“You want my help with... profiling?” I said, raising an eyebrow at Nick.
Angel spoke, drawing my eyes.
“That’s part of it.”
“What’s the other part?” I frowned, again feeling they weren’t telling me something as I looked between her and Nick. “Am I supposed to guess?”
“You know the victim,” Nick said. He folded his arms, shifting his weight between his feet a second time, making the leather crinkle in his jacket.
I stiffened. “How? How do I know him?”
Angel held up a hand, giving Nick an annoyed look. “It’s fine, doc. He’s no one you’re close to, I don’t think. He’s one of your patients.”
“Ex-patients,” Nick corrected. He continued to watch me with that denser scrutiny, his muscular arms crossed, bulky in the leather jacket. “He filed a complaint about you actually. Recently. He also called you... a lot. What I would call an unusual amount, Miri, both before and after he filed the complaint. So we need to bring you down and talk to you about that. And whatever else you can tell us about him.”
I let out an incredulous laugh.
“Am I a suspect?” I said.
Angel shook her head vehemently, again holding up her hand and glaring at Nick. “No, doc. Not at all.” Letting the first glimmer of a smile touch her full lips, she glanced at the closed door behind me. “...Anyway, I’m pretty sure you have an alibi.”
“What’s his name?” I said. “The client. It’s a man, right?”
“Norberg. Jeffrey Alan.” Nick continued to stare at me with that frown on his lips. “Ring a bell?”
I grimaced. “Yes.”
“Files say you saw him as a patient for almost a year?”
I nodded, still thinking. “You’re sure it’s murder?” I said.
For some reason, that time I looked at Glen. He didn’t answer me or even acknowledge my question but continued to stare, his lips pursed, his eyes bordering on puzzled. He wasn’t looking at my face, but down at my bare legs and feet below the boxers.
I shifted my gaze to Angel.
“You’re sure it’s murder?” I asked again.
“He was decapitated,” Nick grunted, answering for her. “With a sword. After being tied to one of those thick piles under the pier. That answer your question?”
I grimaced again. “Jesus. Why?”
“How the fuck would we know why?” Nick growled. “Do I look like I’m carrying a crystal ball? This just happened. The killer didn’t exactly leave a note explaining his reasoning.” When I continued to stare at him blankly, he scowled at me. “Why do you think we’re here, Miri? We need your help. Now are you going to go put on some fucking clothes and come help us? Maybe take a shower first? We’re serious about needing to talk to you. And I want you to look at the body on this one. There’s some weird... ritualistic-type crap. You and Black kind of stuff.”
When I looked at him that time, Nick gave me a meaningful stare.
I got what he was saying.
He thought this might have something to do with seers.
He specifically thought it might be related to that seer cult that didn’t like humans very much––the same one led by my uncle, who went by the alias “Mr. Lucky.” I’d never heard anything about them decapitating people with swords, but the last seer that went off the rails and started murdering people seemed to be big on symbolism, so I got why Nick would make the connection. Still thinking, I nodded, again giving Glen a brief glance.
That time, Glen was staring at my chest.
He noticed that I’d caught him staring that time and blushed, looking away.
“All right.” I tried to rake my fingers through my hair. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even get my hand into it, much less through it; it was a knotted, tangled mess on my head, probably akin to a bird’s nest filled with two angry, unbrushed cats. I had to give up halfway, disentangling my fingers and letting my arm fall to my side.
I pretended not to notice them watch me do that, too.
“Okay.” I exhaled, looking past them down the hall.
Just being around my friends was making me realize how strange I felt, how completely out of step with the world. It pulled me out of the fugue state I’d been sharing with Black well enough to realize just how deeply I’d been in it. I wondered what his staff thought, meaning the people working for Black Securities and Investigations just down the hall.
Some of them––Lizbeth, mostly, his office manager––brought us food over the past few weeks, but otherwise, we hadn’t interacted with them or anyone else in the building since we got back from Paris. Given how most of them viewed me prior to that, they probably thought I got Black hooked on drugs and locked him in here to rape him for a few weeks.
Hell, Nick seemed to think the same about Black with me.
I glanced back at Nick as I thought it. When I did, I caught his eyes raking over me, that disbelief still etched on his face. I felt worry on him too, now that I let myself be more aware of him, along with a kind of helpless fury at Black.
“Can we meet at the station?” I said finally.
Angel spoke drily, drawing my eyes. “Will you make it there, doc?”
I let out a humorless snort. It was a valid question. “Well, what do you propose?” I shrugged with one hand. “There’s a coffee shop downstairs. Would that work?”
“Let us in, doc,” Nick said. “I want to have a word with Black.”
I frowned, shaking my head. “Really bad idea.”
Nick glared at me. “Why?”
“Why?” I looked between him and Angel, making a disbelieving sound as I folded my arms. “You’re kidding right?”
“Not really, doc.” Angel’s voice was more subdued than Nick’s had been. It also held more concern. She glanced at Glen, then back at me. “I think we should come in, too.”
Looking between them, it struck me that they really had no idea what mental state me and Black were in. They just saw me looking like this, and they didn’t see Black. As far as they knew, he could be pumping me full of drugs and keeping me here against my will.
