The 2nd Cycle of the Darc Murders Omnibus (the acclaimed series from #1 Police Procedural and Hard Boiled authors Carolyn McCray and Ben Hopkin)

by Carolyn McCray

  All was right in the world.

  As Mala rested her head on Darc’s shoulder, feeling the strength of his body under her cheek, his life and vitality seeping into her, a sound intruded on her peace. The stark crack of a bullet ripping through the air.

  Regina Cross’s head exploded in a spray of blood and brains, right in the middle of the grouping of the policeman. It was an impossible shot. One that could only be made from above by an expert.

  And as the world fell apart in chaos, one thought coursed through Mala’s head.

  This had been the work of the Master. That shadowy figure who had haunted their steps from the very beginning. The one who was now covering up any involvement that Regina Cross might uncover.

  The feeling of safety that had warmed her a moment ago was gone.

  The Master had destroyed it.

  And their lives would never be the same.

  DENIAL: The bridge short story to 1st KILL

  CHAPTER 1

  Mala inhaled the scent of salt air and wood warmed by sun.

  The sailboat cut through the water, a hot blade through ice cream. The feel of the wind at her back filled Mala with a peace that she hadn’t felt in years. Back when she was coordinator for the Sailing World Cup. Before being a child psychologist had even been on her radar.

  Why had it taken her so long? What on earth could have kept her from one of the activities she loved so much it had been part of her lifeblood?

  She stared over at Janey and Carly, who had their heads together, looking at something over the side of the ship. Her heart ached as she realized that both of these girls shared a mother that Mala would never meet.

  What would that woman think of how Mala was trying to raise these precious children? It was a question that plagued her pretty much every day.

  They had set sail from the harbor early that morning, heading out to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. They would eat lunch at the café there, then take the zip line tour. They might even head over to the lighthouse on the west side of the island to check out the whales.

  Trey had been complaining the entire time that man was not meant to traverse the open water. Something about not having gills. Mala was pretty sure that had more to do with a penchant for seasickness than any philosophical issues Trey might have.

  That opinion had been confirmed when he’d popped half a bottle of motion-sickness pills. This could end up being an interesting trip for the messy-haired detective.

  Everyone else seemed to be enjoying the trip. For the first time in months, Maggie wasn’t fanning herself or complaining about the heat. It had not been a pleasant summer for the overly-pregnant woman.

  When was she due? It had to be soon, from what Mala could see. The poor woman looked like someone had used a bicycle pump to inflate her stomach to the point it might burst. Mala pushed the unpleasant image away. Today was too beautiful for thoughts such as those.

  The day was a rarity for Seattle, sunny and bright. The humidity was more par for the course, but this was just what living in Washington State on the coastline in the midst of summer looked like.

  At least it wasn’t as stifling out here on the water. The breeze cooled them down, as did the spray that splashed up from the stern of the ship.

  Mala had insisted that the trip be made on an honest-to-goodness sailboat. It would have been a simple matter to commission some powered vessel to carry them out to sea, but it would have felt like a violation to her.

  “Not… good idea,” Trey groaned. “And… the boat’s… spinning sideways.”

  His face, in spite of the Dramamine, was taking on that greenish tint that preceded some kind of violent digestive reaction. His eyes wandered around in his head, like he was seeing things that weren’t there. Mala just hoped that he made sure to vomit over the edge of the ship when the time came.

  To Mala’s surprise, it was Darc that answered his partner. “Sailing around the islands seemed like it would be a pleasurable activity.”

  The phrasing was his, but the expression wasn’t. Ever since they’d chased through the sewers of Seattle after what had ended up being a crazed social worker, Darc had been attentive, even demonstrative.

  It was freaking Mala out.

  She wasn’t proud of that fact. After so many months of hoping for some kind of significant emotional connection with the man, he was now offering it… along with a lifelong commitment… and Mala’s instinct was to run.

