“Even after I told you what I could do, what I could become, you still believed. That night, as Eli, today as your precious professor, all you had to do was put two and two together. But you didn’t. It always works, no matter whether my chosen victim is a captain of industry or a disillusioned police officer.”
“Big problem for you,” Micki said, voice shaking. “Now I know you’re not real, you can’t hurt me.”
“Oh, but I can. Because I’m as real as your memories. And like them, I’m always with you.”
Her gun lay on the floor between them. Micki calculated her best move for getting her hands on it before the chameleon did.
“I’m not going to fight you for that,” he said. “Go ahead, take your time.”
Micki snatched it up, curling her fingers around the grip. “You need to die.”
“You’re the one who needs to die, Michaela. No one cares about you. No one wants you around.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“You didn’t even know Angel was pregnant. Why is that?” Micki didn’t respond, and he went on, “She told Arianna, and Angel hardly even knows her. But when she needed understanding, that’s who she went to.
“And what about Zach?” Uncle Beau grinned; sweat beaded his upper lip, the way it always had, no matter the temperature outside. “He betrayed you, didn’t he? Like all the others. Your father first, just up and left you without a goodbye. Your mother was next, wasn’t she? Oh, she stayed in body. But her soul checked out. She didn’t care enough about her little girl to notice . . . things. Even your old partner turned on you. Everyone, Michaela. Why is that?”
Every word felt like another piece of flesh being brutally ripped away. No, worse than that. Pieces of her soul.
“And what about your precious Hank?”
“He never left. He loved me and believed in me.”
“Then why didn’t he tell you the truth?”
“What truth?” Her gun bobbled. “We shared everything.”
“Not everything, Michaela. You didn’t tell him about me. You didn’t tell him about us.”
His voice was suddenly everywhere. Booming off the walls and resounding in her head. Over and over.
“You didn’t tell him about us.”
“Stop it!” she cried.
“And he didn’t tell you everything, Michaela. He had secrets from you. Big secrets.”
She tightened her grip on the gun. It seemed to have no effect. “Is that why you killed him?”
“I didn’t. You did. You killed him.”
The last was like a damning hiss. Micki felt it to her soul.
“You wouldn’t back off. You forced my hand. And now you’re doing it again. The same mistakes, over and over. You’re stupid and weak.”
“I’m taking you out. This stops today. Now.”
“I agree. It should stop.” Her uncle’s thick drawl deepened. “But my death won’t stop it. Only yours will.”
Micki struggled to clear her head. To stop his words from seeping in and sounding . . . right. Because they were making sense. The logic of them was bringing a sort of peace.
“No,” she managed. The Glock’s grip was slippery with sweat. Sweat rolled down her spine and pooled in the small of her back. “Dead is dead, no matter what kind of monster you are.”
He laughed. “You can’t shake this off, because I’m in control. We’re joined now. That day, the cold. I know you felt it. I slithered into your head. I live there now, Michaela. Just like I lived in Thom’s and Mercedes’ heads. Just imagine me, there in prison with you. And every day, every moment, I’ll remind you of who and what you really are.”
“Come, Michaela, let’s play a little game of make-believe.”
“The instant you pull that trigger, I transform into Natalie King and you become a murderer. You’re the cop who went off the rails and murdered an innocent woman. What a blight on the NOPD. Her estate will sue, of course. Her attorney will see to that. Think about the future, Michaela. About just how awful it would be for everyone and everything you care about.”
Micki did, ideas and images running wild through her head, stealing her ability think clearly, let alone fight. Her legs gave, and she dropped to her knees.
“Only you can stop our little game of make-believe.”
Him, his voice, in her head forever. Her reputation ruined. A cop gone bad. The police department punished. The people she cared about hurt.
Micki looked at the gun, held now with limp fingers. It would be so easy. So quick. And then, no more pain. No more nightmares.
She curved her fingers around the grip. Tears slipping down her cheeks, she turned the barrel on herself.
“That’s my good girl,” he said softly, starting toward the door, and pausing when he reached it. “You don’t get out of this alive, Michaela. You never could.”
Chapter Forty-two
12:59 A.M.
Zach turned onto Micki’s street. The arc of his headlights illuminated a man climbing into a car parked directly in front of her place. Zach frowned. From the man’s hulking silhouette, he appeared middle-aged and overweight.
It was well after midnight. What business could he have had with Mick?
Zach didn’t like any of the answers that popped into his head. He eyed the car as it passed him; the driver didn’t glance his way. Just in case the man checked his rearview, Zach drove past Mick’s, pulling over only when the other vehicle turned off.
Zach wasted no time, setting off for Mick’s at a dead run. He reached the entrance, rang the bell. After several moments of silence, he pounded on the door. “Mick! It’s me. Open up!”
“Leave me alone! I don’t want you here.”
Her voice sounded strange, wild and uneven. “Mick, sweetheart, you’re talking crazy. Come to the door. It’s me.”
When she didn’t respond, he grabbed the door handle. A sensation like poker-hot pinpricks ran up his arm. The image of the woman exploded in his head. Her amber eyes seemed to glow as she laughed.
