Sins of the Angels

by Linda Poitevin

  “Victim number four.” Bartlett peered at a chart beside the tray. “Still a Jane Doe.”

  The door beside Trent opened to admit an assistant medical examiner along with Raymond Joly and his partner. Alex flashed them a tight smile of acknowledgment and plucked two latex gloves from a box. She looked askance at Bartlett. “May I?”

  “Be my guest. Careful, though. The thing is razor sharp.”

  She lifted the claw gingerly from the tray and grunted in surprise. “It’s cold,” she said. She held it up for Joly, who had come across the room to join her.

  “I know. Like ice. It doesn’t warm up no matter how long you hold it, except—” Bartlett paused.

  “What?” Alex asked. “You have something else?”

  “Maybe. But damned if I can explain it. We measured the actual temperature of the thing at twenty-one degrees Celsius.”

  “But that’s—”

  “Room temperature. I know. Like I said, I can’t explain it.” The claw’s cold suddenly pierced all the way to Alex’s bones. She shuddered and dropped it back into the tray. Peeling off the gloves, she leaned around Joly and dropped them into the garbage bin beside Trent, meeting her partner’s flat gaze before turning back to Bartlett.

  “Anything else?”

  Bartlett leaned back against the autopsy table in the center of the room and crossed his arms. “Just that it was lodged in the anterior side of the scapula. The shoulder blade.”

  “Anterior—you mean the front of it? As in—?”

  “As in it had to get there from the front of the body. Through the chest cavity. And when I say it was lodged, I do mean lodged. It took me almost twenty minutes to pry the thing loose. Whatever put it there has one hell of a swing. Which reminds me: given the strength it would take to inflict this kind of damage, I think we can safely rule out any possibility the killer is female.”

  Alex stared at the coroner. “He cut through bone?”

  Bartlett nodded.

  “Maybe we should rule out the possibility he’s human, too,” she heard Joly mutter as he followed his partner and the assistant examiner into another room.

  Alex sensed Trent’s sudden stiffness from across the room, but ignored him in favor of glaring after Joly. Great. Now she’d be up all night with nightmares of some bizarre cat creature roaming the city. She massaged the back of her neck.

  “All right. I’ll let Roberts know about”—she waved her hand at the tray—“whatever it is. Call me when you have something more on it.”

  A CLAW.

  Alex climbed the steps to the exit door and stepped out into the shadows of the buildings that blocked the evening sun’s rays. A silent Trent followed close behind her, but to her everlasting relief, she felt no tingle at his nearness, no heightened awareness. The alley episode might have been hell on her nerves, but it seemed to have done for her hormones what no amount of internal lecturing had been able to achieve. Thank God.

  A claw.

  No such thing had been mentioned on the list of possible weapons for any of the murders. It had never even been hinted at. Probably hadn’t been thought of. She opened the driver’s door of the car and reached inside for the unlock button.

  What was next, fucking Catwoman?

  She leveled a hostile look at her partner across the roof of the sedan. And what the hell was with Trent’s complete lack of reaction to all this? He hadn’t displayed the slightest interest in either the claw or Bartlett’s observations. Hadn’t reacted at all until Joly’s flip suggestion that the killer might not even be human.

  Trent glowered back at her. “What?”

  “Nothing.” She slid behind the steering wheel. They’d finished the task Roberts had set for them—well, she had, anyway—it was seven o’clock, she’d passed exhausted three days ago, and she refused to extend this day by a single second. Certainly not by participating in another of those conversations with Trent.

  “So where am I dropping you?” she asked as he closed the passenger door behind him.

  “Dropping me?”

  “Roberts said we were done for the day once we’d seen the coroner. Is your vehicle at the office, or do you need a ride home?”

  Silence met her query. Alex switched on the ignition, put the car into reverse, and looked sideways. Trent stared out the windshield, his face like carved stone. She squashed her curiosity like a bug.

  Don’t ask, her inner voice growled. Don’t you dare ask.

