reached past her to push the door she guarded open. She stopped him, covering the knob with her hand, shaking her head.
“In the interest of full disclosure, I’m still not entirely convinced that you aren’t involved. Part of the reason you’re here is so that I can keep an eye on you,” she said to him, his face inches from hers. “If I find out you’ve got a part in this, I’m gonna make you very, very sorry.”
“You gonna arrest me?” The fleck of gold in his brown eyes caught the dim light of the hall, shooting burnished sparks in her direction.
Sabrina just smiled and turned the knob, pushing the door open for him. “Arrest you? No, Croft, if I find out you’re in on what was done here, I won’t arrest you. I’ll kill you.”
26
Dubai City, Dubai
There was nothing like having diagnostics run on the dirty bomb grafted to your spine to make you feel like a shower. A long one, with plenty of soap and water hot enough to blister your skin. Michael scrubbed like he was sanding Bondo off the fender of his dad’s 1934 Ford coupe, the steam so thick he felt like he was growing gills.
He’d told Ben Miami but he planned on heading to Columbia. There was a situation there he wanted to keep an eye on between a well-established arms dealer and his old employer, Alberto Reyes. Things were heating up between them—they were either getting ready to announce their engagement and move in together or start a full-scale turf war… and Reyes wasn’t the type to settle down.
Reyes ruled Columbia’s drug trade with a level of viciousness that made Pablo Escobar look like a kid selling chocolate bars. He was a greedy bastard—never satisfied with what he had, never willing to share if he could see a way around it.
Jorge Cordova was Europe’s premier arms dealer. Based in Spain, he made his millions supplying RPGs and AK47s to rebel upstarts but the truth of the matter was, if it could be used to kill, Cordova sold it in bulk to anyone with the cash to make it happen.
Drugs and guns went hand in hand. Reyes would see Cordova’s operation as a valuable asset and want it for himself. And he’d burn down half of Spain to get it.
Reyes was powerful. Too powerful. The fact that he’d had a major part in Reyes’ rise topped his mile-long list of regrets. Michael had been monitoring his activities and the longer he watched, the more certain he became that he’d have to step in and put a stop—
A pounding, fast and hard, against the bathroom door ripped Michael out of his reverie. “Hey, Crying Game—you gonna spend your thirty in the shower or what?”
Michael gave the faucet a twist and popped the shower door open, steam pouring out after him. He whipped a towel off the bar and gave his high and tight a fast rubdown before slinging it around his hips. “I thought you left,” he said, pulling the bathroom door open and crossing the room without sparing his partner so much as a glance.
“I missed you.” Ben grinned at him before dropping his lanky frame into the nearest chair. “And I thought I’d offer to drop you in Cartagena since I know that’s where you’re really going.” He leaned back in the chair, pulling the front legs off the floor, balancing on the back.
Michael traded the towel for jeans and pulled on a shirt. “What makes you think that’s where I’m going?”
“Let’s see… because you’re a fuckin’ boy scout,” Ben said. “You’ve had your eye on the Cordova situation for a while now. You think you’re responsible for making Reyes into what he is… take your pick.”
He slammed the dresser drawer home, the bang of it drowning out the last of Ben’s words. “I am responsible.”
“Please—just because you were there doesn’t make it your fault.” Ben said with a shrug.
“I was more than just there, kid. Reyes would still be humping shipments through the jungle for his cousin if it wasn’t for me.” There was no way to explain guilt to someone who’d never felt a moment’s regret.
Ben just rolled his eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself. Reyes is a climber—he was gonna get to the top, with or without you.”
“Maybe,” he said but he didn’t really believe it.
“Not maybe. Abso-freakin’-lutely. But, whatever—go to Columbia. Take Reyes’ toys and piss in his sandbox. Nothing I say is gonna change your mind anyway,” Ben said with a grin. “But at least let me give you a ride to work.”