I fought to interpret things the way they would, given everything they’d seen and heard. I couldn’t quite do it, not well enough to form a coherent picture. I also couldn’t fathom how them seeing or talking to Black would help with any of that.
I could definitely see ways in which it might make things worse.
Black’s mind rose in mine.
What do they want?
Police, I sent. It’s police stuff. They want me to come with them to the station.
What? His thoughts grew angry. Why?
One of my clients was murdered, I told him. Ex-clients. With a sword.
You were here.
I rolled my eyes. They know that.
Who’s there?
It struck me that I’d been shielding my friends. Even from Black.
Maybe especially from Black.
Angel, I sent reluctantly. Glen, from homicide. I hesitated. ...Nick.
A hotter anger flared off Black in a thick cloud.
Black. I tried to head off what I felt forming. Calm down. This is work-related, okay? Work. They already think I’m on drugs or something, so you coming out here yelling and threatening lawsuits is only going to make things worse...
I could already feel him getting up off the bed. I felt his intent to come our way and realized he was as naked as I’d been.
Clothes! I shouted in his mind. You need clothes, Black! Or they’re going to arrest both of us for real!
I felt him hesitate. Then I could see him going through drawers.
I also heard him muttering, My goddamned home. Can’t come to my home, arrest me for being naked inside my own fucking place...
Black. I sighed. I’m handling this. I promise... you don’t need to come out here.
He didn’t answer, but I felt the pulse of immovability on him.
I refocused my eyes on the corridor and found Nick, Angel and Glen all
staring at me again. I saw an additional knowledge in Nick and Angel’s eyes, which told me they’d likely guessed what my staring off into space meant.
“Black’s coming,” I explained.
I forgot briefly that my comment would probably confuse Glen. Seeing that confusion rise to his eyes, I shoved that aside too.
“Look. The place is trashed. He probably won’t want you to come in.”
“Why is it trashed, doc?” Angel said.
I looked at her. I fought for a few seconds on how to answer, but my mind was blank.
Before I could sort through words, the door opened abruptly behind us.
I turned along with everyone else.
Black stood there, shirtless, wearing dark pants. His feet were bare. He looked pretty close to how he had the first time I’d seen him up here, meaning outside the police station. His hair had been cut military short when I found him in Paris, but it was a bit longer now. He’d shaved most days since we’d been back, even holed up in here, but he had a good five o’clock shadow going now, and his gold eyes looked inhumanly bright, but maybe only to me.
The barcode tat stood out on his arm, next to a thick black letter “S.” At some point over the last however-many days, he’d told me that the combination was called a “racial-cat” tattoo in the world where he’d been born.
The one he wore designated him as seer––meaning, not-human.
It also designated him as property.
He had other tattoos too, I’d discovered. It was probably better if I didn’t think about those tattoos right then, however, since most of them wouldn’t be visible with him wearing pants.
Even so, my eyes drifted down his bare upper torso. His muscular chest was strangely perfect, inhumanly so, I knew now. He still had a light bandage over the stitched up stab wound on his side, something I’d made an effort to keep an eye on given how drugged out we’d both been acting and the nature of some of our more strenuous activities. I’d changed the bandage daily, cleaned it, disinfected it, but truthfully, I’d been amazed at how fast it healed.
Black said that had a lot to do with me, and the amount of “light” we’d shared.
The rest had to do with him being a seer.
According to him, it wouldn’t even leave a scar. Black told me seers didn’t really scar like humans did. Meaning, they rarely obtained lasting scars at all.
I caught Angel staring at his bandaged side and then up at the angular lines of muscle and skin and bone to his chest. I watched her study those strangely symmetrical contours, her eyes noting his darker-colored nipples and nearly hairless and unmarked body with a kind of amazed look on her face. Finishing her appraisal, she glanced at me.
She gave me a slight smile, raising an eyebrow in an unspoken, Wow!
I stiffened. Then I found myself moving, shifting my body so I stood between her and him.
I saw her notice and flinch. She looked more startled than offended.
“What the fuck do you want?” Black said.
All three of them jumped, backing off instinctively.
Glen looked up at Black like Black had just threatened him with physical violence. He didn’t reach for his sidearm holster, much less the grip of his gun, which I happened to know was an HK45, but something in his posture suggested he might have thought about it. It occurred to me that Glen probably wasn’t used to facing off with people his size, much less men even taller than he was. Glen was probably six-four or six-five himself and built like a football player. Nick jokingly called him “the Viking.”
Black was taller.
I didn’t know precisely how tall, but I guessed his height at six-six or six-seven. His frame was somewhat more compact than Glen’s, but roughly the same size as well, including his arms and shoulders, which were hard with muscle, like a boxer’s or a gymnast’s. He had a lean build, not an ounce of excess flesh anywhere, his muscles rope-like and well-defined but not bulked out like a bodybuilder, either.
Black carried what my martial arts teacher would have called “functional bulk.”
He looked like what he was, a fighter.