  Was it possible that Mala had chosen Darc because she’d thought that he was incapable of love? She shook her head. This was not why she was out here today.

  Mala was going to enjoy this trip if it killed her.

  * * *

  Moving around the sailboat was a mystery to Trey. Every time he went to put his foot down, it was like the floor… no, wait, it was called the deck… moved a couple of inches to the right. No, starboard. The freaky names didn’t make this any easier.

  Trey suspected that at least part of his disorientation was the massive dose of Dramamine he’d taken. He’d only noticed the “may cause drowsiness” warning on the label after he’d shoved a fistful of pills down his gullet.

  That may have been a mistake, in retrospect.

  At least he wasn’t seeing things. The boat… no, ship… kept wanting to canter and veer off from side to side and front to back… stern to bow… but there were no beckoning mermaids or beautiful sirens.

  Yet.

  “Janey, could you reach into that cooler and pull me out a bottled water?” Trey asked.

  Well, that’s what he’d tried to say. Those had been the words he’d concocted in his head and attempted to communicate to his dry and somewhat numb tongue. What actually came out of his mouth was altogether different.

  “Janey. Cooler. Water.”

  Was that his voice? He sounded like a crazy person.

  But Janey understood. She scooped a bottle out of the ice and handed it to Trey. Parched as he felt, Trey didn’t drink the water. He just placed the plastic container against his forehead, reveling in the cool surface.

  Sailing was not fun.

  Trey stumbled off in search of a darker place. Maybe he could go down below. It might be less… oceany… down there.

  But as he stumbled his way over to the entrance, Trey caught sight of something bobbing in the water, off to the side of the boat… dammit, ship. He glanced in that direction, then groaned. Maybe he was seeing things after all.

  He took out his bottle of motion-sickness pills and tried to read the label, in spite of the fact that the letters were all moving around like tiny ants. This was ridiculous. He was going to need some help.

  “Hey, guys! I think I see a body over here. Wanna come and take a look?”

  Well, that’s what he’d intended to say. What actually came out of his mouth was closer to the following.

  “Hrgrack! Body. Look.”

  For three such tiny little sounds, they seemed to provoke a pretty large reaction.

  * * *

  Janey watched as Carly darted over to the side of the ship. That was the side that Mala called star bored or something like that. Popeye laughed and said that she didn’t know what she was talking about. It was star poured. Star bored didn’t make any sense.

  Maybe he was right, but Janey knew he was a silly bear, so she wasn’t going to trust him. All she knew for sure was that their sailing trip was going to be cut short.

  Already, Mala was turning the ship around, making the long pole thingy swing from one side all the way over to the other. Then she did some things with the ropes that were attached to the big sails.

  Janey didn’t really understand any of it. The lines in her head were giving her plenty of information, but they mostly talked about how people were feeling, and what they might do. When it came to things, they didn’t say much.

  And as much as she’d been excited to come out here, Janey had now decided that she didn’t much care for sailing. She could see that Mala did, so she wouldn’t put up a s
tink or anything, but she wasn’t all that sad about heading back.

  “Trey, you found the body, so you’re in charge of it,” Mala called out as Trey groaned at her and shuffled toward the back end of the ship. “Grab that hook over there. We’ll pull it behind us.”

  There were all kinds of lines coming off Trey, and a lot of them didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Janey wondered if those had to do with all those little white pills Trey had taken when they’d started the trip. He definitely didn’t seem normal right now.

  “We’re heading almost directly into the wind now,” Mala said, “so we’re going to have to tack. Darc, can you give me a hand?”

  Darc moved over to help. Janey could see the colors around him so much more than she ever had before. It was kinda cool.

  But in another way, it was almost like he was someone else. Someone that hadn’t saved her from the bad priest. Someone that hadn’t made her feel safe when all she had to protect her was just a gold badge that she drew around herself.

  She knew it was still Darc. But another part of her wasn’t so sure. Popeye said that he still smelled the same. He would know, being a bear and all.

