by J. R. Ward
“Fucking . . . hell. I knew it was him.”
“He’s setting us up.”
V stiffened. “For what?”
Wrath sent a get real over the desk. “People have lost entire branches of their families. They’ve fled their homes, but they want to come back here. Meanwhile, things are getting more dangerous, instead of safer in Caldwell. Nothing should be taken for granted right now.”
Read: He wasn’t assuming his throne was secure. No matter what he happened to be sitting on.
“So it’s not that I don’t understand where Payne’s at,” Wrath said. “But we’ve got to circle the wagons and hunker down. Now is not the time to layer on the complication of a human in here.”
Things grew quiet for a moment.
As V considered his counterpoints, he picked up another square, rolled it tight, licked the flap, twisted. “He helped my Jane last night. When the Brothers and I came back here after the melee in that alley, Manello was hands-on and then some. He’s a spectacular surgeon—and I should know. He operated on me. He’s far from useless.” V looked across the desk. “If the war intensifies further, we could use an extra set of surgical hands down in the clinic.”
Wrath cursed in English. And then in the Old Language. “Vishous—”
“Jane is awesome, but there’s only one of her. And Manello has technical skills she doesn’t.”
Wrath popped up his glasses again and rubbed. Hard. “You telling me that guy is going to want to live here in this house day and night for the rest of his life? Lot to ask.”
“So I’ll ask him.”
“I don’t like this.”
Loooong silence. Which told V he was making headway. He knew better than to push, however.
“I thought you wanted to kill the bastard,” Wrath groused. As if that would be preferable as a goal.
Abruptly, the image of Manello on his knees in front of Payne blazed into V’s mind, until he wanted to snag a pen and poke his own eyes out. “I still do,” he said darkly. “But . . . he’s who she wants, true. What am I gonna do.”
Another loooong silence, during which he made a satisfyingly tall pile of light-ables.
Finally, Wrath dragged a hand through his mile-long black hair. “If she wants to see him outside of here, that’s none of my business.”
Vishous opened his mouth to argue, and then shut his trap. This was better than a flat-out no, and who knew what the future held: If V could evolve to a place where, even after The Shower Nightmare, Manello remained aboveground and breathing, anything could fucking happen.
“Fair enough.” He resealed the pouch. “What are we going to do about Xcor?”
“Wait until the Council calls a meeting about him—which will be in the next couple of nights, no doubt. The glymera is going to eat this shit up, and then we’ve got real problems.” In a dry voice, the king tacked on, “As opposed to all our half-assed ones.”
“You want the Brotherhood up here for a meeting?”
“Nah. Give ’em the rest of the night off. This is not going away.”
V stood, pulled on the robe and gathered up his smoking para. “Thanks for this. You know, about Payne.”
“It’s not a favor.”
“It’s a better message to carry back to her.”
Vishous was halfway to the door when Wrath said, “She’s going to want to fight.”
V pivoted around. “Excuse me.”
“Your sister.” Wrath put his elbows on all the paperwork and leaned in, his cruel face grave. “You need to prepare yourself for when she asks to go out and fight.”
Oh, hell, no. “I’m not hearing that.”
“You will be. I’ve sparred against her. She’s as lethal as you and I are, and if you think she’s going to be content prowling around this house for the next six hundred years, you’re fucked in the head. Sooner or later, that’s what she’s going to want.”
Vishous opened his mouth. Then shut it.
Well, he’d had a rockin’ good time enjoying life for about . . . twenty-nine minutes. “Don’t tell me you’d allow it.”
“Xhex fights.”
“She’s Rehvenge’s subject. Not yours.” Wrath’s brows made a third disappearance. “Different standard.”
“Number one, everyone under this roof is my subject. And two, it’s not any different just because she’s your sister.”
“Of course”—It. Is.—“not.”
“Uh-huh. Right.”
Vishous cleared his throat. “You’re seriously thinking about letting her—”
“You’ve seen what I looked like after we worked out, right? I was giving her no leeway at all, Vishous. That female knows what she’s doing.”
“But she’s . . .” My sister. “You can’t let her go out there.”
“Right now, I need as many fighters as I’ve got.”
Vishous put a hand-rolled between his lips. “I think I’d better go.”
“Good idea.”
The second he was out and had shut the door, he flicked the gold lighter Fritz had given him and inhaled like a Dyson.
As he thought about his next move, he supposed he could flash back to the Commodore and deliver the happy news to his sister—but he was more than a little afraid of what he’d materialize into. Besides, he had until dawn to convince himself that Payne out in the field was not an Edsel-like idea.
Also, he had someone else he had to see.
Taking the staircase down, he crossed the foyer, and hit the vestibule. Outside, he walked fast through the pebbled courtyard and entered the Pit through its stout front door.
The familiarity of the couches and the plasma screen and the Foosball table eased him.
The sight of the empty bottle of Lag on the coffee table? Not so much.
“Butch?”
No answer. So he went down the hall to the cop’s room. The door was open and inside . . . there was nothing but Butch’s huge wardrobe and a messy, empty bed.
