My thoughts were stuck on one word. “That’s what Miss Prim called Red Coat.”
“Huh?”
“Praedator. What does that mean?”
Hadley shrugged. “How should I know?”
“Because you knew what cambion meant.”
“I’ve never heard of a Praedator before.” She looked at the letter. “It resembles the word predator, meaning hunter, killer… slayer. This may be the Latin spelling for it.”
“So it’s saying—”
“It’s saying you’re to hunt something. What’s that?” Hadley pointed at the photograph in my hand.
“Logan Bradley.” I laid the picture on the table. “Uh… so, I haven’t mentioned the detectives at Maude’s this morning, have I?”
“No, I think you skipped over that part. Why were there detectives at Maude’s?”
“One of Maude’s clients was murdered, and this guy is missing.” I tapped the photo. “He’s also a client.”
“Why would Satan and Lucifer send you a photo of him?” Hadley jerked upright. “He’s dead.”
It was my jaw’s turn to drop. “What?”
“Think about it. Satan is sending you, his hunter, to find this guy. He’s got to be dead, and you’re to collect his soul.”
“Hadley, you’re starting to sound as crazy as Aunt Kate. Tell me you’re not saying I’m a Grim Reaper?” I leaned back in my chair. “Or are you?”
“No, a Grim Reaper would take all dead souls, wouldn’t it? You’re being given a specific task. And that task has to be from Satan. Or Lucifer. Or whoever. Who else is going to send you a charred envelope?” She lifted the letter to her nose and sniffed. “That smells like sulfur.”
Damn. I’d hoped I’d been the only one to notice the scent. I squeezed my tired eyes shut, desperately wishing for a pillow and a bed. “Okay, so Red Coat was a cambion and just happened to be this Praedator whatever who works for the devil—devils?—to hunt down… what? Evil ghosts?”
“Yeah.” Hadley nodded. “I think that covers it.”
“Why would they want to hunt down bad ghosts? Wouldn’t they want evil to wreak havoc on the earth or something?”
“Perhaps these ghosts aren’t evil? Could there be something else about them making the devil want them in Hell?”
“I still don’t understand why I was sent this letter.”
“You get her job.”
“Oh, no.” I snatched the sheet of paper off the table and shoved it into my purse. “No, no, and again, no. How about we go back to talking about my backstabbing brother and his hideous fiancée?”
“How about we figure out what you’re supposed to do in your new job?” Hadley laughed. “I’ve been joking that you work for the devil, but now I think you really do. Or is that devils? This is confusing.”
“This isn’t funny,” I said. “If Logan’s dead, why wasn’t his body found with Gina Welch’s? They’d been together the last time anyone saw them.”
“Tell me what the detectives told you.”
“Only one detective talked.” My face heated at the memory of Wilcox. “He didn’t say much, just that Gina Welch was dead and Logan Bradley was missing.”
“Why’s your face red? Are you blushing?”
Damn Irish skin. “No, I’m mad because he was a jerk.” Hadley’s eyebrows quirked up. “Seriously, he was infuriating.” Hadley stared at me, and I caved. “Okay, we didn’t exactly hit it off. He blamed me for Miss Prim pinching his butt, and I was tired and didn’t care for his arrogant attitude. Happy?”
My phone rang, the sound almost drowned out by Hadley’s traitorous laughter. I reached over to silence the phone. Maude could wait.
“So you’re not going to find this guy?” Hadley asked, wiping at the tears streaming down her cheeks. She wisely let the subject of Detective Wilcox drop, but then she hadn’t been there to see his tight butt, or those expressive dark eyes.
My thoughts snapped out of directions they didn’t need to go, and I pointed to the photograph. “I have to find Logan. Do you see this?”
“His cheek?”
“No, that symbol carved into his cheek.”
Hadley’s eyes squinted. “Yeah, why?”
“Do you remember that night?” I asked. Hadley’s face clouded. Neither of us liked remembering. Hadley had decided to break free of her goody-two-shoes persona and live adventurously. She hadn’t agreed to another adventure since. I pointed to the picture of Logan’s cheek. “He had the same symbol carved into his cheek.”
“Oh, that’s not good.”
