Good God. Even now, with foul talk of a cannibal, she threw him off guard with her manners.
The shirt barely covered her hips. And with her in that position, he saw . . . well, everything.
Lounging in the doorframe to keep from touching her, he said, “You know, Gaby, most women feel vulnerable when they’re naked.”
She dragged out a box without looking at him. “Why?”
The question threw him. “I suppose because many men are spurred by lust at the sight of a woman’s body. Some men, idiots I guess, can lose control.”
“So?”
Right. Why would Gaby be concerned with a man’s loss of control? She’d flatten anyone who tried to take advantage of her. “Very few women are as capable of fending off rape as you are.”
“Interesting. But I’m not naked, so does any of this really matter?”
He felt sweat on his forehead. “Jesus, Gaby, you’re mostly naked and you just flashed me an invitation that was damned hard to resist.”
Flipping the lid off the box, she slanted him a distracted frown. “Are all men so unflagging then when it comes to sex? I mean, seriously, Luther, I figured you’d want some downtime by now.”
She damn well didn’t need to know how other men dealt with sexual overindulgence, because she wouldn’t be with anyone other than him—but telling her that now wouldn’t be a smart move. Especially not when she was so open to him for a change.
Stepping forward, Luther went to his knees and joined her on the floor. “With you, Gaby, I don’t think I’ll ever get enough.”
Unconvinced, she turned away and lifted out . . . a manuscript. She set it on the floor between them and just waited.
Luther knew in his guts what she’d just revealed. For some time now he’d suspected that Gaby created the popular, underground graphic-novel series Servant. The vividly depicted stories of a female paladin on earth had an enormous cult following.
And through secretive sales and hidden identities, only Morty had it available.
In fact, Servant kept Morty’s comic book store in business. As Gaby’s closest cohort, whether she’d ever admit that or not, Morty got the privilege of presenting her work to the world—or at least as much of the world as his small shop could reach.
“It’s you, isn’t it?”
Her hands flexed over her knees. “And you. And everyone I’ve met. Everyone I’ve . . . eliminated.” She glanced up at him. “Usually I use the writing and artwork as a way to exorcise the ugliness of what I’ve done, what has to be done.”
“It’s cathartic to get it out on paper?”
She nodded. “But on occasion, when I’m working, things show up that I didn’t yet know. Clues to the future, direction on what to look for.”
“Me?”
She smirked. “No way, cop. You came with no warning. If I’d had even a clue how much you’d invade my life, I’d have steered clear for sure.”
“As I recall, you tried to do just that.”
Her mouth twisted. “Yeah. A lot of good it did me, huh? You’re not very good at accepting rejection.”
“About as good as you are at accepting affection.” Luther scooted around to sit next to her, letting their shoulders bump, their hips touch. “So what in the manuscript makes you think a child will be a victim?”
“The little girl is an intended victim. But no way in hell will I let it happen.” She turned the pages around, flipped aside a few, and showed Luther an eerie ink representation with stark details and fearsome impressions. “There. Do you see her?”
Peering from behind a dark-skinned woman in the throes of consummate terror, Luther saw the child’s face. The woman had already been attacked, but the child appeared unharmed.
“It’s too late for the woman?”
Agitation took Gaby to her feet. “I don’t know.” She sliced a hand through the air. “Probably.”
Luther studied the incredible artwork with new attention to detail. Gaby possessed not only phenomenal physical ability, but astounding artistic talent. “Does Mort know that you’re the—”
“No.” Her shoulders bunched as she paced, not in dejection, but in profound thought. “Only you. And it better stay that way.”
“Because . . . ?” He wanted to hear her say that he mattered more than anyone else.
Instead, she shook her head. “Around you, especially whenever you touch me, I’m not as effective. Since I guess you’re not kicking me out . . . ” She paused, waiting for affirmation.
“Definitely not.”
“Then I guess we should try working together. When my elevated perception fails me—thanks to you—you can maybe step up and fill in some of the gaps.”