He just shook his head. “I get on that plane with you; I wake up on the Vegas strip in a revolving bed with mirrors on the ceiling and some chick in the next room, dry humping a stripper pole. No thanks.”
“That happened one time—”
Michael cut his partner a look that did its job. “No. Thanks.”
Ben dropped all four on the floor and stood. “You never spend time with me anymore.”
“Sorry, honey, Daddy’s gotta work.” Michael ushered him through the door before following him into the living room.
He watched Ben shoulder his duffle. “You want some company? I could come with you,” the kid said halfway to the door.
It was a tempting offer. If things got messy with Reyes, he could use the back-up but Michael just shook his head. “No. Go waste your father’s money on strippers and booze. I’ll see you in a month.”
“Okay… but if you need a spotter, call me,” Ben said, using his thumb and pinky to mimic a phone as he headed out the door.
There was a commercial flight leaving for Cartagena in a few hours. If he hurried he’d be able—
Michael’s phone rang. Retrieving it from the kitchen counter, he gave the screen a glance. He recognized the number. Not one he’d heard from in a while. Not one he’d ever expected to hear from again.
“Hello?”
“You’re a bit too hard to get a hold of these days, Mikey,” Tom said, sounding more than a little frustrated. “I’ve left about a thousand messages.”
And he’d erased them all without even listening to them. He hadn’t seen Tom in eight months. Not since that day at the diner when he’d been half out of his mind, looking for Sabrina and willing to do anything and kill anyone to find her. Not since he’d admitted to Tom and Carson who Sabrina really was and that he’d known the whole time.
Is it her? Is she Melissa? Please, just tell me…
Yes.
He ran a rough hand over his face. If he’d been Tom, he’d have killed him for keeping something like that from him. Why Tom felt the need to keep in touch was something he didn’t understand. “I was on a job.”
Tom rolled over him like he hadn’t said a word. “You been keeping up with the papers? The articles on Meliss—Sabrina?” Tom said. Of course he’d still think of her as Melissa. That’s who Sabrina was supposed to be. Who Tom knew her as. She was supposed to have married Tom and raised a bunch of kids while helping him run his uncle’s diner in Jessup, the town they all grew up in. Instead, she’d been kidnapped and tortured by her psychotic half-brother and left for dead a thousand miles from home. Life had not turned out the way it was supposed to for any of them.
“No,” he said and he hadn’t, although he wasn’t surprised to hear that Sabrina’s story had grabbed a headline or two.
“Well, the reporter writing most of them came here about a week ago. Asked a lot of questions about her… and then he started asking questions about you.”
Michael’s hand tightened around his cell. “What’s his name?” Michael said, heading for the elevator. If he hurried he’d be able to catch Ben before he left.
“Croft. Jaxon Croft.”
The name rang a bell, fall off in the distance. “Croft… he say what he wanted with me?”
“No. Just asked if Sabrina knew you. If you’d been involved at all in what happene
d between her and Wade,” Tom said.
“You the only person he talked to?” he said. He wasn’t exactly Jessup’s Prodigal Son. Town pariah was more like it. If Croft was looking for someone to turn on him, he’d have his pick of blabbermouths. One in particular came to mind. “What about Carson? Croft talked to him?”
“He tried. Croft rolled up in here, started pestering my customers so I asked him to leave before someone said too much. Things got… heated and I punched him. Carson was there,” Tom said, sounding like just thinking of the incident made him angry all over again.
Great. There was no love lost between Jessup’s Chief of Police, Jed Carson, and him. Last time they’d seen each other Michael had put a bullet in his shoulder and threatened to torture him for information about where Wade was holding Sabrina. Carson would see it as payback to tell Croft all about it.
That’s why what Tom said next surprised the shit out of him. “Carson pulled us apart and hauled Croft off to jail and held him overnight before driving his ass back to Dallas the next day. I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think Carson told him anything worth knowing—about you or anything else.”