  She backed out of the parking space, drove to the exit, and then, when Trent still didn’t seem prone to respond, prodded, “Well?”

  “You shouldn’t be alone.”

  Alex braked, sat for a moment, and then slid the gearshift into park. Maybe she should just resign herself to every exchange with this man turning into one of those conversations. Maybe expecting it would somehow make it easier.

  “And why would that be?”

  “If you did see the killer, then he saw you.”

  Alex’s hands tightened on the steering wheel and she bit back a reminder that he had denied anyone else’s presence in the alley. “So?”

  “It’s not safe for you to be alone.”

  The hard plastic grips imprinted ridges on Alex’s palms. “I appreciate your concern, but even if he did see me, he doesn’t know who I am or where to find me, and there’s no reason to think he’d come after me specifically. His victims are random. He—”

  “Trust me,” Trent interrupted. “Once he realizes wha—who you are, he will come after you. You can’t be alone.”

  She suddenly found herself replaying that afternoon’s scenario: the way Trent had turned as she’d come up behind him; had grabbed hold of her arms; the way he had shoved her back, away from the scene; the way he had sheltered her with his own body.

  Stop, she told herself. Stop now.

  But her voice took on a life of its own.

  “You don’t know that,” she said. “You don’t know him.” A harsh inhale from Trent’s side of the car made her turn. She flinched a little from his white-hot fury, felt the iron control he wielded over himself, and, in a flash of intuition, recognized the anguish that underlay both. That underlay the man himself.

  Because he did know the killer.

  And it was personal.

  Before the cop in her could react to the realization—before she could muster her thoughts or phrase her questions or demand answers—another part of her hijacked her thought process. A part that felt ageless and timeless, and made her earlier response to him pale into insignificance as she reached for his shoulder. Reached to comfort him, to relieve him of even a tiny part of the burden she sensed he carried.

  Reached—and connected with something invisible. Soft. Warm.

  Unmistakably feather-like.

  The blood drained from her face. She snatched back her hand, clenched it into a fist in her lap, tore her gaze from Trent’s, and turned again to the windshield.

  Shit.

  Fuck.

  Fucking shit.

  Nausea rolled in her gut, began to spread. Panic fluttered in its wake.

  “Detective—” Trent began.

  “Get out.”

  “Listen to me.”

  “Shut up. Shut up and get out.” She bit down against the sickness rising past her chest, into her throat. “Now.”

  Trent hesitated for another second, and then opened his door and silently slid from the car.

  BEFORE ALEX PULLED away, leaving him standing on the street, Aramael had already considered and discarded the idea of putting himself back in the vehicle without her knowledge. He didn’t trust himself to stay hidden from her, or her not to sense his presence despite his best efforts. Neither could he allow her to be out there in the city on her own.

  A touch of his hand unlocked the door of a dark gray sedan parked at the curb. Another touch fired the ignition. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t consider his actions. Knew only that he had to follow her. Caim would seize on an opportunity like this, might already b
e watching for it.

  Aramael pulled off the side street and into the traffic, heading in the direction he’d seen Alex take. For a moment, he couldn’t find her, and his heart turned to lead in his chest. Then he felt again the connection between them, the gossamer thread that ran from his soul to hers, fainter than it had been in the alley, but there. He traced it and found her car turning left at the intersection ahead. Sliding into the line behind her, he made it through on the same green light, and settled back into the driver’s seat.

  Only then did he think about the consequences of what he had done. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and pressed down harder on the gas pedal as Alex accelerated ahead of him. Car theft. Another first for a Power. Maybe now the Highest Seraph would see fit to—

  To what? The only possible option might be to have another Power join the hunt, and Aramael rejected the idea with a vehemence that threatened the wheel in his hands. It was too late for that. He could never tolerate another hunter going after his brother. Caim was his.

  And so, Heaven help him, was Alex.