“I’m in here.”
Frowning, V doubled back and leaned into his own room. The lights were off, but the sconces in the hall gave him enough to go by.
Butch was sitting on the far side of the bed, his back to the door, his head hanging, his heavy shoulders curled in.
Vishous stepped inside and closed them in together. Neither Jane nor Marissa was going to show up—both were busy with their jobs. But Fritz and his crew were probably going to sweep through here some time, and that butler, God love him, never even knocked on closed doors. He’d lived here too long.
“Hey,” V said into the darkness.
“Hey.”
V went forward, rounding the foot of the bed, using the wall to navigate. Lowering his ass onto the mattress, he sat beside his best friend.
“You and Jane okay?” the cop asked.
“Yeah. S’all good.” Such an understatement. “She arrived right around the time I woke up.”
“I called her.”
“I figured.” Vishous turned his head and looked over, even though that hardly mattered in the pitch black. “Thank you for that—”
“I’m sorry,” Butch croaked. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry. . . .”
The hoarse exhale that came out was a sob barely covered up.
In spite of being blind, V put his arm out and curled it around the cop. Pulling the male close to his chest, he laid his head down on his buddy’s.
“It’s okay,” he said roughly. “It’s all right. It’s okay. . . . You did the right thing. . . .”
Somehow he ended up moving the guy around so that they were stretched out together and he had his arms around the cop.
For some reason, he thought of the first night they’d spent together. It had been one million and a half years ago, back at Darius’s in-town mansion. Two twin beds side by side upstairs. Butch had asked about the tats. V had told him to mind his own biz.
And here they were in the dark again. Given all that had happened since then, it was almost unfathomable that they’d
ever been those two males who had bonded over the Sox.
“Don’t ask me to do that again anytime soon,” the cop said.
“Deal.”
“Still. If you need it . . . come to me.”
It was on the tip of V’s tongue to say something like Never again, but that was bullshit. He and the cop had done rounds on this psychiatric floor of V’s too many times, and although he was turning over a new leaf . . . you never knew.
So he just repeated the vow he’d made to himself back with Jane. From now on, he was letting shit out. Even if it made him uncomfortable to the point of screaming, it was better than the bottle-up strategy. Healthier, too.
“I’m hoping it won’t be necessary,” he murmured. “But thanks, my man.”
“One other thing.”
“What.”
“I think we’re dating now.” As V barked out a laugh, the cop shrugged. “Come on . . . I got you naked. You wore a damn corset. And don’t get me started about the sponge bath afterward.”
“Fucker.”
“To the end.”
As their laughter faded, V closed his eyes and briefly shut his brain down. With his best friend’s big barrel chest up against his own, and the knowledge that he and Jane were tight again, his world was complete.
Now, if he could just keep his sister off the streets and out of the alleys at night . . . life would be frickin’ perfect.
FORTY-SIX
When José pulled up to the Monroe Motel & Suites, it was pretty clear that the only thing new around the place was the crime scene tape that had just been wrapped around the far end. Everything else was wilted and sagging, including the cars that were parked by the office.
Heading past the lineup of beaters, he went all the way down to the last room on the row and pulled his unmarked in diagonally to the other CPD units.
As he put the sedan in park, he looked across the seat. “You good to go?”
Veck was already reaching for the door handle. “You’d better believe it.”
When the two of them got out, the other officers came over, and Veck got surrounded by a whole lot of backslapping. In the department, people thought the guy was a hero for The Paparazzi Incident—and that approval roll wasn’t slowed in the slightest by the fact that the guy always brushed off any attaboys.
Staying tight and cool, he just jacked up his slacks and took out a cigarette. After lighting it and inhaling, he talked through the exhale. “How we doing here.”
José left the kid to get up to speed and ducked under the tape. The broken door to the crime scene had been shut loosely, and he nudged it open with his shoulder.
“Shit,” he said under his breath.
The air was choked with the smell of fresh blood . . . and formaldehyde.
At that moment, the photographer’s flash went off and the body of the victim was spotlighted on the bed—as were the specimen jars on the bedside table. And the knives.
He closed his eyes briefly.
“Detective?”
José glanced over his shoulder at Veck. “Yeah?”
“We have the registration on the truck. Illinois. Owned by a David Kroner. It has not been reported stolen, and guess what—Kroner is a white male, thirty-three years old . . . unmarried . . . on disabili—fucking hell.” Veck’s convo stopped altogether as he came to stand by the bed. “Jesus.”
The flashbulb went off again, and there was an electronic wheeze as the camera recovered from the effort.
José looked at the coroner. “How long’s she been dead?”
“Not long. She’s still warm. I’ll give you a better idea when I’m done here.”
“Thanks.” José walked over to the crappy bureau and used a pen to push around a thin gold ring, a pair of sparkly earrings, and a bracelet that was pink and black.
The tattoo that had been cut out of the victim’s skin and relocated to the specimen jar next to her was pink and black, too. Probably favorite colors of hers.