At him. As if she had known. That Zach would come. But that he would be too late. That she had bested him—both of them—and had known the outcome of the game before it had even started.
Fear nearly strangled him. He pounded on the door. “Dammit, Mick! Open the door.”
Nothing. He peered through the sidelight—the foyer was clear. He went to the front window. The shade was drawn, save for an inch at the bottom. He squatted, peered inside.
The sliver revealed Mick, on her knees. Holding something to her head. No, not something. Her gun.
As if she sensed him staring, she turned toward the window. And smiled. That same flat, expressionless grin that Mercedes King had turned on him just hours ago.
Panic propelled him back to the door. He pounded. “Open this goddamn door right now, or I’m going to kick it in! Five . . . four . . . three . . . two—”
For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Zach found himself rearing back, then driving his heel into a door. This time, he placed it perfectly. The wood splintered. With the second blow, a panel cracked, then, with the third, shattered.
Zach reached through, unlocked the deadbolt and burst into the house.
Mick was on her feet then, eyes wide, gun aimed directly at him. He stopped short, lifting his hands in surrender.
“Whoa . . . put the gun away.”
“Stay away from me. You’re not real.”
“Mick, sweetheart . . . if I’m not Zach, who would I be?” She was looking at him as if he was a monster. “It’s me. Your partner. Your friend.”
“Prove it.”
“Seeing me’s not enough?”
“No.”
“Who was that man I saw leaving?”
“My Uncle Beau. But he wasn’t real either.”
He took a cautious step toward her. “I saw him, Mick. Big guy. He climbed into a car and drove away.”
“You don’t understand.” Her eyes filled with tears. “He’s in my head. I
can’t live with him in there.”
Zach took another step and held his hand out. “Mick, I can’t do this job without you. Give me the gun. We’ll work it out.”
“I don’t think we can.” She shook her head. “No. I don’t think I can.”
She turned the gun on herself and his heart jumped to his throat. “It’s Natalie King,” he said quickly. “She’s some sort of dark force. I think she can change shapes.”
Zach tried to calm his voice. “I picked up her energy on the door handle.”
Mick’s expression changed, as if something he said struck a chord.
“Remember the dark-haired, amber-eyed woman I picked up at the King scene? Mercedes King killed herself this afternoon—she was there, too. And at the Eighth, in Major Nichols’ office.”
He took another step. He was almost close enough to grab the gun. Problem was, if he made that kind of move, she might pull the trigger.
“And just now, I picked her up from your door handle. She was laughing. At me. At us, Mick. Because she thought she’d beaten us.”
She hadn’t moved, so he pressed forward. “I think she masks her true physical identity somehow.”
“She’s a chameleon,” Micki said. “And she has beaten us, Zach. She’s won.”
“She’s hasn’t beaten me, Mick. How about you?”
She didn’t respond. He was losing her, he realized. “That’s not you, Mick! You’re a fighter. Mad Dog Dare, remember?”
She shook her head. Time seemed to slow. Every sound magnified in his head—the rustle of her hair against her neck, the faint creak of the gun’s firing mechanism, her exhalation of breath.
Something bright, hot, and primal rose up in him. He felt it pour forth from his being. A sound rent the air between them, the ceiling fan spun wildly, and light exploded around them. No, not around them—from him. The gun flew from her hand, hit the wall and dropped.
In the next moment, he had her cradled in his arms—and encased in a cocoon of light. For long moments, she shook uncontrollably; her teeth chattered, and her hands were like ice.
Slowly, warmth seeped into her. Her body stilled, then softened, as if whatever evil had held her in its grip melted away. Until she was Mick again.
His Mick.
He closed his eyes and breathed her in, the realization of how close he’d come to losing her sinking in. Zach pressed his lips to the top of her head, and she tilted her face up to his in an unspoken question.
He decided on honesty. “I almost lost you.”
“Yes,” she said.
He shuddered and pulled her closer again. He rested his cheek against her hair. “Don’t ever scare me like that again.”
“I was . . . going to do it.” She looked up at him. “I couldn’t get his voice out of my head. And hers too, the chameleon’s, telling me it was the best way. The only way.” Her eyes flooded with tears. “You saved my life, Zach.”
They stayed that way, gazes locked and clinging to one another—contemplating the horror of what could have been—and almost was.
He thought of those moments, his to-the-core terror followed by that explosion of light. His light. So forcefully directed, it ripped the gun away from her. He’d seen Full Lights with that kind of power. But Half Lights like him couldn’t do things like that.
A fluke, he decided. Born of terror and desperation.
“How did you get the gun away from me?” Mick asked.
“You don’t remember?”
“It was like I blinked, and I was in your arms.”
A discussion for another time, he thought, and tucked her hair behind her ear. “They don’t call me Hollywood Harris for nothing.”
She smiled and laid her head against his shoulder.
“I have a question,” he said.
“You just saved my life. Ask away.”
“The other night, at my apartment—”
“Your apartment?”
“Yeah, you know. When you said . . .”
He realized she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, and let the last trail off. He’d been about to ask if she’d meant what she said about “now or never.”