“Exactly. But,” I said, “if I can find Logan Bradley, then maybe I can find him. That symbol’s got to mean something.” My phone rang. I ignored it. “So I have to find Logan, but this letter, it can be delivered right back to Hell where Satan and Lucifer can shove it. I’m not working for any devil.”
Hadley returned to drumming her fingers against the table. “Do you have a choice? The letter says three days. What happens if you don’t deliver in three days?”
“What do I even do? I only know who this man is because he’s a client. You’re only guessing he’s dead. You’re just guessing that the devil—as in Satan in Hell—wants me to find Logan and send him to Hell. But how do I send a ghost to Hell? Because if I’ve got the powers to do so, Miss Prim gets a one-way ticket as soon as I arrive back to Maude’s office.” The thought perked me up. “But I’m not a cambion. That family legend crap about demons and Druids Aunt Kate spouts off is just that—crap. I don’t qualify for the job.”
My phone rang.
“This phone never shuts up,” I moaned. “Why can’t Maude leave me alone?”
“I think you should get that,” Hadley said.
“I’m not talking to Maude. If she decides to fire me, she can fire me. It should’ve happened last night. Maybe I should quit?”
“Before you do something drastic, look at your phone. It’s your mother, not Maude.”
“What?” The Caller ID flashed my mother’s number right before the phone switched to voicemail. “The motherly guilt caught up to her. She’s probably calling about Sean’s wedding.”
My text notification chimed. Wait—what? My mother had learned how to text? Since when? I read the message, and my head then nestled back into the crooks of my arms. It was the safest place for it to be kept.
“Now what?” Hadley asked.
“Aunt Kate’s in jail, and I have to bail her out. Again.”
Chapter Four
I was first introduced to cops at the age of six. Addie had this great idea to bring gifts to mean old Mr. Eggalson in order to get him to be nice. Mr. Eggalson lived in the cemetery near the house where I grew up. He yelled a lot about rambunctious kids, and he stole the flowers off Mrs. Mavis’ gravestone. I really didn’t care what Addie did as long as it got Mr. Eggalson to stop yelling that I was rambunctious every time I walked past. Since his gravestone was first on the right after entering the cemetery, I had to walk past him a lot.
We decided to gift Mr. Eggalson with eggs since he always smelled like one. A week after Addie came up with this grand plan, the egg shelf in my mother’s refrigerator was bare and the granite slab that read Bryce James Eggalson b: September 20, 1871 — d: April 03, 1933 was dotted with white oval shapes. After that, I really hated walking by Mr. Eggalson because not only did he still yell at us, I learned the hard way that eggs don’t last long in summer heat.
The police knocked on my parents’ front door three nights after we left our gift at Mr. Eggalson’s gravestone. I was charged with vandalism. No one believed they were gifts, and apparently egging a gravestone is a crime—even with shells fully intact. But the age thing had been in my favor. It kept me from the slammer, but it hadn’t saved me from a two-week bedroom confinement as punishment. Addie had the dead thing in her favor. Gravestones don’t have front doors for cops to knock on so she never got into trouble.
Ever since that day, I’d worked hard at keeping my toe on the law-abiding sid
e of the line. To be honest, an adventurous streak in my DNA came to fruition once I hit my teenage years. It was the memory of that cop staring down at me with a dozen rotten eggs gathered in his arms that kept my mugshot out of the police records. Sadly, Aunt Kate often got confused on which side of the line she was supposed to keep her whole foot in, so I was pretty certain the disdain of rules came from my mother’s side of the family, although she disagreed with that assessment, and my father’s side accepted the lawlessness blame quite well in the form of the ‘Yes, Dear’ my father uttered every time my mother lectured on the topic.
Smart man.
The waiting area of the police station was drab with its white walls and hard plastic chairs. Nothing about it was designed for comfort, and my butt ached in annoyance. Actually felt as if it had endured boot camp in the last twenty-four hours, except with no reward of hard perky buns to go along with the suffered pain.