Or had been.
He continued to wander around, looking for things that were out of place, checking the wastepaper baskets, peeking into the bathroom.
Someone had clearly disturbed the killer’s fun. Somebody had heard or seen something and busted the door open, causing a fast departure out this back window above the toilet.
The 911 call that had come in had been made by a male who refused to identify himself. He’d said only that there was a dead body in the room at the end and that was it. Wasn’t their killer. Bastards like him didn’t stop unless they had to, and they didn’t willingly leave behind the kinds of trophies that were on the nightstand and the bureau.
“Where did you go after this?” José said to himself. “Where did you run to . . .”
There were K-9 units searching the woods out back, but José had a hunch that was going to come to nothing. A mere tenth of a mile from the motel was a river shallow enough to wade through—he and Veck had gone over the little bridge that spanned the damn thing on the way here.
“He’s changing his MO,” Veck said. When José turned, the guy planted his hands on his hips and shook his head. “This is the first time he’s done it in this public a place. His work is really messy—and potentially noisy. We’d have found more scenes like this after he was done.”
“Agreed.”
“David Kroner is the answer.”
José shrugged. “Maybe. Or he could be another body we’re about to find.”
“No one’s reported him missing.”
“Like you said, unmarried, right? Maybe he lives alone. Who’d know he was gone?”
Except even as José poked holes in the theory, he did the math and came up with a similar conclusion. It was rare that a person could disappear without somebody missing them—family, friends, coworkers, apartment manager. . . . It wasn’t impossible, but very unlikely.
The question was, where was the killer going to go next? If the bastard followed conventional wisdom, he was probably entering a gorging stage with his pathology. In the past, victims had shown up months apart, but now they’d found two in a week?
So if he worked off that assumption, he knew the careful actions that had masked the killer previously were going out the window, whatever patterns he’d fallen into dissipating in the face of a frenetic drive. The good news was that sloppy was going to make him easier to catch. The bad news was that this might well get worse before it got better.
Veck came up to him. “I’m going to get into that truck. You want to be there?”
“Yeah.”
Outside, the air didn’t smell like copper and chemicals, and José took some deep breaths as Veck snapped on gloves and went to work. Naturally the vehicle was locked, but that didn’t stop the guy. He got a slider and popped open the driver’s-side door like he was an old hand with the B&E.
“Whoa,” he muttered as he reared back.
It didn’t take long for the stench to hit José, and he coughed into his hand. More formaldehyde, but also the sweet stench of dead things.
“It’s not in the cab.” Veck swung his flashlight around the seats. “In the back.”
There was a padlock on the square double doors of the cap, but Veck just went to the trunk of the unmarked and returned with a battery-powered Sawzall.
There was a high-pitched whine . . . a ping! . . . and then Veck was in.
“Oh . . . fuck . . .”
José shook his head as he came around to see what his partner had cursed at.
Veck’s flashlight beam was illuminating an entire collection of little jars with things floating in or sunken down at the bottom of clear liquid. The containers were held safe in a custom-made rack system mounted on the left side. The right side was reserved for tools: knives and ropes, duct tape, hammers, chisels, razor blades, scalpels, retractors.
Hello, David Kroner: highly improbable that the killer had installed this setup in someone else’s truck—and what do you bet that the trophies in all those jars filled the holes in the dermi
s of the victims.
Their best hope was that the K-9 units tracked him in the woods.
Otherwise, they were going to lose another woman. José was willing to bet his house on it.
“I’ll sync with the FBI,” he said. “They need to come down here and see this.”
Veck scanned the interior. “I’ll give the CSI boys a hand. I’d like to get this vehicle moved back to HQ ASAP so everything can be logged properly.”
José nodded, cocked his cell phone, and hit speed dial. As the ringing started, he knew that after he got off with the feds’ regional field office he was going to have to call his wife. No chance he was coming home in time for breakfast.
None at all.
FORTY-SEVEN
“ The sun! Oh, my God! Quick, you’d better—”
Manny came fully awake in midair: Evidently, he’d leaped out of bed, taking the duvet and several pillows with him, and they all landed at once, his feet, the comforter, and the quartet of puffies.
Bright sunlight was streaming in the glass windows, flooding his bedroom with brilliant illumination.
Payne was here, his brain told him. She was here.
Looking around frantically, he rushed into the bathroom. Empty. Ran through the rest of the condo. Empty.
Rubbing his hair, he went back to the bed . . . and then realized, holy shit, he still had all his memories. Of her. Of Jane. Of the Goateed Hater. Of the operation and the . . . that incredible shower hookup. And of Glory.
What the hell . . .
Bending down, he picked up a pillow and put it to his nose. Yeah, she’d definitely been lying beside him. But why had she come? And if she had, why hadn’t she scrubbed him?
Marching out into the front hall, he grabbed his cell phone and . . . Except it wasn’t as if he could call her. He didn’t have her number.
He stood there for a moment like a planker. And then remembered he’d agreed to meet Goldberg in less than an hour.