That wasn’t good enough. He had to know for sure. If Croft was trying to connect Sabrina to him, she was in deep shit. “Give my number to Carson and tell him to call me. I need to know what he said to Croft before I decide what to do about it,” he said. Carson had always been a terrible liar. He’d be able to tell if he’d told Croft about his involvement with Sabrina. If he had, Croft was living on borrowed time.
27
Sabrina followed Croft into the room and shut the door. Strickland was crouched next to the bed, looking at something that clung to the side of the pale pink duvet. Whatever it was, it wasn’t blood. From what she could see, there was no visible blood evidence. Lack of blood told her that whatever had happened to Bethany Edwards, it hadn’t been done here.
“Find something?” She said to her partner and he looked at her before shooting Croft a withering glare.
“Maybe.” He tipped his chin at her. “Might be semen. Might be something else,” he said, scraping a few flakes into an evidence envelope, carefully not to disturb the rose petals scattered across the bed. “I’ll let CSU tell me, ‘cause I ain’t smelling it.” He cracked a smile. “You do that?” he said, tipping his chin toward Croft’s face.
She glanced at Croft. Most of the damage was hidden by the hat but she could still see some bumps and bruises. “Yes.”
“Coulda called—I’d have liked to see it happen.”
“Check YouTube.”
Strickland laughed, the sound causing Croft’s shoulders to go stiff. He wasn’t happy about being laughed at but he kept quiet about it. Sabrina watched her partner poke around in the nightstand drawer and remove a couple of items. An expensive tube of lotion. A television remote. A box of tissue. She looked around. No personal items belonging to Bethany Edwards were visible. No clothes on the floor. No magazines or textbooks. Nothing to tell her that this was a room belonging to a nineteen-year-old college student. Nothing. Just the roses. He’d set the stage—made everything just so in order to feed his fantasy…
“Bag it. It’s a long shot for prints but he might’ve touched them,” Sabrina said to Strickland and he nodded, learning long ago to not question her instincts.
She turned to Croft, studying him for a few seconds before speaking. “So… what do you think? Who is she?” she said to him, watching his face for signs.
Excitement. Arousal .Disgust. Remorse. She saw none of them. All she saw was the kind of detached curiosity that made her slightly uncomfortable.
“Clio.”
Strickland stood, his head tilted to the side a fraction of an inch, asking her if she’d told Croft about the phone call she’d gotten that led her here. She shook her head, telling him that she hadn’t. Strickland dropped his free hand to the grip of his service weapon. Croft’s shoulders tensed, as if sensing Strickland’s intentions, but he remained focused on her.
“At least that’s what it says.” he said, looking at her a second longer before dropping his gaze to the young woman on the bed, his eyes locked on her face.
Sabrina followed his gaze, took in the scene. She was nude, posed with her hands resting demurely on her stomach. Every inch of her pale skin was covered in writing, the ink a muddy rust against the milky white of it. The same word over and over:
Κλέος
“You can read that?” Strickland said. His hand was still on his gun. “Is it Latin?”
Croft looked up at him. “No. It’s Greek and yes, I can read it. And to answer your next questions, I can also speak it and write it.”
“You’re fluent in both Latin and Greek—you know what that makes you, right?” Strickland said, his hand still on his gun.
“Aside from a multi-lingual douchebag with an over-priced education? I suppose it makes me a suspect,” Croft said, delivering the last of his revelation directly at her.
Strickland took a step forward. “No… coupled with the fact that you happen to keep turning up when shit gets weird, it makes you the suspect.”
Croft turned to face Strickland, head on. “I’m here because she brought me here,” he said, tipping his head at Mandy.
“Don’t get it twisted—you’re here because you have a thing for following my partner,” Strickland said. She wasn’t sure when he’d done it, but the safety snap that secured his gun inside its holster had been thumbed open.
“The only thing I’m following, is a story—”
“Who is Clio?” Mandy said, bringing what was shaping up to be an epic throw down in the middle of a crime scene to a screeching halt.