“You’re serious?” For what seemed a lifetime, he’d been waiting for her to trust him enough to fully involve him in her life.
She gave a grudging nod. “Sure, why not? After all, you’re not entirely obtuse. You have pretty good instincts and adequate enough skills.”
From Gaby, compliments sounded closer to insults, but Luther knew that it wasn’t easy for her to admit them to him.
“Such high praise will make my head swell.” He looked back at the depictions. “From everything you’ve drawn here, the woman looks African-American, transient at best, an addict at worst.”
“I know. I think . . . I feel that she’s probably both.”
Fascinated, he continued to peruse the pages. “Under those circumstances, and with nothing else to go on, finding her won’t be easy.”
Her gaze cut to his. “It never is. But she has to be somewhere close enough that I can get to her. I never get called for acts out of my reach. If we check all the slum areas . . . ” She started to say something more when suddenly her back snapped straight, so hard and fast that she bowed up onto her tiptoes with a painful gasp.
Luther was on his feet in an instant. “Gaby!”
“He’s here.” Her voice crooned with frigid intensity. “He’s close.” She dropped back to her feet with steely purpose and joyful anticipation. Chin tucking in, eyes brightening with morbid objective, she started out of the room.
Luther reached for her—and she jerked out of his reach.
“No! Don’t touch me.” Eyes unseeing and muscles clenched, she made ready to battle with him if he tried. “Don’t fuck with me, Luther. I mean it. I need to get him, and I can’t if you start hovering over me, dicking with my perception.”
“All right.” He held up his hands, showing that he respected her decision. “But I’m coming with you, no arguments.”
She said nothing. In less than a minute she had on jeans but no shoes. She’d buttoned the flannel shirt only enough to cover her breasts.
Luther had no choice but to follow her out into the cold, early morning obscurity wearing no more than unbuttoned jeans and carrying his gun in one hand, his cell phone in the other.
“No car,” she told him as she reached the sidewalk and launched into a flat-out run away from his home.
“Damn it.” Luther ran as hard as he could, but the icy walkway numbed his feet and each pounding footfall sent pain radiating up his shins. He hadn’t run barefoot on concrete since he was a young boy. He blocked the discomfort to push himself, and still he couldn’t keep up with Gaby.
He’d almost lost sight of her when, for no apparent reason, she came to a dead stop.
At the end of a driveway, near bagged refuse ready for pickup, she turned a full circle, scanning the area, hunting for something.
Or someone.
He’d gotten to within forty feet of her when her face tightened and she took two hard steps toward a cross street—only to draw up short as an idling car a block down the road, hidden by the darkness, suddenly gunned the engine and sped away.
Gaby didn’t chase after it, thank God. But her eyes narrowed with a transcendent apperception that Luther couldn’t comprehend.
Even as the car passed beneath a streetlamp, thick fog made it impossible to see the license plate, or even identi
fy the make and model, especially since the car kept the headlights off.
Why wasn’t Gaby upset at losing her quarry?
“We’re not going after him?” Feeling like the wimp she often accused him of being, Luther bent, hands on his knees, and tried to regain his breath.
“No.” Gaby wasn’t breathing hard, but he could barely draw enough air into his laboring lungs. “There’s no need, not right now.”
She continued to stare in the direction the car had fled until the sound of the engine faded into nothingness.
Almost to herself, she mused aloud, “I couldn’t see him, but he couldn’t see us either. I’d say that’s a fair trade-off.”
“Who?”
“Not sure yet, but I’ll figure it out.” Gaby put her nose in the air, inhaled deeply, and closed her eyes with a fervid satisfaction that altered her expression. “Oh yeah. I have him now.”
“What is it, Gaby?” Luther straightened as he watched her. What did she know that he didn’t?
“I smell it.”
Dread knotted inside him. She smelled . . . human remains? He looked at the garbage bags. “Oh fuck.”
He started to reach for one, and Gaby grabbed his wrist in an unbreakable hold.