More than an hour had passed since my mother’s text. I’d delivered an egg salad sandwich to Maude because Checking Account informed me that paychecks were a requirement for a continued relationship. Damn relationships. Under the pretense of recon work on a new client, I slipped out the office before Maude changed her mind about that firing thing. I wasn’t up for Checking Account kicking my already sore butt. My next stop had been to an ATM machine, which Checking Account protested, and now the woman seated behind the counter at the police station had my rent money. Someone better be paying me back.
People had walked in and out of the precinct during my short wait, but I was the only person seated in the lobby. The constant ringing of telephones kept my eyes open wide, despite the yelping pleas they screamed with for a nap. Or at least the plea for the sight of my aunt so I could go home and find my bed. And then take a nap. But Front Desk woman hadn’t been forthcoming with information for when the Aunt Kate sighting should occur. No, she’d taken my information, she’d taken my money, she’d had me sign papers, and then she pointed a long no-nonsense finger at the plastic torture device that someone pretended was a chair. And I sat.
“How old do policemen have to be these days?” The question came from a voice with a familiar Irish lit, and the sound rang through an otherwise empty hallway. “You look not a day over twenty-five, Officer Menendez. Are you twenty-five?”
Aunt Kate walked into view clutching the bicep of a cop looking no older than twenty-two, and I bit back a groan. Her two-inch heels clicked on the linoleum tiled floor, and they made her stand taller than her five-foot-two-inch frame. Her sharp eyes never strayed from the blushing cop’s face. I rose to my feet and made feeble attempts to gain her attention. And by feeble I mean jumping up and down while waving an arm. But instead of acknowledging my existence, Aunt Kate left me hanging while she drooled over the young officer. She had a hard time comprehending that most twenty-something males didn’t prefer middle-aged women. She also had a hard time comprehending that she was a middle-aged woman.
“I’m twenty-three, ma’am,” the officer said.
Twenty-three? Close enough. My powers of observation had a rough morning, but they were getting back on track after Detective Wilcox’s revelations had put a large dent into my ego. Not that I would acknowledge that aloud. Actually, I wouldn’t acknowledge it silently, either. Catching details that others missed had always been my thing, my knack. The one reason I’d been so successful at my job with Maude. Until now.
But that was not to be acknowledged.
“Aunt Kate?” I cleared my throat.
“Now tell me, do you have a girlfriend?” Aunt Kate’s grip tightened on the officer’s arm. It was a tell, one informing me I was being ignored. Her gaze remained fixated on the officer’s face as his head shook no to her question. “How does one so young and handsome not have women flingin’ themselves at him? Especially in this uniform?” Her manicured hand raised and tugged at the collar of his shirt.
Aunt Kate needed to be informed that zero money remained inside Checking Account to bail her out on sexual harassment charges. And that information needed to be transmitted fast. But then, Aunt Kate had a hard time comprehending what constituted sexual harassment.
The young officer stammered, and I waited for an entire two seconds before taking pity on the poor man. My tap to her shoulder was hard. “Aunt Kate, let’s go.”
“A leanbh. There you are.” She swung around as her lips molded into a beaming smile on a less-than-innocent face. Her soft Irish lilt was pronounced. “I’d like ye to meet Officer Menendez. Officer Menendez, meet my brilliant niece, Kiara Blake.” Aunt Kate leaned forward and dropped her voice down to a stage whisper, “She’s single.”
Aunt Kate’s antics were as familiar to me as my irritating seven o’clock wake-up calls each morning, and I was too tired to drum up any embarrassment at her pathetic matchmaking attempts—either for herself or for me. But one swift peek at Officer Menendez caused concern that if his face flamed any redder, he’d stroke out. Grabbing onto Aunt Kate’s arm was a slippery task, the woman was quite evasive when she didn’t want to be caught. Cat burglar was a career option if her ventures across the law-abiding line continued. With a firm grip, I jerked on her arm with a force that may have been rougher than necessary. Aunt Kate’s grasp of Officer Menendez’s thick bicep was lost, and she plowed into my side. My arm snaked around her shoulders to keep her there. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Officer. I do want to apologize for my aunt. We’re scheduled to take her to McLean tomorrow for an evaluation.”
“What’s McLean?” Aunt Kate’s leery eyes looked up to mine.
“Why, it’s that hospital in Massachusetts we told you about. The one with all of the nice doctors who will help you get better.”