  Weird that Popeye hadn’t said something rude. Janey thought that he might actually like Darc, which was kind of a big deal.

  As Darc started pulling on some of the ropes, he stood up. The wind blew against his clothes, pulling them against his body. He glanced down, and Janey saw a look on his face that she remembered. That was the Darc who she knew.

  “It will be difficult to return to Seattle,” he said, his tone a lot more flat than it had been all day. “We are only offset from the directionality of the wind by 3.4 degrees.”

  Mala sighed. “I know. It’s going to take forever to get back. And now that we have the body…”

  “Lime Kiln Point,” Darc said.

  Mala nodded, but it took Janey a little bit longer to piece it together. Darc wanted them to go out to the park where you could watch for whales, on the west side of San Juan Island.

  She’d been there before. Mala had taken her. They’d gone to see a lighthouse, and there had been a nice old man who had shown them around.

  Maybe they’d get to go there again.

  * * *

  The streams of logic ran through the water, lifting up the currents found there into stark relief. The information combined with his knowledge of the weather over the past week, and out of those threads, a third line… blue-green in tint… glimmered.

  And Darc knew exactly where it led.

  “We will head directly to the lighthouse.”

  Janey’s face brightened, an expression that was received, processed and codified by the newly established silver links. Their connection remained fragile, tentative… a possible result of the pogrom Darc had waged against the emotional ties not long ago.

  But the assessment was that Janey liked the idea of going to the lighthouse. She and Mala had taken a trip to the island several months ago. That must have been one of their activities while there.

  As for Mala, she accepted his pronouncement without any question. That dynamic in their relationship had not been one that Darc had examined lately, although it had not been there when they first met. She had been one of the few people to stand up to Darc, especially in regards to Janey.

  But with the emotional branches that now began to thread their way through his system, he became aware of how much trust she placed in his abilities. They acted as a team, both understanding and compensating for the other’s strengths and weaknesses.

  Reaching out a hand, Darc took Mala’s in his own for a moment. She glanced up at him, startled. Then, a moment later, she gave him a tentative smile, held his fingers for a moment, then let go.

  Busying herself with the sail that was now filled with air once more, Mala appeared… uncomfortable. That was an interesting response. Darc’s newfound expectations regarding emotion would have predicted a different reaction.

  Odd.

  Just at that point, the wind shifted, and the boom swung across the breadth of the ship, almost catching Trey in the head before he was able to duck. His seasickness seemed to be slowing down his reaction times.

  “Whoa!” Maggie yelled as she rolled herself onto the deck, narrowly escaping the long arm of the pole as it snapped into place. She waved at everyone. “I’m okay.”

  The calculations for this change in the wind processed in the background of Darc’s mind, and the conclusion was not favorable. They would have to change their destination once more.

  “Friday Harbor,” Darc said to Mala.

  She nodded, making the adjustments to the sail. As she did so, Darc noticed Janey’s face. It had fallen.

  “You’ll still be able to see the lighthouse,” Mala called over from where she stood next to the mast.

  Janey’s expression lightened once more.

  Darc, for his part, did not care where they landed. There was a strange reaction from within, a combination of the bands of color and the bursts of silver illumination. Something was wrong here.

  “Uh… hey!” Trey called out from his place back in the aft section of the ship. “Um…”

  Darc turned to look. Trey was still grasping the pole with the hook that was attached to the body. Darc’s partner stared out at the form that floated along behind them.

  Fins swirled around the corpse, evidence of the sharks that lurked below the surface of the water. Even as Darc observed, a mouth filled with teeth gaped wide, snapping down with savage fury.

  The body they were dragging was now missing a limb. The right leg from the knee down, to be precise.

  “Wow,” Carly said, standing at Darc’s side. “Hope that wasn’t an important part of the investigation.”

  Darc chose not to respond. What was there to say?

  The incident, however, did not bode well for the day ahead.