“No.” Her gaze was truculent, almost . . . inhuman.
It reassured him. This was Gaby at her best, and knowing she had a handle on things meant fewer people would die.
“Call it in,” she ordered. “Have them get forensics here or whatever you cop-type people do.”
“Okay.” He covered the hand she’d placed on his wrist and pried it loose. Flexing his fingers to restore the blood flow, he asked, “On what grounds? Unlike you, Gaby, I can’t claim a sixth sense. I have to give them something more solid to go on.”
She turned and crouched down near the stuffed bags. A damp wind blew the flannel open over her midriff, but this Gaby, Gaby in the zone, didn’t feel the cold. Her hair whipped past her eyes, and still she didn’t move, didn’t speak.
Finally, her thigh muscles flexing, she stood. “Tell them you saw him dumping body remains. Bones, brains. Tell them we have the grisliest murder evidence they’re ever going to see.” Her gaze swung around to his. “Tell them we need this prioritized.
“All right.” He lifted his phone.
“Wait.” She worked her jaw, solving some inner turmoil. “Tell them to keep us out of it. He doesn’t know us, and we don’t want him to. As long as we’re unknown, we can continue to investigate. Make them understand.”
Their gazes held. Luther didn’t relish the possibility of being caught in such a farfetched lie. “You’re sure about this?”
“Fuckin’ A, I’m sure.” She all but vibrated with purpose, with devotion to her certainty. She pointed at the garbage. “There is a mishmash of inedible human pieces in those bags, Luther. Body parts already stripped of chunks of flesh because our fiend likes to store his food.” She put her head back, closed her eyes. “When we find him, we’ll find a full freezer, too.”
“Christ.” Luther rubbed his eyes. He wanted to take Gaby away from this, but he couldn’t. He was a cop down to the marrow of his bones. And she was a paladin.
With her guidance, they’d get the cretin that much sooner, and save lives in the process.
She looked around, eyes narrowed, hands on her lean hips. “If you can get some units to check the rest of the neighborhood’s trash, I’m betting you’ll find more bags, too.” She glanced at Luther. “Our guy is smart enough to scatter around the remains.”
Luther’s guts knotted in rebellion to the vividness she described. “You can smell that?”
In the slightest movement imaginable, she slowly shook her head. “Oh no, I smell something far more important than blood and guts and intestines.”
He straightened. “What?”
Her eyes brightened in the darkness, and she said with enthusiasm, “I smell ink.”
Head down, music blaring in her ears, Gaby strolled along the curb toward Mort’s place. It was late afternoon, and she and Luther had already had a long day.
“I don’t smell it,” Luther had said about the ink, as if they operated on the same plane. As if anything about her was perceptible to him.
When would he get it? When it was too damned late?
Not much separated her from the ghouls she killed. When Luther realized that, would he revile her?
She just didn’t know, and it made her tetchy.
At least he had believed her, had thrown himself into her instructions without reserve. In record time, Luther had gotten half the damn police force out on the scene. Neighbors awakened to the racket and lights. News crews showed up on the scene.
From inside a dark cruiser, wearing a hat and sunglasses, Luther directed the search. Gaby tucked into the backseat and thought about what needed to be done, and how she’d do it.
Toward dawn they discovered the third and last bag, thanks to stray dogs that sniffed out the feast. At the sight of a mutt gnawing on a human foot, a young female officer puked up her morning coffee and Danish.
Luther didn’t relieve her of duty. He kept them all searching until the last of the garbage had been screened.
They now knew that their cannibal refused feet and hands, intestines, brains, and the spinal cord.
Internal organs were missing, so he either ate those or hadn’t yet had an opportunity to dispose of them.
After they concluded the search, Luther had trailed Gaby to several tattoo shops. He didn’t send other officers to do the same, because he had no legitimate reason to present for the search. He couldn’t very well announce that Gaby smelled the ink, especially when the overwhelming scents of dead flesh mixed with refuse presented a cacophonous assault on the senses, enough to drown out every other odor—at least for the average person.