  TWELVE

  Alex stared at the tea cooling in the delicate, rosepatterned porcelain cup on the oak table before her, certain her cell phone would begin shrieking at her any minute now, a precursor to the Wrath of Roberts. As valued a detective as she knew herself to be in the unit, she harbored no illusions about how little her past performance would mean after the stunt she’d just pulled.

  And abandoning Detective Jacob Trent at the coroner’s office had been quite a stunt.

  She moaned and dropped her head onto her forearm. Away from him, here in the haven of her sister’s kitchen, her behavior took on even more bizarre overtones. She’d just left him there. Without a word of explanation or an offer to call another ride for him, she’d ordered him from the car and driven off. Let her paranoia get the upper hand and imagined—

  What? What had she imagined? Wings on a man she didn’t know but somehow recognized anyway? An electrical something that had shattered her reality when she reached out to him in that alleyway? The rage that flashed into his eyes, its awfulness overshadowed by the anguish that followed?

  Or maybe she’d just imagined a desire to reach out to a stranger, to hold and be held, to chase away his demons along with her own.

  Alex shuddered. None of what she’d seen or felt, or thought she’d seen or felt, made any sense. None of it was possible. Not in the context of the real world, anyway.

  But in her mother’s world …

  A gentle hand ruffled Alex’s hair. She kept her head down, absorbing Jennifer’s quiet, healing presence as she had so many times before, trying to focus on the immediate problem instead of the cold fear that had replaced her core.

  “Roberts is going to crucify me,” she mumbled.

  “Seeing as how you’ve been sitting here for twenty minutes and still haven’t told me what happened, I’m hardly in a position to dispute that,” came her sister’s tolerant reply.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I did tell you.”

  “So you keep saying.”

  Alex heard Jennifer set down the basket of laundry she’d brought from the laundry room, then pull out a chair from the table. From the corner of her eye, she watched her sister sit and take a T-shirt from the top of the pile, folding it with practiced ease.

  Jennifer dealt with a half dozen items before she touched Alex’s arm. “Come on, Alex. The last time you arrived on my doorstep looking like this was when what’s-his-face told you he was married. What on earth is going on?”

  “Thanks so much for that little reminder,” Alex muttered. “And his name was David.”

  “It was three years ago. Water under the bridge. Now, are you going to tell me what happened or not?”

  Head still down, Alex peered warily past her elbow at her sister. “Promise you won’t go all psychologist-y on me?” she asked, referring to Jennifer’s current studies at the University of Toronto. Proud as she was of Jen’s decision to return to school after the divorce, she dearly wished her sister had chosen a program other than one that made her want to delve into others’ psyches. Not that she blamed Jen for the choice. It was probably as much her sister’s way of dealing with the past as Alex’s work was for her. A past that, by some unwritten agreement, they never discussed.

  Never needed to.

  Until now.

  “Scout’s honor,” Jennifer replied to her question.

  “You weren’t a Scout.”

  “Whatever. I promise. Now, out with it.”

  “I have a new partner—”

  Jennifer slammed her fist down on the table, making the teacup dance in its saucer and Alex jump and raise her head. “Outrageous!”

  “Jennifer.”

  “Sorry. Couldn’t resist. Go on.” Her sister snagged a pair of shorts from the laundry basket. “I take it you don’t like the guy?”

  Alex snorted. “He’s an arrogant ass.”

  “But that’s not the problem.”

  “No.”

  “You do know that having a conversation with you is a little like pulling hen’s teeth, right?”

  “Sorry.” Alex lifted one foot onto the edge of her chair and rested her elbow on her knee, then threaded her fingers through her hair and watched the strands slide between them. “There’s just something about the guy that rubs me the wrong way. And he seemed so angry with me when we met.”

  “Why would he be angry with you? Do you know him from somewhere?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know.”

  Her steady brown gaze serious now, Jennifer sat back to regard her. “You either know him or you don’t, Alex. You can’t have it both ways.”

  “I don’t. But I feel like I should.”

  In the silence that followed Alex’s words, the clock numbers on the aged stove rolled over from 8:19 to 8:20 with a loud click. Forty-five minutes since she’d dumped Trent.