  CHAPTER 2

  As soon as Trey’s feet hit the pier at Friday Harbor, he collapsed to the ground and began kissing it. He had never been more happy than he was to get off that boat.

  “You do realize that we’re not on land yet, right?” Maggie teased him, walking up to him with that strange waddling gait that pregnant women would use in the last weeks of their pregnancy.

  “Close enough,” he managed to croak out.

  Just then, a middle-aged gentleman, tall and tanned strode toward the vessel, looking over Trey toward Mala as she leapt from the ship to the dock in one graceful bound. The man wore a bright yellow golf shirt with light khaki pants and smelled of more money than Trey had ever seen in his life.

  “Pokie?” he called out.

  Mala stopped in her tracks and looked toward the man.

  “Andrew?” she gasped.

  Then the two were hugging one another, babbling over each other in the exuberance of two people who hadn’t seen each other in years. Trey was only able to catch small bursts.

  “Where did you disappear…?”

  “What about you? You never…”

  “…are you doing here?”

  Then they fell silent, as they turned around and realized they had an audience. Trey looked back to see that Darc had now stepped onto the dock. Whipping his gaze back and forth between the tall and tanned rich dude and his own partner, Trey realized that for once, Darc might be getting the short end of the stick here as far as looks went.

  Mala cleared her throat. “This is Andrew Peregrine,” she said, gesturing to the man she was still attached to in a side hug. “He was a Sailing World Cup competitor back when I was the coordinator.”

  Andrew snorted. “That makes it sound so pedantic,” he said. Turning to the others, he grinned. “We used to sail together… amongst other things…”

  Trey glanced at Mala and what he saw shocked him almost speechless. The woman was blushing.

  Darting his gaze back to his partner, Trey saw that Darc had an expression on his face that Trey had only seen once before. Back when they had thought that Van Owen was one a good guy,
the Assistant Prosecuting Attorney had made the moves on Mala.

  Darc hadn’t been pleased.

  But his expression now was even more… how to explain it? If Trey were going to make the attempt, it was somewhere south of the look a volcano might give to a raincloud. This did not seem like it would end well.

  Mala stepped forward. “Sorry, Andrew. This is Detective Trey Keane and Maggie. They’re a couple.”

  Andrew nodded.

  “And this is Janey and Carly,” she continued, “my foster children.”

  The only response Andrew gave was a raised eyebrow.

  “And this…” Mala concluded, “is my boyfriend, Darc.”

  Darc stepped forward. “Fiancé,” he corrected.

  Ouch. Awkward.

  Trey looked around. Yep, pretty much everyone there appeared pretty uncomfortable. Well, not Mala. She seemed downright mortified at her blunder.

  At Darc’s statement, Andrew seemed to come alive. “Ah. So you’re my competition?” He took a step toward Darc and extended his hand. “Always a pleasure to meet a new rival.”

  For a long moment, Darc simply stared at the man’s hand. The tension continued to build, and Trey thought that it might end in Darc challenging Andrew to a duel or something. This was Darc, after all. That scenario wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

  Then Darc took the proffered hand and shook it. From the whiteness of his partner’s knuckles, Trey had to believe the grip was more than a little tight.

  Carly, ever the sharp one, focused in on something else entirely.

  “Pokie?” she asked with a frown.

  Mala’s blush deepened.

  To Trey’s surprise, so did Andrew’s. This didn’t seem like the kind of man who would blush, but…

  “Right,” Andrew said, coughing. “It’s short for… ah… Pocahontas.”

  Carly’s eyes narrowed. “That’s racist.”

  Andrew spread his hands in a gesture of apology. “Yes. Okay. I’ll cop to that. But… it was also nearly fifteen years ago.”

  From the deadpan look Carly leveled at the man, it was clear she wasn’t impressed. She looked down at Janey, and some unspoken communication passed between the two. Neither girl seemed too impressed by the dapper man.