But she wasn’t fucking average.
No, she wasn’t even in the realm of normal, and because of that, Luther hadn’t discounted her theory of a tattoo artist being involved. But neither did he want Gaby harassing tattoo parlors on her own.
The side investigation, Luther claimed, required finesse and subtlety.
They both knew she possessed neither virtue, and so he went with her. She didn’t mind his company, but she thought he could have done something more important, especially since the legwork hadn’t panned out. Yet.
Gaby was so drawn into her own thoughts that she didn’t see the duo of ragtag youths until they stepped out in front of her, blocking her path.
Slowly she looked up and took their measure. Oh yeah. This confrontation showed promise.
Few people in the quiet, disadvantaged area of tenement housing and crime cared when others got victimized. It was an everyday way of life. At the sign of impending trouble, a vagrant scurried away. Two hookers made a point of turning their backs. Across the street, sitting on a stoop, an obese woman in her nightgown smoked a cigarette and rocked a baby.
No cops. No one to care.
There were only two guys, probably between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one. Given their sneers and aggressive postures, they wanted trouble.
A gift from heaven.
Because Gaby had trouble to spare.
Chapter 9
A stiff wind carried the odor of fetid refuse. It wafted around Gaby, but it didn’t come from the men. No, an overturned trash can was to blame. The bodies attempting to intimidate her were outwardly clean.
Their insides, their rotten morals and foul intentions, had no discernible odor. But Gaby knew. She saw beyond their young, handsome faces and healthy physiques to the burgeoning savages within.
Gaby anticipated the conflict to come. She could use a brawl right now. Physical combat had proven to be the preeminent release for her churning discontent.
That is, she’d found battle to be the greatest release before Luther showed her the draining effects of sex.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the lethargy and peace of mind imbued from carnal intimacy with Luther.
The realization of yet another drastic change Luther had perpetrated caused Gaby’s shitty mood to ramp up a paramount degree.
Slowly, savoring the possibilities, she removed the earbuds and turned off her music. She tucked them into her pocket alongside the new cell phone Luther had presented to her, the phone he insisted she carry on her person at all times.
It was a fucking leash and they both knew it, but what the hell? She could give a little on that score. If the cell phone ensured he could reach her whenever he wanted, the opposite was also true. She could contact Luther at any time.
And she would, just to emphasize that their relationship worked both ways. If he worried for her, well hell, she worried about him a thousand times more.
Luther was a prodigious specimen among ordinary people, but his skills didn’t come close to hers, and that made him far more susceptible to injury.
Utilizing her keen insight, Gaby surveyed the two males who’d separated to block her way. Their low-hanging jeans displayed a laughable amount of underwear, and their shirts were meant to show off tight upper bodies.
Cruelty and belligerence were now comfortable window dressings for them, but to Gaby, their insecurities remained so transparent that she almost pitied them.
Almost.
“Everyone has a choice,” she told them. “You see life, see the injustice, and you can either mimic it or you can do better.” Giving them a fair shot, she said, “Now, decide.”
After sharing a look, one of them said, “What the fuck is she talking about?”
They laughed as one, finding strength in unity. “Bitch, are you loco?”
The darker and more handsome of the two slid a suggestive gaze over her. “She’s butchin’ it up, for sure, ain’t you, girl?” His sleazy grin matched his sleazy perusal. “Wearin’ them ragtag clothes and hiding all the good stuff. But underneath there, mama’s got all the right parts, don’t ya?”
Mustering serene but disdainful mockery, Gaby said, “Just spit it out already. What is it that you fuck-heads want?”
The other boy was taller and looked like a basketball player with his long, lean, muscular physique. Laughing at her, he said, “The skinny cat has claws.” He crowded into her space with cocky obnoxiousness. “I like it. What d’ya say, girl?” He cupped a hand over his package. “You know you want some of this.”
Servant: The Kindred Page 12