Nick stepped back instinctively too, but immediately stepped forward a beat later. He didn’t come close to either Glen or Black in height, but he wasn’t exactly short at six feet even, and his own background in martial arts and every other sport imaginable made his shoulders almost as broad as Black’s, if not quite Glen’s.
“You forgetting we’re police again, Black?” Nick said.
Black’s voice and eyes were cold. “I didn’t forget... ‘Nick.’”
“Great. Then you wanna back that shit down a little?” Nick’s anger flashed hotter as he looked up at Black, then back at me. I saw him trying to control it, but something about that anger seemed almost animal-to-animal with him and Black.
“We need Miri to come down to the station,” he said then, his voice flatter.
Black shook his head, once. “No.”
“No?” Nick clenched his jaw. “You wanna give me an excuse to drag you down there, too? Only in handcuffs? Because that might just make my day, psycho-boy.”
I stood more directly between him and Black.
“Nick.” I pushed lightly at his chest and felt Black stiffen behind me. I removed my hand at once. “You need to back off. Now.”
Nick returned my stare, jerking his eyes off Black’s. I saw him trying to control his anger, to calm down, but he was reacting to something about me and Black that he didn’t seem to be able to process. I saw him look up at Black again, right before his dark eyes returned to me. When he looked me over in the T-shirt and boxers, I felt Black tense behind me even more.
I could feel that thing between them start to amplify.
Black opened his mouth to say something, when Angel abruptly inserted herself.
“Can we come in?” she said.
She spoke to Black, not to me, her voice soft and carefully polite. Black’s expression relaxed somewhat when he returned her gaze.
He liked Angel.
Normally I was glad of that, but now, not so much. After a pause where I felt Black thinking about reasons why them coming inside may or may not be a good idea, he surprised me, stepping backwards into the penthouse apartment.
“All right,” he said.
He released the door, then turned away from all of us, padding silently into his living room. The dragon tattoo with its dramatic, deep blacks and shockingly jeweled colors that covered most of his back moved precisely under his otherwise perfect muscles and skin.
I blinked, following him with my eyes, then glanced back at the other three.
Angel barely hesitated. She walked past me into the apartment, following Black towards the white leather furniture that lived at the bottom of the stairs in his sunken living room. Nick and Glen followed behind her, entering the apartment in front of me.
I came in last, closing the door and watching as Angel stopped in front of the massive bay windows that overlooked the city, gazing out over a view of the Bay Bridge all the way to Yerba Buena Island. Oakland was visible too, at least when it was clear, like today.
I blinked out over the same view as Angel as I approached the living room.
Blue skies shone over the city, sunlight sparkling on the surface of the Bay. I could see sailboats out there, and the sun’s rays glinted off the windows of nearby buildings even more brilliantly than they did off the surface of the water.
I followed Angel’s eyes around the apartment as well. Black had an odd assortment of art on the walls and nestled in corners and on shelves, much of it from Asia but also some from Europe, Africa, the Middle East and even middle America, including some very old and authentic-looking Native American sand-paintings, totems and stone carvings. His décor was modern overall, but old and new blended seamlessly, with abstract art hanging next to a tablet covered in writing that might have been early Mesopotamian.
The mishmash suited him personally somehow, both in terms of styles and time periods, rea
list and mythical and abstract––but it also conveyed his wealth even more concretely than the view out the forty-plus story window did.
I hadn’t thought to look around at the apartment or out those giant bay windows in at least a few days. The last time I remembered noticing the view had been at night, while Black and I sat on the floor eating Indian food and looking out over the lit Bay Bridge.
Glancing down, I saw the paper containers from that Indian food feast still sitting on the floor. They stank. Wrinkling my nose, I felt a flush of real embarrassment that time. When I glanced at Nick, I saw him staring at the same pile of still-pungent but mostly dried out containers, along with the other remnants of our last few weeks on the glass coffee table and the kitchen counters and in the sink. As he looked around the floor of the living room, I saw a towel along with a pair of my underwear lying there, too.
Using my bare foot to shove the latter under the edge of the couch, I fought with the heat that now wanted to crawl over my face and neck.
I only glanced up when Black re-entered the room, motioning to the rest of them in that graceful way of his. He aimed the gesture towards the leather furniture.
“Sit,” he commanded.
No one did. They all just stared at where he stood on a step halfway to his living room, his muscular arms folded over his bare chest.
“Are you staying?” Black said, slightly more aggressively.
“We need Miri to get dressed.” Again, Angel spoke only to him. “Then we need her to come with us for a few hours.”
She definitely seemed to have picked up that something weird was going on with me and Black. She spoke to him soothingly, like one might to a feral animal that had been cornered and was now snarling, threatening to bite. Her words were soft enough to make me tense all over again. She might have even picked up on that because she glanced at me next.
“Miri,” she said, her voice still gentle. “Why don’t you go take a shower?”
I looked at Black.
His eyes were on me, too.
You’d better go, he sent grudgingly. I’ve been reading them. He paused, his thoughts growing more of an edge. Who was this fucking guy? This ‘ex-client’? Angel thinks he was stalking you. Was he? Why the hell didn’t you tell me about him, Miri?
Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4) Page 3