That hadn’t even been her, he realized. It must have been the thing she’d called a chameleon.
He wanted to laugh. That night, he’d known that wasn’t Mick. On some cellular—or chemical—level. That’s why it had been as easy as it’d been to turn her down.
Even knowing all that now, he felt almost comically disappointed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, frowning slightly, in that totally Mick way, two small furrows forming between her eyebrows.
One corner of his mouth lifted in a lopsided grin. “Just thinking that you and I have a lot of talking to do.”
Chapter Forty-three
2:40 A.M.
Micki towel-dried her hair. It fell in loose waves to her shoulders. Funny how she’d hated those waves as a teenager. How she’d fought them. Now, she was so grateful she had them because they made her life easier.
She thought of Zach, waiting for her in the living room. How she’d fought him becoming her partner. How pissed off she’d been.
And how grateful for him she now was.
She stepped into her lightest sweatpants, the soft, clingy fabric somehow reassuring. As was the ancient denim shirt she donned, the fabric worn threadbare in places from years of washing.
Zach wasn’t in the living room, she discovered moments later. He was in the kitchen. She stopped in the doorway, a greeting dying on her lips. He stood with his back to her as he gazed out the window above the sink.
A lump formed in her throat as an unfamiliar feeling washed over her—like the sun peeking out from behind clouds on a chilly day.
And something more. From deep inside her. A place that had been long closed seemed to unfurl.
Her breath caught. This belonging, this need, was dangerous territory. She told herself to shut it down, clamp a lid on whatever this was happening between them.
She couldn’t do it. Maybe later, but not now. For this moment, she couldn’t bear to lose what she’d just found.
Zach looked over his shoulder at her and smiled. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” She smiled. “Happy.”
His eyebrows shot up in mock shock. “I don’t know that I’ve ever heard you say that before.”
She didn’t smile. “I’m glad you’re really you.”
He was silent. Their gazes held. Something crackled between them, like a high voltage wire.
He broke the connection. “I’m mostly glad you’re really you.”
A combination of relief and disappointment skittered through her. “Mostly?”
“Yeah.” He crossed to the refrigerator and opened the freezer. “While you were in the shower, I ran to the grocery.” He took a bag out and carried it to the table. “I didn’t know what your favorite flavor was, so I got several.”
“You got ice cream?”
“Yup.” He took a pint of Blue Bell from the bag. “Sweet and Salty Crunch,” he said, setting it on the table. He reached for another. “Rocky Road.” He took another pint from the bag. “Cookies and Cream.”
“What? No vanilla?”
“I’m not a vanilla kind of guy.” He met her eyes. “And I didn’t think you were a vanilla kind of girl. Was I wrong?”
They both knew he wasn’t really talking about ice cream flavors. And God help her, he wasn’t wrong.
“No, you were right.”
He grinned. “I covered my bases anyway.” He took a last tub out of the bag, held it up.
“The Great Divide,” she read aloud, then laughed. “Sounds a bit like us.”
She grabbed a couple of spoons and they sat across from each other at the table, the four pints between them. She pried the lid off the Sweet and Salty Crunch and dug in.
“Oh, my God,” she said around the sweet, melting mouthful, “this is so good.” She went for another.
He laughed and opened t
he Rocky Road. “Reminds me of being a kid. It wasn’t Blue Bell. Haagen Das.”
“The fancy stuff.” She licked her spoon. Then her lips.
He watched her. “You might want to stop doing that.”
“What?” She licked the sweet, sticky residue from the corners of her mouth.
“That.”
She realized what he meant, and knew she had a choice. Tease him by doing it again—and take what was happening between them a step closer to its natural conclusion. Or take a giant step back to reality.
Micki laid down her spoon. “You ready to talk?”
“Only if the party’s over?”
She wished the situation was different or that she was another kind of woman. “Seems that way, Hollywood. Sorry.”
“It’s okay, Mick. I consider it a temporary delay.” He stuck his spoon in the Rocky Road. “You go first. I’ll appease myself with ice cream.”
“Where should I start?”
“Start with that chameleon thing. What the hell is that?”
So she told him about Eli coming to see her, how he had told her Natalie King was a chameleon. How they got in your head and could transform themselves into that which you most desired. Or feared. And anything in between.
It was his turn to talk around a mouthful of ice cream. “That case you told me about, The Three Queens investigation—How does it fit in?”
“That shrink who skipped the country, she’s the very same creature who is now Natalie King. I crossed her then and she took the person I loved most in the world. I’ve crossed her again, but this time she means to take everything from me.”
“Even your life.”
“It looks that way.” Micki took a cleansing breath and went on, “Even knowing all that, I was one hundred percent fooled. First by Eli, then Professor Truebell. Until tonight, I thought they were both back in New Orleans.”
She shook her head. “I should have spotted the ruse right away, that both Eli and Truebell were manifestations, but I didn’t because I wanted so desperately to believe. I just . . . let myself overlook the obvious.”
“Which was?”
“They had no powers. Couldn’t read my mind or communicate telepathically. None of it.”
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