“A psych hospital?”
“Nothing but the best for my Aunt Kate.” I smiled and gave her shoulders a tight squeeze before peering up at Officer Menendez. He’d taken several steps back, the human survival instinct to flee shone in bright neon lights across his now ashen face. My free hand flew up to press flat against my chest as I leaned forward in earnest. “Thank you, so much, Officer Menendez, for taking good care of my aunt. You don’t know how much this means to my family.”
“It was, uh, no problem. Have a nice day.” His feet stumbled in haste to escape down the waxed hallway tile, but a brief second of pause delayed his retreat as he darted a quick peek over his shoulder. “I hope you get better Mrs… Uh, Mrs…”
“It’s Miss,” Aunt Kate called, but he was gone. Disappeared behind a door. Aunt Kate turned to me with pursed lips. “You’re off to ruinin’ my fun, young one.”
“You’re too old for that,” I grumbled, and then took off after her as she made a beeline for the front doors. “He’s less than half your age.”
“You better not be callin’ me old.” Her narrowed eyes widened into delight. “Now he’s a prime one over there.”
I followed her gaze outside. Oh, hell no. Detectives Wilcox and Ross were walking up the steps leading to the front doors of the precinct. Deep in conversation, they weren’t focused on their surroundings. My eyes darted around until landing on an escape route. A hastily devised plan formulated: step through the doors and veer right. The long width of the steps would enable passing without notice.
Keep talking, my willful pleas were silent as I nudged Aunt Kate outside. It was more like shoved, actually. Her look back to me was shot with lifted eyebrows, and my finger became a permanent fixture to my lips for silence. I motioned to the right. Aunt Kate stared at my raised finger. Her gaze flipped to the detectives climbing the steps. Then back at my finger. And a devil’s gleam lit in her eyes.
Crap. Payback’s a bitch.
“Hello there, gentlemen.” Aunt Kate walked over until she became a dress size four blockade in their path. “How are you this fine day?”
Detective Wilcox spotted me first. His dark gaze had only skimmed Aunt Kate before brushing over her shoulder to land straight on me. He nodded in greeting. “Ms. Blake. Did you stop off with any additiona
l information?”
“Ah, now, what’s me Kiara been up to?” Aunt Kate asked. “Has she gotten herself into some trouble?”
My hands gripped the sides of my temples. The headache I only thought was gone came roaring back. Amusement reflected in Detective Ross’s eyes, and I was glad someone found something funny about the rotten day.
“No, Detective,” I took a step toward him since my escape was now a lost cause. “I bailed my troublemaking aunt out of jail, but if you can drum up charges to stick her right back in, I’d be grateful.”
He cleared his throat and glanced away, but I spotted a gleam of laughter lurking within those dark eyes when he asked, “So trouble doesn’t run far in your family, huh?”
I frowned. So much for that truce. Too bad Miss Prim wasn’t around. I needed a laugh, and watching Detective Wilcox run up those steps while an invisible hand pinched his butt would’ve made my day.
“Oh, I like you.” Aunt Kate squealed.
It was the sound of a middle school pre-teen, not the almost fifty-year-old woman that she was. I squeezed my eyes shut and counted to ten. When I reopened them, Wilcox’s wide ones were frozen in an unblinking stare at Aunt Kate while she checked out his bicep. Aunt Kate had a thing about strong arms. Wilcox apparently had strong arms. My eyes shut, and I counted another ten.
“Aunt Kate, I’m sure Detective Wilcox has work to do. We don’t want the detective getting behind on his coffee drinking and donut eating, now do we?”
I pivoted on my foot and marched off. Fifteen steps later, I realized I’d walked alone. For once, couldn’t my aunt be cooperative? I turned back to find Detective Wilcox’s eyes on me, and Aunt Kate’s eyes on his butt. Answer to my question would be a no. The sigh that blew through my lips didn’t even come close to verbally expressing my frustration, but what could I do? That man really did have a fine set of glutes and any aggravation I should have felt toward my aunt was parked right beside her for a prime viewing spot, leaving me the odd woman out. I turned my back on Wilcox’s stare—and his butt—and moved on.
Reaping Havoc: Kiara Blake Book 1 Page 4