  It felt like a lifetime.

  “I see,” Jennifer said at last. “Anything else?”

  Alex stood and paced the hardwood floor from the table to the blue-painted cabinets and back again. “The guy keeps changing,” Alex muttered.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I know it sounds ludicrous, Jen, but I keep seeing …”

  “What?” Her sister’s voice had gone tight.

  Wings, Alex tried to say. But she couldn’t. Couldn’t bring herself to admit aloud the undeniable parallel to their mother. She couldn’t do that to Jen. Wasn’t ready to do it to herself.

  “Nothing,” she said. “It’s nothing.”

  Jen visibly gathered herself, looking determined. “It must be something, or you wouldn’t be here acting all weird and jumpy. Just tell me what’s bugging you, for heaven’s sake. It can’t be that bad.”

  Alex wanted to tell her. Desperately. She needed to talk to someone before she went nuts just from thinking she was going nuts, but protectiveness surged in her as she looked into her sister’s wary face. Several years Alex’s senior, Jennifer had taken her in after their parents’ deaths, and she hadn’t just set aside her own life to raise her little sister, she’d also become the rock that anchored Alex through some pretty horrific years. She deserved better than to have her foundation shaken by Alex’s sudden insecurities—at least until Alex knew for sure what was going on inside her own head.

  So Alex made her shoulders shrug and her lips curve upward. “It’s nothing. Really. I just think this case is getting to me, that’s all. I’m sure a good night’s sleep will help.”

  With luck, it would also provide inspiration on how to deal with the massive abandonment-of-her-new-partner problem she’d face in the morning.

  “Well, if you’re sure.”

  The relief in Jen’s voice belied the concern that remained etched on her face, telling Alex she’d made the right decision. She picked up her cold tea and carried it to the sink, then turned to give Jen, now standing, a quick hug. “Thanks, Sis.”

  “I don’t know what for,
but you’re welcome.” Jen returned the hug. “Call me tomorrow and let me know how you’re doing, all right? Better yet, come for dinner if you can. You haven’t seen Nina in weeks.”

  “She’ll be home on a Friday night? How’d you manage that?”

  “We had a little incident and agreed it would be best if she took a couple of weeks off from some of her friends.”

  Alex held back a snort. She knew how difficult things had become recently, with Jen’s divorce and the hormones running rampant through Nina’s sixteen-year-old body, and she could just imagine the tone of such an agreement. “Something I can talk to her about?”

  “Not right now, thanks. It was just a few missed curfews, so it’s not even that serious, really. She’s just testing me, that’s all.” Jen shook her head and sighed. “Hell, it was even church related, in a way, so how bad can it be?”

  Church related? Alex wanted to ask more of her strongly atheist sister, but Jen’s hard face told her now wasn’t the time. She walked down the hall to the front door, Jen trailing in her wake, and paused there, hand on the knob. One question, she told herself. Just one to reassure herself.

  “Jen?”

  “Mm?”

  “You don’t think—”

  “No.” Jennifer cut her off, soft brown eyes darkened by the heavy, unnamed cloud that hung over them both. “Don’t say it, Alex. Don’t even think it. You’re nothing like her. Nothing. Do you understand? You’re just tired. You’ll be fine.”

  Far from imparting reassurance, however, Jennifer’s vehement denial sat, cold and heavy, in the middle of Alex’s chest.

  Right beside the realization that Jen had answered the question before Alex had even asked it.

  ARAMAEL SHIFTED HIS weight against the tree trunk. The rough bark scraped through his suit jacket, chafing at his body even as the inactivity chafed at his mind. This standing about, this idleness, was interminable. Unforgiveable. He should be stalking the city streets, homing in on his prey, finding Caim.

  He should not be standing here waiting for Alexandra Jarvis to emerge from the tidy, two-story house into which another woman had admitted her almost an hour ago. Shouldn’t be wondering what she was doing in there. Who it was she spoke to. What she was saying.