Croft spared her a glance, shoving his hands back into the pockets of his jacket. “She’s the muse of history and art. One of the nine daughters of Zeus.”
Strickland looked at her for a second and suddenly remembered what he’d told her in the elevator. Bethany Edwards had been a history major at Berkeley. From the look he gave her, he’d caught that too. “What’s with the book and the horn?” Strickland said, tilting his head at the items cradled in the victim’s arms.
“The horn is a clarion, a Greek instrument. The book is… just a book. Both are used to symbolize Clio.” Now Croft looked back at Sabrina. “Even without the writing, I’d know who she was supposed to be.”
“I bet,” Strickland said under his breath.
“And the coins?” Sabrina said, cutting her partner a shut-up look.
Croft leaned in and studied them, one placed over each of the victim’s eyes. “They’re drachmas. Ancient Greeks placed one on each eye to pay Charon, the ferryman, to usher their loved ones across the River Styx and into Hades,” he said, sounding like he was teaching a class on Greek Mythology.
“You seem to know a lot about Greek death rituals,” Strickland said.
“Enough to know that isn’t a part of them.” Croft pointed a finger at the victim’s chest. “Organ removal was never practiced by the Greeks.”
“What’s that?” Sabrina pointed toward the victim’s left shoulder. A letter burned into her skin, as big as her fist. A bright angry red, the edges of her white skin charred black from the iron used to brand her. It looked like a lower-case A but she had a feeling it was something else.
Croft looked at her, his expression unreadable. “It's the symbol for Alpha. It means the beginning.”
28
Again. It was happening again.
Sabrina felt the walls slam inward, crashing down on her so fast and hard she felt her knees buckle a bit under their weight. She glanced at the windows. The curtains were drawn, blocking her view of the outside world. Reaching out, she laid what she hoped was a casual hand on the doorframe.
Keep breathing. Keep upright.
“Why don’t you get him the fuck outta here before I lose my cool, huh?” Strickland said to her, finally dropping his hand off the grip of his gun. She looked up at him. His tone was hard, angry even, but his eyes told a
different story. He saw what was happening to her and was trying to save her from a complete meltdown. “I’m serious, Vaughn. Get him out of here. Go back to the station and start the paperwork. Black and I’ll finish up here.”
Start paperwork. Right. Strickland still didn’t know that she wasn’t even supposed to be here. She’d meant tell him—instead she snagged Croft by the sleeve and pulled him toward the door. Suddenly getting out was all she cared about.
She was in the hall before she even realized she was moving. Outside the apartment. Moving down the building’s corridor. Bypassing the bank of elevators in favor of the stairwell. Her thigh spasmed in protest but she took them fast. Out. She had to get out.
See the sky. Feel the sun. Breathe free air.
“Wait up.” Croft’s hand gripped her elbow and pulled, trying to slow her down.
She rounded on him, grabbing a fistful of shirt, using it to shove him hard into the wall. “You don’t learn, do you?” She practically snarled the words, inches from his face. “The next time you touch me, I swear to Christ I’ll break your neck. Got it?”
Croft’s hands went up. “Sorry. I think that knee to the head you gave me must’ve caused brain damage. Hands off, from now on,” he said, letting out a relieved breath when she took a step back. She slumped against the railing. Beads of cold sweat pricked the back of her neck, sliding a chilly trail between her shoulder blades. Her stomach churned around the remnants of the cinnamon roll she forced herself to eat that morning. She looked at him, aiming every ounce of anger and hatred she felt his way. If he’d just left her alone, let her story die along with Wade—
“You blame me.” he said to her, reading her perfectly.
“Yes.”
Croft shifted uncomfortably. “It was never my intention—”
“Fuck your intentions.” She glared at him for a few more seconds before straightening her frame off the railing. “That is what the truth costs, Croft.People die.” She jabbed a finger up the stairs.
The Sabrina Vaughn series Set 1 Page 40
